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Enjolras’s shoulders were hunched as he sat on a barstool, surrounded by holiday revelers who all seemed to greet each other with the merriment expected of the season. He felt anything by merry, sitting in the shitty bar in his shitty hometown while his parents attended one of their upper class holiday parties.
“You really have to go?” Enjolras had asked, moodily, as he flopped down on his parents’ couch earlier that evening, sounding like he was still a teenager stuck at home while his parents went out.
His father had just grunted, and his mother had absently patted his head as she brushed past, pulling her coat on. “We always go to the Weinbergs’ Christmas party.”
Enjolras had scowled. “The Weinbergs are Jewish.”
“Their holiday party, then,” his mother had said, sighing. “And it would do you some good to get out of the house as well. Unless you really do intend for this Christmas to be a repeat of your high school years.”
She’d had a point, and so Enjolras had put on a cashmere sweater and his nice jeans and the pair of boots he’d spent a small fortune on before pulling on his red woolen coat and heading to the bar downtown, half-hoping and half-fearing he’d run into some old high school classmates.
Thus far, the evening had been a bust, and Enjolras sighed again, picking at the label of his beer. “You good or you want another?” the bartender asked, and Enjolras snorted lightly.
Truthfully, the answer to both questions was no, but he didn’t tell the bartender that. “I’m gonna close out, actually,” he said, pulling his wallet out from his inside coat pocket and slipping a twenty across the bar. “Keep the change, and happy holidays.”
He didn’t bother draining the last bit of beer from his bottle, instead heading outside and shivering as he stepped into the cold. It had dropped a few degrees since he’d arrived at the bar, and he tugged the collar of his coat up in a vain attempt to stop the winter chill.
He rubbed his hands together and started off in the direction of his parents, stopping in his tracks when he heard a voice like something from a dream calling after him, “Hey Enjolras!”
Turning, Enjolras stared at the hauntingly familiar sight of a dark-haired man smiling crookedly at him. “Grantaire?” he asked, barely trusting himself to speak. “Is that really you?”
“It’s really me,” Grantaire confirmed, taking a step towards him, and Enjolras shook his head slowly, trying to believe it. “It’s been awhile.”
“Ten years, give or take,” Enjolras confirmed, looking Grantaire up and down. “You look—”
“Pretty much exactly the same?” Grantaire supplied with a wry chuckle. “Right back at you, Apollo.”
Enjolras barked a laugh at the old nickname. “And I see that hasn’t changed either, though I can’t say I feel like I embody the god of youth anymore.”
“Well, you always were an old soul.” Grantaire hesitated, as if he wasn’t sure what to say next. “I was just heading out when I saw you, but if you wanted to grab a drink—”
“Oh, uh, no thanks,” Enjolras said. “I’ve had my fill of the Musain at this time of year.”
Grantaire half-smiled. “Some things never change,” he said, backing away slowly. “Anyway, I wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas, so – Merry Christmas, Enj.”
Enjolras forced a smile. “Happy Holidays, R.”
Grantaire laughed lightly. “Like I said, some things never change.”
He turned to go but stopped when Enjolras said, without knowing what possessed him to do so, “Some things do. I know I’ve changed.”
“Could’ve fooled me,” Grantaire said lightly as he turned back, a small smile curving the corners of his mouth. “Still turning down alcohol and looking like you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders.”
“In my defense, the last time I turned down alcohol when you offered it, I was 17.”
Grantaire cocked his head. “Not true. I saw you when you came back for Thanksgiving your senior year of college, and you were legal then.”
Enjolras rolled his eyes. “You saw me when I was in the grocery store with my mother. Not exactly the right time to ask if I wanted to get a drink.”
“You underestimate just what I consider the right time to grab a drink,” Grantaire said easily, and Enjolras felt the breath catch in his throat at how familiar this was, their banter, their gentle – and not-so-gentle – teasing, even after all these years.
He may have arrived at his parents’ place two days prior, but for the first time since arriving in the town where he grew up, Enjolras felt like he was home.
He realized that Grantaire was looking at him expectantly and shook his head to clear it. “Sorry?” he said.
“I said, your teetotaling ways aside, you do still have that familiar look like someone who’s got a lot on his mind,” Grantaire said patiently.
Enjolras sighed and scrubbed a gloved hand across his face. “You could say that,” he muttered.
Grantaire nodded. “Saving the world’s gotta be exhausting,” he offered, and Enjolras let out a dry, humorless laugh.
“I don’t know if I’d call overseeing a merger between two multibillion dollar corporations saving the world…” He trailed off, flushing slightly at hearing it out loud. “Well, let’s just say that I’m not here entirely voluntarily. The deal I was brokering fell through, and my firm’s making me take some time off until the new year.”
Grantaire’s expression was unreadable. “Multibillion dollar corporations?” he asked, his tone flat. “Brokering deals? I thought you were going into civil rights law.”
There was no hostility in his tone but Enjolras still felt immediately defensive. “I was,” he said. “I mean, I am. But law school, as it turns out, is expensive, and civil rights attorneys don’t exactly make a lot of money, so I decided to get my start in corporate law until I could pay off my loans and build up some cash reserves before I made the jump into the non-profit side of things.”
Grantaire cocked his head. “Weird,” he remarked, and Enjolras frowned.
“What?”
“Your mouth is moving but it’s your father’s voice that I’m hearing.”
Enjolras’s flush deepened. “Hilarious,” he snapped, tugging his coat closer around him as if it were a defense mechanism. “Sorry that the real world is a little more complicated than I apparently realized when we were in high school.”
“And now you sound like me. At least your ventriloquy skills have vastly improved over the last decade.”
Enjolras’s jaw clenched and he looked away, staring at a mound of snow on the sidewalk as if he could melt it with the force of his glare alone. “Well, sorry to disappoint you,” he said, his tone brittle.
Grantaire sighed. “Did I say I was disappointed?” he asked, and Enjolras glanced back up at him.
“You just said I sounded like my father and a cynic,” he spat. “I assumed both those things would be disappointing to you.”
Grantaire just shrugged, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “You were always the one with unreasonably high expectations, Enj,” he said, sounding tired. “So if anyone’s disappointed here, it’s not me.”
This was familiar, too, but not the same warm familiarity as before. This was an ugly familiar, dredging up memories that Enjolras had spent the past decade trying to forget, fights that had long since passed but had never quite been resolved. His reasons for leaving; Grantaire’s reasons for staying. A confession from Grantaire that Enjolras had never let himself reciprocate, at least not out loud.
Old wounds that had never quite healed, old roads that Enjolras had never quite let himself take.
And standing where he stood now with the benefit of hindsight, Enjolras wasn’t sure he fully remembered why not.
“Anyway,” Grantaire said, backing away again, “like I said, I just wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas, for old times’ sake, and—”
“We should meet up,” Enjolras said abruptly, and Grantaire looked at him, startled. “Hang out, I mean. While I’m in town.”
“Why?”
Grantaire sounded more curious than accusatory, and Enjolras shrugged. “Do I have to have a reason?” he asked, with a half-smile.
A smile that Grantaire did not return. “Since we’re not in high school anymore and I no longer ask ‘how high’ when you say ‘jump’...yes.”
Enjolras’s smile disappeared. “Fine,” he said coolly. “For old times’ sake.”
“Fine,” Grantaire said, matching Enjolras’s tone with something of his old defiance. “Let’s meet up. Your parents’ place or mine?”
Enjolras blinked, taken aback. “You still...live with your parents?” he asked hesitantly.
“No.”
“Then why…?”
“Because I no longer live here,” Grantaire said. “I’m just home for the holidays to see my folks.”
“Oh.”
The single syllable said more than Enjolras could possibly have put into actual words, and Grantaire nodded. “Yeah,” he said, clearing his throat. “Turns out there wasn’t anything keeping me here either.”
Enjolras flushed, recognizing his own words from a decade past, hating that he remembered them, and hating that Grantaire remembered them even more. “Right,” he said, a little hoarsely. “So, uh, where are you at these days, then? What are you up to?”
“Do you care?” Grantaire didn’t ask it unkindly but Enjolras still flinched, and looked away. “Well. If you’re serious about wanting to meet up, you know where to find me. For the next few days, at least.”
He turned to walk away, and before Enjolras could stop himself, he blurted, “Grantaire?” Grantaire stopped, and, almost as if he didn’t mean to, glanced over his shoulder. “Are you happy?”
Grantaire’s breath fogged the air in front of him, hiding his face from view for a moment. “Yeah,” he said finally. “I’m happy.”
It took everything in Enjolras’s power not to ask the questions he so desperately wanted to – happier than when you lived here? Happier than when we were in high school? Happier than when you and I—
Happier than you and I could have been?
But in the end, he knew he didn’t want to know the answer.
So he stuck his hands in his pockets and ducked his head, tracing the toe of one of his too-expensive and not-nearly-warm-enough boots through the snow. “I’m glad,” he said, glancing back up at Grantaire. “You deserve to be happy.”
For a moment, Grantaire’s expression softened, and it almost looked like he was going to ask Enjolras the same question. But whether it was the cold getting to him, or the years that stretched between them, he ended up just nodding. “Yeah,” he said. “Anyway. Like I said, Merry Christmas. I’ll see you around.”
“See you around,” Enjolras echoed, watching as Grantaire turned and walked away from the bar, from him, and from what could have been.
Then he turned as well, and trudged in the opposite direction, alone.