Hmmm. Not quite sure that I like how this came out, but oh well. I own nothing.
They never had the time for a proper relationship.
There were no hesitant touches, no secretive glances, no tiptoeing around their feelings.
There were no romantic dinners, no trips to the opera, no lazy days spent together in bed.
Enjolras was a man of many passions and little regrets. Grantaire had many vices and many doubts, but with Enjolras he had none.
They had it in moments of breathless delight, shivers down the spine when their eyes met across the Musain, eyes sparkling with the reflections of wine bottles and eager young men. They had each other with late night love, little smiles and stolen kisses. They had makeshift meals when they could, leaving books, clothes, and extra pieces of paper in their wake. They caught spare moments when they could, making them count with hot, lingering kisses and heavy, loving touches.
Their relationship was filled with offhand comments, raised voices, heated arguments. They fought over everything and anything, but Grantaire was the one to drag Enjolras to bed after finding him asleep with his head in a book, and Enjolras the one who staggered home with him after having too many drinks.
Grantaire was the one who questioned Enjolras' every move, every belief. The one to drag him away from a protest when the man's passion overtook him and the police were on their way. The one who drew little sketches of the other man whenever he wasn't looking, and stayed up late with him when he was writing a speech.
Enjolras was the one who criticized Grantaire's drinking, cynicism, lack of faith. The one who stopped him from drinking himself into an early grave. The one who could always find him after a fight. The one who slipped out of bed early in the morning, but was always quiet, always leaving a mug of coffee behind to help soothe his partner's hangover.
They never met each others families, never moved in together, never made promises, never built a life together.
Even when the end was closing in and their kisses grew desperate and empty, when words turned to ashes in their mouth and wine to daggers in their throats, when Enjolras watched the barricades and Grantaire watched Enjolras.
They had never even said I love you, had never needed to. They knew.
They never talked about the end they both knew was coming. Never said don't do this, don't make me watch you die, because they couldn't find the words and they both knew it wouldn't matter anyway.
They didn't spend the last night together, and their last morning was spent alone - Enjolras among the blood and screaming and terror and broken bodies, Grantaire at the bottom of a bottle.
But when the time came, they found each other again. They had always been tied together somehow, always needed each other in a strange, passionate, desperate way.
"Do you permit it?"
Enjolras merely smiled.
They didn't need words, didn't need tears, didn't need 'I love you's.
They had loved each other with explosions of emotion, shivers down the spine, sparks beneath the skin.
That was how they had always been, and that was how they ended.