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Enjolras climbs the stairs to his rooms as weary as he’s ever been, every step a century. They are lucky to have escaped today with nothing but bruises and some blood. (Lucky, but also they know and love their city’s streets better than any do, and their city knows and loves them back.)
He promised Combeferre he would care for himself and sleep, refused Courfeyrac’s insistent worrying, made his friends – his lieutenants – leave him at the courtyard entrance. They could barely bring themselves to go, but he cannot let them see him climb as unsteadily as this. He cannot let them see his hands shake while he undresses. They do not need the extra burden.
He turns from the staircase toward his rooms and stops. Grantaire is waiting in the hall, leaning in his doorway. There’s an empty bottle by his side.
“You were not there.” It’s all Enjolras can think to say.
“No.” Grantaire reeks not so much of liquor – though there is always that – as of contrition.
Enjolras is too tired to deal with either. Had this been a test, Grantaire would have failed. “Why then are you here?”
He unlocks the door and Grantaire follows him inside, closing the door and standing against it. “I wanted to see how you are,” he says gravely.
“I should not think,” Enjolras says, hissing as he tries to remove his torn coat, deliberately cruel, “that you would care.”
Grantaire does not smile. “I think you miss the point.”
Enjolras cannot resist twisting the knife. Maybe he would not do it, had Grantaire stood with them, had he borne the clubs and the sight of Jehan unbowed but bleeding. But he was not there, and he does not deserve to pretend he owes them nothing. “For all that you claim devotion, you have never shown it,” he says.
Grantaire looks at him steadily. “I come to meetings.”
“The revolution is our love for our fellow man,” Enjolras says, “and such brotherhood requires action.” He cannot shrug off his coat, his shoulders painful and tense. He would almost rather Courfeyrac and Combeferre here seeing him too spent to help himself than Grantaire, strange and wild and callous.
“I cannot profess love for anything that requires my fellows dead.”
Enjolras grits his teeth and walks slowly toward his bedroom. “Please leave. I would have peace tonight.”
Grantaire moves to go, but stops. “I would offer what help I can,” he says finally.
Enjolras turns around, a small agony, and they are face to face though now Grantaire will not meet his eyes. “And what help is that? You do not, maybe cannot, stand with us. We need you as we need all men, but you only laugh at us.”
Grantaire lifts his gaze then, and he seems lost. Enjolras is grateful to lean against the wall. His temples throb. “Could I believe, I would,” Grantaire says lowly. “It is not in me to do so.” He looks away again. “I would die every day for any of Les Amis, but I will not live in such a way as to hasten their ends.”
“The future will be brighter.” It is all Enjolras can offer him.
Grantaire twists the doorknob. “I came only to see you yet live; I will leave you to your peace now.”
Enjolras is too weary to make any proper reply, but he is too much himself not to fight this apathy. He shakes his head once and winces. “Can you truly not see it? I do not live, because the people are not free. While the people are enchained, how can I pretend blindness? They are mine as I am theirs, as the Republic belongs to us all.”
Grantaire’s hand drops, and he laughs. The sound is bitter. “I can see only this, that if your Patria loved you as you love her, she would not sacrifice you so readily or so soon. I can see that, and I can see how she wounds you – Enjolras, there is blood in your hair, and you breathe as one in pain. Can you pretend her minions did not beat you for your ill-placed love?” He comes forward slowly and stops in front of Enjolras, an arm’s length between them. He looks up quickly and down again. “I am neither Combeferre nor Courfeyrac, but will you permit me to help you in this? Even one such as I can be – ” he pauses, and his shoulders hunch, “ – moved by plight. I am no doctor; there is little enough I can do for you. But I do not think you capable at this moment even of removing your coat.”
Enjolras fights a brief war with his pride. He sent the others away, but he doubts seeing him like this will weigh on the unbelieving Grantaire as it would on them, and in the end he is not truly certain he can manage alone. He says, “If you would be so kind.”
Grantaire smiles, a brief and giddy thing. It is the smile of a nervous acolyte for his idol, and this too is exhausting. Enjolras is no man’s fool, and he knows the depth of Grantaire’s regard; this might be too cruel a thing to give. But Grantaire reaches forward and unties Enjolras’s cravat with infinite tenderness, and Enjolras knows that it is easier to accept this help than it would be to make him leave now. (Besides, the too-human part of him thinks, what if it is cruel? Surely it is the lesser evil.)
“Step forward,” Grantaire says. He pushes Enjolras’s jacket off, gentle and paying attention to every flinch. Enjolras breathes past the bruises at his side and where their sticks caught his arms. “How many were they?”
“A dozen at least. They tried to take Jehan.”
“More fools they.” Grantaire grins as he lays the coat over a chair, careful in this as in his touch, and comes back to unbutton Enjolras’s waistcoat.
“He withstood it as well as Bahorel. They always mistake him for weak, but – ”
“I know he is not.” Grantaire lays the waistcoat over the chair too. “I know you are not either, Enjolras.” He gestures at the bedroom. “Will you lie down?”
Every bone aches. “I do not know that I can,” and surely this of all things will prove him no god for adulation. This is why he could not let Courfeyrac and Combeferre come upstairs with him. He needs to be strong for them, as strong as they are for him.
Grantaire smiles wryly, familiar, and helps Enjolras to his bed. Enjolras sits and does not gasp. Grantaire kneels and takes his heel in hand. His face is uncertain now, and though Enjolras is unmoved, he is not ignorant of what Grantaire might think in this moment, on his knees.
“Would you go on?” he asks.
“You cannot forsake me so easily.” It is said too lightly for the way Grantaire colors as he draws off Enjolras’s right boot and slowly sets it on the floor. He waits, head bent and hands on his thighs, as if for permission to continue.
Enjolras regards him, defeated.
“I would be of use in the ways that I can,” Grantaire says into the quiet. His black curls hide his face.
“I do not understand you,” Enjolras says at last, and slides his left foot forward. “You insist you will die for us, yet you refuse to stand with us. You mock us as you breathe. What kind of love is that?”
Grantaire does not answer. He sets the boot beside its partner and gets up to fetch the cloth at the basin. He wets it and comes to stand before Enjolras. “May I?”
Enjolras nods.
Grantaire touches him with reverence, and Enjolras closes his eyes. Grantaire wipes the blood and dirt from above Enjolras’s ear, and parts Enjolras’s hair to reach what is clotted at his scalp. His fingers are so light. “She is harsh, your mistress,” Grantaire says.
“The National Guard may be of the state, but they do not stand for France, nor for her people.” Enjolras breathes through his nose and reminds himself this pain was got in service. He is glad to bear it. He thinks of the upturned faces of the crowd, and how many of them took pamphlets. Paris will rise. His city will give the Republic what is needed, as she always has.
Grantaire wrings out the cloth and returns. “Your hands. May I? Enjolras, Enjolras, open your eyes.”
He does, and Grantaire is again on the floor, and this time nearer. Enjolras reaches out with his left hand. “They wake,” he says. “Why will you not?”
“Your National Guard will save me that trouble. We will all be gone before you need to worry about me rallying the people.” Grantaire holds Enjolras’s hand flat in one of his own, and with the other so carefully dabs his knuckles. Grantaire trembles, just a little. It would be an easy thing to offer him forgiveness, penitent and hungry like this.
“You smell of drink,” Enjolras says instead.
“You go to the gallows, either with a crucifixion on a barricade or after a sham of a trial. We go with you. I do not think it matters that I drink.” Grantaire takes his other hand. When he’s done, he places it gently on Enjolras’s knee and rises.
Enjolras watches him rinse the cloth and put it on the stand.
“Will you sleep, if I leave?”
“I will try.”
Grantaire pauses in the bedroom door, mimic to before. He says quietly, “I know you despise me. I expect nothing else. It is enough to be in the presence of those I call ‘friend,’ even if they would not use the word for me.”
Enjolras lies back and listens to his body protest. Tomorrow will be harder than today. “They would use the word,” he says.
Grantaire nods, and goes out.