Chapter Text
Enjolras didn't have time for this.
Well, okay, that wasn't true necessarily. If he was being honest, he didn't really have a good enough excuse to justify missing his best friend's birthday. He had already finished both nearly identical copies of his speech, had one printed out, a back-up copy on his computer, and a handwritten one to be safe. He was undecided on which would be recited at the protest, it really depended on how rowdy the crowd would get. His comrades had delegated tasks, and they were all on board with what was expected of them in the coming week and a half. He'd even decided on what he would be wearing on the day, though even he knew that that was a little obsessive. But still, he wished there was more to do.
So, it's not that he didn't have time for a party, it was more so that he didn't want to have time for a party.
That being said, for whatever reason, if the choice was to either be surrounded by the messy drunks that his friends became whenever they had a good enough excuse, or to be at home, obsessing over every little detail, he'd choose his friends, regardless of how much he sometimes wished he could choose the latter. He was so appreciative of his friends, and truthfully, he would always choose whichever choice would be in their best interest. He felt he owed them that.
And again, it was his best friend's twenty-third birthday, and the look on Combeferre's face told Enjolras that he was beyond grateful for his appearance. Of course, Enjolras would never miss one of his friends’ birthdays, he loved them too dearly, it was just hard to focus on anything else with the protest looming so closely. But regardless of all of that, Enjolras found himself sat on Courfeyrac's uneven sofa at around nine o'clock on that Saturday night, a frumpy couch cushion digging into his back, far too sober to be enjoying himself, but content enough with watching Combeferre and Courfeyrac loosening up in the least sensible fashion.
"Let me wear your glasses." Courfeyrac said to Combeferre, visibly drunk also. He managed (easily, honestly) to steal the glasses from Combeferre's unsuspecting head.
"How is it somehow less blurry without them?" Combeferre asked, his face a whole lot more relaxed than Enjolras could ever remember seeing it.
"Because you're wasted, birthday boy." Courfeyrac grinned, hands on the temples of his newfound glasses, showing them off with a little spin and pose.
The night was going well, primarily, as well as it could have gone with a bunch of alcoholic twenty-somethings who collectively only had enough self-control for half of them. Combeferre had gotten hammered almost instantaneously, as he should, Joly was wearing a sexy nurse costume for some fucking reason and singing loudly and drunkenly along to an array of sea shanties that Courfeyrac had impulsively queued, and no one could stop Éponine's uncontrollably bouts of laughter at literally every single thing someone said to her. They were messy, they were embarrassing themselves, but they were having fun, Enjolras recognised. They genuinely did not want to be anywhere else, and for that, Enjolras felt a little jealous.
But soon enough, that jealously was long forgotten, and Enjolras was feeling something else entirely.
"Grantaire!" Someone had called from the middle of the room, and instinctively (and pathetically quickly) Enjolras' head shot up to locate him.
And there he was, sauntering into the room as if he owned it, a black guitar case covered in a seemingly random array of stickers strapped to his back. Enjolras watched him find his way over to a tipsy Bossuet and clap him hard on the back in a friendly manner. He was holding something behind his back rather awkwardly, with his guitar case bulky and in the way. The two exchanged a couple of words, before Bossuet was pointing to Combeferre, and Grantaire's face was lighting up. Grantaire began to stumble his way over.
Enjolras began to breathe manually.
"Well, if it isn't the birthday boy!" Grantaire called loudly upon arrival.
"I'm the birthday boy!" Combeferre called back, raising his arms in the air. Grantaire laughed, one of those real laughs that Enjolras rarely saw, and he pulled Combeferre in for a one-armed hug.
"You are!" Grantaire said as he pulled back, looking Combeferre up and down. "And you're having a big one by the looks of it!"
"Yeah, I am!" Combeferre whooped.
"Yeah, you are!" Grantaire mimicked, roughing up Combeferre's hair. His hands were so broad, they looked so strong, and warm, so-
"And what about you, Apollo? Having another crazy night drinking?" He said, before Enjolras realised Grantaire was looking straight at him.
"No." Enjolras muttered grumpily.
"Boo!" Courfeyrac called, getting half up in Enjolras' face. Enjolras rolled his eyes and found an interesting spot on the wall to look at instead.
"Sorry I'm late, I came from a gig." Grantaire stated unhappily. "Ran a bit overtime because my fucking idiot of a manager didn't think to tell me that I actually started half an hour later than he initially told me."
"Awe, you should've told us! We would've come and cheered you on!" Courfeyrac's voice came through clearly over the way-too-loud party music (if you could call it party music, Enjolras felt like he was in a completely different century.)
"And miss out on this absolute rager of a party?" Grantaire said, playfully sarcastic. "No way!"
"Whatever, you're here now." Combeferre beamed.
"And," Grantaire said, revealing the arm that was held behind his back. "I come bearing gifts!"
"What! No!" Combeferre exclaimed, now eyeing off the brand-new bottle of apple mead that Grantaire was holding up in front of him. A thoughtful gift, a perfect combination of Grantaire and Combeferre.
"You shouldn't have!" Combeferre took grasp of the bottle, his fingers brushing Grantaire's, and suddenly Enjolras felt a dire need to look literally anywhere else.
He spotted Bahorel approaching, as Combeferre could be heard loudly placing the bottle down on a coffee table that had been pushed away from the centre of the room in order to construct a makeshift dance floor.
"Grantaire? Is that you, brother?" Bahorel had reached them, placing a rough hand on Grantaire's shoulder to gain his attention. He looked... odd, Enjolras thought, more tired than he could recall Bahorel looking, though Enjolras couldn't quite pinpoint what was different about him. He didn't seem to be behaving normally, but he didn't seem too drunk. His eyes were half-closed, and his body was swaying ever so slightly. He even looked like he had been crying, his eyes were glassy and red, but he was smiling like a maniac. Whatever was wrong with him, he looked so out of it, and Enjolras almost felt concerned for his friend, until Grantaire began to laugh again.
"Ah, I see someone's been baking up a storm!" Grantaire said, resting a hand on Bahorel's shoulder in return, or perhaps to stop him from swaying.
"You want some?" Bahorel spoke conspiratorially.
"What a silly question. Lead the way." Grantaire replied with mischievous smirk.
Bahorel made eye contact with Courfeyrac as he directed Grantaire in the other direction, and threw a weird look his way, to which Courfeyrac grinned and nodded. And then, Grantaire was being led away by Bahorel, who was struggling not to bump into the random assortment of furniture scattered about. Grantaire turned back, just for a second, and gave Enjolras a cheeky wink and a soft wave of his fingers.
Fucking Grantaire. Stupid, fucking Grantaire, and his cocky demeanour that made Enjolras more furious than anything. He hated the feeling Grantaire invoked in him. The dangerous slamming of his heart in his chest, the creeping rise of temperature in his face, the way his stomach felt like moths were gnawing their way out from the inside. What the fuck was wrong with him? Enjolras had always felt this way towards Grantaire, the frustration and physical tension in his body whenever Grantaire was around was not new to him, but what the fuck was amplifying it? Did he really hate Grantaire that much that deep down his body was trying to reject him? Enjolras didn’t even think he hated Grantaire, but maybe he was wrong. Whatever it was, he was over it, and he certainly wasn’t going to waste his night worrying over stupid fucking Grantaire when he should be celebrating his best friend.
Enjolras shook himself from his thoughts and turned back to Courfeyrac and Combeferre, who were now talking to Joly, who seemed to have appeared out of thin air. Joly looked quite absurd in his nurse's outfit, the skirt showing off way too much leg that he may as well just be wearing the top half of the costume, and the little hat was sitting askew on his head, but he looked happy. And it was so good to see Joly happy, uncaring, a better contrast to the way it felt to see him usually, struggling with his compulsions. Joly had been doing a lot better in the past few years, Enjolras had hardly seen any of the worst of Joly's OCD, but regardless, Enjolras couldn't help but smile genuinely at him when he came to sit beside him on the couch, even with the shitty mood he was in.
"So, Enjolras." Joly said, waving his fake stethoscope around. "You want a free doctor check-up?"
"I think I'm good." Enjolras chuckled.
"Hm." Joly tutted, trying his best to feign a concerned doctor's persona. "You don't look too good to me."
"Really?" Enjolras said with a smile, just to humour him. "What's wrong with me, doc?"
"You look a little-" Joly managed between giggles. "You look a little flushed."
"Do I?” Enjolras began, barely flinching when Joly moved his hand so that it was just a few centimetres away from Enjolras' forehead. Joly was probably the one person Enjolras knew would never touch him without his consent, and so he wasn't too phased when Joly pretended to flip his hand over and over, as if feeling for his temperature.
"You feel a little flushed." Joly said, losing his composure. Enjolras rolled his eyes.
"Are you just going to tell me that you think that I'm on the spectrum again because-" Enjolras was cut off by a comical gasp.
"It's worse than I feared!" Joly said suddenly to Combeferre and Courfeyrac, who were also giggling like fucking maniacs. Joly turned back to Enjolras. "I think you've caught a bug!"
"What kind of bug, doc!" Courfeyrac managed out between fits of laughter, Combeferre grabbing him tightly on the arm to steady himself. Joly turned to look Enjolras in the eyes, as he wrapped his stethoscope around his neck.
"The lovebug." Joly drew out his words, voice low and teasing.
"Joly!" Combeferre laughed. "Subtle!"
"What?" Enjolras asked.
"Oh, nothing." Joly hummed with a bright smile. Enjolras didn't know what he was talking about, didn't understand what the other two were laughing at, and maybe he would've gotten a chance to press Joly further, if Bossuet hadn't called him away.
"Coming!" Joly sang, as he danced off.
Slow down, Enjolras thought. God, everything and everyone was moving so fast around him, and not just here, not just tonight. The days were becoming a blur, and right now Enjolras could barely focus on anything above the noise and the chaotic atmosphere. He felt unsettled, irritable even, and felt himself growing distressed again. Distressed like he was last night, when he'd woken up nudged into Grantaire's shoulder, panicky the way he had been with Grantaire so close, so warm. Enjolras remembered Grantaire's hand on his cheek, talking to him, looking at him. Those fucking eyes-
Get a grip. Pull it together.
Combeferre and Courfeyrac were still laughing loudly, only now they were throwing themselves around in hysterics, swatting each other with uncontrollable smiles and gasping breaths.
"What are you two laughing at?" Enjolras asked, frustrated.
He hardly accepted their half-composed strings of ‘no, nothing, I don't know what you're talking about’, before Enjolras knew he needed to just get out of here. This wasn't his scene, he felt out of place. He needed air, he needed water, he needed something to help him, needed someone to help him. But there was no one. They don't get it. They don't fucking get it. No one fucking gets it.
"Oh, don't frown so much, Enj." Courfeyrac said, lazily crawling over to the couch and throwing himself down on it beside Enjolras. "Maybe you just need to eat something."
Courfeyrac wasn't touching him, but he was still too close. Enjolras couldn't breathe comfortably.
"I'm going somewhere else." Enjolras voiced, before standing abruptly and leaving the back of the living room without a second thought.
Enjolras couldn't hear if Courfeyrac or Combeferre had called after him, and he also didn't care. He carefully made his way out of the room, the lesser drunk of his friends all making room for him as usual in these kinds of social events. In the hallway, he searched for the first open door, which happened to be the bathroom, and he quickly found his way in and shut the door behind him. In the bathroom, the lights were too bright, his eyes felt heavy from trying to adjust from the dimness of the living room. His skin felt wrong, his hair was falling wrong, everything was fucking wrong, and he had no way of fixing it.
Maybe he could just leave, he thought. He could just walk out right now, go home and find a book or a movie boring enough to send him to sleep. No one would even notice, not for a while anyway. Yeah. He could do that. He'll do it now, before everyone starts to get too rowdy. Before anyone will miss him. Yeah.
He sighed. No, he couldn't do that. Not on Combeferre's birthday. His friend's words from weeks ago were running through his mind, stop being so dramatic and ease up for once in your goddamned life, and so he took a long look in the mirror.
"Just- Just loosen up. Yeah." Enjolras said, staring back at himself. He shook out his hands, and then his arms, and his head for good measure. "Loose, fun, having a good time."
When he stopped pretending that loosening his limbs up would help anything, he watched himself back in the mirror for long enough for it to be unnerving. His jaw muscles looked tight, his eyes had dark rings beneath them, his cheeks were a little hollow, and he felt like he didn't recognise himself. Is that what he always looked like? God, no wonder his friends were all trying to get him to eat and sleep more.
And when he couldn't bring himself to look in the mirror anymore, he found himself turning away abruptly and fleeing the room, though maybe too impulsively, because once he found himself back out in the hallway, he wasn't sure where to go or what to do. Parties felt so unnatural to him, it was too much of a chore too keep up the charade of enjoyment. He decided to walk into the kitchen, to maybe get himself a glass of water, which is when he noticed all of the snacks Courfeyrac had set up. And he felt bad, knowing how much effort Courfeyrac had put into making Combeferre's birthday meaningful and memorable, and Enjolras was fucking sulking about like a shit friend.
He realised then that he hadn't actually eaten today, because ‘no Enjolras, coffee does not count as breakfast’, so he eyed off the spread of confectionery and biscuits and copious amounts of booze and settled for a cookie. And it was a fucking good cookie, he thought. He picked up another one. They were a little bland and had a weird nutty, earthy and overall savoury flavour that he couldn't quite identify, but his stomach was thanking him enough for it that he didn't really care.
Until he did care. Very, very much so.
"Ohhh, no." Grantaire's voice appeared from behind him.
Enjolras quickly spun around to find that Grantaire, Bahorel and Éponine had entered the room, and were staring at him in anticipation.
"What?" Enjolras asked with a furrowed brow.
"Uh oh, Enjolras." Bahorel said, a smile forming behind the hands that were covering his mouth.
"What?" Enjolras asked again, growing too impatient for any stupid behaviour.
"Which-" Éponine began, cutting herself off with a giggle. "Which plate of cookies did you take that from?"
Enjolras looked at her like it was the stupidest question he'd ever heard, and then down to the plate below him.
"This one?" He said, pointing.
"Oh my God." Grantaire said with a fallen face. Bahorel's laugh filled the whole kitchen.
"Yeah, so those are weed cookies chief." Bahorel said, all too casually. “Whoopsie daisy.”
"What?!" Enjolras exclaimed, dropping the last little piece of the cookie he had been previously enjoying back onto the plate.
"Oh, this is going to be fucking gold." Éponine bursted into another fit of laughter, smacking Bahorel on the arm.
"Why the fuck would you put weed cookies next to the normal cookies?!" Enjolras yelled at Bahorel.
"In my defence, I did label them." He said with that wide smile, one that Enjolras was truly having trouble understanding in this exact instance. Enjolras looked down at the plate to find that the cookies were, in fact, labelled, a piece of tape was attached to the plate with the word edibles written on it in teeny tiny writing.
"You ever smoked before?" Éponine asked as she cleared her throat, straining her voice as much as she could to sound like she wasn't absolutely whacked. It wasn't working, Enjolras thought to tell her.
"What do you think?" Enjolras shouted.
"Okay. Um, It's cool. Don't stress. They're not even that strong, honestly. Bahorel can't bake for shit." Grantaire said calmly, stepping towards Enjolras and his incoming freak-out.
"Uhm, didn't hear you saying that when I baked you that beautiful cake on your birthday last year." Bahorel said.
"Baz, it was burnt, and you spelt my name wrong on it." Grantaire said, taking the plate of cookies and moving them to a higher surface of the kitchen.
"Yeah, but that's only because I was high when I baked it." Bahorel laughed. Grantaire spun around.
"Look me the eye and tell me you weren't high when you baked these." Grantaire demanded playfully, gesturing to the cookies.
"Oh, I didn't bake those. Éponine did."
Grantaire was silent for a few seconds, before he nodded and mumbled quietly,
"Then we might have a problem."
"Oh my God, I'm going to die." Enjolras whispered to himself, loud enough to catch the attention of the people around him. They all looked fucked. Grantaire seemed the most put together, his eyes only a bit glassy, and he was only slightly drunk from his previous engagement, but Bahorel was swaying like a tree in a fucking hurricane, and Éponine could barely get a word out between bouts of hysterics, so it didn't really bode too well for Enjolras.
"You're not going to die, Apollo." Grantaire breathed a laugh, sounding way too calm and collected for the way Enjolras was feeling right now. "Just come and sit down. You won't even feel it."
Enjolras absolutely did feel it.
He didn't think anything had happened at first, at least he couldn't notice a change in his body for a while. Aside from the slight increase in his already rapidly beating heart, he felt much the same. The anticipation had been killing him more than anything, wondering what it would feel like if he had accidentally managed to get himself high, and the worst of it was not knowing when it would be coming. But a few hours later, when it did finally hit him, he couldn't have given a fuck less about it, because for once, he just felt good. He finally just felt good. Everything was clear, and comprehensible. It must've shown, too.
"Whoa, hey buddy, how are you feeling?" Grantaire's voice suddenly appeared next to him, a little distant but shockingly grounding.
He didn't notice Grantaire approach him, but then maybe Grantaire had been there this whole time. Enjolras couldn't remember. He also couldn't remember what it was that he couldn't remember. But he was feeling something for sure, and that's really all that he could come up with.
"Yeah, I am." Enjolras nodded dizzily.
"Brilliant stuff." Grantaire replied.
They were the only two sat on the mismatched loveseat next to the doorway of the living room, and Enjolras wondered how long it had been since he took refuge here. How long had his friends been throwing themselves around for? Was he watching the whole time? He tried to remember and came up with nothing, so he looked to Grantaire for answers.
Which naturally turned out to be an immediate distraction.
Grantaire looked different, Enjolras noticed. He looked nice. Not that he didn't usually, but in the colourful lighting of the cheap, house-party-grade lights - which were really just the regular lights covered in coloured cellophane - he looked really nice. His hair was brushed back slightly, though rumpled, and his eyes were glazed over and shining effortlessly. He looked sort of unreal.
"I'm pretty sure." Grantaire replied confidently, after some thought.
“What?” Enjolras asked, confused.
“You asked me if I’m real.” Grantaire said. “I’m pretty sure I am.”
“What?” Enjolras repeated, every word that left Grantaire’s mouth becoming as familiar to him as a song he’d never heard.
“Don’t worry.” Grantaire chuckled, tapping a light finger to Enjolras’ forehead. “What’s going on up there, huh?”
"Combeferre.” Enjolras said instead of, well, whatever the fuck it was that he was going to reply with. He'd already forgotten both question and answer.
"You want Combeferre?" Grantaire laughed so astonishingly that suddenly Enjolras was taken aback.
"Wait, you said Combeferre?" Enjolras said, mouth hanging wide. “He’s here?”
"Yeah!" Grantaire nodded enthusiastically, then pointed to the 'dancefloor'. "Look!"
Enjolras looked. Grantaire was right. In the middle of the living room was Combeferre, accompanied by Courfeyrac and Bossuet, all moving erratically and singing in unison. They were… Oh! They were dancing! Had Enjolras ever seen Combeferre dance? Was he good at it? He couldn't quite tell.
“What the fuck?” Enjolras said, uncertain if it was due to remembering the existence of his best friends, or a testament to how absolutely fucking high he was.
"Combeferre!" Grantaire called with his hands cupped on either side of his mouth for amplification. "Get over here!"
And suddenly, Combeferre was making his way over, and so was Courfeyrac, and they were still dancing and- Had Enjolras ever seen Combeferre dance? Did he already ask that? He couldn't quite tell but it didn't end up mattering too much because all of a sudden, Combeferre was in front of him, and when the fuck did that happen?
"What did you do to my Enjolras?" Combeferre asked, pointing a finger into Grantaire's chest. His words were impossibly slurred, and he was stumbling from foot to foot.
"Bahorel.” Enjolras said before Grantaire could respond. He was confident with his answer.
"A cookie." Grantaire corrected with a sharp nod. "He ate a cookie."
"A drugs cookie." Enjolras whisper-shouted with wide eyes and a smile that made his face hurt. Come to think of it, how long had he been smiling? It made his face feel so, so, so weird. He tried to relax it, but he couldn't remember how his mouth was supposed to sit normally, so he began to work his jaw until he forgot what he was doing.
"Get out of here!" Combeferre yelled excitedly, shaking Courfeyrac by the backs of his shoulders. "Are you hearing this?"
"What's happening?" Courfeyrac asked, swaying beneath Combeferre's not-so-steadying hands. His eyes were closed and Enjolras thought he looked lost. Whatever that meant.
"Enjolras ate your edibles." Combeferre said in Courfeyrac's ear. Courfeyrac's eyes flew open.
"Haaaa!" Courfeyrac called dramatically. "Where is Bahorel?! He owes me five dollars!"
“You’re so weird.” Enjolras said, jumping at the loud noise Courfeyrac made.
“No, darling, you are.” Courfeyrac said, taking Combeferre by the hand and beginning to drag him away. "Combeferre, do you want to come and do shots with me?"
"What are you, crazy?" Combeferre exclaimed. "We just did shots!"
"No, Combeferre, shots." Courfeyrac muttered, turning to give Combeferre a suspicious glance and a wink, before nodding his head towards Enjolras and Grantaire sitting alone on the seat. Combeferre replied with an expression of sudden realisation, and began slowly backing the two of them away, in the opposite direction of the shots.
Enjolras thought that that was a weird interaction, and regardless of just how Zen he felt at that moment, that feeling of anxiousness began to creep back in. Was he weird? Did he look weird right now? Why did Courfeyrac say he was weird? Does Courfeyrac think he is weird? Why did they just leave like that? Is Enjolras annoying? Are they sick of him? Oh God, oh fuck, he knew this would happen eventually. He is weird, but he guessed he already knew that. And now everyone else knew too. It was only a matter of time before people realised-
"What's next?" Grantaire said suddenly.
Enjolras drew his gaze from where it was previously floating in space to Grantaire's face.
"What?" Enjolras asked. “What do you mean?”
"Well, I have a hunch that this will probably be the only time I am ever blessed enough to see stoned-Enjolras," Grantaire said with a laugh that was way, way, way too distracting, though less distracting than the fact that Grantaire so nonchalantly reached a hand out to brush one of Enjolras' fucking curls out of his fucking face because that's something Grantaire can just do now, apparently, "and I refuse to let you sit here and get lost in that pretty head of yours, so what do you want to do?"
The questions stumped Enjolras for a minute. What did he want to do? He didn't really want to do anything; he was happy here. Staring into Grantaire's eyes, letting himself go a little bit, it felt right. It felt correct. The only thing he wanted to do was this, except maybe move a little closer, maybe even place his hand in Grantaire's again. He looked at Grantaire's lips. He knew what he wanted to do, he realised, but,
"Oh, I can't say that! Am I crazy?!" Enjolras yelled.
"What do you mean?" Grantaire asked, frowning now.
Fuck. Did Grantaire know what Enjolras was thinking? Did he fucking say it out loud? He couldn't have. Maybe he did. He didn't know.
"Oh my God." Enjolras settled on, after forgetting the question again. Grantaire laughed, another real laugh.
“I hope you know that this is the greatest night of my life." Grantaire teased light-heartedly.
What? Shut up. Think. What did he want to do?
"Okay, what about this.” Enjolras began, his words impossibly heavy and broken. “I write a book.”
“What?” Grantaire asked quizzically, barely containing his amusement.
“Combeferre has a library. That’s where books live.”
"This is true.” Grantaire nodded with a wide smile. “But we're at Courfeyrac's house, remember?”
Oh yeah, that's right. Courfeyrac's house. Courfeyrac doesn't have a library, and besides, what would he write a book about? Whose idea was that? God, Enjolras was struggling to keep up, he couldn't even keep a thought longer than a few seconds. He was hungry, he knew that much. And he was thirsty too, and he realised he still hadn’t gotten a drink of water when he was going to earlier. His mouth felt dry, like it was full of cotton, but he worried that Courfeyrac's kitchen wouldn't have a glass large enough to hold the amount of water Enjolras felt he needed at that moment.
And with that thought, a brilliant and amazing idea dawned in Enjolras' mind.
"Courfeyrac has a pool!" He exclaimed. Grantaire was looking at him like it was the best idea in the world, his eyes were soft, and he was smiling and he was so fucking close to him and,
"Oh, that's a horrible idea." Grantaire tried.
“Come on." Enjolras said to Grantaire, not bothering to wait for his reply. Instead, he bolted to his feet and made a break for the door. He was pretty impressed to find that his legs still worked, his feet knew the way when his mind couldn't remember where to go. The house looked so familiar, it was like he had been here before (he had, many times) and he was amazed by the way he found the back door. He struggled with the lock on the door for a while, Courfeyrac’s house was ancient, and all of the doors had those stupid old-timey locks with those long, rusty keys that stuck in the doors, but he managed it in the end and burst outside and into the backyard.
And there it was. The pool. Luminescent lighting turned it a vibrant shade of blue that Enjolras thought looked magical. Only slightly less magical than the sound of Grantaire's footsteps following closely behind his, and his sudden voice in his ear.
"Well, would you look at that?" Grantaire said. "That is a pool alright."
"Yeah." Enjolras breathed.
He could hear Grantaire beside him now, his breathing heavy from exertion. He heard Grantaire chuckle, and then sigh, and then a bunch of noises Enjolras couldn't identify. He turned to find Grantaire bending down, discarding his shoes ungraciously with some effort and a slight stumble. Enjolras looked around confusedly, looking for clues as to what was going on. He found none.
Grantaire straightened once he had thrown his shoes away behind them, and he took a few steps backwards as he turned to Enjolras with that stupid, stupid grin on his face and said,
"Hey, Enjolras."
"Yeah?" Enjolras replied.
"Check this shit out."
And then, Grantaire was running towards the pool, jumping high into the air, and hurtling himself down into the once-still water of the pool, creating waves and sending them flying. Enjolras felt part of the spray on his face and hands and flinched at the change in temperature. Something in his brain told him to feel annoyed, but that something was tucked too far away to make any sense. That looked cool as fuck.
"Whoa!" Enjolras exclaimed, laughing unnecessarily. "What the fuck?"
And then, Grantaire emerged, taking a gasping breath as he reached the surface. He scrubbed a hand over his face, sending his drenched curls out of his vision, laughing again. Laughing, like really laughing. Enjolras liked that laugh, uncontrolled and cackly, nothing like the one Grantaire gave him most of the time. The one that was low and steady, almost condescending. That one was smug, fake. This one was real.
"Whoo!" Grantaire exclaimed into the night sky.
"That was so cool." Enjolras half-whispered, locked in his daydream. He subconsciously walked himself closer to the edge of the pool, like a sailor in the ocean, being lured in by the sound of a siren's song. He knelt to inspect the water with his hand.
"You think so?" Grantaire asked, wading through the water until he met Enjolras at the edge. He looked up at Enjolras kneeling ahead of him, a proud grin on his face.
He looked happy.
"You're happy." Enjolras said, ignoring the way Grantaire all but flinched at the words.
"Huh?"
"Right now. You are." Enjolras explained. "I wish you were happy more.”
Enjolras didn't know why he said that, unaware of just how much the effects of the weed were taking a toll on his mind-to-mouth filter. He felt a little disappointed when Grantaire's face subdued, and he looked away.
"Damn," Grantaire chuckled as a deflection, "this kid tries weed once and starts just saying shit."
What? Enjolras wasn't just saying shit. Grantaire did look happy, until Enjolras brought it up. He looked effortless and relaxed, like he wasn't thinking about one million things in half a second. Grantaire must be really good at being high, Enjolras thought, because he seemed normal, seemed like the same Grantaire that Enjolras often saw. But now? Now Grantaire was looking anywhere but Enjolras' eyes and he had that self-deprecating smile on his face that he was trying to cover up and- shit, did Enjolras say something that isn't offensive in my head but is still apparently offensive again? What did he say?
Oh yeah, he gave Grantaire a compliment. He didn't usually do that. That wasn't normal. That wasn't what they did. That isn't how they work. So, he tried to compensate by saying,
"You're a fucking idiot."
Grantaire looked at him with fake offence and scoffed. "Excuse me?"
"I said you’re a fucking idiot." Enjolras said simply, hardly disguising his smile.
Yeah, good idea. It's working. Because now Grantaire was chuckling again and smiling and looked like he wasn't repeating the one hundred negative mantras Enjolras knew he said about himself in his head. Now, Grantaire was looking at him again and was, oh God, holding out his hand to Enjolras.
And Enjolras' mind may have malfunctioned just a bit. He felt his heart skip a few, because Grantaire had a wild look in his eye, wicked and calculated but so, so Grantaire, as he said,
"Shut up and help me out of the pool."
Yeah, right. Enjolras was not falling for that. Obviously, the trick would be that Grantaire, the stronger of the two, would pull him in with him. He'd wrap a rough hand around Enjolras' and draw him near, send him plummeting into the pool, because Grantaire was capable of that, because he was so strong. He could probably pick Enjolras up and throw him across any room, and he probably gave great hugs, comforting and warm and welcoming, a hiding place that someone could seek refuge in if they wanted to. Because Grantaire would let them, he was caring and kind like that, and the type of person to do whatever he could to show his love for his friends. Enjolras wondered if that love would ever extend to him. He'd be warm, too, and-
Wait, he was getting distracted. What was he doing? Oh yeah, he was helping Grantaire out of the pool.
He took Grantaire's hand.
Before Enjolras could comprehend his mistake, he was falling towards the water without so much as a moment to brace himself for the harsh chill on his skin. But once he hit the water, once the splash was a muffled sound in his ears, and once he opened his eyes, he saw hundreds of bubbles circling him, and he saw his clothes floating around his body, and he saw nothing but that blue light that had him in some kind of trance. He felt like he was flying, and it was the most peaceful moment he could think of ever experiencing. When he breached the surface, Grantaire was howling with laughter. Enjolras copied him, for whatever reason, his mind racing with endless thoughts of everything to do with this moment, in the pool with Grantaire.
"It's not cold?" Was the first thing Enjolras thought to say once he caught his breath, letting his arms do the work of holding him above the water. "How is it not cold?"
"Magic." Grantaire whispered with a story-tellers wonder.
Grantaire wouldn't stop laughing, and for once, Enjolras didn't want him to. He pressed his eyes shut, and focused on the sound, imagining it in his mind. He started to experience the whole moment in flashes of consciousness, as if he was looking at everything through a camera lens, taking pictures of the important bits. He didn't open his eyes until he realised that the sound of laughter was getting further away, and that Grantaire was drifting across to the other side of the pool, slowly, still giggling to himself.
"Where are you going?" Enjolras heard himself ask. He could hear the fucking downcast of his own voice, but he didn't care. One second Grantaire was near him, the next he was gone. Grantaire didn't reply, just retreated to the corner of the pool, towards the deep end, and-
"What the fuck is that?" Enjolras asked, his eyes open and attention now drawn to a circular object floating in the pool. This was too much magic for one night, he thought.
But then Grantaire was returning to him, with the unidentified floating object being dragged along in tow, and a delighted smile on his face.
"It's a- It's a pool float- Floating thing." Grantaire said as he pushed it over to Enjolras, the pool float slowly drifting across the distance between the two men, with Grantaire following closely behind it. "You sit in it."
It wasn't huge, but it was bigger than he thought they normally looked. He was caught up in how pink it was, and how cool it looked against the blue water as he watched it make its way over to him. Still, he felt like it appeared out of nowhere.
And suddenly, in Enjolras’ next freeze-frame in his mind, he saw the pool float being raised into the air, and coming down on top of Enjolras. He gasped, flinching away from it in bemusement, bracing for impact. But he quickly realised it had a hole in the middle, and before he could even process his movements, his head was through it. He scrambled to pull his arms up and through the hole and finally, he was balancing on it, higher now. He let his arms and his legs rest, letting go of his body completely, and that was the moment that Enjolras felt like everything, every single thing, was okay. No more fighting to stay alive, no more half-holding himself above the water. All he was doing was sitting on a pool float, high out of his mind in the pool, but Enjolras was alive.
"I'm literally the king of the pool." Enjolras stated with a pleased chuckle. He let his eyes fall shut again and rested his head on the newfound cushioning behind his neck.
"Don't you mean elected representative of the pool?" He heard Grantaire say.
When Enjolras opened his eyes, he was met with the beautiful sight of hundreds of thousands of millions of little flickering lights high up in the sky. It was a clear night, just like the night at the Corinthe, but for some reason, he found there were ten times as many as there were that night. He felt like the stars were looking down on him, here in the pool, watching him closely. Some looked brighter than others, and the more he looked, the sooner smaller and dimmer stars appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Where had they come from? Were they always there, seeing him, whilst he was looking elsewhere? Whilst he was distracted looking at the brighter stars? Enjolras felt a vine of guilt creeping through his gut, a pity for not seeing the other stars straight away for some reason and felt himself scowling. And then he heard Grantaire groan in annoyance.
"Stop fucking frowning all the time." Grantaire droned in an exasperated tone. He splashed Enjolras with the water. "What are you frowning about now?"
How would he even begin to explain?
"Those." Enjolras said, pointing up at the night sky, littered with clusters of lonely stars. "Up there."
He could hear Grantaire scoffing at him, along with the sounds of the water moving about as Grantaire absentmindedly circled him, less like a shark to prey, more like a goldfish stuck in a bowl.
"Of course." Grantaire chuckled. "Only you would find a way to be angry at the stars."
Enjolras huffed in response.
"I'll kill them." Grantaire said as he began to float on his back. "How dare they trouble you?"
Enjolras was silent for a few moments, besides a small, almost inaudible chuckle at Grantaire's statement.
"They're so- They're so tiny." Enjolras said, sounding quite annoyed at the thought.
"Well, technically-" Grantaire said, and Enjolras could hear a splash of water loud enough to be able to recognise that Grantaire had raised his arm to point upwards. "They're actually pretty fucking massive. You're just too far away to see it."
Yeah. Exactly.
"I can’t count them all tonight." Enjolras said, once again with an anger of sorts, as if the stars had singlehandedly murdered his entire family.
"You never could, but alright." Grantaire reminded him.
"And they're always there. But sometimes I forget they're there because I'm either not looking, or I'm-" Enjolras tried to explain, but he wasn't even sure the words were coming out of this mouth.
Grantaire reappeared in front of him, now moving to place his forearms on the floating disk and resting his head upon them. He looked at Enjolras curiously, waiting for him to continue. Enjolras became distracted for half a second, noticing a black marking on the skin behind Grantaire's shirt, the white fabric now see-through from the effects of the water. A tattoo. One Enjolras had never seen. On his chest. Enjolras absolutely could not afford to think about that right now, so he took a second to search his mind for the thought he was previously thinking, attempting to find it before it flew away into the nothingness.
"What the fuck was I saying?" Enjolras asked impatiently, squeezing his eyes shut as he continued his mental search.
"Something about the stars and how they're too small and how that fills you with indescribable violent rage for some reason." Grantaire snickered, his head tilted and resting on his arms.
"Oh yeah. I mean, it just makes me think about- I don't know." Enjolras huffed. "What else have I missed because I thought that it was smaller than it was? Do you know what I mean? Does that make any sense?"
Grantaire tilted his head and made a sound in question, motivating Enjolras to elaborate. Enjolras grumbled under his voice.
"What else around me is so amazing and important and- Like you said, fucking massive," Enjolras said, and then sighed, letting his angry demeanour soften, "that I've missed it, because I thought it was something small, because there was something brighter to distract me, and because I was too far away?"
He looked to Grantaire, who was giving him a pensive stare, a look that Enjolras had seen as many times as there were stars in the night sky. The look of Grantaire's eyes, wide and glorious, a corner of his mouth upturned in thought. Enjolras felt something warm in his chest again, and he felt his heartbeat quickening. He could feel the moths in his stomach waking up once more, and this time they were back for vengeance. But he didn't feel angry right now, so why was his body betraying him? He didn't want to feel angry, he didn't want to always feel angry at Grantaire. Grantaire wasn't doing anything wrong, for fuck's sake. Just looking up at Enjolras with those attentive eyes and that slow blink and a sort of aliveness that Enjolras couldn't look away from.
"Damn." Grantaire said so casually, offering a light-hearted laugh. "Who knew stoned-Enjolras was so poetic? You'd give Jehan a run for their money."
And with the mention of someone else, the reminder that other people were existing in the near vicinity, Enjolras felt like the bubble he had blown around Grantaire and himself, the pool and the stars had burst. They weren't the only ones who existed, the world still moved around him, even in his inebriated state. The revolution was still waiting for him on the other side of this early morning, dawn would break in a matter of hours, and he would feel the chill of the world seeping deep into his bones again.
"You okay?" Grantaire asked, his voice softer than his usual taunting inflections.
Enjolras just needed to get out of this pool. Yeah. Don't get him wrong, he wanted nothing more than to stay here, in this moment forever, to feel like his mind was wandering aimlessly along the edge of the pool. A part of him began to imagine the dangers of the world around him as electrical wires, unable to reach him in the pool without losing their power. But those wires were determined to cause destruction, and if they found him here, they'd all go up in sparks. Including him. Including Grantaire. Enjolras had to get out of the pool. Now.
"Yeah, I just need to get out of this thing." Enjolras mumbled, a sense of urgency plaguing him, as he lightly tapped the edge of the pool float, which he could now see had been painted to look like a strawberry doughnut with rainbow sprinkles.
He began to struggle with the stupid doughnut, pulling himself further up to place himself on top of it, rather than slipping through the opening at the bottom and into the water.
"Wait, no, you're supposed to go under-" Grantaire's voice chimed, an amused laugh elicited from his lips.
And with Enjolras' legs through the hole at the top, he lost his balance on the severely unstable floating device. There was no time to process that he was falling, his body thrown backwards into the water as the float was pushed out from underneath him. The backward dive into the chill of the water sent every atom in his body into survival mode, and without thinking, he took a large breath in shock, half-choking on the water he was submerged beneath.
Enjolras could have been upside down, sideways, or floating diagonally, but he wasn't even sure that his eyes were open, so he didn't really know which way was up or down. All he could focus on was the way everything sounded when he was underwater. Grantaire's laugh was a distant rumbling, the water moving around him sounded so calming, and for the briefest of moments, Enjolras found himself having a horrible, terrible thought.
The thought of breathing in as deep as he could, letting his lungs fill with water and chlorine, feeling the bursting of his own eardrums, and then, the best part, feeling nothing. God, how good it would feel to just feel nothing, no responsibility, no buzzing in his chest, no thought keeping him from sleep. Nothing but nothing.
But he didn't breathe in deeply, he wouldn't do that, didn't want to do that. It was only something of a sick fantasy that tended to creep into his mind sometimes, during a moment of complete anxiety. But at the same time, he also wasn't really making any move to swim himself up to the surface either. He just allowed himself to sink deeper into the ambient depths of the pool. And finally, when his eyes began to close amidst the calming sensation of sensory deprivation, Enjolras felt rough hands gripping his shirt, and he was being pulled upwards through the surface of the water and towards the world above him.
When Enjolras could finally breathe again, he began to cough and splutter out the water he had all but inhaled, opening his eyes to find Grantaire directly in front of him. Grantaire was still laughing at him, his head thrown back in a fit, and his hands still clutching the neck of Enjolras' shirt. It made Enjolras laugh too for some reason, the contagiousness of Grantaire's happiness. Grantaire said something sarcastically along the lines of just how gracefully Enjolras had executed his dive, but Enjolras was hardly listening to the exact words coming from Grantaire's mouth. He was rather caught up on how soft Grantaire's voice sounded in his ears. Because amongst the coolness of the pool and by extension the increased circulation in his body, Grantaire's focused gaze was upon him, along with the infinite number of stars watching over him.
They were so close now, and Enjolras could feel the warmth of Grantaire's body pouring his way, across the mere inches that now separated them. If Enjolras took one step further, they'd be chest to chest. If he took another step, they'd be-
Enjolras stopped laughing.
His mind laser-focused on the man in front of him. Still laughing, still mindlessly pulling at Enjolras' shirt. Grantaire's eyes opened eventually, and Enjolras watched in slow motion how his gaze became somewhat vacant, as if he were following Enjolras' lead. Or perhaps, Grantaire had become just as lost in Enjolras' eyes as Enjolras currently was in his. They were so close, closer than they'd ever been to each other. Closer than Enjolras had ever comfortably been to anyone. He'd spent the last twelve years avoiding this, avoiding the feel of another person's breath on his skin, the electricity of someone else's pulse beneath his fingertips. But right then, he couldn't have imagined why he'd found the thought of touching someone else so frightening. Enjolras' breathing stuttered slightly, but somehow, he found the courage that he had lacked for most of his life, and he willed himself to keep himself composed. Composed enough to carefully, decisively pull his own arms up from out of the water, and cup either side of Grantaire's face.
Enjolras wished he could've captured the way Grantaire's face morphed. His eyes widened from giddiness to amazement, as if the only thing that existed was Enjolras and the closeness they were sharing. Grantaire's chest rose and fell with a steady succession, as if the pool had become the ocean and the waves were controlled by Grantaire's lungs. And when Enjolras felt Grantaire's hands detached from his shirt, felt his arms disrupting the flow of the water around him, moving slowly and carefully until his hands were planted softly on his waist, he was brought closer by the hips. Enjolras' mind short-circuited, the pool becoming electric, but not for the reason he had previously feared.
Grantaire chuckled again, nervously this time, never turning his gaze to anything but Enjolras' eyes. That gaze was locked in place, and neither of them said a word, not daring to disturb the reverie they were sharing. If they spoke, the moment would become reality, and even if they were both feeling the overwhelming gravitational pull towards each other, there was no room to acknowledge that this had been what both had been dancing around for years. This is what they should be doing, Enjolras thought, but this is not what they did.
And suddenly Grantaire's focus on Enjolras' eye was broken, flickering down, landing on Enjolras' lips. He let out a shaky breath, before looking back up at Enjolras, and in that moment, Enjolras was gone. His mind had disappeared, his thoughts were incomprehensible, and the world around him had obliterated into smaller and smaller pieces, until nothing mattered but Enjolras and Grantaire, in the pool, mimicking the stars. They were perfectly aligned, a solar eclipse, but they could never be any closer. The moon would vapourise if the sun got too close.
And if the collision of the sun and the moon could create an implosion of the universe, Enjolras thought he felt it, because without so much as a simple warning, the back door to the house flew open. Enjolras half jumped out of his skin, Grantaire did the same.
"What's going on out here?" Bahorel's booming voice echoed through Enjolras' water-clogged ears. Bahorel and Éponine appeared out of Enjolras' peripheral vision, staggering and drowsy, making their way over to the side of the pool. Grantaire cleared his throat, the only contradiction in his effortlessly blasé demeanour.
"Enjolras is quite angry with the stars." Grantaire chuckled casually, turning to face Bahorel now, a respectable amount of distance between him and Enjolras. The words elicited an understanding scoff from Éponine.
"Aren't we all." She said, her toes curling around the edge of the pool. "Come on, Baz."
Before Enjolras even had time to process anything that was happening around him, he heard a large splatter of water to his left, freckling him with droplets once again. And then, another splash, and then voices, and then cheers and laughs and all of a sudden, the night was moving too quickly again. The world continued to spin, and Grantaire had disappeared from his spot right in front of him. Bahorel had him in a headlock, Bossuet and Cosette had now joined them and Enjolras felt the cold. The freezing chill of the pool had killed the moths in his stomach, and he found that he felt lonely without them.
It was nearing one in the morning, and (almost) everyone was awake and kicking. Marius had passed out on the floor of the kitchen an hour prior, and Joly and Musichetta were cuddled up on the loveseat by the door, insisting that they weren't sleeping, but a certain someone's heavy, even breaths were telling a different story.
Those who were still partying on found themselves relaxed in different spots around the living room. Courfeyrac was on the floor at Joly's feet, with a very sleepy Cosette's head in his lap. Éponine took the armchair beside the television, spaced out, hair wrapped up neatly in a towel and sharing a bag of chips with Bahorel, who was still just straight up dripping water everywhere. Combeferre was perhaps the most amusing sight of the night, sitting on the sofa to Enjolras' right with a pair of New Year’s Eve sunglasses on his head, and sipping an unidentifiable beverage from a saucepan with a straw. Grantaire was talking to Bossuet from where they sat beside each other against the far-left wall, the two sharing a large beach towel as an improvised blanket, and Feuilly and Jehan had stretched out on the ground behind the couch. They were all a sight to see, the lot of them. No one ever said your early twenties were glamorous.
"Alright ladies and gents, and Jehan!" Courfeyrac called to the group dispersed across the living room with a suspenseful glint in his eye. Cosette shifted slightly below him, his rousing voice jolting her from her half-sleep. "I think it's time for a little performance, don't you?"
"No, Courfeyrac, no karaoke, please." Bahorel groaned in exasperation. "I can't remember all of the ABBA words right now."
Courfeyrac laughed. "No! Not karaoke!"
Courfeyrac gently coaxed Cosette's head out of his lap and propped her up on a pillow, before briefly leaving the room and heading down the hallway. He came back a short time after with Grantaire's guitar case, the strap lazily slung over his shoulder. He raised his eyebrows suggestively, looking towards Grantaire, who was shaking his head with that smile again, the deflective one that told Enjolras that he didn't have any belief in himself.
"Nah, you don't want to hear all that!" Grantaire laughed, gesturing to the years-old speakers on the TV cabinet. "What about your Renaissance music?!"
"Do it! Come on!" Courfeyrac cried drunkenly. He pulled the guitar case from where it was slung over his shoulder and held it outstretched in his hands, shaking it gently. "You know you want to!"
"It's my birthday, I'm literally birthday boy, I say you have to." Combeferre piped up with a blank face, his sunglasses crooked on his nose and speaking around the straw in his mouth.
Grantaire smiled lovingly at Combeferre, and then accidentally caught Enjolras' gaze. He didn't hold it for very long before he rolled his eyes, reluctant, yet decided to extend his arm.
"Can't argue with that logic. Hand it over then, pretty boy."
A loud round of whoops and encouraging applause filled the room as Grantaire took hold of the guitar case and carefully pulled it from its protection. Bossuet took the beach towel from Grantaire's shoulders and wrapped it around himself properly as Grantaire moved away and found himself a spot in the middle of the room. He settled onto the floor with his guitar on his knee and strummed a chord for dramatic effect.
"Right." Grantaire said, looking around at his friends. "What do you lot want to hear, then?"
Grantaire began playing softly over top of the discourse of his friends bickering about which song they should force him to play, and Enjolras found it rather baffling that anyone would be able to be distracted when Grantaire was playing his guitar at all, even if he was just strumming random chords that belonged to no specific song. Grantaire’s hands moved so naturally around the strings, he made it look easy, and it was entrancing. Eventually, Combeferre pulled the birthday boy card again, for probably the millionth time that night, and he requested a song that Enjolras had never heard of.
“Alright.” Grantaire said, and he began to play a progression of chords that sounded like gold.
His hands moved fast and methodically, Enjolras always wondered how someone could figure out how to do that. The shapes he was making with his fingers looked complicated, and don’t even get him started on remembering what shapes to make. Whilst Enjolras watched Grantaire's hands move, he noticed that his fingernails were painted in a dark green shade, and some of his fingers had yellow circles or something on them, he was moving them too quickly for Enjolras to get a good look. It made him smile to himself.
And then, when Enjolras thought he was already as entranced as he could be, Grantaire began to sing.
His voice was so soothing, a little raspy, but it had a higher sort of pitch than Enjolras would have assumed. It held a controlled quiver on the ends of words that drew Enjolras in, and he found himself lost in the sound. Grantaire was singing the words with his eyes mostly distractedly looking away or closed altogether. But when his eyes flickered open sharply to meet Enjolras' fixed gaze, Enjolras suddenly felt exposed.
"Now, would you die for the mouths unfed? Oh, Eloise." He sang.
For some reason, those words seemed to carve lines in Enjolras' chest, like a prisoner tracking his sentence. Enjolras didn't know if this song was an original, or if Grantaire was simply playing a freakishly relevant song, or maybe Enjolras was still too high and imagining the whole thing, but the way he was singing made Enjolras feel as if he was talking right to him, and he suddenly felt the urgent need to look anywhere but Grantaire, turning his gaze to the wall.
Some of their friends joined in, singing accompanying oohs and aahs so easily that Enjolras realised they must have heard this song one thousand times. Grantaire typically played grungy, rock-style music at his gigs, or at least he did at the handful Enjolras attended, but this song was airy, acoustic, and so much different to his usual style. Enjolras wondered why Grantaire had never played this specific song in his gigs before. He wondered why he never asked to hear one like it.
Grantaire narrowed his focus upon Enjolras' still frame once again, deriding him with a smirk.
"I've seen you publish all the lies, poor girl."
"Lies, poor girl!" Jehan echoed right in Enjolras' ear, tauntingly. Enjolras found himself catching his breath, subconsciously frowning at the attention that was placed on him.
"I've seen the rubbish that you cry over."
"Cry over!" The four backing vocalists (who shouldn't quit their day jobs) sang again, all of them giggling in Enjolras' direction as if there was some kind of joke that Enjolras was missing.
Grantaire was still giving him that cheeky look, evidently amused to see Enjolras so flustered due to the attention. But then, Grantaire's cheeky and testing expression began to lessen, morphing into a troubled look that Enjolras could hardly describe. It was a look like the one he had given him when Enjolras had asked him how he could be so hopeless. It was helplessness. He sang,
"How can you stomach all the dying world? Oh, Eloise."
Enjolras' world decided to stop spinning, as he and Grantaire shared a desperate look that lasted much too long for Enjolras to feel comfortable. Still, he couldn't bring himself to tear his eyes away. He felt vulnerable and open, and maybe it was the weed, or the way Grantaire seemed to be talking to him through those glances they kept sharing, but he couldn't find it in him to close himself off.
When Grantaire looked away, down at his fingers that began to play a bittersweet, melodic instrumental, the rest of his friends had attempted to join in, obviously butchering the harmonies and the tempo, and Grantaire began to laugh and look around at them with small eyes. Enjolras' gaze shifted down to Grantaire's hands, fingers moving sporadically between chord changes.
Grantaire's hands, the ones that had planted themselves in Enjolras' mind at the smash of a bottle, the ones that led Enjolras home on a drunken night, the ones that sweetly bandaged the now healed scar on his jawline. The same hands that give Enjolras soft pats on the back as he slips past, the same hands that can hand him pens and cups. The hand that placed itself so naturally upon his cheek, the same hand that pulled him into the pool. The hands that found their way to his waist, inching him closer. Enjolras wanted to feel them in his own again, wondering if it was pathetic, how much he craved it.
Enjolras couldn't look away from Grantaire, even with everyone including Grantaire watching him, with everyone able to see how lost Enjolras was in Grantaire. He could sense Combeferre's harsh gaze on him, closely examining him, but he didn't care. Not when the rest of the room was drifting away around him, not when his friends’ voices were becoming nothing but white noise as he narrowed his focus onto Grantaire, who shook the hair away from his face as he caught Enjolras' eye, took a deep breath, and began to start singing again.
"Good night now, Eloise, I miss you lots. It's been so hard since the world forgot. Uh, oh.
I'll try now, Eloise, to change what's wrong. I'll try for you, and I'll write your song.”
Enjolras chest began to rise more rapidly, feeling as if his lungs were tightly wrapped in an unbreakable cord, and the warmth of Grantaire's voice seemed to be enough to resurrect those angry moths in his stomach.
What the fuck. Fucking stop. Please, Enjolras bargained with himself. He couldn't keep feeling this rage, it was fucking killing him. Grantaire had done nothing wrong, and Enjolras was feeling the symptoms of his anger again, with seemingly no cause.
The guitar began to soften, and Grantaire's eyes closed tightly as he came to the end of the song, their friends all watching closely now with different faces of pride, awe, and contentment. Grantaire's hands stilled, stopping their strumming, and Enjolras felt strange all of a sudden. He felt strange watching Grantaire's hands, hearing his unshielded voice, locating those eyes that made him feel so strongly and so often. Those eyes were speaking to him, saying something, asking him questions he didn't have answers to.
"Oh, how I've crumbled now, my mind is gone. Oh, Eloise."
God, Enjolras was never doing drugs again.