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It wasn't enough to attend the meetings held frequently at the Café Musain, to stumble around the streets of Paris only to end up at that same place. To stare up into an empty darkness at night and whisper, as he always did with his most sacred and meaningful thoughts, that he wouldn't believe in a single thing that his dear friends shouted out in those dingy walls. But everyone has their weakness, and Grantaire knew his.
It wasn't enough to drown out Apollo's emotive tirades with an old bottle of brandy that made his head pound, buzzed out his senses till every sound was jumbled into an incoherent wave of noise. The alcohol was temporary in its work, but he needed it. Grantaire needed it desperately.
If he released himself from his cycle of drinking, the haziness of his brain may detangle a particular voice, a harmonious chant that challenged his very essence. He craved the alcohol, lest he fall so easily into the sin of worshipping this deity that'd forced its way into his life. A God unheard of by the devote Christians of Paris and lands far beyond, a God so ethereal he was consuming Grantaire's usually pessimistic thoughts with dreams of gander. Change he'd never dared to ask for aloud, he'd considered it absurd to dream. To want. But this God had burned his searing words into his skin, taking him as one of his followers. Enjolras was a perfectly sculped being to the drunkard pinned with awe, his body moulded seemingly by a being higher than himself - which Grantaire doubted existed. His voice held a tone that could intrigue and command any man to question himself, to challenge their very existence. He was a righteous spark of fury that felt akin to sunlight flooding through large stained glass windows, basking Grantaire in that blissful shine, finally rendering the alcohol useless in its job. The man now so attuned to the ecstasy provided by Enjolras.
A yearning pulled him from his drunken fever every time he had convened at the Café, made his eyes track his Apollo with wide eyed wonder. A yearn that had no place here, it belonged only in that empty room where he lay cold at night and whispered to the world.
He couldn't ruin him. He couldn't taint Enjolras by the unholy touch of a nameless man in a depraved world.
So he yelled, jeered and threw out sarcasm filled insults at Enjolras as he spoke those commandments that made Grantaire freeze. The God responded without fail, every time, with equal fever and resentment, his powerful aura only kindled at his challenges. Grantaire could only pray, pray so softly under his breathe words of devotion out his mangled and poisonous lips. They'd spoken so abhorrently to him aloud, the little praise within them could alone be whispered. Enjolras held himself strong and confidently. His heated gaze pierced Grantaire's body, violent yet empowering stabs to his skin that forced those secrets he'd told only to the darkness to cry out for his Apollo to hear for the first time. Only then had Enjolras' golden brows risen and his hardened face shifted tone to something cardinal. Grantaire was overtaken in that moment, an old and worn desire rearing it's shunned away head into his mind, to reach out with his dirty palms and engulf Enjolras into his soul, to carve his preachings into his very being, to have him scorch his flames of power across his battered body. To selfishly take his grace all for himself.
He shouldn't have, it was wrong. But Grantaire was far from a God himself. So that night, one meant to be like the rest, drowned out noises filtered through a drunken mind. An offering was made to Enjolras. A small challenging smirk tugged at the drunkard's mouth.
From there, his devotion blossomed.
Destroying Enjolras is what he'd feared, to break and ruin a symbol so greatly revered by many men in this sector of Paris. To have him fall down, crash and burn into the rest of humanity, but that fear had fought a battle with Grantaire's most internal and primal wants and lost. When his worship was finally granted, Apollo fell.
They both did.
Grantaire had pulled hard and messily on one of the strings threaded within the being of Enjolras, leading him from the public light of the cacophonous Café Musain and down to that desolate room that purity had never touched. Down in that sinful darkness of the room away from the prying eyes of Paris, Enjolras had fallen into bed with Grantaire. Prayers were so much more fluidly voiced to a God in those conditions, the man held Apollo with a gentleness his calloused hands had never offered before. They brushed over his collarbone, featherlight touches from his fingers reading the scripture imbedded within them. Grantaire was content to use the privilege of having Enjolras selfishly to himself, in the quiet where no one could shun them, to worship him as the deity he knew him to be, for him to ask for nothing in return. But between them in the trusted silence after service had concluded, Grantaire strangely felt the reciprocated touch of a loose postured Enjolras with a troubled expression.
"I am no God," he proclaimed, having no need for whispers, between now mortally bitten lips, "I do not want devotion unto me." His meaning righteously echoed their struggle within the city of Paris, his cause that had been kindling his unextinguishable fire - his purpose.
"I worship you. You command my very being." Grantaire's lonely finger dusted over the dips on Enjolras' torso, gliding down to his hip carefully as to not burn.
"If you are as intent on this as I am you must love me as a man." A firm hand seized his limp wrist, a compelling - no pleading hold, "Love me roughly, freely, as I do you. As I beg you to."
But all Grantaire inferred was the awe provoked by Enjolras' words, his eyes wide and ignorant to the slight shake of the hand grasping his.
"Do you permit it?" Enjolras' grip lessened as he ripped himself from Grantaire, he left the decrepit room away from the Musain, taking his warmth and ecstasy with him, leaving the devotee in his cold and empty world.
But Enjolras would return to him for many more nights, etching his mark into Grantaire's once singularly occupied room. Then he'd leave. Their same routine being repeated a myriad of times, all ending with the deity's face clouding as his pleading was ignored. Occasionally, Enjolras would proclaim his last night that he'd ever fall down with Grantaire, but it never succeeded in being true. This oddity was only questioned in the afterglow of fading light that washed over Grantaire the few nights Apollo found it appropriate to rest beside the man.
The title as a God of war, an ancient deity from the Roman pantheon especially presented at those moments scattered in the sudden chaos of the barricade. Grantaire’s worship equipped him with the will to follow Enjolras into battle. His eyes would blitz over the scene, dazzled by the aid of alcohol as he’d spot Apollo amidst the struggle. The thunderous noise of gunfire clogging his ears only leaving a dull whine that, when the dust settled - left that glorious being in a captured moment in time, covered in grime by man but not deterred in his purpose. A man could never so passionately believe in the freedom his friends wanted so desperately, no man could ignite a collectives fury so brilliantly into this mob of men fending off the offence. He had to be a God. It’s what Grantaire believed as people around him fell for this cause lead by Enjolras, what he pondered as he attempted to tune out the sound of gone by dreams flooding into the sewers like the blood from the deceased - down the dirty cobble and back to the earth. Humanity wasn’t so strong. That’s what the brandy sang to him, as he turned back to his old friend. And he sang, to his remaining friends - assuring them with some passion he himself didn’t know the origin of. A community of men relishing in their most likely last night of peace before the merciless heat of dawn. Enjolras stood at the centre, mingled within. A God… almost understanding in the soft tone he addressed to his followers. As that flicker of divinity submerged himself within his temple, he reached Grantaire. He was speechless with the buzz of liquor, but Enjolras’ hand extended and grasped the back of his neck in a firm hold, fingers threading through his dirty locks of hair and setting every nerve of his ablaze to attention - curing his illness with a single touch. He found the courage to grasp Enjolras’ forearm and gently press their foreheads together, audacity being a common object in the presence of his Apollo. Another offering was given.
“Drink with me?” Perhaps it was just a trick in the darkness trying to distort his God’s appearance, but a small, tired smile appeared on his lips for Grantaire alone to behold.
In Enjolras' final stand, he stood surrounded by Guardsmen. His pistol thrown aside, discarded, as he awaited his death. Grantaire observed it all, he momentarily stood in bafflement as he fathomed how Apollo could possibly be slain. That night, it had never even occurred to him. In his questioning, he locked eyes with Enjolras as they'd done a thousand times before, though over noisy confrontations in the Café Musain, in their safety of their friends as they deplored the cruel society France had placed them in. Enjolras' eyes alight with his fury. But now those fiery eyes showed Grantaire a content form of resignment - it all unloaded onto his mind like bullets obliterating their targets. There was a footnote at the end of Grantaire’s holy scripture - a sign that marked it as fiction. All that stood before him now was a man who held but one last want in his life before it was cut short. Enjolras prayed, begged with his soul to Grantaire, reaching out to his own and asked him what he'd like to do next. To decide, a God or a man? To worship or love as the man had wanted. A God did not want for anything. Grantaire pushed past the Guardsmen ready to gun down Enjolras, they held their fire, recognising and honouring to some extent, the desires of dying men.
Enjolras had wanted all along, craved things so messily in a way that only a human could possibly achieve. He was dirty and tainted by the scum of the earth, oppression had fuelled his fire and let him spread it to those feeling his fears. He embodied a dream shared amongst men that Grantaire would scarcely admit to, idolising him into Godhood had turned his dirty blonde into radiating gold and his words into holy commandments. Hiding the man, Enjolras in a veil Grantaire dared not lift to gaze upon himself. Though this slow and painful realisation did not deter Grantaire's devotion, merely helped it morph, into a desperate feeling of grief as he faced mortality. Life had been bitter to him, to his friends, to Enjolras. Here he took his stand beside his once believed God, Apollo. A stand for a cause he'd believed no man could desire and fight for so badly.
"Do you permit it?"
Enjolras, the man he'd fallen into such great sin with who was now destined to be martyred before his time, nodded with that same confidence he'd carried throughout his life. A hand was offered, and Grantaire grasped it in a rough, passionate way that set free his need to connect to Enjolras so deeply. His desire for this man had taken on the form of religion and worship, ending in their messy and wretched love, an act so unholy it could only be deemed ritualistic. They locked together like Ouroboros, a creature endlessly devouring itself in hopes of reaching satisfaction, forging Enjolras and Grantaire into one for eternity as they too consumed each other's love, wants, and dreams. They held one another in their vice grip as the bullets tore through their mortal flesh and blood, cementing their souls together only in the cold embrace of death.