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Courfeyrac says he has to come and press the fan flesh after the show and Enjolras tries to shake him off as usual, pleading recovery time. But Radio City Music Hall is a goddamned big deal and the night's still a gauntlet to be traversed; the hallways are packed with reporters and VIPs vying for a piece of him, and there's nowhere that's quiet and safe.
The other Amis at least are together in the green room with the executives' kids and the fans from the online contest and the extra-invested ones who have clawed their way backstage; it will mean an insufferable hour of signing and smiling for iPhone pictures but Courfeyrac is chattering about giving back and it's not like his absence won't be missed.
“Come on, come on.” Courfeyrac is leading the way. “Retweet them a few times, give some hugs, and you're a golden god. Then we get to party til dawn. Beauties on the bus.”
Enjolras rolls his eyes and pushes a hand through his hair, still sweaty from the electric exertion of the show, and decides to bear it out. Radio City Music Hall doesn't happen everyday; they've dreamed of the night, given New York City a show to be remembered, and it won't kill him to participate in the fruits of their success for once.
Despite their success, the lifestyle is never not difficult; and it seems to Enjolras that they are always a step away from what they'd once been, funding tours through Kickstarter and piling into a van like fish in a barrel to go on tour. He wonders why he worries about losing their luster and going back to that. He misses those days more than not, these days.
Because the spectacle of it is crazy. Actually insane. There were years people wouldn't throw him a nickel while he busked in the subways, and now people literally throw themselves at his feet without the least encouragement. As he and Courfeyrac go through the halls, everyone gawks or takes a picture, and the crowds part “Like the ocean before Moses,” giggles Courfeyrac.
A scream, teenaged. Someone tries to touch his shirt.
Enjolras is a rock star, a position that doesn't come with a manual. You rise up to it, if you are worthy, and hell-as-fuck lucky. Les Amis are good, but they aren't any better than a thousand bands they've played beside in bars. The right place at the right time, dumb luck, good timing, whatever combination it was, they've made it; they are arrived. Radio City sold out and there are murmurings about Madison Square Garden next year that are getting louder.
They have to maintain momentum, though. It's the nature of the game. There's the new album to be written, recorded, and put out, the promotional push and frenzy that will come from that. The resulting tour, world-wide this time.
So much press to do, the constant interviews, the paparazzi following him to Starbucks, his 200,000 and growing Twitter followers asking him the most incomprehensible questions and linking him to incomprehensible pages on tumblr --
Momentum. Enjolras does his duty that night. He presses the flesh. He grins bright white teeth for pictures. He signs a baffling array of items. He answers many queries. He says hello for YouTube. He's trying not to scream and trying to give himself to a hundred people.
Courfeyrac says, “Okay, you did good. Why don't you take 5, go back to the bus and clear your head, and meet us at the after-party? You'll be in a better mood for champagne if you get in your beauty nap,” and draped over his shoulder, Jehan hums an affirmation.
It's not a bad idea, for Courfeyrac, so Enjolras considers it; some quiet on the tour bus before the clamor of the club sounds very welcome. Combeferre, entertaining the representatives of his personal Facebook fan club, thirds it with a nod, and Feuilly is too busy taking selfies with the fans' cameras to chime in.
Enjolras goes before anything else can keep him, making use of the provided security guards who usher him onto the bus, past the crowds that have waited outside the backdoor for hours, and the press of reporters; he cannot escape the staccato of bright flashes.
Then he is alone in the blessed quiet of the big bus. Nothing but the comforting mess of their stuff spilling out of bunks, the array of junk food (he helps himself to a handful of M&Ms), the too-expensive guitars they have indulged in resting in the breakfast nook. It's good to be here, here is more like himself, and Enjolras lets himself sigh and scrubs a hand over his exhausted face and heads towards his own comforting bunk, which--
Which faces Combeferre's, which is currently occupied. The figure in it scrambles out of the shadows. Then a voice says, “Oh, my god.”
The voice is attached to a face that comes into the dull neon bus-lights and is more lit-up. College-age or trying to look it, a lean torso with long limbs in skinny jeans, scuffed green Converse and a vintage Les Amis tour shirt from their first go at it. The shirt makes Enjolras blink first, before he blinks over the rest of him: he hasn't seen the shirt since they'd cooked it up in stoned practice-sessions in college, and he doesn't think anyone in the band still has one.
The purple fabric is old and faded and much-washed and clings to the body beneath it, just a little too small and riding up at the hip. The hip shows a jut of ivory skin over bone. Blue eyes, very blue, under dark, unkempt curls, the shadow of a beard roughening a delicate cheek. Blue eyes that have gone so big Enjolras is reminded of the anime characters Feuilly never stops watching. He's waiting for them to pop out of the pretty head.
“What,” says Enjolras, succinctly.
“Oh my god,” the young man repeats. “I can't believe you're you.”
His Adam's apple bobs; he swallows hard and tries again. “I mean, of course you're you, that's ridiculous. You're Enjolras. You're--. I don't know how to -- wow, what I am I even saying? I just -- I can't believe you're actually--”
Enjolras has watched the strange phenomenon of fans going into prostration in his presence enough that it isn't cause for surprise or alarm, not anymore. It's more a question of whether the situation is bearable, whether the devotee will get their ability to think and reason back or whether they'll be requiring a police car or an ambulance. He's sent more people into panic attacks and respiratory distress than he ever thought possible or his lawyers would like.
He doesn't have time for this, not tonight, not with his head throbbing, not in the last remaining sanctuary. “Who are you.” He doesn't have time for question marks either.
“Oh god. Oh, god! I thought you -- I -- Courfeyrac said that I should wait here, when I met him. He was so cool, I mean, I always thought he would be cool, but it's totally not an act. He -- he said that I should --” the speech stammers and slurs at closing, and the pale cheeks have gone so flush Enjolras is left to wonder how much his visitor has been drinking. He has the 21-and-over wristband, at least, a circle of pink neon at the wrist.
Enjolras resists the urge to rub the ache from his forehead and crosses his arms instead, leaning into the paneling. Situations like this are better dealt with directly. “Listen, if you're waiting for Courfeyrac, he'll--” He'll grip that incredible hair and ride those parted lips until morning, thinks Enjolras. He'll share this gorgeous kid with Jehan, and they'll --
“No, no,” Enjolras hears, the words tripping with nervous haste and dawning uncertainty. “No, I mean, he said I could wait here for you.”
Courfeyrac has lost his mind, or been doing any number of the drugs offered to him backstage, Enjolras decides. Better to have it done. “I'm sorry,” he says, gently, the assumed gentleness with which he has warded off a hundred thousand offers, and the proper legalese. “Courfeyrac was mistaken. There has been a misunderstanding.”
It's surprisingly hard to speak the disclaimer against the ever-widening blue of his eyes, the pretty face that falls, then crumbles after the fall, the lip sucked in and bit. But Enjolras continues: “I hope you enjoyed the show. We really appreciate your support--”
“It's okay, I get it.” The young man is moving slowly from the bed, like he's loathe to set foot to earth. “It has been, like, my life goal to meet you. I'm not complaining. If I died right now that would be totally cool.” He scrapes a hand back through tousled hair, blows out a breath. “Whoa. Am I not awesome? I've composed, like, letters to you, and songs, and essays, and I'm doing a really great job of self-representation at the moment. Just stellar.”
Up on his feet, he looks uncertain at how to navigate the narrow space around Enjolras and get past him, as though he cannot quite imagine moving so close. He fits just under Enjolras' chin.
“It's fine,” says Enjolras, still trying for balance. It's difficult not to feel the earnest nature behind the words; he's human as much as idol, and it's impossible not to be flattered when someone is so moved. At least he knows how to handle self-deprecation; it is the shrieking and crying he has the most difficulty with. “Look, --?”
“Grantaire.” It's supplied eagerly.
“Grantaire. I really do appreciate your support, and frankly, man, that shirt is great, and brings me back. If there's something I can sign, or--”
“Yeah. Yes.” Grantaire draws a Sharpie from his pocket. His other hand is almost trembling as it comes up to tug at his shirt collar. He pulls down, pulling the fabric taut across his left collarbone, showing pale flesh and black ink beneath. “Please. If you would. Just your name.”
It's hardly the first Les Amis tattoo Enjolras been asked to sign, or originate, but he ducks closer on instinct to look. Tricky not to react to the sight of one's words scribed deep. Most people have the chorus of 'Revolution Song' to show, but Grantaire --
Grantaire has the first lines from 'Red Room,' first edition, along the line of bone. He hasn't let himself think about the song in a very long time, like he hasn't thought about the t-shirt Grantaire is tugging.
“Holy shit,” says Enjolras, appreciative. “You're old-school.”
“First tour,” says Grantaire, and now he stands unshrinking. “Freshman year of college. Summertime. We piled into someone's mom's stationwagon and followed you guys around. I drove.”
Enjolras has heard a lot of wild stories, but he hitches an eyebrow here. “No way. That was ages ago.”
“Ages and ages,” agrees Grantaire. He's still standing with the proffered Sharpie like an offering. Then, more softly, “I've followed you. Okay? It's kinda my life's pursuit. So if you could just sign you name, and we could do that, I'll get out of your way again.”
Enjolras is given pause at the way this is brokered. He turns his head to consider Grantaire more fully, trying to place him. “You say you've been to shows since the early days?”
“Yeah. Yes. Whatever, don't worry about it. If you wouldn't mind just--”
“Right. Sure.” Enjolras takes and uncaps the marker. He's signed a hundred trillion things. He's generated dozens of tattoos. “My signature, right?”
At Grantaire's nod, he grips his shoulder for purchase, and scrawls a neat yet loopy identification below the base of the words carved into Grantaire. It's strange to see lines that mean so much to him printed on skin but Grantaire does not seem shy about it so Enjolras is not. The felt tip of the pen bites deep with his name.
He leans back, after a space, lets go of Grantaire's shoulder. It takes longer than it should to retract his hand. Grantaire stays where he is, shirt yanked over the fine ridges of muscle, and the Enjolras, letting it dry.
“You seem so tired,” Grantaire says then. There is surprise on top of his awe.“When you were onstage I might have believed you were a God; but here you seem so tired. Would you not lay down for a while?”
It sounds so strange, so foreign, this proposal. It approaches out of another time entirely, mannered and proper, suggestive and sly; Enjolras hardly knows what to do in the face of it.
There's no one else on the bus, only the two of them. Security and Courfeyrac will keep the rest away. For a moment, Enjolras lets himself consider it.
“Okay,” he says. Once he says it he can't retract it, and he doesn't know if he wants to. “For just a moment.”
They go to his bunk opposite Combeferre's. Grantaire goes in first and he follows after. Grantaire smells like cigarettes and pot and liquor and sweat and wintergreen gum.
At first they lie in straight lines. Then Grantaire turns into him, and says, “If you'd let me--” and his fingers creep up to Enjolras' hair and brow. When he nods, because he has apparently lost his goddamned mind, Grantaire sits up as best he can in the low bunk, and takes Enjolras' head into his lap.
As soon as that is done all sorts of magic starts to descend. He's definitely lost his mind, letting even this much happen. There are fingers smoothing his forehead, and others edged with care though his hair, and the back of a hand pressed to his cheek, fleeting. His headache starts to ebb under the distraction. Grantaire touches him as though he might break, like he is something holy to be handled.
Enjolras doesn't want to think about that so he says, trying to prompt truths: “You were really there for the first go-around?” He closes his eyes. “You look too young.”
“Twenty-two.” Grantaire keeps massaging, stroking. He's good at this. He's only trembling a little. “A year younger than you.” He draws concentric circles into Enjolras' scalp. “Left school around the same time you did.” He shrugs; Enjolras feels it with his head in Grantaire's lap. “I've seen a lot of Les Amis. We can leave it at that.”
But for once Enjolras finds himself hungry to hear it. The proof of what they had made, the effect it had on complete strangers, altering their lives, is never not dazzling. He has generally been reluctant, or thought cocky, at receiving this praise. But here -- here with Grantaire is something different.
“I'd like to hear,” he says instead. “Your favorite show?”
“Mobile, Alabama, second tour of the South. Jehan read poetry in between songs, and Combeferre jumped down from the stage to put out a fire started by a cigarette.” Grantaire clears his throat. “Lots of others, too. I could make you a list. Show you scrapbooks.”
Enjolras is laughing. It feels good to laugh, almost as good as Grantaire's fingers in his hair. He'd nearly forgotten Alabama. “Scrapbooks?”
“I have a collection. I collect you.” The drawn circles falter, become squares. “In my head that didn't sound quite so serial killer-esque. I mean, I've been saving Les Amis memorabilia for forever.”
“You probably have cooler stuff than we do.” Enjolras needs to stop this, he needs to put a stop to lying with his head in the lap of a superfan who is probably recording the whole thing for YouTube anyway, or live-Tweeting it, whatever they are doing these days -- but it feels so good to let his eyes close and only feel the soothing caress. If the touch is too reverent, what of it? Is it exploitation to let someone who adores everything you've done be close, a moment, to its source?
“Are you filming this for YouTube?”
“What? No. I wish.” Grantaire's small laugh tries for lightness. “Here,” he says, starting to shift in the bunk. “Let me show you something?”
Enjolras cracks an eye. It had been too good to be true -- too good to think this lovely creature could have devoted himself to Les Amis and be normal, and here comes the crazy, the guy's got a knife or is going to start talking about accepting Jesus Christ as his Lord and savior, or he's going to take off his clothes and try again for what he'd come here for--
Grantaire gets his knees underneath him, and kneels like that, sliding fingers back under Enjolras' head and neck. He lifts, gingerly. “It's just a little trick, but it's a good one. Let all of your head's weight rest in my hands, OK? No, more. Your neck muscles are still too strained. Just let it go. Did you know that the human head can weigh up to ten pounds? It's a lot to carry around. Let go.”
He murmurs it again as Enjolras struggles to comply. Somewhat abashed by his own stream of thought, he closes his eyes again and tries to follow Grantaire's instructions.
It's much harder than it looks to lie like dead weight and let someone else hold you up, but when he manages to comply, it is not a bad feeling at all. Once his head is lolling, Grantaire digs fingers into the muscles of his neck and scalp, working them soundly. Then he spends a while running fingers in lines from the back of his neck to fan out through his hair.
When he gently lowers Enjolras' head back to the mattress a few minutes later, Enjolras feels blissfully weightless. It is as though an elephant of stress and tension he hadn't even known he was wrangling has been liberated to roam free. He sighs, and it's a happier sound than it should be.
“Better?”
“Yes.” He opens his eyes to find Grantaire fixedly staring down; the scrutiny mixed with desire is something Enjolras is very used to, and also not. He never sees it this close. “Thank you.”
“Anytime.” Again, Grantaire tries to laugh. “So, this time tomorrow after the show in Jersey?”
“We'll see.” Enjolras tries to laugh, too. “Combeferre will procure you, to learn that trick.”
“Combeferre's the best bass player on the Eastern seaboard,” says Grantaire appreciatively, “but my skills are reserved.”
He could stay floating, horizontal, but Enjolras sits up, head ducking the top of the bunk, and turns to face Grantaire. “Why me?”
He's lead singer, front man, and primary lyricist; he gets a lot of press attention, until the reporters realize Courfeyrac's the better interview. He knows about the fan sites, the strange fictions made up about the band; their official Twitter has 1.5 million followers, which Feuilly assures him is just peachy -- but the way Grantaire talks about him and Les Amis, it's more than just their celebrity and current hip factor. Fuck, he'd seen them at their most rag-tag, in the early days, at half-empty bar shows in half-empty little towns across America.
Grantaire's shoulders come up. He looks somewhat at a loss. Then he says, looking at Enjolras, and away, “It has always been you. When you're under the lights, there's nothing like you. You write and sing the things we wish we could say. Some people don't realize the truths you're telling, the wonderful and terrible things you say about the way the world is, because the music's so good, and you're all so fucking hot.” He glances at his hands, folded now in his lap. “I've been listening a long time. I feel like I know you.”
“You don't, though,” Enjolras says. He says it slowly, neutral, more to himself. He doesn't know how many people really know him anymore. He never gets to be himself for long.
“I know a lot of things,” says Grantaire. His body has begun to shift almost imperceptibly, but the space between them is closing. “I know your favorite color, red, and your favorite food, steak, rare. I know your favorite beer, your favorite foreign country, your preferred model of car. I know your early influences, and your modern ones. I know about your family, I've read what you say about your friends, I read all of your old blog entries from before PR made you take them down for being too political. I know everything you've ever said in public, everything you've ever told a reporter. I know the things you think enough about to craft songs from, I know what you think matters, and the social issues and injustices that make you mad; the things that make you sad have reflected my sadness since I was a teenager. I have your words in seven places on my skin.”
Grantaire is very close now. Enjolras says, “Seven?”
“Seven,” says Grantaire. “Your name in ink will be the eighth.”
The head-trick is proving more disorienting than Courfeyrac's drugs would have done. “In black?” Grantaire's lips are very --
“Red,” says Grantaire, looking intently at Enjolras. Then he kisses him, as one might kiss an idol: barest pressure, a ghost of sensation, worshipful, intent, then gone; his expression appears dazed at having done so, amazed at his own temerity.
Something misfires in Enjolras' brain, because his hand comes up and his fingers are pushing deep into Grantaire's hair, locking in; and it's soft as he thought it would be. He's hauling Grantaire against him, Grantaire wets his lips with his tongue, nervous, but then Enjolras' tongue is licking into his mouth --
They grapple in the narrow space, then go down, with Grantaire above him, and making tiny, excellent sounds that Enjolras wants to record. Enjolras brings his other hand up, since it wants to be in Grantaire's hair too, and he ties Grantaire to him with fingers and curls, though escape is highly unlikely. He's no sooner thought that, though, before Grantaire is the one pulling back, bracing a hand on the mattress to give himself leverage. Looking miserable about it, he breaks out of the kiss.
Enjolras doesn't let go of his hair, but he thinks he can feel himself coloring. Maybe he's misread everything, maybe he's still misreading. Maybe the reality of his mouth isn't up to par with Grantaire's long-held fantasies. Maybe this is the worst idea he's ever allowed himself to indulge in and there's always a price for indulgence --
“Don't,” Grantaire says it quietly, wavering over him. He's trying hard not let their bodies touch everywhere now like they had just been doing and that is extremely hard. “You don't have to humor me. This has been a trip. Best night of my life, I've already called it; sucks to be me in the future. Just...I'd rather remember the look on your face when you saw the tattoo, and not that I got to kiss you out of pity and fan-service, okay?”
Self-deprecation can be taken too far. Enjolras rolls his hips instead of his eyes. “Does that feel like pity?” Grantaire chokes on one of his better noises, but Enjolras is still talking. “You say you know me. If you know me so well, when was my last public relationship?”
“Three years ago,” says Grantaire, at once, then blushes at so readily supplying the information. But Enjolras waits, so after hesitating, he continues. “You guys handled his exit from the band really well. I mean, like, Joly dedicated his last solo album to you.”
“And he's still one of my best friends,” says Enjolras. “But that was three years ago.”
“You're notoriously private about your social life,” says Grantaire, quoting the tabloids.
“Off the record,” says Enjolras, raising an eyebrow, “that's because I don't have one. Not since we blew up.”
“But--”
“I'm not saying I've lived like a monk,” says Enjolras. “More like a hermit. I don't let very many people get close to me, and I almost never interact these days with those I don't have to.”
Grantaire sucks in a breath. “So--”
“So I'm saying. This isn't pity or fan-service. I don't do those things, and I certainly do not combine them. I think you seem like a genuine person, you haven't bored me, you look like sex and you're wearing words and clothes that remind me of a time I miss a lot. I can't remember the last time someone else touched me who wasn't trying to rip my hair out for a souvenir. Months, maybe. So--”
“I -- am? I mean, I do?” Grantaire does an adorable thing, which is to look down at himself, as though checking the veracity of Enjolras' statement. “I--”
“You're gorgeous,” tsks Enjolras. “Did you think Courfeyrac chose you for your winning personality? Though he would have, if you'd talked longer,” he adds, to soften it. And, softer, “Courfeyrac knows what I look for. When I look.”
Grantaire is taking the weight of his body from his arms and transferring it back onto Enjolras, by slow escalation of pressure. Luckily, he preens, rather than take any offense. “You like what you see?”
“The first impression is promising,” says Enjolras, “but I'll need to see more.”
This time Grantaire does not hesitate. Enjolras lets him go, and he sits back to sweep the faded Les Amis shirt over his head. In the half-dark, Enjolras sees lines and phrases from his favorite songs written across Grantaire's torso, but he is even more appreciative of the fit, lithe body like a runner's, smooth-chested over a flat belly and shoulders that taper into arms with defined muscles in motion. His curls tumble, unruly. Then he settles back over Enjolras.
“Can I?” It's still half a question, even with the way Enjolras knows he's showing his approval, with the way he's devouring Grantaire. Even so, he asks, and Enjolras nods.
Grantaire slithers down. There isn't much space in the low narrow bunk but he navigates it. He starts to work the tongue of Enjolras' belt loose with hands. His hands are shaking. He gets it open, undoes the snap below, eases down his zipper. His fingers are fluttering. Enjolras puts up his hips, and Grantaire gets jeans and boxers bunched up and starts to edge them off.
Even after all that had just passed between them, all that he had said, Enjolras hears himself speaking. “Tell me that you want this,” he says, as Grantaire bares him, the tops of his thighs and his balls and his hard cock curving towards his belly, too hard already. “Tell me this isn't out of pity or fan service.”
Grantaire doesn't laugh. He moves in to kiss for a long while at the base of Enjolras' cock, and only after some time of that does he trail the kisses up along the length. His mouth is open and very wet, and his tongue laves at the head. “I've wanted to do this since before I ever saw a picture of you, when I only had your music as my guide,” he says. His breath is hot. “Seeing you only made me want it more.”
Grantaire has already torn something like a groan from him with the mix of reverence and teasing, and Enjolras can't help but let his body arch in encouragement. Grantaire takes that as a sign that the need for reassurance is over, and he sucks the head of Enjolras' cock in between his lips while one hand fits around it. Once so grasped, Grantaire's hand tries him out at once, alternating quick, rough strokes for languorously gentle ones, learning the grip Enjolras prefers, somewhere in the in-between; and it feels so fucking good he's groaning again, a definite groan now. It's a sound so foreign he hardly recognizes it as is own.
There's a pillow underneath Enjolras' head, which is still pleasantly spinning from Grantaire's massage, and between his legs Grantaire is kneeling, taking down every inch of his cock like every inch is to be tasted and savored and tended to.
His tongue follows after the press of his cheeks, swirls amidst the suction, and there seems no limit to how much he can swallow; Enjolras watches his cock slide into Grantaire's mouth, and Grantaire's hand twists down and up to make him even harder, and Grantaire's free hand is cupping his balls, Jesus Christ, so carefully, just enough, and Enjolras' head is digging into the pillow, and he's groaning, he can't stop groaning--
“Jesus fucking Christ,” says Enjolras, when Grantaire's lips ghost the blonde hair at the base of his cock, Grantaire bent in half over him, and Grantaire hums in response, musically, and that --
“Fuck. You feel so good. You feel fantastic.” He fights the urge to move, a difficult battle, but Grantaire has enough of him already; it's kind of unbelievable to watch and feel, in fact. He'd just said as much. He's saying too much, maybe. But it's difficult to know how to repay someone for treating you like this. Treating you to this. Enjolras tries to imagine it, and thinks he'd want to know.
He thinks about how Grantaire reacted when he said he looked like sex. He says, “I'm not a very good rock star, I think. If I were, I would have done this as soon as I saw you. I would have walked over to Combeferre's bed, had you bend over me, made my hands fists in your hair to keep you in place and fucked your mouth until I pulled out to come on you. That's what I should have done, if I were a better front man.”
Grantaire is drawing up and almost off, then taking him back down with such intense enthusiasm Enjolras thinks that will be his only answer, exquisitely phrased; but Grantaire pulls away with an obscene noise and says, with lips against Enjolras' electrified skin, “Once a drummer, always a drummer, I suppose,” and he swallows him again after that, while Enjolras learns how to laugh and groan at once.
No one has reminded him of his origins in the back of the band for quite some time. Grantaire was right; he knows him, has an astonishing hold on who Enjolras was before Les Amis became his persona, maybe better than Enjolras himself.
He lets his lower body move to accommodate Grantaire and also to start pushing deeper. Every time he's close Grantaire edges down the volume just enough to keep him off, keeping them going. He tries to at least show rock star composure in this but it has been too fucking long and it's too fucking good, tight wet heat and a slick grip and if sometimes Grantaire's eyes look up at him like he's a God vacationing on Earth, fuck if it doesn't get him to start taking over, and he gathers up as much of Grantaire's hair as his fingers can contain and holds Grantaire's head while his cock thrusts between red, red lips. Grantaire takes it, takes him, Grantaire's eyes are closed as if to concentrate but his lips are smiling--
They find a rhythm of it, and Grantaire bobs his head to match Enjolras' hips, and he doesn't know if he's ever let himself go like this before. All he can feel is wanted, voraciously, unequivocally wanted, totally desired, and for the first time, it's about him, not the band, not something he's supposed to be.
Someone Enjolras might meet in a bar, or through a friend, if they lived under a rock and didn't know about Les Amis, might be interested in him for his money, or the way he dressed or looked. Grantaire knows most things about him, and treasures them, and wants to do this because of who he is, not what he has become.
Thinking sends Enjolras spinning closer to coming. He tightens his hand and tugs hard on Grantaire's hair, admiring the way he winces and shivers at once. “I'm close,” Enjolras murmurs. “Grantaire -- I wish I could -- but I -- can I--”
And Grantaire is nodding, still on his cock; it takes a very long time before his mouth is his own again. Then he says, “Please, I wish you would,” to Enjolras' question, and resumes the motion of his hand.
He is much faster now, urging, and his eyes, when Enjolras manages to focus on them, are curious, and intense, and desperate, and bold, and Enjolras comes harder than he has since forever and a day, since coming was discovered. He paints Grantaire's cheeks, and cheekbones, and his nose and lips and chin and hair; paint is the nicest euphemism, because it's messy and hot and dripping, and Grantaire only closes his eyes at the very last, when he has to.
Both of them stay panting through it a while, and then Grantaire, with closed eyes, gropes around for his t-shirt and cleans off with it. There's a moment when he looks back at Enjolras after that and neither of them know what to say or where to put themselves, until Grantaire says, “Now, that I was filming for the internet,” and Enjolras reaches for him, grinning, and brings Grantaire back up to lie beside him.
Do you thank someone for that? Is it too soon to offer some kind of reciprocation? Is it okay to want to keep Grantaire here in the bunk with him, or is he supposed to see him off, now? Maybe he could come to the after-party in the club, having him there might make it bearable; they could see how much they could get away with in a V.I.P. booth before the paparazzi notice, and Jesus Christ one mind-blowing blow job on his own tour bus and all of a sudden he's Courfeyrac and also David Bowie circa the 1970s. Enjolras does the easiest thing, the most natural option, which is to put his arm around Grantaire.
“If you don't mind,” says Grantaire, “I'd really just like to stay like this for now. I'm trying to burn the last hour into my neural pathways, and that takes significant concentration.”
Enjolras sets his hand where Grantaire's waist dips into jeans. “Can't I return the favor?”
“Some other time. I'm busy concentrating.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow,” says Grantaire. “Same time, same place, after the concert in Jersey. I'll ditch my friends afterwards, though they'll never believe me. Not that I'll tell them.”
Enjolras wades through this, then says, “Ditch them sooner. Better yet, bring them. You all have backstage passes.”
“What were the words that you just said?” says Grantaire.
“I'll need to validate yours before the show,” says Enjolras. “And if you want to see set-up and warm-up, you'll have to get there pretty early.” It's enough to let sink in before he adds, “Or you could stay. Get breakfast with us in the morning, jam in the afternoon, validate your pass, in the green room--”
“Is this actually, like, a question, that you are asking?” Grantaire asks. “Or is it a sadistic game to see if you can make me cry?”
“Both,” says Enjolras.
“I'll stay,” says Grantaire, managing to sound magnanimous about it. “But if you think I'm going to let you fuck me tonight just because you wrote 'Rebel Birds,' I'll have you know I'm not that kind of guy. You're buying me breakfast first, at least.”
“That song's only on our B-side from Feuilly's old basement studio. There's no way --”
“Way,” says Grantaire. He is very warm, and his warmth fills the bed. “Do you know I've wanted to do this even more than I wanted to suck your cock? Well, on par with it, at least.”
Enjolras blinks. Thinks about it. “What? Sleep next to me?”
“Yes,” says Grantaire. So they do.