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While Enjolras has noticed, finally, where Grantaire sits in Roman Classics, he hasn’t changed his own seating arrangement. Feuilly would have been upset and, besides, he doesn’t—exactly—want his friends to learn how he’s come to start talking with one of the many (apparently) inattentive students in this rather large and (admittedly) boring class.
But starting on the second day of their communications, Enjolras gets a text near the beginning of the lecture.
R: you know I never liked the Romans
Enjolras huffs, tapping back a subtle-as-possible why?
R: thieves, the lot of them. Not like Italians, or whatever, I know Italians and Italian, amico mio, or whatever
R: but their religion is totally just Greek stuff
R: with Roman names
Not always, Enjolras replies after the barrage. A lot of the origin stories change, depending on the values.
R: true, tho not relevant, because their entire theology is still a bastardisation of Greek myth
Christianity functions the same way, Enjolras explains, glancing up only momentarily to process that the lecture is very basic. And, also, you took the time to spell bastarisation but not ‘though’?
R: priorities
He has to pinch his nose to avoid a snicker and ends up biting his own tongue, trying to swallow a sound so that his eyes don’t pop out of his skull (which he’s pretty sure can’t happen when you laugh, but Joly is unsure, and he’d rather err on the side of caution). A text in his inbox appears before he can even process the pain.
R: that’s attractive
Flattery will get you lunch.
R: I can’t tell if you’re kidding or not
R: because I wasn’t kidding
R: like you make chewing on a pen a sin
R: if sins mattered
R: shit not that I watch you
R: chew pens
R: I’m going to stop
This time he can’t stop the pfft that escapes him and he shakes his head, drawing Feuilly’s attention and a mutter of “what’s so funny?”
Enjolras composes his face before leaning to his left and saying, “nothing in particular. I’m just looking forward to this class being over.”
Feuilly drapes himself across the long desk, fingertips overextending from the edge. “Yeah, me too. I’m starving. I really shouldn’t have registered for a class right before noon. I like to eat at eleven, aaaugh.” (Feuilly tends to get his melodrama from Joly, though they’re in completely different spheres of dramatic flare).
A blessing to them both—because Grantaire really does stop sending messages—class ends ten minutes earlier than it usually does, and Feuilly goes to meet Marius and Cosette for lunch, leaving Enjolras waiting around at the only exit to the classroom, catching Grantaire by the sleeve of his jacket as he attempts to blend into the crowd of students.
“I owe you lunch,” Enjolras says with mock-severity, and Grantaire arches a brow, holding the notebook dangling from his fingers aloft in a gesture of really, now?
“I assumed you were kidding.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Apparently.”
Enjolras leads Grantaire toward the double doors at the end of the hallway that open out to campus, shrugging his shoulders. “I’m a serious individual.”
“Obviously.”
The notebook in Grantaire’s hand swings when he moves, Classics written in very fine print on the cover. “Notes?”
“Yeah, kind of. More like running commentary, because talking to yourself is weird, Eponine honestly doesn’t care about the Roman Classics lecture when I complain, and I didn’t have you to complain to either.”
(Enjolras—and this is really obvious at this point—rather likes Grantaire’s running commentary. And so—)
“Can I see it?” He asks.
“You,” Grantaire hands the notebook over with a look of a much-tried teacher, “are the nosiest person I know.”
“Excuse you, I don’t transcribe my personal life where anyone with an interest in philosophy can find them, thanks much.” He gives a quick smile to attempt to limit any actual reprimand in his tone—he’s really good at reprimands.
“I do people a service,” Grantaire emphasizes his point through carefully vocalized italics, “first of all, and secondly, most of those books were never going to be returned, I was going to keep them forever and just pay for them.”
Enjolras flips through the notebook with an absent hmm really, trusting Grantaire to notify him if he’s going to run into anything. (And this is odd, because for all the facts Enjolras has about Grantaire and his life, he doesn’t really know much about how trustworthy he is.) Much of the commentary centers around the oft-repeated scratching of woooow Rome, so orignaaaaal wherever did you get that idea you geniuses you and eventually the comments turn into sketches (sketches, not caricatures, and this is an important distinction).
Venus—otherwise known as Aphordite! is under one of the sketches of a woman with a sharp nose, plush lips, and curvaceous hips that are only barely concealed with cloth that looks to be more vapour than robe.
Jupiter—but actually Zeus! Another reads, depicting an older man wielding a lightning bolt in one curled fist.
All the Greek/Roman gods are there, rendered in astonishing detail, and when he flips the final page to find Apollo standing on a hill with his back to the sun, his hair curls of flame, his forehead unwrinkled with worry, his lips pulled upward in a mocking half-smile—and Enjolras knows that face.
They obviously couldn’t name Apollo any different, the caption reads, because Enjolras had yet to be born.
“You do know,” Grantaire says, “I’m just sort of walking in a figure eight around the philosophy and social sciences buildings because your plans are foreign to me.”
“Apollo?” Enjolras asks, disregarding the lead into a mind-change, perhaps, or an actual plan.
He stops walking and Grantaire stops with him, face managing to go pale and flush red at the same time. “Fuck, it’s in that notebook?” It’s snatched from Enjolras’ hands in the matter of a heartbeat and tucked safely under Grantaire’s arm. (And he’s glaring at the cover like it has committed a grievous sin against humanity.
If Grantaire believed in sin, that is.)
“I’m sorry,” Grantaire coughs out. “Wow, I have managed to embarrass myself more times today than any other time in my life, including every drunken disorderly arrest that I’ve gotten—which is three, by the way, you snoop,” (Enjolras had, in fact, been about to ask). “Sorry,” he repeats.
(“Never thought I’d hear that from you. Ever,” one of his texts had read.)
“Did you ever decide on the art minor?” Enjolras asks carefully, staring up their pace again, finally leading them toward a small bistro near the edge of campus on the side closest to the Social Sciences department.
“Nosy,” Grantaire mutters again, and then, louder, he says, “I did, I think I’m going for it.”
“Your rendition of the Greek gods is spectacular.”
“You’re biased because you’re in it, shut up.” Grantaire flushes, looking irritated though at a loss for the subject of his actual irritation. “Let’s talk about you, wonder boy. Tell me a story. Combeferre—from the library,” Enjolras nods to know he knows him, “well, I’ve heard him say you run a club for naïve youths like yourself to change the world on campus. Speak to me of your aspirations.”
Grantaire has zeroed in on the bistro and holds the door open, following Enjolras inside.
It’s a lengthy conversation, one that’s had between drinks and food—and Grantaire has captions to them all. (“Define tyranny for me. Do you need a king or can a parliament be a tyrant?”) Enjolras is almost tempted to write everything down, just to watch Grantaire tear it apart.
He’s never been quite so interested like this before—especially in a person he hadn’t met (depiste all evidence that Grantaire definitely knows who he was, before they spoke) until very recently.
But he is interested—interested enough to arrive twenty minutes late to his two o’clock class.
-
Enjolras is working on a paper on Friday, the sun setting and casting orange light on his bedroom wall, (Apollo, he thinks with a snort, ridiculous—but also, inexplicably, flattering), when he gets a text. He fumbles for his phone without looking up from his laptop, sliding open the lock screen to the message is ready when he lifts the phone to read.
R: your favourite colour is red right?
R: duh of course it is what a stupid question do you even wash that jacket you wear
R: you probably do
R: so these messages just became irrelevant
R: oh wait I actually just finished the shittiest book on earth there relevance
Enjolras shifts his laptop off of his lap, leaning back against the pillows and the headboard to tap out a response. Tell me about it, I’m certain your interpretation is lacking.
R: someone’s got a term paper due soon
R: testyyy
R: but okay so
Enjolras has, somehow, very suddenly, found his life to be full of running commentary and marginal notes—as if his series has just been found, somewhere in the middle, and Grantaire is making adjustments and inquiries where, at first, there had been done. It’s like a rewrite. An opinion column. A diary in a textbook.
R: wait before I continue
—and Enjolras had been about to refute the idea that societal restructuring is completely impossible—
R: do you like Chinese takeaway
He replies in the affirmative.
R: excellent, give me your address, be there in twenty
It’s like his moments are becoming bracketed chunks of meaning to someone other than himself.
Enjolras chuckles, saves his paper, and tells him that the food better be worth it.
R: It will be, duh, I know the best takeaway places
R: trust me