Grantaire hated feeling like this. His chest began to tighten, his breathing quickened, his palms started to shake and he knew he wouldn't be okay until he was by himself. Unfortunately for him, he was in his first lecture for the day; Classics Theory. Jehan sat next to him dutifully taking down his notes, although he kept sneaking glances Grantaire's way. And Grantaire couldn't take it anymore. He got up and walked out of the class, ignoring his professor as she tried to ask him where he was going.
He was so lost in his thoughts as he walked around campus, trying to fight back the nerve to throw up, when he bumped into her. His breath caught in his throat and immediately he fell into her arms.
She whispered in his ear as she gently rubbed his back. "Jehan's taking the rest of the day off okay dove? I'll take you home."
Grantaire snorted unattractively and grumbled into her shoulder. "Damn it Cosette, I thought I told Jehan not to let people call me that."
Cosette just hummed patiently as Grantaire righted himself. They walked to her car and Grantaire slowly noticed the amount of people who just saw him dry sobbing in his friend's arms.
He was too exhausted to be embarrassed.
They drove to his apartment in a comfortable silence. Jehan would be home soon enough and together they would coax him out of this terrible mood he was in. They were good at that. And when he couldn't be brought out of it and he just needed someone to hold him and say nothing. Well, they were good at that too.
They walked up to his flat as slowly as he needed, Grantaire could never take the elevator when he felt like this, and Cosette used her key. She settled him on the couch, kissed him briefly on the cheek before heading into the kitchen to make some tea. She was adding the honey to their chamomile when he walked in.
"Oh honey." Jehan sighed and hurried over to their couch. He wrapped his arms around Grantaire tightly, and tugged him so that he was almost sitting on his lap, Grantaire's back plastered to his front.
Grantaire didn't say anything; he only closed his eyes. He didn't even see when Cosette came into the living room. He only felt her warmth on his leg as she laid her head on his shoulder. They all sat like that for a while, in silence. No one was willing to break it, not even to move to get their teas which were on their coffee table on a tray. Grantaire's breathing had started to calm. He was going to be all right. He had everything he needed for the moment, everything that balanced him.
He was the moon, giving some light to the darkness but never receiving it himself. He was the paint splatters left on his torn jeans, or the dregs of beer that he never finished. He served a purpose at one time, but he doesn't anymore and it was becoming more and more likely that he never will. He was cynicism and alcohol blanketed in self depreciation. He was the tears that are hidden with a smile and the scream that sounds like a laugh.
She was the sun; giving light to everyone without a second thought, because it was her nature. She was the untamed flowers that could be so easily shaped into something demure, but that people couldn't bear to see suffocated. She was pure energy and happiness and desire, never timid and never hesitant. She was the forgotten scar that has faded leaving your skin new and with the appearance of something unblemished.
He was the dawn, the beginning of a new day always inconsistent in what he brings. He was the wilted flowers braided into his hair; beautiful in it's decomposure, glorious in its sadness. He was that quiet moment after a laugh where melancholy joins pleasure, where bliss sleeps with sorrow. He was his poetry, forever changing, occasionally full of grace, full of a multitude of emotions and rhymes that sometimes twisted and contorted in a way that doesn't always make sense.
Whenever he needed them they would come, and whenever they needed him he was there. They were like unwritten poetry, an unfinished dance, an improvised play, a song not yet written. They came together like the wrong pieces of a puzzle. In some ways they connected in a way that was unfathomable. They somehow managed to fit and they didn't make sense, but they needed each other and that was all that mattered.
They were not each other's everything, but they were important to each other in ways no one else could never be.
Grantaire wasn't the only one who frequently broke down. When Cosette and Eponine had broken up, Grantaire came over with a bottle of cheap wine and popcorn, and Jehan brought a copy of the 2005 movie, Pride and Prejudice. "It sucks." Cosette sniffled. "But the cinematography is so pretty." Jehan and Grantaire nodded. They would lie together all night under blankets in Cosette's bed talking about movies, and actors, and plays they wanted to see, museums they wanted to visit, and boys, and girls, and school and anything but Eponine. Deflection was how Cosette dealt with her problems. Since she was a little girl, she'd never known how to deal with them in any other way.
Jehan was similar. When his brother died he cried and cried and didn't leave his room for five days. Cosette and Grantaire joined him. They lay in his room with and stroked his hair, and massaged his feet, and talked about nothing and everything. There was never a moment of silence unless they were sleeping. Jehan generally tuned them out, but he was grateful for the nonsense. He grieved in peace, but he knew he was never alone. They eventually cajoled him out of his room to a sea of tentative faces. His friends were all in their living room looking at him with sad, relieved faces. They were all wearing black, and that was when he realized that it was the day of the funeral. They all went with him. Cosette and Grantaire flanked him, and sat next to him as the priest talked about "the journey through life, and how it suddenly ends," and of how "this was God's plan for him, we mustn't be angry with God, but thank him for letting this peaceful soul enter the promise land." Jehan held their hands the entire time and never let go.
Even when they were all in relationships at the same time, they remained unchanged in this respect.
Grantaire would kiss Enjolras softly on his lips. Sometimes he would look at the blonde man in bed next to him in awe. He would trace his fingers down his slender arm kiss his shoulder, overwhelmed in the knowledge that he was his; that they belonged to each other. Yet whenever sadness overtook him, he craved, and was still accepted in, different arms. He needed his friends to hold him and they would always oblige.
Cosette spent evenings eating dinner with Marius and nights in their bed. She considered herself the luckiest girl in the world as she watched him furrow his brow and smile at her. The strangest combination, yet she found it charming. He was everything to her. However when her Papa passed, the only people who could manage to console her were her two closest friends.
And Jehan loved Courfeyrac with all his heart. He whispered bits and pieces of poetry; some stolen, some his own, in Courfeyrac's ear and Courfeyrac would grace him with a smile wide enough to be a rainbow. They were each other's completely. Nonetheless, when Jehan's first novel was published, he instinctively threw his arms around the necks of the two beautiful people who he knew he owed everything to.
They were lucky enough to have significant others who understood and even supported them completely.
They grew up, and they now had other people to fill their lives with joy, but there was still always that small part in each other that belonged to them and them alone.
They were happy.
"For love is a celestial harmony
Of likely hearts compos'd of stars' concent,
Which join together in sweet sympathy,
To work each other's joy and true content,
Which they have harbour'd since their first descent
Out of their heavenly bowers, where they did see
And know each other here belov'd to be."
― Edmund Spenser, Fowre Hymnes