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It’s cold tonight. The kind of cold that works its way into your bones and lives there, turning your nose red and your fingers clumsy. If you’re particularly unlucky it sneaks into your heart and that’s it, you’re dead by morning. And unfortunately there isn’t quite enough luck in this city to go around.
Winter’s a bitch like that, but Grantaire likes to think he’s smart enough to manage. He has so far, anyway.
“Alright, everyone, go home,” Enjolras says as he winds a red scarf around his neck. Curfew for the entertainment district is fast approaching and it's dangerous enough traversing the streets of New Paris at night without the shiny, sharp-toed boots of the law dogging your every step. The club is in its usual disarray after a night of business catering to the public the modern bread and circuses of loud music and alcohol, but the glasses were washed and the tables wiped down so the rest could wait until tomorrow.
Usually by this time Grantaire is one of two things: passed out drunk somewhere vaguely comfortable or pretending to be. Tonight he’s neither, unfortunately. Spending half the night arguing with Feuilly over malfunctioning speakers has really set his schedule back and he’s only just setting out a bowl of food for the mangy cat that haunts the back of the Musain when everyone starts shuffling out, leaving him to stuff his flask in the pocket of his threadbare coat and follow along. He waves his goodbyes and cracks his jokes and willingly enters the tender embrace of the streets.
It’s not so much that he’s proud. He lets the others assume he has a real home because it’s easier that way. They let him fall asleep in booths or slumped against the bar, sometimes throwing a blanket over him or forcing a pillow under his head, because, well, he’s drunk. That’s Grantaire for you, right? He’s never there when someone comes by the next day to open so he must have someplace to stay.
And he does. It’s not really his place so much as it’s a place, and even then he can’t pinpoint his so-called home to one set location. Like a number of the citizens of New Paris he finds himself squirreled away against the cold in any number of abandoned buildings rotting in the city’s outlying districts. Tonight it’s an old theater and even though it’s big and drafty Grantaire manages to find an alcove in the balcony that’s cozy enough. Someone’s even rigged some of the lights to work again, no doubt stealing power from a business nearby to offer some flickering illumination to the sunken cheeks and hungry eyes of the poor huddled in ragged packs beneath them.
He knocks back whatever’s left in his flask and curls up inside the relative warmth of his coat, a phantom beat still echoing in the back of his head. Working in the club does that to you, but it’s okay, he’s gotten used to it. It’s almost comforting now. A little slice of home to drown out the rustling of muted conversation punctured every so often by the screams of a hungry child.
It’s amazing what poverty can do to you, because he’s almost asleep when the hand touches his shoulder but in an instant he’s wide awake and nearly sober with the comforting weight of a switch blade in his hand. He expects missing teeth and wild eyes and maybe even the barrel of a gun, the sort of things that usually aren’t kind enough to warn you before cutting your throat and nicking everything you’ve got. Instead he’s met with golden curls shining defiantly in the dull lighting and that stupid red scarf.
“Jesus, Enjolras,” Grantaire breathes, slumping back against the wall. He pockets his knife and tries to ignore the way the adrenaline still singing in his veins is making his hand tremble. “Ever heard of knocking?”
“What are you doing here?” Enjolras asks, evidently unruffled by having nearly been stabbed in the face. Always right to the point, of course. Leaving Grantaire to respond in the most mature way possible.
“What are you doing here?”
“I followed you.” He glances around, surveying the old theater like a particularly unimpressive piece of art. “You really do need to pay more attention, I could’ve been anyone.”
A dozen different things spring to Grantaire’s lips but he can’t decide which to say, so he decides to take a swig from his flask instead, realizing too late that he’d drained it earlier. He pretends to drink anyways. At least it gives him something to do with his hands.
Enjolras is watching him but he pretends not to notice.
“Come on then,” the other man says eventually, standing.
“What?” Grantaire hates himself for scrambling to his feet after him but he does it without even thinking. The earth can hardly help but revolve around the sun, after all.
“You’re coming home with me.”
He balks, his heart leaping unhesitant to his throat. Enjolras has no idea the effect he has when he says things like that, the way it makes a little corner of his mind whisper hopeful maybes while the drunk cynic in him just laughs and laughs. “Says who?”
For a rare moment their fearless leader looks unbearably tired and that in itself is a small tragedy. You try and you try but you never win, do you, Enjolras? He wants to card his hands through that spun gold hair and whisper in his ear. Your friends are sleeping in the cold and the people are starving. Why can’t you win, Enjolras? Why can’t you?
But then the moment's gone and his eyes are sharp again. “I’m not cruel, Grantaire,” he says and for a moment Grantaire wonders how much that’s true. Sometimes it’s as if Enjolras is carved from marble, cold and beautiful, but when you look at his hands they’re smeared with dirt and blood just like the rest of them. No more than the rest of them, to be sure, but when someone puts you on a pedestal the light shines that much harsher. “I’m not letting you get murdered in your sleep here.”
He makes a petty comment about how he wasn’t worried about getting murdered in his sleep until Enjolras came around shaking him, but the fact is that when Enjolras leaves Grantaire follows. Hollow eyes track them, burning holes in his back, but he’s still got his knife and he knows that Enjolras’ hand in his pocket means that his finger is curled around the trigger of a gun. They’re not safe, not by a long shot, but no one ever really is.
Curfew has long since passed, even for the green entertainment district strip on Enjolras’ I.D. (it’s been too many years since Grantaire’s bothered to update his), so they stick to the shadows. Luckily not even the law is lurking about this late and the only soul they encounter on the shivering streets is one of Montparnasse’s girls and Grantaire manages to scare her off easily enough with some well-placed name dropping. If he didn’t know better he would have thought Enjolras looks almost impressed. Almost.
They steal into his apartment like thieves, Grantaire a particularly bad one as he stumbles over the unfamiliar layout in the dark. He’s been there a handful of times before – they all have, honestly – but not enough to save him from cracking his shins against the coffee table.
“I wasn’t expecting guests,” Enjolras explains lamely as Grantaire watches him kick dirty laundry into slightly more manageable piles. He catches himself smiling slightly before squelching it back down again. It’s just so charmingly surreal. Looking at Enjolras from the outside you’d expect anything of his to be stark and utilitarian, all sharp, modern angles and primary colors. Yet here he is, tossing a spare blanket and pillow on the well-worn couch, everything about the place carefully shabby with a sort of tentative warmth. Certainly better than where he had planned on spending the night, at least.
“You didn’t have to do this,” he says, eyes down, hands in his pockets. It’s stupid, because Enjolras already knows that and it’s not like he’s about to kick him out now but still he has to say it. He appreciates the gesture in that he’ll have a real pillow and something to wrap himself in tonight, but it doesn’t change that he can take care of himself and he has for a long while now. This is a luxury and he’s not going to allow himself to get used to it.
“You’re my friend, Grantaire,” he says as if that explains everything, but it doesn’t. Because Enjolras doesn’t say things like that, not to him. Not to Grantaire the drunk, the kicked dog with bleary eyes and a sharp tongue who doesn’t believe in anything (except perhaps one thing, just one thing, but he doesn’t know that). This can’t be real.
Except when he looks up there he is, standing there like a god from a burned history book, immortal and forbidden. And suddenly he can’t help it anymore.
That red scarf isn’t so stupid when he’s using it to yank Enjolras forward, meeting him halfway in a near violent kiss. He’s never imagined this before, he’s never let himself, but he’s sure even his wildest dreams never would have included Enjolras kissing him back. But his golden Apollo is so full of surprises and here they are, warm lips locked in a dance they don’t quite know.
Emboldened, Grantaire takes a step forward, moving in a drunken waltz to press Enjolras against the wall. He can feel his name murmured against his own lips and he can’t help but think how he’d like to hear him say it properly, the way he says things like freedom and human rights. It’s like Enjolras is the sun and the closer Grantaire flies the less he cares that his wings are going up in flames.
“Grantaire.” He says it but not the way he’s supposed to. He makes the name soft, almost sad, but his hands on Grantaire’s shoulders are firm as the pushes them apart. His scarf’s all askew and there’s color on his cheeks but he won’t look him in the eyes and Grantaire’s not sure why. “Stop. You don’t have to do this.”
For a moment Grantaire wants to laugh. A harsh, terrible laugh that bubbles wildly in his chest before it sours to anger. It’s amazing how Enjolras can do this to him. He’s Dr. Frankenstein and Grantaire is his monster, shocked to life against his will into feeling emotions he’s spent long years dulling with alcohol and cynicism. He wants to yell, to rant and rave and use stupid complicated words like love and want. But feelings like those are messy and Grantaire prefers to be simple like the new rage coursing like fire through his veins.
Because fuck you, Enjolras. Fuck you and your curls and the way you make his heart beat again. He bared his neck for you and here you are, calling him a whore with all the chivalrous sincerity and innocent grace in the world. You think you’re saving him from a mistake, but you’re not, are you? You’re just making it worse. Because now he’s had a taste of the golden apple and he wants more and he hates himself and he hates that he’s too proud to just laugh and kiss him again.
But bitterness is in his blood by now, like vodka in his veins, so he lets his eyes go dead and his feet pull him a step back to where the air is emptier and colder. “Right,” he says and he can’t help the roughness in his voice because his throat’s so dry and more than anything he wants a drink right now but he knows too well that Enjolras is a social drinker at best and he won’t find anything here.
For the briefest of moments he considers leaving, both to find something strong enough to obliterate whatever’s going on inside him right now and to escape Enjolras’ gaze pinning him down like a particularly curious insect. It’s a fleeting desire though. There’s no way he’ll make it back to the old theater at this hour and he doesn’t fancy losing a finger to frostbite just because he’s too cowardly and proud and sober.
“Goodnight then,” he says, because what else is there to say now? Enjolras has made his bed and, well, Grantaire’s not in it and that’s just the way things are. He’s used to living with that just like he’s used to pretending to fall asleep, only this time he has the luxury of a blanket without any holes and a couch that doesn’t smell like booze, so all in all he guesses he should consider the night a win on his part.
But that doesn’t stop sleep from evading him long after the lights click off and the apartment is filled with deafening silence.