AN: Ugh, I should be working on so many other projects right now, but this short fic refused to leave my head. It's different from my other works. It's a bit darker, but more of a return to form of how I typically write. Quite a few of this is from my PIC's headcanon of Grantaire, which has been rattling about in my head for awhile.
Warnings: Character death.
Respite
When Grantaire was twenty-six, he took a trip to Rome. His friends wished him bon voyage, and in some cases, gave him a going away present. He felt unworthy of it all, and tried to get Enjolras alone to talk to him.
"Will I be missed?" He asked, trying to ignore his sweaty palms and his fingers that danced with each other. He had no nervous tics but he refused to make eye contact just yet.
"Your absence will be noted." The answer was amused. Enjolras was playing with him, and Grantaire could understand that.
"Not an answer to my question." Bold words to demand words from your chosen deity. Enjolras, however, was not the fire and brimstone type. Looking up at him now, Grantaire didn't see hell or even a toying sort of force that the old heroes of yore used to go up against. If Enjolras did not like you, he did not send you away on tasks. Instead, he would simply raze you down. Enjolras, the impatient deity. Enjolras, the confusing god, or maybe he wasn't confusing at all and Grantaire was missing something pertinent. He was always playing this game of filling in the blanks when it came to Enjolras.
Occam's Razor had yet to be invented.
Enjolras smiled which confused Grantaire even more. It was hard to tear his gaze away from those full upturned lips and he wondered how he would survive without seeing them for the time he'd be gone.
"You'll be missed," Enjolras had said. "But only in so much as you'll allow yourself to be. You're not after honesty here, Grantaire. I can tell you optimistic words, the words you most wish to hear, and believe them to be true. But you won't let them sink in too deeply. You have a filter for optimism. Instead, I shall say that I hope this trip does you some good. If not, then you'll still come back our brother, and family is important."
Family is very important. Grantaire agreed with that. He did not have the courage to embrace Enjolras, either as a formal friend or as a Courfeyrac, all clings and hugs. The best he could do was shake the man's hand and remember the feeling of his skin wrapped within Enjolras' for as long as he could.
Family, as it were, took him down south to Italy.
He remembered the cold clammy hand of his mother, the one family member that he held in respect and high regard. She would talk to him nightly, tending to his aches and bruises, and she told him that she believed in him. Grantaire often thought that she lived in her own world and her reality was seen through a filtered lens. She would flit about the house, straightening this and that. She would give Grantaire and his brother sweets and warn them not to tell their father. When his brother would inevitably tell their father that Grantaire had eaten the sweets, she would be quick to remind the boy that he had gobbled them down voraciously as well.
Fair is fair, she called it.
Life wasn't fair, Grantaire knew. If life was fair, he'd be born in a better environment, his mother would have married someone who deserved her, and his father would be dead from alcohol consumption or something fitting. If the world was fair.
"That's not fairness," his mother once told him. "That's simply your revenge mixed in with your well wishes. Fairness works without bias."
"Then how can we tell what is fair?" He asked. Unfair of him to ask her so many questions on her dying bed.
"When it feels right."
"His death feels right." He had dreamed about it. His hands were never the ones wrapped around that throat even though he could feel the stubble underneath his fingers all the same. He moved his hand around his own throat but didn't squeeze. Was this what it would feel like? He could envision his father's eyes getting wider and wider, his face changing color, and he could see the quiet struggle followed by the limpness. In the depths of his imagination, he even wondered if there would be a death rattle. Disgusted, he moved his hand away from his throat.
"To you, but not to the rest of the world."
"He adds nothing to the world."
"Nothing that you can see."
Grantaire opened his mouth to refute that but stopped. With her hair spread out over the bed like that, with her skin so pale, she radiated a beauty that he had never seen before. To him, she was always 'mother', the understanding. Mother, the true and noble. Mother, the protector. Now, she had transcended into something glorious with her death, and he knew that her soul had taken flight. What sad last words those were! They were to comfort him. Her life was built around comforting him, it suddenly looked like. Was he so pathetic that he would need to draw comfort from a dying woman? He was old enough to take care of himself!
Yet, as he moved her hands against her chest, he was reminded of Enjolras. He had caught his friend sleeping once in the back room. Combeferre had gestured at him to let Enjolras be, but Grantaire's curiosity couldn't be contained.
Enjolras was still. He was always a bit still, and Grantaire was forever reminded of a cobra. Beautiful and deadly, it didn't play around when it came to enemies either, and yet it responded to the soft melodies within the air. It didn't recognize music, but it recognized vibrations. Quiet bits of harmony within the air that people couldn't see. It would rise and spread its hood and it was glorious to behold. Yet even in its docile moments, the cobra was never still. A ball of tightly wound energy, just waiting for Something.
Enjolras seemed forever to be waiting for Something. He listened to all vibrations, both great and small. He couldn't see the beauty, but he could sense the growing discontent. His life was spent seeking out the negative while remaining positive, but right now, as he slept, he was still.
Grantaire suddenly felt nauseous.
He smashed the bottle against the table, and as Enjolras hastily woke up, sitting back from where the violence took place, Grantaire was immediately apologetic. "Didn't mean to, sorry, am drunk." Any number of excuses would do.
Only Combeferre, who had been watching the entire time, said nothing. Perhaps he understood? Grantaire doubted it. He didn't understand himself.
Looking at his dead mother, he fidgeted a bit more. Discomfort rose up within him. With her ascendance into such a beautiful figure, his mother was no longer his mother. She wasn't a stranger, but she was beyond his reach. He placed her upon a pedestal in his mind. She could do no wrong. She was a saint. She had become the angel who walked upon earth.
Her death financed his trip.
He saw the coliseum and thought of lions.
He thought of a lion's mane.
He wondered what Enjolras was doing right now.
Would he want him to come back changed? Would he want him to learn something from this trip? Would he want him to enter into some new phase, as though the research of a long-dead civilization would make him realize that Republics were the way to go. He had his fill of politics long before he knew what politics were.
He saw his mother and he saw Enjolras. Quiet, sometimes. Unobtrusive. Willing to sit back and listen. Acting when necessary. Yet Enjolras wouldn't tolerate his father.
What would Enjolras even make of him if he knew? It wasn't as though Grantaire could bring him back to his father's house, introduce him as someone who ought to be, what?
His?
An absurd thought! Grantaire did not enjoy dwelling on his feelings toward Enjolras. They felt perfectly natural, thank you very much. They felt real and right. The only right thing in his life, even though he couldn't understand them. The problem was, was that he understood too much. He comprehended the world in ways his friends could not. He saw that even should they succeed, their dreams would be dashed. Life was miserable like that. Life was unending wherein people fought and nothing changed. So why fight at all? Why not try to take joy out of life where one could?
"Because you don't take any joy out of life," Enjolras had once told him after Grantaire brought the question up to him. "You drink. Your absinthe causes hallucinations. You're not enjoying life. You're taking it all in through a haze, and I doubt you're even reveling in that."
Grantaire pouted at him and launched into a speech worthy of Feuilly on his beloved subject of Poland. He ceased to make sense two sentences in, and yet he felt Enjolras' eyes upon him throughout. That made him nervous with his words. He strained for his inebriation to carry him off to sleep.
When he had finished, so too had Enjolras. "You're not even drunk right now," he said with a marked finality as he turned back to Combeferre and Courfeyrac.
Grantaire remembered Enjolras' hand upon his, shaking it when they departed. He remembered holding his mother's hand as she died. He thought they felt the same, transformed into one small bit of comfort against his skin. Each representing a departure, but Enjolras would return.
No.
He would return to Enjolras.
That was right. That was proper. The sun rose every day. He believed in the sun, so too did he believe in Enjolras.
His father had been waiting for him when he came to claim his inheritence from his mother.
"So she's gone," he said.
"Yes."
The trip to the hospital would have cost them too much. Grantaire had stayed with her because his brother didn't return home and his father couldn't afford such luxuries.
The money was handed over with a caustic look. "You'll only use this for drinking."
"Better me than you." Had his father been expected a fight? Or perhaps just complete submission? Grantaire was used to giving him the latter. He didn't feel like rolling over today. Snatching the money from the man, he immediately turned and walked back to his carriage.
"You'll never use it to make anything of yourself! You're nothing!"
His father's parting words. Grantaire compared them to his mother's. Granted, his mother had been dying. She knew that she was dying. She comforted him. His father didn't know that Grantaire would never be returning, but these were the words he wanted Grantaire to hear, needed Grantaire to hear. Why? Was this so important to him? Did he wish only to pull his son down? Did he want Grantaire to clean up his act through tough love?
"Wait," he said to the driver. The carriage paused.
Grantaire got out, and in full view of his father, undid the fall front of his trousers, took out his prick, and pissed on the ground. When he was done, he calmly fixed himself, got back on the carriage, and went back to Paris.
He had a trip to plan for, and his father did not scream anything at him again.
That's fine. He was tired of the man's games.
Enjolras played no games, but Grantaire made them up anyway. He could get used to this sort of enjoyment and confusion. It gave him a warm feeling inside, and he liked thinking that he had his own secrets with Enjolras that none of the others could touch. He created and invented scenarios, ideas, and what could Enjolras be thinking. Most often, his thoughts turned downward as he berated himself.
Sometimes he'd remember Enjolras, though. He'd remember his smile, his simple nod to one of Grantaire's requests, his desire to improve, and he would think harshly upon himself for believing that Enjolras hated him.
Enjolras, the father who granted him chances. Enjolras, the mother who comforted and protected. Enjolras, the deity he had placed above them all who could never step down since he would forever be Enjolras.
Grantaire returned to Paris, having seen much, learned little, and spent a good few days eating nothing, drinking little, and laying upon the floor of his room missing Enjolras and alternately wishing to kidnap him and bring him here. He missed his friends. He missed the part of himself he left back at the Musain. He missed his mother.
He missed a purpose and a way of being, but he couldn't understand that lack within himself. So it was only a black hole that Enjolras mostly kept filled, but without him, he thought he could hear echoes inside, and when he called out in a fit of sadness, no one was there to answer. He laughed and it sounded hollow. He wept and the sound was monstrous.
He returned home subdued. He brought gifts for the others, souvenirs to prove that he had a great time.
But that night he spent weeping on his knees in front of Enjolras, his arms wrapped around his friend's waist.
Enjolras did not ask why Grantaire had come over to visit him that night. He didn't ask when Grantaire immediately started crying. He did not pull away when Grantaire clutched at him like a child begging a parent not to be angry. He stayed quiet and still, one hand against Grantaire's hair.
"You're not drunk now either."
Grantaire shook his head. "I still have your imprint," he said, his voice muffled from Enjolras' clothes.
If Enjolras didn't comprehend that, he made no mention of it. "Come inside. We'll talk."
Grantaire went inside.
They didn't talk.
In a way, Grantaire preferred that. It was more intimate sitting alone with Enjolras, watching him, sharing tea with him brought up by a very kind and patient landlady. He felt more at ease here than he had throughout his entire vacation.
But that was the nature of their relationship, he supposed. They ought to have been talking. They ought to have been explaining themselves, Enjolras with his simplicity that Grantaire made complex. Grantaire with his feelings that he never bothered to figure out. He would rather figure out Enjolras, and Enjolras would not know what Grantaire was feeling unless Grantaire outright told him.
They existed together, broke bread together, drank together, and sometimes they would talk together, but therein was a rift that divided, one that neither were aware of, and could only await the day in which one would fall into that great chasm and hope that the other would be there to lead them out.