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It isn’t an unusual occurrence for Grantaire to be drinking alone in the living room area of the student apartment he shares with Jehan. So when Jehan comes home one Saturday night at around 8pm, he’s not at all surprised to see Grantaire doing exactly that.
“How far in are you?” Jehan asks, observing the scene as he tosses his keys into the little porcelain bowl he keeps on the table by the door (which Grantaire never uses and that’s why he’s always losing his keys).
Grantaire peers into his bottle like that will tell him the answer. “Three beers and a shot of whiskey,” he answers.
Jehan nods. “So not too far.”
Grantaire grins at him. “Wanna join?” he asks. Usually his poetic roommate declines this offer, often joining him with a cup of tea instead before he goes to bed. But tonight Jehan considers. And then Jehan nods.
“Yeah, I think I do,” he says, sounding a little tired, and then going to fetch a clean glass and the vodka (because Jehan prefers vodka over whiskey).
Of course he ends up just drinking out of the bottle a few swigs in.
“So what happened?” Grantaire asks once Jehan’s hair is coming loose out of its braid and his eyes aren’t focusing quite as easily.
“What do you mean?” Jehan asks frowning at him.
“You’re home at eight o’clock on a weekend,” Grantaire points out, “drinking with your drunkard of a roommate. I have to assume something happened.”
“Nothing happened,” Jehan sighs, tipping his head back to lean against the couch. “Nothing ever happens. My life is perfect.”
“Wow, you’re so convincing,” Grantaire snorts sarcastically. Being roommates, they’re aware of each other more than just marginally and Grantaire knows that Jehan has been having a hard time of things lately. “Did you break up with your boyfriend guy or something?” he asks, not unkindly.
“I don’t have a boyfriend,” Jehan says in a sort of world-weary way, his eyes closing.
“So you did break up.”
“No, I haven’t had a boyfriend with whom to break up.”
Grantaire frowns, taking another swig of his whiskey. “But you’ve been going out with that guy?” he says, confused. “Whatshisface, you know. I thought you were dating him?”
Jehan sighs again and lifts his head off the couch in order to take a drink of straight vodka. He winces as it goes down, then says, “Not dating, no. Messing around, mostly. Regular messing around, but still.”
“Why the hell are you doing that?” Grantaire demands, a little more forcefully than he means to, and Jehan gives him a startled look. “Sorry.”
“Why are you yelling at me?” Jehan asks. “What about you? You usually don’t start until later than this, what happened to you?”
“What always happens to me,” Grantaire says with a kind of rueful smile. “Enjolras.”
“What did he do?” Jehan asks, crisscrossing his legs and cradling the bottle of vodka like it’s a small child.
Grantaire laughs mirthlessly. “What do you think?”
“He yelled at you?” Jehan breathes sympathetically. He loves Enjolras, they all do, but Jehan sees how cruel and cold Enjolras can be — especially to Grantaire. And Grantaire loves him so much, he always takes it straight to heart.
But he tries to pretend he doesn’t, so he smiles again. “At least he’s consistent, eh?”
The face he makes right before taking another drink is far from light.
It hurts Jehan to see it, so he changes the subject. “Why is it so preposterous that I mess around with someone?” he asks. It’s better if they focus on his misery right now so Grantaire doesn’t retreat entirely inside himself, which is a poisonous place for him right now.
Grantaire sort of scoffs at the question. “You, my friend,” he says, slurring slightly, “are not a messer-arounder. You were made for romance and commitment and dinner dates and grand fucking gestures. Messing around isn’t good enough for you.”
“What if I like it?” Jehan asks, challenging.
“Do you like it?”
A pause, then: “I don’t know.”
“Seems like something you should probably know.”
“I mean it’s —” Jehan begins, thinking, “— I guess it’s nice sometimes. To have someone around, even if they’re not really yours. Not so nice tonight, I guess, since we got in a fight and I kind of thought not being together meant not having fights, but all right. And you can stop laughing.”
“I’m sorry, I’m not laughing at you,” Grantaire chuckles.
Jehan sighs again. “I don’t know what I want, Grantaire,” he says quietly, and Grantaire stops laughing. “Maybe I’m not a messer-arounder.”
“Can I ask you a really stupid question?” Grantaire asks, regarding the young poet carefully.
Jehan nods, taking another drink of vodka.
“What about Courfeyrac?”
Jehan frowns and swallows. “What about him?” he asks. “He’s a messer-arounder, sure. He messes around all the time.”
“I don’t know if he is, though,” Grantaire says.
“I think his collection probably would say that he is.”
“Oh, come on, Prouvaire.”
“What?” And Jehan’s face looks so confused and innocent, that Grantaire lets out a sort of disbelieving laugh.
“You seriously don’t know?” he asks.
Jehan shakes his head in frustration. “Know what?”
“Jehan,” Grantaire says, leveling his gaze straight at the poet. “Courfeyrac is in love with you.”
And then Jehan laughs at that. “What?” he says. “That’s ridiculous.”
“It’s so not,” Grantaire argues.
“Courf flirts with literally everyone, Grantaire.”
“He favors you.”
“He doesn’t.” But Jehan sounds less sure now.
“Prouvaire,” Grantaire says firmly, leaning forward and actually putting his bottle down on the table. “There have been no less than five times in the past two months that he’s been locked out of his apartment and slept on our couch.”
“And?” Jehan asks warily. He’s all but hiding behind his bottle.
“And not once has he texted or called me to let him in. Or Bahorel? Or Feuilly? And they live fucking upstairs to him, they could let him in his apartment, but no, he calls you. Then I just wake up in the morning and sit on him. Or,” he adds as an afterthought, “I wake up to find you two perched on the couch together positively giggling over your coffee.”
“We’re friends,” Jehan says defensively. “Friends do that…”
“He looks at you the way I look at Enjolras,” Grantaire cuts through. It’s a low blow, but it’s true. Jehan’s eyes widen, he looks almost afraid. “He does. I’ve seen him, and I know that look. He’s in love with you.”
“He hasn’t said anything…,” Jehan whispers into the glass of his bottle.
Grantaire smiles, kind of gently actually. “I don’t think he wants to lose you,” he says softly. “He doesn’t know if you feel that way about him.”
There’s a silence during which Jehan blows fog into his vodka bottle and stares into the middle space in front of him and Grantaire takes another swigs and waits. Then:
“Do you feel that way about him?”
Jehan’s eyes flit to Grantaire. “I don’t know?” he whispers. “This is all news to me, R.”
Grantaire doesn’t say anything, he just sort of raises his eyebrows.
“I mean,” Jehan begins slowly, “I like him, certainly. He’s my friend — my good friend. Actually, he’s kind of my favorite person.” Jehan smiles weakly, staring out into that middle space again. Then he suddenly frowns again and his eyes are sharp when they look at Grantaire. “He loves me?”
Grantaire nods. “Pretty pathetically. Why does that make you look sad?”
“Hmm?” Jehan asks. “Oh, no. I’m not —”
“You look sad.”
“It’s just —” Jehan heaves a sigh. “Courfeyrac always wants to fix everything.”
“Yeah?”
“What if he just wants to fix me?”
Grantaire laughs again. “My boy, if Courfeyrac wanted to fix someone, he’d be in love with me.”
“Grantaire.”
He looks so worried. Grantaire fixes him with a level stare again. “All right,” he says definitively. “Riddle me this: who do you go to when you feel like shit and you need to talk to someone?”
Jehan doesn’t have to think for very long before he answers, “Him.”
“What about when you want to cry?”
“Him.” His voice is getting softer.
“And when you have good news? First person you want to tell?”
“Him,” Jehan breathes. “Oh my god.”
“And what about him?” Grantaire asks. “Who does he go to?”
Jehan looks up. “Me,” he says quietly. “He comes to me.”
If Grantaire were wearing a hat, he’d tip it. “There’s your answer then,” he says, leaning back into his chair instead. “And I know that I am in absolutely no place to be giving love and relationship advice, but take this from me: it is a gift to have the person you’re right for love you. Don’t just let that go because you’re scared. You’re not a coward. Don’t be one.”
Jehan looks Grantaire over, then says meekly, “That was beautiful, R.”
“Eh, I’m drunk,” Grantaire shrugs. “I probably won’t even remember saying it in the morning.”
Jehan smiles and puts his bottle of vodka on the coffee table, standing and walking over to Grantaire to deposit a kiss on his roommate’s forehead. “You’re a good friend,” he says. “I’m going to try very hard to be worthy of you.”
Grantaire scrunches his nose and waves a hand in denial, but says nothing. Jehan, having had enough of drinking on the couch, says goodnight and wanders toward his room, pulling his phone out of his pocket as he goes.
It’s with a ridiculous amount of newfound nerves that he sends a simple text to Courfeyrac.
Hey.
And with a ridiculously warm fluttering in his chest, he quickly receives a reply.
Hi! :)
And then, shortly after, another text.
C: Are you out tonight?
J: Nope, I’m in. You?
C: Out at the corner bar with Bahorel and Feuilly. You should come join!!
Jehan’s grin almost hurts his face, and he thinks about how he’s not a coward.
Be there in ten.
As he’s leaving, he passes Grantaire. “I’m going out again, will you be all right?” he asks, knowing Grantaire won’t want to be out with their friends tonight, not when he feels like this.
Grantaire nods. “I’m fine, chickadee,” he says. “You going back out with whatshisface?”
Jehan smiles and bites his lip as he shakes his head. “Remember how good you are,” he tells Grantaire firmly, shrugging on his coat.
And Grantaire actually smiles back at him when he says, “Have fun.”