#granjolars

They don’t have trouble finding each other. By chance, or by instinct, they both end up in Paris at the same time this time. Everything else, however, takes a while. And apologies. And a paper hat.

Recognizing someone from a previous life proves more difficult than expected when you’re both not the same person as before. (OVERVIEW)

It wasn’t as if Adrien didn’t like the rain, but he did mind the fact that he had forgotten his umbrella even though he had precautionarily left it on the kitchen table earlier. However, as he had spent the afternoon at R’s and R didn’t have a single functioning clock in his appartment, they had left in a hurry, Adrien hadn’t remembered to bring the umbrella and was now in an irritatingly damp state.

R, on the other side, had just put on his hood and didn’t seem to mind getting soaked on their way to the Métro station at all.

They were going to spend the evening with Adrien’s Amis group, informally, of course. Adrien had thought about asking R to come to an official meeting exactly once, and after thinking about it for seven minutes (in which he had organised his thoughts in a mind-map, which was, embarrassingly, something he did quite often when it came to interpersonal relationships), he had come to the conclusion that R would either refuse more or less politely or that he would come for Adrien’s sake only. Which, of course, Adrien didn’t want. Plus, R already helped him by listening to his lines of argument and tearing them apart, and by mimicking Adrien’s gestures when mockingly reciting his speeches by heart – he could memorize them almost immediately – in his now barely noticeable Irish accent. (Aside from the fact that R refused to put the stress in problème on its last syllable, he had adotped quite a Parisian dialect in less than seven weeks.)

Okay, maybe Adrien was a little bit impressed.

It did, however, bother him how utterly nihilistic and how mercurial R could be. How he would just decide that something wasn’t worth his attention and never think of it again. They had known each other for five weeks now, during which they hadn’t talked for five days straight when R had announced midway through one of Adrien’s lectures about humanitarian aid that he “simply didn’t care” and they had both been too stubborn to apologize for what had happened afterwards.

R made Adrien feel more balanced, that was true. Somehow, they had made it a habit of spending their breaks together (mostly at Adrien’s appartment because at R’s you couldn’t be sure not to trip over some paint pot when he decided that his hallway needed to be black or that he should build a giant cockade out of book pages in his kitchen) and Adrien had to admit that despite of their arguing, it relaxed him. Somehow, seeing that R didn’t seem to mind anything that he found out about Adrien filled him with confidence. He would tease him about it, but never over the top, and Adrien liked the feeling that someone knew about his mind-maps, his habit of sticking way too many post-its in a single textbook and the fact that he secretly was a bit of a picky eater.

Then, however, they would argue for hours, either about a bagatelle or the big picture or about how R would lie on his couch for an entire day and ignore everything and everyone, making acid-tongued remarks about all that Adrien said and did until he would explode and accuse R of things he didn’t even mean. And Adrien would ask himself whether R had been right that day when he had expressed his doubts about them being able to have a healthy relationship.

Adrien had been so absorbed in his thoughts that he didn’t even notice how R had steered him, hand on his back, into the Métro until their station, Passy, was anounced. They followed the bulk through the tiled hallway, past a man playing “La Valse d'Amélie” on his cello (Adrien hadn’t seen the movie, but he had heard Émelie playing it on the piano for about 500 times) and up the stairs. Which was when Adrien remembered the rain and stopped, making a face.

“What’s wrong?”, R asked. “We’re not going back. You agreed to go two days ago even though you were fully aware that most people would be drunk, there would be loud music and you would look like you brought your boyfriend with you.”
Adrien didn’t know what to make of the last part, so he ignored it, a tactic he admittedly used quite often, especially with R. To prove that he was fully capable of enduring a night out with his friends, he stepped out into the rain, automatically hunching his shoulders. Maybe he didn'tlike the rain, after all.

He had walked about ten metres when he realised R wasn’t beside him anymore. He had added three points to the pro and con columns of waiting for him when R caught up with him again, holding an issue of Metronews in his hands. He only realised that it was in fact a paper hat made from the free newspaper when R placed it on his head.

Adrien stared at R, having the strong feeling that he could’t conjure up the death glare at that moment.
He removed the paper hat.
R took it out of his hands and placed it on his head again. “This will save your precious curls from getting ruined”, he stated.

“I don’t even carehow I look right now”, Adrien protested. “But this thing is ridiculous.”
“You’ve justcontradicted yourself. Come on, doctor, you can pull this off. You can wear anything, even tight red jackets.”

Adrien didn’t know why, but when they arrived at Fréderic’s and Marian’s collocation at Square Alboni five minutes later, he was still wearing the paper hat. Maybe it had something to do with R giving him this look when he had presented it to him.
It still looked ridiculous, of course. Fawza had a fit of hysterical laughter as soon as he walked in and he had the strong impression that several photos had been taken before he had the opportunity to fold it and put it in his pocket. Adrien didn’t like being the center of attention when it wasn’t professional, plus the laughter made him nervous, so he made use of death glare again. This time it worked on everyone except Fawza, who was still giggling and in response tried to pat him on the shoulder, saying: “Hats up, Adrien.”

The Death Glare deepened to a Don’t You Dare Make Physical Contact With Me Glare, which would have done the trick, if it hadn’t been for R who was obviously delighted to meet Fawza again.
“That was beret funny”, he complimented her with that grin Adrien still found slightly annoying.
Fawza beamed when she turned to R: “I appreciate your cap-ital effort, but that wasn’t even remotely funny.”
“I think I can do the top hat pun”, he objected.
“Hats more like it”, she grinned.

A fist bump happened. Adrien made a mental note to either make sure the two of them would never be in talking distance again or to stay far away from them.

“Can we please stop with these horrible puns and just sit down somewhere?”, he said. Fawza steered him towards the living room, where most of their friends had gathered. “Hatters gonna hat”, she said.

R snorted.

Jean was very touchy-feely when drunk.
Adrien didn’t know how he could have manoevered himself into this situation, but two hours later, he found himself sitting on the couch, Jean curled up halfway in his lap, occasionally checking for Adrien’s pulse, while Émelie sat cross-legged on the coffee table across from him, ranting about how Heathcliff should be considered a force of nature rather than an avenger. Due to this unfortunate choice of words she then switched topics mid-sentence to ramble on about Marvel comics. Her knowledge was way too detailed for someone who usually emphasized how mediocre they found them.
Adrien hated it when people gave disjointed speeches. It was something that annoyed him about R, as well: He would start off with the Rennaissance and end up with the production of maccaroni.

Adrien didn’t drink because he didn’t like the feeling of losing control. Additionally, he got drunk almost immediately and every time he had tried, everyone had made fun of him for ages. The story of “How Adrien Got Drunk At New Year’s Eve Three Years Ago At Trocadéro” was still recounted at every possible occasion. Even though they had all agreed to never bring it up again.
On occasions like this, Adrien would normally watch everyone get drunk and act ridiculous together with Fawza, but this evening, she was talking to R over in the kitchen.
Adrien was annoyed by this.
Adrien felt stupid for being annoyed by this.

“I told you so!”, Jean said, all of a sudden alarmed. For the hundredth time, Adrien thought that it probably wasn’t such a good idea for Jean to get drunk, but every time he had an opportunity to talk to him about it, he didn’t know how to start with the topic.
“What did you tell me?”, he asked calmly.
“Your pulse is unstable”, Jean muttered with closed eyes. “You have three days to live.”

Émelie was talking about why Angel, not Alec, was true antagonist in Tess of the D'Urbervilles, which almost made her seem like her normal self, if she hadn’t periodically interjected her speech with exclamations about how she wanted to punch mysogynistic, double-tongued asshole in the face every time she watched the BBC Miniseries.

“Émelie”, Adrien interrupted her, “could you help me get him to bed?”
A clearly defined problem obviously had a sobering effect on Émelie, and she immediately stopped with her lecture to get one of Jean’s arms around her neck. Together they hurled him into Fréderic’s room and on his bed.
“I’ll look after him”, Émelie said, “You should check on your friend. He might feel a bit overwhelmed by all of us.”
“I don’t think so”, Adrien muttered, but he nevertheless closed the door behind him and made his way to the kitchen. He found Fawza, alone, sitting on the counter and eating cereal with milk (which she tried to hide behind her back when Adrien came in).

“Seriously?”, he said, frowing.
She quickly stuck her tongue out at him, then continued with her snack. “Capital A, you didn’t just try to make a pun, did you?”
“Where’s R?”, he asked as a reply.
“He went home about thirty minutes ago. Was feeling sick, I think, but he wanted to go alone.”

Adrien’s frown deepened. “Was he drunk, or something?”

Fawza squinched up her face. “I don’t know, I thought I heard somebody throw up in the bathroom, though. But let’s not jump to conclusions. Why do you care, anyway? Did you plan on doing something with him later?”
Adrien ignored the subtext in the last remark. “He has this exam tomorrow”, he said, already a bit angry. “He said it was important and that he would take it seriously.”
“Okay, but it’s his exam and not yours”, Fawza reminded him. The look in her eyes was way too understanding. “Go easy on him, Adrien. This is not your business.”
Adrien just shook his head and went to get his jacket. “I’ll just check on him, okay?”

After having worried about what he’d find at R’s appartment the entire way there, the fact that R opened the door with red and green paint in his hair, seemingly perfectly fine, humming English Civil War again, threw Adrien off course.

“You’re okay!”, he said almost accusingly.
R just raised an eyebrow. “…nobody understands it can happen again, hurra, tala”, he sung without much enthusiasm.
“So you’re really okay?”, Adrien repeated.
“Yeah”, R said. “I was feeling a bit queasy earlier, but maybe it was just the stale air. That, and I had started to feel a little bit weird all alone with your friends, and then I had this really awesome idea of how to install those water bottles over my bed, and so I texted you”, at this point he glared pointedly at Adrien’s pocket, “that I’d go home earlier.”

“Oh”, Adrien muttered. “I didn’t see that. I just heard you didn’t feel and had thrown up or something so I thought…”

R bit his lip before turning away. “So you thought I was drunk and irresponsible as always and you’d show up here to make sure you could drag me to that goddamn exam tomorrow. Yeah, I get your point, Adrien. It’s just sad that I wasn’t the one to throw up but the one to pull back the hair in the process. I don’t even drink, did you know that?”

There was so much accusation in his voice that Adrien just went for the easiest thing to respond to: “You don’t?”

“Well, now that I’ve come to think about it, I guess it would be an awesome idea to be drunk all the time, considering the fact that I’m such a jolly, totally stable person when I’m sober”, R snapped. “But that’s not the point, I’d rather know why you thought it would be your job to rush in here like a knight in shining armour and…”
“…because I was worried about you, obviously”, Adrien said cooly.
“Well then you better stop trying to take care of me, because I can make my own choices”, R said in a flat tone before turning away. In the last second, Adrien slid his foot into the gap and pushed the door back open, following R into the hallway.

Then he stood there, R still with his back turned towards him, waiting.

Normally, if Adrien knew what he wanted to say, the words would just fly to him. He would instinctively know which ones to pick and how to place them. With R, his talent seemed useless, because there was always this heap of vague words and feelings that he couldn’t even interpret, let alone express toward someone else. All he knew for sure in this moment was that he liked R exactly as he was, in all of his messy, unpredictable, devil-may-care ways, because even if he could, he wouldn’t change a thing about him.

Maybe he just had to let go of whatever was holding on to him that made him so angry seeing how R didn’t live up to what Adrien thought was his full potential.
Maybe – if he really liked him the way he was – he just had to full-heartedly let R be the way he was.

He reached out for R’s arm, trying to make him turn around. “I’m not trying to take care of you”, he said silently, “I do care about you.”

R slightly turned his head to look over his shoulder, searching for Adrien’s eyes.

They met.

“You’re my opposite. You balance out my flaws. You point them out. This is why you can annoy me beyond measure, but I love being annoyed by you.”

R made a sudden movement, turning around, grasping Adrien’s other arm. All at once, they were just a few centimeters apart from each other.
Adrien heard himself, like from afar, breathing heavily.
And then, somehow, everything seemed to get grey and wobbly and the walls tilted. As he was collapsing, like in slow motion, the following chain of thoughts took place in Adrien’s head:
- When was it that you last ate something?
- I don’t recall.
- This is probably why we can witness a beautiful circulatory collapse right now. Watch out…

Adrien held on to R in order not to fall, burying his face in the soft transition from his neck to his right shoulder.
His knees buckled.
“Enjolras!”, he heard R cry, and, as he slid to the ground: “You’re the one that needs to be taken care of, you ridiculous man.”