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The last thing Enjolras remembers, he was being dragged along the strip by Courfeyrac before stumbling into an alley to puke. Everything past that is a blur. He tries to focus. Focus. There were lights. Bright lights. Almost hospital bright. He remembers thinking that was inappropriate. Why? Where was he? Where is he now? He tries to force his eyes open but all he registers is pain. He’s in bed. His bed. Or at least his hotel bed. The sheets are warm and soft. His whole body is radiating pain. He’s familiar with this part, at least.
He focuses on breathing. In and out. In and out. Once he’s confident he’s got a steady rhythm going, he focuses on each part of his body, one at a time. Toes first. They don’t hurt too bad. Maybe he has a blister. Feet. His feet hurt . He definitely spent a lot of yesterday walking, or standing at least. He shoves the feeling into a little box at the back of his mind and moves on. Ankles. Shins. Knees. And so on. When he gets to his head, he almost gags. He doesn’t even take the time to register the pain fully before mentally detaching himself from it. Violently. He pictures himself floating high above his physical body, far away from the pain receptors in his brain. Breathe. Just keep breathing. He tries opening his eyes again.
The room is, thankfully, very dark. He looks to his right and sees the blackout curtains have been drawn shut and there’s an unopened bottle of water on the nightstand. Small mercies. He slowly tries to pull himself up and over enough to reach the water when he feels someone shift in the bed next to him. Probably Courfeyrac judging by the thick dark curls he registers out of the corner of his eye. He’s glad Courfeyrac made it back in one piece with him last night. Glad because it means he can kill his friend himself for dragging him around half of Las Vegas while he was blitzed out of his fucking mind.
He sips the water slowly, trying to force down the nausea. He doesn’t have much practical experience with hangovers, but he may as well for all that these rituals are baked into his every morning.
He hears a soft sighing sound and turns back to Courfeyrac, planning to shake him from sleep with the power of his glare alone. He knows he could do it. His stink eye is exceptional.
He almost jumps completely out of the bed when he realizes the body tangled up in the sheets next to him is, in fact, not Courfeyrac. Or Jehan. Or Combeferre.
Scratch that. Deciding his first impulse was correct and he was wrong to deny it, he scrambles out of the bed and over to the far wall. Thanking everything that is holy and sacred that he didn’t tumble right over the second he stood up, he watches as the person on the bed grumbles and flips over in his sleep, wide eyes meeting squinted and bleary ones. “Good morning, sunshine,” says the person on the bed before shutting his eyes again and flipping back over, presumably to go back to sleep.
“Jesus Christ!” Enjolras feels like he might faint, and it isn’t just the normal amount of wooziness that comes from standing up too fast. He stumbles back over to the bed, leaning heavily on it but not quite sitting down.
Muffled into a pillow comes a muttered, half asleep response that can’t be anything but automatic, “I’m Jewish.”
Enjolras doesn’t even process the joke at first, barely awake himself. “Wait, wait, wait. Who are you and why are you in my hotel room?”
The figure in the bed flips back over again with a groan. “Do we have to do this right this second? Can’t I sleep for a little longer before you kick me out?”
“I’m not kicking you out,” Enjolras says. “I just– I mean I’m not– I just, want to know who you are?” His voice turns up in the end, like every sentence is a question. He does this when he gets flustered, which isn’t often, and he hates it, but he barrels on. “Do you remember anything that happened yesterday? Because, like, I don’t and I can’t– I mean I don’t think I– Can you just tell me what happened?”
“What, are you that worried we slept together? I’m pleased to announce with near certainty that we did not do that. Well, I mean we did but we definitely didn’t have sex.” He smiles a bit and kind of shrugs. “Hate to break it to you, but I’ve got jack shit on whatever else happened. I was fucking wasted, dude.” He says it all so nonchalantly, as if it would’ve been no big deal either way. Still his answer is a huge relief. Enjolras isn't exactly a blackout and hook up with strangers kind of guy.
He lets himself sag onto the bed fully, taking his weight off his feet as the last of his adrenaline ebbs out of him. “Oh, ok, well that’s good. I mean– Fuck. Um. I’m Enjolras.”
“Grantaire,” Grantaire says with a quirked eyebrow and a smile he’s clearly trying to suppress. “Happy to be of service to you, Ange.” His face breaks into a wicked grin. “Or rather, not to have serviced you.”
Enjolras makes a mock gagging noise as he looks down in utter bemusement at the body beside him. “That was horrible. It’s–” he checks the alarm clock by the bed and starts a little bit when he realizes it’s almost 1:30. Too late to take his morning meds now, he thinks with a little internal sigh. “Ok, well I was going to say that it’s way too early to be saying shit like that, but.”
Grantaire sits up and leans over, his chin almost brushing Enjolras’ shoulder as he checks the clock for himself before letting out a huff as he falls back into the pillows. “What, don’t tell me you’re a morning person?” His dark curls are wild and messy, but short enough that they still look good, even sleep tousled as they are. And when he smiles, he gets a dimple on his right side.
Enjolras touches a sheepish hand to his own head of curls, definitely a tangled mess on his head. “I just have more energy in the morning is all.”
“Takes all types I guess,” Grantaire says, raising two fingers to give a half-hearted little salute. It’s a ridiculous and insolent gesture, but he looks so sleepy and almost vulnerable in his rumpled t-shirt with the sheets pooled around his waist. “Now if you don’t mind,” he adds, turning back onto his side and pillowing his cheek in the crook of his arm, “I really do want to go back to sleep.” Without waiting for a response, he shuts his eyes and is immediately, as far as Enjolras can tell, gone to the world once more.
Enjolras fiddles uselessly with his laptop, plugged in and fully charged on the nightstand, of course. He had planned to be up early today, try to get some work done on this trip. There’s always so much to do, so many deadlines to hit and grant proposals to write. He shouldn’t have come in the first place. He has so little energy to spare as it is and he shouldn’t be wasting it, but Courfeyrac had begged him, claiming it was fate that his birthday aligned with their one long weekend in April, and Enjolras is helpless in the face of his friends.
But then he made the mistake of thinking that if he was going to be out anyway, he might as well have a drink. Which led to more drinks. And more. And maybe Courefeyrac was right that he doesn't let loose enough. Speaking of the devil, he only manages to scroll around proofreading bits and pieces of various drafts for all of fifteen minutes before Courfeyrac comes charging through the door, looking a little worse for wear, but with a massive grin and manic, wide eyes.
“Enjolras, you’ll never guess–” he spits out before his eyes slide past Enjolras and across the bed to where a very disgruntled looking Grantaire has rolled over in his sleep and shoved his head beneath his pillow. His nose has crinkled up in the middle like he’s concentrating really hard, probably on sleeping through Courfeyrac’s outburst.
“Good morning, Courfeyrac,” Enjolras whispers, climbing from the bed and walking through the open doorway between their hotel rooms. He’s only wearing yesterday’s t-shirt and a pair of boxers, but his friends have seen him in less.
Combeferre and Jehan are lying curled up together on the far bed snoring loudly. Pretty normal for Jehan who is usually up all hours of the night, falling asleep just after sunrise more often than not, but Combeferre must have had it rough last night. He’s usually up as early as Enjolras.
“Enjolras, there’s a man in your room,” Courfeyrac finally chokes out, eyes incredulous and mouth still hanging open.
“I noticed,” Enjolras would almost feel offended except that he was just as shocked as Courfeyrac is now when he first woke up.
“Enjolras,” he says again, this time with feeling, “there’s a man. In your room.”
“Well don’t say it like that.” Enjolras is starting to feel just a little miffed. He may not apply himself very often, but he’s a catch and he knows it. He could totally have scored last night if he'd been looking to. And had been a bit more sober.
“How else do you want me to say it?” Courfeyrac blurts out in what is decidedly not an inside voice before getting smacked in the face by a flying pillow and stumbling into the armchair by the window. Which then bangs to the floor. Loudly.
“Will you please at least try to keep it down,” Combeferre hisses from where he’s sat up in the bed. Jehan has impressively managed to keep himself plastered to Combeferre’s now upright shoulder without showing any signs of having woken up or been disturbed at all. Combeferre, his most level-headed and conflict-avoidant friend, now looks like he might genuinely start throwing knives if he doesn’t get what he wants, and Enjolras, who can count on one hand the numbers of times he’s felt genuinely intimidated by another person in his adult life, takes an unconscious step backward.
Courfeyrac, evidently, has no such survival instincts, perhaps because he’s roomed with Combeferre for the better part of a year now. He gets right back up off the floor and hurls the pillow back. His aim is a bit low, however, catching Jehan straight in the jaw. And still, Jehan makes no sign that he even noticed. If it weren’t for his steady snoring, Enjolras might be concerned.
Combeferre doesn’t say another word, just continues to glare as he falls back against the pillows before closing his eyes once more and letting out a pointed sigh.
Enjolras turns back to Courfeyrac, pulling him slightly back through the doorway into the room with Grantaire. At least Grantaire hasn't given any indication that he's going to try to kill either of them. Hopefully. “Did you have something you wanted to tell me?” he whispers.
“Oh, so, I found a bunch of videos of you on my phone from yesterday,” Courfeyrac starts. At least it seems like he’s making some kind of effort to keep his voice down now that they’ve stepped into the other room. “And one of them is of some guy proposing to you. Like fully down on one knee, holding a ring, proposing. I haven’t looked through the rest but I thought it would be funny to show you that one. Though, now I’m not– I mean I think we found your mystery fiance” Courfeyrac smirks at him, eyebrows raised.
“Just because he got drunk and proposed doesn’t make him my fiance,” Enjolras grumbles, head ducked to hide the blush he feels creeping up his face.
Courfeyrac pulls out his phone, giggling as he explains that it’s better for Enjolras to just see for himself.
“If you’re gonna watch a video of me getting drunk and making an ass of myself, I’m at least gonna have to ask that you bring it over here so I can see it too,” comes a voice from the bed. Grantaire is sat up again, looking at them with an almost apologetic grin, as if he was the one that just woke them up.
“I’m sorry, are we being too loud?” asks Enjolras, hoping he can convey to Grantaire that he’s not the one who should be looking guilty.
“Just that piece of furniture that you threw or knocked over or whatever. Probably could have woken the dead.” Enjolras again thinks of Jehan, sleeping peacefully right on the other side of the wall.
“Sorry about that,” Courfeyrac has the grace to say before Enjolras snatches his phone from his hand and heads over to the bed. He needed to sit down anyway. His knees are already starting to act up on him. He hears Courfeyrac mutter something that sounds suspiciously like, “well fuck me, I guess,” before he scuttles back into the room he was originally supposed to share with Combeferre, closing the door behind him. Enjolras scoots over so that he’s nearly pressed up against Grantaire’s side and presses play on a very blurry video of himself, Jehan, and Grantaire standing outside a convenience store. Combeferre is nowhere in sight, which should be the first sign that something is about to go horribly wrong.
It must barely be late afternoon, but video Grantaire is clearly already hammered. He’s got his head tilted back, waxing poetic about the exact shade of Enjolras’ hair in the sunlight. He keeps going on about how Enjolras would look in the glow of the sunrise on the Rockies. His arms are gesticulating wildly, as if he’s trying to paint the very air itself into the image he sees in his mind’s eye. Enjolras is caught staring at those hands, those fingers, as they fly across the screen, trying to track their complex movements as Courfeyrac’s laughter shakes the camera. Grantaire goes on, begging Enjolras to promise to scale the mountains with him so that he can see it for himself. When video Enjolras acquiesces, he drops immediately to one knee, pulling a genuine, actual ring box out of his jacket pocket and looking up at Enjolras with his mouth half open in awe.
Next to him on the bed, Grantaire makes a confused sound. Presumably, he’s just as in the dark about the origins of the ring box as Enjolras is. Video Grantaire rambles on for a bit longer about how together they will explore the world and see every sunrise together and how the moon and stars themselves can’t keep them apart before holding the ring up to Enjolras and popping the question. Video Enjolras nods his head emphatically before sliding down from the short stone wall he was perched on to accept the ring video Grantaire is sliding onto his finger.
Enjolras feels a little disoriented watching the whole thing play out in front of him with no memory of the actual events to speak of. He’d never really considered himself to be particularly spontaneous or wild, preferring instead to plan everything in his life out as meticulously as possible, always calculating exactly how much energy various activities would take out of him and exactly how much pain he could handle in a given day. Even as messed up as he knew he must have been yesterday, even as ludicrous as the whole situation was, to see himself say yes to a marriage proposal from a literal stranger felt like he was watching a different person entirely controlling his body like a puppet on strings.
When the video ends, he quickly scrolls to the next one, taken later that day, walking down a street together. It’s unclear whether Courfeyrac meant to film this one but it’s only a few seconds long. Courfeyrac seems to be counting. When he gets to four, the video cuts out.
The one after that gives Enjolras pause. In the thumbnail image, he and Grantaire are standing facing each other in an overly-sterile room with hospital-bright fluorescent lighting. The kind Enjolras can't fucking stand. There’s a slender man with slicked-back dark hair stood behind them wearing a black suit with a flower in his lapel.
Grantaire lets out a low whistle. “Uh oh,” he says in an almost playful sing-songy voice. Enjolras has absolutely nothing playful he wants to say in response to that so he just steels himself and presses play.
Courfeyrac angles the camera to face himself, his usual manic grin amped up to eleven, before he spins it back around and zooms out a bit to reveal what is obviously meant to be a small chapel. The sterile kind that you find in government buildings, meant to appeal to the widest common denominator. The video is exactly what the thumbnail image would suggest. Courfeyrac has begun filming in the middle of the ceremony, right as the officiant leads them through their vows. Enjolras feels the world start to tilt beneath him. He’s not registering any of the words. The officiant drones on.
“In sickness and in health–” the noise has cut off and Enjolras looks over to see Grantaire has paused the video.
He takes a deep breath. Lets it out. Takes another. “I can’t believe it.” Enjolras agrees. He feels as stuck in denial as Grantaire sounds. “My mom’s gonna kill me when she finds out I had a goyish wedding. I mean, a chapel? I'm dead meat.”
Enjolras feels almost like he’s just been struck. Jokes. Grantaire’s joking. Now. Enjolras closes his eyes and tries to keep his voice level. “Just for one second, please, I am begging you, be serious.”
The response is almost instantaneous. “I am wild.”
Enjolras gets overwhelming deja vu at the words, tone of voice, the expression that accompanies them, but he’s suddenly too pissed to process it. “No, actually. Are we– did we get married? Like legally? Because this really isn’t something I can deal with right now. I have class on Monday. I have– I mean I don’t– We don’t even know each other.” Enjolras feels like he can’t breathe. Maybe that’s because he actually isn’t. He can never quite tell. Stupid broken lungs , he thinks pounding his chest hard in an attempt to get some air in. He feels a warm hand on his back, soothing the wrinkles in his shirt as it runs up and down his back. Up and down. Up and down. Slowly. Rhythmically. Enjolras times his breathing to it until the burning in his chest calms and he feels like he can form coherent thoughts beyond the panic.
Grantaire opens his mouth and then immediately shuts it, his nose doing that scrunchy thing again. Enjolras would bet any amount of money that he was about to say something stupid again before thinking better of it. He’s grateful for the self-restraint.
“Lucky for us we got married on a Thursday,” Grantaire proclaims. Enjolras mentally takes his ill-begotten gratitude and shoves it right up Grantaire’s ass. Before he can even hope to form a response, Grantaire continues. “If today’s Friday, that means the courthouse is still open. We can go and get it annulled, bada bing bada boom. No more happily ever after.”
Enjolras clasps his hands in front of his mouth and wills himself not to act rashly. Grantaire has, with seemingly good intentions, made a reasonable point. Even if his emotions are running high right now, he can acknowledge that. He takes a deep breath in through his nose. Blows it out. “I need a shower.”
After he closes the bathroom door, he hears Grantaire press play on the video. He stands there, leaning against the door with his eyes closed and listens to the muffled ceremony through the door before the tinny cheers of Courfeyrac and Jehan fill the room. A bit more muffled pandemonium before he hears his own voice shout, uncharacteristically panicked, “Did we fucking lose Ferre?”
***
Two hours later, Enjolras and Grantaire are standing on the steps of the courthouse at a complete loss for what to do next. The lady at the front desk – Dahlia, her name tag had read – was very sympathetic, offering them a sad smile and an expedited form, but it would be five to six weeks at least before a judge would review the paperwork and issue a decision. Until then, they had nothing to do but sit and watch for the mail and be legally married. There was, apparently, no getting around that part. On the brightside, Grantaire hadn’t said anything when Enjolras had grabbed his cane on the way out the door, already feeling stiff in the knees and dizzy barely an hour after waking up. The thought of having to answer a bunch of intrusive questions about his health was not an enticing one.
“So,” Grantaire sighs heavily, staring off into the distance and shuffling his feet. “What now?”
Enjolras supposes they could just exchange numbers and go their separate ways for the time being, but he’s strangely loath to be rid of this obnoxious, funny, ill-mannered, considerate man he’s spent the better part of the last twenty-four hours with. “I could really use a coffee right about now,” he decides on. Neutral. He's putting the ball in Grantaire’s court and seeing where it gets him.
Grantaire looks at him with that wry half-smile, that dimple gracing his features. “Your treat?”
Enjolras snorts, but he grabs Grantaire's elbow, leaning slightly on him as they walk down the steps and into the hazy afternoon street. The nearest cafe, as it turns out, is one of those big warehouse spaces that doubles as an event space for pop-up craft fairs and visiting speakers.
At the front-of-house to the left is a cafe bar with a large pastry section and a chalkboard displaying a list of seasonal specialty drinks. Beside the cash register sits a shelf with a small selection of books for sale covering a variety of topics from a history of global workers’ rights movements to indigenous poetry anthologies. To the right are a smattering of industrial tables and chairs. It’s the area towards the back that is clearly the place’s main attraction, however. Rows upon rows of temporary dividers have been put up, each bearing multiple canvases and framed watercolors in some kind of pop up exhibition. A little sign has been put up proudly announcing a few featured artists and a series of dates. It’s exactly the kind of business Enjolras would’ve chosen to patronize if he’d planned this.
At the register, Grantaire insists on paying, despite his earlier remark. Enjolras feels like maybe he should resist, but he’s not exactly rolling in cash between Courfeyrac’s birthday weekend extravaganza and the court fees from this morning.
“It’s not like a black coffee is going to bankrupt me.” Grantaire manages to put an impressive amount of disdain on his coffee order given that he literally offered to pay for it in the same breath.
“I also got a bagel,” Enjolras protests weakly, but then a book on display catches his eye. He’s read most of the others on the shelf, courtesy of his very well-stocked university library, but this one’s new, and he hasn’t actually managed to get his hands on it yet. He’s heard it’s really good and the author came to his school just last year for a guest lecture, one of the best he’s ever had the pleasure of attending.
Before he knows it, Grantaire’s arm swoops into his field of vision, snatching the book away and placing it on the counter next to the coffees and food. “You don’t have to–” Enjolras starts.
“Too late. Already did,” Grantaire says, tapping his card against the machine. “And you have to take it because if you don’t I’ll read it and I’ll annotate every single nitpicky critique I can possibly find in his rhetoric and it’ll make this copy borderline unreadable. Something about his tone or maybe his expression has Enjolras convinced he's being one hundred percent serious.
Enjolras stares at him for a second. And then he bursts into laughter so hard it has him doubling over holding his stomach with one hand and clutching his cane for dear life with the other. “You’re ridiculous, you know that?”
“Yeah, well.” Grantaire collects their tray and sets it down at the nearest table.
Enjolras plops down in his seat with a little bit of a groan and wraps numb fingers around his warm coffee mug. They're positioned so that Grantaire is backbiting by the sun, bringing out a warm brown halo in some of the wayward strands of hair at the crown of his head. “So, what brings you to Las Vegas?”
Grantaire takes a sip of his coffee and levels Enjolras with a deeply unimpressed look. “Really? Small talk? We’re legally married, you can ask me something more personal than that.”
Fine. Enjolras can play that game. He meets Grantaire’s eyes and holds. “Why do you deflect any moment of uncomfortable sincerity with asinine jokes?”
“Touche.” Grantaire raises his mug in a mock toast, still refusing to drop that little half grin he always seems to be wearing.
“That wasn’t an answer.” Enjolras takes a bite of his bagel a little pointedly. Whatever Grantaire says next, it has to carry the conversation for at least the amount of time it takes him to chew and swallow.
“Fine,” Grantaire puts his hands up in defeat, looking absolutely delighted.” I surrender. I’m on a road trip. Just me and my bike and the interstate. Figured I’d try my luck in Sin City. And what luck I’ve found, Ange.” He uses the nickname like punctuation, letting it roll right off the end of his sentence as if it were the most natural sound in the world.
“So you’re traveling alone?”
“What, are you trying to axe murder me in my sleep? Anyway, don’t make it sound so sad,” Grantaire says, eyebrows furrowed in mock affront. “I’ve been stopping all over the place, visiting buddies from college and distant family members. Anyone with a couch for me to crash on. What’s life without a little adventure?”
Enjolras thinks of the separate just-in-case bag he had to pack with just medical equipment for this long weekend and tactfully sips his coffee rather than respond to that. “What’d you study?” he asks instead.
“Art. What about you?”
The question is benign enough but the tone is borderline flirtatious. Two can play at that game. “How do you know I’m in school?”
Grantaire snorts. “Everything about you. The Pomona sticker on your cane also kinda gives it away.”
Oh. Enjolras had forgotten about that. “Philosophy and political science. You planning to do anything with your degree?”
“Who says I actually earned a degree. I assume you’re going into some kind of political activism?”
“How ever could you tell?”
Grantaire gives Enjolras a long, scrutinizing look, sipping his coffee as he does so. “Vibes,” he concludes, and Enjolras finally breaks, working hard to smother his laughter in the quiet, mostly empty space.
They eat their bagels in mostly companionable silence for a moment before Enjolras asks, “Favorite artist. Go.”
Grantaire barely misses a beat. “Rodin. The way he captures such raw and complex emotion in his work. The way he plays with perspective and movement to create these dynamic emotional journeys. I mean you just look at the tension in the musculature of his subjects and it’s like you’re caught right up in the moment with them, lost in the ecstasies and agonies of their lives. And the hands. I mean, fuck. I’d sell my soul to be able to sculpt hands like that.”
“Is that your medium, then? Sculpture?” Enjolras finds himself drawn in, physically leaning forward in his seat as Grantaire seems to float away, looking off into the middle distance as he talks.
“Nah, I never had the knack for it. I’m mostly a painter. Though I do a fair bit of work in charcoal and I obviously experimented with a lot of mixed mediums in school.” His tone of voice is casual and nonchalant, but he drums his fingers on the table irrhythmically as he speaks.
“A painter whose favorite artist is a sculptor. Fascinating.”
“How so?” Grantaire asks, seemingly amused by the comment.
“I don’t really know, it just. Seems odd. Like, why not a painter?” Enjolras doesn’t really know what he meant by the comment, but he wants to dig deep into the man across from him and unearth as many little gems as he can.
“Who’s your favorite painter, then?” Grantaire asks, and Enjolras really should have seen this coming.
“Ha, so. Kind of embarrassing. Um, I don’t really have one. I don't know I guess I don't really get art. Like, I can look at a painting and say wow that’s beautiful but, I don’t think I have a favorite artist that I can defend, if that makes sense?”
Grantaire looks at him skeptically. “I mean, yeah sure, but how can you just claim you don’t get art. There’s nothing objective to get. You just look at it and you feel. I mean, okay yes the concept of objectivity in art is complicated and divisive and I could spend hours going on about its utility in art critique while also tearing down the very notion of modern art critique itself, but. Really you just. Look at it. And say what you feel. It’s that easy.”
Of course the hot guy Enjolras got drunk married to is an artist with vaguely anarchical views on the concept of art objectivity. Of course he is. The one subject Enjolras has literally nothing to say about. Wait, does he think Grantaire is hot? He mentally shakes himself. Not the time to be having a crisis about that. “I don’t. Is the problem,” he says, voice still level despite it all. If nothing else, Enjolras is someone who can project false confidence.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t feel? Anything?” Enjolras cringes at himself internally. “When I look at art. I just, see it.”
Grantaire’s eyebrows shoot up into his hairline. “I’m sorry that’s bullshit. Of course art makes you feel. You just haven’t been shown how to talk about it.” He stands up, gathers their things, and extends his hand to Enjolras. “Here, come here.”
“Where are we going?” Enjolras asks, already rising to his feet, and he has the sinking suspicion he would follow this man just about anywhere he asked. It’s a dangerous, intoxicating feeling, and Enjolras isn’t sure what to do with it.
“We’re gonna look at the pieces in this exhibition and you’re going to tell me how they make you feel.” His hand is warm in Enjolras’. He looks down, taking note of all the calluses on Grantaire’s palm and fingers, now able to attribute them to hours spent laboring over canvases and sketchbooks.
“Here, look at this one.” The piece they’ve stopped in front of is small, an impressionist piece of a forest rendered mostly in pinks and blues. “No filter. Very first thing that springs to mind when you see this. Go.”
“Um. The trees are pink.” Enjolras says, feeling like an utter fool.
Grantaire on the other hand, eats it up. “Yes! Abstract use of color. What memories come to mind when you think of pink?”
Enjolras waffles for a moment. It’s such a broad question and there’s so many things he could say, from the color of his and Jehan’s freshman dorm’s walls at sunset to the one crop top he owns that Courfeyrac got him for his twenty first birthday to the bouquet of flowers Cosette carried down the aisle at her wedding. He’s not sure which answer would be the right one, or if all of them would be too specific, or what any of them have to do with trees.
“You’re overthinking it. Just say the very first word that came to mind,” Grantaire says, gentle but not patronizing.
“Sunset.”
Grantaire’s hand gives his an encouraging little squeeze. “Yes. Okay. What memories does that bring up for you? How do they make you feel?”
This time Enjolras doesn’t think hard about it. “Calm,” he says. “Sunsets are calm.” He thinks of sitting on the balcony with his laptop and a cup of tea. Trying to eke out as many pages of political theory as he can before he’s too exhausted to think. Writing is something he’s good at. It’s relaxing, even if he is fighting his biological clock trying to get it all done.
“There it is. You look at the picture. What does it evoke? It’s easy,” Grantaire says.
“Yeah, but is that actually what I’m meant to think about when I look at this? Calming sunsets?” Enjolras looks away from the painting, watching Grantaire’s profile as he studies the painting.
“Who cares. Death of the author, and all that. The artist isn’t here. We are.” Enjolras still isn’t sure he really gets it, but he likes the idea all the same.
Grantaire leads him along through the maze of paintings talking Enjolras through each one. They go back and forth riffing off of each other as they move through the gallery. Enjolras answers each question, provides his own input, but he’s mostly interested in listening to Grantaire go on about brush strokes and color theory and sight lines. For every little scrap of personal insight Enjolras can bring to a piece, Grantaire has a whole thesis on another, walking through every step of his first impressions and analyses of the art. His eyes do that same far away thing, even when he’s talking about something right in front of him and his free hand gesticulates wildly as he talks. It’s mesmerizing.
One piece features three abstract women standing in a row against a stark white background. They’re not quite looking at the viewer, and their faces are expressionless in their simplicity. They’ve been staring at it for a while. Mostly just because it happens to be across from a bench and Enjolras needed to sit down. “I don’t really do this ever.”
Grantaire gives him that look, and Enjolras knows before he even opens his mouth that he’s going to say something ridiculous. “What, get married to strangers?”
Enjolras sighs heavily. “No, that too.” Grantaire doesn’t say anything waiting for Enjolras to elaborate. “I don’t really go to galleries or museums. Just stop to look at stuff and talk about it with no agenda.”
“Why not?” If Enjolras didn’t know any better, he might mistake Grantaire’s tone for sincerity.
“I don’t know. There’s only so many hours in a day. Fewer for me.” He pauses, there, expecting Grantaire to ask what he means by that, but he doesn’t. Just keeps that open, curious expression as he looks at Enjolras and waits for him to continue. Patient. “I have so many goals and I don’t know how long I have to accomplish them all and I need to make the most out of every single second if I want to even dream of getting it all done.”
“And what if you don’t?” Grantaire asks. “Get it all done? What will you have lived for in the meantime?”
“My ideals, I guess.”
Grantaire is silent, taking that in. He nods, but otherwise doesn’t say anything for long enough that eventually Enjolras stands again, offering his right hand in a reversal of earlier. “We’ve still got a bit more to look at. Come on.”
They wander for a bit more before they find themselves standing in front of a simple rocky landscape. The foreground is dark, but the sky is lit up in blues and reds and yellows. “This one makes me sad,” Grantaire says. Simple as that.
Enjolras waits a minute for him to elaborate, but he just keeps staring at it. “Why?”
“Sunsets make me sad. I don’t like endings.”
“What about new beginnings? Can’t a sunset be a new beginning?”
“Not if you don’t know how many you’ve got left.” Grantaire keeps staring at the painting, resolutely not turning to meet Enjolras’ gaze. “Figure if I’m gonna get less time than everyone else, I may as well spend it doing what I want. Traveling. Making art. See what I can.”
“I’d never even considered that,” Enjolras says, and there he is again feeling like a fool in front of this man who is so different from him in so many ways. It's not a feeling he's used to, but he finds it's not all that unpleasant either.
“Guess you’re just less selfish than me,” Grantaire says.
“It’s not selfish,” Enjolras snaps. He didn’t mean for it to come out so harshly. Grantaire just nods and stays silent, though.
To their right is the back door to the place. Beside it, a little table with crayons and a basket full of blank slips of paper. Above the table is a bulletin board covered in drawings. Some rudimentary and simple, maybe done by children or just particularly unpracticed adults. Some are a riot of colors, abstract but bright. Eye-catching. A few are just simple, but detailed pencil sketches. They’re pretty and show talent, clearly done by the same person. At the top of the board is a prompt. New beginnings. Of course.
Enjolras looks over at Grantaire, eyebrows raised as he gestures to the basket. “Draw me something?” And Grantaire does. It’s relatively quick. A simple sketch done up with a dandelion yellow crayon of a coffee mug, two slim hands cradling it. There’s a band on the third finger of the right hand. Enjolras suddenly feels like maybe he does get it after all, looking at the way the nobs of each knuckle have been rendered in quick, confident strokes. It feels. Hopeful. “It’s beautiful,” Enjolras breathes.
“It’s you,” Grantaire replies. “Hope you don’t mind, but I knew I had to sketch those hands the moment I first saw them.”
Enjolras looks down and realizes he is, in fact, wearing a simple gold band on the third finger of his right hand. It must have been the one Grantaire gave him last night because he doesn’t recognize it. He put it on the wrong hand. He can feel the heat rising to his cheeks as he hurries to explain, “I swear I didn’t even realize I was wearing this. I just don’t really have much feeling in my fingers and I’ve been a little distracted and here do you want it back?”
He goes to slip it off his finger but Grantaire stops him, gently cradling his hands in his own. “Keep it. I genuinely have no idea where I got it and it looks good on you.”
“It looks expensive,” Enjolras counters.
“Yeah, well. Gotta blow my way through the rest of my college fund somehow,” Grantaire says, like it’s just some meaningless, off-hand comment.
Enjolras stares at him for a long moment, feeling like he’s trapped in a gravitational pull that he never even noticed had been slowly drawing him in. He doesn’t fight it. Doesn’t want to. Grantaire looks down abruptly and scribbles something on the back of his drawing. It’s a phone number. “Here. I, uh, should probably get going. I need to check on my bike. And my aunt’s like, super religious, so if I don’t get to her place by sunset I might not have a place to crash for the night.” He flashes Enjolras that wide grin. “Are you good to get back to your friends on your own?”
“Yeah, of course. Just, uh–” Enjolras falters for just a second. Then he smiles back. “If you’re ever headed my way, I’d be happy to give you a roof over your head and a bed for you to crash in.”
Grantaire raises his eyebrows. “I believe my exact words were, ‘a couch for me to crash on.’ Not that I’m complaining, mind you”
Enjolras just keeps smiling, offering a half-shrug and a wave and Grantaire takes his leave, disappearing out the door.
***
Not even a week later, Enjolras is at the dining room table trying to type up a newsletter for Les Amis while he skims over a textbook passage on modernity. With the last break of the semester over, he’s got precious little time before finals are upon him, and then summer vacation which comes with its own influx of work as all of the students go home for the holiday and he’s suddenly massively short hands in all of his boots-on-the-ground initiatives. He's knee deep in a passage on the Iranian Revolution when the doorbell rings. He calls for Jehan, who is significantly closer to the door, sat as he is on the couch, but he has his earbuds in and has affected his favorite trance pose, so the odds of getting through to him at any point within the next hour are slim. Enjolras sighs, pausing the reggaeton playlist he has on in the background and hauls himself up from his chair, stretching his back as he does. His physical therapist would be so proud.
He plods his way over to the door, rubbing at the sore spot on his lower back as he goes. He opens the door just a crack, leaving the door chain lock in place. If this is another one of Jehan’s creepy friends, or worse, a cop looking for one of Jehan’s creepy friends, he wants some barrier remaining between them and his apartment. When he sees who it is though, he immediately slams the door, rushing to slide the lock out and swing the door wide open.
The first thing he registers as he takes Grantaire in from head to toe is that he looks like shit. “You look like shit,” he says.
Grantaire’s half smile spreads, taking up his whole face as he responds, “You don’t look so bad, yourself, Angel.”
They stand there for a beat too long before Enjolras realizes he’s being a bad host. “Here, come in. Sit down.” Enjolras spares a quick glance at the couch where Jehan is still sprawled over the middle cushion before leading Grantaire through the open doorway to his room and depositing him gingerly on his bed. “You could’ve texted to say you were coming.”
Grantaire’s smile turns sheepish. “I did text to ask for an address. I figured that would already be enough to ruin the surprise. It is a good surprise, I hope?”
Enjolras sits down next to him, their thighs pressed together despite the ample empty space to either side of them. “I– Yes of course it is. I’m the one who invited you. Why a surprise, though?
Grantaire turns away from Enjolras, rifling through his shoulder bag for a second before pulling out a little box of chocolates, the kind they sell at department stores that comes pre-gift-wrapped with a little bow. “I came to celebrate.”
“Celebrate?”
“Our annulment.”
Enjolras’ eyebrows furrow as he mentally counts the days in his head. “There’s no way it went through that fast. They told us five to six weeks–” Enjolras cuts himself off as Grantaire’s smile takes on that now-familiar shit-eating quality that means he’s being fucked with.
“Yeah, well. Didn’t want to wait that long.” Enjolras hears the part that goes unsaid. That unwillingness to waste time that feels so much more precious to them.
There it is. There’s that gravity again, and Grantaire’s smile fades as Enjolras finds himself being pulled further in. “Kiss me?” he asks.
And Grantaire does.