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Grantaire shows up at your house after a summer program in Greece with a tattoo on his left deltoid, the outside curve of his shoulder. It is, as you might have expected, in Greek—it was only a matter of time before he cemented his status as a Classics Douchebag. It’s not large; you can cover it with your thumb when you brush the pad over it: ἀμφιλύκη. You’re happy enough just to touch him after six weeks; you missed him, and though—and perhaps this is your fault—the two of you have never been casually physically demonstrative, it is a quiet comfort to have him right here again. You sit a few inches closer than necessary.
“What does it mean?” You suppose it is the question he wants to hear—confirmed in the way he has an answer ready.
“Amphiluke,” he pronounces for you, four syllables that roll off his tongue easily after six weeks saturated in the language. “It’s—morning twilight, the light before the dawn. I read it somewhere when I was researching my first paper Freshman year—new beginnings and hope. Dawn symbolism. I thought ‘rosy-fingered’ was a little too overdone.” You look at him questioningly. There’s a tentativeness you can read in the way he forms the words, a shyness that means there’s something else. Color comes to his cheeks and he glances down.
“Every time things are dark,” he begins, and you know, after everything, that he doesn’t mean physical darkness, “I tend to… forget. That it’s going to be light again. That things will be alright. But then I—” and here he turns even redder, reaches up to scratch at the back of his neck, then looks you right in the eyes. “I look at you. I look at you, and I remember that the dawn is coming. I wonder how I could ever forget. Somehow… you always believe in me, even when I don’t believe in myself. So that’s you, or it can be. You’re the light before the dawn, Enjolras—the one thing I can believe in when I don’t believe in anything else.”
He’s breathtaking, when he wants to be, and you’re almost giddy at the heady joy of having all of him focused on you. You take him in for another moment, wanting to memorize this exact instant forever, the heart-wrenchingly earnest look in his eyes and the stunning beauty of what he just said. You put your hand to the back of his neck and lean your forehead to bump against his, closing your eyes with a tiny smile. You can feel him un-tense.
You could never be so eloquent about the things that you feel, not with hours of choosing exactly the right words (though you suspect he did give it thought on the plane ride home), and you have to rely on the communicative power of touch. Contact is not something you can take lightly, because the more intimate, the more it feels like you’ve been laid bare, like a diary left open or an exposed nerve—you can’t do casual. But you trust him as much as he believes in you.
You lean forward to press the gentlest of kisses to his lips, hoping that’s response enough to what he said. One hand on his neck and the other at his side, you can feel the fluttering intake of breath, the surge forward, the hand that falters even after years of practice. It’s shocking, to you, every time you remember how much you can love him. He could shatter you with no effort, and though you trust he will not, you reel in the overwhelming tide of emotion, in the fact that he hasn’t the slightest idea of the power he wields over you.
You can’t believe he thinks he’s the only one who’s lost in this. You can’t believe how lost you are.
It’s natural that your hand should sneak up to give you better leverage on his head, that your arm should draw him closer. He’s let his hair grow out since his awful haircut last year, long enough to tangle in, and you’re glad for it as you pull back (he follows like a magnet for a moment) to press a kiss to his temple, his eyelid, the place where his jaw meets his neck. He has his hands balled in your shirt and when you disentangle one to wrap your own fingers around it, he shudders out a sigh at he tender gesture that makes you bite your lip.
Inch by inch you tangle back together as he stops acting like he might break you and kisses underneath your jaw and moves his hand to press flat against the skin below the hem of your shirt—his hands are warm and a wave of happiness rolls through you. You “hm” with enthusiasm and are glad you wore a v-neck when he begins paying attention to your collarbone. You can feel yourself flushing pink and going goosebumped at the same time, your breathing and heartbeat speeding up, and you smile, turning your face into his hair and sliding one hand up his side, glad he can’t see you.
It’s only later when you’re both lying curled together on your bed, shirts half-rucked-up and cheeks pink and bodies warm, that you tell him flat-out: “I like it.”
He snorts, but his expression is still just a little genuinely pleased. “Yeah, I kinda got that impression.”
You lean over and kiss him again. He kisses back.
This time, he’s bolder.
It’s a good afternoon.