Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Day 0

“You’re dreaming! You’re dreaming, wake up!”

“Grantaire, go fuck yourself.”

He smirked instead. “What, you said you wanted to trip.”

“Does anyone else think the world is like, more colorful than usual?” Jehan said, perhaps choosing not to respond directly, or perhaps their mind had simply already wandered away from Grantaire’s feeble attempt at a prank. “Like, the saturation is turned up about… twenty-three percent.”

“Sure thing, love. Let’s get you some cake,” said Grantaire with a laugh.

Enjolras stayed behind, watching the two of them put roughly half of Combeferre’s birthday cake on two small paper plates. He’d elected not to take any of Jehan’s homegrown mushrooms and had refused Courfeyrac’s three separate offers of shots, mixed drinks, and wine. Grantaire, not only noticeably tipsy, had slipped outside to smoke but acted like he had a phone call. Cosette was off an edible she’d split with Marius, who was fast asleep on the couch. Most everyone else was simply drunk.

Enjolras was not the designated driver. There wasn’t one tonight; the party was at Marius’ grandfather’s house, and there were enough spare bedrooms to ensure that everyone had a place to crash. Still, he chose not to drink either way. He liked to observe, and he liked to keep a clear head – what was wrong with that? He didn’t love Combeferre any less. He just didn’t want to drink tonight, and couldn’t understand why, frankly, it was such a big deal.

Courfeyrac was on the table, belting out Queen’s “Somebody To Love.” To his credit, he had an excellent voice, and even better stage presence (if you could call a dining table a stage). Somehow, Bahorel and Musichetta had been recruited to do backing vocals. Enjolras, however, realized that the unease he was experiencing may have been a mild to severe case of overstimulation, and, doing his best not to alarm anyone, he performed one of his classic Irish exits out the back door for a moment of solitude.

What he’d failed to consider was how much Grantaire loved a drunk cig.

His friend was already out on the porch, smoking again and, shockingly, actually talking on the phone. As soon as he spotted Enjolras, he hastily bid whoever was on the other side goodbye and crowed gleefully, “There you are!”

“What do you mean?” asked Enjolras, genuinely curious.

“Courf was looking for you. He texted me to look out for you,” Grantaire explained.

“Well, here I am. Does he need something?”

“I don’t think so. Your undying love and support for his singing career, perhaps?”

“Ha ha,” Enjolras said dryly.

“Want a hit?”

“I don’t smoke.”

“Ha ha,” said Grantaire. Enjolras knew he was mocking him, but he didn’t know why. Grantaire had never seen him smoke, to his knowledge. None of his friends had.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, a tad defensively. Any more and he’d be incriminated.

“Oh, c’mon. You took two smoke breaks at the last meeting alone.”

“What? No, I did not,” said Enjolras, a bit more defensively.

"Yeah, you did.”

“Evidence?”

“You went out to take two phone calls, which conveniently happened when you were visibly stressed. The second time, you came back with a little cough. Sherlocked,” said Grantaire, with a devilish grin.

“I wasn’t…” Enjolras was out of excuses. “Fine. I went outside to smoke, are you happy, R?” At the very least, he refused to go into details.

“You called me R,” he said. Another inexplicable comment.

“Yeah, and?”

“You never call me R,” he said, in the same tone you might say that Kilimanjaro was the tallest mountain in Africa.

“That’s not true,” said Enjolras. He called him R. Maybe less than the others, but he definitely had before.

“Not for a while.” To that, he had no response. “Guess we’re going through a rough patch,” Grantaire joked.

“I guess we are.”

“You never answered my question.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Would you like a hit?” Grantaire asked again.

“Give it here,” Enjolras grumbled. He took a single puff. Then, he had an idea. “I’ve been… stressed recently. Do you have anything… else, that might, you know, help with that?”

“Enjolras?” He did not like the look on Grantaire’s face. Not one bit.

“What?”

“Are you asking me for weed?”

“I– yeah, I guess.”

Grantaire looked like a seven-year-old boy who’d found a puppy under the Christmas tree. “I knew this day would come! One day, your high horse–”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Enjolras said. Perhaps a bit accusingly.

“Enjolras, come on. You used to be so judgemental about all that stuff, I’m glad you’re opening your mind a little–”

“I have nothing but respect for drug users, R, I worked on a campaign to end the systemic abuse of addicts, I–”

“Dude, this is different.”

“Just because I pulled you aside to ask you to stop showing up high to the meetings was not me being discriminatory towards drug users, you just can’t do your best work when you’re–”

“First of all, said it before, I wasn’t showing up high. I was fucking tired. And I’m not accusing you of being discriminatory. Just that, maybe, you always looked at me differently after you found out I liked to, you know, get high. On my own time.”

“I– okay, just forget it. Forget I asked.”

Grantaire’s face might have fallen, but it might have been a trick of the light. Either way, his voice hardened. “For someone who tries to advocate for everyone, you know, be like, a voice of the people or whatever, you don’t take criticism very well.”

“Maybe you’re just insecure,” Enjolras spat back, before he could think about it. He regretted it immediately, to his credit, but he couldn’t take it back.

Grantaire’s face definitely fell this time.

“Fuck you.” He turned away.

“Grantaire, I–”

“Dude, just… leave me alone, okay, I don’t need this right now, especially from you.” Especially from Enjolras? Well, okay there wasn’t time to ask what that meant right now.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, that was an awful thing to say–”

“If anything, you’re proving my point. Are you going inside, or am I?” said Grantaire, his voice icy and his expression even colder. Enjolras deflated.

“I’ll go.” He trudged inside, looking rather like a wet cat. When Courfeyrac offered him a shot, he didn’t hesitate to accept.

Day 1

Enjolras did not get wasted. He drank, usually, very conservatively, and thus more often than not avoided even a mild hangover. However, he was quite sure he’d blacked out last night because he did not remember coming home, but he felt rather fine. Curious.

His phone blared, of all things, “Ginseng Strip 2002” by Yung Lean. Courf did that as a prank – funnily enough, he thought he’d gotten rid of that alarm yesterday. He must have imagined it. Either way, he wanted it off. He fumbled for his phone and shushed the wretched thing.

When he emerged from his room, he found Combeferre and Courfeyrac sitting at the kitchen table, eating eggs and toast, just like yesterday. He seemed to remember that the plan was everyone would sleep over at Marius’, and that, in accordance with the plan, no one had remained sober enough to drive.

“Good morning, my love!” said Courfeyrac, which was exactly what he said yesterday. And he wore the same shirt. This was getting… creepy? Was that the word?

“Hi,” Enjolras ventured. “Uh, how did I get home last night?”

Courfeyrac looked at Combeferre and the two laughed. “You drove, silly!”

“I– what?” said Enjolras sharply.

“You drove home? From work? At like, six. Are you good?”

“Fine,” Enjolras said, in a tone that communicated that he absolutely was not. “I have to go.”

“Where are you going?” Courfeyrac called after him. “Enjolras, it’s Saturday!”

Like hell it was.

He found himself at the cafe, where Bahorel and Cosette were behind the bar making drinks like their lives depended on it. Enjolras had arrived just in time for the morning rush, so he took a seat in the back and feverishly pulled out a pen and paper so he could retrace his steps and try to pinpoint what the hell was going on. According to Courfeyrac and his phone, it was yesterday. According to all known laws of nature, that was completely and utterly impossible.

Enjolras was not entirely removed from popular culture, contrary to what Grantaire’s teasing may suggest. On the walk over, he remembered a film he’d seen as a child where Bill Murray plays an asshole who gets trapped in the same day until he becomes a better person or something and maybe also falls in love? But that was a film. This was his life.

Still, unless this was an elaborate prank that everyone in town had decided to pull on him, tomorrow was today and today was yesterday. It was still Combeferre’s birthday – shit. He hadn’t wished Combeferre a happy birthday. To be fair, that was probably the least of his problems right now. And if Bill Murray movies were anything to go by, he’d have another chance tomorrow.

Maybe he’d slipped into some kind of psychosis, where his reality felt altered but wasn’t to everyone else. Maybe he was finally hungover, but it was only affecting his brain? Maybe Grantaire’s cigarette had been laced. Maybe… none of those options felt right. Maybe it was yesterday again. Maybe he was trapped in the goddamn Bill Murray movie.

“Well, fuck,” he said to the empty chair across from him. “What are we gonna do?”

He spent the rest of the day furiously googling his “symptoms,” and came up with nothing but movie reviews and Reddit threads about how fictional characters got trapped in what people called “time loops.” None of it was about real life, so it was almost irrelevant. Enjolras was not a religious person, but he found the idea of a vast, interconnected universe sort of comforting sometimes. Right now, it just pissed him off. What right did whoever did this have to mess with his head, his work? He had plans on Sunday!

When the time came to go to Marius’, he arrived doing his best not to sulk. Enjolras did not sulk. He wallowed, usually, but this was a special case. Still, it was Combeferre’s day, even though it was rapidly starting to feel like it had been foisted off on an unappreciative Enjolras.

The night hit all the same beats: Jehan took shrooms (Enjolras hadn’t noticed the first time that Eponine took some with them). Feuilly prank called his old Russian history TA. Eponine tried to swing from the chandelier and had to be forcibly removed by a drunk Bahorel. Grantaire slipped outside to smoke. Combeferre did a dramatic reading of his favorite passage from a sappy but funny essay by Kurt Vonnegut before blowing out the candles on his birthday cake (chocolate with lavender frosting, lovingly baked by Bossuet and Musichetta earlier that day). Marius knocked over a seemingly expensive lamp and gave himself a splinter when he picked it back up. And Courf, of course, sang and danced on the dining table. Enjolras stuck around this time and watched his friend. If anything, he was too anxious about the day repeating itself to feel whatever ennui had struck him the night before. He remembered while watching Courfeyrac dismount the table that Grantaire must have been outside, and in a fit of self-destruction that had forged a strange alliance with the optimism that perhaps it might go better this time, he headed Grantaire's way. 

Instead of going straight outside, he lurked by the door. Call it morbid curiosity, but he wondered who Grantaire was on the phone with – all of their friends were inside, and Grantaire did not have a close relationship with his family. Enjolras was at a loss.

“It’s hopeless,” he heard Grantaire say. Then a pause. “Right, right, yeah, sorry. It’s just – you don’t see the way he looks at me.” Enjolras’ ears perked up. Who was he? “I know, we talked about that, the assuming and stuff. I just, every time I try, it goes to shit. Immediately.” The other person must have had a lot to say after that. “Okay, Eleanor.” He could hear Grantaire smiling, maybe even rolling his eyes, when he said that. Enjolras had never heard him talk about an Eleanor before, but they seemed… close? “Yeah. You’re right, you’re right, I know you’re right.” A beat. “Okay, well, I’m gonna go drink more and listen to, like, some really sad soul music. It exists! Stop laughing, oh my god. I’ll send you a playlist, but I’m changing the name before I send it because it’s mortifying.”

Enjolras realized that Grantaire was ending the conversation, and at that, jumped away from the door. That was not his best move. Certainly not respectful of his friend’s privacy.

He would definitely not be asking anyone inside if they knew what Grantaire’s other friends’ names were (friends he didn’t know Grantaire had), or if he was involved with anyone at the moment and hadn’t told them.

He was definitely not going to do that. 

Chapter Text

Day 10

Yeah, he was trapped. Enjolras did his best to offset the monotony by switching up his routine, figuring that any more “same old, same old” would be the first thing to drive him crazy (assuming, of course, that that was not what had caused this in the first place). He still attended Combeferre’s birthday party each night; he was still hopeful that he would not be stuck there for thirty-three years like the guy in the movie. The way he saw it, this could end any day, and he wouldn’t want to hurt Combeferre’s feelings by not attending his party just in case things happened to go back to normal the next day. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but it kept him from spiraling too much. 

“The next day.” Already, that meant pretty much nothing to him. He tried to keep in touch with reality by working from home, but it was Saturday, and Enjolras had the day off. Perpetually. It felt rather like a futile and stupid gesture to put time towards his work, he couldn’t lie. As much as he cared about it, he was putting off the most foreboding obstacle in his way, which was how to get to the elusive Sunday morning (and hopefully, Monday, Tuesday, and so on until he dies). That was another question – could he die here? Would he die here? Or was he trapped in the same circle of hell as the guy from Caddyshack?

It was time, he reasoned. He had to consult someone, anyone, because he was out of his depth, to say the least. Immediately, he knew who to call – he just hoped Gavroche was free that day.

“So, he has this like, mental breakdown, right. ‘Cuz after he realizes that there are no consequences for his actions and nothing matters and as far as he knows, it’s never gonna end, he can’t handle it. There’s this montage where he tries to kill himself, over and over, but it never works. He can’t die. So the only thing left is to accept it.”

If Gavroche could do one thing, it was doing multiple things at once. He was swigging orange juice, playing The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Enjolras didn’t comment on how maddeningly fitting that was), and explaining the meaning of Harold Ramis’ film Groundhog Day.

“It’s kinda, like, existential nihilism if it was a nineties rom-com. Existential nihilists say that life has no inherent meaning, which for some people is terrifying, and for others, it’s freeing. I think it’s cool.” Of course he did. Gavroche threw caution into the wind like he was tossing pennies in a fountain.

“So, how does he escape it?” Enjolras asked.

“That’s the thing – it’s kind of left up to the audience’s interpretation, but I think it’s because he accepts the intrinsic meaninglessness of it all and decides to make the best of it, just help people for the sake of helping them. He realizes pretty quickly that nothing he does makes a real difference because there’s no tomorrow, so the only reason to do good is just… because. He finally gets with the girl he likes, but it’s not because of her. Her liking him back is like a symbol for him growing as a person and changing into someone worthy of her, if you know what I mean. ‘Cuz she represents that selfless good.”

“But why does he get stuck there in the first place?”

“I don’t know, he sucks?”

“But people suck all the time!” Enjolras exclaimed, a bit too passionately. “Why him?”

“Dude, it’s a movie,” said Gavroche, with a look that commanded Enjolras to chill the hell out.

“Yeah, okay. But why that day? Is it just an ordinary day, or what’s so special about it?”

“I think it's the day that brings out the worst in him. He has to do the Groundhog Day newscast, which he hates, in Punxsutawney, which he also hates, surrounded by the people in the town, who he hates the most. So it’s a perfect storm of his worst selfish, egocentric impulses.”

“You know a lot about this movie,” Enjolras observed.

“I wrote a paper on it for my film studies class,” Gavroche explained. “Ponine helped. And so did Grantaire.”

“What grade did you get on the paper?” asked Enjolras. It was kind of a stupid question, but he was curious about Gavroche’s relationship with studies.

“I don’t know,” said Gavroche, giving him another weird look. “Didn’t really give a fuck, to be honest.”

Fair enough.

Day 15

“Am I a bad person?” he asked.

Cosette just smiled, with a hint of pity. “Oh, honey, no. Are you getting cyberbullied again?”

“What? No,” said Enjolras. “And I didn’t get – never mind, you know, it doesn’t matter. I’ve been thinking, just that, maybe I’m a little self-centered. Or egotistical, or just plain selfish, I don’t know.” Because of a Bill Murray movie , he added, but only in his head.

“Did something happen?” she asked, her brow furrowed with concern.

“No, no, nothing happened. I’ve just been doing some self-reflection,” he lied. Well, the second part was true.

“That’s good!” said Cosette. “I like to journal about this stuff. It’s very freeing, you know, to put it all on the page and just let it go.” There was that word again – freeing. It reminded him of something Gavroche had said a few Saturdays ago, about existential nihilism. Ironic, given that he was literally trapped.

Suddenly, he had an idea. “What did you do today?”

“Uh, I woke up, went to work. Then I came here to meet you,” she said. “Nothing too interesting. What about you?”

Loaded question. “Nothing much,” he lied. “What about yesterday?”

“Well, we had the meeting yesterday. And then Marius and I went on a date, we tried that new Thai place. It was really good! I had the pad bamee, and he had the fried rice. Spice level two this time! He’s getting better,” she said with a smile.

“What happened at the meeting?” Oddly enough, he’d already sort of forgotten. To be fair to him, it was over two weeks ago, in Enjolras-time.

She looked at him a little funny, but answered. “We went over the plans for the town hall meeting next week and talked about how the year’s been going so far. You seemed a little…”

“What?”

“No, it’s nothing.”

“What?” he repeated.

“Well,” she said, clearly choosing her words very carefully. “To an outside observer, you might have looked… that is to say, you were just acting a little… high-strung?”

“I’m not high-strung!” Cosette just smiled wryly at him. “What?”

“That’s how you sounded yesterday. You got into that big fight with R. Don’t you remember?”

“Um, yes?” He did. Vaguely. There was yelling involved if his memory served.

“He was trying to give you a suggestion,” said Cosette, once again treading on eggshells. “And you kind of blew up at him.”

“That doesn’t sound like me.”

“It doesn’t?”

Maybe Cosette had a point. Still, he wasn’t that high-strung. He was just stressed; in the past year, the group had only hit one of their annual goals, which was to set up a comprehensive and inclusive sex education initiative at the local high school. Everything else had either failed miserably, or failed to materialize in the first place, and Enjolras didn’t see how anyone could blame him for being frustrated with his comrades. If they only attacked everything with the same passion with which they argued, their track record might not be so… feeble.

“I’m just tired of carrying dead weight,” he said.

“Who’s the dead weight?” she asked. He didn’t know how to respond without sounding like an asshole.

Maybe Bill Murray had some points, too. 

Day 24

There were only so many times you could watch Groundhog Day, obsessively searching for parallels to your own life. He did like the way that Phil, the main character, went around town looking for ways to help people. But he liked to think that he already did that, in a way, with more of a long-term perspective. It was an idea, though. Walk around town, looking for people whose days he could brighten. It certainly beat sitting on his ass watching a movie for what felt like the hundredth time.

He’d taken to saving Marius from getting a splinter at the party, and keeping Eponine from getting anywhere near the chandelier in the first place. Apparently, Bossuet and Musichetta had run out of flour for the cake, too, and had originally had to walk to the nearest grocery store for it, which had led to stress over whether or not they would finish the cake in time for the party. To save them the trouble, he went out and bought some in the morning and left it on their doorstep. He even tried to wake up early so he could make breakfast for Combeferre and Courfeyrac, but he couldn’t wake up any earlier than eight a.m. sharp. Must be some dumb universe rule, he reasoned. 

As much as he wanted out of the loop, he didn’t want his altruism to be tainted with the thought that it might be his ticket out. Surely that would ruin it if it were, and he didn’t do things for others because he expected something in return. This time, it would be nice, though. His sanity was dangling by a thin, taught thread.

The next logical step, as he saw it, was to come clean and get some real insight. There was one person who wouldn’t immediately take him to get his head checked. If anything, they’d do it themself, with a tarot reading and some crystals.

“Explain it to me again,” said Jehan, rather calmly for someone whose earthly paradigm had been permanently altered only moments ago.

“I’ve been living the same day for three weeks, give or take. Today. Every night, no matter what happens, or where I go, I wake up in my apartment to ‘Ginseng Strip 2002’ because Courf thought it would be funny to make that my alarm, and I go… try to figure out how I can stop it until Ferre’s party. I go to the party, you take shrooms, everybody’s happy, I go to sleep, and I wake up again to that damn song.”

“It’s been about three weeks?” Enjolras nodded. “I’m gonna say something really, painfully cliche.”

“Go ahead.”

“Have we had this conversation before?” they asked. 

“Actually, no. I haven’t told any of you yet.”

“Enjolras!” they exclaimed. “You’re living the impossible, and you didn’t think to tell us?”

“I didn’t think anyone would believe me,” he said with a shrug. “Except maybe you.”

“Fair enough,” they said. “Have you seen Groundhog Day?”

“Only a thousand times,” Enjolras said with a pained smile.

“Have you considered the notion that there might be a reason for this?” they asked.

“What, the reason being that I’m a terrible person?”

“Well, first of all, that is incredibly counter-productive. You are not a terrible person. But everyone has areas of their lives they could, you know, improve.”

“Is everyone trapped in a time loop?”

“Fair point!” Jehan acquiesced. “Maybe this is just the best way for you to learn what yours are.”

“It’s not working,” said Enjolras.

“Yet. You know, I always liked that about Groundhog Day. There’s no real conflict but the one within. It’s nihilistic, but in a hopeful way. Have we done shrooms together?”

“No.”

“I recommend it.”

“I know, Jehan.”

“Hey, do you have any tricks? Like, where you point out things that are going to happen right before they do, or you save a kid from falling out of a tree at the exact right moment?”

“Come to the cafe with me tomorrow,” said Enjolras. “I have that down pretty well.” They gave him a knowing smile, and he realized the implications of what he’d just said. “Okay, I’ll call you. And I’ll–”

“Explain it to me again, once more with feeling?”

“Exactly.”

Chapter Text

Day 30

He would get a hobby. He would use this time to better himself, just like in the movie. He stared at the legal pad which Jehan had written on with ideas for what he could do in the meantime until things sorted themselves out.

• Martial arts
• Play an instrument?
• Learn dance routine
• Crochet!
• Read the collected works of some author
• Go back to driver’s ed (very funny, Jehan)

All in all, it looked more like their daily to-do list than a list of skills Enjolras wanted under his belt. But this was starting to get very, very painful. He’d start at the top. For his own sake.

Day 40

He had forgotten most of the details of “Ground Zero,” as he called it, or the first Saturday. The one thing he couldn’t forget was what Grantaire said (well, he remembered most of their conversation, which he wouldn’t admit to anyone but himself) right before Enjolras decided to dig up the shallowly buried hatchet and throw it on a burning pyre: “For someone who tries to advocate for everyone, you know, be like, a voice of the people or whatever, you don’t take criticism very well.”

Grantaire may have been right. After all, Enjolras had only proved his point, which was another thing Grantaire was right about. As if that wasn’t enough, it had only just occurred to him that perhaps the conversation he’d been obsessing over for weeks might actually be important.

His delusions weren’t romantic enough that he thought fixing things with Grantaire would solve his problems. Surely, they ran deeper than that. Still, he thought back to his conversation with Cosette from several weeks ago; whatever he’d said Friday night must have been bad, for Grantaire to be so defensive with him so quickly on Saturday. 

He did have a hard time accepting criticism. And he had a hard time admitting his true feelings to his friends, which he rationalized as the fear of hurting their feelings. But he wasn’t really afraid of that, was he? He’d done it too many times to count, regrettably, and the world always spun forward. Sometimes he didn’t even notice until it was too late.

“Emotional vulnerability is tough, man,” said Bahorel in between squats.

“But what does that even mean?” asked Enjolras. “Emotional vulnerability, I mean.”

“Lots of things,” said Bahorel, grunting with effort as he bent his knees. “Acknowledging shame. Owning up to your mistakes. Risking rejection. How many am I at?”

“Eight,” said Enjolras. “But back to – so, if I were to be honest with someone about how I feel about them, that would be… this?”

“Yep.”

“Huh. But what if–”

“No buts,” said Bahorel, taking a break after completing the set. “Even if it could hurt their feelings. Even if they could hurt yours. Try it.”

“Excuse me?”

“Try it on me. Tell me something you’re scared to say out loud. Just be honest.”

Enjolras thought about this for a moment. It probably wasn’t the time for “I’m trapped in a time loop,” or “I can’t stop thinking about our mutual friend and I don’t know why.” He settled on something more Bahorel-centric.

“You know how… uh, well. I don’t quite know how to say this, but I…”

“Just say it,” Bahorel urged. “You’re gonna live, I promise.” I bet I am, Enjolras thought. More than you know. He remembered then that Bahorel would forget this by tomorrow. There were no consequences, nothing mattered. He could say it. 

“I liked your hair better when it was long,” he said quickly, and then breathed a deep sigh of relief.

Bahorel looked like he wanted to laugh but was trying very, very hard to beat back the impulse. “Okay, yeah! Not… exactly what I was thinking, but you’re getting there. You know, Feuilly said the same thing.”

Day 42

He’d been psyching himself up to be emotionally vulnerable at this party, which, when you put it like that, sounded rather silly. At first, he’d thought it was pathetic, but Bahorel said that word wasn’t in his vocabulary anymore.

He’d tell everyone there something he was afraid to say. Unsurprisingly, he had a few ideas ready to go. No consequences. No risk. It was okay. Tomorrow would be another today, which was actually comforting in this instance.

He opened the heavy wooden door and entered the minefield. Party. It was a party, and he was going to be okay. From where he stood in the foyer, he heard his friends’ familiar voices, speaking familiar words. As usual (when it came to 8:05 p.m. on Saturday, that is), Joly was excitedly explaining the science behind the lake effect while Courfeyrac pretended not to believe him so he would go even more in-depth.

He stood in the foyer paralyzed with anxiety for so long that he was still there when Grantaire arrived. There was no way Grantaire could be his first victim, so he’d make conversation as usual. Dip his toes in the water, so to speak.

“Alright there, Robespierre?” Grantaire asked. He had greeted Enjolras like that every single time, no matter when they met first.

“Fine,” said Enjolras.

“Are you?” This was new.

“Yes.”

“You don’t sound fine,” Grantaire observed. “You sound… I don’t know, nervous or something. Everything okay?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” said Enjolras, and as he said it, he realized he was not doing a good job (at all) at covering up the fear he felt at the prospect of confessing anything to his friends. Well, sometimes Grantaire just made him nervous, too, so maybe that had something to do with it. He always chalked it up to the fact that the chances of their conversation ending in an argument were lower now, but never zero.

“You tell me, man.”

“Nothing’s wrong,” said Enjolras, convincing himself as much as anyone else.

“Whatever you say,” Grantaire said with a shrug, but he didn’t leave. Why wasn’t he following everyone else? “Anything I can do?” That was why. Because Grantaire was a good person who cared about his friends. Fair play, universe.

“Nah, it’s – well.” Enjolras pondered for a moment. Was there anything Grantaire could do for him? “It’s embarrassing.”

“I love embarrassing.”

“Okay, so I’m sort of – can we go outside for a minute? Just to talk about this? I don’t want anyone to overhear,” said Enjolras, mentally preparing himself for the first hurdle of the night: admitting to someone other than Bahorel, the king of healthy masculinity, that he was working on his emotional vulnerability.

“Whatever you need.”

Out on the porch, Enjolras was conscious of every atom that made him up. He felt the blood pulsing through his veins. He felt every individual hair on his head. Worrying means you have to suffer twice, he reminded himself. It was a twee-sounding platitude in Enjolras' eyes (that he knew so well because Jehan had once cross-stitched it onto a pillow), but that didn’t make it any less true.

“I’m trying to work on my emotional vulnerability,” he said, his eyes practically boring holes into the ground.

“Okay,” said Grantaire. “And then what happened?”

“Nothing,” said Enjolras. “I told Bahorel I liked his hair better long. I didn’t explode. Neither did he. But he said that wasn’t enough. So I came here tonight thinking I would tell you all something I’ve been afraid to say, or couldn’t say for whatever reason, but when I got inside I just – froze.”

“Dude, you don’t walk a mile and then run a marathon,” said Grantaire. “Work your way up to that, damn.”

“Well, I don’t know, I just thought it’d be like exposure therapy or something,” said Enjolras, his neck bristling, his ears slightly red. “Run through a bunch of them and then I won’t be scared anymore.”

“I hate to be the one to tell you this, Enjolras, and I know it’s surprising that I’m the one telling you this, but emotional vulnerability doesn’t work like that,” Grantaire said. What was surprising was how gently he was disagreeing with Enjolras. “It’s like a garden. You have to tend it, water it, pull out the weeds every once in a while. It’s not like a painting of a garden where you put in a shitload of work and then you’re done.”

“That was a very helpful metaphor, actually,” said Enjolras.

“You’re welcome.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

This was hard, too. Maybe even more embarrassing. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. “How do you know all of this? Like, is there some kind of instruction manual, or a documentary, or… it just seems like everyone else knows these things.”

Grantaire laughed. And laughed. He even wiped a tear away, which Enjolras did his best not to take offense at. “Are you serious?”

“Yes?”

“I mean, there’s a Personal Growth section in every Barnes and Noble, but there isn’t like, a how-to guide that comes free with your corporeal form. You just… fuck up and try again,” he said.

“Fuck up and try again?” Enjolras repeated.

“Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.” There was something on his face, some emotion that Enjolras couldn’t quite place. Whatever it was, it vanished in an instant, and he extended his hand to Enjolras. “Ready to go tell Courfeyrac you pity-like his tweets?”

“I’m taking that to the grave,” said Enjolras. Grantaire laughed again. There was still something new in this day, something he hadn’t yet discovered. That alone was enough to propel him out of the foyer and into the fire. Party. It was just a party. 

Day 43

Enjolras arrived at Marius’ the next day intentionally late. He knew that it was because he wanted to talk to Grantaire again, but he pretended like he didn’t (for an audience of exactly no one but himself, the only person who knew it was an act). There was a profound loneliness about this whole thing, he realized while arguing with himself. No one else could ever really understand what it was like. It had to be difficult not to slip into some kind of solipsistic bender.

Before Grantaire was even inside, Enjolras had practically ambushed him. “Hi.”

“Alright there, Ro–”

“I’m working on my emotional vulnerability.”

“Um, okay?”

“I need your help.”

“With what?”

“Come with me.” Enjolras took his hand and led him to the study. Was it stupid this house had like, eighty rooms? Yeah. Was it coming in handy right now? No comment. “Can I tell you something?”

“Sure.” Grantaire looked dazed, like a cartoon character who’d been knocked on the head with a comically large baseball bat – if he were any more than zero percent animated, there would be symbols dancing above his head. In reality, he was dangerously close to swaying. Maybe he’d decided to pregame before?

“Sometimes, when you bring stuff up in meetings, I’m not mad because you’re derailing me. I’m mad because you’re right, and I’m mad that I’m wrong. Also, you talk down on yourself too much. I bought that piece of yours at the auction last year because I thought the final bid was too low, and then I lied and told you I just did it for charity. That was unnecessary and kind of mean. I hung it in my room and sometimes when I wake up in the morning I just stare at it for a few minutes before I get up. Also, you shed like a cat. Every time you leave our apartment, I find your hair everywhere.”

“Two shots and a chaser?” Grantaire joked.

“Three shots.”

“Well, thanks, man. I appreciate it. This isn’t a prank?”

“Why would it be a prank?” Enjolras asked, eyes wide.

“You’ve never said anything like that before. Like, are there cameras? Is Courf gonna come out from behind the curtain and tell me I just got punked, and then it’ll get an upsettingly low amount of views on TikTok?”

“It’s not a prank,” said Enjolras. “I just wanted to tell you.”

“Good to know,” said Grantaire, looking thoughtful. “I’m glad you like the painting, I guess.”

This was not the worst reaction by a mile, Enjolras knew that. But he was kind of expecting less unease after he’d already said everything. Somehow it still felt like there was a massive elephant in the room, sitting in a cloud of tension. “Okay. Well. Yeah. You’re welcome.”

“Should we go inside? We’re inside, I mean, go to wherever the party is. You know what I meant.” Grantaire’s expression was undeniably shaken, and Enjolras began to second guess just about everything. He remembered yesterday-Grantaire’s words, about how this was something you had to work at. Maybe he hadn’t quite gotten it right. The ambush, in hindsight, was not his best idea.

Day 44

“So, I’ve got this friend.”

“Do I get to know who it is, or is there some kind of thinly veiled way of talking about someone here without really talking about them in case they walk in and it gets awkward?”

Grantaire would never know, but it was so much worse than that.

“No and no. Anyway, I’ve been trying to be more honest, more open to my feelings and other people’s feelings, and I decided to practice on them yesterday. So I told them three things I’d never said to them before and two of them were good, the third one wasn’t even that bad, but maybe they were a little bit too revealing. I felt so… exposed. And they just stood there, and only kind of responded, and it was just really awkward. What did I do wrong?” Enjolras asked.

“Okay, wow. Lot going on there. How did you bring it up?”

Enjolras cringed and hid his head in his hands. “I’d rather not say.”

“Then I can’t help you, because judging by your non-answer to my question, something about it was off,” said Grantaire, smiling almost imperceptibly.

“Okay, fine, I may have cornered him–them, in a doorway, and told them I was trying to be more emotionally vulnerable. And then dragged them to a separate room and just said all of that.”

“That’s… a choice,” Grantaire ventured. “I probably… wouldn’t do that, if I were you? The next time you try?”

“What would you do?”

“Well, I’d probably say those kinds of things if they came up in conversation or if the timing felt right. Like if the two of us were having a conversation that didn’t start like, I’m gonna get deep with you right now, ok, ready set go, you know? If I’m thinking it, organically, and they’re sitting there, and I have a chance to speak, I think I’d say it then. Anything that's not so abrupt, you know? Like, ask them how their day is going first, at the very least. Establish trust. Establish that you have good intentions.”

That sounded hard and therefore was not what Enjolras wanted to hear. But it was going to be hard, he already knew that. “Thanks.”

“Anytime.”

Enjolras didn’t laugh at the mention of time, but he smirked a little. For once, he was the one in on the joke. It wasn’t very funny, but after forty-three Saturdays since Ground Zero, he had to make do with what he had.