Work Text:
“Grantaire.” The detention supervisor’s voice was sharp, and cut through the half-sleep that Grantaire found himself in, and he jerked into a sitting position, blinking blearily up at her. “If you fall asleep again, I’ll have to report you to the dean, and you’ll find yourself in in-school suspension. Again.”
Grantaire sighed heavily and leaned his chin against his left hand, using his right to doodle in the margins of his math notes, which he was nominally meant to be studying, but couldn’t find it in himself to care about. He hated detention. He hated that he had only gotten detention because his math teacher hated him. He hated being twelve years old, hated being in this school, hated being in this town.
There wasn’t much that Grantaire didn’t hate, to be fair.
But he perked up when the door to the classroom being used for detention opened and a blond boy shuffled in, escorted by the dean, who looked exasperated. “Enjolras,” the dean said curtly, “you’ll stay here for the next hour. Make sure to write your apology letter.”
Grantaire glanced over at the new kid, who looked like a sixth grader, though he had never seen a sixth-grader look as pissed off as this one. Or as handsome, in a way that caused a sudden warmth to curl in Grantaire’s stomach, and caused him to blushed slightly just by looking at him, because of course — exactly what Grantaire needed right now was a crush on a weird kid. “What’d you do?” Grantaire asked in a whisper as the kid took the seat next to his, still scowling.
The blond — Enjolras — glared at him. “Tried to battle the dictatorship known as school,” he spat, much like a kitten who’s had its fur petted the wrong way, and Grantaire raised an eyebrow at him.
“That’s…cool,” he said slowly, in a way that implied he had no clue what Enjolras was talking about. “I drew a picture of my math teacher that he found offensive.”
Enjolras quirked a smile. “Fight the system,” he said, nodding.
Grantaire blinked. “Um. Sure? Not really. I mean, I wasn’t doing it to make him mad. I didn’t even mean for him to see it. I just don’t like math class. And besides, it’s not like we as students have any real ability to change anything anyway.”
Now Enjolras frowned, his brow furrowing. “That’s not true—” he started, heatedly, but the detention supervisor cut him off.
“Mr. Enjolras. There is not supposed to be any talking in detention. You are meant to be working on whatever task you’ve been assigned by your teacher. Need I remind you that you’re meant to be writing an apology letter for—” she checked the detention referral that the dean had brought with him “—yelling at your English teacher about Harry Potter?”
Enjolras flushed, and Grantaire couldn’t help himself — he laughed, though he quickly tried to disguise it as a cough. Enjolras glared at him, looking almost betrayed, and Grantaire shrugged. “Sorry. Just — Harry Potter?”
“My English teacher said that reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire over the summer didn’t count as summer reading, even though we weren’t given any specific books to read, just a page amount,” Enjolras said in a low voice. “I said that she was being an elitist old bat.”
Grantaire looked at Enjolras with new respect, his eyes widening as he pictured the scene in his head. “Did you really say that?”
Enjolras smirked. “Yeah, pretty much. I was arguing in favor of letting us read what we want, so long as we’re reading, and she somehow mistook it as a passionate defense of Harry Potter, which I don’t really care about, but whatever.” He sighed and glanced back at his desk. “Now I have to write her an apology because I was ‘too aggressive’ about Harry Potter.”
Grantaire smirked as well, idly twirling one of his dark curls around his finger as his gaze lingered on Enjolras. “You’re totally into Harry Potter, though, aren’t you?” Enjolras glanced up, eyes narrowed, and didn’t answer. Grantaire’s smirk widened. “What House do you think you’d be sorted in?”
Shrugging, Enjolras flushed and muttered grimly, “Probably Slytherin, knowing my family.” He glanced almost hopefully at Grantaire. “You?”
Grantaire’s smile faded. “Eh, I’d probably end up in Hufflepuff,” he muttered, looking away from Enjolras. “That’s where losers go, right?”
Enjolras studied him carefully. “I don’t think that’s true,” he said finally. “You seem like you’re pretty smart and brave to me — so that means you could be in either Ravenclaw or Gryffindor. And even if you were Sorted into Hufflepuff, Hufflepuffs are cool. They’re friendly and loyal and those are great qualities.”
It was Grantaire’s turn to flush, and he looked at Enjolras with something unreadable in his expression. “You don’t even know me,” he told Enjolras.
“No,” Enjolras said, smiling at him. “But I’d like to.” He held out his hand for Enjolras to shake. “I’m Enjolras.”
“Grantaire,” Grantaire told him, cautiously. “I think I’ve heard your name before. You're the guy who wants to start a gay-straight alliance, right?”
Enjolras beamed at him. “Yeah, that’s right. You want to help?”
Grantaire ducked his head, a little embarrassed, and shrugged. “I dunno,” he muttered. “I don’t really think it’s going to change anything.” He didn’t know exactly what he was referring to — the way kids were treated and the insults thrown at them, the time he had found the word ‘fag’ scrawled on his lockers, or just general ‘things’ — but he certainly didn’t think any of them could actually change. “Besides, I’m in detention a lot.”
Enjolras’s smile turned into more a grimace. “At the rate things are going, I’m probably gonna end up in detention a lot, too.” He looked at Grantaire hopefully. “Give me a chance to prove you wrong?”
Grantaire smiled tentatively. “Ok,” he said. “I’ll give you a chance.” He had a feeling he’d give this guy a chance to do just about anything.
The detention supervisor cleared her throat. “Gentlemen,” she said warningly. “I’m not going to ask you again.”
They both turned back to their work — Grantaire to his math, Enjolras to his apology letter — but they couldn’t help but glance at each other every now and then, smiling at each other, and for the first time in, well, forever, Grantaire thought that detention might not be so bad, and maybe, just maybe, he had a reason not to completely hate this school.