Chapter Text
It is shockingly, bitterly cold.
Enjolras shivers and tugs his coffee closer. Combeferre, reading a newspaper across the little table, lifts both eyebrows in amusement.
Enjolras cuts him a sharp look and pointedly sips his coffee with as much restraint as possible - but he can’t hide the frisson of delight that passes across his face at the warmth. It’s not like he hasn’t spent the majority of his adult life living up North, but Combeferre knows all too well his incurable aversion to cold.
Maybe they should have gone to Marseilles instead, or Aix. There they might have had a chance at the sun. But no, the embassies and the meeting, the people Enjolras needs to sway, are in Paris - in November Paris, blustery and cold.
And perhaps they should have taken their coffee indoors, but - this is Paris; if they have to be here, they’re going to make the most of it. Which includes the pavement café experience, even though it’s so blisteringly glacial the little green cups are lukewarm in a minute and stone cold in two.
“I’ve got Southern blood too, you know,” says Combeferre dryly from behind his newspaper. “The difference: I know how to dress accordingly.” He’s wearing a thick parka and scarf; Enjolras, on the other hand, is sharp in a suit - a suit that is doing nothing to shield him from the wind.
“I’m not cold,” he says, experimentally. Combeferre snorts and folds up the newspaper. Tucking it into his briefcase, he reaches nonchalantly for his own coffee. Enjolras raises an eyebrow in turn, watching him prolong the gesture, and Combeferre hides a smile in the rim of his cup. A familiar morning tease. He relents.
“No news; at least, none important enough to make it overseas.” For what they’re doing, no news is good news. Enjolras exhales.
“Excellent. Will Courfeyrac be down soon? I need to go over some legal details with him before I talk with Peyron.”
“I’m sure he’ll be out of the shower any time now. I told him we’d gone down the street for breakfast.”
Enjolras bites back a smile. Courfeyrac had spent the night flirting persistently with the wickedly clever woman tending the bar - who, when her shift had finished, had proceeded to drink him under the table, and not into a bed.
He must have an awful hangover, but neither Combeferre nor Enjolras can summon any sympathy for their friend. They have, however, ordered him a croissant, as consolation.
The street in front of them pulses with people, even in the cold silver light of morning.
Combeferre taps his fingers on the table. “There’s a politician dead in Moscow. Brezhnev’s crying foul, says it was an assassination.”
“Well, and maybe it was.” Enjolras snorts delicately into his coffee. “A bit overt to be American, I’d have thought? Especially with the SALT talks going on.”
“Ford’s denied involvement, whatever that means. I don’t think the Russians buy it.” Combeferre takes a sip of coffee, lost in thought, then sighs and returns it carefully to its dish. “And there’s been a bombing - two, in Birmingham, yesterday night.”
Enjolras looks up from the coiling steam of his coffee. “How many dead?” he asks, quietly.
“Twenty-one, so far - more than a hundred wounded.” Combeferre’s jaw tightens imperceptibly. “Neither of the two pubs targeted were evacuated in time. There’s not much anybody can do with six minutes warning.”
“This is playing at revolution,” Enjolras mutters. “Yes, independence, absolutely - laws cannot and should not be applied to a people unless they are truly a part of that which wills the law into being, and the radiance of the future sometimes demands a terrible price; but -”
“The good must be innocent.” Combeferre finishes. “Yes. The taking of lives in this manner places a tarnish upon any cause, no matter how justified that cause is.”
Enjolras exhales. “You have the right of it, as always. I expect the backlash against the Irish is severe?”
“Mmm. I’ll call Joly; he can get our contacts to keep an eye on those caught in the crossfire, make sure they get the care they need.”
With the NHS, a fund transfer won’t be necessary - which isn’t the case in most of the situations Joly deals with.
“Good.” Enjolras looks exhausted, Combeferre thinks, like glass blown too thin. His voice is brittle. “The people of the world must be able to forge the lock-picks of their escape from the chains of oppression; but among the many things I have learned from you is that tools of this sort tend to blow up in the faces of those that use them, and the chains are merely tempered in the flames.”
Combeferre gives him a small, sad smile.
“The truest freedom must come through the enlightenment of the people; ‘thus the union of the understanding and the will in the social body, thence the full cooperation of all the parts, and finally the greatest force of the whole,’” Enjolras quotes, and his eyes flash. “Those who don’t know the extent of their subjugation cannot fight against it; the only aid an outsider can give to a people that leaves the legitimacy of the general will unsullied is just such an enlightenment - the ability to develop and voice informed opinions of their own.”
Enjolras breaks off rather than finishing, gaze drawn to a passing figure in the crowd; a dusty bell rings in the back of his mind, sending a thrill of curious recognition down his spine. He sets his coffee down carefully. A stroll, perhaps, might be in order, as the morning is brisk and lovely, and the idea of letting the stranger disappear into the depths of Paris is suddenly - unwelcome.
“I just need to stretch my legs,” Enjolras says in explanation as he unfolds himself from the little table. “I won’t be long - keep Courfeyrac here when he arrives, have him take a couple of ibuprofen; I need him alert.” And, tossing a bottle at Combeferre, Enjolras is gone.
Combeferre watches him go with something akin to worry. He, too, had vaguely recognized the person in the patched grey jacket.
------
Enjolras follows the man at a distance, concealed among the morning pedestrians of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, studying him. Those dark curls are - had been - distinctive, and a cold, confused knot begins to form in the base of his stomach.
When the man lifts a hand to his ear, sweeping a strand of hair out of his eyes, Enjolras is almost certain. He’d never once met anyone else with fingers quite like that, quite as long and graceful and poised; in years past, all too often trembling slightly with the effects of alcohol.
The only problem is, Grantaire is supposed to be dead.
They’d buried him ten years ago, for God’s sake.
Yet although he still hasn’t seen the man’s face clearly, Enjolras is sure. Grantaire is here, in Paris.
A man in a pale suit sitting at a café on the other side of the road stands up, and Grantaire turns toward him.
The two are the only still objects in the street; a strange polarization, Grantaire shadow-silent and the other man just as coldly focused on him.
Then Grantaire moves, crossing the paving-stones, hands carefully out in front of him in a gesture Enjolras can’t quite parse. The other man echoes the movement, and resumes his seat with hands on the table.
Grantaire sits facing Enjolras, ducking briefly to place a small leather case on the ground beside him, and Enjolras can’t stop his heart from stuttering at the confirmation of what he already knew. The face is more angular than before, the eyes more shadowed, and there is a composure to the set of his features that Enjolras can’t remember ever seeing before; but it is him, all the same. Grantaire’s mouth moves as he exchanges pleasantries with the other man - a business partner, perhaps.
Belatedly, Enjolras realizes he has stopped walking and is staring rather conspicuously. He pulls out a notebook from his suit jacket and pretends to be checking a map scribbled inside the cover by the hotel manager that morning.
When he looks back up, the atmosphere at the table has changed. The set of the suited man’s shoulders reads tension, and Grantaire has subtly angled himself both in and away, body language clear - he’s poised for flight.
Enjolras watches, curious, and then several things happen at once - Grantaire knocks over a water glass - the pale-suited man’s hands slip off the table, going for his pockets, but Grantaire is quicker (always fast as lightning) and he’s got a gun in his hand - a gun in his hand - and he fires.
There is a dull whump.
Grantaire is in the street in a heartbeat, calm and unhurried. Behind him, the other man slumps at unnatural angles.
The other patrons of the café seem remarkably unsurprised - but Enjolras doesn’t have time to consider that because he’s moving, stepping into Grantaire’s path with a strange pulsing in his head, heedless of his notebook falling to the pavement.
There is a blur of motion, and the gun is in his face, endless round darkness, Grantaire’s eyes dispassionate blue and finger tightening on the trigger - he’s going to die, how useless, here - he doesn’t flinch.
But Grantaire does, recognition hitting him like a crossbow bolt, and his hand jerks up and to the side. The bullet flashes in a streak of heat past Enjolras’ ear.
“Enjolras,” he breathes in silent horror, “fuck -”
Enjolras raises an eyebrow as his heart thumps heavily against his lungs; there are a thousand questions crowding on the tip of his tongue, but -
“Get out of here, jesus christ, go, go, christ -” and Grantaire shoves him away, hard.
The café’s other occupants are on their feet now, and the outline of danger is obvious in the way they move, in the odd rucking of their coats and their hands reaching as if in slow motion.
Dying here achieves nothing, not for any cause, screams a little voice in his head, and for once Enjolras is inclined to listen. Whatever’s happening here, he’s weaponless, and there is not a single thing he can do. So when Grantaire whispers a suddenly raw, “I am capable,” Enjolras nods once, sharply, and then turns and runs.
Gunshots cough behind him.
As soon as he reaches the main avenue, he slows to a fast walk that is unremarkable among the hurrying streams of distracted Parisians, cursing himself for not having noticed the crowds thinning the further he had followed Grantaire among the twisting streets.
It occurs to him that he’s just entrusted Grantaire with his life. For some reason, he isn’t concerned. I am capable. Enjolras believes him.
His pulse has quieted somewhat when he spots Combeferre and a tousled Courfeyrac at their table. He lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, and Combeferre looks up.
Enjolras mouths “Hotel, now” at him; Combeferre catches his urgency instantly, sweeping the papers spread out in front of him into his briefcase and standing in one motion. Courfeyrac looks up, puzzled, but his eyes widen when he sees Enjolras’ face and he gulps the rest of his coffee, untangling his feet from the chair legs.
“You’re bleeding,” he says, matter-of-fact, and hands Enjolras a napkin.
Combeferre leaves a ten franc note on top of Courfeyrac’s half-eaten croissant.
------
Capable of what, his earpiece scratches out frantically, getting yourself killed? You sodding idiot! What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing -
But Grantaire’s heart is still in shock, and the sound of his gun blends with a high-pitched rushing buzz in his ears.
One down - two - fuck, behind him - he twists and lashes out with a foot to the jaw - they’re not firing to kill, he can tell, this is wrong - he rolls under a punch and uses the butt of his Smith and Wesson to knock that one unconscious, and something thuds heavily into his ribcage.
Ah, shit. From the sudden flare of agony, that might have been a rib cracking.
There are too many of them.
R! screams Musichetta through the earpiece.
------
Enjolras settles gingerly onto the bedspread as Courfeyrac dabs a wet cloth over the side of his head. Combeferre’s unpacking the first aid kit - bought in London because the last one had been confiscated on the damn Atlantic flight.
He pulls out a bottle of TCP, and Courfeyrac winces in sympathy. Unscrewing the cap, Combeferre says, quietly, “The bullet just grazed your temple. You should be fine.”
Enjolras closes his eyes against the sting of the antiseptic.
“Hold this, Courfeyrac, please,” and Enjolras feels cool fingers on his jaw, tilting his head to better inspect the wound.
Without opening his eyes, Enjolras says, “It was R.”
Combeferre sighs, breath ruffling the curls under Enjolras’ ear.
Behind him, Courfeyrac drops the bottle. Enjolras imagines dark liquid splashing into the white carpet, spreading out, a blooming yellow rose.
------
Grantaire blinks awake to silence.
Fuck me, he thinks, groaning; he aches all over and there is a sharp throb radiating through his head. He moves to rub his eyes, but is stopped short; cold metal bites around his wrists. His ankles seem likewise occupied.
Shit fucking bollocks, he thinks with more vehemence, but manages to stop the fear coiling up his throat from showing on his face.
Okay. Evaluate. He’s in a room, small, dirty cream walls, no windows, plain white door, no handle. Empty except for him, cuffed uncomfortably to a small metal chair in the middle of the room.
Possibly it was once a bedroom of some sort - there are four scuff-marks spaced in the shape of a bed on the floor in the far corner.
A hotel room? That would make sense; nothing permanent, no real document trail, easily abandoned once they’ve done what they intend to.
Dread slides silvery down his spine; all the worse for being named. He knows what happens next.
The door opens. A woman in an impeccably tailored suit steps inside, followed soundlessly by a man carrying another chair. He sets it down some distance from Grantaire, aligns it precise to the wall.
The woman waits until he has straightened, then flicks a hand in dismissal. He inclines his head and slips back through the door. It shuts with a click.
She moves forward, and settles gracefully into the seat.
When she speaks, it is in French. “Hello, R.”
Don’t fuck with me, Grantaire thinks, and snaps, in perfect, unaccented Russian, “Get to the point.”
------
Enjolras has his head over the sink, Courfeyrac massaging shampoo into his scalp in soothing circles. Foam drips down onto the porcelain, gone pink with blood.
No one’s said a word. Combeferre must have suspected something, from his reaction; Courfeyrac seems unable to speak - a first, thinks Enjolras wryly, except - not quite.
They’d been close since the first week of university; they’d all been close, they were les Amis de l’A B C, they all virtually breathed with the same lungs, shared the same heart, if not quite every thought. Courfeyrac had come up with the pun, of course; he’s taken French since he was six, and can be remarkably persuasive when he has his heart set on a thing.
Courfeyrac was - still is, always will be - their hot bright lifeblood; and he’d been the one to find Grantaire’s crumpled car at the bottom of the ravine, that cold summer night so long ago.
He hadn’t spoken for a week.
Still quick to give his heart, still a star system of warmth, Courfeyrac has intensified to fill the darkness of a missing sun. Even now, when he looks at them, the fierce protectiveness that had always been there is sharpened by the lurking terror of loss.
Enjolras can’t forgive Grantaire for that.
Warm water sluices over his head, then the soft towel covering his shoulders and neck is taken up. Courfeyrac rubs it briskly over his damp hair, leaves it draped over Enjolras’ head and goes to fetch a blowdryer.
Enjolras blinks water out of his eyes, lifts the towel out of his face. Combeferre is leaning on the doorframe, arms crossed.
“Talk to me,” he says, quietly.
Courfeyrac plugs in the blowdryer.
------
She’s smoking a cigarette now - red, red mouth pursed around it, smoke curling out in ribbons. She leans forward, blows a stream in his eyes. He screws them shut and repeats, “You know who I am. I can’t tell you anything you don’t -”
He sucks in a breath; she’s stubbed the cigarette out on the skin at the curve of his elbow.
She raises an eyebrow, gestures for him to continue as she relights the cigarette.
Grantaire coughs out a laugh, then gasps for air. Yeah, definitely a snapped rib or two.
His voice is hoarse. “Like I said -” and he smiles with blood on his tongue, “- I’m as much one of you as can be. Look, the stuff you need, it’s in the briefcase - do you want stories or the real deal? I can do fucking stories, and you sure as hell don’t have a hundred eyes - well, it’ll be words and not song, but my point stands -”
Half an hour ago, the other man had reentered the room; he’s been standing, motionless, just behind Grantaire’s shoulder, and it is making his skin crawl in anticipation.
The man moves now, fist snapping out and connecting with the back of Grantaire’s head. Everything goes white.
Dammit. Okay. He can deal, fine.
He opens his mouth for some kind of retort, but his tongue is sluggish against the roof of his mouth and anyway there’s a thick wad of cloth being shoved past his teeth. He bites down and tastes blood - someone slaps him across the face, hard.
“Nothing to say now?” Her voice is cool, amused. “Well, well.”
A laugh.
“We have your pretty friend, you know.”
Grantaire’s heart stops. He raises his head to look at her, despite the sudden sick impossibility of motion. His hands are cold. Her eyes are colder.
“Did you think you could distract us with theatrics? How sweet.” She sounds delighted.
He struggles for breath. She leans in. “He’s just next door.”
Helpless, his eyes fly to the wall.
Her breath ghosts past his ear. “They’re going to shoot him now.”
Oh. Bad as a blow to his broken ribs, it is worse, it is a thousand cathedrals smashing - ripping him to shreds -
The sounds he makes are muffled, and she laughs. “Listen.”
As if he could do anything else.
There is a silence as wide as the universe between him and the next room - the walls must be paper-thin, because he can hear the click of the gun cocking.
The sound of the shot is deafening.
His thoughts scatter like a flock of startled birds - circling, circling - there is emptiness and ice and the birds fall dead one by one and his mind is filled with feathers and blood.
------
“I need to leave for the meeting, Combeferre,” Enjolras sighs as soon as Courfeyrac turns the blowdryer off.
“There’s time,” Combeferre says, pushing away from the doorframe to stand upright. “Here, I’ll do it.” He takes a brush from the cabinet beside the door, and Enjolras feels himself smiling almost against his will.
Courfeyrac moves round in front of him, perches on the tiled edge of the sink. His hands have nothing to do now, and they twitch.
The tug of the brush through his hair is soothing, as if all his anxiety is being pulled out of his head with each stroke, piece by piece.
Finally, Courfeyrac speaks. “Grantaire -” He stops, unsettled, then gathers his thoughts. “He... shot you?”
“No… well, it’s the not quite that matters. He could have; he killed another man.”
Combeferre lays the brush aside and runs a clinical eye over Enjolras’ face.
Enjolras doesn’t break eye contact with Courfeyrac. “He had the gun in my face like an instinct - not even Combeferre can handle a gun like that - and he couldn’t shoot me.”
He doesn’t say what he thinks next - whatever Grantaire’s been doing these past few years, it certainly hasn’t been wasting himself in the gutters of the Continent.
But Combeferre seems to understand anyway, and his eyes sharpen. “You did know, Enjolras, when Grantaire - disappeared... he’d been sober for two and a half months?”
What.
No, he hadn’t.
Combeferre exhales. “I thought not. Well, I saw him that afternoon; preoccupied, sure, but still sober."
Something twinges beneath his breastbone.
“You would have put things together. As it is, well - I’d only suspected, but this settles it, rather.”
Courfeyrac jolts upright. “Oh, my God.”
Grantaire’s mother had been Russian - she’d died, the year before the wreck. Grantaire had spoken the language as easy as breathing - he had a head for tongues - used to do jiujitsu, moved like a ballet dancer when sober - those missing weeks, and when he came back he was always slightly different, subtly out of kilter -
And Brezhnev, newly in office, with the world running scared.
“You know I volunteered at the hospital?” Combeferre was saying to Courfeyrac. “We never did a proper identity analysis. The body was taken away before we could do much of anything at all, and no one ever said a word.”
“I spy with my little eye something beginning with R,” murmurs Courfeyrac. There is a strange elation in his voice.
------
For some reason, Courfeyrac’s voice is playing in his head, through the pain.
He’s on his knees and his face is underwater, and Courfeyrac says, staticky, “If we die in the fight, well, that’s how we’d want to go, isn’t it?” Air, light... water. “Nothing really to mourn there. We achieved significance.”
Grantaire can’t remember having this conversation. Air bubbles leak from his mouth.
“I just can’t take - it’s a waste, you know? Meaningless.”
They pull him up again, and his lungs scramble for oxygen.
He knows, theoretically, that it hadn’t been Enjolras in the room next door. They’d have made him watch, if it had. He couldn’t be dead. He wasn’t dead.
He wasn’t.
------
As Combeferre fusses over the knot of Enjolras’ tie, Courfeyrac keeps up a running patter of information, pacing excitedly from one end of the room to another; occasionally he flings himself over to check on the tie’s progress.
Enjolras already knows the gist of it all, but it is reassuring to hear again; Peyron’s political leanings (“...quiet shade of grey mouse color, a well placed word can move worlds and all that, so try not to offend him too much - oh, don’t look at me like that, we need his support, man’s got money -”), his areas of interest (“half as concerned with Poland and the Iron Curtain as Feuilly, that’s pretty damn concerned, so feel free to expound, okay?”), what literature to cite (“for the love of all that is holy, not Marx this time, he’s allergic”).
Finally, Enjolras’ attire is deemed acceptable, and Courfeyrac runs out of words.
Combeferre pulls him into a hug, then draws back and says, seriously, “Don’t be gentle on this.”
His reply of When am I ever goes unsaid, but Combeferre’s eyes flash with humor anyway.
Enjolras reaches out to touch Courfeyrac’s wrist. “Thank you,” he says, meaning it.
Courfeyrac smiles and closes his eyes, grips the offered hand fiercely. When he opens his eyes again, they are full of fire.
“Go now. We’ll find him.”
------
The room is empty now, and dark.
He tries not to think about the pain; he drifts, Enjolras’ sunbright hair behind his eyelids.
Centuries pass, until - a crash, a flood of light, cautious footsteps, the metallic rustle of a radio.
“Fucking hell, R,” a voice says, far away, echoing oddly through his head. Then there are fingers at his wrist, his neck, the clinking of metal at his ankles.
“Oh thank God,” Musichetta whispers when she finds a pulse.
Grantaire feels lips press lightly to his forehead.
“Up we go.” Someone slips under his arm and pulls him upright. He bites back a whimper. “Can you walk?”
No, he thinks, and also, wait, because the only thing that matters is the Schrödinger’s angel on the other side of the wall, and he doesn’t care how sure he is, he has to know. His lips are cracked and swollen, but he says, “Enjolras -”
Grantaire’s head lolls against Musichetta’s shoulder, and her heart shivers at how wrecked his voice is.
He tries again. “Next door - ” A rasping breath. “Please...”
She’s got to get him out of here. “Okay,” she murmurs reassuringly, into his hair. “Okay.”
Somehow she gets him properly on his feet and out the door; propping him carefully against the wallpaper, she pulls out her semi and smashes down the neighboring room’s door with a well-practiced kick. She doesn’t go in (places like these are terrifyingly easy to rig - she should know, it’s what she does) but it’s clear from a glance that the room is empty.
“Nothing here,” she says to Grantaire.
The relief is dizzying. Grantaire feels the world spin and he is suddenly so lightheaded that his vision goes sparkly and his legs aren’t strong enough to hold him up; then Musichetta is at his side again, with a curse and a muffled, “Steady.”
“Musichetta?” he mutters.
“Yes.”
“Do something for me?”
“Yes?”
And he tells her, and she smiles in spite of herself because that is just so Grantaire, and she settles his arm more firmly over her shoulder and he takes a step forward and grits his teeth all the way across the hall to the stairs down and out and into the backseat of a darkened car where at long last he can lie down and fall into soft sweet gentle oblivion.
------
Combeferre rubs the bridge of his nose in frustration.
Nothing.
The first thing he’d done was call Feuilly, who actually worked for the CIA (in an unknown capacity). Feuilly had sighed, a long and resigned sound, but the important thing was that he had agreed to look into the situation. It was Combeferre calling, after all.
He still needed time to get inside and into the mainframe, so - radio silence for a few hours.
Combeferre’s been down to the café Enjolras mentioned to question the propriétaire; there had been blood still on the cobblestones.
He groans and reaches for his coffee, bringing it to his lips, only to find it drained.
“Would you like a second cup? Or rather, a sixth,” drawls Courfeyrac.
Combeferre looks up at Courfeyrac, who is eyeing him mischievously, brows raised - sipping from his own cup.
“Your tenth,” Combeferre points out.
“True.”
They have taken over the concierge’s desk downstairs in order to have access to a telephone and a fax-machine (what wonders a wheedling Courfeyrac can work); Parisian phonebooks, maps, papers pile in snowdrifts around them.
The ‘phone rings, and is at Combeferre’s ear before it has time to stop rattling.
“Hello?”
“Hey. I’m in.” Feuilly’s voice sounds strange. “This is some weird shit. I’ve found a subdirectory, printed out some stuff - can’t be sure, but... look, I’ll fax it to you, okay?”
“Okay,” says Combeferre. His throat feels tight.
There is a pause, then the fax machine stutters to life and spits out a single sheet of paper. Courfeyrac snatches it up, brings it close to his eyes, hold it away; then smiles smugly, and passes it over.
The page is covered with little data dits, but a face can be clearly seen.
“That’s it; this is R,” Combeferre says, quietly, into the phone.
“Yes, I know.” Impatient.
“What?”
“It’s the other picture I’m not sure about.”
There’s another fax lying in the tray; this time it’s a photo. Combeferre reaches for it first.
His hand goes numb. Oh my god.
Feuilly again, crackling in his ear. “It was faxed here about an hour ago, sender unknown - is it...”
“Yes,” Combeferre says, distant.
In the photo, Grantaire is sprawled, eyes open, on a chair in some anonymous room, black curls slicked wetly across his cheekbones; but for the jacket, he is nearly unrecognizable - the grayscale hides nothing. Written at the bottom, in neat black letters, is a date and time, certificate of arrival, and a careless scribble, “Compromised (?)“.
Courfeyrac rips it from his hands; there is a moment of shocked silence - his eyes widen, sick, and he presses the back of his hand to his mouth.
Then Feuilly says, sharp, “Hey. Hey. Calm down. The next thing in here is a flight record, Paris to New York. He’s out. He’s safe.”
Combeferre breathes through the claws in his throat.
“Thank you, Feuilly,” he says.
“No problem.” He sounds tired. “I’m going to let the others know, okay? Not everything. But.”
“Wouldn’t dream of stopping you. Do what you do best and don’t get caught,” Combeferre tells him.
“It’s why they hired me.” A chuckle. “Take care, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
The line clicks to silence.
He replaces the ‘phone carefully on the stand, then turns and opens his arms. Courfeyrac moves into them, buries his head against his neck and holds tight.
A voice from the door says, amused and very English, “Care to lend me a hand?”
------
It's late and the streetlights are casting golden puddles on the wet pavement by the time Enjolras returns.
Combeferre’s waiting for him inside the door, thermos in hand. There is a hurried exchange, briefcase for thermos; Enjolras takes a long, grateful gulp, then makes a face.
“What is this, tea?”
“Mmmm. You need to sleep tonight.” Then Combeferre adds, cryptically, “Although that might be a bit difficult right now.”
“Why?” Enjolras says, suspicious.
Combeferre smiles. “You’ll see.”
Enjolras follows him to the stairs and all the way up to their room; Combeferre doesn’t turn around until they reach the door, where Courfeyrac stands as if on watch.
“Nobody’s disturbed anything,” Courfeyrac says, eyes dancing.
Enjolras glances between the two of them, puzzled. Courfeyrac makes shooing motions with his hands. “Go on in.”
Enjolras moves forward with a huff of exasperation; twisting the handle, he turns and gives them a last bemused glance; then he steps inside.
A flower stem crunches under his foot - but Enjolras doesn’t notice. It's almost difficult to remember how to make his lungs work.
The room glows with chrysanthemums, hundreds of them, scattered over the floor, in vases on every surface, heaped on the pillows and duvet, red-white-gold, an explosion of color.
Enjolras closes his eyes, and breathes in.