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Enjolras didn’t get Twitter.
Despite Courfeyrac’s frequent jokes on the subject matter, he understood the mechanics of it just fine, even had a Hootsuite account set up for his account — @Revolution1832 — but he didn’t understand those who could spend hours just scrolling through their twitter feeds, or those who followed eighteen thousand celebrities who all tweeted practically the same thing. He saw Twitter as utilitarian means of finding information quickly as it was happening, nothing more.
Until one day, when Combeferre asked him casually if he had ever searched for himself on Twitter.
“Searched for myself?” Enjolras asked before taking a swig of coffee, just the way he liked it — a little cream, extra heavy on the sugar. “Is this like googling myself? Because you’re supposed to be keeping an eye on that for me and casually getting rid of the unsavory things that pop up.”
Enjolras also didn’t understand how hacking worked, but he knew Combeferre had the means to make webpages seemingly disappear, and that was all he really cared about. As such, Combeferre rolled his eyes. “Not quite. But you can search for terms on Twitter even if they’re not hashtags or directed at your username and see what people are saying about you. I keep an eye on all of the more high-profile members of Les Amis, just to be on the safe side.”
The sip of coffee Enjolras took this time was cautious, and he looked closely at Combeferre over the rim of his coffee mug. “I’m assuming someone said something, or else you wouldn’t be bringing it up right now.”
Combeferre laughed. “A lot of people have said a lot of things. Your name always gets a spike in appearances after a protest or anything with media coverage, even more so if there’s a picture of you in the newspaper or on TV.” Enjolras rolled his eyes and barely held back a groan — the fascination with his physical appearance was one thing that he couldn’t quite wrap his head around, and he was still grumpy that there was an entire twitter account dedicated to his ass. “Anyway, there’s some interesting stuff, and I was just wondering if you’d ever checked it out.”
His tone was casual — too casual — and Enjolras’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Well, I’m going to now,” he said slowly. “Which, again, I’m assuming is why you brought it up, since you knew my curiosity would get the better of me. All I know is, it better be worth it.”
Enjolras managed to wait a whole hour before he logged into twitter to check for himself, and Combeferre was right — there were a lot of tweets referencing his name, though not directed at him. A few questioned his beliefs or challenged his ideas, and he quickly tweeted replies at them in hopes of getting a conversation going. An obscene amount were about how attractive he was, and he felt his ears burning red as he quickly scrolled past. But one name in particular popped up several times, always with comments not related to either his appearance or his ideas. “Hard to say whether my liver or Enjolras’s speech will give out sooner” one read, from the date of the last Amis meeting. And there, from their last protest — “Scarlet jacket, scarlet lips, scarlet ideals — Enjolras is on fire today (figuratively, not literally, but if Courfeyrac was on the other side…”.
Those two tweets alone were enough to tell Enjolras that it was one of the actual members of Les Amis, rather than just a random person who showed up at the meetings and protests, which limited the number to…about twenty, if he thought about recent regular attendees, since it had to be someone who knew of Courfeyrac’s brush with pyromania.
Curious, he clicked on the profile of user @MyFullGlass and scrolled through his recent tweets, his expression tightening as he did. Even the ones that didn’t mention Enjolras by name all seemed to be about Enjolras. They ranged from the sarcastic — “If he mentions the dawn as a metaphor one more time I’m going to beat him with #TFIOS and tell him it’s a metaphor” — to the almost sweet — “He looked at me today and I thought my heart might leap for joy” — to the weird — “what’s a mob to a king what’s a king to a god what’s a god to a nonbeliever who don’t believe in anything #apparentlyeverything” — to the downright obscene — “#putthatbottledown he says. #putyourdickinmyass I think. Why is one a command to be obeyed and the other merely #wishfulthinking?”.
Even worse, though, were the tweets aimed at Enjolras’s ideas. Whoever it was clearly paid a lot of attention to Enjolras’s speeches, since many tweets were dedicated to tearing them apart. But other tweets were more glib, and even worse, such as a whole set of tweets from two weeks ago, at an impromptu rally, where @MyFullGlass tweeted, “I’m gonna tweet #delusional every time he says something, well, delusional. And probably drink too. #impromptudrinkinggame.” That tweet was followed by about twenty tweets within two minutes all saying a variation of “#delusional”:
“#delusional and he’s only just started”;
“#delusional you can do better than that”;
“#delusional and #Iwanttoseeyoursources”;
“#delusional jesus fuck”;
“#delusional for fuck’s sake apollo”;
and more, and ending with: “#delusional fuck it I’m giving up and just drinking. The night embraces the day and says give up the hopeless cause bro”.
Enjolras’s face grew redder and redder the more he read, until he was positively seething, and it took all of his self-control to not angrily DM the asshole (who was, interestingly enough, following him).
Instead, he called Combeferre.
“Was this what you wanted me to read?” he demanded as soon as Combeferre picked up the phone.
Combeferre sighed and said in a long-suffering tone, “I’ve told you before, Enjolras, I can’t see whatever you’re looking at on your computer screen.”
Enjolras huffed. “Whatever. I did what you told me to do and searched for myself on Twitter, and I found this asshole—” Combeferre made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a laugh, and Enjolras scowled but continued doggedly “—I found this asshole who only seems to tweet about me, and never in a particularly positive fashion.”
He could practically hear Combeferre roll his eyes, which only made his scowl deepen, but then Combeferre sighed again and asked, “Well, what’s the username?”
“At My Full Glass.” Combeferre was silent and Enjolras frowned. “What? Do you know who that is?”
Combeferre sighed even deeper this time. “Enjolras…”
“Tell me who he is,” Enjolras demanded. “I know you know or you would’ve just denied it. Your hesitation speaks volumes.”
“Your paranoia speaks volumes,” Combeferre grumbled. “And I’m not telling you anything. I didn’t have you search for yourself on Twitter just so you could obsess over this. If you want to know who he is, maybe you should try to figure it out.”
Enjolras pulled his phone away from his ear and stared at it as if Combeferre might appear and explain himself. “What?” he asked, when he returned his phone to his ear. “How the fuck am I supposed to figure out who he is?”
But Combeferre had already hung up, assumedly in the thirty seconds of dead air when Enjolras had been staring blankly at his phone, and Enjolras let out a growl and stuffed his phone back into his pocket, glaring instead at his computer, which sat there innocently, its screen bright and cheerful. “Asshole,” Enjolras grumbled.
Over the next week, Enjolras tried his hardest to figure out who @MyFullGlass was. He dismissed a few people out of hand — Combeferre, for obvious reasons, Courfeyrac for just as obvious. He half-wondered if it was Feuilly, remembering far too well and far too awkwardly the crush he had harbored for the first few weeks after meeting Feuilly, but figured Feuilly didn’t have the time to maintain a sockpuppet account of this ilk. Bahorel might do it as a joke but Enjolras somehow doubted it, and it wasn’t poetic enough for Prouvaire. Bossuet might also do it as a prank, but it was a little too specific and not malicious enough for his joking tastes, and besides, the poor guy didn’t have good enough luck to maintain it for that long without getting caught.
Joly, maybe? Enjolras tried in general not to rely on Joly for much, not because the man was untrustworthy so much as various ailments caused him to flake out, so it was possible that he harbored some feelings in Enjolras’s direction that he wasn’t aware of. But at last checking, Joly and Bossuet were in a relationship with Musichetta, and all three seemed happy, so Enjolras couldn’t imagine Joly maintaining something like this on the side.
So who else could it be? Who else cared enough, or showed up enough, for something like this?
He almost wondered if it was Pontmercy, who didn’t seem to have a malicious bone in his body, but the man was a conservative, so Enjolras supposed he couldn’t really put anything past him.
Still, he doubted it, and so was still wondering who exactly it might be when he went to the Musain the next night for a Les Amis meeting. He sat down at the bar, and rather uncharacteristically, ordered a drink. Prouvaire sat down next to him. “Enjolras,” he pronounced, carefully, and Enjolras raised an eyebrow at him.
“Stoned or drunk?”
Prouvaire’s smile was bright. “What is of the Earth is of the most worth,” he said seriously. “But my friend, I came to see what was wrong. You seem most melancholy, and melancholy, as we know, is a province with which I am intimately acquainted.”
From Enjolras’s other side came a snort, and Enjolras glanced over to see Grantaire, slumped against the bar, a drink in his hand. “If you’re intimately acquainted with melancholy, I must be its goddamn husband for as acquainted as I am with it.”
Enjolras couldn’t help but frown at Grantaire, who seemed to do nothing more than sit at the bar and drink and pay no attention to what was going on at their meetings. “I’m hardly melancholy,” Enjolras said, more to Prouvaire than Grantaire, who didn’t seem to notice anyway. “I’m just frustrated. I’ve been trying to find someone, and it’s not going well.”
“If you wanted to find someone, all you had to do is ask,” Grantaire said, leering at Enjolras, whose frown deepened.
“Not like that,” he snapped. “Something serious, something which you can hardly understand.” Enjolras phone pinged and he fished it out of his pocket, swiping it to unlock it, at which point his phone, the battery bar in the upper corner flashing angrily, decided to die. “Fuck,” he swore, and glanced at Prouvaire. “Can I borrow your phone? It was a text from Combeferre, and it may be important.”
Prouvaire just nodded sagely. “Important. Yeah. But, uh, no. I am transcending the technical world this week.”
Grantaire laughed and propped his head up on his hand as he smirked at Enjolras. “He means he lost it. Again. You’ve got to stop using your phone when you’re stoned, man, or you’re never going to get it back.” He fished his own phone out of his pocket and slid it across to Enjolras. “Here. Use mine.”
Enjolras glanced at him, surprised. “Thanks.” He swiped it open and frowned, because the screen that greeted him was @MyFullGlass’s home page. “Hey, that’s odd, I was just…” He trailed off as he looked closer at it and realized what he was looking at, and looked up at Grantaire with an odd expression on his face. “Wait a second…are you…”
Grantaire blushed scarlet and grabbed his phone back from Enjolras. “I completely forgot,” he muttered, avoiding Enjolras’s gaze. “I, uh, I have a, uh, a thing. I’ve gotta go.” He stood and darted towards the door, pausing only to clap a still-grinning Prouvaire on the shoulder, and leaving Enjolras staring after him.
Grantaire.
Enjolras couldn’t believe it was Grantaire.
Grantaire, the same guy who professed not to believe in anything but who listened to every word that Enjolras had ever spoken and digested it into 140 characters of glib sarcasm and eviscerated it in the same number. Grantaire, who was all about drinking and not taking anything seriously. Grantaire, with his smirk and his eyes and that look on his face…
Fuck.
Enjolras almost wished that it was someone else, anything else, because the things it implied coming from Grantaire were more than what he wanted to think about right now. But he couldn’t not think about it. And he couldn’tnot do anything about it.
So, in true Enjolras fashion, he decided to face the problem head on, and went to Grantaire’s apartment.
Well, ok, first he had to text everyone in Les Amis to ask for Grantaire’s address, and then he had to map it on google maps, and then he went to Grantaire’s apartment.
With only slight hesitation, he knocked on the door, and when Grantaire opened it, said all in a rush before Grantaire could even speak, “I-think-I-need-to-apologize-and-I-think-we-need-to-talk.”
Grantaire gaped at him. “Christ, do you even need to breathe?”
“Of course I do,” Enjolras said, frowning. “Despite what you may think, I’m not actually a god, hashtag Apollo or otherwise.”
Grantaire’s face slowly broke into a smirk. “Oh, you saw that, did you?” He stood back from the door and allowed Enjolras in, who barely glanced at around at the small but surprisingly clean place before meeting Grantaire’s slightly nervous gaze again.
Enjolras smiled slightly as well. “Kind of hard to miss it.” He hesitated and leaned against the wall before saying slowly, “So about that whole Twitter thing…”
“It was a mistake,” Grantaire said instantly, his gaze sliding away from Enjolras. “I shouldn’t even have started the stupid thing, but once I did, well, it became a way to vent. And I really never meant for you to see any of it.”
Shrugging, Enjolras said quietly, “I don’t think it was a mistake.”
Grantaire’s reaction was instantaneous, an arched eyebrow and confused expression. “You don’t?”
Enjolras shrugged again and looked away. “I mean, a waste of time, maybe. Especially since there’s so much more that you could be doing with the time and effort you put into that twitter account.”
Now Grantaire frowned. “Like what?”
“Maybe paying as much attention to the meetings as you pay to me—” Enjolras started, but Grantaire just snorted and shook his head.
“And what would be the point of that?” he asked quietly. “You’re the reason why I’m there. That, and the Musain’s drink specials on the night of meetings. But it’s my problem, not yours, just like how the Twitter account was supposed to be my secret, and you were never supposed to find out. You don’t have to do this. Hell, you don’t have to do anything.”
Enjolras bit back his immediate response, which was to shoot back “I wasn’t planning on it” before he decided against it, instead raising an eyebrow at him. “I somehow don’t see how we can keep going on like this with you tweeting indirects about me instead of helping with our cause.”
Grantaire raised an eyebrow right back. “Well firstly, what I do is my own fucking business. Secondly, look at you, googling what an indirect is. And thirdly…it’s not like we have some kind of friendship that we need to worry about salvaging.”
Both of Enjolras’s eyebrows raised at that, and before he could stop himself, he blurted, “But we could.” Grantaire stared at him, and Enjolras blushed. “I mean, we could work on that.”
“Why the fuck would you want to be friends with me?” Grantaire asked, a little blankly.
“Because I like you,” Enjolras said honestly, then blushed even more when he realized what he had said. “I mean, I like the you that I’ve seen in those tweets. Yeah, sometimes you’re a dick and you’ve tweeted some very specific things about my anatomy that kind of freaked me out at first, but your tweets…they’re funny, and smart, and honest. And that’s a part of you that I’ve never seen before, and would maybe like to get a chance to get to know.”
He hadn’t planned on saying any of that, but once the words were out, he knew they were true. Grantaire just continued to stare at him before saying slowly, “Well, I guess we could…try.”
Enjolras smiled tentatively. “Cool. So, maybe we could do something tomorrow night? I think Prouvaire’s got a poetry reading…”
“That sounds good,” Grantaire said faintly, still staring at Enjolras like he couldn’t quite believe it. “I’ll see you then.”
Enjolras’s smile widened and he ducked his head and nodded. “Right. Well. I should go.” He headed for the door, then paused, glancing back at Grantaire. “Oh, and Grantaire?” Grantaire looked up at him. “Indirect me again on Twitter and I’ll kick your ass.”
Grantaire laughed, a sudden, bright sound, and Enjolras grinned in return before leaving. His phone pinged as he was halfway down the sidewalk and he pulled it out, not entirely surprised to see a new Twitter notification.
“@MyFullGlass: Apparently I’m no longer allowed to indirect @Revolution1832 #sucksiknow”.
“@MyFullGlass: But in other news I guess @Revolution1832 and I are friends now? Or at least working on it? #imightdiefromshock”.
“@MyFullGlass: Kind of happier than I can even explain right now. Tagging @Revolution1832 or he might accuse me of indirecting.”
Enjolras rolled his eyes and tweeted, not in response to any of Grantaire’s tweets, “New to this #indirect thing but there’s this guy and I want to be friends with him #maybemore #letsseewhathappens”.
Within seconds he had a reply from Grantaire: “How come you’re allowed to indirect and I’m not? #notfair”.
Enjolras smirked.
“@MyFullGlass because payback’s so much fun.”