"It's cold and dark here, Eponine. I think I may have died and gone to hell."
"Then get the fuck out, Grantaire—why are you calling me about it?"
"Uh. Yeah, about that. I forgot my shopping list on the counter and I really really really need you to read it off to me. 'Cause it's Jehan's birthday tomorrow—today I guess—and I forgot some important stuff." Eponine groans, which he supposes is justified. "Sorry," he adds lamely.
"Dude, you need to stop doing your Walmart runs at three in the morning, you're killing me here. Not everyone gets classes that are all after noon." Of course Eponine can't see his face, but Grantaire grimaces apologetically all the same. He sifts through his head for something suitably remorseful to say, but before he can find anything he hears a shuffling sound accompanied by a sigh from the other side of the phone.
"Okay. Here's your damn list. You had better be writing this down."
"I think I've got everything already, I just wanna make sure."
"Jesus Christ," she mutters, and Grantaire feels a pang of guilt. "Okay, here we go then. Ramen?"
"Check."
"Cooking spray? What? Have you ever actually cooked anything before? Like, ever?"
"It's not for that, but check."
"Goldfish crackers?"
"Check."
"Glitter stickers? Dude, I can't believe—"
"Check"
"Peanut butter." Grantaire can practically see the sour look on her face at this point.
"Check."
"And nutella."
"Che-oh wait, man, uncheck. Negative check. The check train has not left the station."
"Okay, great. Go get your goddamn nutella. I'm going back to sleep, and if you fucking wake me up on your way back in, I—I'm too tired to threaten you properly, but trust me." She left it there.
"Got it. Got it. Like I said, I'm really sorry and you're the best roomie ever and I owe you big time."
"Fuck yeah you do. Jehan had better have the best birthday on the whole fucking planet." The line goes dead and Grantaire slips his phone into his jacket, scrubbing at his eye with the heel of his hand. Even he wouldn't usually be out this late if he wasn't drinking, but after what had come to be (albeit with a certain degree of fondness) known as the "Great Spaghetti Incident of '14" he had sworn that he would do his best to redeem himself next time Jehan's birthday rolled around, and everything on that list was instrumental to what would definitely go down in history as the best birthday ever. Without a doubt.
He isn't one to feel weird about showing up at Walmart in the middle of the night in his pajamas and a leather jacket, but even if he did, he decides, as he trudges over to the nutella, the rest of the 3 AM crowd isn't about to judge him. A tired-looking girl he's pretty sure he has seen on campus somewhere is half-heartedly sweeping the floor of the produce section, and a couple of high schoolers that smell like weed and cheap booze are giggling to each other over in the toy section. Apart from a few other tired shoppers, the store seems deserted.
"Bed, here I come," Grantaire mutters as he spots the nutella next to a blond guy with his back to him looking at the honey, and made a beeline for it. He rubs his eyes again and glances back at the girl, trying to remember where he has seen her as his hand finally touches the—
Wait.
He turns back toward the shelf in vague horror as he realizes that blond dude had had the same idea, meaning that now each of them had a hand wrapped around not only the nutella jar, but each other's hand too.
Shit. Grantaire hastily withdraws, meaning to grab another jar and possibly run away as fast as he can (Admittedly, it's not very fast-He hasn't exercised in a while.), until he realizes that the jar they had both reached for was the last one on the shelf. Blondie seems to realize that at exactly the same time and they both make a grab for the jar again, which brings them back to the exact fucking place they had started at. Grantaire turns around to face the guy and gets a good look at him for the first time.
Oh.
Shit. Fuck. God dammit. Fuck me running. He could have continued in his head for some time, were it not for the dawning look of realization on the other guy's face, closely followed by flat-out anger.
"Uh...Enjolras? Nice to...see you?" It really isn't. Even in the middle of the night at fucking Walmart, Enjolras manages to pull off the "wrathful angel" expression pretty well. He's wearing that stupid, tacky red jacket that he always has on, this time over a faded sweater and some jeans, but despite being dressed like, well, someone who had to go to Walmart at 3 AM, the way he's glaring down at Grantaire is still enough to make him want to shrink down and cower, maybe crawl into a hole for a bit. Grantaire hates that. He hates how he can always just feel the superiority radiating off of Enjolras, like he's some goddamn saint or something and not just another fucking college student.
"You," he spits, with enough venom to make Grantaire take a step back, though he still keeps his hand over Enjolras' on the nutella jar. No way is he letting this asshole have it. No fucking way.
"Me," Grantaire sighs. "Listen, dude…" He searches for something to say, preferably something that will get him out of the store as soon as possible, hopefully with the nutella to boot. Still, he can't quite force the unfriendliness out of his voice. "I am just so sorry about this, but the thing is, I really need that nutella. Can't you just settle for marshmallow fluff or something?"
"No, for your information, I can't! Can't you?"
"Nope." To prove his point, Grantaire tightens his hand around the jar, which unfortunately means that he's squeezing the hand of the world's biggest asshole as well. He does his best to stare Enjolras in the eye stubbornly, and is taken aback to see him glance at the nutella with a slightly panicked look, his face reddening. "What do you even need it for?"
"That's...that's none of your business!" Grantaire hasn't seen the dude look this pained since they had been forced to do a group project together. Sheesh, is Grantaire really that excruciating to be around?
He has a feeling this isn't going to end well.
"Listen, Enjolras, can we just talk this out? Maybe?" Enjolras glares again, looking like one of those old-timey biblical paintings where all the sinners are smited at the hands of the righteous. Grantaire decides that he's closer to a god than an angel. "It's the middle of the goddamn night, please don't make this difficult," he adds against his better judgement, and regrets the words the second they leave his mouth. Enjolras draws himself up to his full height, looking irate, and Grantaire is reminded again of how infinitely smaller and less impressive he himself is, like if you set a lightbulb down and told it to outshine the sun.
"Oh, so you don't want me to make things difficult? Wow, that's rich coming from you." Grantaire suppresses a wince.
"I don't know what you have against me, but-"
"What do you mean?" Enjolras is practically shouting now. "How can you even say that after what you did in painting class last week?"
"It was just a little paint!" Grantaire huffs, doing his best to avoid telling him to calm down.
"A little? You flicked it at me and it got all over my shirt! You could've ruined my favorite shirt!"
"No I couldn't have! It was watercolor, it washes out—and besides, who wears their favorite shirt to painting class!?"
"That's not what's important!"
"Yeah, well, you wouldn't shut up about—what was it? Affirmative action?"
"It was civil liberties, and don't tell me those are the same thing, they're completely different. And anyway, it was only because you said you didn't care about politics." He said the last part like Grantaire has confessed then and there to shooting the president, or possibly eating children. At this point, Grantaire is basically sure the guy is completely nuts, stomping around campus with his weird friends and tacking up posters for campaigns and protests and rallies on every flat surface within reach. He's also around ninety percent sure that he has never seen him without that obnoxious red jacket, if not wearing it then slung over a shoulder or draped over the back of a chair. Grantaire wonders if there is some sort of symbolism he's missing here. In his head, he rolls through a list of things associated with red—danger, anger, courage—revolution, he thinks, as a scrap of memory from a long-ago history class surfaces in his mind. Revolution, he thinks, and realizes suddenly that he has been standing there silently for just a few seconds too long.
"Listen, if it all matters to you that much," he says abruptly, "why didn't you just go with a poli sci major, or sociology or something?"
"I did. Both." Wait. That can't be have been right. Grantaire swore he could remember Enjolras mentioning a fine arts major at some point. But if that was true...
"What about fine arts?"
"That too." Enjolras said tightly, his mouth pressed into a thin line. He was standing stock-still, and his expression had gone from contempt to something like wariness. Though why he'd look like that around me of all people I have no idea. What am I gonna do, call him a nerd?
"You're doing a triple major? Isn't that...uh, isn't that a lot of work?" he asks, then mentally face-palms for voicing such a dumb question.
Enjolras gives a stiff nod, and it's then that Grantaire notices several things that seem to have slipped by him until now—the hunch of Enjolras' shoulders, the way the corners of his mouth seemed perpetually turned down, the bags under his eyes—no wonder he's picking fights over nutella at three in the morning. He looks like he's barely keeping it together. He feels guilt settling in the pit of his stomach, and against his better judgement finds himself slowly removing his hand from on top of Enjolras'. Enjolras, he realizes, doesn't seem so much like a god anymore, or even an angel, just another tired college kid.
"I changed my mind," Grantaire says slowly. "Marshmallow fluff it is. You take the nutella." And he means it, he really does want Enjolras to have the nutella, but Enjolras has dropped his hand too.
"No, you have it. I don't need it that much. I'm sorry for shouting at you. You didn't deserve that," and Grantaire is convinced this must be some sort of exhaustion-induced auditory hallucination because there's no way fucking Enjolras is apologizing to him, that's not how the world works. There's no chance Grantaire is taking the nutella now, then he'd feel like the world's biggest asshole and he's not even entirely sure why.
"No way. Man, I've had it bad before, but never " go to Walmart to stress-eat nutella at three in the morning" bad. You need it more than I do." Enjolras looks slightly offended but doesn't contradict that part, which more or less confirms that yes, that is what brought him here at this hour, and it's a little bit sad but Grantaire knows Enjolras doesn't want his pity.
"I'm telling you—" Enjolras starts, but then Grantaire's struck by a thought.
"Okay, listen, we both clearly want the nutella, but also seem to not want the nutella, so here's an idea: wanna share it? I haven't got anywhere to be, and you clearly don't if you're here, so why not chill for a bit?" Enjolras looks like he's going to refuse and keep on insisting Grantaire take it, sheerly out of principle if nothing else, but then he actually stops to think for a moment. "It's only fair" Grantaire presses, and Enjolras shrugs.
"Sure."
On a whim, Grantaire tips a box of graham crackers into his basket, too, and that's that.
"All I'm saying is, sometimes you just feel like even though you're doing everything, you're just doing nothing, you know?" And Grantaire nods understandingly, because even if he doesn't know, Enjolras was sounding borderline hysterical in the beginning and Grantaire's pretty sure that if he doesn't let everything out, sooner or later he's going to physically explode. Really, it's a wonder it hasn't happened already. "It's just, I want to help, I really do, but it's so hard sometimes." Grantaire doesn't quite know what to say to that, so he breaks another graham cracker in half and sticks it in the nutella.
He chews pensively for a few moments. Both of them are sitting on the curb of the sidewalk between Walmart and the parking lot, an open jar of nutella and a box of graham crackers between them. Enjolras is positioned in such a manner that the fluorescent light streaming from the door thirty feet away illuminates half of his face in a way that makes Grantaire's gut wrench confusingly. He looks like something you'd see in one of those urban photography exhibitions, and for a moment it's hard to think of him as a person and not an art installation.
"The thing is," Grantaire finally answers, aware that if he's not careful he's likely going to shatter whatever fragile peace the two of them have found. "The thing is, you're only one guy, you know? I mean, you've got friends and stuff and obviously you're like, super dedicated to this justice thing," Enjolras looks indignant, like he thinks Grantaire is making fun of him, so Grantaire throws in "which is great man, I admire you, I really do, but you're acting like you've got to take on the whole damn world on your own. I mean, even Ghandi and Martin Luther King and shit, they didn't think they could fix the whole fucking planet, but you seem like you're trying, you know?"
Enjolras frowns and scoots around to face Grantaire. Their calves press together but Grantaire isn't complaining because here's fucking Enjolras of all people, talking to him like they're equals or some crazy shit like that and telling him his problems like they're been friends for years and not two guys who've hated each other over the past few months. It's mind-blowing, in its own sort of fucked-up way.
"I guess I see what you mean," he sighs, "But that doesn't mean I'm going to stop fighting. Ever." Grantaire can't help but smile a little.
"Didn't think so." They eat silently together for the next couple of minutes, and Grantaire hopes to God the silence is coming off as companionable and not awkward because every time Enjolras shoots a glance at him it feels like there are a hundred eyes on him instead of two.
"Grantaire?" he asks abruptly, and the uncertainty in his voice is enough to make Grantaire look Enjolras in the eye for once. "Did you, uh, did you mean what you said before? About...about admiring me?" He's pressing his lips together the way he was before, and it's making him look tired and just a bit anxious, the same way he looked earlier in the store, but now he looks sort of hopeful, too. Grantaire can tell he's gonna have to watch what he says because he's just reached the double jeopardy round of Talk To Enjolras and he's about to either ruin everything or finally get something right. He breathes deeply.
"I did. I really did. Like, the amount of conviction you've got, the amount that you care about fucking everything, it blows my mind. I mean it, like somewhere along the line I picked up the skill of not giving a shit, which, yeah, has its uses, but hell, it's fucking nothing when you compare it to someone like you." Grantaire exhales and silently prays that Enjolras doesn't respond with some sort of half-assed attempt to tell him that no, Grantaire's wrong about himself, he is a beautiful flower with so much potential, but he can sort of feel it coming, which is why he's surprised when what he feels is Enjolras' hand sliding along his jaw instead.
Grantaire jerks his head up to look at Enjolras, who's gazing down at him with this wide-eyed look that makes Grantaire feel like his heart is gonna burst out of his chest, and it might just be because of the dim light but Enjolras' pupils are so blown he can hardly see the blue and then he can't see his eyes at all any more because Enjolras has leaned down to press their lips together.
Grantaire is so shocked he's about to pull back but then something catches in his throat and he just leans into it and god, fate can be a bitch but this is worth all those fights and glares. He's considering putting a hand on Enjolras' shoulder or maybe sliding it into all that golden hair or maybe just straddling him right then and there but then Enjolras jerks back, panic written across his face. He scoots backwards abruptly, stammering, then jumps to his feet.
"Shit." he says, and it's the first time Grantaire's ever heard him swear. "Shit, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, oh my god," and if Grantaire felt bad for him for being tired and stressed then this is a thousand times worse because now Enjolras looks scared. "I'm so sorry," he breathes, then "please, please just forget that happened. Please," and Grantaire would say something but he's just a little bit in shock right now so he's left to watch as Enjolras turns around and sprints away. The last Grantaire sees of him is a red jacket flapping behind him before fading into the darkness.