Chapter Text
In the small town of Adamant, the sunsets were red like something dying. It painted the evening sky with a ferocious color, forever growing in its intensity, and then becoming all black at its peak, like something going out of this world fiercely.
It was a cruel thing to behold, and Grantaire had never loved anything quite so badly. The sunset was his and only his; for a few minutes a day he was given something so unspeakably magnificent it made him want to cry in the most cliché way.
His heart pumped in his chest with a strange sort of anger, his blood rushing through his veins, his cheeks burning and his feet cold as ice. The death of the day gave Grantaire life.
It was a symphony like no other, the way summer would burn through all of them here, in the middle of nowhere. Grantaire could hear it now, his mind stuck between the staccato bursts of those early days in the city, when it was all light and warmth and now, dirty mahogany tables and cafés with cigarette smoke you couldn’t see through. The sun showered the empty beach in its delicious crimson as the sounds in Grantaire’s head rearranged themselves into a chaotic finale.
All streets and birds and university lectures, coffee with too much sugar as you pretended to pay attention to a friend rambling. It was all background noise however; these flashes merely gave way to the core of the song, the verse that discussed what Paris really meant to those kids who ruled it. Grantaire reached out his hand into the red evening light – and there he was, Enjolras, walking towards him, carrying himself like something divine.
He smiled at Grantaire, like he would, seemingly amused by having found him here.
“I’m beginning to think you love the shore more than me,” he said as he reached him.
“Never. Also, shore? You might want to start talking like a person and just say beach.”
“That just sounds so wrong. It’s not like anybody bathes here. The water is too cold.”
“You’re too cold,” Grantaire bit back, grinning as the other man punched him in the arm. Enjolras sighed, almost fondly, and Grantaire was kidding himself if he thought Enjolras was a verse. He was the whole goddamn song.
“Shut up, you know I’m not. You’re just here so much.”
“Yeah.”
“I mean, I get it. It really is beautiful here. I’m glad you brought me.”
Grantaire could feel tears fill his eyes. The sun was very low in the sky now, its light painting them both rather violently.
“I didn’t,” he replied, clearing his throat. Enjolras snapped his head at him.
“What?”
“I never brought you here, Enjolras. We never got to come here together.”
Red, orange, more red, and for a moment, purple.
“I- I don’t understand.”
The sun, as if on cue, sank beneath the never-ending sea, and in the dark, Enjolras disappeared.
Grantaire walked home alone.
**
“I love grapes,” Éponine said, her words barely comprehensible as she stuffed a handful of grapes in her mouth. I wuv gabes. In the TV screen light, her dark skin appeared slightly blue, in a rather smurf-like manner.
Grantaire made a fist, cracking his joints.
“Yes, you love grapes, I know, you just love grapes so much, they’re the light of your life, you just love grapes, we get it.”
“Did you just fucking meme me?”
“Sounds so dirty when you say it like that.”
“I’ll give you dirty, you fuck,” she said, then frowned, like even she was surprised how a small girl like her could have such a low, raspy voice. That couldn’t have been true of course. Éponine was not surprised by anything. She had the kind of face that remained unmoved by everything, like if you threw a dead body in front of her, she would just raise an eyebrow and murmur: ’what else is new?’
Grantaire envied that, to be quite honest. It must have been cool to walk the face of the earth like that.
“As fun as that sounds,” he said, arching his neck to be able to see the clock on the stove, “you can’t make good on that promise. You have to go.”
“Oh right, my shift.”
Éponine jumped to her feet, dropping the bowl full of grape stalks on the floor in the process. Grantaire sighed, leaning down to pick it all up.
Éponine put on her ancient leather jacket, shaking out her hair. Grantaire stood up with the bowl, taking a good look at her. She looked nice, her eyeliner intimidating as ever.
“Are you coming?”
“To witness yet another episode of Cheers starring Pontmercy?” Grantaire mused. “No thanks.”
Éponine made a face at that. She worked at the local bar slash pub, the Vine and Dime. A guy called Mabeuf owned the place, and he thought the name gave the place a cool medieval feeling. Éponine fucking hated that name. It’s anachronistic is what it is, she would say. They didn’t even use dimes in the middle ages.
The only reason she started working there (apart from the fact that she badly needed the cash) was Marius Pontmercy, a tall goof with an okay smile that Éponine, for some mysterious reason unbeknownst to Grantaire, was desperately, pathetically in love with.
He wasn’t as bad as all that, but the fact that he was completely oblivious to Éponine’s feelings and used her as a lap dog made him utterly unlikeable to Grantaire.
“It’s not going to be like Cheers,” she argued. “Like, not everybody knows his name. Mabeuf doesn’t. He keeps calling him Magnus.”
Grantaire smirked. “Beautiful, I’ll start calling him that. Maybe he notices.”
“Marius is not much of a noticer.”
“Here’s a little game I like to call: List Shit Marius Is Unaware Of.”
“That Montparnasse keeps stealing from him.”
“When it’s raining out.”
“That time Musichetta kissed his cheek and he walked around with lipstick stains the whole day.”
“The mortgage on his house.”
“Me.”
Grantaire’s heart skipped a beat. “You win this round.”
“Duh. You’re really not going to come?”
He licked his lips. “Can’t. I’m afraid Parnasse will steal from me too.”
“I promise he won’t. He’s in jail,” Éponine said, her expression bored, somewhere along the lines of just another Tuesday night with Éponine. The girl was crazy. Crazy awesome.
“…Okay. Still, I have to pass.”
“There’s going to be booze, man. Maybe we’ll go wild and bring out the board games.”
“Nope.”
“You never come out these days,” she mumbled.
“Just tired, I guess,” he shrugged, making his way to the kitchen.
Éponine frowned, and glanced at the ground. “Enjolras is dead.”
Grantaire stopped dead in his tracks. Something cold was opening up inside his chest.
Éponine continued on, ruthless. “He’s dead, R. Gone. He’s not going to come back.”
Words. He should probably say them at some point.
“I know he’s dead.”
“But you’re alive. Grantaire, I love you, and I know that the past two years have been hell for you, but you can’t keep doing this, closing yourself up, I. This isn’t living. You don’t talk to people; you barely leave the house. You either don’t drink at all for weeks or, or I find you passed out in the bathroom. And I’m not going to fucking watch you destroy yourself. Jesus, you’re alive, Grantaire.”
A darkness made its bed in Grantaire’s smirk. “You sure about that?”
“R-”
“You can go now.”
“Grantaire, I just-”
“I’ll see you, Éponine,” Grantaire said, cutting her off, something so stern and cold in his voice that made Éponine back off. She shut her eyes for a second, then took off, slamming the door behind her.
Grantaire walked slowly into the kitchen, putting the bowl with the grapes on the table. He sat down and stared at it, never turning on the lights.
An echo of Éponine’s voice (Enjolras is dead, Enjolras is dead, Enjolras is dead Enjolras is) kept him company for the night.
**
It was summer then too, when Grantaire first met Enjolras, very unlike all the summers to come though. The city was trapped in the heat, and the heavy quiet every excruciating morning brought with itself, and every day it was harder and harder to stare at the graffiti on the subway.
Grantaire was never unhappier – see how funny it was? The universe would laugh itself dead from the beautiful and terrible irony, because Grantaire would think of that time in his life now and see no unhappiness, only a sweet emptiness, days filled with anticipation.
Every Monday morning and Thursday afternoon led to meeting Enjolras, all the dead ends in the maze just one more chance to go the right way, to amazingly, incredibly, unbelievably be at that library where Joly spent his free hours, to say ‘bless you’ to him when he sneezed, to start talking to him about meaningless mundane stuff, to be his friend.
All of that led Grantaire to him.
Such a beautiful time, looking back. On the other side of the mirror, however, the Grantaire who was just starting college and was so dissatisfied with the world he could barely wake up in the morning, that Grantaire didn’t think very highly of the way his life was.
He liked Joly, sure, a totally decent fellow, but he never once thought it to be a cosmic miracle that they became friends.
He truly had no idea what was coming.
**
“So I have this favor to ask you,” Joly said to him one day, at the park maybe – no, at the pub, Grantaire remembered people talking loudly over them, cheering some game on television.
“Oh great.”
“Yeah,” Joly agreed, staring at him with a bemused expression on his face. Grantaire raised his eyebrows.
“And are you going to tell me what it is? Let me in on the secret?”
Joly’s eyes widened. “Oh sure! Please come to a meeting with me.”
“A meeting? Joly, are you. Selling drugs?” Grantaire asked, doing a stage whisper that made Joly wrinkle his nose.
“What? Gosh, no. Jesus. No, it’s a student-thing. It’s at this café, the, the Musain?”
“Never heard of it. Also, a student thing? Please tell me you’re not thinking about extra credits? Joly, it’s summer.”
“It’s near campus, I think. The café, I mean. And I know it’s summer, it’s not for a class, just a thing some students are doing.”
“But what is the thing? I’m burning up with curiosity here, dude,” Grantaire replied, lifting his arms for extra measure.
“They talk politics, mostly.”
“Ew.”
Joly sighed.
“I knew you were going to say that, but, listen, R. It’s a good thing. A bunch of people come together every week or so-”
“Every week? Eager much?”
“-and they discuss, you know, social problems, organize rallies, raise awareness. That stuff,” Joly continued, taking no notice of Grantaire’s interruption, his hands seemingly stuck in a weird cycle of gestures. He looked almost nervous to be talking about this. Grantaire swallowed, weirdly aware of this tongue.
“And you really want to go, huh?”, he said, narrowing his eyes.
Joly looked up to meet his eye. “Yeah.”
Grantaire sighed.
“And do I have to go? Do you have no other friends?”
Joly beamed at him, as if certain of his victory, and said, “Nope.”
“You better buy me booze though,” Grantaire said, and shook his head. Joly winked at him.
“Or else.”
**
They called themselves The Friends, capitalized like that, and Grantaire’s mind immediately went in an I’ll Be There For You sort of direction. The turnout was surprising though, they barely fit in the small back room of the café, all these kids who were somehow interested in the affairs of the world? Grantaire could not wrap his mind around it.
Even for a group of people called The Friends, well, they were extremely friendly. A tall, bald guy made a beeline at them the moment they entered, a little bell above the door indicating their arrival. He shook hands with both of them, introduced himself confusingly as both Bossuet and Lesgle.
“I’m so glad you guys came,” he claimed, his smile practically ripping his face in half, and Grantaire felt almost bad. This person (albeit misguided), seemed so sincere and smiled at him so nicely. His hands shook a little as he returned his greeting, something like guilt in his stomach. What was the deal.
“So are we,” Joly replied, answering Bossuet/Lesgle’s grin.
“Yeah,” Grantaire added lamely. The conversation continued without him. Joly and Bossuet (that was the name he actually used) turned out to be from the same town, and they rambled on enthusiastically about buildings and old ladies that were somehow significant. Grantaire tuned out, looking around the room. There were a few people here he’d seen around – quite a few actually. Combeferre from his Roman Myth class, and maybe he knew that other guy too, what was his name again. Yes. Feuilly. Wow, come to think of it, he had classes with a lot of these people, weird. There was something to be said about idealistic freshmen.
A quiet seemed to spread over the room, everyone finding somewhere to sit. Grantaire went with the flow, taking his seat at one of the back tables, taking out his sketchbook in case this got real boring real quick. All eyes turned to a guy standing at the front, looking hesitantly over all of them. Tall dude, wearing a hoodie too bright for this world, and his face-
Every breath left Grantaire’s body. It felt like mighty trees growing.
**
His name was Enjolras, and he was. Well, an idiot. The guy started talking and what came out was all academic terms, action plans and flashy PowerPoint presentations but, the way he talked, God. Something in his voice ignited everything inside Grantaire and it made him think of The X Files, because when Enjolras started speaking, Grantaire wanted to dress up in I Want To Believe T-shirts and roam the streets of the city, and just set fire to everything that was in his way.
He had a very peculiar voice like that.
As hesitant as he seemed before stepping up, Enjolras was all fire when he started speaking, opening up and something magnetic shining through his cracks. His beautiful pale skin seemed to glow and his feet could have been levitating from the ground as far as Grantaire knew. He wanted to draw Enjolras – no, he wanted to take him in his hands and beg him to step into the pages of his sketchbook and heal every drawing he could find there, amend the weak sketches that could never compare to the real thing.
Grantaire could not believe this. Fucking hell, his hands actually shook just from stealing a glance at Enjolras’ face, just from listening to the rise and fall of his voice, a voice that reminded Grantaire of something like the sea, changing from soft waves crashing to raging storms and burying those who could not swim.
Grantaire was shipwrecked in Enjolras’ voice.
It was, of course, perfectly and absolutely unfair that someone who ran tremors through Grantaire’s whole body without realizing it would be the kind of person who thought writing strongly worded letters to politicians would change the world.
He was talking about a possible sit-down strike now, with occasional inputs from Combeferre and a guy named Courfeyrac, who both seemed to catch every meaning of his with perfect ease, and they apparently wanted to protest the mistreat of retail workers, and Grantaire wasn’t even surprised, God.
Grantaire had taken to observe Enjolras’ cheekbones in greater depth, following the lines of his face as if mesmerized. The neon lights hit Enjolras’ face in exciting ways, coloring him quite ethereal, and it made Grantaire smile. This Enjolras did not belong here, among the folding chairs and the dirty tables, he stood out like the ripest fruit between the leaves.
A sit-down strike, seriously. Like that would do anything.
“Excuse me, would you like to say something.” And apparently, Grantaire had said this last bit out loud. Enjolras was looking right at him – him – now, his blue eyes cold but alive with an annoyance that made his aristocratic features even more obvious.
Enjolras was already painting himself every moment, and Grantaire didn’t have to do a goddamn thing.
“Uh,” Grantaire said, his mouth, once again, a death trap, “no. Um, you’re fine.”
Really fine.
“Is that right? Then why are you interrupting this discussion,” asked Enjolras, his lips in a definite pout now, this was beyond ridiculous, the guy was a phony, why did it make Grantaire’s blood boil.
“Is it a discussion though? Or are you just preparing a big monologue?”
“Excuse me?”
“Experimental theatre? It’s cool, man. You’re like that scene in The Lion King when Simba practices his hollering. It’s adorable.”
Wow. He had really just said that.
Enjolras seemed taken aback as well, and so did, basically, everyone else in the room. Combeferre’s mouth twitched but he disguised it by adjusting his glasses, and Courfeyrac was making eyes so wide at Grantaire you’d think it was Christmas morning. Grantaire was vaguely aware of Joly gaping at him from across the room, and of laughter from one side or another, but all he had eyes for was Enjolras.
Enjolras, who was looking at him with delicious, outright fury. Grantaire felt almost accomplished at being able to pull a reaction like that from such a godlike figure. His face was hot from all the blood rushing to it, his arms felt strong and sure at his sides; he hadn’t felt this good in weeks, and he hadn’t even had a drink yet.
Enjolras was still looking at him, worrying his lip, and Grantaire was fully, completely awake.
“Well,” Enjolras finally said, “if you’re so dissatisfied with how we talk about things here, why don’t you speak up? I’m sure you have countless excellent points, uh-”
“-Grantaire,” he put in, seeing Enjolras’ hesitance. “And how could I speak up, dude? You seem to entertain the idea that writing letters to suits and sitting down in inappropriate places will somehow make a difference. Apart from getting a chill, obviously. I don’t see how we could see eye to eye here.”
“Then what do you suggest we do, Grantaire?” Enjolras said, hissing, as though he was seeking to impersonate a cat.
“You mean like besides literally anything else? Gee, I don’t know man. A cookie sale is always an option.”
“Grantaire,” Joly stage-whispered, outraged. Grantaire merely smirked, bathing in Enjolras’ attention. Somewhere in the back of his mind he had the vague idea that insulting the other boy was way out of line and he should probably quit it at some point, but he enjoyed being out of the darkness at last, and talking to Enjolras, arguing with him, felt like running towards the sun.
“Sit-down strikes have the history of-“
“-not working? Sure. Listen, man, I really don’t want to tell you how to do your thing, but I do want to say just this one thing, it’s one of those days. Peaceful protests make zero difference; no one is going to listen to something as quiet as that. What you need to do here is make actual noise-”
Enjolras seemed to actually listen to what he was saying now, his scoff fading away and making room for something more focused, but still terrifying. Grantaire swallowed.
“I’m not sure jumping up and down is the right way-,” Combeferre began, but Grantaire shook his head.
“Romania in 1989, Egypt, Cuba, Occupy Wall Street-”
“Occupy was a failure though,” Enjolras added, but he seemed almost intrigued by Grantaire giving such a specific advice. To be completely honest, Grantaire was pretty surprised as well. He hadn’t even been planning on paying attention.
“But you have heard of it, right?” Grantaire smirked, which Enjolras returned with something resembling a half smile, which, wow. Grantaire was not prepared.
**
Once the so-called meeting was over and everyone was packing up their stuff, Grantaire, probably still high on adrenaline and just hopelessly stupid, walked over to Enjolras, who was organizing his notes now, shoulders hunched in a way that was unbecoming.
“So what’s up, dude? Are you a Poli-Sci student?”
Enjolras looked at him, perplexed.
“You’ve just argued with me in front of 20 people - and now you want to small talk?
“Sure, why not?”
“You. You compared me to a baby lion.”
“Don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy that,” Grantaire whispered, leaning in, and something twinkling in Enjolras’ eyes made him feel very brave for a second, which probably led to him bursting out with, “anyway, I just came over here to ask you if you are a way to block water.”
“What?”
Grantaire looked him in the eyes solemnly.
“Because damn.”
Enjolras closed his eyes for a long moment.
“That is. The worst pick-up line I have ever heard. Like, bar none.”
“Yeah, I bet you hear a lot though, huh?”
Enjolras huffed, disbelieving. He turned his head, and Grantaire could see that his cheeks were getting flushed in a very becoming way.
“Look, I don’t know if you’re joking or-”
“Listen man, I tell excellent jokes, you would know, because you would be laughing. Just – quality humor. That’s what I offer to the masses. And anyway, what I’m trying to say here is that I never go up to people I just met like this, so, really, this is all your fault.”
This last bit caught them both so off guard that for a moment neither of them could keep a straight face.
“My fault?”
“Yeah. Our argument was too good and somehow my brain short-circuited, and I am beginning to think there is no way out now. And also, I tend to speak until someone actually, physically stops me, so-”
Enjolras blinked at him.
“Okay.”
“Okay, you’ll stop me? Or-”
“Okay, I’ll go out with you,” Enjolras said, his face somehow overwhelmingly earnest.
“Really?” Grantaire grinned, then frowned. “Wait, did I actually ask you out?”
“Well, I thought you were getting there,” Enjolras said sheepishly. “But-”
“No, no, that was totally where I was going. No way out now.”
Enjolras smiled. “Okay.”
“I’m just kidding. You can actually back out anytime. Actually, I would fear for your sanity if you didn’t.”
“Oh great,” Enjolras said, rolling his eyes.
(Enjolras is dead Enjolras is dead Enjolras is dead Enjolras is)