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The stables were permeated by an icy chill, yet Enjolras took no notice as he entered, for he was preoccupied by an entirely different thought; that the revolution was trampled and that Grantaire, warm, solid Grantaire was standing next to him.
Enjolras had been on the run for three days now; in all but name, Grantaire was too. His name and place of residence was not known to the Guard, yet he had not left Enjolras’ side since that fateful day on the barricades. They had scarcely the time to eat or sleep since they left Paris; wandering the countryside, they melted snow to drink and freshened themselves up in quickening brooks, roaming like living ghosts in the swiftly falling dark. Enjolras had never planned to leave Paris, for, as the great men of all ages, his heart and the city’s throbbed as one, to the same rhythm of revolution. The existence of one without the other was a scientific impossibility.
Yet here he was in the stables of a good farmer who agreed to give them a place to sleep for the night, exhausted past the brink of endurance; he dropped into a haystack as if shot, not seeing, not looking where Grantaire would sit, only knowing with the deepest of convictions that Grantaire would sit next to him; and as soon as he lay his head down, he was fast asleep.
He woke to the bitter cold as it seeped into his bones. He shivered – and in the dark, he felt Grantaire’s large, coarse hands pull him closer. Wherever he touched Enjolras, heat bloomed.
“Why do you not sleep?” Enjolras demanded.
Grantaire’s teeth chattered as he spoke, “How could the moon rest while the sun is asleep?”
“Are you mad?” Enjolras sat up, seized by a violent panic at the nonsensical words. He pressed the back of his hand against Grantaire’s forehead; he saw the man’s eyes in the softly falling blue light of the full moon, wide with terror and it seemed to him that Grantaire’s skin was burning with some hellish fire, entirely unnatural. “How long since you last slept?” Enjolras’ tone had, as always, a tone of imperious want that he had always found most unbecoming in himself, yet it was born of the iron at his core and would not melt. He now attempted to soften himself. “Would you not come closer?”
Grantaire stayed stubbornly in place.
Enjolras was obliged to draw him closer into his arms, for he knew that feverish men needed warmth. His breath billowed hotly and white into the dark.
“What are you doing?” Grantaire choked out.
“I am warming you.”
“Frightfully kind of you,” Grantaire murmured with some of that cynicism that had always so infuriated and entertained Enjolras. Now he stifled a smile.
“I see you have kept your fighting spirit.”
“Fighting spirit…” Grantaire muttered.
They were silent for a while. Enjolras laid his head on Grantaire’s shoulder and Grantaire went still as statue; he was slow to relax into Enjolras’ embrace.
Enjolras was not made for tenderness; he was made for the revolution, he was made of sharp words, sharp eyes, sharper weapons, and he loved Grantaire, had always loved him like the flame loves kindling. Grantaire was of course not aware of this, for Grantaire was a good man. He had proven himself ten times over in the past days when he would have lived and died with Enjolras, and Enjolras could only wonder if he himself had possessed even a fragment of that loyalty. If he had been half as good a man as Grantaire—
But Enjolras was made for the revolution.
Grantaire let out a tremulous sigh.
“Is there no end to this night?” he murmured. Naturally, he must have been fed up with Enjolras’ restrictive embrace and wandering hands; abruptly, Enjolras caught himself trailing absent circles on the soft underside of Grantaire’s wrist.
“Soon,” he breathed into Grantaire’s skin. “Dawn will come soon.” Through the crimson of the emerging sun, dawn would always come.