Chapter Text
The meeting of their cell chapter breaks up, and Enjolras waits until most of the ABC have dispersed. A few of them linger in the back room on their way out, drinking, but once the meeting room itself is empty he slips up the back stairs. The staircase is coded to all of them, but Combeferre’s study is locked down more tightly, and Enjolras has to break in to get the door open.
He doesn’t expect Combeferre to be inside already.
“You know, you could always knock,” he says mildly.
Since he seems to be under the helpful impression Enjolras was looking for him, Enjolras shrugs. “It was faster.”
“Do I break into your rooms?” Combeferre asks, then answers himself. “I suppose I do, but I don’t disembowel your codepad to do it.”
Combeferre doesn’t need to. He has an override, which Enjolras reluctantly granted after certain events had made it clear that, sometimes, someone else having access to his rooms was a good idea.
“Was there something you wanted?”
“To talk to you, obviously,” Enjolras says. “I wasn’t convinced by your turn of argument in the meeting, and I wanted to discuss the possibility of another strategic capture if support for the Bill is against us.”
“Frankly, the way most security around political figures has been increased since the uprising two years ago–”
“That's what I wanted to discuss.” It's a subject designed to distract Combeferre, but it's something Enjolras has genuinely been considering of late. He hasn't raised it in a chapter meeting, yet; mooting it to the highest council has to come first. “If our object was leverage, rather than information–”
It takes Combeferre a moment to follow, then his eyes widen behind their frames. “Oh. That's a – departure.”
It's one that would take them over the line they straddle now, an illegal far-left group that's under a certain amount of surveillance, with outstanding warrants out for their three leaders; it would put a price on all their heads, every single one, and it would start an outcry that would be hard for even the most rigorous government intervention to stifle.
It's not a step to take lightly.
“We've never involved civilians. We've never interfered with friends and families.”
“And yet every day they interfere with our friends and families,” Enjolras says. “Have we not all been forced to sever the ties that bind us to them for their own protection? Is there an acquaintance of ours that has not been questioned? On a greater level, is there a single human life not subject to their interference and unjust control?”
“Too far,” Combeferre says critically. “You always drag out the really big rhetorical flourishes when you're reaching.” He straightens. “What's really going on?”
Enjolras glowers. “I'm serious.”
“I'm sure you are,” Combeferre agrees, but he's out of his chair and scrutinising him closely now, and this is exactly what Enjolras didn't want. “You look shifty. And you're tapping your foot, and fidgeting – No, don't move away. What is it this time?”
His surgeon's hands manipulate Enjolras expertly, tilting his head back and forth, checking his pupils in the harsh artificial light overhead. Not satisfied, he palpates under his jaw, checking his glands.
Enjolras glowers harder.
“Hm.”
“Satisfied?”
“Not at all. Your nodes are a little enlarged, your temp is up, and your pulse is too fast. Are you going to tell me what you've done to yourself, or do I have to drag it out of you?”
“It's not what you think,” Enjolras says. Combeferre is still looking at him with that mixture of gravity and disappointment he's perfected over the past decade. It should have lost its edge by now; Enjolras is no longer twelve. “My blockers aren't working very well, that's all.”
Combeferre's look of disappointment deepens, but it's just habit at this point. He lets go, sinking back into his chair and Enjolras rubs his jaw.
“Your bedside manner is somewhat lacking, has anyone ever told you that?”
Combeferre waves a hand, not bothering to respond. It takes him a few minutes to find and access Enjolras's medical records; they're under the highest possible encryption, and it takes time to get in, even considering that Combeferre set it. “We haven't upped your dose for over a year – you've stopped growing, so it hasn't needed adjustment. You've probably just become accustomed to that base level of suppressant.” He pushes his glasses up his nose and reaches for his prescription pad, apparently unaware of Enjolras fidgeting guiltily. “What are you currently taking, 60mg–”
“Eighty five,” Enjolras admits quietly. He walks as careful a line with Combeferre when it comes to medical issues as he does with the activities of the ABC: he may keep information from him, but he never lies.
The look Combeferre gives him this time isn't just disappointed, it's disbelieving, edging into anger. “That's extremely unsafe. How did you – Joly.”
“I didn't say that.” Enjolras watches with some alarm as Combeferre trades his pad for his phone and starts texting. He's been trained to withstand interrogation, has withstood questioning –
“You didn't have to.” Combeferre sends the text. “I can't prescribe you any more, Enjolras. It's not safe.”
“I can't afford a heat, Combeferre. That's not safe.”
“You're already taking as much suppressant daily as someone of your age and weight can. You could push it maybe as much as 5mg more, but that would bring you right up to the line, and possibly over it – and once that's crossed...” He looks serious, but Enjolras has heard this lecture before – heard it from Combeferre every six months since his seventeenth birthday. It no longer has any effect on him.
“I'll chance it.”
“You're not listening to me.” Combeferre does something to his record; red flashes across the screen of his pad. “I won't prescribe you more. It may buy you six months, but if you've already crossed your threshold, where do you go from there? Your hypothalamic system must be under incredible stress, and I'm not sure how much longer you can afford to keep it completely suppressed. If you're coming up to the line, maybe it's time–”
“In six months I could be dead,” Enjolras says darkly. “We could all be dead.”
Combeferre's mouth thins. “Forgive me if I prefer to imagine that you have sixty years ahead of you to worry about.”
Enjolras pushes a hand through his hair, running calculations. He can feel the edges of it already; a faint buzzing in his bloodstream, a tightening of his skin. He's gotten used to the feeling of it coming on, this past year. It's becoming a regular warning signal, telling him when it's time to bully additional suppressant out of Joly – a well that's beginning to run dry; telling him that it's time to dampen it the fuck down and send it away again. He needs it to go away. Combeferre doesn't understand; as a beta, he can't properly understand what it means to be so subservient to your own physiology and brain chemistry, to be threatened with losing all control.
“Maybe – maybe 5mg more would be enough to keep holding it off.” It'll have to be; it could give him weeks, at least, if not months. Six months, if he's lucky. “Fill it for me, and–”
“No.”
“No?” Enjolras narrows his eyes. “I believe that you swore an oath of loyalty to me–”
“I swore an oath to you, yes,” Combeferre says. “I also swore an oath to Apollo the physician, to Asclepius and Panacea.”
Enjolras hates it when Combeferre quotes the Hippocratic Oath at him. He hates it when Combeferre settles immovably at a point from which Enjolras can't shift him, argue him, or outvote him. It doesn't happen very often.
Combeferre stares back at him, implacable. The pad has disappeared into the desk again, behind one of Combeferre's personal palm locks, and without it Enjolras isn't able to forge prescriptive codes that would pass muster with any pharmacy tech –
Without help.
“Fine,” he says tightly, and turns on his heel.
He's half a pace out of the office when Combeferre says conversationally, “I've told Joly not to prescribe you any more blocker, either. On pain of my ingenuity.”
-
Enjolras was willing to bet the threat of his ingenuity against Combeferre's, but Joly doesn't seem to agree.
“I'm much more frightening than Combeferre,” he mutters, and Courfeyrac pets his hair.
“Of course you are, baby.”
Enjolras lift his head off the table and glares at him. Courfeyrac removes his hand with exaggerated caution, grinning,but Enjolras is not in the mood for his antics right now.
“Don't patronise me. If you want to pull that kind of condescending alpha bullshit, you can get the fuck out.”
“Hey,” Courfeyrac says, hurt. “You know I wouldn't – I was kidding.”
“It's not a good time to kid,” Enjolras says, and then sits up straight. “Courfeyrac – you're an alpha.”
“Indeed I am.”
“If Combeferre keeps blocking me, I'm going to need one–”
“Whoa, whoa,” Courfeyrac says. “Stop right there. Right there. I know you don't believe in the validity or innate superiority of pair bonding, which is fine, whatever, but it exists, and I'm taken. Very, very taken. Off the market. Not available. My body is not mine to give to the cause.”
“That's exactly the kind of bullshit we're supposed to be fighting against,” Enjolras says, distracted. “No one's body is anyone's property than their own–”
“Right, right,” Courfeyrac nods, “theoretically, yes, but in practice? This is Jehan's, and as much as you want a taste of this jelly–”
“I will end you–”
“Baby, you can try.” He grabs Enjolras's hand before it connects, presses a kisses below the base of his thumb, and returns it to him. “Still joking, by the way. Protecting you from yourself, getting you to lighten up, all of the above, but no patronising."
“I do not,” Enjolras says emphatically, “want your jelly.”
-
What he wants is to turn his body off and keep it off. It's irritating enough that he already has to waste valuable hours tending to it, eating, sleeping, exercising – he's tried caffeine and amphetamines and fuck knows what else, but eventually there's always a crash, always a debt to repay. The last thing he has time for is a sex drive. Another bodily need to add to the list, another drag on his attention, a dulling of his mind when he needs every wit to survive.
It's getting worse. It's barely been a day since he noticed the first signs; the slightly heightened senses, the sudden awareness of his nerve endings, the rub of his clothes against his skin.
Two days, and he's dealing with things he hasn't had to think about since he went on the blockers. He wakes up hard and grinding against his mattress, and only the application of cold water and the imagined images of the worst things he can think of – cauterised flesh, the time they had to escape through the sewers, Marius eating soup – make it go away.
Three days, and even that doesn't work.
“Please,” he says, taking Combeferre's hands and squeezing them. “I beg you. I'm begging.”
“That's kind of hot,” Courfeyrac says. He sounds a little horrified. “Combeferre, making Enjolras stop being hot.”
“Are you sensing his pheromone levels?” Combeferre asks. “If he's broadcasting that strongly already – his androgens are reasserting themselves faster than I expected, but I suppose, after being suppressed for five years–”
“Yes, you told me so, I know,” Enjolras breaks in.
He hates it when people talk over his head. It's all part of a broader inequality, weighted unfairly on biological lines. He acquits Combeferre of that kind of unconscious superiority, but Courfeyrac is more volatile, for all his stated principles. Enjolras believes him to be completely sincere in his desire for a more equal world, and he's certainly done his best to drop his alpha privileges the way he dropped the 'de' from his name, but some reflexes are more innate than others, harder to shed.
“Mm, a little,” Courfeyrac says, flaring his nostrils and breathing in. The horrified look comes back. “Combeferre, this is deeply disturbing, can I go?”
“You're not a prisoner.”
“Can I go?”
“No, I'm running tests later,” Combeferre tells Enjolras. “Nice try, though. Courf, I'd prefer if you stayed here, we need to discuss what we're going to do, and your insight is invaluable – as always, but particularly in this instance.”
“We,” Enjolras echoes. “We're discussing what we're going to do? I knew you were waiting for me to crumble so you could seize the reins of power–”
“Triumvirate,” Courfeyrac sing-songs.
(In principle, that's what they're supposed to be, the three of them: the highest council of the ABC, an equal balance of alpha, beta, and omega, all working together for a common cause, none superseding the others. A demonstration of the equality they're fighting for, an example of the change they want to bring. Enjolras has always insisted that the balance of three is coequal, but if he takes the lead in private a little more often, well – that's subversive enough in its own way. Besides, it works.)
“I'm starting to think these walls are padded for more reasons than discouraging eavesdroppers,” Combeferre says, looking back and forth between them judgingly. It's a disturbing little room, the bunker under their building, and they weren't the ones who modded it. Enjolras usually tries not to think about its original purpose whenever they meet there. “Seriously, I called a meeting of the high council in here for that reason, but–”
“It's too late,” Courfeyrac says, going serious. “It's not just me, the others are starting to pick it up, too. Not the betas or the omegas, obviously, but Bossuet asked me what Enjolras had done to his hair, because it was extra shiny, and Bahorel wanted to know why he was all weird and twitchy and did someone let him take amphetamines again–”
“One time.” The crash at the end of that sleepless week had been bad enough that he'd decided never to employ it as a tool again, he hadn't needed the lectures. He'd gotten them, though.
“Everyone's still scarred, Enjolras,” Courfeyrac says. “No one's forgetting what you're like when you're on a crazy hyperactive power trip, not ever.”
“We achieved our mission–”
“We kidnapped three politicians–”
“We gave them back!”
Eventually.
“Anyway,” Combeferre interrupts. “We need to decide what we're going to do.”
“Can't you just –” Courfeyrac waves a hand vaguely. “Stuff him with enough suppressant to make it go back to business as normal? I'm taking his side here. This is getting weird.”
“Thank you–”
“Enjolras's norm is not normal,” Combeferre says. “If you don't like him now, imagine him five days from now, and then imagine that that's what he's stuck like every six months until forever, thanks to his abuse of gonadotropin blockers to the point of going over his tolerance threshold.”
Courfeyrac visibly blanches. “Jesus.” He rubs his face with the back of his hand, like he's trying to wipe away the trace of a pheromone trail. “Old-fashioned solution, then? Fuck, that's just not right. It's Enjolras.”
“I'm not any happier about it,” Enjolras says sharply. He's still annoyed at Courfeyrac's imputation about his jelly. He doesn't want anyone, much less Courfeyrac.
He does, however, need this to stop, to the point of being willing to actually entertain the idea. The past three days of escalating torment have had a lot to do with bringing him around on that point. He still can't spare the time, but two or three days to work out the heat the old-fashioned way – possibly they can afford that. If nothing serious comes up. Which it might, no matter what Combeferre says.
It'll give him six months until the next cycle, and by then his blockers might be working better after the break. He could have years before he needs to go through heat again. Combeferre has explained this to him multiple times over the years, and with particular frequency in the past few days, and the logic is inexorable and inescapable.
That doesn't mean Enjolras likes it.
“Right,” Courfeyrac says, and Enjolras can see the change in him again, the moment his brain switches tracks from play to planning. It's something he both envies and doesn't understand about Courfeyrac, his supreme ability to juggle personal and political. “We're going to need a temporary alpha, then. Not me, obviously, and Bossuet's bonded, too; Marius, ha ha, that would be hilarious if Eponine didn't murder us all, fuck. Bahorel and Feuilly aren't bonded, but they've been taking care of business together, I don't know how things stand there – maybe Bahorel would be willing.”
“Mm,” Combeferre says, his eyebrows pulled together in thought. “Perhaps.”
"It's not like he's hideous," Courfeyrac continues, apparently unaware that Enjolras is calculating how best to crush his windpipe. "I wouldn't, obviously, but thousands would, if he kept his mouth shut - I mean, not even counting R's little sketchbooks, Jehan has a whole sideline in poems about his icy and terrible beauty. 'Shall I compare thee to a frosty morning? Thou art more cold and yet more radiant; O, the harsh clear light that comes with dawning' - admittedly, not his best work, I think there's a 'yawning' rhyme somewhere later-"
"Jealous?"
"I'm very secure in my masculine beauty," Courfeyrac says, utterly unabashed. "Also, I have an entire unpublishable private literature dedicated to my attractive person - anyway, to return to my point, we can always troll for stunt dick on Craigslist, if you don't want to keep it in-house.” He snaps his fingers. “Wait – Eponine! Is it a stunt dick we need, or would a stunt cu–”
“Courf,” Combeferre snaps.
He's always tried not to think about the whole messy biological process, so Enjolras consults with himself, checking the vague preferences that were still nebulous when he went on the blockers, and concludes, “Dick."
“Just not right,” Courfeyrac mutters.
There are licenced sexual therapists, obviously, for anyone in need of an alpha or an omega and unbonded. They should be able to organise something, Combeferre argues, if they use enough encryption, if they burn a few more false identities... This can be managed sanely and safely.
Courfeyrac is still broadly in favour of something more anonymous and less official. Not exactly Craigslist, even the a4o section, but they should be able to set something up, if they're slick enough. Trade for it, someone chasing a thrill. This can be sorted, hole-and-corner.
Neither of them are really asking Enjolras what he wants. He doesn't exactly know what he wants, beyond not having to deal with this. If only Combeferre was an alpha –
“Beta,” Combeferre says, when Enjolras voices this thought. “Very, very beta. I would do a great deal for you, Enjolras, but I can't do that.” He glances at Courfeyrac. “I see what you mean, it is disturbing.”
-
The very secret meeting of the highest council breaks up in acrimony, and the door to the small padded room – dubbed the Privy Closet by Jehan, to only his amusement – is slammed several times.
It doesn't really help Enjolras's long-term goals, but he feels much better for the slamming in the short term.
-
They hold the next ABC cell meeting without him. Enjolras keeps to his apartment for the next day or two, staying out of the common areas, and telling everyone who texts him to leave him alone – standard operating procedure for a crash after a period of overactivity. That much, he agreed to.
He didn't agree to meetings being held without him. He would have believed it was postponed, as Courfeyrac had airily promised, if it wasn't for Marius.
Marius: sorry to hear you're sick. feel better!!! :((((
Marius: this meeting feels weird without you :((((
“Enjolras,” Combeferre says, when he staggers to the door of the common area and points an accusing finger, “go back to bed. You're sick.”
“I am not. I am well, and of sound – well, of functioning mind and body,” Enjolras says, and punctures the air with his finger again. “This is mutiny.”
“No, this is Sparta,” someone – Enjolras suspects Bossuet – mutters. It comes from the corner where he's sitting, anyway, and it's more likely to be him than Joly or Musichetta.
That movie is banned from their weekly Popcorn And Movie Night, thanks to its offensive portrayal of pair bonds fighting side by side in service of Sparta, omega shieldbearers in service to their alpha spearcarriers, and Enjolras reminds the meeting of this.
“The point of that movie is Gerald Butler's abs, Enjolras,” Eponine says. She's sitting cross-legged in the corner, clever fingers weaving a cat's cradle out of copper wiring.
“This meeting is about Bill VII A going before the the Senate next month,” Feuilly agrees. “Did you come down to change the conversation to pop cultural representation? Because that's an important issue, of course, bu–”
“He's going back to bed,” Courfeyrac says, distentangling himself from Jehan. “Because, as you can see, he's clearly not well–”
“Go, before Joly strains something!” Bossuet says, and Joly presses himself harder against the far wall. He looks like he's trying to melt through it like a mutant in one of the movies Courfeyrac likes to show on Popcorn And Movie night.
“Feel better,” Marius adds sympathetically, and his face actually manages to approximate one of his sad smiley emoticons.
Enjolras opens his mouth to lay in, and Courfeyrac looms over him, shaking his head emphatically.
Bill VII A is important, it's why Enjolras needs to be present. He tightens his grip on the doorway, and Courfeyrac puts an arm around his waist. To the room it probably looks supportive, but it clamps like iron and forces Enjolras back.
“You can't stay,” he says, his voice dropped to a thread. “I may be a stronger alpha than the others, but if you put another foot over the threshold it won't just be me picking up your scent, and I know you don't want that, Enjolras. God forbid the Fearless Leader should appear less than infallible– Trust me and Combeferre to handle the meeting. Just – let us do this for you.”
Enjolras can't think clearly. He knows what Courfeyrac is saying is true. It's even kind. It's hard for Enjolras to trust anyone, especially an alpha, but trust Courfeyrac he does, however he grumbles. This legislation is too important, though; it's an attack on their civil rights, disguised in platitudes and slipped as a rider into an unrelated bill like a razorblade in candy. “I can't,” he says. “You know what this could mean.”
“I know,” Courfeyrac agrees, but his arm bears Enjolras back, away from the meeting room and their gathered friends, into the passageway. The door shuts behind them. “I've got your back in there, I promise. Can you make it back upstairs? I don't want to leave the meeting too long.”
Enjolras nods, and with a worried glance over his shoulder, Courfeyrac leaves him.
He's careful to secure the meeting room door behind him this time, and Enjolras hears the sound of the deadbolt shooting home. They don't normally lock and code it on that side when they meet. If there's danger, it'll come from the street entrance; if someone has access to the back of the warehouse or the upstairs apartments, the most secured parts, then it's already too late.
Enjolras stares at the closed door. If he goes back to his rooms, Combeferre and Courfeyrac will probably refuse to report back fully. Their focus will be on his problem, and on potential solutions, as if Enjolras isn't capable of dealing with two separate issues at once, biological impairment or not.
He doesn't take the stairs. Instead, he wanders further down the hall.
Another door gives under his hand, and he stumbles into the back room that has served the ABC as their informal tavern since the increase of their activities – and the consequent increase of law enforcement's interest in them – stopped allowing many of them the freedom of the city.
It should be empty. Every member of the ABC who can physically attend the meeting should be present, but there's someone drinking at the bar.
Enjolras tenses for a moment, and relaxes only when a closer glance informs him that it's no intruder, only Grantaire.
Grantaire is an albatross around the neck of their organisation, so his choice of the bar over the meeting shouldn't irritate Enjolras, but it does. Everything about Grantaire irritates him; the way he constantly disrupts meetings to play devil's advocate, the way he's never completely sober, the sloppy way he wears his clothes. The expression of slightly bitter amusement he wears constantly, the way he's always blasé and never sincere. Even his dark curling hair flops irritatingly into his face.
The meeting is probably producing more fruitful debate and more unanimous sense of purpose without Grantaire there to sow discord and distraction, but that's not the point: he shouldn't be in here drinking when he could be in there. If Enjolras was allowed – and it's terrible, not being allowed – there's nowhere else he would rather be. He's here as a last resort, and it's insulting that for Grantaire it's a first.
Enjolras glares at Grantaire's slumped back until another throb of pain lances through his temples and he remembers why he sought this door.
He usually forbids the use of intoxicants – stimulants are one thing, at least they can be useful, but all intoxicants do is dull. But his head hasn't stopped aching in days. Every muscle in his body is tight, quivering with tension.
For the first time, Enjolras thinks he might understand the impulse to indulge.
He makes his stumbling way over to the bar. Grantaire's shoulders stay hunched in whatever black mood has struck him this time, and he doesn't glance up, even when Enjolras leans over the edge of the bar and starts trying to make sense of the bottles.
“Wine! No, something stronger. What's stronger? Grantaire, what do you normally drink?”
Grantaire finally looks up from his tumbler, and his eyes widen. “I heard you were – Apollo, are you okay? You look like shit.”
“I'm fine.” His stupid knees aren't holding him up properly anymore, that's all.
“You don't look fine.”
Grantaire sounds genuinely concerned for once, and when Enjolras teeters forward again he reaches out; his fingers brush against Enjolras's elbow, clearly intending to take it and steady him.
Then he stops short, nostrils flaring.
Enjolras pauses, too, his hand closing around the neck of a promising-looking bottle. “What?”
“Oh.” Grantaire's eyes have gone even wider, if that's possible, blue irises being swallowed up by expanding pupil as Enjolras watches. His nostrils flare again, scenting.
Enjolras has never been particularly physically aware of anyone, thanks to his blockers, and he's never been more than half-aware of Grantaire at all. He has him mentally filed as organisational deadweight, an indulger of intoxicants, someone who has continued access to the ABC only because of his friendships and because Enjolras can't overrule Courfeyrac and Combeferre when they're in agreement.
Right this moment, he can't look away from Grantaire's drowning eyes, fixed on him as if they can swallow him up, too. They're almost all black now, with thin rings of brilliant, brilliant blue at the very edges. Grantaire's mouth, his mobile mouth, red with wine, opens. The tip of his tongue comes out, as if to taste the air as well as smell it. “Oh.”
Something unfamiliar shoots through Enjolras like lighting, and he flinches back. “Don't touch me,” he says, panicked. “Get out!”
He's the one to scramble backwards and away, though, and it's not until he's upstairs, back in the stale air of his own apartment that he puts it together.
It's the onset of heat drugging his brain and slowing his thought processes down to molasses, but it's some satisfaction to know that he's not the only one who was behind on this particular curve.
“I have a solution,” he tells Combeferre and Courfeyrac when they finally come up to report on the meeting. It derails the argument about keeping to his room, at least. “You weren't thorough enough in your accounting of the alpha population. Grantaire's an alpha. Why didn't you know that? Why didn't I know that?”
He'd always assumed Grantaire was a beta, but he can see the alpha in him now: the physical power, the boxing and the fencing, the way he can throw back a handle of vodka and still walk a straight line, albeit with extreme care.
“You didn't know that?”
“Are you saying you did?”
“Um, obviously,” Courfeyrac says, and Combeferre shrugs. “You seriously didn't?”
“I naturally assumed–”
“You and your assumptions - I swear to god, you have the worst fucking instincts of anyone I've ever met–”
“That's because Enjolras has been systematically smothering his instincts in the cradle every time they try to develop,” Combeferre says, and Enjolras divides a baleful glare between them.
“If you knew Grantaire was an alpha, why didn't you suggest him?”
Combeferre and Courfeyrac exchange looks.
“Because you don't like him?” Courfeyrac offers finally. It sounds unduly hesitant, like he could say more.
“Of course not, but he's preferable to a creepy stranger, or to a cog of the very system we're trying to tear down,” Enjolras says, with a glare all Combeferre's alone for his ridiculous licensed sexual therapist suggestion. “It's a good solution; he can be useful to the ABC for once, and since Bahorel has failed us–”
(What Bahorel had done, once approached, was scratch at his sideburns. “Um, this is uncomfortable.” At his side, Feuilly had looked stalwart and brave. “I mean, we weren't looking to put a label on this, or a ring, or anything, and obviously if it's for the cause–”
“Your sacrifice will not be required,” Combeferre had told him kindly, and they'd both practically melted with relief.)
“Did you ask Grantaire what he thought of this plan?”
“No, I only just thought of it,” Enjolras says, waving away this minor point. “Anyway, he also swore an oath to me–”
Courfeyrac makes a noise that sounds a little like “Argh.”
Combeferre sighs.
“I'll talk to Grantaire and see what he thinks. You – try to sleep. And stay in your rooms.”
-
The next day is the worst so far.
Enjolras is twitching out of his skin. All he is has been reduced to base animal functions, a stupid creature ruled by impulse and need. He can't think about anything but the humiliating need to be touched, to be taken. He can't think about anything but release. And nothing works. This is a fact. He acknowledges it, and yet he can't stop touching himself, can't stop trying – Logic has failed.
“I hate this,” he tells Combeferre pathetically when he codes open the door to his bedroom. Well, mostly he tells the carpet he's collapsed upon, but it's meant for Combeferre. “I hate this. Make it stop.”
“Oh, jesus,” Courfeyrac says, recoiling, when he steps through the door. “It smells like – argh.” He breathes in and his expression goes blankly stupid for a moment, as foolish as Enjolras feels, and then he blinks hard. “Again, I agree with Enjolras. Make it stop.”
“I'm working on it.” Combeferre crouches down. “Enjolras?”
“Leave me alone to die.”
“Not on this watch,” Courfeyrac says, rejuvenating. “You're not that lucky. Come on, dude, we talked to R and now he wants to talk to you, and I'm not stepping one foot further into this room. If your ass needs to be dragged out, it's all on Combeferre.”
Enjolras sneers at him elegantly, but allows Combeferre to help him to his feet and straighten his clothes.
-
Grantaire is waiting in the first of Enjolras's rooms, the antechamber he pretends is his only room to those who haven't been invited further into the warren. He looks anxious, and also showered. His hair is still slightly damp, his clothing clean and unrumpled, and it's possibly the most presentable Enjolras has ever seen him. He's even clean-shaven, and that's definitely something Enjolras has never seen before.
Grantaire is staring at his feet, but he looks up the second Combeferre and Courfeyrac usher Enjolras into the room, jerked by some invisible wire.
“Oh,” he says faintly.
Enjolras stares back at him, fixated. It's even worse than in the bar the day before, like all of his attention has suddenly telescoped down to this one person, sensing that he's possible, some instinct already recognising and dismissing Combeferre as a beta and Courfeyrac as bonded –
“Yeah, I'm going to go,” Courfeyrac says, sidling to the door, and Combeferre looks like he wants to follow, but duty and a lack of sensitivity to pheromone exchange prevents him. His face screams I can't leave the children unsupervised!
“I've briefed Grantaire on the situation, and he's said that he's amenable, but I just want to make it very clear that if either of you have any doubts – or if you feel the need for any sort of mediation –”
“Go away, Combeferre,” Enjolras says, still staring.
Grantaire doesn't break eye contact, either. “I think we're good.”
Combeferre still has that look on his face, but after a moment he nods, and leaves.
Enjolras checks the code on the door, setting it to the highest possible security. Then he turns to Grantaire.
“Thank you,” he says stiffly. “I appreciate your – this. I know that – this task goes somewhat beyond the call of duty.”
Grantaire looks uncomfortable again. “It's not a problem.”
“It's an imposition, and I appreciate it.” Enjolras takes a breath. This is so very awkward. He wants – no, he can't want yet. He has to talk. “I have to make some things very clear.”
“Anything you want.” Grantaire turns his palms up, showing that they're empty and unthreatening. “Just tell me, at any time–”
“No,” Enjolras says. “Once my heat's fully – I might say anything, that's why I have to be clear now. I don't know how much of the rhetoric around this kind of relation you believe in, but I'm not your pet, not your lover, and not your slave. Whatever happens–” he gestures between them, a little wildly. “It's a means to an end. It stays in these rooms. You don't discuss it afterwards; not with me, not with anyone.”
“Apollo, I wouldn't.”
Grantaire says it firmly enough that Enjolras is somewhat reassured. He's still terrified; his body might want this with mindless unrelenting intensity, but he feels like he's standing at the edge of a cliff he's been avoiding for a long time, finally pushed to the brink, and he's about to leave solid ground for freefall. It's a battle between mind and body, and the outcome might be inevitable but it still goes hard.
“Okay,” he says, and it's to himself as much as to Grantaire. “I'll accept that, I suppose. I have no reason to believe you wouldn't – that you wouldn't behave as a gentleman.”
Grantaire's mouth twists a little at the antiquated line that makes Enjolras feel stupid as soon as he's said it, or maybe with some private irony.
Enjolras wants to taste it, and the thought is like a spur digging into his side, breaking skin. It's an opening to all kinds of thoughts, giving the mindless shapeless need of the past few days a focal point, and he has to close his eyes and breathe carefully for a few moments to put them aside. He's not done yet; there are other points on the agenda to cover, things he's not sure Combeferre stipulated.
Grantaire is watching him when he opens them, the way he'd stared at him by the bar.
“Birth control,” Enjolras says, and the drowning look drops from Grantaire's face, replaced by blank shock.
Enjolras isn't sure why; it must have occurred to him as a possibility, and from what Enjolras has read, full status disclosure between partners is a necessary prerequisite to sexual activity.
“I've had an implant since I turned seventeen, so that's something you don't need to worry about.” It's a faint rectangle under his skin, set between the bones of his forearm and only palpable when specifically sought for. He touches it sometimes, for reassurance, and when he glances down he finds that he's doing it now. “I know that – I mean, I've read that condoms don't usually – that heat partners tend to be too gone to use them correctly. This is my first time, so you don't need to worry about diseases, either.”
“Combeferre said it was your first heat,” Grantaire says, slowly. “But you've – I mean, you've done stuff normally, right? Like, before you went on the blockers–”
Enjolras grimaces. Full status disclosure, right. He can almost understand why some of the guidebooks suggested it was something some people found uncomfortable.
“I've been on a high dose of suppressants since the day I turned seventeen, without break. That means, in addition to giving Combeferre periodic heart attacks, I haven't experienced any kind of sexual interest or reproductive drive since then, and before– Well, I was below the legal age of consent.”
“No one actually obeys the legal age of consent, Apollo,” Grantaire says, despairing, like that's the only possible thing in that torrent of information he's even capable of answering. His expression is a little wild. “Between peers, that is. Jesus. You've never – you've never–”
He breaks off, and his hands come up to rub at his temples like his head is hurting, too. “I don't know if I'm the right person for this. God, I know I'm not.”
“Obviously, it's not ideal,” Enjolras agrees. “But right now, you're the only person, and.” He pauses. It's almost true: he can make it true. “And I trust you.”
Grantaire looks like Enjolras just pushed him off a cliff of his own, hands frozen in his hair. He doesn't say anything for a few breaths, several long unravelling moments.
Enjolras doesn't have time for this kind of delay. “I believe it's usual to respond to a disclosure of sexual status with reciprocal honesty.”
Grantaire takes a final breath, deeper, and he must get a lungful of pheromones because the shocky look on his face visibly changes into one Enjolras is more familiar with. It's mostly identical to his expression from the encounter in the back room, but there's a touch of something drugged that Enjolras recognises, like his scent is as much an intoxicant as any of Grantaire's chemical sometimes-vices. “I'm clean, too. Combeferre made me pass a whole panel of tests before he let me in here.”
Enjolras relaxes a tiny fraction. “Combeferre is occasionally useful.”
“Yeah.” Grantaire rubs his temples again. “He gave me – look, I want to run something by you, before we – before anything. I want to give you a choice.”
He waits, watching Grantaire fumble in his pockets and then turn his hands out to Enjolras again. This time, there's a small white pill centred on each palm.
“Red pill, blue pill,” Grantaire jokes weakly. It's a reference Enjolras actually doesn't mind; The Matrix is an excellent metaphor for his own purposes, and he uses it a lot. Too much, according to Courfeyrac. “Red pill, I take my next blocker and I stay in control of my own, um, reproductive drive. Blue pill, I bring it on now, earlier than I'm due.”
Enjolras looks at them. They're both rounded, whitish, unassuming – almost indistinguishable, except for their stamped markings.
Should he ask Grantaire which option he prefers? But if Grantaire wanted him to know, he'd have made it clear, surely. Grantaire is offering, and it's a gift; even this far out of his mind, Enjolras recognises that it's a gift, an attempt to allow him to control or choose this much, even if he can't turn his own body off.
He tries to think about the branching possibilities, to weigh the options fairly, running a hand through his hair. “I don't know,” he says finally. “I'm not exactly an expert at this – I don't know. I can't think.”
“Enjolras.”
Grantaire never uses his actual name – it's one of the most annoying things about him, on a long list of annoying things. It's arresting enough that Enjolras stops pacing and panicking and looks at him, and only realises after he's done it that his sudden obedience might have less to do with the novelty, and more to do with his stupid instincts.
“Calm down,” Grantaire says softly. “You can do this. You don't have to make the decision if you don't want to, but I thought you'd like to, that's all.”
It's a good thing that Grantaire is asking, Enjolras tells himself, trying to push away irritation. He's being less overbearing than he could be; it's not his fault that he's an alpha and Enjolras hates him on principle and also wants to do exactly what he says right now.
“Very well,” he says tightly, trying to sound more collected. “Talk me through it.”
“Red pill,” Grantaire says. “I don't start it, I stay about normal – I'm in complete control of myself and my actions, and I can be very careful with you.”
“Will you still be able to perform?”
Grantaire's smile goes crooked. “That won't be a problem.”
“So why ask?”
“Well, it's more equal in a way, maybe. It wouldn't be just you that's out of control if I'm in heat, too. And, um. Endurance. It's a thing. Heat's easier that way, for everyone, less drawn-out – But like I said, I don't know which you'd want. I wanted to leave it up to you.”
“I'm in heat,” Enjolras says, and it's a weak evasion. “Technically, I'm not of sound mind or body right now, and unable to enter into binding legal agreements or operate heavy machinery.”
He's always hated excuses based in shitty evolutionary psychology and a poor grasp of biology, used to justify alpha superiority as something innate, but that prohibition, at least, is making a certain horrible amount of sense. Or is it only making sense because he's not of sound mind? He can't think..
“Enjolras,” Grantaire says, and this time the faint note of command is stronger.
It's not much of a choice: being vulnerable and stupid and out-of-control in front of a self-possessed Grantaire, naked in every possible way, or driving them both to the same level of need, of nakedness. It seems unfair, to make Grantaire go through the same humiliation that's wracking him right now. But equality in everything, even in this –
“Blue pill,” he says. “Start your heat.”
Grantaire nods. Enjolras searches his face for some sign – was that the right choice? Should he change it? Is his desire for approval some side effect of his heat? – but Grantaire's expression doesn't change at all.
His fingers curl over the pill in his right hand, sealing it from sight, and he lifts the left to his mouth and swallows fast and dry. It's quick, too late to take back.
They look at each other.
“Relax,” Grantaire says, and Enjolras tries to untense muscles he was unaware had suddenly tightened. “It takes a few minutes. We don't evolve in two seconds flat.”
“Evolution implies movement from an inferior to a superior state,” Enjolras says automatically. It's a familiar argument, one they've had before, and it helps.
“Only from a eugenicist point of view,” Grantaire says, and he sounds as grateful for the distraction as Enjolras himself. “From a strictly Darwinian position, there's no inherent value judgement with any given adaptation. They're just randomly evolving to fit different niches; there's no master plan, they're not moving towards any particular end goal–”
“Yes, but no one argues pure Darwinian evolution per The Origin of Species,” Enjolras whips back. “It's been impossibly corrupted in pop culture by the slant towards eugenics, particularly given the alpha-omega theory Galton pushed–”
He stops for breath, then stops entirely. Grantaire's scent is changing; the air is thick with it, protean and uncurling, increasing. Enjolras wants to throw himself at him. He wants to unlock the door and start running. Between the two urges he's completely paralysed.
“Relax,” Grantaire repeats, and his voice is slightly deeper now, maybe, or maybe it's just vibrating at exactly the right frequency to make Enjolras's skin prickle. “I'm not going to hulk out, you need to calm down.”
“That's easy for you to say.” Enjolras hates the sound of his own breathless voice, the brokenness of it when it's usually a perfect tool for his use. “You've done this before.”
Grantaire reaches out like he wants to touch him, comfort him, then draws back. It stops Enjolras having to make the throw-himself-or-run decision, at least, but he's becoming uncomfortably aware that both their alternate options are dwindling away, second by second. This is the choice they've made, to go through heat together, and shortly that will be the only choice.
He's breathing faster and faster; heat or hyperventilation?
“I suppose you don't have anything to drink in here.”
Grantaire shrugs when Enjolras looks at him incredulously. He shrugs again when Enjolras asks “Are you sober?”
“Pretty much. It seemed like it would be better. I'm regretting it now.”
“There's a bottle of something in the fridge.” This time it's Grantaire looking incredulous, and Enjolras adds “For Courfeyrac, when we meet in here. Combeferre, too.”
“Well, thank fuck for Courfeyrac,” Grantaire mutters. “Where's the kitchen? How far back does this place go?”
This is why people aren't allowed in his quarters. “Through there.”
Grantaire goes, shaking his head, and when he comes back he has the wine uncapped and he looks like he's been applying it liberally.
His scent is almost a physical thing now, stronger, and Enjolras stumbles across the room towards him. He can't stop himself; he doesn't want to. The minute or two of separation has been murderous.
“Hey,” Grantaire says, and now he sounds breathless, too.
Enjolras presses himself against him, just trying to touch him with his whole body, get as much of Grantaire against him as he can, and Grantaire presses back.
They're locked chest to chest, belly to belly, thigh to thigh, knee to knee. It's not enough. It's not enough. It's better and worse at the same time; what Enjolras needed, but not what he needs exactly.
He shifts his hips against Grantaire, trying to get more of him, and that feels good, why didn't he think of it before? It feels amazing, so he does it again, and again, and it gets better, but not –
“Hey,” Grantaire says, after a moment. “Stop. Enjolras. Stop.”
“No,” Enjolras says, but he's not completely gone. It takes him a few seconds, but he manages to stop what he's – to stop humping Grantaire's leg, fuck, what's wrong with him? No, he knows what's wrong with him.
He pulls away, peeling himself from Grantaire fraction by humiliating fraction.
“Fuck.”
“It's okay,” Grantaire says. “Apollo, look at me. It's okay. I don't have any problem with that – you must have been able to feel that I didn't have any problem with that. I just thought, maybe, it might be a good idea to go find your bedroom. I know this is a heat, but you deserve better than your living room floor with your clothes on, the first time.”
Enjolras recognises this as true. He's just not sure how he's going to last, or how to get there.
“Just – point the way,” Grantaire says. The hand not holding the wine bottle slips down, finds Enjolras's hand and takes it firmly. “I won't let go of you.”
Enjolras isn't sure how they get there – an agony of stumbling, of being tucked against Grantaire's side and kept upright – but they do, eventually. If he was less insane with need, he'd be embarrassed of his room; the bed is unmade, sheets in twisted coils, and it must reek of him, of days tossing and turning in his bed, trying to make the urges go away, or at least satisfy them.
Grantaire staggers when they cross the threshold, and Enjolras nearly goes down with him. “Sorry, sorry,” he mutters. “Fuck. Bed, Apollo. Bed, not floor.”
“And clothes,” Enjolras says, reminded. He's supposed to take them off, that's right. He gets the shirt off easily, but the pants seem unduly difficult, the trick of the fly as hard to crack as some high-level coded government seal. He can do that, why not this?
“I don't know,” Grantaire says. He's staring at him. Enjolras must have said that out loud. “Just, oh, fuck.” Enjolras's pants are finally off, puddled on the ground around his ankles until he kicks them away. “Fuck. I should – my clothes, too.” He gestures with the bottle at Enjolras. “I was going to suggest you have some wine, help you relax, but I don't think it's going to be neces-”
Enjolras takes the bottle from him and swallows. He doesn't need the Dutch courage, but he'd like the excuse of it. It's sharp white wine, thin and astringent, but he gets it down.
“Fuck,” Grantaire repeats.
Enjolras wonders if it's an erotic trigger for him, if his need for intoxicants is hardwired into his entire limbic system. It seems possible. He takes another swallow, testing, and is rewarded by Grantaire's fingers going lax on his shirt buttons.
He sets the bottle down until Grantaire's managed to undress himself. Then he walks back to Grantaire, who is busying himself folding his clothes for some stupid reason Enjolras can't understand – it's not like he bothers with niceties of dress normally, so why now, of all times? – circles him, and drapes himself over his back.
Grantaire stiffens, the shirt crumpling in his hands, and Enjolras rubs his chest against the smooth length of his back blindly, cat-like, trying to know him through the contact. It's the first time he's touched Grantaire fully skin against skin. His nipples have gone hard, seeking out sensation, skimming the flesh of Grantaire's back even as it slips away and Grantaire turns to face him.
Grantaire's hands come up, one settling on his hip, keeping his pelvis angled away; the other cupping the side of his face, tilting his chin forward.
Enjolras doesn't want to look at him. It's easier if he doesn't – how do people do things like this and look each other in the eye? – but Grantaire keeps stroking his cheekbone with his thumb until he does.
“Can I kiss you?” The thumb sinks lower, brushing against the corner of his mouth. It starts to trace the curve of his lower lip. “You've done that, right?”
“Turned off my sex drive at seventeen,” Enjolras reminds him shortly.
“Before, though?”
Enjolras shakes his head, but he doesn't succeed in shaking Grantaire's hand away. “Why do we need to kiss? This isn't romantic, it's not a bonding – it's just a heat, a – a servicing.”
“Well, people tend to,” Grantaire says, but he removes the hand. “I'll try not to, then. I can't promise–” He shuts his eyes as Enjolras puts an end to the careful distance between them.
That's it, the first time: standing together in a puddle of discarded clothing in front of Enjolras's bed, grinding blindly against each other until Grantaire gets a hand between them and oh, that's what Enjolras needed.
He's never really thought about how this sort of thing happens, but Grantaire obviously knows what to do, his fingers closing in a tight circle that slides their dicks together, and Enjolras would be ashamed of how much he's leaking if it didn't feel so good, if everything wasn't suddenly smooth and hard and slick –
“That's right,” Grantaire says, a hot breath at his ear, “I've got you. You can let go.”
Enjolras isn't sure what he means by that, but the next slide is so good, right to the center of him, that he can't completely kill the sound that wants to escape him. Grantaire's hand stutters and suddenly his mouth is on Enjolras's shoulder, wet and open, and at the next sound his teeth sink into the hard flesh there, and apparently that's it, the last barrier –
Enjolras finds himself crying out in a wordless shout, all of it, all of what he's been feeling and has been trying to stifle, and comes in a hot pulse of release that seems to go on and on.
He becomes aware, after a while, that it's only Grantaire that's keeping him on his feet. Grantaire's arms circle him fully now, holding him up while Enjolras slumps helplessly against his shoulder; he's shorter, but he's steadier. Enjolras can feel his heartbeat pressed between them, reverberating against his own chest; it still sounds fast, and in the sudden silence of his own head now that the urge that's been driving him has slackened, it's deafening.
He straightens up, trying to make his knees work, to push Grantaire away.
“There you are,” Grantaire says, sounding a little amused, a little – something else. “I was kind of worried that I'd killed you.”
Enjolras feels more like himself again, and suddenly and tremendously embarrassed. He made so much noise, for so little reason. It's made worse by the fact that Grantaire's still hard, and just watched him come apart. Enjolras can't meet his eyes.
Then he frowns; didn't Grantaire take the pill that would chemically start his heat? Shouldn't he have had as little control as Enjolras himself?
“Well, heat,” Grantaire says when Enjolras mutters something along those lines. “It takes alphas a little differently, it gets – well, you'll see. I wasn't kidding about the endurance thing, and if you come here–”
He reaches for Enjolras again, pulling him back against his chest, and it's with absolute despair that Enjolras finds himself going happily, feels desire stir in his belly again. “I thought it was over.”
“It figures that you'd be as impatient about this as everything else,” Grantaire says, and his hand is on Enjolras's dick again, pad of his thumb rubbing with gentle assurance against the underside, teasing at the head. It should hurt, should be so sensitive that Enjolras can't bear it – he does remember that much of puberty – but the hurt doesn't come, just pleasure, and more pleasure, until he's swelling to fill Grantaire's hand again.
“It's not over?”
“Well, we took the edge off,” Grantaire says, still rubbing, and he makes a pleased sound low in his throat when Enjolras arches his back and presses into his touch. “Ever heard of a honeymoon? Back when they bonded alpha-omega pairs at seventeen – for life, thank fuck that tradition's gone by the wayside – that's what they called their first heat, the first month they were bonded.”
“Not a month,” Enjolras pleads. He doesn't think he can take even a week of feeling like this. He'll die. Days. Combeferre promised him days.
“No, not a month,” Grantaire agrees. “Doubt it was a month even back then. It's just a phrase, Apollo, don't worry. A few days–”
Enjolras barely remembers the second time. It's the third by the time he's on his hands and knees in his own bed, Grantaire fucking him from behind with hard thrusts of his hips, pushing back desperately to meet him.
Enjolras meant it to be impersonal, forced that position for a reason. Still, Grantaire rolls them onto their side after, not bothering to pull out. Enjolras wants to protest the spooning – this is a servicing, after all – but every time he tries to move Grantaire nips at his shoulder and tightens his arm around his waist, and it feels good to keep him inside; it calms some of the urgent need that starts rising up again almost immediately every time Enjolras gets off, holds it off longer.
It also feels good to have Grantaire nuzzling against the back of his neck, muttering nonsense and rubbing tiny circles into his skin.
They move naturally and without effort from that round to the next, to the next. Enjolras loses track after that. It feels like like they're strung out over days, a blur. They drowse and wake to fuck and drowse and fuck again; a week could be passing, locked in his apartment, riding out the heat.
At one point he finds himself on his kitchen floor where they'd gotten distracted while stopping for sustenance, on his back with his legs wide open and Grantaire's head between them, fucking the empty air as he tries to angle his hips back, to get more of Grantaire's mouth on him, inside him. It's the best thing he's ever felt, but eventually it's not enough anymore, either.
“Now,” he orders.
Grantaire makes a pained noise and pulls his mouth away with great reluctance and an obscenely wet sound, and the hard sucking kisses he presses against the inside of Enjolras's thigh are so distracting Enjolras almost lets him get away with it before he has to repeat himself.
Grantaire's quick to put it in, for all his complaining, and they both groan at the feeling of him sinking home; it's smooth and swift now, practiced, Enjolras so open for him that he slides in easily. This time it's slow, long lazy strokes that Grantaire draws out and out and out, not hurrying until finally neither of them can stand it.
“This is probably unsanitary,” Enjolras says some time later, when his mind has cleared a little. He can see right under his fridge from this angle on the floor, a hidden perspective revealing dust and crumbs and a few of the stupid Spock magnets Courfeyrac had bought him. He can't remember if he knocked them off on purpose or not when Grantaire slammed him up against the fridge, but even if it was an accident, it was a good deed.
“If I don't mind tonguing your ass you don't get to complain about that,” Grantaire says, running an idle hand up and down his side. “I'm not going to kiss you, don't worry.”
“Not what I was talking about,” Enjolras says, but he's too tired to explain. He closes his eyes, feeling Grantaire's fingers slowing to trace each individual bump of his ribs, the jut of his hipbone, the long lean muscle in his thighs.
“Love your skin,” Grantaire whispers. It makes him sound like a serial killer, and Enjolras would tell him so if he hadn't been the one trying to wear Grantaire like a coat when his heat hit. “I always thought you looked like you were carved out of marble, but I didn't realise it was true. Can't believe none of this – that you didn't feel – What are you like, when you're not in heat, and when part of you's not turned off? Do you even know?”
“I'm the same,” Enjolras says. “That's the point.” The same as he'd be if he could open his eyes one morning and wake up a beta, with his biology regularised, anyway. He thinks. It's not like he'll ever know.
“Maybe you'd be happy as a giant brain bobbling away in a jar, Apollo, but think of the waste,” Grantaire says. When Enjolras doesn't respond, he drops it, sucking another mark into his shoulder instead.
They fuck until they're sore, then fuck again, and again, in every room and on every surface that Enjolras's apartment offers. There's carpet burn on Enjolras's back and his knees, and his ass is one sore tingling ache, and his dick is no better.
“Can't,” Grantaire groans, much later. “No more. I'm broken.”
“Mm,” Enjolras agrees, “no more,” but he can't help nuzzling at Grantaire's stomach, the crease of his hip. When he starts nuzzling at his dick, trying to bring it back to life, Grantaire groans again, louder, and pushes his head away.
“The spirit's willing, Apollo, but the flesh is tired. I can't.”
“Can.” Enjolras nuzzles again, and Grantaire's hand returns, but his fingers tangle in Enjolras's damp curls instead of shoving him away, and he sighs.
“Fine, but you're doing the work.”
Enjolras is the one who rolls Grantaire onto his back that time, throwing a leg over his hips and sinking down onto his dick. It feels different with this angle, in complete control. He doesn't ride it as much as he rocks back and forth, working it inside him in until it's rubbing at just the right places.
Grantaire lets him do it for a while, getting more and more into it, until finally he can't take the teasing anymore and rolls them over.
The next time they're too sore and fucked out and the heat is coiling up relentlessly again, it's the other way around.
“I can't,” Enjolras says into the pillow. “Not again.”
“Can,” Grantaire says, climbing on top of him, and Enjolras spreads his legs for him helplessly. It's already a conditioned reflex, Pavlovian as much as biological. When Grantaire's heavy on him and nudging between his legs, it's all Enjolras can do, melt and spread, and Grantaire takes advantage of it, pressing his face into the curve of Enjolras's neck and making him take it yet again.
He fucks him like that into the mattress, and it's too much, and Enjolras is so tired, and every bit of him is sore and used and aching. The worst part is that it's still so good and he can't help responding, and Grantaire fucks him through several more wrung-out climaxes before he's done.
“I hate you,” Enjolras tells him grumpily, letting Grantaire cuddle him closer. It's comforting now, and he's so used to it he almost can't remember what it's like not to be touching Grantaire. It feels like an eternity ago that he resented the cuddling. Now it feels like the boundaries where he begins and Grantaire stops are uncertain, like they're two people wrapped in the same caul of skin.
“I know, kitten,” Grantaire mutters, kissing his shoulder. He pauses when Enjolras stiffens. “What's the matter?”
Enjolras's voice has gotten progressively more wrecked over the past – however long it's been; he hasn't seen a watch. He's moaned and shouted and begged and his voice is as used as the rest of him, but he manages to grit out “Not your pet,” anyway, and feels Grantaire tense around him in sudden understanding.
They lie there pressed together, suddenly awkward where moments ago they'd been loose and melting. It's strange to feel so uncomfortable when everything has been so mindless, so easy.
“I know,” Grantaire says finally. “I do know, I just, you know how I – fuck, if I say I like giving people petnames, that's going to strike exactly the wrong note, isn't it?”
Enjolras almost laughs, and from the way the tension in Grantaire's body loosens behind him, he can tell. “Really, I hate you.”
“Maybe stop purring this time, and it'll be more believable.”
“I'm not pur–”
“Are,” Grantaire contradicts him. “You make this lovely little noise in your throat after I've fucked you. It's darling. Didn't you notice?”
“There's nothing to notice,” Enjolras protests, but now Grantaire's pointed it out he can hear it too, the low hum of contentment he can't quite stop.
Grantaire kisses his shoulder again, chuckling. He's been careful, despite the wilder promptings of his heat; he hasn't kissed Enjolras's mouth once. Enjolras has allowed kisses on other parts of his body – they don't seem to count – but with Grantaire curled around him like a comma, laughing in his bed and calling him stupid nicknames, it feels too intimate.
His head feels clearer than it's been since this began.
“Not your lover, either,” Enjolras says, and the reminder is meant for both of them.
Grantaire's hold on him slackens, and they fall apart naturally. Still touching – not touching is agony too terrible to court – but only connected now by the tuck of their knees together, Grantaire's hand loose on Enjolras's hip.
“I know,” Grantaire says finally, when Enjolras has almost forgotten the thread of the conversation. “Believe me, Apollo, I do know.”
They lie quietly together for some time, and when the heat starts up again, it's less urgent. “I think it's getting better,” Enjolras says wonderingly, shifting his hips until they fit back into the cradle of Grantaire's, and Grantaire makes a considering noise.
“The downtime's been getting longer, and the heats've been getting further apart. Didn't you notice?”
“Almost over,” Enjolras says, and he welcomes the familiar spike in arousal this time, now that he can tell it's less heightened, now that its barbs don't prick quite as sharply. He rocks back against Grantaire in a slow tease, enjoying it, until the heat builds and builds and starts to bite, and then Grantaire's pulling away.
“Back on your knees,” he says, and slaps Enjolras's hip roughly. “Last time.”
-
Combeferre's the one who estimates downtimes and uptimes and metabolism rates, and he's the one with the override to Enjolras's most private locks, so he's the one who cautiously opens the door.