Peace
Alright, so I promised soft old men, but then this happened, and well…
E/R, canon divergent post-Barricades. Canon compliant character death, canon-typical violence and mistreatment of prisoners.
It was barely dawn when Enjolras slipped out of bed, trying not to wake the man snoring next to him. But even the simple act of trying to get out of bed without rousing his companion seemed beyond him now, as the lump wrapped in the majority of the blankets let out a disgruntled noise, a hand emerging from under the covers to reach for the emptiness where Enjolras had just lain.
“Come back,” Grantaire said grumpily, and Enjolras just laughed lightly, bending down and reaching for Grantaire’s hand and entwining their fingers together.
He ran his thumb lightly over Grantaire’s gnarled knuckles and the veins that stood out starkly against the liver-spotted back of his hand before raising Grantaire’s hand to his lips. “Go back to bed,” he ordered, his voice quiet but no less commanding than it had once been.
Grantaire’s head emerged finally from under the covers, his grizzled features thrown into shadowy relief in the dim light. “Only if you come back to bed with me,” he said, his voice pitched low to suggest Enjolras return to bed for reasons other than resuming sleep.
Enjolras laughed lightly. “I’m not certain my back has recovered enough from last evening’s activities, and your knees absolutely have not.” He arched an eyebrow at Grantaire. “Of course, you are welcome to remove yourself from bed and prove me incorrect.”
Never one to forgo a challenge, Grantaire attempted to sit up, only to give up with a groan. “Fiend,” he muttered, waving a dismissive hand at Enjolras. “Leave me be to suffer in peace.”
Laughing again, Enjolras hastily dressed before shuffling around the side of the bed so that he could bend over and kiss the top of Grantaire’s head. “Sleep,” he murmured. “I shall return before you wake again.”
Grantaire rallied himself enough to kiss Enjolras properly, cupping Enjolras’s wrinkled cheek with his hand. “You had best,” he said. “Or else I shall have to content myself to seeing you solely in my dreams.”
Enjolras rolled his eyes affectionately, turning his head to kiss the palm of Grantaire’s hand. “I’m certain you would see me in your dreams regardless.”
Grantaire smiled softly at him. “You know I shall.”
Enjolras straightened again, wincing as he did, and by the time he made it to the door, Grantaire was snoring once more. He shook his head before starting slowly down the stairs, wishing he had thought to bring his cane upstairs with him the previous night.
Of course, the prior evening he had been rather preoccupied by the man now asleep again in their bed, their shared enthusiasm leading them to act, and at least temporarily feel, far younger than their current ages. And if his body protested this morning, he still couldn’t quite find it in himself to regret it.
Well, he regretted that they had not been able to do this when they were in their prime, when one night of lovemaking would not leave them both with well-earned aches for the next week, but better now than never.
He retrieved his cane from its spot by the front door and made his way outside where the sun was just beginning to peak over the rooftops that lined the narrow street, and he turned his face up to it instinctively, pausing for a moment just to feel its warmth on his face.
Then he strode determinedly in the direction of the baker’s, to fetch the breakfast that both men desperately needed after the previous night.
He walked slower now, but no less proud despite age and a bayonet wound to his knee having finally caught up with him. His hair glinted more silver than gold these days, the youth once embodied by his most-hated nickname ‘Apollo’ as well as his visage now lost to the wrinkles and creases that mapped the life he had lived.
Of course, he carried with him more evidence than that of the hardships he had faced over the years, but those scars were seen only by Grantaire these days.
The baker did not look surprised to see him despite the early hour, instead reaching automatically for a loaf of the bread that Grantaire favored. “Fine morning,” he said warmly, passing the bread to Enjolras, who nodded.
“That it certainly is,” he agreed, handing his coins to the baker, including, as always, a little extra in case any came in begging later that day. It was not much, but it was a small gesture for Enjolras to couple with the work he and Grantaire did to uplift those who needed it most.
“But where is your companion this fine morning?” the baker asked.
“Where else?” Enjolras grumbled, pretending to be put out, as if he and the baker did not have this conversation at least once a week. “In bed still, lazing the day away.”
The baker laughed. “Then give M. Grantaire my best when finally he rouses himself,” he said, and Enjolras just smiled.
“I certainly shall,” he promised, tucking the bread under his arm before continuing up the street.
He had a few more stops to make to complete their meal, and by the time he returned home, the sun had eclipsed the rooftops fully and the housekeeper was already bustling in the kitchen. “Oh, M. Enjolras!” she said when he came in to deposit the food on the table. “I thought you and M. Grantaire were still asleep.”
“He is,” Enjolras told her, breaking off the end of the baguette and taking a bite. “But one of us had to seek provisions, and I appear to have been the unlucky one.”
Her face softened. “I don’t think M. Grantaire would ever dispute you on who is the lucky one between you two,” she told him. “And not just because you let him sleep in.”
Enjolras nodded, his chest suddenly feeling tight, and it took a moment for him to speak. “On that count, I believe we are both lucky,” he managed finally.
She smiled at him. “Best take that up to him, then,” she said, hurrying to grab some cutlery and a napkin for him to take along with the food. “You know how he gets when he’s hungry.”
“Don’t I ever,” Enjolras said with a short laugh.
He turned to head upstairs but she stopped him. “I know it’s not my place to say anything, but I worked for M. Grantaire for a long time,” she said, and Enjolras paused, glancing back at her.
“Yes?” he said, curious where she was going with this.
“I just wanted to tell you that I don’t think he was ever truly alive until you returned,” she said, and Enjolras’s heart clenched painfully. “For whatever that is worth.”
“Everything,” Enjolras told her, the starkness of the word underlining its sincerity. “It means everything.
— — — — —
Enjolras had thought his life over when the barricade was taken, but life – or at least, the National Guard – had a crueler fate in mind. While his companions had perished, he had been dragged before a mockery of a court and promptly convicted of treason before being handed over to the prison system.
“Kill me, then,” he had snarled once while being beaten for the minor offense of, seemingly, continuing to exist.
His jailer, a paragon of cruelty, had just laughed. “You think we would be foolish enough to make a martyr of you?” he had asked. “Oh, no. Your punishment will be far worse than death.” He had grabbed Enjolras by the hair, yanking his head back as he sneered in his face, “His Majesty’s grace will allow you to live the rest of your miserable days in prison where you will suffer the worst fate of all: to be forgotten.”
And he had been, relegated to stints of hard labor in between prolonged periods of solitary confinement, seemingly at his guard’s whim. At first he counted the days, but as they stretched to years, he found he could no longer keep track. There was little point in counting, after all, when the number mattered not: five, ten, twenty years, his fate remained the same.
It would have been enough to break any man, as Enjolras had quickly learned that fortitude held little bearing on those who survived. Those who made it, it seemed, were driven by something far deeper than hope and stronger than courage.
Enjolras had thought, at first, that the Cause he had given so much for might be what drove him, but as the days dragged onward, he found himself tiptoeing closer and closer to despair. What good was believing in a Cause that presented no change to his circumstances, or those of any of his fellow prisoners?
For that matter, what good was believing in a Cause that had left all those he had ever loved in this world dead in the streets?
That thought plagued him most of all, haunting his nightmares with specters of his dead friends. Most of the time, he just saw their lifeless bodies in a horrifying tableau, but on occasion, they spoke to him, mocking and taunting him. Those were his darkest nights of all.
It was one of those such nights when he lay alone in a damp, cold cell, feverish and delusional, that he had seen them again, first Combeferre, eyes vacant and staring, then Courfeyrac, crumpled in a heap. “No,” Enjolras moaned, covering his face with his hands. “No, please.”
“Enjolras,” a voice whispered, and Enjolras shook his head wildly.
“No,” he repeated, pleading. “Not again—”
“Enjolras,” the voice said again, stronger this time, and different from the jeering tone the apparitions normally had.
Slowly, he lowered his trembling hands, staring at the figure of the man crouching in front of him. “Grantaire?” he managed, his voice a croak.
The figure nodded. “Enjolras,” he said, and Enjolras gasped at the familiar sound of his name from Grantaire’s mouth. He rarely pictured Grantaire in his hallucinations, but this was different. This was as if the man himself was there in the cell with him.
“This is a dream,” he said, and Grantaire cocked his head.
“Is it?” he asked.
Enjolras shook his head. “No, I mean—” He pushed his hair from his face. “This is not a nightmare. It is a dream.”
Something softened in Grantaire’s shadowy features. “A good dream, then, I hope,” he said. “A dream that might take away some of the pain in your heart.”
Enjolras’s expression tightened. “How can it?” he whispered. “When you – when they—”
He couldn’t continue, and Grantaire just nodded slowly.
By knowing that those you love will never truly leave you.
That is an answer for a child. I know better. With all I have seen—
With all you have seen, perhaps what you need is to feel like a child again, however fleeting it may be. You have seen loss, and pain, more than anyone should in one lifetime. Would it be so terrible to at least pretend, for a moment, that you haven’t?
It won’t change anything to pretend.
Won’t it?
How can I, though? It is too much to bear alone.
But you are not alone. I am here.
But you’re not. You’re not here. You’re—
He couldn’t continue, burying his head in his hands. “Peace,” Grantaire whispered in Enjolras’s ear, and he could almost imagine that he felt Grantaire’s arm around his shoulders. “I am here. I have you.”
Perhaps it was just that Enjolras had been exhausted, and ill, but for the first time in more nights than he could count, Enjolras had slept, wrapped in Grantaire’s lingering presence.
Maybe it was just that there was no one else he would rather have there, no one else he would tolerate to see him like this.
Or maybe it was that there was so much that he had wished he had told Grantaire, so many moments that he wished they had shared. All those late nights in the Musain…
But that was a different dream entirely, and when the morning dawned, when the guard banged on the bars of his cell, Enjolras woke up alone.
For one dark moment, he had felt worse than he had the night before, stricken as he was with the clarity that Grantaire was gone, that he had never really been there, that he, too, was dead, that he had inevitably been struck by a cannon blast or a rifle shot or pierced by the point of a bayonet, just like the rest of them.
But then Enjolras had sat bolt upright, realization hitting like a thunderbolt, because Grantaire had not been like the rest of them. Grantaire alone had not fought, had not stared down the cannons and bayonets.
That Grantaire alone had slept.
That Grantaire alone might have lived.
Enjolras had found what was to drive him, a singular obsession that held the despair just far enough at bay that he could survive. Even if he was to spend the rest of his life behind bars, knowing that Grantaire might still live meant that all hope could never truly be lost.
And while he would never be happy with his circumstances, he thought perhaps he could live with this kind of peace.
At least, until one day which later he learned was 22 years after their failed revolution, when he was escorted by the guard to the front door of the prison he’d spent some time in and told, roughly, “Your conviction is overturned.”
“Overturned?” Enjolras had questioned, squinting against the sunlight streaming through the window in the door. “But the king—”
“—Is no longer the king,” the guard told him curtly. “You’re free to go.”
With that, he has been all but shoved outside to a world that looked very little like the one he had left or even the one he had lost. In looking back on it, he had no idea what he would have done, put out on the street with nothing but the clothes on his back, save for—
“Enjolras!”
The years had been hard on Enjolras’s body just as well as his spirit, but still he would know the voice that called to him from the crowd even if 50 years had passed – even if 50 lifetimes had passed. “Grantaire,” he had gasped, clinging to the name and the memory like a buoy.
And there had been the man himself, like the vision from his dream. Time had perhaps been kinder on him than it had been on Enjolras, but he could mark its passage nonetheless in the gray that streaked Grantaire’s still-unruly curls, in the creases in Grantaire’s brow, even in the way he hurried forward to Enjolras, not quite moving as fast as he once had and lacking some of his usual grace.
But the hand that had closed on Enjolras’s elbow was as strong as ever, and Enjolras let out a wordless cry before embracing Grantaire, not caring that he was covered in dirt and grime and all the evidence of the horrors he had faced. Grantaire, it seemed, equally did not care, as he had pulled Enjolras closer still, burying his head against Enjolras’s shoulder.
“You lived,” Enjolras breathed, clutching Grantaire as if he could not bear to let him go.
Grantaire nodded. “I lived.”
Enjolras pulled back just far enough to search Grantaire’s face. “But this whole time, I thought – I feared—”
His voice broke, but Grantaire seemed to understand. “I know,” he said, his voice low. “And I do not know how I can ask you to forgive me for letting you—”
“But why did you?” Enjolras interrupted. “Why, when but one visit from you…”
“I wanted to,” Grantaire told him, his voice pained. “I asked the court to keep me apprised of your well-being – well, actually, I had Marius do it. He’s a baron now, did you know that? But—”
“But you did not come see me.”
Grantaire bowed his head. “I did not think you would want to see me,” he said, his voice soft. “To know that I survived, when all else was lost—”
“My friend,” Enjolras interrupted again, the word feeling strange on his tongue for how it failed to capture everything Grantaire was to him, everything he had always been, even if only in his dreams. “The thought that you still might live is what has sustained me these dark years. Knowing that you slept, hoping that you were not roused, that the National Guard might mistake you for one already dead…”
He trailed off and Grantaire shook his head slowly, doubt flickering in his features. “Truly?” he asked quietly. “You do not begrudge the libertine whose survival hinged solely on the overindulgence of wine?”
Enjolras shook his head. “No more than I begrudge those who could not be stirred from their beds. Besides, you were always where I pinned my hope. If I could convince no other but you, I would never consider myself to have failed. And this means I have time yet still to try.”
That realization hit him as he spoke the words, and his knees buckled. He would have fallen were it not for Grantaire’s arms holding him upright. “I have you,” Grantaire whispered, and Enjolras let out a wordless sob at the words he had dreamed so many times being spoken to him.
“I know,” he managed. “I know.”
When finally he was able to straighten, Grantaire gave him a slightly shaky smile. “Well,” he said briskly, clearly attempting to change the subject, “since you have consented to forgive me, or at the very least not begrudge me, I must tell you what I have done, or what I have tried to do, in your absence—”
“Beloved,” Enjolras said, and while he had never before called Grantaire that, it felt more right than friend ever had or ever could. “There is nothing you have ever needed to do.”
Grantaire had looked as if he wished very much to argue with that, but for once, he had said nothing. “Then let me, at the very least, bring you to my house, that there you might find food, clean clothes, and some respite.”
“Very well,” Enjolras said.
Grantaire had reached for his hand, then hesitated. “Do you permit it?” he asked, almost shyly, and wasn’t that a revelation – Grantaire, shyer as he neared 60 than he had ever been when Enjolras had known him before.
Enjolras had wordlessly taken his hand, squeezing it once.
Their hands had stayed clasped as Grantaire had led him through the streets of Paris, at once achingly familiar and hauntingly foreign. As they walked, Grantaire filled him in on the political happenings, but Enjolras found it hard to muster the enthusiasm that was perhaps expected of him for the revolution that had, this time, succeeded.
It would return, in time, and in no small part because of Grantaire – the cynic leading the believer back to faith! – but even the thought of it seemed too far away for Enjolras to then grasp.
When they had arrived at Grantaire’s house, a modest lodging, Enjolras spared barely a glance at the building before setting upon the food Grantaire’s housekeeper had thoughtfully prepared, wolfing it down as if he knew not when he would find his last meal.
“What next?” Grantaire had asked when he had finished, having watching all of this silently.
Enjolras had swallowed before hesitantly saying, “I thought, perhaps, to bathe?”
Grantaire had silently taken his hand once more and led him upstairs. There, he had a bath drawn for Enjolras
Again he had asked, so soft and low that Enjolras might have missed it had he not been listening for it, “Do you permit it?”
Enjolras nodded, and Grantaire’s fingers trembled for just a moment before he helped Enjolras remove his clothing. For a fleeting second, Enjolras wondered if he should be embarrassed, to be naked in front of Grantaire, but he could not bring himself to be, even as Grantaire’s fingers gently skimmed his ribs, sticking painfully from his thin frame, or traced a bruise against Enjolras’s thigh.
This was Grantaire. Even after all this time, Enjolras knew that he had no need to be embarrassed with him.
Then Grantaire helped Enjolras into the bathtub, and without asking this time, rolled up his sleeves before picking up the soap and carefully, reverently, beginning to wash Enjolras’s back.
His touch grew firmer but no less reverent as he continued, moving Enjolras as if he weighed nothing to lather and scrub seemingly every inch of his skin without flinching. Enjolras offered no protest, trusting Grantaire as he always had. He closed his eyes and leaned against the bathtub, drifting into a sort of half-sleep as Grantaire cleaned him.
When he was finally clean of at least the dirt that stained his outside, Enjolras stood shakily with Grantaire’s help, letting him towel him dry before dressing automatically. “I am sorry that I have no better fitting clothes—” Grantaire started, but Enjolras just shook his head.
“They will do,” he said softly. “Thank you. For – for everything.”
Grantaire’s expression softened. “There is no need to thank me. It is the least I could do.” He paused before adding, a little hesitantly, “And this house, I know it is not much, but—”
“It is more than enough,” Enjolras told him.
Grantaire worried his lower lip between his teeth for a moment before blurting, “Then I hope you will consent to stay, here, with me.” Enjolras stared at him and a mottled flush rose in Grantaire’s sagging cheeks. “This house, the life I have built, the work I have done – there has always been something missing, something I left room for – someone I left room for.”
“Grantaire—”
But Grantaire did not let him interrupt. “I know what you will say. You are predictable even now, at least to me.” Enjolras shook his head, but Grantaire did not pause. “You will say that you have changed, that you are no longer the man whom I loved all those years ago, and that may well be true. But I never stopped believing in you, and I hope in time I can convince you to believe in me, too.”
“I already do,” Enjolras told him honestly. “I always have.”
Grantaire searched his expression for a moment. “And yet you hesitate.”
“Because I have changed,” Enjolras said. “You have seen what the past years have done to my body but you have not yet witnessed what they’ve done to my mind, or to my spirit. And those are wounds that I fear may never heal. So to offer to shackle yourself to someone who may be broken beyond repair—”
“Did you love me, all those years ago?” Grantaire interrupted, and Enjolras flinched at the question.
It was one thing they had never said to each other, but even with all the time that had passed, he knew that they had never needed to. “You know that I did.”
“In spite of my drinking, and my cynicism, and the darkness that always threatened to overwhelm.”
He didn’t phrase it as a question but Enjolras still answered. “Yes.”
“Why?”
The question took Enjolras by surprise, and it took him a long moment to answer. “I do not know,” he admitted.. “I just did.”
Grantaire didn’t look surprised. “Then is it truly so hard for you to believe that, just as you loved me at my most broken, I too may still love you at yours?”
Enjolras did not smile. “Belief and I parted ways some years back, I’m afraid.”
Now Grantaire’s expression softened, just a little, and he took a step closer to Enjolras. “Then how is this for belief: I do not believe you beyond repair. But even if you were, it would temper my love no less.” He reached for Enjolras’s hand, lacing their fingers together. “And if you and belief have truly parted ways, then I shall simply have to believe it enough for the both of us.”
He said it with the conviction that Enjolras had once hoped Grantaire would espouse, and a part of his heart he thought might never heal seemed to beat just a little stronger. “I love you,” he told Grantaire, a little helplessly. “Still, always. You—” He swallowed, hard. “—you kept me alive when I thought I could not go on.”
“As you have always done for me,” Grantaire told him. “So will you stay with me? Will you make this house our home so that we can keep each other alive?”
Enjolras managed a small, tired smile, his first real smile in what was almost certainly years. “I have nowhere better to be,” he told Grantaire before asking, “Do you permit it?”
Wordlessly, Grantaire kissed him.
And after Grantaire had led him to bed, Enjolras had laid in Grantaire’s arms, feeling safe for the first time in years. And for the first time in years, he had allowed himself to cry.
“Peace,” Grantaire had whispered, his lips brushing against Enjolras’s forehead. “I am here. I have you.”
— — — — —
Enjolras stood in the doorway, watching Grantaire sleep, warmth spreading throughout his chest. Wordlessly, he set their breakfast down on the dressing table and with as much grace as his old bones would allow, he clambered back into bed.
Grantaire let out a snuffling noise before turning to squint at him. “What are you doing?” he asked.
Enjolras just pulled him close. “What does it look like I’m doing?”
Grantaire just hummed, his eyes already closing as he pillowed his head on Enjolras’s chest. Enjolras stroked Grantaire’s gray curls, marveling at how much had changed, and how much hadn’t. How much never would.
He closed his eyes, resting his cheek against the top of Grantaire’s head. “Peace,” he whispered. “I am here. I have you.”
