Grantaire didn't know who would be coming by so late.
The knocking on the door assured him that someone had, in fact, come by. The sound echoed in his head and in the dark.
"Woe to him who is alone when he falls," he whispered again to himself. He wanted to go open the door, or rather, he thought he ought to want to, but the darkness was like ice, freezing him where he lay and taking any desire to move, to do anything.
The knocking stopped. Grantaire sighed, the ache of nothingness turning his bones poisonously cold.
The door opened. This surprised Grantaire so much that he lifted his head to look.
"Hello?" asked Jehan Prouvaire's voice. Grantaire could see him squinting into the dark, Jehan's eyes adjusted to the light and blinded by darkness. "Grantaire, are you home? I know it's late- sorry, I just- well, I was a bit worried, honestly. We haven't seen you around lately... Are you even home?"
Grantaire grunted. "I'm here."
"Ah!" Jehan sounded relieved, although Grantaire could not fathom why. "Are you alright?"
"Does it matter?" Grantaire asked. "Nothing matters. Everything becomes nothing, given time."
"... And so, by wordplay, everything matters." Jehan said stubbornly. "Although I don't see why I need to beg permission from the nothingness, which we have not yet reached, to ask if my friend is alright." He crossed over to Grantaire's chair and sat down on a stool. "Although I see you aren't. You may be trying to sleep- would you like me to go, or would company not be adverse to you?"
"Doesn't matter," said Grantaire, although Jehan's stubborn and calm speech distracted him from the empty, gnawing feeling in his bones and in his mind.
"Then I will stay with you," Jehan said decisively. "Do you care if I get a light?"
Grantaire didn't- nothing was worth the trouble of caring- and Jehan lit a lantern and set it between them.
The light was bright, and with some coaxing Jehan convinced it to burn steadily.
"Do you wish to talk?" he asked. "I'm full willing to discuss anything from the nothingness time brings to which flowers grow where."
Grantaire said that they were all the same to him, but he'd already thought about the nothingness and traveled every avenue of thought about it. The flowers, he had not thought nearly so much about.
And so Jehan talked about meadows and bees and grass, about clouds and their particular shapes. About something Joly had said that day that had made Bosseut fall off his chair from laughing so hard. He told Grantaire many things, he told him all about the world, and at one point rose to light a fire in the hearth.
None of it made the nothingness less certain, but it was nice to be reminded that there was something besides the nothingness that existed. Jehan talked until Grantaire finally fell asleep, and not feeling sleepy himself, decided to make the place a bit more tidy. He slept then, and Grantaire woke to find his friend asleep in his worn and sagging couch.
"Two are better off than one, for if they fall, one will lift up his fellow," he muttered under his breath.