Chapter Text
Plié.
Attitude devant.
Pirouette en dedans.
Fouetté en tournant en dehors.
Legs straining, Grantaire settled back into first position, pausing there for only a moment before he let his shoulders slump and his eyes close. Sweat itched on his brow; his breaths came fast and shallow, making him quiver from head to toe, and the ache that was starting to take root in his thighs and back served as a painful reminder that he’d been practicing for over three hours now. Grimacing, he reached for a towel — and spluttered indignantly as one slapped the back of his head.
“Please, clean up,” said a familiar voice, silken and lofty. “I would very much appreciate it if you didn’t stink up the studio.”
Grantaire rolled his eyes and started to scrub at his sweat-damp hair, turning as he went to face his dance partner and friend. “Ah, surely you are too kind to me, Floréal.”
Floréal arched a dark, perfect brow and leaned on the barre, having just executed a faultless battement fondu développé. “I am not kind.” Her slippered feet glided seamlessly into second position, and she sank into a grand plié so deep that Grantaire whistled. “I am simply honest.”
Grantaire corrected her shoulders with an absent brush of his fingers. “What some call honest, others might call cruel.”
“Indeed,” she agreed, rising again with a light, effortless fluidity that Grantaire had always envied. “But you are not others, now, are you, R?”
“You are right; I am not.” Grantaire wiped his brow, his collarbone, the back of his neck. The ache in his limbs was turning to fire, but he found himself relishing the burn — it was proof that he had worked hard, that he had done something well.
“When are you leaving?” he asked, tossing the damp towel onto the bench and glancing about the dim, drab space. Windows were hard to come by in the studio; there was only one in this practice room, thrown wide open and lit to blinding white by the fall sunshine. Through it filtered the familiar cacophony of Paris: carts clattering, people shouting, strains of music carried on a playful breeze. It was late September, when fall and summer clashed in a fleeting burst of golden splendor, cutting the thick honey heat of August with the chill winds of approaching October. There was no lovelier time of year.
Grantaire breathed deeply and gripped his elbows. There was no lovelier time of year — but there was also a fresh canvas (and a fresh bottle of wine) waiting for him at home.
“That depends,” Floréal said, lowering her heels to the floor. Grantaire had nearly forgotten he’d asked her a question. “When are you leaving?”
He shrugged, rolling a kink out of his neck. “Now. In an hour. Whenever they kick us out. Everyone else seems to be busy today — some sort of meeting, not to my taste, they said.” He bowed with a flourish. “I am yours to command, milady.”
“Milady,” Floréal mused, a wicked grin gathering on her full, dark lips. “I like it.” She tossed out an imperious hand. “Take me outside, monsieur.”
With a theatrical click of his heels, Grantaire moved to Floréal’s side, and she threaded their arms together. The adjacent hallway was narrow, quiet, and barely lit, flooded instantly with the echoes of their footsteps as they strolled through. Grantaire had once said that Floréal was never not dancing: even now she moved lightly, fluidly, head balanced over shoulders, shoulders balanced over hips, hips balanced over delicately pointed toes. Her head and chin were carried high; Grantaire knew that the brown of her slim, comely throat had deepened with the summer, and would swiftly fade again come winter. The curve of her mouth was haughty but not hateful. It was her mouth that had first drawn Grantaire — full, soft, always ready to tip into either a smirk, a scowl, or, on rare occasions, a simple smile (though no one ever knew which one it would be until it appeared). No words ever crossed those lips without careful calculation, and once they were loosed upon the world they could do whatever she wished them to: cut, caress, compel, kindle. It had not taken Grantaire much time to realize that he would rather hear those words than taste their beginnings, and it had taken Floréal even less to decide that those same words could fetch her a prettier face (and with it, prettier sums in prettier pockets).
So they danced together, and drank together, and quarreled only over who picked up the tab.
“The summer is nearly gone,” said Floréal, twirling lightly away from him and back again as they emerged into the foyer, “and I do not intend to let you waste the last of it.” Her dress fluttered, soft as spun sugar, but Grantaire knew that the body beneath was hard with lean, well-honed muscle. “We’re going dancing.”
“Dancing,” Grantaire repeated, and stumbling as she hauled him along. “Floréal, my darling, I wish that this duty did not fall to me, but I fear there is something I must explain to you—“
“Don’t be snide.” Floréal accompanied this with a roll of her eyes. “I mean real dancing. With music. And an audience. And fun.”
On the last word, she kicked open the front doors, drowning them both in warm white gold. Grantaire faltered, blinking in the sudden illumination, and Floréal let out a bright, joyful whoop, like a young songbird that had just cast itself from the nest and discovered the rush of the wind beneath its wings. “Come on!”
Grantaire blinked once more and shook his head, squinting into the glare. The cobbles shone like wet steel in the sunlight, and the houses like gilt; their neat roofs were the color of old, rich leather, sun-bleached from dark brown to a bloody, rusty red. The poor and the rich alike streamed along the sidewalks, counting change or swapping gossip or just drinking in the sunlight, savoring it like the slice of fruit left at the bottom of a juice glass. The last taste of sweetness before there was nothing left at all.
“Come on, R.” The mix of sunlight and elation that bathed Floréal lent her a warm golden glow, lighting up the flecks of brass in her hazel eyes. Her smile was a brilliant slice of white through her dark face. “I’m going, and I’m not going without you.”
A cool breeze touched Grantaire’s face, drying what remained of the stinging sweat. His weight passed uncertainly from his left foot to his right.
Somewhere down the street, a violin struck up a bright, reedy tune.
Floréal, grin broadening by the second, held out her hand.
“Oh, what the hell,” Grantaire muttered, and took it.
Floréal wrapped her fingers tight around his — there went any possibility of escape; Floréal never let go of the things she wanted — and took off at a sprightly run, bounding toward the central square with the easy, long-legged grace of a gazelle. Grantaire, with a roll of his eyes that was wasted on Floréal’s silk-clad back, raced after her.
The music swelled as they neared its source. It was a quartet, at least, perhaps more, and the air they played was vaguely familiar — distantly nostalgic, Grantaire thought, like a childhood memory. His shoulders and heart lifted with it.
“There!”
They had rounded a corner and entered the main square, where a substantial crowd had already gathered. At its center stood a small cluster of musicians — violinists, a flautist, even a young, russet-haired woman with a makeshift drum. Their growing audience revolved at a slight distance around them, clapping to the lively four-four beat, moving to the rhythm but not quite—
“Let’s dance,” Floréal breathed.
Before Grantaire could sputter out a protest, they were in the circle — or, more accurately, he was in the circle.
“Eyes up, dancer!” Floréal sang, and Grantaire turned just in time to catch her around the waist as she leaped past, using her momentum to spin up into her favorite lift.
“Flor!” he snapped, nearly turning an ankle as they swiveled left. Floréal rebalanced herself expertly, and the onlookers tittered excitedly as Grantaire adjusted his grip and lowered her into a perfect arabesque, her waist taut under his fingers. Floréal’s control of her body was near faultless, and Grantaire barely felt her weight as he moved to partner her. She flashed her eyes at him; behind them, the flautist soared into a solo just as Grantaire took his cue and pushed Floréal away from him, keeping only her hand as she pirouetted once, twice, thrice. Her hair fell like black rain as the wind pulled it from its neat coil, spreading it in a glossy sheet over her back.
When she came whirling toward him a second time, dress billowing like the flags over the Chateau de Versailles, Grantaire was ready. He was only vaguely aware of the other couples that were starting to swirl around them as he found his grip and lifted her up, up, up, sweeping his friend overhead in a move that was no less exhilarating for its familiarity. The music wreathed him, flooded him, consumed him, and his steps quickened with the tempo as the quartet’s excitement grew with the crowd.
Floréal’s laugh was bright, silvery thing, like the sounds pouring from the flute behind her.
“Let me down,” he heard her say, and he did as she asked, turning her down into his arms and letting her spin away from him, toward the edge of the crowd. Grantaire turned to watch her, a grin creeping across his face as Floréal extended a hand to a mousy, shy-looking young man with a splash of freckles across his nose. When he chewed his lip, his smooth, youthful face etched with anxiety, she caught both of his hands and dragged him into the growing ring of dancers.
“Go on, R!” she shouted over her shoulder, sidestepping neatly to avoid getting her toes trampled by her new dance partner’s clumsy feet. “Don’t just stand there!”
Grantaire hesitated for a only split second before sauntering over to the spectators, hand outstretched. The crowd stirred, and a group of girls began to push at each other, giggling and exchanging hushed words of encouragement. After a moment, a petite young woman with hair like corn silk stumbled forward.
Grantaire smiled at her; her eyes and mouth were so wide open that it was impossible not to. “And your name, mademoiselle?”
Her cheeks bloomed like roses. “Lucienne.”
“Lucienne,” Grantaire repeated, taking her right hand and guiding the left to his shoulder. Her fingers were slim, delicate, and finely-boned; she couldn’t have been older than seventeen, the same age as many of the proteges that the ballet master sometimes asked Grantaire and Floréal to assess. “Ready?”
Her dark eyes brightened with resolve, and she nodded once, sharply. “When you are, monsieur.”
He grinned. “Hold on tight.”
Lucienne yelped as they launched into the dance, but soon picked up on the flow and rhythm of it, letting Grantaire lead her through some simple spins and dips as they made their way around the circle. After a dozen measures or so, she began to relax — gradually, her slight, stiff frame became pliable, following his lead instead of letting him carry her through the steps.
Miraculously, she only stepped on his toes about four times.
When the song ended, they were one couple of perhaps two dozen, with barely enough room to put down their feet. Lucienne was skipping in place, face aglow.
“Again?” she asked, just as a sleek-haired young man squeezed out of the crowd beside them, wide eyes snapping between Grantaire and Lucienne.
“If it was all right with you, monsieur,” he said, making an awkward attempt to smooth his already-flat lapels, “I was wondering if I might ask mademoiselle for the next dance.”
Grantaire looked to Lucienne, eyes lifted in a question. “Perhaps you should ask the mademoiselle herself.”
The young man inclined his head to Grantaire, looking sheepish, and turned his gaze on Lucienne instead. “Mademoiselle?”
With a thinly concealed grin, Lucienne sank into an elegant curtsy. “I would be honored, monsieur.”
“Then I take my leave,” said Grantaire, bowing to each of them in turn before politely backing away, allowing the newcomer to take his place in the ring of dancers. Lucienne flashed him a brilliant smile of thanks, which he returned with a wink and a nod. “I pray he stays off your toes, mademoiselle.”
“And I as well,” she returned, a flicker of amusement in her pale eyes. Then the music started up again, and Grantaire ducked hurriedly out of the way.
Then, from behind him— a muffled cry.
Grantaire immediately whipped toward the noise.
“Flor?” he called, voice high with panic. He would know his friend’s voice anywhere, knew it so well that the sound cut through the music and laughing voices like a hot knife through butter. “Floréal!”
“R!” came the answering call, and despite the exasperation coloring the dancer’s voice he felt a rush of relief so pure and powerful that he wobbled on his feet. “Grantaire, I am fine, it’s nothing more than a—“
Ignoring her, Grantaire plowed through a cluster of merrymakers to reach his friend, receiving a handful of spluttered curses and hearing none of them. Floréal glowered at him, a hand cupped to her lip.
“Leave it be, R,” she said with a roll of her eyes, but Grantaire cut her a look, and she reluctantly lowered her hand. Almost instantly, Grantaire felt his hackles rise.
“Who did it?” he hissed, rushing close to take her face in his hands and study her split lip, which was still oozing a thick, dark trail of blood down her chin. “Who touched you?”
“It was an accident,” she said, looking skyward as if begging God to strike her down and spare her from Grantaire’s fussing. If anyone else had given such an explanation, he would’ve pressed until he was certain it was the truth, but Floréal was not just honest — she did not know how to be any other way.
“I’m fine, R,” she repeated, bumping her shoulder against his to soothe the mild sting in the words. Her smile was slightly red-tinted as she pulled out the folded kerchief she kept tucked in the bodice of her dress and wiped away the blood. “He did not expect me to spin back so quickly. It will heal soon enough.”
Her voice was tinged with wistfulness now, and Grantaire sympathized. They did not speak often on the subject of soulmates; as young dancers with an occasional tendency toward recklessness, the rapid healing and resistance to illness that lasted until one touched their soulmate had seemed like a gift, a pleasant side effect of a condition they otherwise did not notice. Now, it ached in the manner of an old bruise: faintly but deeply, and only when pressed on.
Grantaire supposed it was meant to be reassuring, the knowledge that he would not — could not — die until he had met the one who would supposedly complete him. But sometimes, when he awoke undamaged in a gutter after a night of trying to drink himself away, when the razor caught the edge of his jaw and the wound sealed almost before the blood had a chance to well, he wondered if even a body shattered in the Seine below the Pont au Change could be dragged forcibly back to the land of the living.
Floréal was still looking at him, her kerchief pressed delicately to her lip.
“R,” she said, and it was at once a question and a warning. She had told him once that his eyes spoke more sharply than his tongue; it was one of the reasons why he most often sought refuge in sleep and drunken stupors. Only there could he keep his thoughts entirely to himself.
He made himself smile, made himself muss her loosened hair.
“Let’s have a look, then,” he said, nodding at the kerchief. Floréal eyed him suspiciously over the top of it, the afternoon sun weaving the earthy green of her irises with gold. “It should be all right by now.”
Her brows remained quirked, but she lowered the stained, wadded fabric.
Beneath, the wound swelled, glistened, and began to bleed again.
Softly, very softly, Grantaire swore.
Floréal’s eyes shot wide, and her hand flew to her mouth, catching the ruby drops that were still leaking from the cut. Her fingertips shone red; so did the edges of her teeth. Her look turned suddenly wild.
“Floréal,” Grantaire blurted out, the word half a caution and half a plea, but she had already turned tail and was barreling through the crowd, thrusting aside those who did not react quickly enough to her shouts of “Make way! Make way!” She was a blur of black and bronze, sweat-sheened skin and wind-whipped ebony lace, a spontaneous forest fire burning its way across the square — away from the crowd, toward a slight, nondescript figure headed in the direction of the Rue de Belle. Her dance partner — the mousy, freckled one she had pulled into the circle. The one who had not expected her to spin back so quickly, and had bloodied her lip by accident — her lip, which was not healing, when only that morning she had scraped her knees on the studio floor and watched as the wet pink flesh sealed over with smooth, soft brown skin.
Now Grantaire watched, open-mouthed, as his friend’s long, lean legs devoured the space between her and her soulmate.
Her soulmate.
Floréal had a soulmate.
Grantaire struggled to take a breath. His chest felt full, tight, and painful, his skin cold, his head swimming, as if he had been thrown into a freezing lake and left to drown; the earth seemed to sway beneath his feet. He resisted the urge to stretch his hand into the empty space that Floréal had occupied only moments before.
Floréal.
Soulmate.
Floréal.
Desperate for something to distract him from the scene unfolding at the edge of the square, Grantaire cut his fingernails into his palms, tiny crescent wounds that pricked briefly with blood before their rough edges sealed, softened, and faded altogether. The quartet had started up again, and the dancers with them; the couples only noticed Grantaire enough to sidestep him, whirling in and out of his peripheral vision, colorful specters in the pale September light.
Almost blindly, Grantaire turned and stumbled out of the circle. His tongue felt like a foreign object in his own mouth, heavy and dry. He needed a drink. He needed to forget. He needed—
At full speed, without looking up, he slammed into something warm and solid.
Grantaire froze. The something — no, someone — let out a muffled grunt. Hands settled on his upper arms. Eyes — sharp eyes, bright eyes, cool yet full of fire — settled on his face. Shock settled in his heart.
“Pardon me,” said an unfamiliar voice, startlingly close. It was a beautiful voice — golden and rich, weighty and warm, slow and deliberate as the sunrise. The kind of voice that Grantaire knew would stick in his memory like honey on his fingers: something sweet to lick off later, to remind him of the taste that had already faded from his tongue.
“Pardon me,” said Grantaire, a half-beat too late. His gaze snagged on tousled golden curls; on the healthy flush of a smooth, sun-browned cheek; on the clean, sharp line where a determined jaw met an elegantly curved throat. “Forgive me. I would have looked where I was going, but I’ve been told you can go blind if you stare directly into the sun.” He accompanied this with a quirk of his mouth and a flutter of his eyelashes. This young man seemed the type who would be repulsed by idle flirtations; his blood-red, custom-tailored waistcoat spoke of substantial wealth, while the glint in his eyes spoke of places to be and things to be done.
Just as Grantaire had predicted, his lips pursed, folding in on each other to form a firm, flat line. Grantaire’s own lips were dry; he wet them with a flick of his tongue.
“Of course,” he added, dancing along the perilously fine line between absurd flirtation and plain babbling, “I have also heard that Apollo is a warm, passionate soul, and poetic, also. Perhaps blindness would be a small price to pay, to be near to him. What do you think?”
The young man slitted his eyes at Grantaire. “I think that I will always prefer the company of men to that of gods.”
“How lucky for me.” The strength behind Grantaire’s grins was waning; he wished that this man, however beautiful, would step aside and let him return to the loving embrace of his bed and his alcohol. “If you truly reject the company of your divine brethren, Phoebus Apollo, then perhaps you would deign to share a drink with me someday.”
It was a request meant to repel, not to seduce — a bar would cut Grantaire off before he could black out, and that was something he did not have patience for at the moment. But the young Apollo’s expression barely shifted.
“If you take your wine at the Café Musain,” he said, “and would not object to having multiple drinking companions, then you would be welcome tonight at the meeting.”
Grantaire blinked, lips parting. “Meeting?”
Fire sparked in Apollo’s gaze: not rage, but enthusiasm. “Tell me, are you a working man?”
Laughter bubbled up in Grantaire like bile. “I suppose you could say that.”
“A student?” the young man pressed. His weight moved onto the balls of his feet when he was speaking, and back again when he was done; he was very close, close enough for Grantaire to see the strands of lighter flaxen curling amongst the dark gold and tawny of his hair. “Tell me, Citizen — how would you like to see the fall of the king?”
Grantaire jerked back, a peal of laughter escaping him that held more venom than mirth. “Why?” he asked, voice turning acrid. “Are you going to push him down the palace stairs?”
Apollo’s face clouded, blue eyes snapping like heat lightning. “So you would scorn our cause.”
“What cause?” asked Grantaire with a curl of his lip. “Suicide by National Guard?”
To Grantaire’s surprise, the young Apollo didn’t immediately lash out— instead, his face went quickly and carefully blank, his frustration betrayed only by the muscle feathering faintly in his jaw.
“If you have nothing to share but cynicism,” he said stiffly, his shoulders so low and tight that they pulled his coat smooth across his back, “then I will be on my way. When it is you as well as I who reaps the benefits when the monarchy is ended, perhaps you will rethink things, and join our midst.”
And then, with the sunlight glaring off his hair and his waistcoat gleaming like a bloodstain, he was gone.
“Grantaire!” came a voice — Floréal’s voice, sounding full to bursting — and Grantaire twitched, rooted to the spot. Ahead of him, the young Apollo was about to vanish among the crowd, melting into their midst like a drizzle of golden honey into tea; behind him, he could hear the pat-pat, pat-pat of Floréal’s satin shoes on the cobblestones, heading rapidly in his direction. “Grantaire!”
At the last possible second, he whipped around.
“‘Taire,” Floréal panted, hardly able to speak through her grin. At her side was the awkward, freckled boy, now flushed, looking dazed beyond coherent speech; his wide eyes were fixed on Floréal’s bright, animated face, almost unblinking, as if the thought of glancing away from her for a mere moment was unbearable. The backs of his fingers were curled against Floréal’s, touching but not yet entwined.
“I— I must go,” Grantaire blurted, smashing a fast, clumsy kiss against Floréal’s cheek as he squeezed her free hand, hard. “Enjoy your evening. I will… I will have a letter brought to you before dark.”
“Grantaire!” He felt delicate fingers on his wrist, pulled free of them before they could grip. Stumbled away. “Come back — R, you don’t look well.”
“I am not,” he heard himself say, as if at distance, before he turned and tore away into the crowd.
~~~
The walk home was not long. Grantaire had moved many times over the years, rarely lingering in one house or apartment for longer than six or so months; his drunken self did not play well with haughty landlords (and neither did his sober self, for that matter). His current residence hardly warranted the name — a cramped flat at the seedy north end of the Rue du Belle, squeezed into the upper level of an apartment building that looked ready to slump over into the street. It was dim, tiny, and occasionally prone to leaks, but it had a window that opened in the direction in the Seine, and a door with a functioning lock. That was enough for him.
Soft, moist wood yielded under his fingers as he pushed through into the flat, yanking the spare key free of the lock as he went. Going to the hunched cabinet in the corner, he fumbled simultaneously for a match and a bottle of whiskey; he found one before the other, and fire pooled on his tongue before it leapt between his fingers. He lit one candle, then another, and another. His hand trembled. The match slipped from his fingers, struck the carpet. Went out.
Floréal had a soulmate.
Ever since he’d seen that single drop of blood rise on his friend’s lip, the realization had grown within him like a cancer. For years, he had almost wished that Floréal were his soulmate — not because he was in love with her, but because she understood him. She was the only one who could tell the difference between a night when she could leave her liquor cabinet unlocked and a night when she shouldn’t, the only one willing to dump cold water down his throat or over his head when a hangover would’ve otherwise kept him chained to his bed. She was always there: a hand in his as they danced; an arm under his shoulders when she (rightfully) didn’t trust him to get home safe; a voice murmuring in his ear as he lay curled on the bathroom floor, an upturned glass lying a few feet from his left hand, a stained razor resting just beyond the reach of his right. She was safe, she was constant. She was home.
But she was also her own person, with a life that had begun before Grantaire — and would continue after.
Grantaire gripped the counter; his knuckles were white under the faint shimmer of the candles he’d managed to light. He considered fetching a glass, then drank straight from the bottle, trailing fire down his throat as he reached for another match. This time he got to five candles before an involuntary twitch of his fingers sent the match careening to the floor, where it fizzled out in a delicate wisp of smoke. He was panting slightly — he felt hollow, skeletal, as if every breath were escaping between the gaps in his ribs, never to reach his lungs. Even the whiskey wouldn’t settle in his stomach. For once he could find no enjoyment in the heat of it, in the pleasure that was made mostly of pain.
A streak of lucent gold suddenly cut across Grantaire’s hand like a brushstroke, and he turned his hazy eyes to the window. Outside, the sun was burning down, staining the sky as if with iodine; the Seine was brilliant with its reflected glow, blazing like the Phlegethon. The soft, chalky clouds in the east were starting to purple with approaching dusk.
Dusk. Floréal’s letter. Grantaire peeled himself back from the counter, bottle in hand, and crossed swiftly to the tiny desk in the corner; he was not drunk yet, only warm, and his balance was sound as he lowered his aching body into a chair. Suddenly self-conscious, he flicked a glance to his left, toward the couch, but his sister was not there: there were only faint indents in the threadbare cushions where Violetta had once lain. His sister’s visits tended to be more infrequent than not, as he would expect, considering she spent most of her nights in plush beds, her svelte frame wrapped in silk sheets, minimal clothing, and the arms of this nobleman or that one. She had no place of her own; whatever Grantaire had was hers as well. But Violetta was beautiful — both exquisite and wise, read the letters that sometimes arrived at their shared address, at once the incarnation of the glorious Venus and the omniscient Minerva — and that meant her business thrived. Rare were the nights she spent alone.
Tonight, it seemed, was not one of those nights — Grantaire’s fingertips skated across smooth stationery and a broken wax seal as he searched for an inkwell, the paper like satin against his skin. He glimpsed only the address — his own, prefaced by Violetta’s name in a official, unfamiliar hand — and the signature — sweeping, in more ways than one — before he held a candle to the letter’s creamy edge. The flame caught, and Grantaire inhaled a mouthful of the bittersweet smoke before he dropped the letter into the waste basket and left it to smolder.
With the tang of whiskey and burning ink in the back of his throat, Grantaire smoothed a slightly rumpled sheet of paper across the desk and twisted the top off the inkwell. The quill that he and Violetta shared was going dull — she had been writing to many clients as of late — but he still put it to paper.
My dearest Floréal.
He grimaced; scratched it out.
Darling Floréal.
He smeared the words with one finger.
Floréal.
The ink shone for a moment, black as blood in the half-light, before settling into the page. Grantaire hesitated for a moment before dipping for more ink and continuing.
I would like to apologize for my behavior earlier today; I confess it was unnecessarily brusque and entirely unexplained. I am ashamed to have deserted you in such a way.
He could practically hear Floréal’s whisper in his ear: who are you, and where is my R?
The quill paused in his hand, trembling; then, suddenly seized with frustration, he flung it down and tore the page in half. When he cast it into the waste basket, the smoke that rose from it was sour under his tongue. His breath was a knife in his throat. What to say? How to apologize? How much to confess — that he was afraid to lose her, that she was one of his dearest friends, that he was sorry in advance if he drank himself senseless before her eventual, inevitable wedding?
No.
He fumbled to open the bottom drawer of the desk, fingers slipping on the cold, grooved brass. Heart beating his ribs like a moth against a windowpane, he yanked out a fresh sheet of paper, so fast that the edge slit open his palm. Breath hissed through his teeth as he reared back, gripping his hand.
He took a moment to breathe, clenching his fingers as the hot, prickling pain built deep and swelled slowly upward. The cut was clean, and fairly shallow, but it still hurt like hell; the skin around the wound was wet and tender, already growing warm.
“Damn it,” he murmured, grabbing a clean-looking handkerchief and starting to mop up the mess. His brow pinched; he was used to the ache of overused muscles and the sting of scraped knees, but this was a different kind of pain. The wound pulsed with his heart. “Fuck.”
He pressed the wadded kerchief into the cut until it bloomed, dark and full as a late summer rose. The curses kept flowing under his breath, a creek swollen by a storm; the pain seemed to deepen with each passing second, as did the hue of the handkerchief. He wished he had a reason to paint with such a color — but then, perhaps not. He didn’t need any more reminders that humanity could produce beautiful things only through suffering.
He shook his head, grimaced, and peeled away the handkerchief.
Later, Grantaire would wonder why he hadn’t wept. Why he hadn’t leaped from his seat and burst out onto the Rue de Belle and run all the way to Floréal’s door. Why he hadn’t thrown open a window and screamed his triumph to the sky — for it must be a triumph, mustn’t it? It must be. It must.
But he didn’t. He simply sat — sat, and shook, and watched the blood from the unhealed cut thread its way down his wrist. Watched it slip and shimmer across his skin. Watched it run and swell and shine, like paint, like wine, like the red string of fate.
Like a promise, driven by the beat of his heart.