It had been ages since darkness had fallen, and no one had bothered to help it get back up, it thought to itself with a curse. Presently, it took its own initiative and found itself blinking into the radiant gaze of the newling sun. The dark smiled. "Hello, Enjolras. How long have you been there?"
"About fifteen minutes. Are you all right, Capitaine?"
The concern in the other boy's voice amused Grantaire greatly, and some pith about how he'd not be all right until La Belle France had Liberated Herself from the Manacles of the Tyrannous Monarchy and was Free to Blossom not beneath, but united beautifully with a Representative Government firmly founded on the Divine Truth that All Men Are Created Equal danced theough his dulled mind and was bitten back savagely from the edge of his sharpened tongue. He settled for, "As well as can be expected, mon ami." Let him read what he wills in that, thought Grantaire smugly. Enjolras nodded in satisfaction and made him supress a sigh. Obviously, moved by the desperate state of France under the Bourbon Yoke, "Capitaine Grandeur" had wept and sought solace in an absinthe bottle. Of course, he sneered inwardly. That's it exactly.
"Of course," said Enjolras, smiling in admiration.
Grantaire's heart sank in rapture. His smile required no force to come across as slightly grim. "Drink with me?" His hand still stroked the near-empty absinthe bottle, but he noticed that Enjolras blanched just looking at it, and pushed it quickly away in favor of a miraculously full bottle of red wine that Louison had placed there. She was quite familiar with the breakfast habits of the young revolutionary leader.
Bless her heart, thought Grantaire as he poured two glasses and pushed one towards the other boy. Enjolras stared down at the glass dubiously, but accepted it. He toyed nervously with the stem instead of tasting it immediately. Grantaire's smile grew slightly wry at this, and he raised an eyebrow as Enjolras' bearing grew even more slightly uncomfortable.
"So," he began, pretending to ignore the mounting and inexplicable disquiet in the other, "have you news for me, Enjolras, or is this a purely social call?"
Enjolras shifted a little, grimacing over the sip of wine he'd sampled and moving quickly to hide the grimace. "Combeferre told me I could find you here."
"Did he?" Grantaire raised the other eyebrow.
Enjolras swallowed another gulp of wine, uncomfortably. "I'm not much of a drinker." He sighed, pushing the glass back towards Grantaire. "I don't care for the taste."
"That is unsurprising. This is terribly cheap wine from some backwater hamlet in Gers, and red is mercilessly bitter. I shall point you out a truly excellent vin blanc, sometime. You're from the Midi too, n'est-ce pas?"
"I'm from Gers myself, actually."
"You don't say? A real Gascon then! That is a fine thing. My hometown is not far outside." He grinned at Enjolras, who looked terribly blank, and blankly terrified. "Now, why were you looking for me, again?"
Enjolras opened his mouth, and then closed it, much to Grantaire's amusement. He cleared his throat and began again, "I wanted... I wished to tell y...." He paused and took a deep breath, then said, all in a rush, "I wished to report on tonight's distribution run."
"Ah, yes, the pamphlets." Grantaire leaned back in his chair, eyes twinkling with merriment as they regarded Enjolras, squirming in his seat as if he were pinned there; a golden insect wriggling helplessly under the poinyard of Grantaire's gaze. "So?"
Enjolras cleared his throat, and smiled weakly. "It went very well. Like wildfire. The little response we received immediately was entirely favorable. Tomorrow or the next day, we'll know truly how sucessful our mission was." Enjolras' voice grew stronger as he spoke, until, glad to be back to matters of business, he nearly glowed.
Grantaire silently cursed this formal shift, but he nodded to Enjolras. "Good. Was there anything else?"
"No, not really..." Enjolras stood, taking that as a request to go. R chuckled.
"Then pardieu man, sit down and finish your drink. Yes, it's sour, but so is the rule of Louis Philippe. The discipline of the one fortifies us as we endure the other."
"Today." The light of the spirit inflamed, which had almost faded from Enjolras' eyes, burned brightly once more and Grantaire was guiltily pleased with himself. "For now. With you to guide us, Capitane Grandeur, this outrageous brutalization of our land and people cannot last!" And he threw back half the glass in a gulp, trying desperately not to grimace or spit it out. Grantaire laughed, richly and approvingly.
"There you go, Adrien. That's the spirit." Enjolras looked up from the glass, and cocked his head to one side.
"You know my name?"
"You told it me, when I met you, if you recall."
"You've never called me anything but Enjolras. I hadn't thought you'd remembered it."
"I did." Grantaire sipped from his own glass, grinning at Enjolras over the rim. The hairs on the back of Enjolras' neck began to prick up slightly and it occurred to him, through the slight burn the wine had begun to inflict on his mind, that the seeming inanity of this part of the conversation was all facade. He felt himself drawing nearer to a place he could only half see, at dizzying speeds; a feeling only accelerated by the tease in his Capitaine's voice as he asked, "And mine... do you recall it?"
The wine. Enjolras was mid-sip as the question was asked, and he squeezed his eyes shut through the wash of alcohol fire, nodding. "Uh huh," he swallowed to clear his throat of the burning sensation the liquor created there, "Marion Grantaire, n'est-ce pas?"
"Right." He smiled softly at the struggling Enjolras, who sighed and determined that he'd have to give up on such vices for now.
Enjolras looked up at Grantaire's eyes and nearly recoiled at their invasiveness. He looks at me like he wants to burn a hole through me; he thought absently, and then coughed to clear his head.
Grantaire, for his part, seemed nonplussed. "A little too much, petit?"
Enjolras nodded. "Yes. I told you I'm not used to such..." he trailed off, favoring Grantaire with a puzzled frown.Petit? He was younger than Grantaire, true, but a good head or two taller.
Grantaire grew almost as delighted as Enjolras was terrified by the sudden change in Enjolras as several thoughts and ideas began to sink in and form as much of a picture as there could be in the youth's unripened mind. Suddenly, it was not a boy, but a man sitting there with a deepening scowl on his face and the wine glass clenched in his hand. Grantaire marvelled at the way anger smouldered blue in the entrancing eyes, which seemed at the moment to be chiselled completely out of ice. It was the angel of vengance, severe and unmovable, dashing by its very existence all of Grantaire's hopes while making his heart and spirit soar. When Enjolras spoke it was in a low, almost menacing near-growl. "You're dead drunk, aren't you?"
"No, not dead." Grantaire raised his eyes to the blue flames, grinning like an image of Lucifer out of some grotesque catechism. "Drunk, perhaps. But Adrien, mon petit, it has nothing to do with liquor."
Enjolras caught his breath as Grantaire caught a lock of the golden hair; then shook his head to free it and his eyes, also, from Grande R's abysmal gaze.
"You can't mean..."
"What can't I mean?"
The hand Enjolras had shaken off touched his face at the temple and crept softly along his pallid cheek, as if it was drawing out all of his righteous fury through the touch. Enjolras felt hus pride deserting him and shut his eyes, murmuring protests of utter disbelief against the sapping of his will. His hand, the last bastion of his former sentience, advanced with the advertised intention of plucking Grantaire's from his cheek and casting it away. Somewhere, it betrayed him, perhaps as his fingers grazed the back of the roughened hand. Enjolras opened his eyes to meet Grantaire's in a union of mutual shock; doubled with amazement on the one end and triumph on the other. The turncoat fingers laced and locked with those of his leader, and pressed Grantaire's against his cheek. He swallowed and licked his lips; committed, but knowing not how to say so.
Grantaire, comprehending all, turned his grin of victory into a tender smile, and brushed away a lock of hair from where it had fallen across Enjolras' excellent forehead. "Come home with me, Adrien." The boy -- for he was, once more -- swallowed, staring at the out he was not going to take.
"All right. But I've never..." He added the last hurriedly, and Grantaire stopped him with a finger to his lips.
"I know. It's all right. Come on." He leaned forward to ensure the completion of his conquest, and found his prey startled by his forwardness but completely won. When he pulled back after a moment, the dark light in his eyes shocked Enjolras with its dangerous ardency.
"Come on," repeated Capitaine Grantaire in a husky near-whisper, and Enjolras obeyed. He was not following; they were walking side by side companionably as they made their way through the advance of morning. Fortunately, the fog hung thick about them. It heightened Enjolras' already surreal sense of giddy detachment and lent a veil of obscurity to their journey. It seemed to both, with varying sentiments, that the dawn conspired with them by cloaking them away from the advance of day and the world waking about them, as they prepared to descend into the dark. This is precisely what crossed Enjolras' unquiet mind as he faltered on the threshold of Grantaire's flat. His leader, his idol, his Capitaine Grandeur had entered already, and held the door ajar for him with a diabolic patience. Enjolras did not immediately move. It seemed to him that he stood on the edge of an abyss, and who could tell what lay at the bottom: Paradise, or the pit? Even now, the option hung dimly there: run away, or step off. Off end. Go for it, boy.
He stared into the void for what seemed like along time before, sans any outside urging, he took a deep breath, tensing for his leap at the edge of the jumping-off place. Determined to find what pleasure he could in descent, he plummeted, and soon found himself landed in the warm arms of Grandeur.
Tell me quickly what's the flamin' story...