Written for The Les Mis Anon Kink Meme.
Polish version by me.
English translation by Elwen_Rhiannon.
The Fall
When the meeting is over, Grantaire knows what to expect. Soon they will leave, no-one caring enough to notice him; they always leave like that. Even if he wants them not to. But maybe that's better.
He decides he doesn't want more alcohol tonight. He sits in the corner and opens his book instead. The absinthe he has already drunk does not disturb him. It's quiet, warm and calm: it could last forever.
Very rarely, thinks Grantaire, you can get what you want.
He's right, the peaceful mood lasts only a few minutes: it is disturbed by somebody's steps and the sound of moving chair. Grantaire curses quietly, not bothering to look up.
"Left my gloves here," says Prouvaire quietly. "May I sit?"
Grantaire wonders why the hell is he asking when he's already sitting. He nods, still looking at the book and does not even try to hide his dislike.
"You're reading?" asks Prouvaire, visibly embarrassed, like someone who knows that he is not welcomed. Grantaire laughs with a short, fitful laugh. It ends as unexpectedly as it began.
"You think I can't?"
"You know I didn't mean it this way," sighs Prouvaire, oddly serious. "I'm sorry."
Grantaire instinctively reads a passage from the book. Fidelity always wins, fidelity wins the most beautiful of all rewards. Do not be discouraged by coldness and pride.*
"You mean this, then? It's a fairytale." He shrugs; he does not want to talk, especially not about the book he is reading. "Goes well with what you're talking about. Liberty, egality, fraternity and such. Right book in the right place."
Prouvaire does not react to the provocation and this is what finally gets Grantaire's interest.
"Have a drink," he says, a bit more kindly, moving his bottle of absinthe in Prouvaire's direction. It takes him a moment to notice that another one, already opened, is standing next to him. Well, thinks Grantaire, it explains a lot.
Mindlessly, Prouvaire moves his finger around the edge of the glass.
"She left me," he says, more to himself than to Grantaire, in a tired, surprised voice, as if he still could not believe it. "Just like that. Found somebody better. So simply. After all she said yesterday! They always... always..."
He stops, looking round with a vacant look.
"Better with someone than on her own," mutters Grantaire, thinking suddenly that perhaps this is not the consolation Prouvaire should hear now. But the person in question does not look as if he heard him at all; he is sitting with his head slightly tilted, obviously thinking about something.
"I don't really like absinthe," he whispers.
"Of course." Grantaire starts to wonder how many glasses has his interlocutor already managed to put into him and which one of them is more drunk. He closes the book loudly and puts it away. "Not in the slightest."
"I don't drink... actually." Prouvaire slowly puts a finger in a glass, shrugs and moves his hand back. He watches a drop of alcohol on the end of his nail with fascination. "Condorcet wrote that drunkenness is an ugly fault."**
"Perhaps he wrote it this way," Grantaire waves contemptuously and grimaces with irony. "He would have done better, had he stopped writing and drunk something. And since when you're reading Condorcet, by the way?"
"I'm not." Prouvaire looks at the table, suddenly embarrassed and starts to play with his glass. "Just heard it."
Grantaire pretends to believe him, though he cannot understand what the hell is so shameful about one reading Condorcet.
"He wrote the same about sodomy," adds Prouvaire very quietly, looking at the floor now.
"Sodomy," repeats Grantaire with surprise, much too loudly, knowing for sure now that it is not about gloves.
"Yes." Prouvaire lowers his voice to whisper, even if there is not a person in the room except them both. "Is it really... ugly?"
Grantaire ponders for a moment whether he should get up and leave, but there is so cold on the outside and he has no place to go to anyway. Which is why he stays and calmly bears Prouvaire's desperate look.
"And how the hell can I know?" he asks lightly, knowing that he should react.
"I can't ask any of them," says Prouvaire quietly and looks at him as if it has been obvious and Grantaire feels as if he has been slapped in the face. It hurts, no matter how much has he been used to it.
"Well, you should try," he answers with a sarcasm that he does not even try to hide. "Maybe they'll answer you."
Prouvaire can laugh, even if he does not do it often, but this time his laughter is bitter as never before. Grantaire is under an unpleasant impression that it sounds much like his own.
"Right, so you'll not ask," he starts, carefully. "It doesn't matter, what I may say. You're loosing a meaning, poet."
Prouvaire shakes his head violently.
"They don't know anything," he says and tightens fingers on the edge of the glass. "Not a thing. They don't understand. If someone does, it's you."
They sit in silence for a minute and just drink.
"I envy you, you know?" asks Prouvaire suddenly and Grantaire has to put his own glass away to not to choke. He cannot stop to look around to check whether Prouvaire really speaks to him.
"Me? Ehm... better leave this absinthe, you know." He moves the bottle to another table. "When you start envying me, it means you have enough."
"Yes, you," repeats Prouvaire, with seriousness that resembles child's. "You're already at the bottom. It gives you some firmness, doesn't it? It's easier like this. When you know what you are. Not like me. Once on one side, once on another side. You can't walk on the edge of a precipice."
He falls silent suddenly, looks into Grantaire's eyes and perhaps understands what he has just said because he blushes. He catches a glass of absinthe desperately and empties it with one rapid gulp.
Next minute is a fit of coughing, trying to catch his breath and being patted on his back. Prouvaire allows his companion to do whatever he wants, listening in silence to Grantaire's comments. Not really sarcastic this time, well, only slightly.
"One has to know how to drink, and you've just failed. Better go home, poet."
There is a concern in Grantaire's eyes, but Prouvaire sees only mocking. He cowers, as if he has been hit, and looks at the floor. His hands start to shake more.
"I can't," he admits quietly and drops his head. "Even drink. It's just the matter of how far can you reach. Some say you can do everything if you really want to. Maybe I should believe in it. It would be much easier, don't you think?"
In front of Grantaire's eyes there are blond hair and stern, boyish face.
"Not really." He takes the glass himself and takes a gulp of absinthe. "Actually, not at all."
He is surprised when he sees Prouvaire smiling, sincerely and almost warmly.
"What now?"
"I guess I was right, you know," says Prouvaire gently. "At least once. Thank you. Give me your hand."
Grantaire shrugs.
"You're dead drunk, poet."
"Perhaps," admits Prouvaire after considering it for a while, but he lifts his head up and looks at Grantaire with an unusual stupor. "But give me your hand."
Intrigued, Grantaire moves his hand and allows it to be touched. Then he allows for more. It does not last long anyway, or perhaps he looses a sense of time when Prouvaire clings lips to his fingers. Almost as if he cared.
But Prouvaire stops. He lets Grantaire's hand go and sighs.
"All tastes the same, always," he mutters and hides his face in his palms. His shoulders are trembling. "The taste is bitter even here. Bitter everywhere, wherever you turn."
"You've just drunk absinthe," reminds Grantaire reasonably, lifting his eyebrows slightly, not expecting his words to cause any reaction. But Prouvaire suddenly stops trembling.
"True," he says and for a brief moment he covers Grantaire's palm with his own. "Condorcet wasn't right. It's not ugly. It's sad. The worse for it."
Grantaire nods and carefully draws his hand back. That's all. No need for more.
"Still think it's easier at the bottom?"
"Don't know," murmurs Prouvaire vaguely and presses a cheek to the table. "Don't know, don't know, don't know..."
He's asleep in a minute.
It is then when Grantaire gets up, grimacing bitterly. He knows perfectly well what to expect. When the poet wakes up, he will be himself again: forget what he was talking about. He can fall down ten or a hundred times and still remain innocent, with the same question. With no end.
It would be better for him to leave now; he always leaves. Even if sometimes he wants to stay.
To some questions, thinks Grantaire, it is better not to find the answers.
* August von Sachsen-Gotha, Year in Arcadia: A Shepherd's Calendar, 1805
** Prouvaire refers to Condorcet's footnote to Voltaire's Prix de la Justice et de l'Humanité 1786 edition