Work Text:
“Daddy?” a young girl’s voice said behind Grantaire.
The corner of his mouth slid up as Grantaire turned to look at Renée. “Yes?”
She shuffled her feet. “When will Papa be home?” she asked, and Grantaire didn’t miss the mischievous glint in her eyes when she looked at him.
Grantaire sighed, shrugging. “I dunno,” he said, as if Enjolras wasn’t going to be home at the time he was always home on days he didn’t have meetings. Wiping the paint off his hands and onto his shirt,, Grantaire looked at his daughter. “Why do you ask, hm?”
Closing the gap between her and her father, Renée pulled herself up onto his lap, even though at eight years old, she was a bit big for it. “Well, you and Papa haven’t been to the store in a few days, and so there’s nothing in the house to snack on, and dinner isn’t for another full hour and a half.” Tracing her finger over the stains on Grantaire’s tattered white button down, she looked up at him, her lip sticking out just slightly. “And I’m hungry, and we haven’t been to the ice cream place in at least a week.”
His mouth widening slightly, Grantaire looked at his daughter. “Is your room clean?” he asked, lowering his voice conspiratorially.
Renée broke out into a big grin, and she nodded.
“Both your side of the room and your brother’s?”
Nodding again, Renée slid off her dad’s lap and ran down the hallway, shouting her brother’s name, and Grantaire hoped that his and Enjolras’s son was awake from his nap. A moment later, Renée was back in the room, dragging her younger brother, André, behind her, rubbing his eyes with his free hand, but not looking like he was about to scream, cry, or both. Picking him up and setting him on his lap, Grantaire bounced the four year old on his knee. “Tired?” he asked quietly, and the boy nodded.
Turning his gaze to his daughter, Grantaire made his gaze serious. “Did you wake him up from his nap?” he asked Renée, pressing a kiss to André’s head as he yawned.
“Of course not!” she said, as if Grantaire had dealt a serious blow to her reputation as a good big sister. “He’s been up for at least ten minutes.”
André nodded in Grantaire’s lap, and Grantaire sighed, looking at his son again. “André, do you want to go get ice cream?” And all of a sudden it was as if, at just the simple mention of ice cream, the four year old on his lap had just eaten a pint of the stuff, and he was nodding vigorously, and Grantaire was faced with the sight of both of his children looking at him with pleading eyes, and he knew that no one could say no to that. Even Enjolras, who was, in theory, the ‘bad cop’ parent, would have caved before Renée had even brought André in the room. So, it was with a sigh that Grantaire told his children to go wait in the living room while he changed out of his paint clothes and then, yes they would go get ice cream, and of course they could have sprinkles.
And so, fifteen minutes later, the trio had managed to make their way down to the ice cream shop at the end of the street, and Grantaire wondered exactly why they had thought it was a good idea to get a house with an ice cream shop nearby, but at the looks on his children’s face’s, he decided he really didn’t care.
“Can I get two scoops?” André asked, looking up at his father, and Grantaire pretended to contemplate the question, before nodded with an exaggerated sigh.
“I’m going to go get a table!” Renée said after ordering her two scoops of orange sherbert ice cream, and Grantaire nodded, keeping his peripheral vision on her, but once André was handed his double dip chocolate cone, Grantaire had other worries.
“Hold these,” he told Renée, handing his daughter his birthday cake ice cream cone and her orange sherbert one before lifting his son into the seat, hoping that he wouldn’t spill ice cream on himself, before taking back his own ice cream. “Don’t make a mess of yourself,” he told André before leaving his children briefly so he could get napkins.
Looking up at Grantaire when he came to sit back down, André smiled, gesturing to his clean shirt with the hand that wasn’t holding the cone. “See, no spills!” he said excitedly, and Grantaire bit back a laugh at the sprinkle that was stuck to his son’s nose, pulling out his phone to take a picture and send it to Enjolras, before taking another one of Renée, because you can never have too many pictures.
“See Daddy, I told you this was a good idea,” Renée said, licking her ice cream cone, and making considerably less mess than either Grantaire or André. (Grantaire had the excuse that he was a painter, he was supposed to be messy, and, well, André was four.)
A moment later, Grantaire pulled his phone out of his pocket, picking up without looking at the screen when he heard that it was Enjolras’s ringtone. “Hey,” Grantaire said, and knew that the lilt in his voice when he talked to Enjolras wouldn’t go away, even when they’d been married for nearly fifteen years already, and both had grey streaks in their hair in their forties.
“Hey, R,” and the lilt was there in Enjolras’s voice too, though it was over something a little less happy.
“What’s wrong?” Grantaire asked, turning away so the kids didn’t see the concern on his face.
“Look, I’m going to be home late,” Enjolras said after a pause, “Boss called a meeting and it’s one I absolutely can’t miss, and I know it’s been like this all week and I’m sorry, but tell Renée and André that I love them, and take more pictures of them eating ice cream, please.”
Grantaire’s expression deadpanned, and he nodded to himself. “Alright, hurry home afterwards. I’ll save some spaghetti for you. I love you.”
“I love you too, I’m sorry,” Enjolras said again. “I’ll get home as soon as I can, I love you all.”
“Love you,” Grantaire said one more time before pressing the end call button, and pulling his face back into something happy as he turned back towards his kids. “Daddy’s going to be home a little bit late, surprise meeting.”
A small chorus of complaints came from the two small humans sitting in front of Grantaire, and Grantaire shrugged. “He says he loves you very very much though, and he’ll be home as soon as he can to give you both kisses goodnight.”
André stuck his bottom lip out, and Grantaire leaned forward, pressing a kiss to his son’s nose. “Come on,” he said to the pair, you can’t be sad when you’re eating ice cream!” And he licked his own cone as if demonstrate his point, and made a face at the kids. “Come on, if you eat fast enough, we might even have time to go play the claw games in the lobby before we have to go home and make dinner. Do you guys want to help me make the spaghetti?”
Both the kids nodded excitedly, and went back to licking their ice cream, Grantaire making jokes and snapping pictures.
“Daddy!” André said after a few minutes, looking with a shocked expression at his shirt, where there was a small bit of chocolate ice cream sliding at the pace of a snail down Iron Man’s face.
“Oh,” Grantaire said sadly, grabbing a couple of napkins from the stockpile in the middle of the table. “Come on, let’s clean it up. We can wash it when we get home, I have plenty of supplies for getting stains out of shirts, and for now, Iron Man can enjoy the ice cream too. See, look,” Grantaire smiled and poked André in the chest where Iron Man’s face was, “it’s right over his mask. You’re sharing.”
André looked up in awe. “Whoa,” he said quietly, looking from his shirt to his dad, “Cool!” he said, eating his ice cream again while Renée looked at both of them with wide eyes, biting down on the last of her cone, and Grantaire wondered how she managed to bite down on the ice cream as he took the first bite of his own cone, and wondered why he was the one who was going to finish his ice cream last, and the he wondered why it mattered, before deciding he didn’t care and continued to eat as Renée babbled on about field day that was happening at school tomorrow.
Eventually, Grantaire had two sets of eyes on him, staring him down as he took the last bites of his cone, exaggerating the last few bites as his children groaned for him to hurry up so they could go do the claw machine. “Daddyyyyyy,” René said scooting out of the seat and pulling on her dad’s sleeve. “Claw machine.”
Laughing quietly, Grantaire stuck the last bite of cone in his mouth, still chewing before he was pulled out of his seat by his daughter, his son sliding out behind him as they pushed open the door to get to the small area between the restaurant and the outside doors, looking up at him expectantly as he dug in his pocket for four quarters so each of them could do the claw machine once, handing two to each of them, Renée stepping up to go first, André hanging onto the side of the machine as his sister pushed the quarters into the machine and pressed the start button.
And, if Grantaire hadn’t been so focussed on helping his daughter get the claw positioned right over the small bear she was trying to capture, he might have noticed the door open behind him before he felt familiar arms wrap around his waist, turning around to look at Enjolras just as Renée pressed the button to let the claw drop and put the claw game into fate’s hands.
“I thought you had a meeting?” Grantaire asked as André came over to wrap his arms around Enjolras’s leg, a squeal of “Papa!” escaping his lips as Renée pulled the small lightly colored bear out of the machine.
Enjolras nodded, his hands still on Grantaire’s hips. “Oh, I did, but someone crucial wasn’t there, so we waited for five minutes, and then decided that it wasn’t really that important after all, and I figured a little bit of surprise never went amiss.”
Grantaire smiled and pressed a chaste kiss to Enjolras’s lips. “I love you, you know that?”
“Yeah,” Enjolras said, giving his husband a cocky smile. “I love you, too.”
Looking down, Grantaire saw André pulling at his pant leg. “My turn,” he said, the look on his face one more fitting of someone going into battle, and Grantaire pulled away slowly from Enjolras, helping André get the quarters in the slot, before he situated himself on one side of the machine and Enjolras squatted behind their son, both ready to help him with where to move the claw, and after a series of, “To the left, to the left,” and, “Back a little bit, now forward,” the claw dropped, and a small monkey was captured by the claw, and a few seconds later clutched tightly to the chest of a four year old boy.
Smiling and pressing a kiss to his son’s forehead, Grantaire didn’t notice when Enjolras pressed two cold quarters into his hand. “You go,” Enjolras said. “I’ll watch the side of the machine.” Grantaire held his hands up in protest, but Enjolras shook his head. “Go for the little dark brown teddy bear. I already have a name picked out for it.”
Grantaire rolled his eyes, but pushed the quarters into the machine, the countdown from fifteen telling him just how much time he had left before the claw dropped whether or not he wanted it to.
“Back a bit,” Enjolras said with seven seconds, and Grantaire followed the instruction, letting the claw steady with four seconds to go, and all four people standing in the small space watched as the claw dropped towards the small bear in the back corner of the machine, all four of them whooping when the claw wrapped around one of the arms of the bear, pulling it up slowly…
...and dropping it right on the edge of the clear walls around the chute that meant freedom for the bear, and if Enjolras hadn’t been so focussed on the fact that the bear looked this close to teetering back into the machine, he would have berated Grantaire for the quiet swear he muttered under his breath.
“What if it’s stuck?” Renée asked after a few seconds, pushing her face against the machine gently, and all four of them held their breath as that small movement caused the bear to wobble slightly, and after three of the most nervewracking seconds of any of their lives, drop into the exit chute, all four of them cheering doubly as loud as they had when Grantaire initially captured the bear.
Pulling it out, Grantaire looked it over, and noticed that it had a small bare patch of fur on one of its arms.
Enjolras stepped up next to his husband, slipping his fingers between the other man’s, and gently grabbing the bear from Grantaire’s hand. “I’m gonna name it R,” he said quietly, and Grantaire smiled and leaned over to kiss his husband, ignoring the “ew” that he heard coming from the direction of their children. “I love you,” the pair said together.
Grantaire pulled away. “Alright, time for spaghetti,” he announced, pulling Enjolras, their fingers still entwined away from the claw machine, out the door, Enjolras pausing a moment to pick André up, the bear in his hand resting next to the monkey in his son’s, and Renée skipping forward to wrap Grantaire’s hand in her’s. Like that, the four of them took up most of the sidewalk, but none of them really cared as they walked down the block towards their house, Grantaire smiling to himself, because there was no doubt about it, he was one of the luckiest men in the world.