Archive of Our Own ^beta

“You know, you could ask for a key,” Enjolras informs him when he finally arrives. “Or, better yet, you could not break into my flat at all and wait for me to get back.”

Grantaire answers without looking up from his task. “‘Break in’? Such strong words, you wound me.”

“Strong, accurate words,” the blond repeats, tone flat as he sets down his bags and unwraps a scarf from his neck. “How was Maximilien for you? Thank you again for looking after him.”

“Trash Can,” Grantaire corrects pointedly as the cat in question hops back and forth over the flickering red dot, “was brilliant, as always.”

A sigh. “You know you can call him ‘Max.’”

“I cannot: I know too much and have an ounce of respect for, if not myself, at least your cat.”

“Which makes ‘Trash Can’ the obvious alternative,” Enjolras concludes dryly.

“I’m glad you see it my way.”

The banter is old and comfortable after a month of paranoid apartment inspections by their landlord (well, perhaps not so paranoid). Years of keeping his head low and paying rent mostly on-time has earned Grantaire the kind of privacy that only a long history of staying in one’s own lane can bring—very unlike his neighbor’s loud policing of tenant rights. It also doesn’t hurt that Grantaire’s lease was grandfathered in from the old owners, so he’s technically allowed pets where poor Enjolras is not.

Not that there’s anything particularly ‘poor’ in quality at all about his neighbor: since the day Enjolras had shown up on Grantaire’s doorstep, desperate and clutching a noisy, wriggling lump to his chest inside of an oddly purple sweatshirt, Grantaire can honestly say his life has only improved. Because of the cat, of course.

At any rate, it’s not as though he comes over that often, just when he’s having a bad day. Or a good day. Or a day that he’s been around too many people, or a day that he’s been around no one, or a day that he wants an excuse to stare at his uber-hot neighbor.

All told, he usually stops by Enjolras’s apartment a perfectly respectable several times a week.

“Anyway,” Grantaire says, pushing himself to his feet and perching Trash Can unwisely atop his shoulder, “if I have to wait for you to come to me I do fear I risk never encountering your divine countenance again.”

Another unimpressed look. Enjolras should start a collectible series. “I would retrieve Maximilien, given the opportunity.”

“Ah, but is that a prospect I am willing to peril? My dear Ange, when locks are as easy to pick as yours, why bother taking the chance?”

This time the sigh is heavier than before, though Enjolras’s expression softens as Trash Can bounds from Grantaire’s shoulder and across the counters to his technical, legal, on-paper-and-also-at-the-vet’s-office owner, nuzzling against the blond’s knuckles and purring with satisfaction when the weak-willed bastard begins petting him almost immediately. “I’ll change the locks,” his neighbor threatens absentmindedly.

“I watch Lockpicking Lawyer,” Grantaire counters.

“That sounds legally dubious.”

“I watch it in incognito mode.”

“That does not stand up in the court of law as reliably as you seem to think.”

“It doesn’t,” he agrees, “but at least this way my ads are based exclusively off of the porn I watch in cognito mode, and I strongly believe that this is what led you, a very hot single, to my area.”

Enjolras’s head gives a minute shake, and if there was going to be a response it’s lost when his phone begins a series of vibrations that Grantaire takes to mean that a call is incoming. The other man shoots him an apologetic look, but Grantaire waves him off.

“It’s cool, I have to decorate for my dog’s birthday party anyway.”

The phone is already at his neighbor’s ear when Enjolras mouths, “You don’t have a dog?” and Grantaire takes his leave.

—-

Three weeks later, Enjolras’s lock still has not been changed, nor does Grantaire have a key. At this rate a key might honestly slow down his process, given his comfortable familiarity with the collection of pins and rollers that make up the lock’s inner mechanisms. The door springs open, and as soon as he hears Trash Can’s enthusiastic mew Grantaire’s bad day begins to fall away.

“Hey Trashy, how are we today?” he coos, kneeling to occupy both hands with petting the sleek cat. It’s a two-handed petting kind of day.

“Knocking is also effective.”

“To be fair,” Grantaire starts, allowing himself to assume a more comfortable position leaning against the wall and encouraging Trash Can into his lap, “this is the first time I’ve come over that you’ve been present.”

“First time that you know of,” comes the answer from the kitchen bar where Enjolras appears to have set up shop—and look, it’s not like Grantaire has ever done anything in Enjolras’s apartment that he’s ashamed of, but that doesn’t make the prospect any less chilling. “How was your day?”

“Eh,” Grantaire shrugs, forcing the thought from his mind with familiar ease. “New liver, same eagles.” One of Enjolras’s eyebrows cocks, but the man himself says nothing. “You?”

It’s the blond’s turn to shrug. “As well as studying constitutional law in the current political climate ever goes.”

“I’ll press F in the chat for that one.”

This time his neighbor’s eyebrows furrow, but he still doesn’t ask for elaboration, so Grantaire doesn’t provide any. “How long have you lived here?” asks Enjolras suddenly without looking up from his laptop.

“Um.” How long has it been? The concept of ‘years’ started to fade after university when he ceased to have anything to measure them by. “I was definitely here last election cycle. Signed my lease a bit after uni, so I guess…” The concept of numbers is also, embarrassingly, escaping him. “Six years? Seven?”

“I see. I moved in last year.”

Cool? Brushing Hot Cat-Owning Neighbor off seems unwise, but somehow in the month and a half that they’ve been doing this, conversation about one another’s personal lives has never come up, and Grantaire doesn’t know how to navigate it. “Did you have Trash Can when you signed?”

“Ah, no.” At least at this he gives a cursory glance in the direction of the feline in question, something almost like fondness softening his eyes before he turns his attention back to his work. “One of the tenants was moving and couldn’t keep him. He was going to go to the pound otherwise, and—” He shrugs. The sentence doesn’t need to be finished: Grantaire knows what happens to cats that are six years old in a city shelter.

“Sounds like Trash Can was very lucky to have you, then.”

That earns a scowl. “Maximilien wouldn’t have needed to be lucky if the government took care of its citizens and his owner didn’t need to move to a different complex.”

“Looking to be a politician, then?”

“I was,” Enjolras says, the answer sounding almost like an admission, “but the more I learn about the system, the more impossible it seems to change from within.”

“So it’s treason?”

If he recognizes the reference, Enjolras doesn’t show it. “I should hope it doesn’t come to that, but at this rate…”

He suspects that Trash Can is preparing to take a nap in his lap, and Grantaire is trying to decide how long he wants to stay this evening. It hasn’t been a particularly draining day, but this is civil conversation, and he isn’t sure how long he can keep it up. “Just find loopholes, then.”

“Loopholes.”

“Yeah. You seem smart enough, and I’m sure your law classes have taught you all about that sort of thing, just. Find a way around it.”

“Around treason.” This time there’s an amused-sounding lilt in his neighbor’s tone.

“If anyone can do it, I trust it to be you.” The conversation is suddenly too sincere, and Grantaire decides that it is time to go. Carefully prodding Trash Can from his almost-nap, he gingerly cradles the cat in his arms and carries it to the nest of blankets that Trash Can had claimed as his own long before Grantaire was ever in the picture. “Just remembered that I have to ship some bones to India, so I’d better get on that, then.”

Enjolras blinks at him. “Is...is that legal?”

“Guess we’re about to find out.”

—-

Of late, Grantaire has been availing himself of the relative wealth of his neighbor’s library. He’s read most of the books before, but Enjolras evidently annotates, providing entirely new, often insightful, and frequently entertaining subtext to the dryness of the old classics.

“I’m in agreement that the fall of the Russian tsardom was unavoidable,” he calls from where he’s laid out on the couch with Trash Can curled up on his chest as he hears the door swing open, “but your bitterness toward Nicholai II specifically seems a bit unwarranted given the position and political situation he’d been born into. I mean, compared to the tsars before him he was downright liberal.”

“Threat of uprising tends to have that effect,” comes Enjolras’s weary response.

“Before a revolution happens, it is perceived as impossible; after it happens, it is seen as having been inevitable,” quotes an unfamiliar voice.

“Legend of Korra?” Grantaire guesses.

“Rosa Luxemburg,” corrects the man, poking his head into the living room, “but close. I don’t believe we’ve met? I’m Courfeyrac.”

“Grantaire.”

Apparently Courfeyrac has heard much more about Grantaire than is conversely so. “Ahhhh, so you’re the infamous neighbor,” he says more loudly than is strictly necessary.

Before Grantaire has the opportunity to ask what in the fuck that entails (or even debate if he’d like to find out), Enjolras makes his hasty appearance. “Have you fed Max yet?” His countenance is slightly redder than usual, more likely due to the horror of having his gossiping revealed than the exercise of climbing the steps to their floor.

“Trash Can wasn’t fussy when I got in, I figured I’d let you take care of it.”

“‘Trash Can’?” Courfeyrac repeats, eyes alight.

“‘Maximilien’ isn’t up to his standards,” Enjolras explains.

“Correction: ‘Maximilien Louis Antoine Léon’ is a mouthful, and ‘Trash Can’ says the same thing in two syllables.”

By now Courfeyrac is positively glowing. “This is amazing. This is—you actually have strong opinions on 18th century French revolutionaries?”

“Not good ones,” Enjolras interjects, sounding rather cross as he refills Trash Can’s water bowl.

“Look, St. Just was a babe, just admit—”

“I’m not sexualizing historical figures, and that’s that.”

“Time is just a number.”

“Not engaging.”

“Well yeah, you’ve already been more than clear on your disinterest in that particular pastime.”

“So you’re a moderate,” Courfeyrac postures, eyes narrowing despite a polite smile as he leans back against the wall.

“Worse,” corrects Enjolras. “He’s a nihilist.”

“Oh dear,” Courfeyrac says in apparent agreement, though his smile only widens as he crosses the room and takes a seat on the couch beside Grantaire. “What brand?”

The new division of the sofa’s real estate forces Grantaire to push himself upright, leaning back against the cushioned arm. “Epistemological.”

“It means he doesn’t accept that anything can possibly be determined as definitively true,” Enjolras sighs as Trash Can races past him to play with the newly-filled feed ball.

“Or untrue.”

“You’d like our friend Combeferre,” Courfeyrac informs him.

“Bet.” Now that his neighbor has ceased answering questions on his behalf, Grantaire turns his attention to his neighbor’s friend. “And you? You seem…” He gives the man an intentional up and down, just to see the reaction. It’s vaguely amused, which Grantaire decides is good enough. “Politically-motivated.”

“Courfeyrac once burned a copy of a charter from over two hundred years ago because he felt it took halfway measures with the liberty of the people.”

Courfeyrac’s eyes don’t leave his as Enjolras rattles off the anecdote, and honestly? It’s kind of hot. “Our meetings get that way. You should drop by one sometime.”

“‘Meetings’?”

It takes less than a second for the effect to drop, and Courfeyrac gapes at Enjolras in something that could be either outrage or disbelief, voice pitching almost hysterically when he finally exclaims, “You haven’t told him about meetings?”

Enjolras’s arms are crossed as he looks pointedly at something in the opposite direction of Courfeyrac. “It didn’t come up.”

“It always comes up. You always bring it up!”

“Well I didn’t this time.”

“You—” Courfeyrac’s eyes dart back to Grantaire, as though suddenly remembering his presence. “We’ll finish this later,” Courfeyrac promises before turning to Grantaire. “Anyway, Enjolras leads this club—”

“I don’t lead it—”

“—co-founded, was unanimously elected to be the spokesperson, and can be swiftly deposed should we ever decide that he is no longer acting in our best interests according to the club contract drawn up by and for the people,” Courfeyrac amends. “Anyway, I think you’d enjoy it—you know, meeting some of the others, seeing Enjolras in action…”

“Are they all as persuasive as you?”

“Impossible,” Courfeyrac smirks. “We all have our personal charms, though, and no one more than our dear Enjolras here.”

Grantaire glances between the two men and decides that he is either being made fun of or being used as a prop to make fun of Enjolras. In either case, it’s in his best interest to decline.

“You know, I would,” he says after a long beat, “but I gave up social interactions for Lent.”

“You’re Pagan,” Enjolras observes flatly at the same time as Courfeyrac points out, “You’re interacting socially right now.”

“Goodness, I’d better be going then,” he tells them, springing up from the couch to make his exit. “Send Trash Can my love.”

Before the door shuts, he can faintly make out Courfeyrac’s bewildered follow-up realization: “It’s May.”

—-

It’s been two weeks since that initial invitation, and apparently Courfeyrac has made getting Grantaire to attend a meeting his new life mission: the man has already found Grantaire on instagram, twitter, facebook, and—of all places—tumblr. He doesn’t even use tumblr.

“Courf sent me another message on facebook,” Grantaire calls out when he hears the door squeaking open again. It’s occurred to him to grease the hinges, but he prefers the built-in alarm system. At the moment he also finds himself much more preoccupied with the very serious task of teaching Trash Can to roll over on-command. It isn’t going well.

“Is that so?” Enjolras sounds more tired of Grantaire’s bullshit than usual, but it could be that handling cookware is putting him in A Mood: after all, if the last two building evacuations are anything to go off of, it’s unlikely that Enjolras has many positive memories that he associates with the process.

“Yeah, he’s a good conversationalist. Terrified what platform he’ll find me on next though.” This time when Grantaire taps the floor Trash Can lays down, which he decides is worth at least half a treat. “Think if I make a Grindr he’ll find me there? I’d love to find how far that silver tongue reaches, if you know what I mean.”

Can one angrily fill a pot with water? Either he’s reading too far into things or Enjolras is more expressive and intense in his hatred of cooking than Grantaire had previously realized was possible.

He’s probably reading too far. “Don’t know why he’s so dead-set on getting me to attend these meetings.”

“Could be that he thinks you’d enjoy them.” There’s steel in Enjolras’s voice as the pot clatters onto the stove, water audibly steaming where it evidently spills onto an already-hot burner. “It seems you already know some of our members, after all.”

“Yeah, and Courf used his dastardly charm to get them to gang up on me too.”

“They’d probably like to see you.”

“Sounds fake, but okay.” Pushing himself to his feet, Grantaire makes a token effort to brush off some of the residual cat fur before falling back onto the couch. “Why is Courfeyrac being so insistent, though? Is it my body?”

“He’s a kind person?”

“Or he wants my body. I mean, he certainly isn’t after my personality.”

No answer.

“So, say we were to share a bunk bed: is Courf someone who prefers the metaphorical top bunk, or—”

“Courfeyrac is happily taken.” Something that sounds an awful lot like the lid of a pot slams down against the counter with enough force that Grantaire is surprised it isn’t accompanied by a shatter.

It’s the first time in nearly three months of tomfoolery, shenanigans, and general assholery that he’s actually seen Enjolras lose his cool. Like, his neighbor’s definitely been vaguely irritated before, even moderately impatient, but a proper snap? It’s unfamiliar territory.

Grantaire decides to give the blond some breathing room, throwing one of Trash Can’s bribery treats in the general direction of the kitchen in hopes of putting the animal companion on the right course.

A tense minute later, he finally ventures to speak. “Shame,” he shrugs, pulling out his phone and tugging his lockscreen around with feigned nonchalance. “I suppose it’s for the best that I declined his invitation, then, jilted and jaded at love lost as I am.”

Apparently Trash Can has found his mark: when his owner enters the hallway that opens to the living room, he is being carried like the absolute baby he is, purring audibly as Enjolras rubs his belly. The owner himself still appears rather cross and isn’t looking at his visitor, but his posture has relaxed to the point that Grantaire doesn’t think he needs to fear for any more cookware. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Hm?”

Enjolras must be exploring every way he can walk his baby-cat around the room without looking at Grantaire. “We’d love to have you at the meetings.”

Grantaire’s eyebrows give a dubious raise. “Even the great democratically-elected non-leader?”

The response comes in the form of a huff, but at the very least it seems less angry and more impatient. “I think you would make an excellent addition.” Trash Can is getting visibly restless in Enjolras’s arms, and the man is suddenly seated on the end of the sofa opposite Grantaire. True to form, the cat immediately gets to his feet, setting to work making himself comfortable in Enjolras’s lap (hardly a difficult feat, Grantaire is sure) and establishing a satisfactory base-level of fur on the man’s trousers before settling into a loaf position. “I know Joly and Bossuet would like to see you, too: now that they know we’re neighbors they hardly ask about anything else.”

They’ve been messaging Grantaire too, but that’s hardly the point right now. “So you want me to come?”

Enjolras’s throat clears awkwardly before he responds. “To the meeting, yes,” and damn, Grantaire wishes he could take honest credit for the innuendo. Dishonest credit is worth just as much, though.

“Well, I’d best be off, then,” he tells Enjolras with a grunt as he pushes himself off the sofa.

A surprised sound comes from Enjolras, but it’s too late: he is already trapped on the couch, anchored there by his Large and Very In-Charge feline companion. “If this is about earli—”

“Have you seen me?” Grantaire interrupts, spinning so that he’s walking backwards toward the door. “I have an extremely firm full-body sugar-wax appointment to keep if I’m going to be attending your next meeting.”

He tries not to let the way Enjolras looks almost pleased go to his head.

—-

It takes another week, but Grantaire does actually attend one of the infamous meetings.

The meeting itself is entirely forgettable: he pays attention long enough to determine that everyone’s there with intentions of, like, changing the world. It’s a noble effort, one Grantaire supports even: he’s just not up to committing himself to the energy, heartache, and overall expense of hope. Nice ambience, though.

As it would turn out, his former drinking buddies are also great sober buddies, and he falls back in with Joly and Bossuet so easily that the past many months un-Joly-ing and un-Bossuet-ed feel like time utterly wasted. In fact, before the end of the night Grantaire is pretty sure he’s spoken with every member at least once and liked all of them rather well. Without much effort he quickly finds his next several weeks booked with library outings and garden strolls and camping trips, and he’d be worried he had inadvertently joined a cult if he wasn’t so deep in their ringleader’s pocket already.

They’re also somehow all ridiculously hot? Admittedly their leader sets a pretty high bar—and now that he’s seen Enjolras in action he can confirm that Courfeyrac was totally right about the ‘leader’ thing and that his neighbor is a nitpicky bastard—but Grantaire spent most of the night convinced that there was some trial or checkpoint he’d missed on the way in because he is definitely an outlier in the looks-department. Perhaps being surrounded by such a hyper-sexy crowd so obviously out of his league should have made him feel intimidated, but instead it felled any pretenses of romantic interest and opened the field for genuine friendship, which was pretty...nice. Cool, even.

It doesn’t stop him from being surprised when Enjolras actually sticks around to wait for him before returning to their building, though, nor when he’s invited in. “Maximilien has been alone all day,” Enjolras explains, “and I have some paperwork to finish up before bed.”

Fair enough. Trash Can is easy to spot, curled up in his usual pile of blankets as he is. His eyelids flicker open as the light turns on, and he reaches into a languid stretch before leaping from the couch and sauntering lazily to Grantaire’s feet, weaving between his legs until his petting whims are satisfied. “You are the most sinfully spoiled creature,” Grantaire mutters, brushing a knuckle against the cat’s jaw and shifting to sit on the floor.

Whether Trash Can understands his words’ meaning or not, Grantaire suspects that the feline would not give a flying fuck, and through the proceeding slew of cooed insults he merely rolls over to allow Grantaire access to his soft, vulnerable underside, like an idiot.

“You would never have made it in the wild, you stupid housecat,” he croons as Trash Can purrs under his hands. “Look at you! You lack any preservation instincts whatsoever!”

“Any particular reason we’re negging my cat tonight?” Enjolras interrupts, re-entering the living room with a stack of envelopes and taking a seat at the far end of the kitchen bar.

Grantaire hadn’t realized he’d had an audience. “That’s not what negging means,” he gruffly informs Enjolras, cheeks prickling with heat.

His neighbor shrugs as if internet slang means nothing to him—which, horrifyingly, might be so.

“Look, Darwinism failed your cat, and he doesn’t even care.” As if to prove the point, Trash Can rolls back over and bumps his head against Grantaire’s knee.

Enjolras’s eyes flit up briefly from the stack he’s sorting through. “Seems like it’s working well enough for him.”

Giving a mighty gasp, Grantaire clutches the hand unoccupied with petting lazy, sleepy cats to his chest. “A dependency on the system for survival? Why, Enjolras, he doesn’t even have representative power.”

“He’s a cat.”

“A cat with no input on his living conditions, and an illegal resident to boot. What kind of world did you bring him into?”

“One where someone comes over multiple times a week expressly to coddle him?”

“Ah, you’re right: he lives like a king.”

“Maximilien has done nothing to deserve being beheaded.”

“Spoken like a true Jacobin!” Grantaire watches as Enjolras pauses at his work, features rearranging in a way that almost suggests a smile. Victory.

Another ten minutes pass in relative silence as the blond works on...documents, probably, and Grantaire stops bullying Trash Can in favor of rousing him into chasing a mouse on a string.

“We’ll make a hunter of you yet,” he promises in a half-whisper.

Apparently Enjolras takes this as a sign that he is in want of conversation. “You, Joly, and Bossuet,” he prompts awkwardly. “You know each other.”

“Fewer times than I can count on one hand.”

This answer seems to startle Enjolras from his paperwork. “Beg your pardon?”

“Nah, I’m just messing with you.” No he’s not. “Yeah, we met a bit after I got out of uni. Were thick as thieves for a couple of years. Collectively banned from half of Main Street.”

Enjolras’s lips purse, and Grantaire can’t help but feel he’s walked into a trap. “Not to pry,” he says pryingly, “but what made you fall out of touch with them? They insinuated that they hadn’t heard from you in some time.”

Five months, two weeks, and three days, but who’s counting? “Yeah, I, uh.” Is it too late to bail on this conversation? “We were bar buddies, and then I stopped going to the bar.”

“I see.”

And here’s the thing: lots of people like to say that. ‘I see,’ like they understand the whole scope of the situation, but they don’t, because it’s impossible to comprehend the crushing craving and loneliness and boredom that comes with quitting something that your whole life has been constructed around catering to your need of, the friendships that revolve on that crutch and how you’re not just stepping away from the drink, you’re stepping away from the entire culture that surrounds it and isolating yourself.

He doesn’t know how to tell Enjolras this, or about the dread he’d had when he texted his friends before the meeting to inform them of his fragile sobriety and the trepidation that had followed as he awaited their responses, or that Enjolras in his stupid purple sweatshirt showing up on Grantaire’s doorstep three months ago had been the first non-work social interacton he’d had since the night he’d hit rock bottom and decided that he needed a change,

so instead, he responds, “Yeah.”

It’s quiet for another minute before Enjolras says decidedly (as seems to be the case with everything he does), “Well, they seemed really glad that you came tonight. And I’m glad too.”

Wow, Grantaire’s pretty sure he’s getting secondhand embarrassment off of that one. Of course, it could be firsthand embarrassment, not the least of which because the declaration brings him a ridiculous amount of pride to hear.

“Whelp,” he grunts, standing, “time for me to shave.”

“Shave,” Enjolras repeats flatly.

“Nothing you’d know anything about, Smoothface,” he winks, depositing Trash Can on the bar to execute his mischievous will.

“You know he’s not allowed on the counters!” Enjolras calls behind him.

“Behead him, then.”

—-

Meetings become a regular thing.

It’s awkward at first—being there ‘for the show’ is evidently not as common as Courfeyrac had led him to believe—but Grantaire does what he can to shut up for once in his life, and in return Enjolras doesn’t ask him to contribute. Had this come together six months ago, Grantaire is certain he would have ruined countless meetings shooting his mouth off to avoid having to hear their naïve idealism, but sobriety seems to go a long way in stoppering that up long enough to politely get through a two-hour meeting and the socializing that follows.

It doesn’t take long for Enjolras and him to find a rhythm there either: Grantaire makes a point to be in Enjolras’s apartment Wednesday before 5:30, and Enjolras invites Grantaire to play with Trash Can after. It’s a good system, and the door is usually even left unlocked for Grantaire to let himself in beforehand (a phenomenon that, embarrassingly, took him two weeks to realize).

By the end of the night Enjolras isn’t usually particularly talkative, which is just as well because after two hours of having to contain himself Grantaire is talkative enough for the both of them. On the rare occasion he does run out of diatribes, though, his neighbor has been polite enough to prompt him into further discussion (rambles), asking about his childhood and other tedious filler topics that Grantaire is only all too happy to babble on about for untold lengths of time.

Tonight happens to be one of those unlikely nights. It is regrettable that he doesn’t have more to say regarding the state’s care for its elderly, but it and the corresponding bill that the club is pushing have been the focal issue the past four meetings, and almost everything he might still have had left to say had already been brought up in very frank terms by the group’s own members tonight in order to determine how to approach their task.

Nevertheless, with Trash Can finally waking up from a long and exhausting day of being a sleepy bastard, it’s not like there’s any inherent need to fill the silence while Enjolras does something on his laptop at the kitchen bar. “What do you think the perfect date is?”

“April twenty-fifth,” Grantaire answers automatically. Trash Can is doing a handsome job of destroying the cardboard tunnel he’d been gifted two days prior, and it’s enough to distract from the fact that Enjolras mistakenly came under the impression at some point that this is a normal thing to ask people. Has he been taking conversation notes from Courfeyrac? The hell?

“That—no. With a person. Romantically.”

This time Grantaire actually looks up to try to gauge what his neighbor is getting at, but Enjolras’s expression is steadfast and serious as always. “Uh. I dunno.”

It’s been a while since he’s put much stock into dating. Even before sobriety took over his life, his ‘dating life’ (as only the most generous of folks might refer to it) had consisted almost exclusively of hook-ups with the occasional morning-after breakfast. As his current crowd seems to be ‘idealistic do-gooders who are so out of his league,’ even the most optimistic dating prospect he’s considered of late has been ‘online dating, but without the shank.’

“I dunno,” he repeats. “I mean, what makes the date is the person, right? So I could list off any number of formulaic, basic dates or things I enjoy doing, but the former is going to vary drastically based on who I’m with, and the latter is something I’ll enjoy just as much on my own. Like, with that in mind my perfect date would probably be a nice night in with them. They’d make dinner, maybe some fresh bread—nothing fancy, mind, just...took some effort, showed that they thought about me and what I’d like—we’d talk through dinner, maybe watch a movie after. Comfortable. Effortless.

“And then a wild and unforgettable night of impassioned pounding, of course,” he adds, because this topic is getting a little serious for his liking.

Enjolras seems to ignore the addend though (he’s gotten rather good at it over the past months), nodding thoughtfully. “That does sound nice.”

“I thought so,” Grantaire shrugs. “You think Trash Can’s getting fat?”

“He shouldn’t be, he just ended his diet.”

“Hmm.” He eyes where the cat lounges lazily on the cardboard, laid out like a sitcom husband in front of a TV. It takes concerningly little effort to imagine a miniature beer at his side. “Might wanna start it again.”

“Maximilien,” Enjolras chastises reproachfully.

“To be fair, I think he liked the feed ball.”

The blond sighs. “We may have to return to that.”

Clapping his hands together decidedly, Grantaire stands with only the most minor of grunts. “Well, that decides it then: I’m off to check out the price of cat treadmills.”

“Must you?” Enjolras has long since given up the noble task of being surprised at Grantaire’s excuses, instead opting more often than not for exasperation.

“I must,” he tells his neighbor seriously. “I’ll have a referral for you before the week is out.”

“I wish you wouldn’t.”

“Capitalism, my dear Enjolras!” he calls as he shuts the door behind him.

—-

By the time the phonecall finally comes, adrenaline has already robbed Grantaire of any energy he might have had to be a dick.

“Where are you?” Enjolras asks without preamble. “Still at the vet?”

“Nah, my place.”

“I’m coming over.”

Even standing as soon as the dial tone hits, Enjolras still beats him to the door, knocks pounding a steady staccato against the particleboard.

“Where is he?” the man asks as soon as the door swings open, pushing past Grantaire into the living room without waiting for a reply. The flat is a perfect mirror of Enjolras’s, but it’s also the first time in five-ish months of acquaintanceship that his neighbor has been over; Grantaire has no strength left for self-consciousness, but he still feels every inch of the judgement as Enjolras gathers Trash Can into his arms from the messy floor. “What happened?”

‘What happened’ is that Grantaire had been greeted upon (forced) entry into Enjolras’s apartment by the sight of Trash Can helping himself to a sample of the bread dough on the counter. “Vet tech didn’t see any signs of the yeast still rising or alcohol poisoning, but they kept him on observation for another couple of hours just in case before release. They were very nice and didn’t charge for their time, apparently it was a slow night.”

Handling Trash Can with much more delicacy than the cat is usually shown, Enjolras takes a seat on Grantaire’s worn sofa and looks unfairly like he belongs. “That’s good.”

“That’s lucky,” Grantaire insists, but with the night’s events having more or less come to a close without issue there’s no bite to them.

“Why didn’t you call? I’m glad you left the note, but—”

“I don’t have your number?” He sinks onto his stool with a sigh, spinning on the swivel-top with no trajectory in mind. “It wasn’t on your fridge with your other emergency contacts.”

“Ah. I’ll fix that—though I suppose you do have my number now.”

That he does, though Grantaire hadn’t had any real designs to save it. Tossing a tired glance toward the coddled bastard of the night, he decides it may be worth both of their whiles in case of Future Trash Can-Related Emergencies. FTCRE for short.

“Why did you come here instead of returning to my flat?”

The answer seems self-explanatory, and Grantaire stops his rotations to shoot Enjolras a look that he hopes conveys as much. “I needed to keep an eye on Trash Can and didn’t want to drag all of my crap over.”

“Oh,” Enjolras says simply, blinking at Grantaire as if seeing his set-up for the first time. “I didn’t realize you painted.”

He doesn’t, not really. Honestly, it’s been a long time since Grantaire has wanted to paint. In high school it had brought him great satisfaction, but even without majoring in the arts, doing it for a grade in gen eds had sucked the joy from the recreation. Tonight, though, he’d wanted a return to something uncomplicated, familiar. Easy. “Sometimes,” he shrugs, reaching back to retrieve his paintbrush from where he’d left it and dip it back into his palette.

“Is it okay? For Maximilien to be around?”

“What? Sure, I mean—” His neighbor’s concerned expression catches up to him. “Oh, well yeah, obviously. They’re acrylics, I would have a window cracked or something if Fumes were involved.”

“I’m sure, but animals are more sensitive to these kinds of things—”

“Dude, I know. I’m the one who had to spend the night at the vet’s, remember? Not especially eager to make a return-trip.”

“Right,” Enjolras coughs, looking somewhat bashful. “Thank you for doing that, by the way.”

Rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand, Grantaire sighs. He’s very tired. “All in the name of a higher cause, right? Speaking of, you need to change your emergency contact info at the vet when you get the chance.”

The blond frowns, continuing his cautious personal examination of Trash Can’s abdomen without looking. “I was unaware I had one.”

“You didn’t. They have my info now, and I’m pretty sure the lady at the counter put me down as your partner.”

The creases in his neighbor’s brow deepen as his eyes return to the lardass in his lap. “Why would I need to change that?”

Grantaire is going to do Enjolras the honor of assuming that he’s asking the more sensible of the two possible interpretations of his question. “For one thing, Courf or Ferre would probably be slightly more reliable.” At the very least, they definitely know Enjolras’s phone number.

“Ferre’s allergic,” Enjolras dismisses, “and Courf lives with him. In a pinch they could look after Max, but Combeferre would be sniffling for weeks.”

“Is that why Ferre’s never over?”

“And why I’m usually out,” his neighbor nods. “We used to live together, actually, but once he and Courfeyrac finally started dating it made more sense for us to shuffle around the next time our leases were up for renewal.”

“Which brought you here?” Grantaire guesses.

“Precisely.” Apparently he deems Trash Can to be in suitable condition, cradling the stupid asshole back up to his chest. “Besides, you live next-door and see Trash Can more frequently: having you as the emergency contact makes much more sense. That is, if you’re comfortable with it.”

“Of course I am,” Grantaire scoffs, sweeping a stripe of green down the edge of the canvas. “I love that idiot.”

“Then I’ll keep it.”

“Does that make me Mr. Grantaire-Enjolras, then?” he teases, basking in the way his neighbor’s cheeks color.

“I can change the relationship.”

“Don’t worry about it, s’not like they treated me any different for it. One less thing for you to do.” The painting had started as intentionally having no aim or direction, but he’s starting to actually like it. “By the way, just thought you should know: under all that fluff, your cat doesn’t have a penis.”

“I see,” Enjolras nods seriously. “He’s trans, then.”

Why not? “Sure.”

It’s weird being on the other side of this equation but not altogether unpleasant. Enjolras seems content to dote on his rotund, dietarily sensitive ward while Grantaire continues his work, belatedly picking up a roller to add some texture that probably would have been better-suited for when he’d begun. “By the way,” he starts, leaning so close to the canvas that he probably has flecks of orange in his eyebrows now, “why were you making bread? Some experiment with Courf?”

The blond’s mouth makes several shapes before settling into a line accompanied by a nonchalant shrug. “In a manner of speaking.”

“Did the experiment involve seeing if you can figure out the fire department’s shift schedule? I can already tell you, Cliff is on-duty Monday through Friday, and Alice comes when she isn’t in classes.”

Enjolras appears rather unimpressed with the advice.

Sweeping a layer of purple from corner to corner, Grantaire decides he’s probably just ruined his painting. Even better. “You’ve been failing at cooking since long before I became your designated Cat Guardian, I needed something to do during our weekly fire drills.”

“It’s not a drill if the danger is real,” Enjolras sniffs, countenance somehow a shade deeper.

“Oh, I am very aware of how real that danger was now that I’ve gotten to know you. It’s a good thing you got Trash Can after that became an established thing, pretty sure ‘24 hours notice before inspections’ is voided in case of emergency repairs.” He pauses at the thought. “In which case, feel free to destroy my kitchen in your future efforts to woo Alice from her partner.”

“I’m not—”

“Or Cliff, whoever,” Grantaire shrugs, “but I don’t have any secret cats to risk smoking out or revealing.” His paintbrush dips into the water, swishing until the liquid is a tepid brown. “With that said, I would rather you not destroy my kitchen in a way that would call attention to such an arrangement: no need for the complex to start asking Questions.”

“‘Questions’?” One of his neighbor’s golden brows arches.

“Oh, you know. The kinds of salacious questions one asks when a sexy younger man starts spending significant amounts of time in the quarters of an older gentleman of ill-repute.”

“You’re two years older,” Enjolras protests.

“Two years more time to tarnish my reputation.”

“As if your constant presence in my apartment is any less suspicious.”

“I’m a generally suspicious character, that’s different. My spending time at your flat implies a coming to the light, your presence in mine implies the steady start down the path of moral degradation and corruption of purity.”

“I don’t think it does.”

“Well then, you must excuse me, I have suspicious things I must be off to in the comfort of my own apartment.”

Enjolras blinks at him. “I...am right here.”

“You can take Trash Can with you too.”

“I can see that you haven’t moved.”

“Absolutely unscrupulous, Enjolras. Right before your very eyes.”

“Fine, I’ll go,” the blond huffs.

“Downright dubious.”

“Bye.”

“Do what you can to salvage your reputation on the way out!”

—-

“It’s overrated.”

“It’s Liberty Leading the People, how could it be overrated?”

Enjolras rolls his eyes. “Delacroix is a sell-out.”

“Explain.”

Evidently this is enough to finally make his neighbor turn from his laptop, sighing like his stance is perfectly obvious. “Liberty was done following the 1830 July Revolt, which changed the power from Charles X to Louis-Philippe—the so-called ‘Citizen King.’ Delacroix had been inspired, there were Romantic sentiments, he was immortalizing the spirit of the movement.”

“So far, so good.”

“And then the government purchased it to hang in the palace of Louis-Philippe as a reminder of who had put him there and how easily he could be deposed.”

“Clearly effective.”

“Clearly. It was removed by 1831 for ‘being too revolutionary,’ and following the June Rebellion the next year—”

“The what?”

“—it was more or less hidden away for another fifty years before being presented for submission into le Louvre, sanitized entirely of its political sentiments. In the meantime, Delacroix accepted commissions from the very weak-willed government that had censored the work in the first place.”

“Don’t bite the hand that feeds.”

“He was an artist, and a Romanticist at that.”

“Paint is expensive.”

“And I can sympathize with that, but it doesn’t mean he wasn’t a sell-out. In any case,” Enjolras huffs, turning his attention back to his laptop, “it’s ridiculous that it should get all this attention now while other works fall to the wayside.”

“Oh? Other works like?” Until today Grantaire had been unaware that Enjolras had any opinions about art at all, much less strong, inflammatory ones with contextual backing.

“Well, Raft of Medusa, for one.”

“Géricault is hardly uncelebrated.”

“No, but when you go to le Louvre it hardly garners the crowd that Liberty does despite being right next to it.”

“Delacroix was a great deal more prolific than Géricault,” Grantaire points out, “and he had the sponsors and longevity to assure it.”

“Oh, it isn’t about that, though. It’s about...it’s a good painting that consistently gets passed over in favor of a coward’s attempt at patriotism.”

“Define ‘patriotism.’”

“Standing with your countrymen,” answers Enjolras, a hint of ferocity flashing with the pointed statement.

Well, he’s not arguing with that. “Touché. Still, I’m surprised: I would have thought the spirit of the revolution would have appealed to you, even if the artist didn’t.”

“Did the people rise in the 1832 uprising?”

“I still don’t know what that is.”

“They didn’t, so I would say that it was unsuccessful in its goal, wouldn’t you?”

“Is being made to feel not a worthy pursuit on its own?”

Enjolras pauses at his keyboard. “Touché,” he echoes, typing resuming once more.

“Speaking of, where’s Trash Can?” It’s been at least ten minutes by now, more than long enough for the cat to appear from whatever he’s usually up to when Grantaire isn’t here.

“Marius borrowed him.”

The question of the wisdom of such a move is on the tip of his tongue, but his natural curiosity and propensity toward chaos wins out. “Oh?”

“Some...girl,” his neighbor answers with a bewildered shake of his head. “He promised Maximilien lots of attention, and Courfeyrac is there to make sure nothing bad happens.”

“Finally acknowledging the powers of animals as Babe Magnets, are we?”

Enjolras sputters. “Excuse me?”

“Oh, don’t be coy, I’m sure you’ve picked up your fair share of ladies since acquiring Monsieur Maximilien.”

“I’ve—what?”

“An essential part of any dating profile,” Grantaire nods. It’s been a while—at least two weeks—since he’s worked Enjolras into a proper fluster, and he’s enjoying it.

The other man closes his eyes, taking a deep breath before finally saying, “I’m gay.”

“Gentlemen, then.”

His head gives another minute shake. “I don’t use Maximilien to ‘pick people up.’”

“That’s how you lured me in, what am I to think of that?”

“You—I—I didn’t mean—” It’s the most brilliant crimson yet, and Grantaire needs the pigment in his collection. Shaking his head, Enjolras resumes his attempt at a response. “I’m sorry, can you elaborate on that?”

“Hottie McHotStuff shows up on my doorstep with a kitty in peril doing puppy-dog eyes? I didn’t stand a chance. Probably for the best that all you needed was for me to watch Trash Can, I’m sure I would have agreed to anything.”

Enjolras’s expression turns withdrawn, mouth shifting to a thin line. “You didn’t have to.”

“Ah, but I did. And here I am, six months later, arguing Romantic painters from the relative comfort of your couch with nary a whisker in sight.”

“But you did think he’d be here.”

“Your presence was certainly more of a surprise than his would have been,” Grantaire admits, “but not an altogether unwelcome one.”

“Because we’re…”

“Friends,” he affirms. “At least, I consider you to be one.”

“And I you,” Enjolras says quietly.

“Great. Then we can both appreciate our time alone without the child, and you can give me the details on what Marius intends to do involving a cat and this poor, poor girl.”

He does, and—in traditional Pontmercy fashion—it is arse-over-tits overcomplicated, dramatic, and utterly riveting.

“See?” Grantaire gestures once his laughter has subsided, “you hold your own just fine without Trash Can around. You’ll swing yourself a man yet.”

“My happiness is not contingent on having a partner, romantic or otherwise.”

“Careful, keep saying things like that and you’ll make me fall in love with you,” he warns, standing and stretching. Enjolras is still watching him carefully, and either the rise of his shirt has offended his neighbor or he has overstepped some boundary or another with the retort. “Anyway, I’ve decided: I’m putting out a commission on the black market. Time to find out what la Liberté guidant le peuple is really worth.”

“Sounds illegal.”

“Oh, extremely. My gift to you.”

“I didn’t ask.”

“You didn’t have to,” he tells his neighbor with a wink as he opens the front door. “We’ll see what fits in my budget!”

—-

A postcard fit into his budget, and Enjolras has inexplicably framed it.

It’s well out of Trash Can’s reach, too, which is infinitely more thought and care than Grantaire had thought Enjolras would give it when he’d pick it up from the souvenir shop. The miniature copy of Raft of Medusa he’d also picked up hanging beside it is slightly less surprising.

Today Courfeyrac is already in when Grantaire arrives, which means Enjolras is probably around somewhere as well.

“R,” Courfeyrac smiles magnanimously. It’s the wide, satisfied smile of the cat who got the cream, and the fact that Trash Can is in his lap being pet like a true Bond villain accessory hardly detracts from the imagery.

“Courf,” he nods in return, turning into the kitchen to pretend to help himself to something from the fridge and hoping Courfeyrac can’t smell the fear rolling off of him. “Where’s Ange?”

“Otherwise preoccupied.”

“Bathroom?”

“I suspect he’ll be a while.”

Yep, fear is definitely the sensible choice here. “Sounds good.” It turns out that there is nothing worth stealing from the fridge because Enjolras is a terrible cook and should feel bad about it.

“What are your intentions with my best friend?”

“Which one?”

“The one I’m not sleeping with.”

Enjolras, then. “I like his cat, and he’s kinda fun to bully.”

“He’s also fun to be around in general, wouldn’t you say?”

“Uh, sure.” Grantaire hasn’t put much thought into it, but yeah, even now that he’s begun having a social life again, Enjolras is more or less the person he always comes back to.

He genuinely can’t figure out the point Courfeyrac is working toward, which is honestly terrifying. “And hot.”

It’s a trap, for what he isn’t yet certain, so he only gives a lukewarm, “Definitely.”

“Cares about people, too. Great leader. Solid future.”

“Are we making a dating profile for Enjolras? Because if so, I’m in. I am happy to be the overinvolved mother he never asked for nor wanted.”

Courfeyrac wets his lips. “He certainly would be the catch, huh? So crazy he’s single.”

“Yeah, right? Insane.”

The staring intensifies. “He has a lot of people who flirt with him, too. Never takes any of them up on it.”

“He does seem like he’d be pretty oblivious to most advances,” Grantaire agrees, leaning against the entryway to the living room. Are they trying to set Enjolras up with someone? He’s pretty sure Courfeyrac knows everyone of repute that Grantaire does, and the edges of the venn diagram that don’t overlap aren’t really people Enjolras should probably ever meet.

“Oh no, Enjolras is pretty good about picking up on that sort of thing,” Courfeyrac reassures him. “Just hasn’t been interested.”

“Could be ace,” he suggests. “Or aro.”

“He’s not.”

“Oh.” Grantaire is lost again.

“Well,” the other man corrects, “he’s demi, but that’s neither here nor there.”

“I’m sorry, what’s the point again?”

“Okay, so back to the sample case—oh, hello Grantaire,” Enjolras greets, looking only mildly surprised as he shuts his bedroom door behind him. Trash Can evacuates his very conspicuous position on Courfeyrac’s lap as if on evil, evil cue, bounding over to Grantaire and nuzzling at his legs. “I’m afraid we’re doing some schoolwork, so I won’t be very sociable.”

“That’s quite all right,” he says, bending over to pick up the duplicitous cat. “I’ve got what I came for, so I’ll be going.”

“Where are you taking Trash Can?” calls Courfeyrac behind him. Gods bless him, at least someone in this flat is still capable of confoundment from time to time.

“To attract some eligible bachelors,” he tells the man with a wink. “Ones who can appreciate attractive blond heartthrobs with promising careers and justice in their souls.”

Before the door closes he hears Courfeyrac mutter a pained, “Oh my God, he’s an idiot” to some unknown and uncaring deity.

Whatever, not his problem.

—-

Grantaire is an idiot, and it has definitely become his problem.

He’s been good—really good—for the past five months he’s been attending meetings, but last week he’d been in a bad place and attended anyway and he’d fucked up, fucked up badly enough for Enjolras to snap and Feuilly to look like he was raring for a fight and Combeferre to give him this look and Joly to turn to him and softly suggest that he consider leaving early, a suggestion that Grantaire had snatched up with all the vehemence of a man who knows he’s made a mistake but isn’t ready to come to terms with it yet.

He’s since sent an apology text (many apology texts) and has made amends with everyone...except Enjolras.

It’s been too awkward: his outburst hadn’t been especially gentle toward anyone, true, but much as the man might try to deny it Enjolras lives his club and the philosophy behind it and everything it stands for, and in one irritable night Grantaire had written off all of their efforts as pointless. He can make his excuses to everyone else, but he can’t face Enjolras.

It hasn’t been quite as easy as he’d anticipated to stay out of Enjolras’s way. Even with everyone else’s blessing he obviously couldn’t attend tonight’s meeting, but it’s more than that: work has been stressful this week, and he’s had to stop himself more than once from automatically letting himself into his neighbor’s flat to decompress with Trash Can or even bullshit with the man himself.

That’s been its own thing, too. Grantaire had entirely underestimated how frequently they talked until suddenly they weren’t. They don’t text, nothing so pedestrian or intentional as that outside of the groupchat, but Enjolras had always been there to run every banal thought that crossed his mind past, and now Grantaire doesn’t have him and is bursting at the seams with mundanity too ordinary or niche to harass Joly or Bossuet with, and if he tries to use Courfeyrac or Combeferre as a stand-in they not only will insinuate that he should apologize in their own horribly reasonable and accurate ways but also they won’t be Enjolras.

For now, he’s trying to get used to his new life. It’s easier than giving up alcohol had been: he can continue seeing most of his friends, for one, and he doesn’t have to worry about any averse physical reactions in the meantime, which is nice. With sobriety as the benchmark, it’s not unconquerable.

He almost thinks he imagines it when, at quarter past seven (halfway through their usual meeting time, Grantaire’s mind treacherously supplies), he hears a knock at the door. A long beat passes before he pushes himself to his feet.

There’s no ugly purple sweatshirt this time, no attempts to hide a mewling lump or frantic glances around the hall to see if anyone else spots him: tonight it’s just Enjolras in a charcoal sweater with Trash Can clutched to his chest, eyes directed pointedly to the ground.

“He missed you.”

Gulping, Grantaire nods, opening the door more widely to let the man in.

Enjolras steps in far enough to allow Grantaire to close the door before extending the cat to him with two hands; upon acceptance, the blond’s arms cross. Trash Can mews plaintively as Grantaire adjusts him to proper petting position, starting up a steady purr once he’s adequately settled and being appropriately attended to.

The riotous roar of the feline’s contentment is the only sound that passes between them for a long minute before Grantaire finally opens his mouth to speak. “I didn’t actually mean—”

“I know.” Enjolras still isn’t looking at him, but his expression has become somehow more tired than before.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

There’s a perfectly good couch in the living room—the clean living room, Grantaire’s had some free time on his hands—but neither of them make any move toward it, still mulling awkwardly in the hallway. If nothing else, he’s pretty sure Enjolras wasn’t exaggerating about Trash Can: he knows firsthand how absolutely insufferable the bastard-boy can be when he wants something.

“I’m glad you came,” Grantaire says, more quietly this time.

The corners of Enjolras’s mouth stiffen as he crosses his arms a little tighter. “I wasn’t sure you would want me to.”

“Because I haven’t been over.”

“You’ve been avoiding me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Well, as I said, Maximilien missed you.”

Grantaire isn’t sure what to say. For all of his teasing, he’s never seen Enjolras upset like this, and he gets the distinct impression that this is about more than the meeting. “I’ve missed him too,” he at last acquiesces.

The blond’s expression twitches. “Apparently not enough to visit.”

“I wasn’t sure if I’d be welcome.”

“Of course you are. I might not have been thrilled with you, but that doesn’t mean you should just stop visiting.”

“I thought you might be mad.”

“And you thought avoiding me would help?”

“I didn’t think it would hurt.”

“Maximilien didn’t know where you’d gone off to or why you weren’t around anymore.” At last the blond turns to meet his eye. “Was that just supposed to be it? I get upset with you, so you up and leave?”

Ah, here it is. “I’m not…” Grantaire sighs. “I’m still getting used to having a cat who wants me around even when I fuck up.”

“Well, he does. And I don’t think it’s very respectful or responsible of you to abandon him just because you’re uncomfortable owning up to the consequences of your actions.”

“You’re right,” he nods, continuing to rub circles between the cat’s shoulders. “It was shitty of me and unfair to Trash Can.”

“It was.”

“And I’ll do better in the future. I’ll be a better friend.”

The other man’s eyes bore into him, jaw set. “For Max?”

Grantaire holds the gaze steady. “For Trash Can.”

—-

It happens on a day like any other: Grantaire is spread out on the floor encouraging Trash Can to give into his more predatorily-inclined instincts when the cat’s ears twitch at the tell-tale squeak of the front door, followed shortly by the sounds of a coat and scarf being removed.

Now, Trash Can would never do anything so undignified as to run, but he does saunter with more haste than the average Parisian might deign appropriate toward the source of the sound.

“Hello, Grantaire,” Enjolras greets, as though it were a totally average and innocuous day. “Hello Trash Can.”

A day like any other.

“What did you call him?”

Enjolras has the decency to look indignant about it, at least, cradling the cat whose name is definitely finally officially and unquestionably ‘Trash Can’ in his arms. “He doesn’t answer to ‘Max.’”

“He doesn’t ‘answer’ to anything.”

“Everyone else calls him ‘Trash Can,’ it’s not like it matters.”

“Everyone who isn’t you.”

A huff. “Are we really going to do this today?”

“In nine months of acquaintanceship, this is the first time I have heard you refer to Trash Can by his true name: of course we’re doing this today.”

“‘His true name’?” Enjolras repeats dryly.

“His jellicle name, if you will.”

“I won’t.”

“Doesn’t matter, you called him ‘Trash Can.’”

“And you’re making me deeply regret it.”

“Would you truly deny an old man his pleasures?”

“You’re twenty-nine.”

“And you’re…younger than twenty-nine.”

“Twenty-six.”

“Damn, you are Baby.”

Absentmindedly rubbing his knuckles over Trash Can’s stomach, Enjolras sighs before sinking into the sofa beside Grantaire. A moment later he swivels, one leg swinging onto the couch to enable him to properly face Grantaire. His neighbor’s knee is still inches from touching him, but the distance feels palpable, warmth mingling in the space between them. “Why don’t you ever ask me questions about myself?”

Uh. “Uh.”

“I ask you about your family and school and hobbies and interests all the time, but unless it’s about Maximilien you almost never reciprocate.”

“I ask Courfeyrac about him sometimes too.”

“Doesn’t help your case.”

“Point.” Running a hand back through his hair, he sighs. It’s not that he doesn’t want to know about Enjolras, he does, but for all of his boundary-crossing (he still doesn’t even have a key), asking questions about his neighbor’s personal life has always felt like the step too far, like getting invested. “Um. What’s your favorite color, I guess?”

“I don’t have one.”

“Okay, see, this does not encourage me to ask further questions.”

Even so, Enjolras is grinning and allows Trash Can to pad toward Grantaire in whose lap the jellicle cat quickly settles. “Most of my answers won’t be like that. Try again.”

“Okay then.” Adjusting his sitting position to get comfortable, Grantaire considers his options. “What is your first name?”

That earns a laugh. “Jean, it’s Jean. You’ve definitely heard Courfeyrac refer to me by my full name before.”

“I kinda figured he was fucking with you. I mean, what caring parent would bestow a red-blooded Jacobin such as yourself with the middle name ‘Louis-Philippe’?”

“That, ah. Actually, I chose it.”

“No.”

“I did,” Enjolras insists bashfully. “My parents and I had The Gender Discussion when I was seven and deeply enthralled with French history without understanding its nuances.”

“Where did ‘Jean’ come from, then?”

Another flush. “I copied it from Combeferre.”

“And Courfeyrac?”

“Followed suit when he officially transitioned in uni.”

“You all are the actual worst.”

“I know.”

“They’re dating!”

“I know!” Enjolras exclaims, dissolving into peals of laughter. “Why do you think we all go by our last names?”

“You are all ridiculous and should have been split up at a young age.”

“They tried.”

“Not hard enough!”

The conversation dissipates once more into helpless giggles, Trash Can quickly growing impatient and abandoning the couch altogether and Grantaire’s stomach aching with mirth long before either of them are in any state to resume discussion.

—-

It’s mid-morning on a Monday when Grantaire becomes convinced that he should talk with the landlord about installing a new door.

This one has served him faithfully these past eight years, to be sure, but even with almost seven in the bank as an accomplished alcoholic with a whole slew of minor offenses deserving of angry visits at odd hours, he’s certain his poor door has never had to withstand knocking of this intensity in all its many years at its post.

It takes only a moment to peek through the peephole to affirm that it is the lone person Grantaire can think of capable of such intensity without a bullet featuring his name. “Yes, Enjolras?”

As per usual, Enjolras seems to take an open door as an invitation to enter. He gets to the living room before spinning on the ball of his foot, somehow maintaining the appearance of motion personified even in his stilled state. “Claude knows about Max.”

Grantaire’s mind is a flurry before he can even pick an emotion to process. “Fuck.” He approaches the living room without thinking, flopping onto the sofa as Enjolras avails himself to Grantaire’s armchair, twisting it to face him and leaning so far forward in it that he’s only realistically utilizing the very edge of the seat. “So you’re being evicted?”

“He’s going to try.”

“How did he even find out? Did he violate tenant rights?”

“No, my fridge broke. Well, I broke my fridge.”

Grantaire’s eyes narrow in confusion. “...how?”

“Not important,” Enjolras dismisses with a wave of his hand. “What matters is that Claude deemed it enough of an emergency that he waived the 24 hour-notice and found Maximilien. Technically I could take him to court over the definition of ‘emergency,’ but it’d be a needlessly complicated battle with little to gain, and at the end of the day I was in violation of my lease. Or so I thought—”

Grantaire’s brain tunes out in favor of processing literally anything at all. What does a world without Enjolras even look like? He knows he’d lived it for 28 years, but the prospect of facing a future without him is suddenly daunting, bordering on unthinkable. What does Grantaire even do from here, just...have a neighbor whose apartment he doesn’t let himself into at his leisure? Get his own cat? Socialize on his own time?

A new thought occurs to him. “So wait, if you’re evicted, where will you go?”

“Oh, um. I guess I’d stay with Courf and Ferre until I finished my degree, and then I’d probably return south with my family.”

“And...Trash Can?”

“Send him ahead to my parents, most likely. But—”

The rest dissolves into white noise: this can’t be happening. They’ve been so careful, this can’t be happening. Two months ago he might have tried to tell himself that this feeling, like a sucker-punch straight to the gut, was over losing the cat, but he knows better now: he knows that Enjolras is a terrible cook and tried to teach himself art history but got overwhelmed by all of the context and doesn’t have a favorite color but does have a favorite historical charter, and he’s stupid and brilliant and passionate, and he can’t just leave, not now—

And suddenly Grantaire is struck by the realization that he is in so, so much deeper than he had realized.

“What if you moved in with me?” he interrupts desperately. It's a bad idea, a terrible idea, especially on the cusp of his newly-realized feelings, but he's no stranger to self-denial or bad decisions, especially not if there's any chance of fixing this. “You could be my illegal boarder instead of Trash Can, and you’d be able to stay together, and…”

Enjolras’s expression turns from puzzlement to a smile. “I’m about to get to that, bear with me another moment. As I was saying, I was looking over my lease with Bahorel and Courfeyrac and discussing the unique situation with building ownership and how the turnover happened, and—Grantaire, we found the loophole.”

He blinks. “Loophole?”

“The woman who owned Max before me, she’d been allowed pets too, and Max was on her lease agreement.”

His brows furrow. “Right, but that would have been—”

“Nullified when the resident moved out, yes, except that not all residents on the contract moved out. Trash Can stayed.”

Grantaire’s eyes widen. “Trash Can stayed.”

“Because of the way your lease was drawn up—and it is spectacularly convoluted, there are several loopholes Bahorel will probably want to go over with you when he wakes up—Maximilien is treated as his own private resident, so the terms surrounding his presence in this building remain in place.”

“And...if he’s on his own lease, you won’t have to move.”

“Claude can try, but I’d be surprised if he can get it past preliminaries, especially now that Bahorel has finally passed his bar.”

“Gods, the menace,” Grantaire manages through a half-laugh, somewhere between disbelief and relief.

“But even if we hadn’t found the loophole, I wouldn’t have wanted to live with you.”

Ah. Right, of course. Grantaire isn’t so blinded by the weight of his feelings that he’s suddenly under the impression that he has any chance. That much has remained the same over all of these months. “Yeah, I mean. I can see why.”

“I really don’t think you do.”

“Nah, it’s cool, I get it.”

“Ask me, Grantaire.”

“What?” He looks up at his neighbor, who is now staring intently at him.

“Ask me why I wouldn’t have wanted to move in with you.”

Crossing his arms, Grantaire leans back on the sofa and huffs. “Why wouldn’t you have wanted to move into my shitty one-bedroom as an illegal boarder after having lived on your own in a flat of the same size for the past two years and also knowing anything about my personality?”

“Because I like you, Grantaire. Very much. And I have very strict rules about moving in with people I’m dating before the one-year mark.”

He blinks. “But I—you—I didn’t—”

The other man shakes his head, chuckling softly to himself. “I’ve been trying to figure out for months if you like me back, and I was starting to come to terms with that you probably don’t, but when I thought I might be evicted…” He shrugs helplessly. “I needed to know for sure.”

“Well,” Grantaire awkwardly laughs, “I guess you have your answer now.”

Enjolras stares at him blankly for a beat before taking a deep breath and expelling it in one long, controlled stream. “Actually, I don’t.”

“Oh. Oh, um.” Subjecting himself to the horrifying ordeal of being known feels awfully unfair given that ten months of obliviousness have just caught up to him all at once, but then, he is the one who had his head so far up his sphincter that it took him ten months to come to terms with. “Well, uh, this has been all rather sudden, and I’m not really sure, hrm. Uh.” He inhales. “I mean, affection is so fickle, is it not? Just consider Eros and his arrows—which actually is a convergent homonym, ‘arrow’ coming from the Latin arcus, or perhaps the proto-Germanic arkhwo or the Old Norse ör, where ‘Eros’ is of course Greek, the Latin counterpart ‘Cupid’ clearly bearing no semblance to arcus—but do the gods ever have a plan for these things? Are Cupid’s arrows not wrought on the weary and unexpecting, without care nor design? The only order there has ever been is to devoted followers who appeal to the crass vanity of the gods and the gods’ own sadistic inclination toward chaos, although one might argue it’s more reasonable than we mortals can imagine, daytime television to the immortals—”

“You can say you don’t like me,” Enjolras interrupts. His face is red, but his expression holds steadfast. “I can handle myself, we don’t have to make this a thing.”

“No, that’s not what I—I mean, I like you too. It just kind of hit, like, now? So I haven’t, uh, grappled with the size of it yet. But yeah, I do. Like you. I don’t just think of you as a friend, there’s definitely a certain ‘more’ there that I think I’d like to explore. If that’s, uh, fine. With you. Fine with you, but also to explore with you. Enjolras. Me and you.” Somebody please stop him. “Us.”

At least Enjolras looks somewhat amused now. “I do feel I made my stance on the subject pretty clear, if not for the past several months then at least a minute ago.”

“‘Months’?” Grantaire repeats. He mentally reviews the past several months and—wait, no, yep, there it is. “Nevermind, I see it.”

“I really thought you were teasing me, but then you’d backtrack and do or say something that made me unsure again.”

“I literally hadn’t even considered it as an option,” he admits. “Like, there’s punching above my weight class, and then there’s not even being invited to the match.”

“Well, in case there is any ambiguity left,” Enjolras clarifies, nudging his foot against Grantaire’s calf, “you are definitely invited.”

“Cool,” he says, nodding. “Very cool.”

“So.” Enjolras’s throat clears. “Would you like to go on a date with me?”

Grantaire glances at the time. “I have work in an hour, so maybe not now, but, uh. This evening?”

“This evening,” Enjolras agrees, grinning widely. “I have some bread dough in your freezer that I’ve been saving for months.”

“Is that what that’s meant to be?”

“Hush you, Combeferre helped me.”

“You invited Combeferre to my apartment?”

“You told me I could use your kitchen,” Enjolras points out, “and there’s less dander here, so Combeferre was fine once he took his allergy meds.”

“What does bread dough have to do with anything, anyway?”

“Well, I have to make you dinner. Get my apartment ready for a nice night in, get some candles. Not so sure about the end of the date,” he says, shooting Grantaire a pointed look, “but at the very least I could have some movies at the ready.”

It takes a moment for the meaning to click. “Oh, you meant months.” He’d been thinking since their weirdly intimate fight two months ago, but Enjolras’s ridiculous date interrogation was five, minimum.

“Your signals have been extremely mixed.”

“So I’m gathering.” There’s a really great opportunity to drop a line here, pull the whole ‘I can clear that up for you, if you want’ and go for a kiss, but the entire past ten minutes has been such a rollercoaster with so little time to process that he instead stands up. “Well, I’ll let you get to that, then. I, uh. Have to go pet my cat.”

Enjolras makes little effort to muffle his laughter when Grantaire opens the door into his face, and the resolve only seems to wane once Grantaire realizes that he’s kicked himself out of his own flat.

He takes a moment to consider his options: he could return to the relative comfort of his apartment and face the (albeit amiable) ridicule of his maybe-boyfriend, or he could continue on to Enjolras’s flat and enjoy the company of a cuddly boy.

It’s been a pretty good day: he should visit Trash Can.