Work Text:
“You took your time getting here.”
There was a low chuckle, and the chair to Grantaire’s left slid out. “Rum or whiskey?” Enjolras asked, nodding at the glass in Grantaire’s hand. He climbed onto the stool almost elegantly, one hand pushing against the bar.
“Apple juice,” Grantaire corrected with a smirk. He took one more sip before setting the glass down, no longer needing to look like the drink was his reason for being there. Drink hadn’t been for a while now. “You still know shit about alcohol, then?”
“Apparently I know shit about you, too, now,” Enjolras muttered. From the corner of his eye, Grantaire saw him raise a hand to signal the barman. “Since when could you sit at a bar and not drink alcohol?”
‘Could’, Grantaire noted, not ‘did’. “‘Could’? Your faith in my self-control is staggering.” He paused, as the barman took Enjolras’ order – some kind of fancy elderflower drink, an action staggeringly familiar – before continuing, “And, well, Jehan had to beat the alcoholism out of me eventually, right?”
Enjolras nodded.
Grantaire turned himself slightly, so he was facing Enjolras just as much as he was facing the bar.
He’d aged well. Obviously. Hair still shining like a freakin’ glow stick, if a bit shorter than when Grantaire had last seen it. More professional. Jaw line was stronger, forehead more lined, hands rougher. Eyes still bright. “You found Jehan, caught up with him yet?”
“No?” Echoing Grantaire, Enjolras turned inwards, looking at him with wide eyes. “Jehan’s in Liverpool?”
Frowning, Grantaire took a quick gulp of juice. Enjolras copied him. “Sure – he’s got a job at the Tate, is hoping to transfer to Tate Britain when he gets a high enough job... did you not know that?”
Enjolras shook his head. “I’ve only been in Liverpool a few days. Which is why I’m late – haven’t learnt my way around, and your directions-”
“Mm, few days, enough time to grab a map from the tourist office,” Grantaire teased, just to see if Enjolras’ scowl was still the same.
It was.
“I don’t like being a tourist, you know this.” Enjolras muttered, swilling his glass. And Grantaire did know. “I’m not here as a tourist, I’m here on business-”
“Ah yes, the political conference,” Grantaire mused, nodding, smirking slightly. “You here as a speaker, or just reporting it this time?”
Enjolras’ lips twitched into the hints of a proud smile. A bit out of practise, but Grantaire still spotted it. “Yes, I am actually speaking this time. One of three journalist speakers, the rest are all MPs. Oh, and there’s the Chancellor for the opposition but no one gives a toss about him, let’s be honest here.”
“‘Toss’?” Grantaire echoed, with a touch of shock. He shook his head despairingly. “You’ve been spending too much time in the House of Lords, too much time around Eton grads.”
Undeniably smirking, Enjolras tilted his glass to Grantaire as he corrected him lightly, “You forget, I am an Eton graduate.”
Grantaire scoffed. “Only on paper. You graduated Eton, you’re not an Eton grad. There’s a difference.”
Enjolras tried to hide his smile behind his glass. Grantaire saw it. “So who spilled the beans on me being in sunny Liverpool?” Grantaire asked, leaning back in his chair, cradling his own glass. “Jolly Joly?”
Looking sombre, Enjolras shook his head. “Actually, I haven’t spoken to Joly for a while, now. Last I heard from him was to congratulate him for his paper on neurochemistry getting published.”
“That was six months ago,” Grantaire said.
Enjolras shrugged. “Last time I spoke to you was over five years ago.”
Five years and four months.
“I’m not very good at keeping long-distance relationships going,” Enjolras continued wryly. “I have this tendency to-”
“Get caught up in work?” Grantaire finished for him, raising an eyebrow. “Shockingly, I noticed that.”
Enjolras tried to shoot him a glare, but apparently Grantaire’s immunity had survived those five years and four months. Sighing, Enjolras set his glass back on the bar. “I read your article,” he confessed. “On the new sculpture display, by the wharf or wherever? Realised you must be in Liverpool, so looked you up. Nice bio, by the way.”
“Bio?” Grantaire frowned, before realisation struck. He almost laughed. “You had to find my contact details through my page on the newspaper’s website?”
Enjolras had the decency to look ashamed at that. “Just the newspaper, if that makes it any better,” he corrected, with a smile that showed he knew it was hopeless. “Called them, said I work for the BBC and needed your email address urgently.”
Grantaire snorted into his juice.
“Art critic, though,” Enjolras continued after it became clear Grantaire wasn’t going to choke to death. “Nice. Putting your cynicism to good use.”
“Not good for nothing after all, eh?” Grantaire teased.
“Not quite,” Enjolras replied, winking at him, presumably to indicate that he, too, was teasing. The gesture made Grantaire smile again.
“So, you read the article?” Grantaire asked, when the comfortable silence started to seem like it could stretch on forever. “What did you think?”
This time, Enjolras smiled the widest, brightest smile Grantaire had seen in years. “It amused me,” Enjolras conceded, as if he knew that that was Grantaire’s only goal. Would have been, if Grantaire had known that Enjolras would read any of his work.
Pride warming his chest nicely, Grantaire bit back a grin and instead said, “I’ll drink to that.” He hesitated before the glass touched his lips, and added, “Well, not in the idiomatic sense, obviously. Only literally.”
Enjolras laughed, before raising to clink his juice against Grantaire’s.
“Isn’t there a speech today?” Grantaire asked, frowning as if he hadn’t been up last night, researching stuff to talk about with Enjolras. “On, uh...”
“Benefits of changing to the euro,” Enjolras finished for him, nodding. “It’s fine, I’ve got ‘Lissa covering that for me. I called in sick.”
He must have seen Grantaire’s stunned blink.
“What?” Enjolras asked, sounding confused. “You said this was the only afternoon you had free.”
It would have been impossible for Grantaire to hide his huge smile behind his glass. He didn’t even try.
*
Later that day – around half seven, after a long and very aesthetically pleasing walk via the docks on his way home – he found that he already had an email from Enjolras.
I can’t believe I forgot to say this earlier, but it was really nice to catch up with you. I had fun. Don’t laugh at me, I did. We really should do this again before we leave for separate ends of the country again, if not further.
Grantaire went to bed smiling.
*
“-and you had this, God, what was it, like a ‘for sale’ sign that somehow ended up outside Bossuet’s room-”
“I most certainly did not steal the for sale sign, I would never-”
“No, no distinctly remember it was you-”
“Must have been Courfeyrac, or Bahorel-”
“No, it was you, because it was that only time during freshers that we actually managed to get you drunk and get that stick out of your arse-”
Enjolras was laughing so hard he was bent double, and Grantaire was starting to worry that he wouldn’t be able to breathe. But the man was still trying to protest, waving one hand at Grantaire as the other clutched his chest. “No,” he gasped, “No, it wasn’t because I remember waking up with a plastic police barricade in my room, Courfeyrac had dared me to steal it from where they had been painting the SU building or something – the for sale sign was definitely someone else.”
“Barricade?” Grantaire echoed, struggling not to be suffocated through laughter himself, “Are you fucking kidding me? A fucking barricade? That’s a joke, this is a joke, you’re bullshitting me-”
Enjolras looked set to fall off the park bench. His laughter was no longer audible. A passing woman with a kid looked at him with concern, but Grantaire waved her on with a grin that was starting to make his cheeks hurt. “You definitely stole something though, that I’m certain about, I remember having the epiphany that you weren’t just a stuck-up twat, that you could be fun.”
“Only once in a blue moon, though,” Enjolras added, wagging his finger.
“Mm, true,” Grantaire allowed. “And only when Courfeyrac, Joly and I did the special Fun Enjolras dance and chant. Like summoning the fucking rain in the Sahara desert, making you have fun in University, I swear...”
That, for some reason, set Enjolras off again. “Oh, dear,” he chuckled, wiping his wet eyes on the back of his hand – he’d been laughing so hard he’d started crying. “I was such a stuck up little twat, wasn’t I?”
“One serious son of a bitch,” Grantaire agreed cheerfully. “I would have thought you were on formal mourning, or some bullshit, if you didn’t insist on wearing that garish red for the first few months-”
“It wasn’t months, it wasn’t intentional, and it wasn’t garish,” Enjolras protested.
“Garish.”
“It wasn’t-”
“So very garish.”
Obviously struggling immensely to not burst back into uncontrollable laughter, Enjolras shook his head. “Okay, fine, I defer to your artistic expertise, as far as the red is concerned.”
Grantaire raised two fists to the sky in victory. “You’re finally letting me win an argument! Finally! Only took, what, near ten years of knowing you?”
“With a five year gap,” Enjolras allowed.
Grantaire shrugged, not really an admittance. “We managed to loosen you up, though,” he said, cheerfully nostalgic. “By that third year...”
Enjolras chuckled, rubbing his face. Grantaire grinned at him, and nudged their shoulders together. An unspoken communication that though some of the memories were worthy of embarrassment, c’mon, Enjolras had to admit they were good times.
“People have criticised your work, though,” Enjolras said, and for a second Grantaire spent a bizarre moment trying to figure out who would criticise a critic’s work, before Enjolras continued, “Apparently I still don’t laugh enough. I remember being told that my laughing over a Sunday dinner this one time came as such a shock to my boyfriend’s mother that she almost went into cardiac arrest.”
“Boyfriend?” Grantaire echoed.
Enjolras scowled, waving a hand as if to wave the word away. “Ex, now, was boyfriend at the time. This was a long while ago, actually.”
“I was about to say,” Grantaire said, breathing out and relaxing again, “You, a love-life? But surely a boyfriend would be a horrible third-wheel between you and your work!”
“And with that, you concisely sum up why we’re no longer together,” Enjolras said, actually sounding quite cheerful about it.
Grantaire smiled.
A comfortable silence continued for a little while.
“I leave tomorrow,” Enjolras said abruptly. “Going back to London. Uh. But I might be able to come back to Liverpool in a bit, do some coverage with shots of the building the conference was in, or-”
“I’m probably not going to be here much longer either,” Grantaire cut in, suddenly feeling tired. “I go where the newspaper points me. There’s some kind of avant-garde display in Stockholm, soon. No doubt they’ll want me there.”
Enjolras was looking at the floor, nodding.
“We’ll keep in touch, of course,” Grantaire said, trying to feel like these weren’t the exact same words he’d said five years and four months ago. “Emails, Skype, text... twenty first century, et cetera, et cetera...”
“Yeah,” Enjolras muttered, eyes still fixed on the tarmac between his feet.
“And don’t you go and get wound up in your work,” Grantaire persevered, “try and be sociable every once in a while, okay?”
“Okay,” Enjolras repeated.
“We’ll have to schedule regular meet-ups. Once every month or so.” Grantaire trailed off, falling silent with uncertainty. “This... this all sounding good to you?”
Enjolras turned his head to smile up at Grantaire. “It sounds great,” he said, eyes shining with something that wasn’t quite happiness, and that fell just short of hope.
*
Enjolras went to London.
*
Grantaire went to Sweden.
*
It was two months before Enjolras finally received an email:
So guess who’s in London.
*
“You’re late.”
Grantaire skidded to a halt beside the bench, panting, staring at Enjolras with clear incredulity, even going so far as to look out across the Thames and the sky as if they could give him an explanation. “The fucking bus was late!” he cried eventually, pressing his palm against his heaving chest. “I texted you! I fucking ran the last bit!”
“You’re a month late,” Enjolras corrected, crossing his arms and looking up at Grantaire. “You told me we’d meet up every month. It’s been two months.”
Grantaire laughed – brokenly, he still hadn’t got his breath back. He collapsed onto the bench beside Enjolras. “You realise I’ve been shunted from Scandinavia to Germany to Poland to Turkey, right? No need to pop into the office when there’s internet! I haven’t been in Britain-”
Enjolras just stared him down. Grantaire slowly fell silent.
“All right,” he sighed eventually, making Enjolras’ lips curl into a smile. “I’m late. I’m sorry. I’m so very, very late.”
Enjolras considered him for a second, before shrugging. “I guess a leopard can’t change his spots,” he mused, looking out across the Thames in an attempt to look cultured and intelligent. As ever – as he’d expected – Grantaire called him out on his bullshit, laughing and shoving him to the side.
The small-talk lasted a while. They ended up having to buy lunch from the little silver vans along the Southbank. Several hours of small talk, and Enjolras didn’t get bored of a second of it.
“You going to lug that bag everywhere?” Grantaire asked eventually through a mouth full of chips, gesturing at the large brown paper bag Enjolras had, indeed, been lugging everywhere, and yet, somehow, also managed to forget about entirely.
“It’s yours, actually,” Enjolras remembered, with mild surprise. “From Courfeyrac.” He kicked the bag over, watching with a smirk as Grantaire peered first at Enjolras with suspicion, then down at the bag.
His face when he pulled out the glittered Doc Martins was something Enjolras never wanted to forget. He wanted to keep a photo of it in his wallet. “Oh... god.”
“He said something about borrowing them?” Enjolras said, feigning innocence. “In university, or something?”
“I was quite happy forgetting these had ever happened,” Grantaire said with a faked revulsion. “Oh, eugh. No. How drunk was I...”
“I’ll assume that’s a rhetorical question,” Enjolras chuckled, watching with amusement as Grantaire vehemently chucked the boots back into the bag.
“Take them,” he said passionately, shoving that bag at Enjolras. “Keep them, take them far, far away, bury them-”
“I’m not keeping them!” Enjolras protested, trying to shove the bag back across. “No way! I don’t want them in my house for another minute-”
“Then give them to Courfeyrac!” Grantaire suggested, one final push firmly dropping the bag back down by Enjolras’ feet with a thud. “Tell the rag bastard that if he so desperately wants me to take them back, he can give them to me himself.”
Resigning himself to being in possession of the boots for a short while longer, Enjolras tilted his head as he waited for Grantaire to continue.
“Well,” Grantaire said, shrugging as if uncertain, “This whole reunion thing – it’s working out well enough so far, isn’t it?”
He looked across at Enjolras at that, eyes wide and hopeful.
If he’d been six years younger, Enjolras would have being chewing his lip with nerves before he replied. “About that,” he said.
He waited to see if Grantaire would respond. When he didn’t – when he waited – Enjolras felt more certain as he continued. “There’s a job vacancy at the BBC. In the news department. Uh. The culture section. I thought – It’s a good position, you’d have power, you’d still be able to write articles, good income too, and you’d get to say where you-”
Grantaire didn’t understand, he could see it.
So he paused, licked his lips, before he tried again. “I don’t like having to wait two months to see you. I’d even prefer it if I didn’t have to wait one month. If that’s okay.”
He didn’t get an immediate answer. Grantaire was frowning, and Enjolras had always been bad at understanding him when he was at his most serious.
When Grantaire looked down, Enjolras desperately followed his gaze, hoping to figure something out.
He thought he understood when he saw Grantaire’s hand resting on the space between them, palm up.
He was sure when, after taking Grantaire’s hand in his own, Grantaire tightened his grip.
“Yeah,” Grantaire said, smiling. “I think that’s okay with me.”
It was terribly cliché, almost sentimental, but a few hours later, the sun set and the two of them kissed outside the Tate.
*
Courfeyrac finally gave Grantaire his boots back seven months later, at Enjolras and Grantaire’s house warming party. Jehan immediately stole them for himself.
Joly cooked. Bossuet ate half the batter before the cookies were even in the oven. Musichetta, Feuilly and Grantaire spent far too long arguing over what colour to paint the lounge until Enjolras split the fight up on his way to take Combeferre, Eponine and Cosette flutes of champagne (alcohol for the guests only).
They’d given up on mature chatting and had broken out the games by the time Grantaire and Enjolras finally find time to sit together on their sofa. A moment of peace as everyone cheers on whoever’s battling it out over the Wii.
Grantaire’s eyes are fixed on Enjolras, and he’s somehow managing to both frown and smile. Feeling like a teenager as he tried not to blush, Enjolras nudges him lightly and asks, “You’re looking at me funny. What’re you thinking?”
Appearing almost bashful, Grantaire laughs. “Did you miss me? In those five years, did you miss me, at all?”
It’d be easy to say Yeah, of course, but truthfully, it’s not an ‘of course’. They weren’t on the closest terms, on the best terms, in the few years where they met daily. It wouldn’t be absurd to think that Enjolras would relish breathing space, even. But. “I did, actually,” Enjolras said, smiling wryly, and drawing further laughter from Grantaire due to the shock in his voice. “Not all the time, but – actually, it was before televised debates I’d find myself missing you.”
As Enjolras had thought he would, Grantaire snorted at that. “I never even considered the chance that you thought of me, until I got your email,” Grantaire admitted. “I thought you’d go on your merry way, quite happily forgetting about little drunk me-”
With that – with that impossible concept – Enjolras threw his head back and laughed. “Oh, R, Grantaire, you tee-totalling, cynical, pedantic, good-for-nothing bastard,” he said affectionately, the old epithet coloured with sentimentality. “I,” Enjolras continued, grinning as he clasped Grantaire’s face firmly, “could never forget you.”
Grantaire tried, with a twisted smile, to ask if that was a good or bad thing. But he didn’t have the time before Enjolras roughly tugged him forwards for a brusque kiss.
Only Courfeyrac saw and wolf-whistled. The others' attention was occupied as, in an impossible turn of events, Marius beat Bahorel in Wii boxing.