Chapter Text
Enjolras slammed his fist on the table. "Grantaire, that's enough!" he spat, fury flaring up in his eyes. "If you have nothing to add to the conversation but drunken nonsense, get out! We don't need you distracting everyone all the time, and if you don't plan on doing anything else, you'd better leave."
Grantaire stood up, not looking Enjolras in the eye, and tried to grab his bottle of wine, but he accidentally pushed it of the edge of the table instead, spilling everything onto Bossuet's lap. If Enjolras had seemed enraged before, it had nothing on how he looked now. "Can't you do anything at all? You can't even leave without making a mess, you foolish drunkard, are you good for anything?" Enjolras turned around to try and calm his breathing, his hands rubbing the temple under which a killer headache was hiding. He already knew he had overstepped a line and would have to make his excuses, but by the time he turned around Grantaire was gone. Enjolras slumped into his chair and slammed his binder shut.
"Lets- lets just leave it at that for tonight." he sighed, an uneasy feeling settling in his gut.
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The shrill sound of his alarm tortured his ears as R tried to find the motivation to get up from his ratty mattress. He sighed miserably and turned his brain on auto-pilot, something he seemed to do a lot these days. He turned on the radio but as soon as he heard "-feyrac, spokesman for les ami-" he clicked it off again. Grantaire didn't doubt he'd hear all of it later today. It only took a moment to get into his worn out clothes, and combing his hair was useless anyway, so he grabbed his headphones and headed out for work, his hoodie hiding his face and thoughts from the world. Grantaire knew not eating in the morning was unhealthy, but caring for himself was not something he was particularly good at.
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The day after Enjolras had told Grantaire to leave, Grantaire didn't show up at the meeting in the Musain. The whole evening the atmosphere had been uncomfortable and Jehan kept shooting Enjolras angry glares. Everyone was unnaturally quiet and for the first time, Enjolras was relieved to wrap up a meeting even though none of the points they discussed had caused any particular trouble. If anyone noticed Enjolras kept glancing at the door, no one mentioned it, but when he walked out he passed Jehan who just told Bahorel a bit too loud "No, he hasn't answered to anyone all day."
Enjolras didn't have to guess about who they were talking, and the uneasy feeling in his gut just grew a little more.
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Grantaire put on his apron and took his place behind the counter, mentally preparing himself for a day of helping horrible people to their coffee. The establishment he worked in was nothing too fancy, but it was well located on a busy road, so they still got a lot of customers. His boss was a horrible demanding person and his wage wasn't too high, and that was probably the only reason he got this job and kept it for four months now. He wasn't a particularly skilled as barista, and there were always people looking for a job. Frankly, only the fact that he wasn't good at anything else either was what kept him from quitting, but he needed the money, so he forced his lips in a smile when his co-worker walked in.
Celine was a really great girl, but also Grantaire's personal hell. She always kept the radio on, listening to the news, waiting for every mention of les amis de l'abc. In fact, Celine was obsessed with the guys behind the new extreme left party that kept growing day by day at a frightening speed. They had appeared almost out of nowhere, a bunch of young men from the south. Some feared and others hoped that they would be the most popular party at the next elections. Celine could not stop talking about them and kept telling Grantaire every little detail about the party all day long, no matter how bored he tried to look. She was certainly not the only girl like that, for the party's core group was a bunch of very charming and good looking young men, and the girls and press just swarmed around them like bees around honey. Their leader had even been voted most eligible bachelor of the year not so long ago.
Grantaire had nothing against these girls, but the fact that he had to work with a person who kept talking nonstop about the group of persons he tried to forget most, really was the worst part of his job.
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One day turned into three, before everyone shot into action. Bahorel and Jehan had been late, and with three members short, it felt even more awkward to try and have the meeting like usual. Then suddenly the two had burst in and walked straight to the end of the table, their faces both on extreme trouble.
"R hasn't answered our texts and calls for three days, so we went to his apartment." Jehan started, not having to mention to anyone just what had happened three days ago. "He hasn't been there, Enjolras. He hasn't returned to his apartment in three fucking days." Jehan was a gentle soul who rarely cursed, and rather used poetic and flowery words, so the whole room knew exactly how dead serious the situation was. Enjolras stood, his face gone white.
"Jehan, we have to find him."
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"-then ELLE gave Courf an 8/10 on his clothes, of course Enjolras got a 10, but they only gave Combeferre a 6. I really don't get it, he looks so frigging adorable in his jumpers, and who cares if it's an easy outfit, I mean-" Grantaire sighed, looking at the cups he was cleaning with sad tired eyes. It was one of the calmer moments of the day, and Celine had been looking up pictures of les amis on her laptop. Grantaire didn't feel like being confronted with the faces of the people he cared for most. He did spend some of his evenings looking at old pictures, but that was mostly alone on his bed in an extremely drunken state. In fact, it seemed like a very good day to spend his evening extremely drunken.
"-And I get people don't have the same fashion sense as I, but omg R, I am so in love with Bahorel and his dandy style is just perfect and hnggg-"
Grantaire put the cups down and turned to take the order of a bunch of way too loud teenage boys. Only a couple of hours until he could go home. Too bad that by now he needed almost as much alcohol as he had blood, in order to forget.
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Enjolras sat at their table in the Musain, his head in his hands. They had been looking for Grantaire for almost four days now, and practically all of les amis' projects had been put on hold, the fear for their friend taking up all of the space in everyone's head. The first days Courfeyrac, Feuilly, and Bahorel had gone through all the pubs and bars of the city, Joly, Bossuet, Combeferre and Enjolras had checked all alleyways, and Eponine had taken Marius along to investigate in the cities' underworld. When nobody had any success, they had declared him missing to the police, but it seemed like they had been too busy to look after a lost drunkard. They had made posters and put them up all over the city, called the police in different cities. Nowhere had they found even a hint to where he'd gone.
The guilt was slowly eating Enjolras from inside out, and for the millionth time that week he wished he hadn't been so harsh. Sleep was something that he only did if it was needed before, but now it was going into the extremes. At that moment Marius and Joly burst in, both out of breath, panic on their faces, and Enjolras stood up, hope on his face. They had gone to one of the hospitals, Ferre and Courf doing the other one. "
T-there was a nurse who recognized the photo." Marius almost shouted. "He was brought in unconsciously the day of...The fight, but he had disappeared from his room the next morning."
Enjolras looked at both of them, not knowing if he should be more relieved because they had a clue, or more worried, because R had been brought into the hospital. His guilt only rose when he realised Grantaire had probably drunken himself into a coma over the words he had said, and he felt like absolute shit, rage at himself rising in his throat.
Joly looked almost apologetic when he continued their story."She wouldn't tell us what happened to him, but it was no intoxication. He was on the acute ward, and the nurse mentioned he really should not have left the hospital with the injuries he had endured." Enjolras dropped back in his chair again, his face totally blank. He vaguely registered Marius and Joly calling their friends, and then later their friends arriving in little groups. For the rest of the evening he just stared at the table, the noise of his friends, coming up with more plans to find R, disappearing in the background noise. What had he done.
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"A cappuccino, scarface." the teenage boy with a face full of acne ordered in a disdainful tone. Grantaire suppressed the urge to tell him that the boy's face was in a worse state than his own and turned around to prepare the order. He caught Celine's gaze and snorted when she mouthed "He's the one to talk." with her back turned to the customers. It wasn't like Grantaire was not used to comments about his face. He hadn't been pretty to begin with, and he had known that. Since he had acquired his injury though, a lot of people just blatantly stared. Grantaire had a nasty burn mark that ran from the left side of his forehead, over his temple along his eye and onto the upper part of his cheek. Most of time, it was almost hidden by his dark curls and hoodie, but that was impossible at work.
He made sure the cappuccino was extremely hot before handing it to his impolite customer with a smile.
"Here you go, sir."
The elder lady behind him in the row tutted disapprovingly at the leaving boy, and whispered confidentially to Grantaire "Don't let him get you down son, you are pretty no matter what they tell you, and true beauty is on the inside anyway. You have plenty of that, I can see!" R only wished he could believe her.
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The weeks passed and the initial frenzy had turned into dark resignation. It lay over the meetings like a dreary blanket. One by one les amis had given up the hope of finding Grantaire. There had never been a corpse, but never another clue either. In the end, only Enjolras and Jehan were still spreading flyers on the street. Jehan had come to forgive Enjolras, and over their shared worry, their friendship had grown. He had told Enjolras a lot of things he hadn't known about Grantaire, and Enjolras wished more and more that R hadn't disappeared, if that was possible.
He had cared about him of course, like he cared about all his friends. But Grantaire had always intrigued him, and maybe there had been more truth in the saying "opposites attract" than Enjolras had wanted to admit. Grantaire had always been the friend that could get the most emotion out of Enjolras. He was the best at infuriating him in all kinds of ways, but also at impressing him in all those kinds of ways, and he wished that he had shown him that more.
For the first time in his life, he regretted that he was bad at communicating about normal things like emotions. Enjolras had always seen Grantaire as a proof reader of some sorts, knowing that any argument R could not respond to was made of steel. Grantaire had been helpful in perfecting Enjolras speeches in a different way than the others, but probably at least as important. He even caught himself thinking on multiple occasions when he was preparing speeches or arguments: "What would Grantaire say to that?" and it was a habit that slowly crept into his life and stayed.
Jehan's stories revealed a lot of R's sides that Enjolras never knew about, and he regretted that deeply. The weeks passed and Enjolras realised he would've liked to get to know so much more about him. The weeks passed and Enjolras realised he missed him.
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"-and they were bashing on Feuilly because he's a polish immigrant and he shouldn't be in French politics and all that bullshit, but it's not because he's born in Plock that-"
"Warsaw."
Celine stared at him and Grantaire cursed himself. He carefully kept up the pretence that he knew nothing about les amis and was not interested at all, but it was hard not to slip up sometimes, when you had been friends with them for years. How long ago it seemed, but how clear he remembered every detail. Grantaire was good at listening, whatever Enjolras seemed to think, and it was one of his few characteristics of which he was proud. He was however not that good at keeping his mouth shut in inappropriate moments.
He had slipped up a few times before, about the pronunciation of Courf's second name, about Jehan's favourite poet and the worst of all, Enjolras shampoo. She had wondered about it out loud, and Grantaire had answered without thinking, and then covered it up by telling her he was just joking, and that he had no idea. He really wasn't prepared to tell her he had gone shopping with les amis multiple times, and that he had a bottle of shampoo that he never used, but sometimes smelled when he felt really lost, in his apartment.
"That's right. I messed it up with the place where he went to school! How the hell did you know R?"
"Uh, I saw it in an interview you left somewhere around when I was taking a break."
She nodded and kept looking at him with a strange look, and R was sure she didn't totally believe it. There was nothing to be done about it though, and it wasn't as if she could somehow find out the truth. He sighed, and went back behind the counter to resume his work.
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The weeks turned into months, and even Enjolras and Jehan stopped with the flyers. Things became very busy, and to forget about Grantaire, Enjolras buried himself in their work. It didn't really help.
They became an official political party, and their goal was to change the government from inside. Les amis won some local elections, and then the way was open. In record time their extreme left party grew, the unrest of the people driving them to vote for the change they represented. In the four years since Grantaire left, they had gotten Enjolras and Combeferre into parliament, moved to the capital, created headquarters there, and they were now preparing for elections again. This time they were aiming high, and some feared and some hoped they had a chance.
Little did les amis know that unintentionally they had followed Grantaire to the city he had fled to.
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Grantaire knew les amis were in the capital, and he had often contemplated moving away again. But he rarely went out without his hoodie, and he had never actually run into one of them. That was nearly impossible now, since they all seemed to be constantly covered in journalists and fans. What he had not anticipated was that the streets were not the place where he had to look out for les amis. His workplace had turned out way more dangerous. Every 5 free seconds she had, Celine was streaming videos, her backgrounds of various electronic devices featured Bahorel's face, and if there was something about them on the tv that hung in the corner of the coffee shop, the sound went up to the point where it was border line annoying for the clients.
This was one of these moments, and Grantaire was really thankful that his shift ended in a couple of minutes. It was the worst possible situation, because the talk show featured an annoyed Enjolras, the host asking him questions that had nothing to do with politics. Grantaire was absolutely sure that tonight would end in extreme drunkenness and passing out for him now. After curtly answering to what his favourite aspect of the capital was ("The opportunity it gives us to change the government.") and which of les amis he personally liked more ("My friends are all equal to me.") the interview took a much much more terrible turn.
Grantaire felt like running away when the presentator asked the next question, because there was no way in the world he wanted to know the answer, but he was frozen to the spot, unable to not want to know the answer. He had always thought Enjolras asexual, only ever declaring his love for Patria, but if the answer was somehow different, he did not know how on earth he was going to cope.
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Enjolras sighed internally, but kept a calm outwards composure. The tv-channel had lured him in with promising him an interview about his political views, but so far, none of the questions had been about that. The host, who was acting way too familiar and cheesy, annoyed him to no end. It didn't help that apart from his otherwise mundane appearance, the man had hair that reminded him strongly of Grantaire, which made him feel all the worse.
"-That's a quote we'll have to remember ladies and gentlemen! Now Enjolras, which of 'les amis' is your favourite friend?"
Enjolras had to the urge to run away. He was not about to share such personal information, and found the question irritating. Enjolras was a private person, and rarely released information about his private life, which just made him all the more interesting to the public. He knew that in this case he couldn't, because his response would surely be used by adversaries to claim there was trouble in the party and that Enjolras had favourites.
"My friends are all equal to me" He practically sighed. Stupid questions deserved stupid answers. The host smiled, and as he leaned closer, Enjolras could almost predict that he was going to ask something even more personal. Something he seemed interested in himself, by the way he was suddenly looking scarily intense.
"I see. You say your friends are all equal to you, but is there a special someone in your life? Or was?"
It wasn't that Enjolras was surprised by the question, because of course that would've been what everyone was interested in. The problem was that he felt that little bubble of anger coming up, at the host, the tv-station, the small-minded people. It was the kind of anger that had cost him Grantaire four years ago. The fact that the man in front of him had R-like hair, and that he had been thinking about him earlier, sealed his fate. Later, Enjolras would have a strong urge to hit himself, cursing the fact that he didn't think this trough and regret it deeply, but then again, saying the wrong things about his emotions was sort of Enjolras' thing.
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"There was...someone I would have liked to-but I messed up and he's gone. Well, it's too late now anyway." No one even noticed Grantaire stumbling out, and when Celine looked for him after the broadcast, he was long gone. Warily she looked at R's belongings that he had forgotten, and wondered what happened.
Grantaire had thought that he wouldn't know how to cope with Enjolras loving another person, but of course that was utter bullshit. He knew exactly what he was going to do. He was getting so drunk he wouldn't wake up for a week. Or never. At the moment he rather favoured the latter option.
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