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Enjolras had handed him a shirt without a word, having gotten up from the couch to disappear for a moment, returning with a red sweater—that Grantaire very much appreciates, even if it is just this side of too big, his ink peeking over the collar, just beneath his clavicle.
Grantaire had pulled the shirt over his head—and Enjolras has disappeared, presumably in the direction of the murmurs down the hallway to his left. He stands, on knees that would rather not support him, and heads toward the sounds, taking slow steps, admiring the use of space in the flat that’s only marginally larger than his own.
It is, very obviously, Enjolras’. There’s paraphernalia for anti-Mutant Registration protests, documentation that legally entitles him to be places where he protests—or it did, before today. Before the one called Apollo had opened his big fat mouth and made all those documents null and void.
He turns down the hallway, taking quiet steps toward the light of the kitchen before stepping in, the mutterings and conversation going quiet when he does, all eyes on him. Jehan gets up first, the dying plant near the kitchen window twitching and blooming in delight. “Grantaire, Jesus, you’re all right!”
The embrace is hardly surprising and Grantaire feels better already, the headache splitting his skull retreating from behind his eyes to the back of his head. “I’m fine, yeah, fine. Are you all okay? It looked like it was about to get messy.” Jehan pulls away, taking Grantaire with him, and dropping him into the chair he’d vacated.
Casual touches are bestowed upon him when they affirm their perfectly all rightness. (“It’s hard not to be all right,” Courfeyrac says, “when you had everyone worldwide distracted with a stunt like that.”)
The pictures under his skin roll, pulsating through his muscles and threading through his bones, and he smiles, a little.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Enjolras’ voice cuts into the chatter, though from his place against the counter he’s speaking to his trainers rather than his friends. “Why didn’t you tell us you were a mutant too?”
Anger is an undulating force beneath his words, and the kitchen gets just slightly warmer under his gaze.
“Uh,” Grantaire swallows, his ink pulling down from his collar, toward his chest, and he can feel the story break open upon his skin, memories opening in shapes on his palms. And he tugs the end of Enjolras’ sleeves over his fingers. “You know, personal prerogative.”
Enjolras heaves a vicious sigh, sparks coughing from between his lips. “You’ve been making a mockery of our fight against Registration,” Enjolras says quietly, and sweat beads on the back of Grantaire’s neck. Tendrils of ink wipe it away. “This whole time, our fight has been yours, and you made light of it.”
Grantaire grimaces. “Oh no, Enjolras, none of this has been my fight. My fight is a daily process hoping someone doesn’t notice that I’m covered in ink. Ink that moves, and shifts, and can bleed out of me.” He feels it rush up, covering his face, crawling under his hair, tousling it with inky fingers. “I don’t have a rallying cry, Apollo. I don’t have an army. I’ve got me. Who I have to look out for. Because who else will?”
He pushes away from the counter, stalking over with fire blazing underneath his skin—and it is, as he’s always been and will always be—like a star giving birth to something brighter. “If this wasn’t your fight they why, why, why did you throw yourself in front of the army and almost get yourself killed?”
“Because you are too stupid to even think about protecting yourself!” Grantaire is standing now, inhaling deeply through the nose to keep his colours in place upon his skin, breathing deeply again to suck it under his collarbone, keeping his visible pieces free of his marks. “If I hadn’t been there, you’d have gone out in a blaze of temperamental glory, because that’s just how you work!”
“That doesn’t mean I needed you to risk your life for me!”
Grantaire waves his arms, colours rushing toward his fingertips. “Everyone else in this fucking kitchen can risk their necks for you, starting riots in Paris’ streets, but not stupid Grantaire! And now you know that I’m a mutant! Why am I so different? You know that I’m not a normal little human kid, tagging along with the older children. So why am I not good enough for you?”
Everyone is quiet, sweat sliding slowly down all their skins as the temperature rises. And then it falls, slowly, incrementally, and Enjolras steps away from him, the fire in his eyes dying and his shoulders slump forward. “You’re good enough for me.”
“Just not good enough to die for you.”
Enjolras anger swirls red and orange around Grantaire’s navel. “I don’t want you to die for me. I don’t want anyone to die for me. I just—if this cause was never yours, why would you do that?”
Grantaire can’t believe they’re hashing it out in Enjolras’ kitchen, can’t believe this is how he confesses—to mutanthood, to whatever this is. He can’t believe that they have to do this now—in front of everyone.
He rolls of the sleeves of Enjolras’ sweater, as high as they can go, to the middle of his biceps, and the colours illustrate a history. A history of a mutant, too scared to say anything, but too enthralled to walk away. Someone too stupid to quit and hide and someone too brave to back down. A planet orbiting the Sun.
Rallies and secret meetings and every encounter they’ve ever had—a story on his skin.
“I might not believe in a lot of things—I might not even believe in fighting. But I sure as shit believe in you and I’ll be damned if anyone lays a hand on you.” He swallows, rolling the sleeves back over his ink. “Or any of you,” he amends.
(But he knows and he knows they know that everything he’s ever done has been ordered by priority.
And that Enjolras is his.)
Enjolras says nothing, leaving the kitchen, down the hallway, and the front door opens and slams.
“If it’s any consolation,” Jehan says quietly, the plant by the window curling and blooming carefully, stretching up with life despite the wilting temperature, “that was really poetic, Grantaire.”
“It’ll be better,” he sits back down, and little Gavroche comes into view—flickering in and out of existing (Eponine must be putting him through his paces)—before running off and down the hall at a sharp command from his sister, “if we can find some booze. I say it’s time for a party.”
(He breathes in his colours and hides them beneath a sweater just this side of too big.)