Work Text:
There’s a reason he likes to hang around Enjolras’ flat rather than his own—books are stacked against walls and furniture. Sketchbooks, novels, science fiction epics, anthologies, textbooks, essay collections. They’re everywhere, not a room is without one, and Enjolras has a curiosity that can’t be tamed by a simple don’t touch anything you weirdo. And so he has yet to invite Enjolras over here (there’s probably shitty poetry somewhere in all this mess).
Which is good—because he imagines that if he had all these margins at his disposal, all this space (because there, on the counter closest to the coffee pot, are all the new books and, okay, maybe a couple of them were bought with Enjolras in mind) is just begging to be filled with things. He isn’t sure what yet.
Those sorts of things have to come to his fingertips on their own.
He grabs the novel at the top of the stack—A Tale of Two Cities, his previous copy having gone missing some time ago that Grantaire can’t recall very well. He was probably drunk at the time.
Books scatter to the floor as he sweeps them off the couch, having crossed the hallway to the living room, throwing himself onto the cushions and cracking open the book, a plethora of pencils waiting on the end table, leaving him options if he misplaces one. Or two.
Or five.
I’ve read this book four times, he writes on the first page, and I think I bought this copy so I could talk about stupid things.
Most people buy diaries for that, he muses.
(Oh well.)
Five pages in, and his free hand finds his phone, tapping out a message he only half-consciously sends, before scribbling on the top of page six. I think the radio would make this more interesting and conducive to absorption—testing this theory.
There’s an old radio buried behind a stack of books near the television set that Grantaire has had since he was fifteen, and fumbles for a book—ah, here’s a copy of a utilitarian theory textbook—tossing it in the direction of the obscured radio, grinning to himself when he hears the satisfying thwack of a solid hit against plastic, and the radio starts up, an auto salesman advertising on a station famous for global music from the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s. (Could be worse, he thinks, going back to the book open on his lap.) His phone vibrates when he hits page ten, and I think he’d be beautiful in the French Revolution, just think of all the shit he’d— is half written when he stops to check the message.
Apollo: Really? A Tale of Two Cities? (And Grantaire is man enough to admit that he does, in fact, have to go back into his sentbox to see what he sent. Reading A Tale of Two Cities, thinking of all the shit you’d start back in the day.)
And so he replies, yes, obviously it was the era you were born to die for. If you had been born then.
Apollo: Ye of little faith.
I have a lot of faith in you, he taps back, half-reading the words on the page, half-reading the text. Faith that you’d die for your ideals, etc., etc.
It’s a compliment, he adds in a subsequent message.
Apollo: I will try and remember that.
A power ballad from the ‘70s gives way into a slow rock song from the ‘90s when Grantaire replies. You probably should try. I can be offensive.
Apollo: You don’t censor yourself, do you?
The great comedians don’t, so why should I?
Apollo: Aspirations in that arena?
I’d get booed of the stage, don’t even joke. He smiles at the screen, much as he’s smiled at the back of Enjolras’ head for half a semester—and a semester before that, in Greek Classics—the precursor to Roman Classics, really, philosophies and works building on one another. The guitar in the background pulsates as he flips the page, and reaches for his pencil.
(I get down on my knees, I’d do anything for you, hums through the flat, words coming through the hum of barely-even prose, lamenting how one person could be born with a face like that, how is it even fair.)
Apollo: Perhaps I wasn’t joking. I’m told my humour is lacking.
(I don’t want—any-body-else—)
I could see it. You could sport frown lines if you let yourself.
(When I think about you I—)
The classic piece of literature on his lap is summarily shut and chucked at the radio, a flush rising high in his cheeks as the collision shuts the song off. (Bullshit station anyway, and he grabs the closest book to him, passing a glance at his phone, though it hasn’t gone off—he would know. He pays attention to it.
An inordinate amount of attention to it.)
How could someone so mistaken about the way the world works be so appealing he scratches on the page, the g at the end of appealing somehow managing to run away with his fingers and turn into the makings of Enjolras’ face.
(Fuck me—and then he stops that thought because he’s a better human being than that. He is.)
Apollo: If my ego were fragile, I don’t think I could be friends with you.
I don’t know if that means you’d be more likely to date me, Grantaire replies, or if it means you wouldn’t talk to me at all.
(Oh God fucking damn—) And this, he supposes, is why he’s always stuck to writing in books. Because, heaven forbid, he decide to communicate with actual human beings. Nothing ever goes well, he can’t seem to shut his mouth or control his thumbs, and it’s only gotten worse since he put down the bottle and refused to pick it back up.
Apollo: Are we not dating?
Apollo: Were you not aware that we’ve been going on dates?
Apollo: Are you serious.
The last message isn’t even a question and Grantaire grabs for a different book and a second pencil—the other having slipped out of his fingers or from his mouth or maybe it fell out of his lap—flipping the inside cover of—ah, what is this one, Hamlet—and pulls his hand across the page in a barely legible string of I am going to regret this and personal autonomy will bite me in the ass for the third time in my life if this is the last thing I write tell my sister every novel she’s ever sent me is a lie.
Apollo: Grantaire, are you legitimately serious? (And he lets his thumbs fly across the screen to answer this question before he thinks too hard about it.)
Do you want to come over?
Apollo: What? Now? Why?
There will be pasta, probably, and you just have to promise not to touch anything.
Apollo: I’ve been accused of kleptomania.
Don’t lie.
And don’t try to be funny, it’s unbecoming.
But I may have just pictured you stealing from an art museum.
Apollo: Address, and I’ll be there as soon as I can.
Apollo: Just so I can hit you for being an irritant.
I look forward to your fist upon my cheek.
Grantaire then—without giving himself time to toss his phone where Two Cities had ended up—releases his address into technospace before tucking his phone away, tossing the books that had been on the couch back to their proper place.
A permanent marker sits among the pencils on the end table and he picks it up, flipping it between his fingers for a moment before bringing it to his lips and pulling the cap off with his teeth, stopping at the wall before entering the kitchen to print the date—very small, only marginally bigger than his book-script—capping the pen when the last number is immortalised on the paint.
(If he needs to he can always paint over it.)
He places the marker in his back pocket, finishing the trek to the kitchen to put a pot of water on the stove to boil.