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Enjolras liked his coffee a very specific way, a way that often made Courfeyrac gape at him like a monkey in heat . It had to be black (“How can you even drink that? It’s like… liquid shit!”), no artificial sweeteners, containing five to eight espresso shots (“Each shot is like a little taste of death, Enj! You’re going to kill yourself!”), and it had to come from the coffee shop about twenty minutes east of his office (“Oh, so you’ll walk an extra five blocks to this out of the way shithole instead of the Starbucks TWO MINUTES from your office where I WORK? Way to support me, Enj.)
Combeferre had suggested that there was a reason for Enjolras’s chosen coffee provider, a cute barista perhaps? Enjolras had simply scoffed at this and told his best friend point-blank that he’d been watching far too much The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals with Courf.
The truth was, there really was nothing special about the coffee shop Enjolras went out of his way to visit every morning. While the baristas there all knew him by name and had his order saved for him almost two minutes before he actually walked in the door and they were all lovely people, there was no, as Joey Richter put it so eloquently, “Latte Hottay”. (Most of the baristas were lesbians anyway).
However, just next to the coffee shop, was a tiny little flower shop with pink and yellow shutters and geraniums in the front. It seemed incredibly cliché, like something out of Jehan’s fanfiction, to have a local coffee shop next to a local flower shop. But Enjolras couldn’t care about that too much when he could be staring at the florist who worked there.
Enjolras had stumbled upon him completely by accident, and he was eternally indebted to his sister because of it. Cosette had a floral arrangement or something waiting at the flower shop, but couldn’t go pick it up because she had a date with Marius. To Enjolras, those statements were not mutually exclusive, but because no one can say he wasn’t a good brother, he went to go pick it up. Cosette told him to expect a woman named Musichetta to help him out.
The only person there was not named Musichetta and was definitely not a woman. He had dark hair that curled around his ear and green, green eyes. He wore a black beanie that swooped over his forehead in a way that made his eyes peek out like pieces of uncut jade (and on an unrelated note: sent spirals spinning in Enjolras’s heart).
It wasn’t like Enjolras to pine like this. But he just couldn’t forget the way the man smiled at him like he was telling him a secret, the way he whistled and hummed as he watered the plants in the shop, and the lingering stare he gave him before turning back to work.
So every day after picking up his coffee order, Enjolras walked to the bench in front of the flower shop to peek in through the window at the florist. Most of the times he was there, sometimes Enjolras arrived a bit too early or a bit too late. But ever so often, Enjolras would catch a glimpse of something special: the man doing the twist when no one else was in the store, laughing with a coworker, or quite clearly talking to the plants he cared for.
Enjolras knew that if Courfeyrac or Combeferre found out what he was really doing here, they wouldn’t let him hear the end of it.
Cosette was never fooled however. When he got home that day, Enjolras must’ve had a painful blush on his cheeks because as soon as Cosette saw him her lips quirked into a smirk and she simply said, “Is it him?” Unfortunately, she never disclosed his name, much to Enjolras’s frustration (little sisters are the worst). Cosette had stopped him before he left the house, making him promise to “talk to him, please, I’m begging you!”
So here he was. Outside the flower shop. Going to talk to the guy he’d been crushing on for the past two months. Huzzah.
As soon as he stepped into the store, something orange and fuzzy jumped out at him. Against his better judgement, Enjolras screamed and backed into a wall, knocking over a packet of seeds.
Real smooth.
“Woah, woah!”
Enjolras glanced up, eyes searching for who had spoken only for his throat to tighten as he locked eyes with him. Shit.
Up close, his green eyes glimmered with amusement and Enjolras could feel his heart beat starting to quicken. The man’s nametag read ‘Grantaire’ and it took about two more seconds before Enjolras realized he was still speaking:
“…Vicky just gets really excited when new people come into the shop.”
“Vicky?” Enjolras meant to ask in a steady tone, but it ended up as a squeak. Grantaire smiled, lifting up a big ball of orange fur that vaguely registered in Enjolras’s brain as the blob that jumped at him earlier. And as a cat.
“This is Vicky, he’s a lazy, fat, gay cat, isn’t he?” Grantaire cuddled the cat in his arms cooing at him as one would a baby. The sight mad Enjolras’s heart swell.
“Anyway,” the dark-haired man grinned dropping Vicky to the floor and fixing his gaze on Enjolras, “what can I do for you, Apollo?”
Enjolras furrowed his brow. “Apollo?”
Grantaire smirked and reached over and flicked one of Enjolras’s blonde curls out of his eyes. “Yeah, Apollo. You’ve got the face for it.”
The blonde’s face flushed pink as Grantaire chuckled. The florist bent down to scratch Vicky behind the ears before saying, “You’re Cosette’s brother, right?”
Enjolras cocked his head to the side, his face still not returned to its former color. “You know my sister?”
Grantaire nods. “Yeah, she’s a regular. One of our only regulars actually.” He pauses, then grins again. “She talks about you a lot.”
Enjolras swallowed visibly. “All good things, I hope.”
Grantaire shrugged, smirking.
“How’d you know I was her brother though?”
Grantaire just stared him. “Apart from the fact that you have the same face? Probably because I know what she likes and you did not strike me as a dahlia guy when you came in that first time. I figured you were picking up her order.”
Enjolras nodded, then deliberately stared at his shoes. Vicky was staring back up at him like, I know why you’re here. Begone, fleshling.
Then Grantaire tapped him on the shoulder, leaning in conspiratorially and whispering, “Of all the things Cosette told me about you, never mentioned that you looked like a fucking god.
“Um…” Enjolras.exe has officially stopped functioning.
Grantaire smiled at him, a warm, wholesome thing. “My shift’s over in about ten minutes. You wanna hang here until then and we can go get some coffee?”
Enjolras cracked a tiny grin. “Yeah, that’d be great. I know a place.”
Grantaire raised an eyebrow at him. “Is that the place you come from when you want to ogle me by the window?”
Enjolras’s face bloomed red again.
“You saw me?”