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Combeferre shook his head with a quiet laugh.
He wasn’t oblivious to irony. He didn’t delight in it the way Bossuet did, but Bossuet wasn’t there -- and somebody had to appreciate the nearly serene expression on Enjolras’s face.
Serenity wasn’t really something to be expected from someone handcuffed to a police bench.
But their predicament (because Combeferre unsurprisingly found himself in the same position) had him smiling -- genuinely smiling. Enjolras had closed his eyes and rested his head against the wall behind them while they waited to be booked, or fussed over, or whatever it was that the police were planning on doing to them.
They couldn’t hold them indefinitely. Obviously they would try -- but no one knew their rights and the legal code when it came to being detained better than Enjolras.
Probably because very few people had as much experience with being detained as he did.
And Combeferre, for all his insistence that they try not to intentionally make an enemy of the police force, didn’t really mind being along for the ride. Better to have company when this sort of thing happened than to have to go it alone.
“So how long do you think they’ll keep us?” He asked quietly.
“Couple of hours at most,” Enjolras answered without opening his eyes.
He was fucking thrilled, even if it wasn’t obvious. His friends would have realised -- Combeferre certainly did -- from the steady, unwavering curve of his mouth. But the police just read his elation as unapologetic disdain. It was half the reason they were actually still there.
From his point of view, any action that demonstrated the corruption and weakness of the government was good. It didn’t have to end in their favour. It didn’t have to end with the police watching, rather than waltzing in and smashing things, and dispersing the group. Any event would create a memory, and even the briefest memory could become the spark that would win the fight for their future.
So he smiled, and Combeferre laughed.
And the police stoically ignored them for as long as they legally could.
A couple of hours came and went without anyone so much as glancing at them. The bench had ceased to be a fun place to be -- which was exactly what the arresting officer had been waiting for -- and the handcuffs had started to make their wrists ache. But it wasn’t enough to bring Enjolras’s high spirits down. His smile had faded, but the smug elation at his achievements lingered in the bright flicker of his blue eyes.
It took the sight of a vase of roses on the other side of the room to actually prick at his good mood.
Combeferre glanced at him, sensing the cold, serious air. “What’s wrong?”
Enjolras’s mouth twitched.
“Enjolras?”
“How annoyed do you think Grantaire will be? On a scale of... one beer to a fifth of whiskey?”
Combeferre blinked. “About this?” He paused briefly, and then laughed. “He’ll probably be ecstatic-- you getting arrested is his favourite drunken story. Well, stories.”
Enjolras’s smile came back, but it wasn’t as wide or as enthused as it had been.
“I meant because it’s Valentine’s Day.”
And then it was Combeferre’s turn to falter. Relationships, strictly speaking, were not his forte. Although in fairness, he’d always assumed he would be slightly more reasonable about them than Enjolras -- but he’d noticed that the world had a habit of turning sureties upside down when people got too cocky. It was better to be confident, but flexible.
With a strong emphasis on flexible for the unsettling moments when Enjolras -- someone who stoically shunned those kinds of emotions -- quietly referred to his personal life.
“Is Grantaire likely to remember that?” Combeferre asked.
Enjolras would have shrugged if his right shoulder hadn’t felt paralysed. Police benches were not designed with convicts in mind.
But Combeferre knew him well enough to pick up on the feeling. “He doesn’t seem the type to care about that kind of thing,” he advised. “Besides, it’s not like you were planning to get arrested.”
An almost unrecognisable emotion tugged at something in Enjolras’s chest. He hadn’t been -- that was true -- but it didn’t do much to settle that new, strange sense of guilt.
Their arresting officer stopped in front of them just as Combeferre gave Enjolras a reassuring pat on the knee.
“You’re free to go,” he said bluntly.
Enjolras straightened up, feeling oddly relieved. It wasn’t terribly late -- he might still be able to salvage a small part of the day.
The officer smiled with all the evil and corruption that defined everything Enjolras hated about their government. “Not you,” he amended. He reached down and unlocked Combeferre from the bench. “Just this one.”
Combeferre didn’t move. He watched Enjolras.
Enjolras looked stony. “You know that’s illegal,” he replied civilly.
“It isn’t, wise guy.”
Enjolras didn’t react.
“You’ve got a criminal record.”
“I haven’t.”
The policeman dragged Combeferre to his feet with some difficulty. Combeferre was not at all willing to go. “You’ve been locked up more than five times on the same charge,” he grunted. “And now we’ve got the right to detain you for twenty-four hours on account of you being a public menace.”
Enjolras looked up at Combeferre.
Combeferre stared back down at him.
The policeman glared as the silence dragged on and on.
And then Enjolras laughed. He tried to stifle it, realising that he was in a significant enough amount of trouble without antagonising the police even more, but he couldn’t. He hung his head, and his shoulders shook, and the policeman silently fumed while Combeferre bit his lip to keep from smiling because Enjolras -- impossibly stony and austere Enjolras -- was utterly contagious in those rare moments.
After a minute -- as the officer tried to drag Combeferre away -- Enjolras looked up. There was mirth in his eyes, but absolutely no regret as he called out: “Tell him I am sorry.”
Combeferre answered: “I will.”
The policeman physically shoved Combeferre out of the station because it was transparent to him that the blond boy with the bright eyes had not been even slightly sorry about anything to do with him.
When the officer returned, he unhooked Enjolras from the bench -- only to cuff his hands behind his back again. Enjolras was undaunted. He willingly marched into the back, to where a cosy little cell had been prepared for him.
It was obvious from his manner -- in which he practically led the way -- that the title of ‘public menace’ was not entirely false.
In all honesty, he was just grateful that the cells in the police station were more secluded than ones in the local prisons. The doors were solid, rather than barred, with the exception of a gap where he had to place his hands so the officer could uncuff him.
It was excessive, really. He was a menace, not a hardened criminal. But it was also apparent from the way in which the officer delayed that the man clearly just didn’t god damn like him, and wanted to make everything about his visit -- no matter how short -- as unpleasant as possible.
“Enjoy your night,” the officer said sourly, in a way that reminded Enjolras of one of Bahorel’s favourite fight-the-man cop dramas.
But then he was gone -- having slammed the little window in the door shut -- and Enjolras was alone. He turned around, massaging his wrists slowly. It wasn’t ideal. For all his hard-line attitude, he did honestly prefer his own bed to the lumpy mattresses on jail cell cots. (And the bottom bunk was no exception, he noted, as he sat down.) But he was resolute.
He could make it up to Grantaire tomorrow.
He leaned back and closed his eyes. And in the silence of his cell, he marvelled at the fact that -- even though he was in jail, and even though his pro-liberty, fuck-your-partisan-politics meeting had been raided and quite literally demolished -- his thoughts kept wandering back to dark hair, soft lips, and sweet blue eyes.
Not that there was anything sweet in those eyes at that moment. If anything, they were mostly just foggy and confused.
That happened when Grantaire found himself unceremoniously pinned against the sidewalk just outside the bar. Bahorel was on his left, and Feuilly was on his right -- and none of them had anything to offer except for the occasional moan.
Feuilly especially, whose left eye was rapidly swelling shut.
What was it about Thursday nights that made bar fights so much more violent?
A policeman knelt next to the three of them and quickly started to recite their rights. “You are being taken into custody by the Parisian Police. If you do not fully comprehend the rights that are being read to you, you may ask for further assistance--”
Grantaire lifted his head off the ground. “Wait, wait--” The officer blinked, and Grantaire -- in extremely shoddy Spanish -- continued. “Stop, I don’t speak French. I need a translator.” The officer stared, and Grantaire, in utter sincerity, added: “Make sure she’s hot.”
Something very much like a shoe connected painfully with Grantaire’s leg. (“Ow.”)
“We know who you are, Grantaire,” the kneeling policeman told him. “Save yourself the trouble, and shut up.”
“Police brutality!” Grantaire shouted. “I have the right to meet hot Spanish women!”
Bahorel and Feuilly snorted into the concrete.
The policeman stood up, and with the help of his fellow officers, picked the three astonishingly drunk men up off the ground and shoved them into the back of a single squad car. As a stern looking policewoman pushed Feuilly’s head down (since his depth perception was nil at that point), he twisted and asked over his shoulder in an almost incoherent slur: “Do you have a cigarette? I think I’ve been drinking.”
She didn’t seem to notice when he ‘fell’ face first across Grantaire and Bahorel.
In fairness, they didn’t either.
Feuilly didn’t bother getting up. He rolled over and watched the street lamps fly past the window through his good eye. Grantaire rested his head on Bahorel’s shoulder, and Bahorel -- who took up most of the back seat by himself somehow -- stretched his legs out to the opposite side of the car.
It was almost cosy in a way.
“Pretty great holiday,” Bahorel muttered.
Grantaire blinked slowly. His mind was too hazy to remember the actual day, so he asked: “Holiday?” He had an odd, heavy feeling in the pit of his stomach.
“Valentine’s Day,” Bahorel answered. It was the reason they’d gone out drinking in the first place.
Not that they needed a reason -- but it was a great excuse to bring home hot and slightly desperate women.
There was a slight pause while Grantaire registered the words.
And then he shouted: “Fuck!” so loudly that the policeman behind the wheel actually slammed on the brakes. All three of them jerked forward -- Feuilly hit the metal grating that protected the cops up front from the arrestees in the back and yelped as he slid into the space around their feet.
Bahorel stared at him with wide, slightly wild, and incredibly confused eyes, as if he expected the car to dissolve around them at any moment.
Grantaire fumed. “I need to get out!” He shouted, completely oblivious to the fact that he was in a police vehicle, and not a taxi. “Take me to-- shit, where the fuck does Enjolras live? Rue Vev-- ... Avenue Rume... fuck!”
The policeman and his partner rolled their eyes and drove on.
“Stop! You don’t fucking understand! This is important!”
Bahorel grunted and pulled his feet out from under Feuilly, draping them across Grantaire’s lap instead. “Like he’ll even know what day it is,” he mentioned in a deep, quiet rumble.
“Of course he’ll know what fucking day it is, why wouldn’t he?”
“Because it’s Enjolras.”
That hit home. Grantaire settled back against the seat.
But it didn’t make the news that he was probably going to spend the night with Feuilly and Bahorel any better. Not that he didn’t like his friends -- like being a loosely applied term, because his appreciation for them actually bordered on an unhealthy need -- but it would have been his very first Valentine’s Day night with Enjolras.
The night bit obviously being far more important to him in his inebriated state than the Day bit.
The fucking pomp and circumstance of the day could rot in its corporate-driven, greedy little hole. He was utterly and thoroughly concerned with the far more important wild-and-debauched-let-me-show-you-how-I-love-lust-need-you-with-my-teeth activities that came later.
The activities that he was no longer going to be allowed to participate in.
He slumped over in an unhappy sulk.
Three officers had to physically carry him through the door when the car arrived at the station. If they hadn’t been far too familiar with Grantaire, they might have considered phoning an ambulance -- but there was a certain sense of leniency to be expected when there was a bed with his name on it in the back.
Literally, considering he’d written his name on a cot in permanent marker during one of his visits.
And then spent seven hours drawing penises on the wall before anyone noticed.
He’d been fined, of course, and his artwork washed away -- but permanent marker didn’t come off fabric easily, and if the officers at the station were sincere, they hadn’t really been all that invested in removing it. A random name on a bed was better than erotic imagery.
Besides, Grantaire wasn’t even excessively intoxicated. He was just being moody.
He, Feuilly, and Bahorel were inside the station and booked in under an hour. Unlike the officer who had nicked Enjolras and Combeferre, the people who brought them in had no interest in making them suffer.
Honestly, they would have preferred it if all three of them just passed out immediately. It would have been a lot easier on everyone.
Feuilly and Bahorel were carted off to their own cell. They should have been stuffed in an open, barred room together with the rest of the drunks -- but depositing them in one of the smaller rooms in back seemed like the safer option, considering Feuilly was nearly unconscious, and Bahorel was on the verge of transforming into a rabid animal every time someone pulled them more than a few feet apart. No one in the building was willing to test police-issue handcuffs against his drunken rage.
They had another room with a man they’d been told by a fellow officer was ‘extremely dangerous to public safety’. He’d insisted that nobody who could be incited to rebellion should be allowed within ten feet of that particular cell.
Naturally, it was the perfect place for Grantaire -- who couldn’t be incited to walk on his own -- to go. And in an ideal coincidence, it was the very same room that housed ‘his’ bed.
Enjolras sat upright at the sound of voices gathering just outside his door.
He briefly considered the possibility that he might be attacked by angry policemen-- not that it had ever happened before, but he didn’t exactly have much faith in government organisations -- and got to his feet.
The door made an ominous scraping sound. He shielded his eyes with one arm as the little cell was flooded with light.
Two policemen bustled in (a third stood at the door with a nightstick in one hand, just in case) and deposited a heavy looking sack in the bed that he had occupied only a moment ago.
Or not a sack rather -- what seemed to be a living, breathing man. Enjolras’s eyes narrowed.
The officer at the door noticed and muttered: “Now just stay back, you. Let him sleep it off.”
“Sleep off what?” Enjolras asked bitterly. “Drink, or assault?”
Grantaire’s eyes opened. He was staring at the wall -- but he knew that voice.
“Oh, stuff it,” the policeman answered. His comrades quickly withdrew, and the door was shut and locked once again.
Enjolras sighed.
And then he caught himself staring, because that drunk man’s curly hair seemed uniquely familiar.
Grantaire rolled over.
It was nearly impossible to catch Enjolras off his guard -- but in that moment, he felt genuinely floored.
Neither man spoke. Grantaire silently wondered if perhaps he was hallucinating, or dreaming, or dead -- or any combination of the three, and Enjolras briefly theorised that this was obviously some kind of twisted joke concocted by his so-called friends.
But it couldn’t have been. Because he’d most certainly been arrested, and he knew Grantaire well enough to vouch for the almost stomach-turning smell of alcohol.
“What did you do?” Enjolras asked quietly.
“No, fuck off-- I’m imagining this.”
Enjolras snorted. Grantaire sat up (with some effort).
“You’re a hallucination,” he said bluntly. “No, fuck me. I’m a ghost.” He reached up and rubbed his face with both hands and took a deep breath. “...Enjolras?”
Enjolras nodded. “In the flesh,” he replied dryly.
“...why are you in my jail cell?”
“Your jail cell?”
Grantaire stared at him -- clearly waiting for an answer. The fact that it was his cell was evidently non-negotiable and not worth explaining.
“Combeferre and I were having a meeting with a few of our friends.”
“A meeting.”
“A certain kind of meeting,” Enjolras amended, coming to sit next to him. Grantaire shifted, turning to face him. “You’ve been drinking.”
If it had been within him to do so, Grantaire would have blushed. But it wasn’t -- he compensated by hanging his head slightly. “I forgot what day it was-- I went out with Feuilly and Bahorel. They’re here too.”
“Why?”
“Bar fight.”
Enjolras frowned.
“Worth it.”
“You start a bar fight, but you’re just a drunk. I have a perfectly legitimate meeting, and I’m a public menace.”
Grantaire’s mouth twitched. “Public menace?”
Enjolras sighed and closed his eyes. “Bureaucratic crap.” His shoulders seemed to slump slightly.
Grantaire watched him silently, still fighting a smile. After a moment he leaned in and gently kissed the corner of Enjolras’s mouth. Enjolras’s eyes flew open, and Grantaire murmured: “Happy Valentine’s Day.”
Enjolras gave him a blank, vaguely indifferent look.
Because frankly, he wasn’t quite sure what to do. Who the hell found themselves locked in a fucking jail cell with the person they actually loved on Valentine’s Day?
They did, apparently.
“Enjolras?”
Enjolras hung his head.
Grantaire withdrew slightly. He wasn’t drunk, but he wasn’t sober enough to read through Enjolras’s stiff expressions.
But Enjolras didn’t give him the time to try -- he reached out, cupping the back of Grantaire’s neck with one hand as he pulled him close. He kissed him lovingly. Not hard, or demanding, or even apologetically -- just lovingly. It was a kiss filled with the sweet, sincere affection of someone who was grateful simply to have him there.
Grantaire shuddered from head to toe, finding it difficult not to melt into the bed.
Enjolras lightly caressed the back of Grantaire’s neck with the tips of his fingers as he kept kissing him.
Grantaire reached out with both hands, firmly gripping the front of Enjolras’s shirt.
There was a smile on Enjolras’s mouth when he finally did pull back. It was small, but that was typical for Enjolras. He didn’t use grand gestures when expressing his affection. With him it was always a modest, but firm touch.
Grantaire held tight.
“This feels real,” Enjolras quietly teased.
Grantaire kissed him again.
And again.
And again, just to be sure he was right.