Chapter Text
“Okay, so there’s this guy, and he has a blog.”
That was how he tried explaining the whole affair to Courfeyrac one afternoon, when they were sitting in a coffee shop somewhere in the banlieues of Paris. Grantaire had just come back from a trip to London, and had settled here until he could find an apartment in the city again. The dirt of the poorer quarters matched the blues he’d brought home from the rainy streets of London – or maybe it was just a thing that happened after travelling, the passing inability to settle back into normalcy.
“Okay, that’s… great!” Courfeyrac smiled, and had no right to sound anywhere near as enthusiastic as he did, considering that Grantaire’s attempt at storytelling was a poor example of one. His frown didn’t diminish his smile; it only made him look like a curious Cheshire Cat. “How is that important again?”
Grantaire still looked pale from the months spent in London, and the shadows under his eyes spoke of reasons to drink he had brought home in his suitcase where the people he would have drunk with had stayed behind. He sighed deeply. “I don’t know, Courf.”
They had only been communicating via tumblr during the last months, and Courfeyrac found it hard to start off where they had left all those months ago. Grantaire was pleasurable to have around, but by no means easy to communicate with – just because he laughed easily didn’t mean he would open his heart to just anyone. More of the opposite. “Has he been sending you hate?”
Grantaire shook his head decidedly. “No, no!”
He ran a hand through his dark curls and smiled crookedly. “Have you been online lately?”
Courfeyrac shrugged. “A little. Not much. I’ve been out with some guys I met, I should introduce you…”
Grantaire waved his hand dismissively. “You can tell me about your new friends later. I need you to listen now.”
Courfeyrac shut his mouth and nodded, ever the good friend. Grantaire took a sip from his coffee, and Courfeyrac could have bet that it would smell suspiciously like alcohol if he decided to sniff it.
“It’s a bit complicated,” Grantaire said, “A friend showed me this guy’s blog a couple of weeks ago, and I really wasn’t that interested because it’s all that social justice crap and politics and let’s save the world and then have fair-trade breakfast, and you know how well that goes with me, but then my friend showed me a picture and I might have followed him.”
“And that’s a problem because…?”
“Well, he’s hot,” Grantaire explained matter-of-factly.
“That’s not exactly a problem,” Courfeyrac decided after a moment’s hesitation. He tried to remember some of Grantaire’s reblogs, something out of the ordinary maybe, but his dashboard had been so full lately with posts from the ABC that Grantaire’s must have gotten lost.
“He’s hot, and completely out of my league,” Grantaire added, waving his cup around dangerously but managing not to spill anything. Years of drunk practice, Courfeyrac assumed.
“You admitting defeat before even trying?” Courfeyrac smiled, then held up a hand, “Wait, you weren’t seriously thinking about dating someone from the internet, were you?”
Grantaire rolled his eyes and leaned back in the soft chair with his arms crossed. “You sound like my sister.”
“Your sister is kinda hot.”
“And you’re a dick.”
Grantaire uncrossed his arms and picked at a loose thread on the upholstery of the chair. “I know that he lives in Paris, or at least somewhere close. He goes to demonstrations here, there was the one about the lack of democracy in the European Union where he--”
Grantaire stopped and looked up, noticing Courfeyrac’s smugly raised eyebrow. “What? I can know stuff about politics too. Just because I think they’re all morons doesn’t mean I’m not listening.”
Courfeyrac shrugged. “Actually I was more wondering if this mysterious guy had anything to do with your early departure from London, but okay.”
Grantaire had returned to Paris two weeks earlier than expected, little more than a couple of days ago. There had been no explanation, although Courfeyrac had tried asking when Grantaire had called him with the request of picking him up at the airport.
“Do you really think I would let two weeks of artistic self discovery go to waste over some guy?” Grantaire scoffed. “It’s not like I couldn’t have painted him in England. There was a misunderstanding with the landlord.”
He blinked. “Not that I painted him. I mean, I could have. But I didn’t.”
“I’m sure of that,” Courfeyrac replied with a grin, “Now, tell me, how long have you been following him?”
“About three weeks,” Grantaire answered after a moment of struggling with himself. He preferred to keep his misery to himself, but then again, he had brought up the topic. He’d spent his last week in London trying to convince himself he was overreacting, maybe now was the time for a little bit of honesty.
Courfeyrac’s grin only got wider. He was always cheerful, and it was immensely hard to hold a grudge against him – and Grantaire had tried.
“We’re going to find you a flat first, okay?” he said determinedly, “Then you can settle here again, and then you have time to worry about your Apollo.”
“Achilles,” Grantaire mumbled, “he’s definitely more of an Achilles.”
Ξ|Ξ
Two days after their meeting in the café, Courfeyrac called him up again. “How’s it going, Marius?”
“This is Grantaire,” Grantaire replied, grumbling because damnit, Courf called him in the middle of a project and now he was smearing paint all over a phone that wasn’t even his because he was borrowing the flat from someone who was out of the country for two months. And his name was not Marius.
“I know you’re Grantaire,” Courfeyrac replied with a sigh, “I was just making a joke about… ah, well, you don’t know Marius, I’ll have to introduce you tonight. They’re gonna be delighted, you’ll see…”
Grantaire frowned. “Tonight?”
Courfeyrac made a noise of enthusiasm that slightly scared Grantaire.
“You’re coming with me tonight. Café Musain, lots of fun, you’ll see… I already asked Combeferre, and he’s cool with it.”
“What are you even talking about?” Grantaire interrupted Courfeyrac’s excited rambling. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, then almost crossed his eyes in trying to get a look at his forehead. He had a sneaking suspicion he’d just left paint there as well.
“Those guys I told you about?” Courfeyrac explained, going more slowly the second time around, “It’s this group of friends I met after you left, they’re really great and you’re gonna like them, I can feel it!”
Grantaire looked at his watch. “Tonight, you said? When exactly?”
“I’m going to pick you up at half past eight, okay?” Courfeyrac seemed to be typing. “There’s never exactly a fixed time for the meeting, but that’s usually when the fun starts.”
“Okay,” Grantaire said, “I’ll see you then.”
He hung up before Courfeyrac could try his hands on an actual conversation. That could wait until later – and the atrocity he called a painting was waiting to be finished.
He went back to the acryl paint and canvas, but there was too much red and gold and looking at it after being torn out of his creative state of mind he actually couldn’t stand it anymore. The problem was that he knew damn well what he had been trying to paint while trying to avoid painting this exact individual – a guy he only knew from pictures goddamnit. This had resulted in splashes of red, aggressively covered in fine lines of gold.
In hindsight, he’d only managed to make it look like he’d murdered a fairy on the canvas – the almost unearthly outline of cheekbones that had captured his attention from the first moment he’d seen it was still too visible, and the mess of gold lines on top was still too recognizable as blond curls.
He switched on his laptop with a sigh, telling himself he was only looking for inspiration, something that would get him back into the mood for political comics and caricatures, and not looking for more pictures of that guy.
Only when he was about five minutes into his dashboard did he realize that he had opened tumblr. With a shrug, he scrolled back up – who needs that button it’s like taking the car when you could just walk where you want to go – and went on Courf’s blog to leave him a weird anon message. His reactions were priceless and generally hilarious.
That was, until he came across his friends latest post.
Introducing a shy introvert cynic to a bunch of lovely idiots. What could possibly go wrong?
He hadn’t tagged Grantaire, probably because he valued his life. Grantaire growled at the laptop screen and started replying, then deleted his initial ‘I am not shy!’ and typed ‘fuck you’. It felt immensely satisfying, though he still wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t going to murder his friend. One day, maybe.
He went back onto his dashboard. Of course, quite consistent with his luck, Achilles – damn guys who were careful about not revealing their real name on the internet, Grantaire had had to come up with something – had just reblogged something, including a long and exhausting comment too. It was a link to a newspaper article online, but going by the comment Achilles had added under the link, he didn’t agree with what the article had to say.
« The concept of fair-trade has been devised to cover up the vast unfairness in agriculture that the European Union and the USA have managed to achieve. We claim fairness and equality in dealing with less developed countries, but only to assure our access to those markets where we sell our cheap products. Fair-trade is supposed to give us citizens back the choice of disagreeing with this crime that our governments commit daily, but it cannot be an excuse for our complacency. »
Grantaire laughed, and then reblogged the link. He wished he could slap his dumb grin off his face. The cartoonist in his head sneered (sure, pay more money so some arrogant bosses in huge companies can get even more money, it’s not like you’ll make a difference anyway), but it was cute to see the guy get excited about pretty much anything.
He went back up his dashboard and refreshed, and almost had a heart attack. There was another picture of Achilles on his dashboard.
Obviously, the guy hadn’t posted it himself – he wasn’t vain enough for that, and there probably wouldn’t be a point to it for him – he’d just reblogged it from someone. The first comment, added by the one who’d posted the picture, said ‘our fearless leader entrancing the masses at the protest against more money for Greece’.
Achilles’ comment was a bit longer, but it took Grantaire more or less five minutes to even scroll down far enough to read it, because he was busy staring at the guy’s profile. His blond locks were sticking up in all directions, and he was in the middle of shouting something. He was wearing the same red raincoat that Grantaire had tried to paint him in earlier, and he stood out starkly against the rainy grey sky and the protesters who were mostly dressed in black.
And as much as Grantaire admired his Achilles – maybe he should tone it down on the possessive pronouns a bit – he had to laugh at the contrast of commentary:
The guy who’d posted the picture had clearly done so with a friendly jab at Achilles’ enthusiasm, a point which said Achilles had completely missed. Instead, he had outlined the purpose of the protest again.
« The problem, my friends, is not the money we’re giving. We need solidarity in order for this union to work, and that means helping out when a member of our community is shook by a crisis like this. The problem is that for years rich countries have been preaching equality without exercising it, using the free market only to gain access to new selling grounds in countries where the industry couldn’t compete with their cheap products. Our prosperity was borrowed, and it’s only fair that we pay now. »
Grantaire scrolled back up, still grinning, cast a last dreamy glance at the photograph and then reblogged it.
Ξ|Ξ
Courfeyrac burst into Grantaire’s apartment with his mobile pressed to his ear and his car keys in his free hand. He looked mildly horrified.
“Where are you now, Eponine?”
Grantaire guessed that Courf didn’t like the answer, going by his widened eyes and the hand pressed to his mouth. “But you don’t have a key to my apartment!”
He dashed past Grantaire and sat down on the grey, dubiously stained couch. Grantaire was basically wary of all of his borrowed furniture, but Courfeyrac didn’t seem to mind anything at the moment. “It’s not my turn, Eponine!”
Grantaire went back into the kitchen, not wanting to eavesdrop on the conversation when he didn’t have to. While he was at it, he grabbed a beer from the fridge and pressed the opened can into Courfeyrac’s hand when he returned to the living room. His friend took it without a second glance, pressing the freezing cold and slightly wet aluminium to his cheek.
“So Marius is there, great. Well, I’m taking Grantaire for the first time, and I’m not gonna miss that.”
He took a sip from his beer while listening to the answer, the sighed. “Listen, I’ll come over again. We’ll find a solution.”
He hung up with the desperation of someone who carries his heart out in the open, plain for everyone to see. “Eponine,” he explained and finished the rest of his beer. Grantaire took the empty can from his hand, then crumpled it and threw it over his shoulder into the general direction of the kitchen. Some wayward drops of liquid remained on his hands, and he wiped them clean on his dark, paint-stained trousers.
“Eponine who?” he asked and sat down on the floor cross-legged, facing Courfeyrac.
“Eponine Thénardier,” his friend explained, “She’s part of the group, we’ve been hanging out together a bit and I’ve been looking after her little brother when she needed a babysitter.”
“Is that what this was about?” Grantaire asked, gesturing towards the phone sitting on the sofa next to Courfeyrac. His friend nodded, leaning forward to bury his face in his hands. Grantaire would have offered him another beer, but Courfeyrac still needed to drive.
“She wants me to babysit. Apparently, Marius is going to be at the meeting.”
“Marius? Who’s that now?” Grantaire sighed, then his head snapped up suddenly. “Wait, you called me Marius when you phoned me. Why did you call me Marius?”
Courfeyrac looked baffled at the sudden influx of questions from his friend. “Marius is part of the group as well,” he explained, choosing to answer the questions in the order they had been asked in, “Well, most of the time anyway, when he’s not pining after Cosette. That’s why I called you Marius – you were kind of playing the lovesick puppy yourself the other day.”
Grantaire snorted. “I was not.”
Courfeyrac leaned forward to pat Grantaire’s head. “It’s okay. Just keep thinking that and you’ll be fine.”
Ξ|Ξ
Courfeyrac’s apartment hadn’t changed a bit.
The door still stuck, and it took Courfeyrac a second and some muffled cursing to wrench it open. Clothes were still strewn all over the floor – Grantaire recognized two of his t-shirts that he’d probably left at his friend’s place when he’d showed up drunk – and there was a large pile of shitty sci-fi-novels next to the sofa, the kind that always left you feeling like you would have been better off reading Star Wars fanfiction online. Grantaire knew Courfeyrac loved those.
Eponine was sitting on the kitchen counter when they entered, eating a yoghurt that – going by the brief flash of horror on Courfeyrac’s face – had probably been taken from his fridge. She smiled at Courfeyrac, and then considered Grantaire with a frown.
“So who’s your friend?” she asked with a nod in his direction.
Courfeyrac gestured between the two of them. “Eponine, that’s Grantaire, my friend who was in London. Grantaire, this is Eponine.”
Eponine waved at him briefly, then resumed eating her yoghurt. “Hi.”
Courfeyrac looked around the apartment nervously. “Where’s Gavroche?”
Eponine pointed towards the bedroom. “He said he had your permission to play with your collection of Matchbox cars.” Her grin was smug. “Totally cute, by the way.”
Courfeyrac yelped, and then dashed out of the kitchen in a hurry. Grantaire, who was left with Eponine, decided to raid the fridge for a beer.
The fridge was covered in postcards and pictures – Grantaire recognized the one he had sent from London, Courf had placed a magnet over the penis he had drawn on one of the palace guards – and its contents were in various states of decay. Grantaire found the beer in the same drawer as a bunch of oranges, took one and closed the door again.
Eponine was watching him.
Standing closer to her now, he could see that her clothing wasn’t as much of a fashion choice as it was a necessity she was trying to cover up – her boots were hanging loosely from her feet, too big for her, and her shirt was fraying. The coat next to her, from what Grantaire could see, was missing several buttons.
When she put her empty yoghurt down, Grantaire realised why Courfeyrac hadn’t complained about her taking his food. He felt a pang of sympathy for her, but dismissed it quickly – she didn’t want sympathy, he could see that in her eyes. She looked perpetually challenging.
“Nice shirt,” she remarked now with a smile, and Grantaire realised he must have been staring. He looked down and found that he was still wearing a paint-stained shirt that said ‘my best friend is called Jack Daniels’, and laughed briskly.
“We go way back,” he joked and took a sip from his beer. There was a rattling sound from the bedroom, and a disappointed whine. Grantaire raised his eyebrows.
“Since when did Courf become Mama Courfeyrac?”
Eponine laughed – it was a tell-tale laugh; loud and brief, as if she was surprised that she had found reason to do so. “I didn’t even have to chain him to the sofa with Gavroche. They just caught right on.”
She shrugged. “Maybe it’s a boy thing, needing someone to look up to who adores you equally and will still have your ass when you do shit. Daddy certainly never met any of the criteria.”
She scoffed, then regarded Grantaire from the corner of her eye as if she wasn’t sure if she had said too much. Grantaire just kept sipping his beer with a contemplating expression until Courfeyrac returned with a small, blonde-headed boy flung over his shoulder.
He put the boy down in the middle of the kitchen with a huff, then looked over to Eponine who had crossed her arms in a fashion that said not my problem.
“I caught it. Now what?”
Gavroche kicked his shin, which prompted Grantaire to laugh. “I like him.”
Gavroche smiled and shrugged as if he could care less. “I don’t need a babysitter, Ponine, I’m almost twelve!”
“Last time you said that you tried to sell your sister on ebay,” Courfeyrac reminded him, “So no, we’re not doing that again.”
“I thought it was a dating website,” Gavroche grumbled and looked over to Eponine. “Come on, I promise I’ll be nice!”
Eponine and Courfeyrac meanwhile were caught in a staring contest. Grantaire wasn’t sure if the girl was simply determined or borderline murderous.
“I am going to that meeting,” she said.
“Me too,” Courfeyrac insisted. He didn’t look half as scary as Eponine, Grantaire remarked with a certain fondness, more like a small terrier trying to stand his ground. Whereas the little Gavroche looked a little too pleased with the situation for Grantaire’s liking.
The only way to get through this, he decided, was by finishing his beer. The familiarity of the bitter taste always offered comfort, soothed bothers both big and small and presented advice in times of need. Moreover, it gave him an excuse to speak up where he would usually mind his own business and blame it on the alcohol.
“Well, then why don’t you just take him?”
Eponine and Courfeyrac stared at him like he was out of his mind.
“We can’t--” Eponine began, and Courfeyrac agreed.
“He’s just a kid, we shouldn’t...”
Grantaire looked down at the boy with a raised eyebrow. “Oh, I don’t know. If nothing else, he’ll be tired by the time we get home.”
“Stop talking about me like I’m not here!” Gavroche complained with a stomp of his foot.
When Courfeyrac tilted his head, Grantaire knew it was decided. “I suppose we could...”
Eponine just shrugged, jumping down from the kitchen counter and grabbing her jacket. “Whatever.”
They hurried out of the apartment – the door stuck when being closed, too – but Grantaire pulled Gavroche to the side on the stairs. “Don’t think I haven’t figured out how fucking pleased you are about this, you little shit.”
He said it with a fond smile, though, and Gavroche only winked at him.