Chapter Text
“Grantaire?”
Combeferre cautiously inched down the disused hallway, one hand trailing along the wall like he was hoping to have something to grab when the floor gave out. He was leaving lines in the dirt — a sign that someone had been there in the last forty years — but he couldn’t imagine that it mattered very much.
This wasn’t an archaeological site. It was a death trap.
But it was the right address— or rather, it was the address that Grantaire always referenced when he referred to ‘his place’. But he couldn’t possibly live there. No one could live there. It wasn’t /safe/ for human habitation.
It was safe for pigeon habitation, Combeferre admitted, but he’d seen a number of those as he climbed the broken stairs.
And all the while he’d awkwardly called out: “R?” to the grime, and dust, and stillness — but only the creak of the floorboards had answered.
Common sense told him to give up and go home, and ask Grantaire about it the next time he saw him. It wasn’t worth the risk, because logic and the laws of physics dictated that the higher up he went, the less stable the house would be. The rational voice in his head was practically shouting its agreement.
But his curiosity rallied.
And as a firm believer in the cult of ‘What If?’s, he kept walking.
There was another staircase at the end of the hall — the last one, judging by the shape of the building. It was narrow, and short, with a closed wooden door at the top. That on its own was surprising — none of the other rooms had doors. Or if they did, they were hanging by the hinges.
One had plastic taped along the top of the frame, but he’d ran right past that and — with his characteristic calm — told his curiosity to go fuck itself for the time being.
But now there was a door, and a door was different — and he wanted to know why.
He kept his hand on the wall as crept up the stairs. He kept his hand on the wall as he knocked. He kept his hand on the wall even as that first, logical voice told him that this was a little ridiculous, and that it might be someone’s home, but it might not be Grantaire’s, and the original inhabitant might have left for the summer, or—
Thoughts of plastic and tape danced through his head, and he quickly shoved all of the blossoming ‘What if?’s to the side.
Pulling his hand away from the wall, he tried the doorknob. It wasn’t locked.
“Grantaire?” he asked a final time.
No answer.
Combeferre pushed the door open.
And found himself at the threshold of a room that could have belonged to no other person than Grantaire.
It was an attic — he’d been right about that. But it was a surprisingly spacious one, with exposed rafters, from which his dark-haired friend had hung a unique collection of things: shoes, with the laces tied together; dried flowers; heavy, winter-esque clothes; well-worn boxing gloves; and paintings.
There were dozens of paintings of Paris, dabbled on ripped paper, canvas, and what seemed to be bedsheets.
Smaller drawings had been scattered throughout the room, rolled up and stuffed in the mouths of empty liquor bottles. A red jacket had been hung reverently to the left of the door. There was one table — one dirty, scratched, and broken-but-fixed-with-tape table — and a small mattress on the floor by a wall. Combeferre couldn’t stop to think for all the things he was seeing. A radio with a coat hanger for an antenna sat on a windowsill lined with wilting plants. The windows themselves were dirty. Some of the panes had things written on them in marker — poems, perhaps? But there were names, and dates as well. There was writing everywhere, he realised.
Grantaire had even carved things into the wooden pillars that seemed to be barely holding up the roof.
But more than anything, it seemed to smell like Grantaire. There was that sickly, musky scent of mould and alcohol hiding in the corners, but tobacco and charcoal were the dominant aromas. And they were aromatic — they didn’t feel oppressive, or overwhelming. The tobacco lingered, while the charcoal seemed to be a natural part of the house itself.
There were no lights. The sun snuck in through the filthy windows, leaving elongated shadows of words on every surface. It poured onto the floor through a round opening closer to the roof — another window, Combeferre noticed with a frown. It had no glass, and no screen. It was wide open to the very hot summer air outside.
Because it was a vent. Combeferre shook his head, reprimanding himself for not catching that at the start. The shape of the roof drew the hot air out through the opening.
He straightened up and looked around again.
He was standing at the door of Grantaire’s home — Grantaire’s shadowy but airy, dirty but lived-in, messy but clearly well loved home. He found it fascinating.
But more than anything, he wanted to see Grantaire in it. Whether he was sketching at his table, or drunk underneath it, or curled up on the bed that seemed too small for him — the space was lacking without his presence.
Combeferre walked over to the windows with the plants. For some reason the floor didn’t seem to creak as much up here. There was an ironically rusted watering can on the ground, but it was unsurprisingly empty so he pulled a bottle of water out of his bag and silently doled it out. The first three gave off little bursts of a minty scent as the water splashed over the leaves. Satisfied, he turned towards the door.
Bright colours drew his gaze upwards.
He hadn’t seen the sprawling names before, because they’d been just above his head. But now ‘Feuilly’, ‘BAHOREL’, ‘Prouvaire’, and ‘Lesgle’ — spray-painted across the opposite wall in orange, red, green, and yellow — leapt out at him. Judging by the different styles, Grantaire hadn’t been the one to write them. ‘Grantaire’ was not painted with them, but there was a large ‘R’ scratched into the lintel.
A smile tugged at the corners of Combeferre’s mouth.