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Grantaire slides out of bed and lowers himself down to the floor in front of the sliding closet door mirror. His limbs feel tense and loose at the same time, and the ache in his chest forces them to curl towards each other despite how heavy they feel. His hair covers his forehead, flops in front of his eyes, but the deep bags beneath the are still visible, the darkening stubble on his pale skin, the lines around his mouth that aren’t from smiling. He raises the camera towards his reflection and clicks the shutter. He’s been battling depression, addiction, so many problems for years now. Things at the surface and things pushed far too deep. They claw at him and hound him, a silent howling in his head, an intangible clawing at his body. They make him ache, unable to sleep, at four in the morning. His shoulders hurt and his hair is greasy and unwashed and his eyes feel swollen and heavy. Enjolras sleeps soundly in their bed. Grantaire’s chest feels hollow and sore and his head is full of static. The spaces between his organs ache. The light from the hall is dim and yellow and ugly, turning a sickly green where it meets the blue light of the sky outside. It suits his mood. Grantaire documents.
He is a painter by schooling, but photography is faster, a more accurate way to capture reality than the imagination and the shaking fingers of an addict. And so Grantaire documents with a shutter, chronicles his crumpled little life image by image. Enjolras knows about it, but rarely looks through the files collected on the laptop; Grantaire knows he’s afraid of what he might find there. Afraid there might be more than what they deal with on a daily basis. But he needs to know it’s real, needs to know what he feels isn’t just some invisible monster batting him round the head, needs to know that the sliding exhaustion and nights of sleeplessness aren’t imagined, that his face looks as hollow and bleak as it feels. He needs to find some way to articulate how he feels. So he records late nights and early mornings, records the day he spent in the bathroom, in the shower in his clothes, Enjolras locked out and leaning dejectedly against the door in the hall, records the mountain of crumpled cigarette packs that piles up on the windowsill through the week, records the downward curve of Enjolras’ mouth as he sleeps. He deletes nothing; every frame is tucked away on the laptop, proof that his problems are real.
Enjolras rolls over, reaching out to Grantaire’s side of the bed and finding it empty. Grantaire watches in the mirror as he pushes himself up on one elbow and looks around in the darkness.
“Grantaire? You all right?”
“Fine.” His voice is rough with lack of sleep. His eyes feel gritty, eyelids heavy, but he knows they won’t remain closed even if he tries. “I’m all right.”
“Come back to bed,” The request is accompanied with the soft swish as Enjolras draws his arm across the empty half of the bed. Grantaire’s inability to sleep is nothing new. The routine changes sometimes, but the circumstance is old.
“In a minute.”
Enjolras mumbles something in reply, but it’s muffled as he turns back into the pillow. Grantaire stares at his own reflection, studying his knobby joints, the shadows in the hollows of his body, the little blemishes and discolourations of his skin, as he listens to Enjolras breathe above him in the dark. Sometimes he wonders why the other man is still here; surely he didn’t expect to deal with this when they met. Surely he didn’t expect to be sleeping by the side of a broken man. And yet, he’s still here, asleep in their bed, blond hair spilling across the pillow like a halo, one arm crooked at his side as if waiting for Grantaire to join him.
The camera is turned off and set back on the table beside the bed. Grantaire rubs a hand across his eyes and slides back under the covers, shifting until he’s comfortable, rolled onto his side with his knees up and his face tucked into the crook of his elbow. He feels Enjolras shift to wrap an arm around his side, a leg between his feet, nose tucked into the back of his neck. He sighs, and it shakes. Enjolras’ grip on him tightens, lips brushing the top of his spine, and Grantaire wishes the ache in his chest would let him sleep for once.