Chapter Text
Grantaire skimmed aimlessly through the magazines hunting, without much hope, for something to catch his fidgety attention.
His train had been delayed because that was the way his luck ran. He’d swung his arms, picked at the cuffs of his hoodie, and built up a truly impressive rant about rail privatization and how could anybody ever think adding three layers of bureaucracy would help the situation. But the boards stayed resolutely uninformative and he lost all patience at the sixth echoy announcement of the delay. So he’d decided that since he’d just come off a successful job he could afford a couple of magazines to save his sanity until Network Rail decided to at least pretend it was competent.
Unfortunately, having just come off a job, all he wanted was to be at home curled up half-asleep on his couch. He didn’t have enough focus even for a magazine promising to find him his dream lover with the power of purple shirts and avocados.
Pictures he could just about cope with, so he flicked through the magazines hoping for a photoshoot interesting enough to make the wait until he could fall asleep on the train bearable. Unfortunately it was all country house, cooking feature, town house, cook– oooh wait, naked person.
Grantaire hastily flipped back – hey, he owned his shallowness.
Without really looking, he flicked past the male figure in various poses with attempted-artful draping keeping him from naked-nakedness until he reached the article title page.
Then his own breath choked him and he nearly dropped the magazine.
After a second, when the world didn’t dissolve into the hazy glow of a drunken dream but remained the same glare-lit noisy shop and he was clutching a magazine to his chest while the public information system mumbled through get another announcement of the delay, Grantaire took a couple of deep breaths tasting the grit-metal of the trains.
“I’m not crazy,” he told himself, and wished he sounded more confident about it. “I’m sober. I haven’t even had a drink since me and Eponine went out before I left for the job. I’m imagining things. I mean I haven’t for the longest while but –” but at one point in his life he suffered that flash of fake-recognition constantly. The drinking hadn’t helped.
“I’m sober,” he reminded himself. Cringing, he peeled the magazine away from his chest and squinted down at the picture.
Enjolras stared out at him from the page.
“Ohmigod.” Grantaire clenched his arms around the magazine before his trembling fingers dropped it. “Ohmigod.”
Before he could have a complete breakdown on a station platform, his train was announced, leaving in the next ten minutes from the other end of the station. Grantaire pushed other considerations aside, grabbed the magazine, paid, went back, snagged two premade vodka tonics, paid again, and fled.
Collapsed in his seat as the train jerked into motion, he tried to breath over the pounding of his blood.
“You’re being ridiculous,” he told himself. “And imagining things. And you’re supposed to be saving the drinking for going out at celebrating with Ep.” He shook his head, she was just going to have to forgive him, desperate times and all that. He cracked open the bottle and took a sip. “There, all better. Now let’s see who looks so much like Enjolras, so I can avoid having anything to do with them.” He took another sip of his drink then screwed the cap back on before the train jolted it everywhere, wriggled comfortably back into his seat, and picked up his magazine again.
Carefully smoothing it open he stared at the picture. The title across the top of the page read, Fallen Angel, in all caps. It was a full frontal nude portrait from the chest up and it was definitely Enjolras.
Enjolras with his soft curls and fierce thin-lipped glare. Grantaire’s eyes tracked down the strong column of his throat, remembering years old fantasies –
Slouching at his desk, chair tilted at a careful angle so it appeared he was focused on the teacher at the front of the classroom, while actually he could watch the angel at the table across and in front of him.
Enjolras was industriously scribbling down notes, of course. Grantaire could see the flex of his fine-boned hand and the studious intent in the glorious half-profile of his face.
With an effort he turned his head to focus on his own work. He had precisely zero notes on the binomial theorem but there was a biro portrait of Enjolras he didn’t remember drawing. The scrape of a chair brought his head back up. Enjolras, still intently taking notes, was reaching back with his left hand, twist of paper caught in his fingers. Shifting forward, Grantaire took the note.
STOP SKETCHING AND DO SOME WORK And there was a little stick figure pointing one imperative arm, because Enjolras was secretly a massive dork.
Grantaire looked at the board and the scribble-scrabble that only made sense when Enjolras patiently talked him through it. Giving up on binomials, seriously they sounded like a band name, oooh, idea.
When he and Enjolras clattered into the library for their free period, he presented Enjolras with a sketch of an energetic band with a familiar looking lead singer and a banner reading ‘Apollo and the Binomials’ – and was rewarded with Enjolras’ bright laugh.
Not quite able to meet Enjolras brilliant blue eyes he ducked his head and studied the flex of Enjolras’ throat, the shadow left by the open collar of his shirt, and valiantly tried not to imagine licking his way under said shirt.
– but now he could see further, the spread of his shoulders – Enjolras had sexy clavicles, how was that even possible – the dark patch of his nipples. It was more than he’d ever allowed himself to imagine of his Apollo and Grantaire could only stare in horror and disbelief. Desperately he blinked a couple of times but nothing changed.
“How could this happen? Enjolras has sexy naked pictures. And some idiot’s taken them in black and white.”
How could this happen. Where were the golden curls and flushed rosy cheeks, the burning blue eyes. Enjolras had been reduced to the marble statue Grantaire had teased him he was and it was obscene.
Grabbing for his vodka, he took a hasty swig. Oops, that was going down fast, but that was okay, that was why he didn’t buy bottles anymore, much easier not to slip up if you had a limited amount of alcohol to start with. With that in mind he took another gulp and turned the page. There was a small pocket of text alongside but most of the double page spread was taken up with a centerfold picture, Enjolras sprawled out over a bed looking both cold and miserably uncomfortable.
Grantaire glared. Models generally were tired and uncomfortable by the end of a shoot but the photographer was supposed to disguise that. If Enjolras was so ill at ease it was bleeding off the page somebody deserved a punch on the nose. The next page was even worse, they’d dragged Enjolras to a gym for some benighted reason, so he looked both uncomfortable and awkward. And it was still shot in black and white, like a teenager’s idea of a moody shot. Leaning closer to the page, Grantaire scrunched his eyes to make out the photographer’s byline. Montparnasse, that explained it then, the pretentious asshole.
Another drink, and Grantaire turned to the article to see how this travesty had come about.
Apparently Enjolras was the leader of a social activist group, which could not be less surprising, called Les Amis de l’ABC, which made Grantaire smile, and there had been some sort of bet or challenge from a couple of female activists regarding the male gaze, and oh my god, that was such an Enjolras reason to have naked pictures.
Grantaire cracked open his second vodka tonic.
He maybe shouldn’t be drinking quite this fast, his tolerance was gone and the juddering of the train was making his head swim but he needed fortification because the rest of the pictures were equally terrible.
This was unfair. Grantaire had skipped the country five years ago, just after their A-levels while Enjolras was on holiday with his parents, leaving Enjolras nothing more than a good luck with university card, because he hadn’t wanted the memory of Enjolras’ reaction to his failure. He’d wanted to keep whole the image of Enjolras happy and confident, full of plans to get Grantaire through clearing and into university with him, without wrecking it with reality.
Enjolras never had any concept of how the real world worked, witness naked pictures. Because now that image of Enjolras burning with hope and purpose and belief – which had supported Grantaire through some hard times, because sure you needed to believe in your own worth but when the whole world is telling you you’re worthless it’s sometimes very hard to believe, and Enjolras had so much belief he’d always managed to spare a little for Grantaire – was tarnished. Enjolras might be social justicing as Grantaire had always expected, but he clearly had nobody standing by to point out when he was being a moron and making himself unhappy. Enjolras deserved better.
Oh but there was a phone number for Les Amis at the end of the article. Grantaire finished his second vodka and rooted in his backpack for his phone, then dialled the number with fumblely fingers.
“Apollo, light of my life, I thought you were anti being called a marble statue. Not that you aren't a very pretty one but...”