Grantaire raised numbed fingers to unbutton his collar, shucking his jacket off altogether. He curled up with it, and Enjolras pulled his own pillow away, propped it against the wall. He straightened and shot a dark look at Courfeyrac and Bahorel, hovering in the doorway, drunk and unsteady themselves. Courfeyrac had the sense to look ashamed, and started to ask again if, only for a few hours. "Just get out of here," Enjolras ordered, to forestall whatever lack-brain apology he hadn't the patience for. With more muttered apologies, they slipped away. Enjolras bolted the door again, resolved to return to his studies and simply ignore the drunkard until morning.
Grantaire had opened his trousers, was fumbling there. Enjolras favored him with a withering glare that the man, eyes closed and scarcely conscious, could not properly appreciate. Before he could muster the words to combat yet another pointless and debasing vice, Grantaire rolled onto his back, hand falling away from its half-hearted stimulation to lie at his side. Enjolras set his jaw, and after a moment's hesitation, he descended upon Grantaire, tidying the insensate man up with sharp, impersonal movements, as one tending to a stranger's corpse. Straightened his collar, re-buttoned him without quite watching what he was doing.
Enjolras then turned his back decisively, eyes on the inch of candle still burning at his desk, trying to retrace his interrupted rhetoric before he could lose it in the waiting stacks of notes and books. /The ideal of Liberty, held dear by the People even under the worst despot... but too often confused, by rich and poor alike, with liberties and still worse license./ That wasn't right; and the inspiration for the theme's alteration was all too present. There weren't so many hours left in the night (he had lost track, before Bahorel started beating down his door) and the man was dead drunk anyway. But he had been working, and working well; now he could not. A quiet sigh behind him, then nothing; they'd said he would only sleep. Enjolras sank to the nearest furniture - the edge of the mattress and tried to recall his original thought. /Liberty, once held dear.../ The drunkard lying only a little behind him crossed his mind not at all.
Grantaire, by some feat of will, raised a hand to place it just above the bend of Enjolras's elbow. "Put the lights out," he muttered. There was only the candle on the desk, and a very little light from the open window. Enjolras shook his head, at the interruption and the elusive phrase that had been so obvious an hour previous. Grantaire receded again into quiet mutterings, and then only the heat and slight pressure of his hand.
Enjolras took his wrist then, lifting the dead weight off his arm. His mind remained elsewhere, his eyes on the desk and its inch of candle, and the drunk in a middling stupor. His fingers hesitated over a healing cut, and Enjolras turned the hand then, curious. Unbuttoned his shirt-cuff to trace the wound where it trailed off on Grantaire's forearm, crisscrossed by other slashes. Grantaire blinked at him, turning a little, mute as Enjolras traced the haphazard markings with a fingertip and a puzzled frown.
The liquor and low light deprived Grantaire of a clear sense of Enjolras's face, but numbed the still-healing cuts to a nearly pleasurable twinge when Enjolras scraped at them. He could have no idea, naturally, and Grantaire indulged in a vague fantasy of enlightening him. Presently Enjolras satisfied his curiosity, determining - what? Fastened Grantaire's none-too-clean shirt cuff again and placed his hand back at his side. Next he'd have a blanket pulled over him and be expected to sleep the night through. Enjolras shifted forward, trying to stand without disturbing Grantaire's stupor.
The drunkard forced his eyes open again, laughed a little. "There's more, Apollo. Lost interest?"
The so-called god turned towards him sharply, startled and then merely annoyed by the mortal's persistence. "It was a fight," he said with certainty. "Unless you fell on your own bottle."
"Well. Something like a fight," Grantaire said with an effort. There were silly boys who threw themselves in the river, drank poison, talked of nothing but death. He was a fool who asked death in for a quick tumble, and at present could not recall his apparent host's name.
"Too hot here for this," Grantaire continued, when it seemed he was alone in the conversation. He raised himself cumbrously and set to undoing his shirt again. Enjolras looked on in some dismay, before the scarring caught his attention again. "How did you get so many?" he asked, interrogating. And before he could think, he was pinned to the mattress, bent backwards with the drunkard's full weight on his shoulders, gasping for air.
Grantaire regarded him solemnly, speaking clearly. "He was quicker than you." A mere arms-length away. His eyes were wider now, flickering quickly over his captive. Without conscious thought, Enjolras jerked and was pushed back harshly, pinned with an arm across his chest and a hand at his throat. He grimaced at the smell of wine and worse, but could not catch a breath deep enough to hold, nor throw the drunkard off. Grantaire was thrown himself, perhaps too drunk to hold himself up properly certainly too close. Enjolras looked away, held himself very still until he could slow his breath and his heart stopped pounding.
Enjolras's skin was cool where it touched Grantaire's; no guessing whether the boy's blood ran hot or cold. Grantaire watched entranced as the half-imagined flush faded from the boys features, and met Enjolras's gaze shamelessly when he deigned to give the drunkard his attention again. "Marble again," he marveled, taking care with the words. "You'd never understand, but...you see how, maybe," he added as an apology, and crossed the last space to kiss Enjolras's cheek, chastely. Almost certain he could keep his promise this once, he rolled away and made a valiant effort at standing. "I'll go."