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The bed creaked and dipped in a far too familiar way, and Grantaire groaned without opening his eyes. “Come back,” he mumbled sleepily, more into his pillow than into the quiet of the morning.
He only opened his eyes when Enjolras chuckled lightly in response before leaning over to kiss his forehead. “Can’t,” he said, stretching before he stood. “Bus leaves in an hour and Combeferre will literally kill me if I miss it.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Grantaire grumbled, propping himself up on his elbows as he watched Enjolras grab his bell bottom jeans and shirt from the night before off the floor. “What are you protesting against this time – the draft? The war in general? Civil rights?”
“I don’t think civil rights is something you protest against,” Enjolras said mildly.
Grantaire just arched an eyebrow. “If you’re a white man from the South—”
“Touché.” Enjolras paused. “You know, you could always come with me and find out.”
He said it casually, as if it was the first time he’d made such a suggestion and not the fiftieth, which helped explain why Grantaire matched his tone as he countered, “You could always stay here and tell me.”
It was an old argument, the kind that had been played out so many times that neither even needed to speak the words anymore to know how it would end: a stalemate, just as it always did. Enjolras just shook his head as he buttoned his vest before pausing, catching sight of something on Grantaire’s night stand. “Wait a minute, is that—”
Grantaire blanched, scrambling across the bed to grab the picture frame, but Enjolras beat him to it, snatching it triumphantly away from him. “You framed my mug shot?”
For a moment, it looked like Grantaire might try to deny it, but he settled for shrugging in an unconcerned kind of way as he finally pulled himself into a sitting position. “Well, it’s not like you’ve ever given me a picture of you,” he pointed out. “Not even your senior picture from high school – Class of ‘62, Go Falcons.”
Enjolras rolled his eyes. “Mostly because all of those were burned,” he said dryly. “Where’d you even get this from, anyway?”
“Clipped it from the paper,” Grantaire said with a shrug. “Helps me to not forget what you look like when you’re gone.”
Something flickered in Enjolras’s expression. “Grantaire—”
“I know,” Grantaire said quickly, standing and crossing to Enjolras to give him a kiss before telling him, his voice low, “Just as long as you come back to me.”
“I always do,” Enjolras told him.
“Good,” Grantaire said firmly, before something like a smirk twitched at the corners of his mouth. “Because you know that I need you.”
Enjolras’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t—”
“I can’t help myself,” Grantaire told him solemnly, completely ignoring his attempted warning. “I love you and nobody else.”
Enjolras sighed heavily, even as he wrapped his arms around Grantaire’s waist. “I will literally pay the radio station to stop playing that song.”
Grantaire laughed. “You just don’t like that I claimed Sugar Pie and stuck you with Honey Bunch.”
“Yes, that’s the only part that I dislike, and not the incessant singing,” Enjolras said sourly before leaning in and kissing his forehead. “I love you.”
“Love you, too,” Grantaire told him, ruining the moment of sincerity by adding, saccharine-sweet, “Honey Bunch.”
Enjolras’s eye twitched as he did his best to ignore him. “I’ll see you when I get back,” he said instead, and when Grantaire looked pointedly at him, he rolled his eyes and added, “Sugar Pie.”
Something darkened momentarily in Grantaire’s expression. “Just try not to get yourself shot,” he said lightly. “Or beaten. Or arrested.”
“I promise to try.”
Grantaire just sighed. “I wish that was more reassuring.”
Grantaire didn’t even attempt to hide the look on his face as Enjolras got off the bus, looking tired. HIs expression tightened when he saw Enjolras’s black eye and barely-scabbed split lip. “It’s fine,” Enjolras assured him. “It could’ve been a lot worse.”
Grantaire just hummed noncommittally, reaching out to lightly brush his thumb across Enjolras’s bruised cheekbone. “At least you’re home.”
“Not just home, Enjolras said, swinging his backpack off his shoulder. “Home and with a gift.”
“Are you repaying the money I wired Combeferre to bail you out?” Grantaire asked.
“Better,” Enjolras said, digging through the bag.
“What could possibly be better than—”
Enjolras pulled something out of his backpack and handed it triumphantly to Grantaire. “Don’t say I never gave you a picture of me.”
Grantaire glanced down at the photo, torn between amusement and exasperation when he saw the updated mugshot, clearly from his most recent arrest. He could just make out the shadow of the shiner ringing Enjolras’s eye, and the dark gray smear of blood from his split lip, but more importantly, Enjolras was grinning in the picture, that grin that he normally saved for when it was just the two of them together.
“I love it,” Grantaire told him, his voice thick. “I love—” He broke off, glancing sideways at the other folks greeting people from the bus. “I love it,” he repeated. “How did you manage to get your hands on a copy?”
“I asked,” Enjolras said nonchalantly. “And when that didn’t work, I told them that denying me a copy was a violation of my Sixth Amendment rights by denying me evidence of my physical state upon arrival.”
Grantaire cocked his head. “It’s been awhile since I studied the Bill of Rights, but—”
“Oh, yeah, I made it up,” Enjolras said with a grin. “But they didn’t know that, so they reluctantly agreed, with one condition.”
“What’s that?”
Enjolras’s grin widened before he said, with a terrible attempt at an affected Southern drawl, “That I remove myself from the fine city of Birmingham and never return.”
Grantaire whistled. “They drive a hard bargain.”
“They have no way of enforcing it,” Enjolras assured him.
Grantaire rolled his eyes. “Because that’s what I was concerned about,” he huffed under his breath. He ran his finger across the photograph before asking, deliberately casual, “So how’d you get the shiner? Same way you got the fat lip?”
Enjolras’s expression softened. “Could’ve been worse,” he repeated quietly.
Another argument neither of them were ever going to win, as both had drastically different ideas of what ‘worse’ looked like. Instead, Grantaire took a deep breath before saying, in a somewhat hollow attempt at a joke, “People are gonna think I beat you.”
Enjolras laughed lightly. “Wouldn’t they be surprised by the reality,” he murmured, his voice pitched low, and Grantaire glanced up at him, a smile finally breaking across his face.
“Don’t give me any ideas,” he said, matching Enjolras’s pitch. “In fact, we should probably get out of here before one of us says something out loud that we shouldn’t.”
Enjolras smirked. “Tease.”
Still, the walk to Grantaire’s car was spent in companionable silence, and when they got to the car, Grantaire held the door open for Enjolras. “After you, Honey Bunch,” he said sweetly.
Enjolras rolled his eyes, but with obvious affection. “Thanks, Sugar Pie,” he drawled, but his sarcasm was belied by the way he took Grantaire’s hand after he got in the car, running his thumb across Grantaire’s knuckles.
Again silence fell between them, until Grantaire asked, not looking away from the road, “Do you at least feel like it made a difference?”
Enjolras sighed. “Less than you’d probably want,” he said. “But more than you’d probably let yourself believe.”
Grantaire nodded slowly before asking quietly, “Do you think you’ll ever fight for us one day?”
Enjolras didn’t need to ask what he meant by that. “I think it’s all part of the same fight,” he said finally, after a long moment. “Fighting for the rights of one advances the rights of us all. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but one day.” He glanced over at Grantaire. “What about you?”
Grantaire half-smiled. “Maybe not today,” he said. “Maybe not tomorrow.” He squeezed Enjolras’s hand. “But one day.”
“Yeah?” Enjolras asked, a little hopefully.
Grantaire nodded. “Yeah.” He paused before adding, “After I get home and get that mugshot framed, anyway.”
Enjolras barked a laugh and scrubbed his free hand across his mouth. “Priorities.”
Grantaire glanced over at him, grinning. “What can I say,” he said. “I can’t help myself.”
Grantaire reached out to carefully adjust the framed mugshot, knocked out of place by one of the unusual amount of guests in the house, no doubt. His hands were more gnarled now, the beginning of liver spots showing on their backs as he straightened the frame, and his reflection in the glare of the glass showed streaks of silver in his hair.
The mugshot was one of mange hanging on the wall, most of Enjolras, but more than a few of Grantaire through the years. But no matter how many he had accumulated, this one would always be his favorite.
He traced a finger across Enjolras’s face in the picture, pausing when he heard someone behind him. “You ready, Sugar Pie?”
Grantaire smiled just as he had back in 1965 whenever he saw Enjolras, and he turned to face him, eyeing him appreciatively in his tux. Enjolras’s hair was almost fully gray now, but to Grantaire, that just made him even sexier “You know it, Honey Bunch,” he said, smoothing a hand down the front of his own tux. “After 50 years, I’m definitely ready.”
“Good,” Enjolras said, matching Grantaire’s smile. “Because, if I may, I love you, and nobody else.”
“I sure as shit hope so,” Grantaire said with a laugh. “I’m still surprised Courfeyrac managed to throw all this together as soon as the Supreme Court handed down the opinion in Obergefell.”
“Please,” Enjolras scoffed. “I think he started planning our wedding in 1965.”
“He’s not the only one,” Grantaire said softly. He held his hand out to Enjolras, the feeling of Enjolras’s hand strong and sure in his own as familiar as coming home. “And I’m not going to wait anymore. Because…”
He trailed off, and Enjolras sighed good-naturedly, almost certainly dreading where this was headed as he prompted, “Because?”
Grantaire grinned and lifted Enjolras hand to his mouth to press a kiss to his finger, where he would be putting a ring soon enough to commemorate 50 years of love, and torturing Enjolras with this song. “I’m in a fool in love, you see.”