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Grantaire had never been alone. Even when he drank to an oblivion where no one could follow, he had the green fairy for company. But Grantaire was always lonely.
As a child Grantaire had been surrounded by nurses and tutors, had been educated and preened to fine society. He had every meal at the long table with his family and every minute of his day was spent learning or playing, with someone to watch over him and assure his father that he was up to only good. And Grantaire supposes--though he doesn’t remember it much now--that when he was young he must not have been awfully lonely. Children seldom realize the gilded cages in which they are kept until they grow too big for them.
But as children do, he grew; his mind grew and with every book he avidly consumed, so did his world. And as he began to grow into himself--as children often do--he began to find himself abashed for his hobbies and his actions. Mathematics and Politics were more important than literature and arts, and he damn well better learn the difference between what is and isn’t a waste of his father’s time. And as children often do, he tried his best to be what he needed to be.
But then as children grow, they find it harder and harder to conform, and must find some outlet for themselves, some way to let their own selves exist beyond the expectations of others.
Grantaire found dancing. It was refined and elegant, his father approved and his mother was amused, but it worked muscles he forgot he had and dancing wasn’t what most young men his age did. It helped for a time. But eventually his peers and teachers began talking of theatres and operas and moving to more professional outlets and how Grantaire could make a name for himself and he knew that his time on the dancefloor had come to an end.
So then Grantaire found fencing, his father approved more than he had of the dancing and it gave him another way to let himself break out of the bonds of his familial responsibilities. Fencing was his own responsibility and dance had made him fast and elegant.
But when he had a row of small golden awards and fencing had become just another task--another reason for his father to preen his oily feathers as if he was the one who spent three hours every day in stretches and positions and practice--he found boxing.
It was rough. He broke bones, he bruised, and he bled. And he thrived. And his father was decidedly less pleased with his decisions, but he was a smart young man, surely to come to his senses soon enough and who wouldn’t be proud of such a strong, able-bodied son?
But dance had made him elegant and fencing had made him swift and too soon he became too quick, too smart, and when he found himself begin roaming the dark streets daring anyone to hurt him, he knew boxing had lost its uses too.
And it was then that Grantaire found absinthe.
And it was from here Grantaire supposes, that he truly began to fall from the enlightened heights on which his father had shoved him. Drink made a slippery slope from every height, it equaled all men into the gutter.
It was--as they called it--his liquid courage and with it he began to skip his studies, holing himself away to study the Classics and learn exactly what light did when it fell upon the water. Slowly, but inexorably, he began to slide away from his father’s wishes. In fear of his family’s retribution, he drank more, and ran more, and eventually, his father was known to say that he could barely recognize his son anymore.
He supposes no one was much surprised by that point when he left his family entirely, running away to Paris to study his Arts. By that point, he had forgotten what it was like to not feel lonely.
He had gained his freedom, and with it he flourished. He was accepted as a student of Gros, a prestige his father never commented on, and he seemed well on his way to a successful life in his rapid mastery of paint.
But still, he was lonely. So he made it a point, to never be alone.
Grantaire wandered the streets of Paris, his previous talents ensured that he was never vulnerable to unpleasant outcomes of encounters with shadowy individuals, and his quick wit soon charmed his way into regular tables at cafes and shops across the city. He knew the city like a brother, he knew its darker corners and its brilliant boulevards, its watery veins and teeming heart. He became familiar with the despairing and the downtrodden, he already knew well of the privileged and powerful. They were all human, and they were all horrible, and he painted them all.
The more he saw, the more he painted, and the more he painted, the more he learned, but the more he learned, the more he drank. He painted the cold, quiet girl who sat at the corner down his street every morning and every night, gently accepting any handouts that might come her way, slowly freezing her way way into a womanhood assured to be as bleak and desperate as her girlhood. He painted the man who conned flowers off old flower-sellers and pawned them onto young girls who had drifted too far from their father’s and brother’s watch, leading them down sordid alleys with the promise of delights which naive eyes couldn’t ever resist.
He painted the men and the women, the children and elderly. He painted the dandies and bums, he painted the rich chins pointed in the air and poor noses crushed into the mud. His peers called it “morbid” and “haunting”, he called it “truth” and chased his growing bitterness down with a bottle of brandy.
Grantaire sought to find the People in his paints, and instead lost himself in drink.
He drifted from his studio and slowly his paints ran out, his only coin feeding the inescapable demon that clawed at his mind and shook his hands and spun the world about until he satiated it with drink.
He spent his time drinking and flirting, he was never alone for more than an hour at a time, be he never settled and few knew him as more than “R”; he was surrounded by the people of Paris that he had sought, and he had never felt more lonely in his life. He was known to be witty and a pleasant drunkard, a bottle never far from his hand. He was always up for a cheerful time but no one knew where he stayed, or if he had anywhere at all. No one much cared.
Until he met the man with the booming laugh and even more explosive fists.
He had been drinking late into the previous day and his awakening to this day’s dawning had not alleviated his inebriation so instead of awaiting the impending sickness, he washed it down with more drink, and become even worse off than he normally allowed. He would later blame this state for his desire to start an arm-wrestling competition right there in the cafe; the drink he would also say, was to blame for his jumping upon the table, proclaiming himself the champion, the best, even going so far as to call himself Hercules, and point at the largest man in the room, daring him to even try and topple him from the table. (It was his time in dance that he accredits his ability to stand, nonetheless leap upon furniture and proclaim upon them.)
As his luck would have it, rather than beating his already broken nose in even farther, the man laughed. His laughter filled the room and the delight in his eyes shone with the hellfires of mischief and Grantaire again blames the drink for his insistence that the man try to best him.
It took but one slam of the man’s fist upon the edge of the table to topple Grantaire’s perch and land Grantaire himself flat on his ass upon the floor. Bending down, the tall man reached out a hand to Grantaire and with another laugh, introduced himself as Bahorel, and Grantaire, upon taking his hand and standing, promptly passed out cold into his chest.
If Grantaire had trained himself to awaken in unfamiliar surroundings with a rapid and often violent start, and if Bahorel had tried to be a good citizen and take him to his own home and let him rest and recover in his own bed, and if Bahorel had accidentally awoken the man when attempting to check his temperature and pulse, and if perhaps Bahorel had ended up facedown on the floor with the far shorter and surprisingly muscular man pinning him with an arm behind him, and if perhaps Grantaire had immediately vomited upon poor Bahorel, well... It might explain why these two oldest friends always laugh when asked how they became friends with each other and answer “It is a long story, a confusing story, and one we don’t quite understand ourselves.”
But one thing is for certain, for once, in a very long time, Grantaire had not felt lonely.