Archive of Our Own

"Rent is due on the first, 4C, no exceptions."

Grantaire's jaw clenches, as does the left hand at his side, and he has to resist the urge to hit the guy. He knows he's the one here, at the man's apartment, asking the superintendent for an extra week to make rent, but he has a name and it isn't the tarnished brass numbers nailed to his apartment door. "I know, and I was late last month and you let me slide," he says, just barely managing to keep the edge out of his voice. "I appreciate it, but it's just been another hard month and—"

"And," the man interrupts, not even bothering to look up from his phone's screen. "The rent is due on the first or you're getting an eviction notice. I've given you enough chances. You're not the first starving art school student I've had to put up with. I'd better see you on the first." He closes the door in Grantaire's face.

Grantaire stands there for a moment, contemplating leaving a dent in the wood as a parting gift, but he has no place else to go and that would surely get him tossed out on his ass. And he would just end up injuring the hand he paints with. He mutters a string of creative and colorful curses under his breath as he turns away from the door, jogging back up the four flights of stairs to his apartment. He glares at the 4C on his door as though it’s its fault that the superintendent is such a dick. But Grantaire sighs as he enters the apartment, patting the numbers as a means of apologizing as he passes over the threshold. He loves this apartment, as shitty as it is. Grantaire has made it on his own without asking his father for help, and he intends to keep it that way.

He makes his way to the kitchenette, opening the fridge and seeing the glaring white of the enamel staring back at him. Alright, so not asking anyone for help also means that his refrigerator is often bare. And the cupboards, for that matter. But Grantaire doesn't mind a less-than-healthy diet of instant noodles and cold cereal. Just like the super said, he's a starving artist. The suffering helps his art. Or something. He splurges in other areas anyway. He closes the fridge and grabs a bottle of one such indulgence off the counter, not bothering with a glass. There's maybe a glass and a half left in the bottle of Bordeaux that he'd opened last night and that hardly constitutes dirtying another cup. Grantaire already has two days' worth of dishes piled up for later.

So he falls onto his couch with a sigh and swigs straight from the bottle, his eyes wandering slowly around the room. It's no Château de Versailles, smallish and cramped and usually a bit untidy with his art supplies and dirty laundry and books scattered all over. Still, it's his. It's home. And Grantaire isn't about to lose it. Going back to his father’s just isn't an option.

-----

It's a new day, which, despite starting with Grantaire waking up with a crick in his neck from sleeping in a supremely uncomfortable position on the couch and cradling a bottle of cheap Malbec (hadn't he begun with Bordeaux?), means... well, it means it's a new day. Grantaire doesn't really do the starry-eyed, hopeful optimist thing.

But he gets up, finishes the bottle because it's there, showers, and gets dressed. He picks up a paper from a neighbor's doorstep, which he'll put back later so it's technically 'borrowing', and he shoves it in the satchel slung across his body as he heads downstairs. It's a rare occasion when Grantaire is seen without the old, worn leather satchel on his person. Depending on the day of the week, it's either filled to the brim with the supplies he needs for his art classes or, like today, it's been unloaded to just one sketchbook, an assortment of pens and graphite pencils, a pack of cigarettes, the iPod (eighteenth birthday gift) that's a dinosaur by today's standards, his ID and whatever cash he might actually be fortunate enough to have on hand. The essentials, really. And that borrowed newspaper.

Which Grantaire pulls out as he sits at a recently vacated table of some bistro he has no intention of ordering from. To any waiter who really isn't paying much attention, it looks as though Grantaire has just finished his meal and has pulled out a paper to read. If he holds it up high enough in front of his face, nobody will bother him for some time. He's not a rookie at this.

He turns straight to the job listings after fishing a ballpoint pen out of his bag. The first of the month is just over a week away, and Grantaire doesn't think he can sell enough sketches or paintings to cover what he doesn't have, which is roughly half. He isn't sure where his money went, but even as he thinks that thought he knows that's a damn lie. Those cigarettes and bottles of wine don't pay for themselves. Neither is a habit Grantaire particularly wants to give up, though, so he makes do by skimping on what he spends on food and clothes and basically everything else. He's not exactly a Luddite, but he can do without certain modern conveniences that a lot of people deem necessities. Grantaire has a laptop (another gift from what seems like another lifetime) that isn't the apex of today's computing technology, but it can connect to the WiFi he borrows from another neighbor. Even then, he doesn't use it all that often. He doesn't even own a TV, which suits him just fine as the last time he did have regular access to television programs there was nothing on but uninteresting drivel ninety percent of the time. He does have a cellphone but not one that talks back to him, just a cellphone that can make and receive calls and send texts and pictures. Too many people spend their lives with their faces turned down and focused on their screens, using apps to tell them where to find the best of life without getting out there and finding it for themselves. And it’s Paris, for fuck’s sake! The most incredible, beautiful, cultured city in the entire world. Why would someone need to ask Siri where to eat when all they have to do is walk into any one of the city’s thousands of restaurants and it’s almost guaranteed to be good? It's a topic that nobody should ever get him started on.

After circling a number of potentially promising job opportunities, Grantaire sets off on foot to visit the various places and turn on the charm. His charm is what he has to rely on, after all, as he doesn't have a resumé to speak of and no references. He's lived off of student loans and the odd job here and there, paid under the table in most cases and never permanent. He's also occasionally sold a piece or two, but Grantaire prefers not to have to resort to that. He's still just an art student, for one, hardly a master who should be profiting off his work. But the other reason is that a lot of his work is too personal to let another person hang it over their sofa or in their foyer. The subject matter comes from a place that Grantaire can't explain and isn't really sure he wants to try. These are pieces that nobody else has ever laid eyes upon, and the situation will never be so desperate as to change that.

It does, however, get admittedly a bit more desperate after a couple hours go by and all that Grantaire has been met with is rejection. He knows it's only the first day, but he doesn't exactly have the luxury of time. As it is, none of the menial jobs he was seeking would've paid a lot so he'd been contemplating working two. But he leaves the last circled job opportunity with another je suis désolé, Monsieur, and it looks as if finding even one job is going to prove impossible. Grantaire steps out onto the sidewalk and glances around. He needs a cup of coffee, maybe something a little stronger even, but he's in a part of the city he doesn't frequent too often. It's not as if he's got business here anymore. So Grantaire heads off in search of more comfortable, familiar surroundings.

-----

He doesn't exactly find that.

Grantaire had been heading to the coffeehouse near the college, the one he usually stops at after classes because the wait staff knows him and sometimes will pass him a black coffee and look the other way. But he takes a different route than the one he normally takes since he's not coming from his apartment, and Grantaire finds himself walking along the Boulevard Saint-Michel. He passes by familiar shops, the area not very far from his building and one he spends a lot of time in. There's the pâtisserie that makes an éclair that Grantaire would be willing to trade sexual favors for. He lifts his hand in greeting at the clerk behind the counter of the tabac where he buys his cigarettes. Grantaire knows the grocer with the freshest and best produce and the sweet elderly couple that owns the fromagerie that's far too expensive for his meager living, though they often bribe him inside for a chat and a sample of their latest fare.

The thing that derails him from his original destination is a café he's passed hundreds of times but never bothered to stop in. Beyond the fact that he prefers the café nearer to the college, where he spends nearly as much time as he does in his neighborhood, there's always been something about the place that strikes Grantaire as... odd isn't the right word, exactly. He just gets a feeling he can't quite explain every time he walks by, which is why he crosses the street to avoid doing so whenever he can help it. Today, though, he's perhaps too preoccupied with thoughts of his troubles to realize that he's standing on the corner right in front of Café Musain until he looks up at the building's facade. That feeling washes over him again, not quite a chill but something similar, and for reasons he will never be able to cite, Grantaire decides to step inside.

The Musain isn't terribly different than the seemingly millions of cafés that are scattered around Paris. Mismatched tables and chairs, nearly every one occupied with a wide variety of people: couples on dates, students with noses in books, business people with laptops and tablets and iPhones all firing at once. In typical Parisian café fashion, the Musain isn't just a coffee shop; a full bar sits along one wall and Grantaire can hear the distant noise of a bustling kitchen over the din of the patrons. The art lining the walls depicts everyday Parisian life from every era imaginable, and Grantaire makes a mental note to later study them in closer detail. The feeling Grantaire got outside only gets stronger as he walks further inside, and he can't shake it. It unnerves him because he's never been here, not even to stop inside to use the restroom, and yet the polished wood of the bar almost feels familiar beneath the palm of his hand. It's just déjà vu or the tricks of an exhausted and stressed-out mind. Nothing he can't cure by making up for the cup of coffee he'd skipped earlier that morning, he tells himself. But the fact that his feet automatically carried him to the bar indicates that he has something else in mind. Grantaire pulls out a stool and before he can even open his mouth to order, the barkeep speaks first.

"Are you Georges?" she asks. "You should've been here twenty minutes ago." He's glad he isn't Georges, not with the scowl she's wearing on her face.

"No, madame," he replies, shaking his head. "Not Georges. I wouldn't dream of being late and incurring your wrath."

She actually cracks a smile, something he'd have previously not thought her capable of, but it fades quickly. She seems to be appraising Grantaire. He just sits there, not sure what to make of it and really wishing he'd stuck to his original plan.

"You'll do," she says, finally, as if he is supposed to know what exactly it is he'll 'do' for. "That is, if you're looking for a job. Can you manage to wait tables without breaking more than two dishes per week?"

Grantaire doesn't even think before answering, "Yes! Of course, madame."

"Good," she says. "Come back tomorrow, an hour earlier than now. I'll show you around and then we'll put you to the test." The look on her face is still a bit skeptical, but she knows she has the option of firing Grantaire as quickly as she's hired him. Hired him. What just happened? He has no idea.

Grantaire forgets all about the drink he'd been seeking. He stands and grins brightly at the woman. "Thank you, madame," he says, impulsively taking her hand and pressing a kiss to it. "You might have just saved my life." He's only exaggerating a little. She rolls her eyes but there's not much real irritation behind the gesture.

As Grantaire rushes out of the Musain, he hears, "Just be on time!"

-----

He's late.

It's his own fault, having started off the entire day half an hour behind schedule. Grantaire just had to celebrate his turn of good fortune, though. It was barely even half a bottle of wine. Okay, maybe three-quarters of a bottle. Still, he's handled more than that before. He just chalks it up to the residual 'the universe wants to shit on me right now' streak he'd previously been on until yesterday. That doesn't help the fact that he misses the métro because he'd missed the first twenty minutes of class and had to stay and speak to his instructor for a few moments. So he has to walk to the Musain, and even half-jogging some of the way doesn't save Grantaire from being exactly eight minutes late.

"Georges was twelve minutes later than I am," Grantaire says as he sweeps into the café. The woman who'd hired him yesterday is now behind the counter instead of the bar, and she's looking at him with a gaze that could kill. He steeples his hands before him, still breathless from his brisk walk. "Madame, please, tell me you haven't given away my job."

She's charmed by him, Grantaire can tell, though she does her very best to indicate the opposite. "Twelve more minutes and I might have," she barks. She jerks her thumb in the direction of a long corridor just off to her left. "There's paperwork for you to fill out. On the table near the window. Once you're done with that, grab an apron and bring the papers out here to me. Then we'll see how long I'm going to keep you."

Grantaire flashes her a grin. "You are an angel, thank you. You won't regret this."

"Don't make me," she calls after him, and he swears he can hear a smile in her voice.

The corridor is dark and long and the second Grantaire steps into it, he feels an unexplainable chill run down his spine. He can hear voices coming from the back room, a chorus of them, animated and lively, though it sounds as if they're slightly muffled or far-off. Grantaire walks into the room and expects to see people, but he's alone. There are empty tables and chairs, one with the paperwork said to be waiting for him, but he looks around the large room and sees no one. He steps into the room slowly, frowning as he casts his eyes back and forth. Grantaire knows he heard voices. He notices, as he sits at the table underneath it, that the window is open so the voices could've drifted in from outside. Grantaire peers out and sees people passing by but can't hear them as clearly as he had the voices of those men. And why have they suddenly stopped? There's nothing but silence filling the air now, though he feels like there are pairs of eyes on him.

Grantaire tries to shake the feeling off and takes a pen out of his bag to fill out the paperwork. He hurries through it, eager to get out of that back room for some reason. He still feels as if he is being watched, despite the fact that he's looked around several times and found himself alone. There is one moment when he thinks he sees a flash of red in one corner, but it's apparently a trick of the lights because he blinks and refocuses and there's nothing there. Grantaire gathers the papers and stashes his satchel, grabbing an apron off the row of hooks lining one wall, and he makes a beeline down the corridor. He expects the voices to return, but all he hears is the noise from the main room of the café. He tells himself that maybe that was all it was in the first place, even though there is a part of him that knows better.

Claudette — he learns that's her name after calling her madame one too many times and she informs him as much — looks over his forms and him and nods her approval. She shows Grantaire everything there is to know about working at the Musain. Everything. In one whirlwind circuit around the place, halted only by the presence of customers she has to greet or serve or bid farewell to. Either she's really desperate for help or she's unnaturally confident in the abilities of a man she had been acquainted with for mere minutes before offering him a job. Grantaire doesn't much care. He'll learn everything there is to learn and make it work. He needs the paycheck.

It is desperation, though, he finds out as Claudette is showing him how to use the espresso machine. Again. It's an antiquated thing, nothing like the one-press-of-a-button machines he's seen in newer coffeehouses. She effortlessly dispenses ground espresso into something she calls a portafilter, tamps it down, affixes the portafilter to the machine, and pulls what looks like a perfect shot - all without looking at the machine once.

"Guillaume gave his two-week notice last week and then informed me two days ago that he wasn't coming in for the rest of the two weeks," she says, tossing back the freshly-pulled shot like it's whiskey. Grantaire has a feeling she could keep up with him over at the bar. "And we had to let another person go because she was taking home unopened bottles of wine. Like I already explained to you, you're free to help yourself to a few glasses while you're closing up. But outright theft will not be tolerated."

"I wouldn't dream of it," Grantaire says, leaning against the counter. "You had me at 'you can help yourself to a few glasses'. I know better than to bite the hand that feeds me."

Claudette rolls her eyes and grabs a towel, moving past Grantaire. "You're going to be trouble, I just know it," she says. "The charmers always are. But that's it, then. You know everything there is to know. And if you can't remember, don't come asking me. I'm not here to babysit you. Ask one of the other servers, if they're not too busy sitting on their asses and watching the new guy do all the work."

Grantaire already has grown to like her immensely. "I might just surprise you, Claudette."

"You'd surprise me if you showed up again tomorrow," she retorts. "Now, go. You've got customers."

Grantaire looks up and sees three young women approach the counter. He straightens his apron and heads over to take their orders.

(And it only takes three tries to get the espresso machine to work for him.)

-----

It’s not a bad first day, if he must say so himself. Grantaire doesn’t break any dishes, doesn’t spill any food or drinks on anyone, and he only forgets to put two orders in with the kitchen. It could’ve gone much, much worse. In fact, he was expecting it to.

So he’s rather pleased with himself when Claudette informs him that it’s time to lock up. He’s too new for her to leave him to it, of course, because she may have hired him on the spot but she’s not about to hand him a set of keys just yet.

Grantaire is just finishing wiping down the tables when Claudette calls out to him. “I’ve got a family to get home to. Go get your things and we’ll get out of here.”

He has nearly forgotten about the back room and the way he felt earlier when he entered it. But the feelings come rushing back as Grantaire heads down the long corridor, which is much darker now that night has fallen. He feels ridiculous. There’s nothing to be afraid of, although he isn’t sure it’s fright he’s feeling. There isn’t anything scary about the room. It just fills Grantaire with an uneasiness unlike anything he’s experienced.

Grantaire has to push those feelings down, though, because he works at the Musain now, and the back room is where the aprons are hung and the used linens go and employees’ possessions are stored. He walks into the room, not aware that he’s holding his breath as he does so.

Not until he tries to gasp at the sight of the figure seated at the table he’d been sitting at earlier and can’t.

The man isn’t someone who has been in the café at any point since Grantaire came on shift. He definitely would’ve noticed him for two reasons. First, he looks as if he’s stepped right out of the pages of a history textbook. He’s dressed in a red jacket and he’s wearing a brocaded waistcoat beneath it. And is that an honest-to-god cravat? His trousers and boots are from at least a few centuries past, and there’s a blue-white-and-red rosette pinned to his lapel. That get-up is enough to make him stand out in a crowd, let alone in the Musain.

But the other reason Grantaire would’ve noticed him is because he has to be the most beautiful man Grantaire has ever laid eyes on. His full head of blond hair is the first thing Grantaire notices about his appearance, tied back in a loose ponytail with golden tendrils escaping the satin ribbon binding them and falling around his shoulders. But then he notices his eyes, so brilliantly blue from across the room and even in such dim lighting. He's perfect, Grantaire thinks, from the line of his nose to the shape of his petal-pink lips. He looks as though Botticelli's own hand painted him there in his perfection, in his ethereal beauty. Grantaire is struck absolutely speechless by his presence.

"So you see me," he says.

Grantaire resists the urge to look around. He knows he's talking to him. "Well, yeah," he replies, slowly. "Is... is there any reason I shouldn't?"

The man shakes his head and laughs a bit. "You didn’t earlier."

"Earlier? Nobody was in here earlier. I'm sorry, I just—"

"Grantaire!" Claudette calls from the main room of the café. "With or without you, I'm locking up in ten seconds!"

He turns away from the blond stranger to answer her. "Just a moment, Claudette, there's—" Grantaire looks back to the table where the man is seated.

Was seated. He's gone. Grantaire looks around with a bewildered expression. He was right there, not even two seconds ago. The chair is still pulled out from the table. There's a backdoor but for him to have reached it that quick is simply impossible, and Grantaire would've heard the motion. He feels that unnerving feeling creep up the back of his neck again, and his brain tries to come up with plausible explanations for what just happened. He didn't hear him leave because he'd been talking to Claudette. And just because Grantaire can't move that fast doesn't mean that man can't. Grantaire certainly didn't imagine him, and he isn't about to entertain any other possibilities.

He shakes his head, removes his apron, and grabs his bag. Grantaire jogs out to Claudette, wanting to be out of that room now.

"Sorry," he says, flashing her a sheepish grin. "There was, uh, a knot in my apron strings. Hope I didn't keep you waiting too long."

Claudette has her hands on her hips but she's smiling. Sort of. "You did good today, so I'll forgive it." Grantaire follows Claudette out and she locks the café's door, turning to him. "So. You come back tomorrow. I'll work out a more permanent schedule for you. If you're late again, you're cleaning the bathrooms the moment you get here."

Grantaire suspects he's going to clean the bathrooms either way, but he smiles and bows slightly at Claudette. "Merci. I will be on time, I assure you. I might show up early, even. What's your favorite flower?"

Claudette rolls her eyes and laughs, swatting in the air dismissively. "My husband would come tan your hide if you brought me flowers when he hasn't in years. Save your charm for the young, single ladies. Go on, get home."

"Goodnight, Claudette," Grantaire says, walking in the opposite direction of her. His charm would be better spent on young men, but she doesn't need to know that just yet. Or ever. The last time an employer found out about his sexuality, he was told not to come in any longer. Grantaire knows there's a chance that Claudette wouldn't care either way, but he can't afford to take that chance.

But his mind isn't on anything but the man in red. Grantaire can't stop thinking about him, picturing his face and his fine features, recalling the sound of his voice. He very nearly walks past his own building because he keeps on getting lost in thoughts of all that blond hair. It doesn't get any better as he trudges up the stairs and lets himself in. Through his "dinner" of two cigarettes and nearly half a bottle of wine, Grantaire doesn't stop thinking about him. Where had he come from? Where had he gone so quickly? Why did he seem surprised that Grantaire could see him? The questions swirl around his head, but it's the man's striking beauty that haunts him more than anything. His face had immediately struck Grantaire as vaguely familiar. He had almost felt as though he'd seen him before, but he knew that wasn't possible. He would have remembered seeing a face like that in his lifetime. The feeling doesn't leave him as he falls heavily onto the couch and reaches for a sketchbook. He has the urge to draw that face, to capture as much of his surreally beautiful likeness as possible. As if he has forgotten a single detail of it. He snags a pencil from the coffee table as he flips through the sketchbook to find a blank page. He shuffles past the older sketches he’s done in the weeks prior — an elderly couple he’d observed sitting on a park bench with hands clasped, a quick outline of the Eiffel Tower, the view from his building’s rooftop — and something he drew two weeks ago makes him stop dead in his tracks.

It’s him.

It’s the man from the Musain. Grantaire would know his face anywhere, now. The sketch isn’t particularly detailed but there’s enough to know it is unmistakably him. He has the same flowing hair, the same perfectly-shaped lips, the same sculpted nose. Grantaire had felt he’d seen him before. This is why. His hands are shaking as he flips ahead to the next page, and it’s him again. There’s both a rough profile, almost a silhouette, and a more detailed half body shot. Grantaire marvels at the fact that he’s wearing what appears to be the same outfit as he’d seen him in earlier.

He flips back to the front of the sketchbook and, sure enough, the man’s likeness is peppered throughout his drawings. A sense of panic starts to wash over Grantaire because no, this isn’t possible, he doesn’t know this man and has never met him until today. But he knows that he’s avoiding facing a truth that has slowly been dawning over him since he first recognized the blond man in his art. Even as he flips through page after page of his old, filled sketchbooks, some dating back a year, and sees that same man scattered throughout them, Grantaire can’t bring himself to admit that any of this is actually happening.

“It’s the goddamn wine,” he mutters to himself, tossing aside the seventh sketchbook he’s gone through. “I’m done with the stuff. Done!” He kicks over an empty bottle as he hastily gets up from the couch, wanting to be away from his sketches. Grantaire makes his way to the haven of his bed, sure that a good night’s sleep will fix all of this. He’s overtired and overstressed and maybe he had a little more to drink than he thought. Wouldn’t be the first time.

He passes the closet where he stashes his finished pieces, the ones that are too personal to sell, and Grantaire’s feet come to a halt. That truth he’d been avoiding? It’s right behind this door. Grantaire blinks at the wood, as if he’s expecting it to have the answers to the questions swirling around his mind. He knows he can open the door and look at his paintings and confirm what he already knows to be true. He reaches for the doorknob but pulls his fingers back from the metal as though burned by it.

He turns away from the door and climbs into bed, not bothering to change his clothes. Maybe none of it was real, after all. Maybe the man wasn’t ever at the Musain but just a product of Grantaire’s overactive imagination. “Maybe I’m losing my fucking mind,” he says to himself.

Grantaire spies an open bottle of red wine on the table next to his bed. He knows he just declared his intentions to stop drinking, but if ever there was a time he needed a drink this is it. He picks up the bottle and takes a swig, wincing at the sour taste. He’s consumed worse.

He finishes the wine, gets up to open one more, and is asleep with an empty bottle cradled in his arms within the hour.

-----

Grantaire wakes up far too soon, drenched in a cold sweat.

He’d been dreaming of the blond-haired man in red. There is chaos all around, men shouting and gunshots and what sounded like cannonfire, and then there’s silence. It is the silence that rouses Grantaire, sleeping in his own dream. When he wakes, he sees him. He’s in front of what looks like a firing squad, antiquated weapons raised and pointing directly at him. Grantaire feels a panic in his chest and scrambles to his feet, crying out long live the republic! and declaring that he is one of them. He makes his way to the man’s side, brazenly ordering the soldiers to kill them both, then turns with a softer tone to ask the man permission to die by his side. The beautiful man gives it, smiling and taking Grantaire’s hand, and then flashes and smoke fills the room, loud bangs piercing Grantaire’s eardrums, white-hot metal piercing Grantaire’s flesh.

And then it’s over.

He is in his familiar bed, the darkness of his room a comfort compared to the scene of moments ago. Grantaire is breathing hard, his fingers clenched tightly in the sheets. For a brief moment, he looks around in the darkness, searching for a blond man he knows can’t possibly be there. But he’s alone, as he always is when he wakes up, and so he heaves a deep sigh as he lays back down to burrow beneath the covers.

It was just a nightmare, he tells himself, and it was just a daydream earlier at the Musain. He says it over and over, sometimes out loud and under his breath, until he believes it enough that he can fall back asleep.

-----

Grantaire approaches the back room of the Musain with a slow and trepidatious step.

He’d been ten minutes early to impress upon Claudette that he was still a better choice than Georges, despite having been late his first day. Grantaire had managed to avoid the back room until his actual shift was set to begin, making himself a coffee, socializing with a few of the patrons he remembered from the previous day.

Now, the room is unavoidable. He hears the same voices he’d heard before, a chorus of men all talking animatedly though somewhat muffled. But they don’t fade when he gets closer, not this time. They grow louder and clearer. He clutches the strap of his bag as if it’s a weapon he can wield against whatever he’s about to walk into. Grantaire closes his eyes just before he steps into the room, convinced that he can just will the voices away.

“R!” comes the jubilant shout that makes Grantaire nearly jump out of his skin.

He opens his eyes in time to see a bald man striding toward him, a big grin on his face as he opens his arms wide. Grantaire winces but the other man doesn’t notice, embracing him like an old friend. He is very solid and very real, and he squeezes Grantaire like he’s been waiting a very long time to do so. Grantaire wonders if his ribs can withstand it.

They do, and the man pulls back to hold him at arm’s length, grinning broadly. “You look good,” he says, letting a mere five seconds pass before embracing him again. Grantaire can’t help but let out a little oof and the man barks out a raucous laugh before releasing him once more. “Forgot how delicate you were.” He fakes a jab at Grantaire’s midsection that says he clearly thinks otherwise.

Grantaire looks bewildered. “I— I’m sorry,” he stammers out. “I don’t…”

The smile on the man’s face fades a bit. “You don’t remember me?”

“He doesn’t remember any of us, Bossuet. Not yet.”

Grantaire feels a jolt shoot up his spine, almost a shiver, at that voice. He realizes who it is before his eyes search the room and find him. He can’t stop the soft smile that flickers across his features at the beautiful sight. Just like in his sketches. Just like in his dream. Just like…

The bald man — Bossuet, he’d been called — steps beside Grantaire and slings an arm around his shoulders, grinning brightly. “Ah, but some things never change.”

The blond looks down and appears to blush the slightest bit, and a smattering of laughter breaks out. It’s then that Grantaire notices that the room is much fuller than he’d initially thought. His eyes widen as he sees a room full of men dressed just like the other two. One of them, dark hair in curls around his face and a charming grin curving his lips, lifts his hand and waves enthusiastically at him. Grantaire waves back because he doesn’t know what else to do. There’s a bearded man in glasses beside the blond in red, who nods at Grantaire with a smile.

None of this can be real, he thinks.

“Who does he think we are?” asks a man who has his long frame curled into a chair, his fingers playing with the ends of a long, ginger plait.

Bossuet, his arm still around Grantaire, gives him a little shake. “Let’s ask him, Jehan,” he says. “Grantaire, who do you think we are?”

Grantaire is aware of the eyes of every man in the room on him: the man holding the handkerchief to his nose and mouth, another man with darker ginger hair and the broad shoulders of a laborer, a tall man with a crooked grin and a faint black eye blossoming beneath his right eye. The rest are looking at him, too, and he suddenly feels nervous and unsure of what to say. Because he isn’t sure he has an answer that makes any sense. He has no idea who they are but, moreover, he doesn’t even know if they’re real.

“I don’t know,” he answers truthfully.

Bossuet clutches at his chest as though wounded, bending over slightly. He wanders over to settle into the seat beside the man with the handkerchief, draping himself dramatically across his lap. “You stage a rebellion with a man and you expect him to at least remember your name,” he says, looking up into the amused face of the other man. “I thought we raised him better than this, Joly.” Grantaire watches as the one called Joly rolls his eyes affectionately and runs a hand over Bossuet’s head.

He looks around at the faces around him, faces that he strangely feels should be familiar but aren’t. “I don’t mean to be rude,” Grantaire begins to apologize. But something Bossuet said makes him pause. “I’m sorry. Did you say… stage a rebellion?”

The blond steps forward, closer to him, and Grantaire suddenly feels like it’s harder to draw in a breath. “Does that mean anything to you?” he asks. There’s an intensity to his gaze, to the tone of his question, and Grantaire wants so badly for it to mean something. He even imagines a stirring in his chest, a flash to the dream he had just the night before. But he shakes his head in reply, and he can’t quite explain why the brief flash of disappointment in those blue eyes bothers him as much as it does.

“These tables aren’t going to wait themselves, you know!”

Grantaire starts, snapping his head toward the corridor and the sound of Claudette’s voice. He’s very nearly forgotten where he is amidst the impossibility of the gathering of men before him.

“Coming!” he calls back in response. He turns to explain why he has to go but if they just sit tight…

Except the room he is looking at is empty.

Grantaire feels his stomach clench, a cold sweat immediately breaking out across his brow. No, this can’t be. They were just here. He touched one of them, talked to them! They knew his name, and not only that but his nickname as well. He isn’t sleeping, it isn’t some elaborate dream, and he certainly isn’t drunk and hallucinating. Grantaire reaches for the back of the nearest chair to brace himself, shaken to his core and convinced that he’s losing his mind.

But Claudette calls again, this time with much more impatience laced in her tone, and it’s enough to make his trembling fingers reach for an apron and tie it on. His feet feel heavy and clumsy as he walks down the corridor toward the main room, glancing back over his shoulder every other step. They don’t reappear, though, and Grantaire can’t hear their distant chattering.

It’s as if they were never there, which may or may not have been the case. He just doesn’t know.

-----

He gets through his shift without incident, but he barely remembers any of it at the end of the day. It’s a blur of one customer after another, making immemorable small talk as if on autopilot, just enough to get decent tips, and not being able to truly focus on anything but the men in the Musain’s back room.

Grantaire spends the entire day avoiding it, though now that it’s closing time he knows he has to go retrieve his bag again.

Claudette is wiping down the espresso bar, her final task, as he takes a few timid steps down the hall. He pauses and listens.

Silence.

Grantaire takes a deep breath and takes a few more steps, pauses and listens again.

More silence.

He breathes deeply again, this time more a sigh of relief than anything, and his steps are more steady when he walks into the back room. It’s empty.

“Of course it’s empty,” Grantaire mutters to himself, untying his apron and discarding it in the dirty linens bin. He grabs his bag and slings it over his shoulder, not staying in the room any longer than he has to.

-----

The closet with the paintings almost seems to have a voice of its own tonight.

Grantaire glares at it, finishing his dinner of four cigarettes and the rest of a slightly-soured open bottle of Pinot Noir. He hasn’t touched his sketchbooks, knowing he’ll see him again, and he just can’t cope with that. If he looks at those paintings, it’ll make everything a thousand times worse.

But there’s an almost perverse desire within him to see them. Maybe they’re not the same as he remembers. Maybe looking at the paintings will actually alleviate his concerns and allow him to get a better night’s sleep than he had last night. Maybe he’s deluding himself because even if the paintings aren’t what he knows they are, there’s still the matter of the men appearing and disappearing at will at the Musain.

Grantaire rakes a hand through his hair, lets out a loud huff, and he makes a decision: he isn’t drunk enough for this shit.

By the time he finishes the next bottle, Grantaire can’t be bothered with the closet and its contents. He can’t even be bothered to get up and make his way to his bed.

-----

He dreamt of them.

Grantaire is distracted by thoughts of it all day, from the walk to school to every minute spent sitting in his classes to the walk to work. It’s all he can think about.

The dream hadn’t been jarring, unlike the first one. Nobody died, at least. There had been such an ease about their friendship, him among the men as though that was truly where he belonged, sitting around in a room that looked suspiciously like the back room of the Musain. There had been laughter and wine flowing in equal measure, and Grantaire had been seated with the man who had embraced him, Bossuet, and the other called Joly. And it had felt so right, more right than anything he could remember in recent years. The beautiful man had been there, too, looking stern and serious as he spoke with the tall brunette in glasses and the dark-haired man whose smile just exuded charm. It was actually kind of pleasant, and Grantaire remembers waking up with a smile.

Still, as he looks up at the Musain and the faded sign proclaiming the café’s name, Grantaire isn’t able to stop the shudder that passes through him. He knows it’s ridiculous, but there’s something about the dream that feels like it was much more than that. He had the same feeling after that first nightmare, and Grantaire suddenly knows what it is. The dreams didn’t feel like dreams at all. They felt like memories.

He stops just across the street from the café, his heart thundering against his ribcage. They aren’t memories. They’re certainly not his memories. They can’t be. Grantaire feels as if his head is starting to swim, like a migraine is just around the corner, but he admonishes himself and forces his feet to carry him to the front door. He is not going to let whatever wine-soaked madness this is (even though he has been sober the few times he’s seen the mysterious men) ruin this job and his only chance at keeping a roof over his head.

Grantaire enters the Musain and sees faces that are starting to become familiar, smiling and offering a small salute to Claudette behind the bar. She rolls her eyes and swats her towel in his general direction, and he knows that means she’s pleased to see him again. He won’t get rich working here, and he might need a second job before long. But Grantaire fits in here, likes it here so far.

Mostly. He can do without the hallucinations that have his feet slowing his pace as he heads to the back room. That’s what he’s decided they are. Hallucinations. Hallucinations that can somehow give hugs. Fuck, there goes that theory.

Grantaire realizes he hasn’t been paying attention to whether or not he could hear their voices. He walks into the room and braces himself for the sight of them.

It’s empty.

-----

At the end of the day, the room is still empty.

-----

It remains empty for the next two days.

Grantaire tells himself he’s relieved. He shouldn’t be seeing those men who would look more at home in some painting in a gallery than in the back of a modern-day café.

But he also finds himself missing them. Which is absolutely absurd because he is now absolutely sure they’re Not Real. They are a product of too much wine and too much stress and too little sleep. It’s a good thing that they’re gone. He’s just glad the hallucinations didn’t follow him anywhere else.

That’s all they ever were. Hallucinations. Visual and auditory and tactile hallucinations. Grantaire looks it up. He’d been skeptical to label them as such because he’d never heard of a hallucination being something you could touch. But surprise, surprise: alcohol consumption can trigger tactile hallucinations. So that settles it for him. The men were not real. He doesn’t have to check the paintings in his closet because it doesn’t matter. That’s probably where his subconscious came up with them in the first place.

Not real.

And definitely not missed.

-----

Another two days passes and still no sign of them.

Grantaire isn’t sleeping well, but it has nothing to do with their absence. Nothing at all. Neither does the fact that he’s found himself standing with his hand on the doorknob to that hall closet at four in the morning twice this week. He doesn’t know what he’s so scared of (which is just one more lie he tells himself because he knows exactly what he’s afraid of), but he just can’t seem to open that door. He tells himself they’re just his stupid, mediocre paintings. He takes another (and another and then another) swig of wine to gather his courage, but that doesn’t work. He just ends up waking up slumped against the door, an empty wine bottle leaning against his thigh, and nothing to show for any of it. He’s beginning to think he’s starring in some warped take on The Tell-tale Heart, sometimes swearing he can hear those voices from the Musain coming from behind that door.

Today just isn’t a day for classes, so Grantaire doesn’t go. But he doesn’t stay home. He can’t deal with that closet or being indoors period. He spends the day in the park, armed with his sketchbook and deliberately drawing everything that isn’t people: trees, birds, cloud shapes, a bicycle leant up against a lamppost. He doesn’t bring any colors with him either, the red too tempting to venture onto other subjects he has no desire to sketch just then. Grantaire fills a third of the sketchbook before he knows it, hours uncounted spent on that bench, the pencil in his hand and the lines he creates on the blank pages the only things that matter.

Work still has to matter, though, so Grantaire eventually forces himself to leave the refuge of the park and head to the Musain for his evening shift. He takes his time strolling through the streets of Paris, the city he’s written a million love letters to in the form of paintings and drawings. The sun is just beginning to set and the nightlife is vibrating with energy, ready to come alive at any moment. The dinner crowd is starting to fill the restaurants, groups of university students gather in cafés to plan the night’s revelries, tourists amble along the sidewalks with their noses in guidebooks and maps. Grantaire could walk these streets a thousand lifetimes over and he’d never tire of them. Paris is the one thing he allows himself to romanticize but, really, he doesn’t have to do much.

By the time he reaches the Musain, he’s got a faint smile on his face and not a care in the world.

That all changes the moment Grantaire steps into the back room.

“Where have you been?” he demands of him. The anger in his own voice surprises Grantaire. He should’ve been relieved that the figments of his imagination were no longer tormenting him with their presence. He told himself that he was. But faced with the blond in red again, he just feels that he’d been abandoned.

“You needed time,” the man says. The casual, almost careless way he lifts one shoulder in a shrug infuriates Grantaire.

“I don’t need time,” Grantaire says hotly. “I need to know who the fuck you are!”

The man looks disappointed again, as he had once before, and it has the same effect on Grantaire as it did then. That just angers him more. “You know who I am, Grantaire.”

“I don’t! I don’t know who you— I don’t even know what you are!” he shouts, taking a step closer to him. “Are you real? Am I losing my goddamn mind? What the fuck do you want from me?”

The other man is too calm, too patient when all Grantaire wants is a fight. He doesn’t know why he wants one. He just does. But he isn’t going to get one. The blond just blinks at him and suddenly closes the gap between them. He’s standing close, too close, and Grantaire isn’t breathing.

“Always the skeptic, R,” he says. His voice is soft, hypnotically so. “I’m right here, right before you eyes, and you still don’t believe in me?” Grantaire can’t speak, just watching as the man slowly lifts a hand and reaches toward him. He seems as though he’s about to graze Grantaire’s cheek but then suddenly drops his hand back to his side. “You did, once.”

Grantaire’s mouth falls open but the words are lost to a loud crashing noise from the kitchen. He snaps his head in the direction of the sound, looking down the long corridor behind him, and he sees Claudette hurrying to find out how much that clatter is going to cost her. But the commotion is just a temporary distraction. Grantaire has something far more pressing to attend to.

He turns back to the man.

The room is empty once more.

-----

Three glasses of wine before (and one — okay, one and a half — surreptitious glass during) his shift help Grantaire make it through the night.

As soon as he’d found the back room empty, he had rushed out of it. He stashed his bag on the shelves beneath the cash register instead because he’d had enough of that back room. Fuck that back room. Going back in there at closing time wasn’t something he was willing to do. So he downed three glasses in rapid succession while Claudette had still been handling the kitchen catastrophe, and Grantaire’s hands stopped trembling enough to carry his tray. The glass (and a half) he’d sneaked during his shift was only a necessity because a blond with a red blazer came in the front door and he’d mistaken the woman for his mysterious back room apparition at first glance.

But now work is over. Grantaire walks down the street with his hands shoved into his pockets, his face contorted into an expression that would keep even the most desperate pickpocket away. None of it makes any damn sense. People don’t just appear and reappear at will. Not actual, living people anyway. Claudette never once seems to indicate that she’s ever seen the men in the back room. And when he one day casually asks some of the kitchen staff if they’ve ever seen the guy in red hanging around, they all look at him as if he isn’t speaking the same language. So it’s apparently just him that can see — and talk to and hear and touch — them.

The blond’s words about believing in him haunt Grantaire all the way home: you did, once. Had he imagined the almost wistful tone in his voice? He knows he didn’t imagine the fact that he had reached out toward his face. And what was it the other one, Bossuet, had said when Grantaire lost himself and smiled the second time he saw the blond? some things never change. It all speaks to some intimacy between them, something deeper that Grantaire feels incredibly frustrated that he can’t piece together. And then immediately feels more than a bit unstable at the fact that he’s even trying to sort out this connection between himself and the hallucinations or apparitions rather than seeking to sever it.

He stops off at his usual tabac, the red diamond sign out front glowing like a beacon to him. He prefers to roll his own cigarettes when he can, but Grantaire needs to light up on the way home so a pack will do. The moment he steps onto the sidewalk again, he’s got a cigarette between his lips and a lighter raised to the tip of it. The first slow drag is almost orgasmic for the way it seems to calm his frayed nerves. Grantaire closes his eyes and even lets out a low hum as he blows a curl of smoke up into the night air. He doesn’t care how he looks to other people. He needs this.

He gets home quickly after that. Grantaire is already on his third cigarette as he walks in the front door. He drops his bag and keeps his eyes straight ahead on the kitchen. He doesn’t let himself look anywhere else because if he does, he knows his eyes will betray him and land on that closet door. So he makes a beeline for the unopened bottle of Merlot that’s sitting on his counter. It’s dreadfully cheap stuff but he isn’t drinking for the taste. All he wants is to drink until the world gets fuzzy and there are no more pretty men in red coats that cannot be real.

-----

Half a bottle later, the world is still alarmingly focused.

-----

Another half bottle later, everything looks like it’s being shot through a soft lens.

But the madness in Grantaire’s brain, the madness that the damn Merlot was meant to quiet, has only grown louder.

He’s sitting with his back to the closet door, one leg straight out with the bottle propped against it and the other bent so that his elbow can rest on it. His hand is tangled up in his hair, head bowed a bit, and he’s actually laughing.

“You fool,” Grantaire says to himself. His words are slurred but it doesn’t matter because he’s the only one listening. “You always said you wouldn’t turn out like the old man. Always. That was the one fucking thing you promised yourself wouldn’t happen. And yet here we fucking are. Drinking yourself probably to death. At least you don’t have a kid to push around. Fuck.” Grantaire grabs the bottle and takes another swig, draining it, and he drops it to the floor and lets it roll away. There’s another one somewhere in the house and he intends to find it.

Grantaire tries to stand but the room lurches violently and he falls back against the door with a thud. He tries again, his feet slipping out from beneath him when he’s managed to get halfway up and sending him back to the floor again. He huffs and reaches for the only thing nearby that will give him any sort of leverage: the doorknob. There’s a lot of twisting and slipping and cursing, but Grantaire makes it to his feet.

“Fuck you, I did it,” he says, pointing an angry finger at nobody at all. He begins to stagger away, feeling triumphant, when he hears a creak just behind him. Grantaire’s blood runs cold, the sound having a somewhat sobering effect on him. He doesn’t have to turn around to know what’s happened but he does anyway.

In his clumsy attempts to get to his feet, Grantaire has opened the closet door.

His heart pounds violently against his sternum, a sweat breaking out across his forehead at the sight of the canvasses within, all stacked and leaning against each other on the floor of the otherwise empty closet. There’s at least twenty of them in there. He lost count when he forced himself to stop painting the haunting and unsettlingly similar scenes over and over again.

Grantaire is frozen, his eyes fixed on the canvasses. He wants to slam the door shut or maybe burn the paintings until they can no longer torment him. But he does neither. He stands there and he stares. For a full ten minutes he just stands in front of the open door and stares at the interior of the closet. It feels like days to Grantaire. Finally, finally he moves.

But not back, not away, not in the direction nearly everything in his body is screaming at him to travel. Grantaire takes a step toward the closet. There’s no light inside, but the light from the room is illuminating it enough. He sees the canvasses inside, sees flashes of color: red, so many shades of red, burnished gold, sky blue, browns, greens, sunshine yellow, black, white. He takes another step, hand trembling as he reaches out and takes hold of the canvas that he can’t see, the one with its back to him and leaning against the others.

He turns it slowly, holding his breath as if in anticipation of the unknown even though what’s on the other side isn’t exactly a surprise.

It’s a shock to the system all the same. Of course the first one he chooses is him. It isn’t a large canvas, but he fills every inch of it. He’s wearing that red jacket, his hair is only different in that it’s loose and untamed, his eyes are the same soul-piercing shade of blue. His perfect features are exact replicas of the face Grantaire has seen in the Musain. But the man in the painting isn’t merely a man; a golden halo radiates from above his head and a pair of elegant wings sprout from his back. He’s an angel.

Grantaire’s mind races just like he knew it would once he opened that damn closet door. That’s why he’s avoided it for so long. The sketchbook, these paintings. How can he have drawn and painted a man he’d never met until he saw him at the Musain? More than that, how can he have met a man who doesn’t seem to actually exist? None of it makes any sense. He wishes he could blame it on the wine, but Grantaire knows better even in his inebriated state.

So he keeps going. He sits on the floor in front of the open door and pulls each canvas out. They’re all there: Joly and Bossuet, the one called Jehan, the bearded man with glasses, the one with the dark curls, the ginger with broad shoulders and strong forearms, the tall one who had the look of a brawler and a fresh black eye. They’re all angels, too, painted with halos and wings like the blond, some with red sashes at their waists or wrists, others draped in La Tricolore. One of the paintings has all of them included, eight angels positioned along what looks like a barricade of shattered and broken furniture with the brightest light emanating from behind them. It takes Grantaire’s breath away and he almost can’t believe his hand could create something so beautiful.

He has no idea when he started crying, only noticing when a tear drops onto his forearm as he pulls the last painting from the very back of the closet. It’s the blond again, but he isn’t portrayed as an angel this time. He’s not even in the foreground of the painting, though it’s clear he’s the focus. He’s framed in an open window through which a faint light is pouring into the room. It has the effect of silhouetting him in an unearthly glow, like he’s surrounded by a golden aura. Lined up in front of him, rifles raised, is a firing squad of uniformed men. He doesn’t look afraid. He looks determined and defiant, resigned to meet his fate.

But what strikes Grantaire most is the imagery he painted in the very foreground of the scene. It’s half a table, the top of which is littered with overturned cups and a spilled wine bottle. That’s not it. It’s the arm that’s outstretched toward the horrible sight of the upcoming execution, belonging to whomever is seated at the table, fingers splayed in a gesture that universally means stop. He can feel the desperation coming from that simple gesture, he somehow knows that the death of the man in red is the very worst thing that can happen to the man that hand belongs to.

Grantaire feels this so strongly, deep in the pit of his stomach, in his very soul, that he holds his own arm out in front of him, mimicking the pose. His eyes shift back and forth from his hand to the one on the canvas.

They’re identical.

He drops the canvas and scrambles to rise to his feet. He looks wildly at the paintings that are arrayed at his feet, and it feels like the room is closing in on him.

“I’m one of them,” Grantaire breathes, confused and terrified all at once.

Grantaire stumbles over the frames as he rushes to grab his keys. He needs answers. He needs to know who they are. He needs to see if they’re there. He has to get to the Musain. He knows he should wait until he’s more sober, sleep until it’s morning and his mind is clearer, but this can’t wait. He tears out of his apartment and it’s a miracle he doesn’t tumble down the stairs. Grantaire nearly mows down one of his neighbors, one he doesn’t recognize in his haste, and he mumbles an apology over his shoulder. But he doesn’t have time to stop.

He is practically running by the time he reaches the Musain’s street.

Grantaire can see the top of the café, can just make out the faded letters of its sign. He feels his heart fluttering around in his chest like a hummingbird. They have to be there. He hasn’t thought about the alternative until this very moment, but they just have to be there. Grantaire doesn’t know what he’ll do if he finds that back room empty. He darts across the street, looking down to fumble with the keys in his hand, singling out the one that opens the Musain.

He hears the screech of tires and sees the bright, white glare of headlights too late.

-----

When Grantaire wakes up, he’s somehow made it into the Musain. He feels like there’s something he should remember, something that only happened moments ago, but he can’t grasp what it is and he isn’t sure it matters. He needs his answers. He begins walking down the corridor and straight toward the back room, noticing that he’s wearing black boots and a green waistcoat that feel a bit foreign and familiar at the same time. Still, none of that seems to matter.

They’re all gathered there, all eight of them, and they fall silent the moment he steps into view.

And he sees him, sees every face in the room, but his eyes alight on him first and a single word — no, a name — instantly springs into his head as if something has finally been unlocked inside his the recesses of his mind.

“Enjolras,” Grantaire sighs.

Enjolras closes his eyes and Grantaire swears he sees a ghost of a smile on his lips as he exhales a relieved breath. And then he’s striding across the room and colliding with him, wrapping his arms around Grantaire so tight he can feel his ribs protest. But it doesn’t matter because he’s clinging to Enjolras with everything he has, pressing his face into the crook of his neck. Everything is suddenly clear. Enjolras’ touch, the warmth of his skin against Grantaire’s face, the way he smells and sounds - it’s all familiar and right and where he belongs. It makes everything come into focus, makes names and faces that seemed unknown to him come rushing back. He could stay in Enjolras’ arms forever and not mind one bit.

But they all want a piece of him. Joly and Bossuet are the first to swoop in, enveloping him in a dual hug that feels like it’s been centuries in the making. Jehan grabs him next, kissing both cheeks, and Feuilly is waiting after, pulling him into a bear hug. Courfeyrac flings himself at Grantaire, nearly knocking them both over in his exuberance but is saved by Combeferre’s steadying hand against Grantaire’s back. He opts for a more dignified handshake, but it’s only a few seconds before Combeferre gives in and embraces him just as warmly as the rest. Bahorel saunters over and takes Grantaire’s face in his hands and gently butts their foreheads together, grinning his crooked smiled at him.

When his friends finally relinquish him, Enjolras is standing before Grantaire once more.

“Took you long enough,” he teases, his blue eyes gentle and full of fondness as he looks at Grantaire. “Do you believe in me now?”

Grantaire nods, a soft smile creeping across his face. “You’re the only thing I believe in. You know that.”

Enjolras reaches for his hand, their fingers sliding together like a perfect fit. It feels like a continuation of something but Grantaire doesn’t have time to process that because Enjolras is tugging him forward, pulling him flush against his body, and he ducks his head until their lips meet. It feels like sunlight is pouring into him and radiating out of him at the same time. Enjolras’ kiss is familiar and warm and everything he didn’t know he’s been craving and missing for who knows how many lifetimes. Grantaire wraps an arm around Enjolras’ shoulders, never wanting to be any further than this from him for the rest of eternity.

Because as much as he cherished the space he’d carved out for himself in 4C, this? This is truly home.