So, this story is going to be different than anything I've done before. When I'm inspired to write, it's always because of music, particularly the feeling a song wants the listener to feel. I started writing this when I heard one of the songs I'm going to use later, but I do NOT consider this to be a songfic, it is a multi-chapter story with a plot, not a sloppily written one-shot.
That being said, please stick with me, give the Grantaire/Eponine pairing a chance, I promise I'll do it justice!
I get up around seven, get outta bed around nine
And I don't worry about nothin' no because worryin's a waste of my time
The show usually starts around seven, we go on stage around nine
Get on the bus about eleven, sippin' a drink and feelin' fine
"Make me understand," Eponine pleaded. Her dark eyes met her friend Grantaire's from across the table. He was slurping down a draft beer, and it was the seventh Eponine had counted him drink in the less than two hours they had been at their usual table at their favorite bar, the Corinth. They were seated at one end of the customary two long booths their group of friends pushed together. It was the first thing Eponine had said in a while, as she was lost in her own thoughts while she counted.
It was a loud Thursday night, and their customary start to the weekend. The bar didn't have a dance floor, just tables full of college students celebrating the almost-end of another week of classes to the soundtrack of some Top 40 radio station. It was home.
"Understand what?" Grantaire asked. He gripped his glass mug with both hands, bringing it slowly to his lips.
Eponine nodded her head toward his mug. "That."
"This is called beer."
"Smart-ass," she said with a roll of her eyes. "I mean that I want to understand why you like to drink so much," she continued, picking her words carefully so as not to offend Grantaire.
"That's an awfully stupid thing to want, Eponine," he grumbled. He cast a furtive glance around the table, not wanting any of his other friends to hear this conversation. Grantaire's drinking habits were, as an unspoken rule, not discussed.
"I mean it," she said softly.
"You don't have to babysit me," Grantaire said over the rim of the mug.
Eponine paused, unsure of her words. She and Grantaire had become closer since Marius, who introduced her to his friends, had started dating a girl named Cosette a few months ago. The two, along with Jehan, had similar majors and had several classes together. When Marius either stopped hanging out with them or always had Cosette at his side, Eponine had gravitated toward Grantaire, and their fierce personalities meshed surprisingly well. She took a deep breath. "I'm not trying to babysit you, or tell you to stop drinking; I'm just trying to understand. I don't know how else to explain this." She grew visibly frustrated.
Grantaire sighed. "Eponine, I drink because I like it. I like it because it numbs me."
"Why do you want to be numb?" she asked quietly, leaning forward and resting her face in her hands. Her dark eyes searched Grantaire's, and her heart raced as the conversation inched closer to her purpose. "Sometimes I think I'd like to be numb, too," she admitted.
We've been dancin' with Mr. Brownstone
He's been knockin', he won't leave me alone
Courfeyrac, who was sitting to Grantaire's right, noticed that the conversation between the two had become serious in nature. Grantaire saw him whisper, in a failed attempt as being discreet, to Combeferre on the other side of him.
"Not here," Grantaire said. He downed the rest of his beer and stood, motioning for Eponine to follow him. "Walking her home," he mouthed in response to Courfeyrac's questioning look behind Eponine's back. Courfeyrac grinned and made a rather crude gesture with his hands, to which Grantaire just rolled his eyes.
The apartment Grantaire shared with Jehan wasn't far from the Corinth, and the night was one of those beautiful March nights that tricked a person into thinking summer had come early. Eponine filled her lungs with the sweet air, searching her brain for a way to continue the conversation. For one of the first times she could remember, words utterly failed her. They walked in silence, beating the familiar path to the apartment she spent so much of her spare time in.
Eponine technically still lived with her parents, just a few metro stops away, but she didn't get along with her family. If she had the money she would have moved out in a heartbeat, but it was easier in her mind to just crash at her friends' apartments. Nobody minded; the friends were more like family. Their courses of study differed greatly, but they all in some way possessed a similar spark of life. It held them together. Eponine was a journalism student, but her focus on writing enabled her to enroll in some of the same classes as Grantaire and Jehan, who were creative writing students.
Once in the apartment, she assumed her usual post in the worn, overstuffed green armchair in one corner of the living room. Grantaire disappeared into the kitchen, she presumed, to get more beer. She tapped her hands anxiously together. She honestly wanted to know what exactly it was about alcohol that so seduced Grantaire and neither had spoken since they left the bar.
I used to do a little but a little wouldn't do it
So the little got more and more
I just keep tryin' to get a little better
Said a little better than before
"Here," he said, pressing a bottle of beer to her hand.
"Thanks," she responded, noting that he gave her one beer and brought out three for himself. "That's exactly what I'm talking about, Grantaire." She shot an accusatory look at the coffee table in front of Grantaire's spot on the couch, where he had set down the bottles.
He sighed. "I can't give you a good answer," he finally said. He took a long drink.
"Bullshit," Eponine firmly said before drinking from her own bottle. "Don't you trust me?"
"Of course I do," Grantaire said with a pained expression on his face. He scratched at the slight stubble under his chin. "That's not it at all."
"Words practically bleed from your fingers. You're a terrific writer, and don't try to be humble about it."
Grantaire blushed as he stammered, "This isn't the same. You have to realize nobody has ever actually come out and asked me about my…alcoholism…before."
"You're not an alcoholic," Eponine hastily said.
"Now that's bullshit," Grantaire snorted.
"You aren't some bum passed out in a park. You're a good student, a better friend."
"Eponine, I spend as much time and effort drinking as Enjolras spends devoting to his student government stuff. Except I can't exactly list binge drinking on my resume under the skills section." His words weren't enough to remove her confusion. "Trust me, being an alcoholic doesn't go hand-in-hand with being a failure."
We've been dancin' with Mr. Brownstone
He's been knockin', he won't leave me alone
She contemplated this confession for a second. "What do you mean, about the time and effort part?"
He started on his second bottle of beer, or his ninth for the night. "This is why I can't make you understand no matter how hard I try. You can't possibly comprehend what it's like to sleep for one hour some nights and for 14 hours straight others. Sometimes I start drinking at four in the morning because I can't sleep. I have to pencil drinking in around and during work and school. I have to drink so much to go numb that I can't stop." Grantaire spat the final words out bitterly, his knuckles white where he was clenching the bottle he held.
Eponine sank beside Grantaire on the couch. "I'm sorry," she whispered. She had underestimated the extent of the addiction. "You're right. I don't know what that's like. But I promise you, I know pain. Pain stalks me and makes me want to make a friend of numbness."
Grantaire narrowed his eyes, but he didn't doubt her. One of the reasons they got along so well was that they both liked to live for the present moment. Jehan liked to dwell on the past, and the things he wrote always had slight undertones of melancholy. Other friends of theirs, like Enjolras and Combeferre, were constantly anticipating the future. Eponine and Grantaire usually didn't talk about either the past or the future, but clearly that pretense was abandoned that night. "Tell me about the first time you drank," he said, changing the subject.
Eponine furrowed her eyebrows, sipping her beer. "I didn't really drink in high school. The first time I got drunk was with you guys freshman year, actually. My parents have never had their shit together enough to help me with anything, let alone paying for college. I was either working or studying every second I could."
A small smile played at Grantaire's mouth as he pictured his spitfire friend as a nerd. "Surely you drank at least once?"
"I stole a Mike's hard lemonade once at a sleepover in eleventh grade," she recalled sheepishly. "Why do you ask? I've obviously come a ways since then." To prove her point, Eponine easily chugged the generous amount of beer left in her bottle and helped herself to one of Grantaire's.
"The first time I drank was in eighth grade. I was fourteen. My neighbor Marc was my best friend at the time, and once his older brother got a case of some cheap light beer for us. Three of us choked it down in his garage, as fast as we could. I couldn't understand why adults liked it so much, I used to hate the taste." Eponine pictured a young Grantaire, a bottle to his young lips, his perpetually messy black curls in his face. She shuddered. "Obviously, we got wasted. We walked from his garage down the street to the gas station, committing about a billion social offenses. I thought it was hilarious the next morning when my mum yelled at me until she was red in the face because I puked in the front yard."
"Well, I think you were the normal one and I was the exception, then," Eponine offered.
Grantaire shook his head. "No, it would have been normal if this had been a one-time or even a couple-of-times thing. It turned into every weekend. Marc and I would walk around our neighborhood, sneaking or breaking into garages to see what we could find. We knew which housewives had stashes of liquor and where to find fridges full of what we saw as free booze. It was fun, for a while."
He stopped talking. Eponine noticed the waver in his voice, and she didn't ask him to continue. She turned on his TV for some background noise to fill the deafening silence. "Do you want something to eat?" Eponine asked.
"No," Grantaire answered thoughtfully. "Food kills the buzz. I'm probably only skinny because I don't eat real food."
"Oh," Eponine said. She realized that she hardly ever see him eat, as he put it, real food. Always a snack, like popcorn or fried bar food.
"Anyway, getting drunk on the weekends stopped being enough and I let it get out of hand. I let my friends talk me into a lot of things. I did stop drinking for maybe a year when my mum threatened to send me to rehab after Marc brought me home all kinds of fucked up one day. I'm not sure if she really didn't realize what I was doing or if it just took her to see it in person to admit it to herself.
Now I get up around whenever, I used to get up on time
But that old man he's a real motherfucker
Gonna kick him on down the line
"I was doing okay until halfway through my senior year, when I realized how badly I wanted to go to college. Writing was the only thing I was ever really good at, other than drinking," Grantaire said with a sad smile. "I got really stressed, once I got accepted here. I've never been good at change."
Eponine interrupted, "I don't know that anyone really likes change."
"Well, I started sneaking beer at night. I told myself it was to help me get to sleep on those nights where I was tossing and turning until I could see the sun coming up outside my window. Except the two it would take to fall asleep turned into ten before I could stop myself." He looked Eponine in the eyes for the first time since he'd started his explanation. She thought his eyes looked caught in a hybrid between vacant and miserable. "And, clearly, I haven't stopped myself since."
I used to do a little but a little wouldn't do it
So the little got more and more
I just keep tryin' to get a little better
Said a little better than before
Eponine put her drink down and hugged Grantaire awkwardly. Twice in one night, he left her unable to come up with a single word. When she pulled away, he saw a tear roll down her face. She wiped it away, embarrassed.
"Why are you crying?"
"I didn't mean to." She blinked rapidly, willing the tears to stop.
"I bet you're sorry you asked," Grantaire said. He looked away from her again, staring absently at the TV.
"No. I'll never be sorry for asking, Grantaire," she replied. "Nothing you say could make me stop being your friend. I told you, I want to understand." Eponine put her tiny hand on Grantaire's in a gesture of comfort.
He grimaced. "I'm not sure that you really will, no matter how much I tell you about my dirty laundry."
"Do you remember what I said earlier? Make me understand."
"Eponine, I don't fucking understand why you're so interested. I just drink." He swished the beer in his bottle around for good measure.
"I know you're not drunk enough to forget our conversation at Corinth," Eponine said. "I told you I was no stranger to pain. I've been holding it together pretty well for a while, but I think I'm starting to crack. If you don't help me manage it, I'll find another way."
Grantaire frowned, caught completely off guard. He didn't know exactly what she meant. To him, Eponine had always been strong and independent. "What are you hiding?"
"I'm not hiding anything," she said a little too quickly. "I just don't want to talk about it."
"Even after everything I just told you?"
"Even after that," she nodded.
Grantaire's heart thudded in his chest. He was pretty sure Eponine could hear his thoughts. He was definitely buzzed. His fingers tingled a little bit and he couldn't really feel Eponine's hand on his. He used alcohol to numb his feelings, so the surge of concern washing over him disoriented him.
"Come on," Eponine chided. "You teach me how to drink, I teach you how to feel."
"That's confusing."
She smiled. "Yeah, I know. Whatever. Let's agree to something."
"Something…I'll drink to that, I guess," Grantaire said, raising his drink in a toast. Eponine clinked her bottle to his.
We've been dancin' with Mr. Brownstone
He's been knockin', he won't leave me alone
No, no, no, he won't leave me alone
Song inspiration for this chapter is Mr. Brownstone by Guns n' Roses. Yes, I know it's slang for heroin and not alcohol but it the sentiment fits here. I promise you'll love Grantaire/Eponine as much as I do eventually. Please let me know what you think of this crazy nonsense I have planned.