Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"Grantaire!" Joly shouts when Grantaire walks in. "Guys, look who’s here!" He lifts his head from the depths of Courfeyrac’s couch, gestures with his cane like an old-timey auctioneer. Somebody has fastened a small bunch of flowers and a polka-dotted bowtie around the handle, which is to say, even Joly's cane is better-dressed than Grantaire.

Through a chorus of greetings, Grantaire blurts out, "Musichetta, you know how ties work, right?"

"Hi to you too," says Eponine, on Musichetta’s other side. Bossuet and Bahorel are busy hanging off the arm of the couch, cracking each other up about something, but Musichetta gives Grantaire an odd look and he realizes it might be traditional to say hi to the person you're supposedly dating first. 

He casts around for Enjolras, tucked into a smaller couch with Combeferre and Jehan. Judging from their posture, which is about half sitting, half football huddle, they'd been discussing Serious Issues before his big entrance.

Grantaire waves. "Hey." 

"Hey," says Enjolras. 

Grantaire has the sense that doesn’t count as enough of a real conversation, so he crosses the room to join them. Jehan’s outfit is disappointingly normal—everything fits right and nothing is hideous, in a way that kind of suggests an outside hand—but on second glance, he’s wearing the shoes Grantaire drew on, the “take your bigotry and cram it” florals, along with clashing checkered socks. What a cool kid.

“So, uh,” Enjolras starts.

“Sorry I’m so late,” Grantaire says breathlessly.

“Bahorel’s girlfriend’s later than you,” says Jehan with a shrug. “The one who ‘goes to a different school’,” he adds, sarcastic quote marks plain in his voice.

“I am telling you guys, my girlfriend exists, okay?” Bahorel shouts, laughing, from the other side of the room. “If Ashley’s not real, who have I been making out with all this time—” 

The suggestions fly fast and loud, too much for Grantaire to follow. He knows, because Bahorel does not stop talking about her if the subject comes up, that half the group has met this girl. Their skepticism has the feel of an inside joke constructed before Grantaire’s time. It’s not a game he can play.

“Uh,” he says.

“You look nice,” Enjolras says dutifully. He could be reading it from a card.

It’s windy enough outside that if anything, the trip from his van to the door made Grantaire’s hair worse. His tie is still draped limply around his neck like a feather boa that gave up. But Enjolras is right; this is what a person says to their prom date. It’s as if they’re trapped in a scripted scene, or a cuckoo clock—there’s a path to follow, lines and actions spinning on gears beyond their control.

Was he supposed to get Enjolras flowers? There definitely seems to be an above average amount of flowers in the room, but since nobody’s going home between here and the dance, he doesn’t see the point in making someone carry around a bouquet all night.

"Thanks-you-too," Grantaire recites, craning his neck to track down Musichetta.

“I can get that for you, if you want,” says Enjolras. “The tie.” 

Grantaire turns back around. ‘Of course you can,’ he thinks, with a snideness that even he can tell is completely unfair. 

He nods and Enjolras unfolds himself, looking somehow taller than usual in his suit. He also looks deeply uncomfortable—he keeps tugging at the ends of his sleeves and hunching his shoulders and shifting around like somebody’s cat shoved into a doll’s sweater. It’s reassuring on some level that Grantaire is not the only person who hasn’t gotten the hang of the whole tux thing yet. It also makes eye contact marginally easier than if Enjolras was lounging around like a male model. 

Enjolras frowns, absently worrying at the hem of his jacket. “By the lamp, maybe? So I can see.”

“Makes sense.” Grantaire lets himself be steered into the light, stands as still as he can with Enjolras this intent on him. Or intent on his clothes, but Grantaire’s nerves can’t tell the difference. They aren’t touching but Grantaire can sense it, the fingers tugging gently at his collar. 

It brings them uncomfortably close, although of course they’ve been closer before. It feels different in full daylight, though. There’s a moment where he looks up and Enjolras is holding one end of the tie in each hand, lips parted in concentration, and Grantaire thinks, ‘If we were doing this for real, this is where I’d kiss you’ and then Enjolras’s eyes flicker towards his and Grantaire has to look away. 

He dedicates himself to memorizing the wood grain of the floor, mapping the lines and swirls. The rest of the room is too chaotic to focus on, too full of motion. Someone is chasing someone, there’s a blur of color and mixed laughter.

“Can you, uh, tilt your chin up,” says Enjolras. “Can’t quite see what I’m—”

“Yeah.” Grantaire tips his head back, shifts his attention to the ceiling, which offers unfortunately less in the way of distraction.

Enjolras doesn’t seem to be having much success. Grantaire can tell he’s trying to make some kind of loop or twist or something, but he keeps pausing in the middle and then starting again.

“It’s just this one part I’m having trouble with,” he explains.

“It’s okay,” says Grantaire, tracing the trim that runs along the top of the wall. He could pretend he was annoyed but the truth is, standing here quietly is a lot easier than diving into the party and doing his best impression of a person whose life is going great. 

Part of him hopes it takes Enjolras another ten minutes to figure out the knot. Long enough for some more deep breaths, long enough to call up anything good a person’s ever said about him and wrap it around himself like a coat. 

“I only learned how to do this yesterday,” says Enjolras, apologetic.

Grantaire tries to remember the next step of a conversation like this, what he’d say if he was going to say something normal and calm. “Did your dad teach you?”

“Looked it up on YouTube,” Enjolras says. “The directions weren’t very clear, so I had to keep pausing, but I did figure it out after a while.”

The mental image of Enjolras alone in his room, tirelessly practicing his double windsor for tonight and scrutinizing video footage to make sure he had it right, makes Grantaire smile. 

He wishes he’d never mentioned Enjolras to his mom. If he was going to blow up at her, he could’ve found another way to say he was bi. There wasn’t any reason to sully his sham relationship by dragging it into this mess.

Enjolras sighs. “You can look down again, it didn’t help.”

Grantaire traces the circuit of the trim a third time. His eyes are starting to burn from forcing them to keep to the edges of his vision, but it’s still the best plan available. “I’m good,” he croaks.

“Don’t worry, I’m gonna figure this out,” says Enjolras.

“Take your time.”

“Maybe if—” There’s some kind of wrapping or tucking motion near Grantaire’s throat, and then Enjolras says, “Ha!”, triumphant, and on instinct, Grantaire glances back up to see his victorious grin. It falters almost immediately. “Everything okay?” says Enjolras.

“Why?” 

“Uh, your eyes are kind of red.”

“Are you asking if I’m high?” Grantaire says, bristling.

“Is that what I said?”

Grantaire takes a step back and rubs at his eyes. “No,” he mumbles. “It’s, uh—I kind of, came out to my mom and it didn’t—” At that, Enjolras lets the tie drop, whatever progress he’d made slipping away into the ether. “It could’ve gone worse but it didn’t go, like super great either, so—”

“Why, what’d she do?” Enjolras asks in a low voice. His hands are on Grantaire’s shoulders. “Do you need a place to stay?”

“No.” Grantaire tries to match his volume. “I’m not disowned. She didn’t shout or anything. I mean, really, nothing’s changed, but like.” Nobody’s watching them, tucked away in the side of the room, but when his throat tightens, he is acutely aware that they’re not really in private either. He breathes, shuddery. “She wasn’t, she didn’t say anything homophobic, she just, y’know, didn’t say anything good, either.”

Enjolras’s mouth tightens in distaste. “Did she say anything at all?”

“She asked if that’s why I flunked a grade,” he says. 

“What the fuck,” says Enjolras. Grantaire briefly considers making a joke, not that he’s sure what it would be, since the hilarity is not exactly flowing, but he can’t look Enjolras in the eye and manage anything light-hearted, because Enjolras has this expression like he was just punched in the face. His posture has gone tense, grip tightening unconsciously.

“Anything I can,” Enjolras starts. He makes a face. “Of course, it’s not like there’s anything I can do to make it better, but is there, I don’t know—”

“Uh, man.” Grantaire scratches at the back of his neck. “Man, I dunno.” Maybe he should feel weird asking, but with Enjolras’s impromptu accidental shoulder massage, they’re already halfway there. “A hug?”

Enjolras is a quick learner, Grantaire thinks, watching him step forward, arms out. On Thursday, he was so hyper-cautious at the start, it was like being held by a shy ghost. A good hug takes commitment. Maybe it’s not surprising then, that Enjolras got the hang of it so soon, how to judge the correct amount of pressure, tucked snug against each other. Even getting a faceful of dress shirt doesn’t totally ruin it. 

“Not everyone is your parents, y’know?” says Grantaire quietly.

“Not everyone is your parents, either,” Enjolras says, more or less into Grantaire’s hair, and that’s like a second hug.

“Statistically, you’re right,” Grantaire mumbles.

“I know that you’ve said I’m not your shrink—” Enjolras seems to be choosing his words with extreme care. “But have you ever maybe thought about going to an actual therapist, because that is not—that’s not a reasonable reaction—”

Grantaire’s bark of laughter is loud enough that Cosette looks over from where she’s talking with Courfeyrac and Marius. It is not the most unhinged sound he’s ever made, but he doubts it would rank in his all-time normal laughs, either.

Volume control. Of course. “Way ahead of you,” he says to Enjolras’s probably rightly concerned silence. “That’s, um, why I was late yesterday, I wound up, like, making an appointment with Mr. Myriel.”

“That’s good.” Enjolras pulls back to give him a look that is almost too earnest to handle. “That’s—a really smart idea. Everything I’ve heard about your family—”

“Not for that,” says Grantaire, automatic. Only then does he recognize the pickle he’s put himself in. “For, uh, other stuff,” he finishes dully.

Enjolras nods. “Yeah, your self esteem issues?”

“My what?”

“Okay,” says Enjolras. “Something else, then.”

“I don’t have low self-esteem,” Grantaire insists. “I’ve read a whole pamphlet about it in the nurse’s office—”

“Grantaire, that pamphlet was written in the Reagan administration,” says Enjolras, and it’s not like Grantaire didn’t notice that the art direction is way behind the times but he’s not sure quite how much has changed about, like, human nature. “Nobody knew anything back then,” Enjolras adds, with absolute assurance. “They elected Reagan.”

Grantaire pulls him back into that hug because hiding his face in Enjolras’s chest means he’s in the clear to go ahead with whatever kind of ridiculous, sappy smile his face feels like forming.

“What’re you two doing over there?” Courfeyrac calls.

“Practicing our slow-dance,” says Grantaire. He moves them back and forth in something like a rhythm and Enjolras lets himself be swayed as Grantaire hums the first melody he can think of, which might be a carpeting jingle actually, but it’s too late, he chose this road. Grantaire does not listen to a lot of whatever it is people slow dance to.

“Well, tear yourselves away from each other for like, a second, because the imaginary girlfriend is pulling up,” says Musichetta from the window.

Bahorel’s girlfriend is round and freckled and her hair has been dyed purple due to some bet or dare that Bahorel welched on, to her endless amusement.

"You owe me so many favors," Ashley keeps saying all the way to Courfeyrac’s foyer, because apparently it's too windy to take prom photos outside. "So many favors. Undisclosed favors."

Grantaire thinks that sounds ominous, but Bahorel only turns to grin at her and say, "Ooh, undisclosed."

"Not a euphemism," she's saying, and then without warning, the two of them are making out against a wall, rattling the framed photos of Courfeyrac’s family in matching Christmas sweaters. It’s hard to know where to look. Everyone else walks by them with a jaded calm. Ashley seems like a lovely girl but Grantaire is suddenly very glad she goes to a different school. 

In the foyer, there’s more milling around while Courfeyrac’s mom tracks down the good camera, and Musichetta knots Grantaire’s tie correctly on the first try—carrying on an animated conversation with Bossuet the whole time, which frankly feels like showing off.

“Hey,” Musichetta says, when she’s finished and Grantaire is left worrying at his collar, which feels too tight now no matter what she insists or how many times she calls him a baby. “R, where’s your boutonniere?”

Grantaire stops tugging. “Where’s my what?”

“The little flower pin thing you give a dude,” says Joly, nodding at the blooms on his cane. 

“Like, a corsage?” says Grantaire. “Isn’t that a dating-a-girl thing?”

“Girls get corsages, boys get boutonnieres,” Courfeyrac explains.

“Why?”

“I don’t know, gender roles?” says Musichetta.

Looking around the group, it dawns on Grantaire that everyone else seems to have the flower situation firmly handled—even Eponine, who would certainly have an excuse to not be on top of that business. The blossom she gave Bossuet is made of duct tape, the kind she was folding in Enjolras’s room, but it actually looks cool, like a robot flower. Cosette got Marius some kind of soft baby blue thing, Jehan and Courfeyrac have matching ones, presumably because they bought them at the same time in some sort of obnoxiously cute date situation, and Ashley cheerfully hands Bahorel something that involves a chopped up lei and a lot of glitter glue.

(“It’s a statement,” says Ashley when Bahorel peers down at it, “about the artificiality of—” 

Bahorel laughs. “It’s a statement that someone needs to take your bedazzler away.”

“Never,” she says and then they’re making out against the door and Grantaire is searching for any other place to direct his eyes.)

“Uh, I didn’t get you a fancy flower pin,” Grantaire tells Enjolras with a wince. “Sorry.”

Enjolras shrugs, hands in his pockets. “It’s okay, I didn’t get you one either.”

Musichetta giggles. “Wow, you two. Saved by your own mutual obliviousness, it’s unbelievable—”

“See, this is why you’re meant to be together,” says Jehan. “Sitting around, forgetting your own anniversary for years to come—”

“Where’s Feuilly?” says Grantaire abruptly and only a little to change the subject.

“Weekend camping trip with the foster-parents,” says Eponine. “Gavroche is going too. They offered to let me come, but it was like,” she weighs two invisible options with her hands, “go to prom or pee in the woods, so—”

“The classic dilemma,” he agrees. “Although, there’s trees pretty nearby, so it’s not like you need to choose. Sucks about Feuilly, though.”

“Feuilly’s into it,” she says. “Boy Scout shit.”

“So he ditched us at the last minute for peeing in the woods?” Grantaire shakes his head as Cosette mutters,

“There are, you know, other camping activities—”

“Oh, no, it’s been in the works forever,” says Bahorel, surfacing for air at long last. There’s lip gloss all over his face.

“You knew this,” says Enjolras. 

“No I didn’t,” Grantaire insists.

Enjolras raises his eyebrows in a way that feels meaningful. “That he was going to be away for prom?” he says, and Grantaire remembers in a hurry. Feuilly’s absence this weekend was the only reason Enjolras didn’t pick him as the fake boyfriend, way back when.

If Feuilly’s foster parents had gone camping some other week, Grantaire wouldn’t even be here. If Marius wasn’t terrible at secrets, he’d be the one not-exchanging boutonnieres with Enjolras right now. If Joly hadn’t already agreed to go with Musichetta. If Bahorel hadn’t met Ashley yet. If Combeferre hadn’t been planning on asking out some girl. If Craigslist had felt slightly less shady.

It’s dizzying. All of the past two and a half months are built on such random, flimsy foundations. It’s like being cast in a play because the director decided to fling darts at a phone book.

He is deeply thankful when Courfeyrac’s mom emerges from a side room with the good camera and a toothy grin. “Group photos, kids, let’s get cracking!”

Grantaire’s not sure if anyone has ever taken a photo of the entire ABC before. Probably the closest thing is that drawing he made at the meeting yesterday, not that anybody saw it besides Eponine. All he can think, as Courfeyrac’s mom attempts to herd them all into frame, is that he hopes an ABC superhero team would be better at fighting evildoers than it is at standing in a straight line.

There’s so many of them, they have to pack in close to make the shot. It’s uncomfortable and boring and it takes way, way, too long because people keep blinking or talking or sneezing, but Grantaire doesn’t hate it, standing elbow to elbow with these kids, trying not to laugh at Joly’s dumb science puns, trying to remain neutral in Bahorel’s covert tickle war and convince Courfeyrac to stop messing with his hair.

Couples photos, though. There’s an agony Grantaire somehow failed to foresee.

“Enjolras, can you put your hand on his waist?” says Courfeyrac’s mom. “Step closer to each other, come on. You can’t scandalize me, you’ve met my son.”

Grantaire shuffles a half-step back in his shiny useless dress shoes, but Enjolras stays exactly where he is, so when his arm stretches forward, they look less like prom dates and more like the saddest two-person conga line in the world. Enjolras’s hand isn’t on Grantaire’s waist; it’s hovering too lightly to feel through the suit jacket. Grantaire has done enough acting to be able to tell when a scene isn’t hitting the right marks, and they are bombing right now. 

He knows this even before the heckling starts. “Boo,” says Bahorel, goodnatured, “enough of the irony thing, do this for real.”

Grantaire’s not trying to hold up the process, and he certainly doesn’t want to drag it out, standing here in front of all their friends, waiting for this painful sham to be frozen forever on film. 

“If you’re not comfortable—” Courfeyrac’s mom starts.

“Ten minutes ago, you couldn’t pry them apart,” says Musichetta. “Guys, c’mon, you were like, just touching so much more than this, so—”

Grantaire doesn’t know how to tell her that the hugging didn’t make this easier for him, that if anything it’s harder now to step back into the role they set for themselves two and a half months ago, to take a step closer with everyone watching and pose within the stiff, awkward circle of Enjolras’s arm like it’s all perfectly natural, like it’s nothing. The suit fabric of Enjolras’s sleeve rustles against the suit fabric of Grantaire’s jacket, slick and unfamiliar. His shoes pinch and the tie is choking him. The overhead light shines down on them, too bright and far too focused.

“Can you guys maybe try to smile?” says Courfeyrac’s mom, with such hope and patience that Grantaire’s heart goes out to her.

Unfortunately, that feeling doesn’t translate into better control of his smile. On the second try, he manages to unstick his lips from his teeth, but he doesn’t need a mirror to know it lands in grimace territory. 

Eponine rolls her eyes. “Oh my god, there are so many more of these to get through, and I’m so hungry, can you guys just—”

“Give them a break,” Jehan says. “Maybe if we stopped all staring at them—” 

“Can we have a sec?” says Grantaire, and Courfeyrac’s mom obligingly sets the camera down. “Hey.” Grantaire turns to whisper to Enjolras. “I was just thinking, do we even need to take this picture? Like, who’s gonna want a copy?”

Enjolras considers this. “My parents,” he whispers.

“Yeah,” Grantaire whispers back, “but—not like they’ll want one after tonight, right? So what does it matter?”

Enjolras’s mouth twitches downwards. “If you can find a way to explain that to everyone—” and yeah, Grantaire’s got nothing. Enjolras sighs. “Your tie is crooked,” he mutters.

“Can’t be, Musichetta just fixed it for me,” says Grantaire. He has been picking at it, though. He doesn’t have the self-discipline not to. Maybe he needs one of those cones like dogs get after surgery. He reaches up to fix it, aligns the knot with the notch in his collarbone since surely that’s got to put it in the center.

“Sorry I couldn’t get it,” Enjolras says. “I really did try,” and if this is how much he beats himself up about failing to correctly make a knot in a decorative piece of fabric, a knot he’d learned less than 24 hours ago, his disgust at not being able to psychically ferret out Eponine’s family drama makes a sliver more sense.

“Don’t worry, not like I could do it either,” Grantaire points out. “You managed your own, at least.” 

Enjolras shrugs. “Thanks for the cider,” he says. “From yesterday. I was meaning to say.”

“Well, thanks for finally letting me pay for something,” says Grantaire. Enjolras hums, noncommittal. It can only mean one thing. “Oh my god, is the money for that cider hidden somewhere in my car?”

“How would I have managed that?” says Enjolras, biting his lip. “I was barely awake.”

“I know better than to doubt your powers.” In a half-hearted attempt to prepare the van for impersonating a limo, Grantaire had cleared all the clutter out before changing clothes. No bills had surfaced, and few hiding places remain. “Is it jammed into a seatbelt buckle? Is it under the floor mat? Is it wedged into the engine?”

“So, to be clear, you’re suggesting that while the car was going at least thirty miles an hour, I climbed out a closed window, opened the hood of your van, and took the time to wrap three dollars around part of the machine powering the car—”

“See,” says Grantaire, “you say that, and all I hear is the lack of a firm denial—”

Enjolras shakes his head. “I’m not a ninja, Grantaire. Reel it back in—”

His mouth is way too close to amused for that to be anything but a pun.

‘Reel it in,’ Grantaire mouths. A second later, the pieces come together. “Oh my god,” he says, delighted despite himself, “you weirdo, you hid it in the tape deck!”

“It’s not hiding if I tell you,” says Enjolras with great dignity, except he’s grinning too, like the force of Grantaire’s smile is pulling it out of him. “But that would be a pretty clever play—”

“How much of tonight is just tape puns?” Grantaire asks. “I need to know right now, okay, I need to prepare—”

“Okay, you guys are done,” says Cosette.

Grantaire starts. He peers over at her. “What?”

At some point since Grantaire sort of temporarily forgot there were other people in the room, Courfeyrac’s mom found the time to pick up her camera again. She holds it in the air.

“But we didn’t—”

“Don’t worry,” says Courfeyrac’s mom. “I got what I needed. Who’s next?”

The whole messy, frustrating, bizarre spectacle of the last two and a half months might be worth it for the chance to watch from the driver’s seat as twelve people squeeze themselves into a six-passenger van. Grantaire has a newfound respect for clown cars, which is a sentence he never saw himself thinking.

The fact that everyone’s in formalwear really adds something. It feels much more intentional, watching them scramble in tuxes and tulle and impractical shoes. Less like teenage shenanigans, and more like the first step of some elaborate high-stakes con, or a wedding gone badly awry.

Literally every person in the van manages to step on Eponine’s dress on their way in. Marius disappears into a pile of flailing limbs and, mysteriously, reemerges with glitter in his hair. Musichetta loses an earring and then finds it again in Bossuet’s shoe. Bahorel offers to ride on the roof so many times that it starts to feel less like a joke and more like he may genuinely not realize he isn’t Spiderman. 

For reasons nobody seems to be able to articulate, prom is at the Lithuanian Cultural Heritage Center. 

“Are we sure?” Grantaire says. He means both “is this the right venue?” and also “are we confident Lithuania is a real country?” because no matter how hard he racks his brain, Grantaire can’t bring up one concrete detail about it. Feuilly would be able to put this to rest, Grantaire thinks sadly. Shame he’s not here.

“It’s been in the announcements so many times,” Combeferre puts forth mildly from the back, where he and Enjolras are double belted.

Grantaire opens his mouth but Enjolras beats him to the punch: “He doesn’t listen to morning announcements.”

“Damn right,” says Grantaire. “Blissful ignorance. It’s the best.”

“Grantaire, I will give you forty dollars if you can guess our prom theme,” says Courfeyrac. 

It’s tempting. Grantaire owes slushies to an ever-increasing number of people. “Uh, Lithuania?” he tries.

“Turn left up here,” says Musichetta from the passenger seat. 

“Two more guesses,” says Joly from her lap.

“Oh man.” Grantaire spins the wheel. “I’m gonna say, ‘high school’? Or wait, ‘Love’? ‘Bad decision-making’?”

“That’s not a theme, that’s a summary,” Jehan’s voice drifts up from the floor. He’d opted to skip all the double-belting in favor of lying on his belly, one arm looped around Courfeyrac’s ankle for stability.

“C’mon,” says Grantaire, “does everyone else seriously know this?” 

“I know it, and I don’t even go here,” says Ashley, mouth briefly detached from Bahorel’s again.

“Give me a hint, someone,” says Grantaire.

“What do kids like?” Cosette prompts, and Grantaire leaps to the challenge. 

“Candy? Ninja Turtles? Making fart sounds with their hands?” 

Eponine just sighs. “You are gonna be so disappointed.”

At the very least, the building is real, and it’s way nicer than the school gym. There’s a chandelier in the lobby, and nothing smells like decades of stale sweat. Someone has put up a big sign that announces in construction paper letters, “COLUMBUS HIGH SCHOOL PROM - A NIGHT OF FAIRYTALE ROMANCE.” Beneath it is a drawing of a castle. The castle has cartoony eyes and a wide grin. Grantaire’s nightmares will be many and lingering.

“C’mon, guys,” says Cosette, pulling a digital camera out of her tiny wrist-purse. “Let’s get another picture before we go in!”

If Grantaire can avoid a repeat of the debacle at Courfeyrac’s house, God willing, he will. “We just took pictures,” he whines. “Why do we need more? Our faces haven’t changed between, like, dinner and now.”

“Let the woman take a picture,” Eponine snaps. Grantaire turns to blink at her, and in so doing, actually looks at her for the first time tonight.

“Shit, dude, your dress,” he says. Grantaire has witnessed every stage of its creation, which mostly involved Eponine slicing up thrift store gowns and then sewing things together while swearing, but he hadn’t stopped to appreciate, really, that at the end of the process she was going to have something she could wear on her body, like actual clothes. He doesn’t know what the terms are for this kind of shit, but Eponine’s dress is definitely actual clothes. “You’re like an evil queen in a YA novel.”

“That was the goal,” Eponine mutters. “Pretty much. Hey, are we taking this damn picture or what?”

In the frantic flurry of motion and cat-herding that follows, Grantaire thinks about how awkward his presence is gonna make all these photos after tonight. His face in the lineup will mar every keepsake, turn it into a reminder of a relationship about to expire.

“I can take the photo,” says Grantaire. “Cosette, get in there.”

“I should,” says Combeferre. “Since I’m the only one in the group who’s, uh, unattached.” He says it like it’s no big deal but he also says it less to the group and more to an abandoned program lying on the floor. It should be comforting in some way to know that Grantaire is not the only person in agony right now. Somehow it is not. They’re both members of the Forlorn Single Losers club, but Grantaire is stuck in the undercover division. He lets Combeferre take the camera.  At least it’s a group picture so he can focus most of his attention on giving rabbit ears to Bossuet, and away from Enjolras pressed against his other side. 

Grantaire drags his feet on his way to the dance floor—he refuses to call it a ballroom; this is not an Austen novel. He wants to be at the tail end of the group for some reason. Maybe all those meetings left him with a fondness for the back of everyone’s head.

“Hey,” says Eponine in his ear.

“You were right about the theme,” he says.

“Well, obviously.”

“Do you think the people who planned this thing have ever read a fairytale?” 

“I know,” she says, “have you seen any wolves yet?”

“Or witches, or trolls or, like Rumplestiltskin,” he agrees. “One of the interesting ones. None of this true love, magic shoes, singing bluebirds horseshit—”

Eponine snorts. “Sure thing, Cinderella.”

The main thing Grantaire and Cinderella have in common is that tonight is running on a countdown. “Mouse footman,” he says. “At best."

“What are you guys talking about?” says Enjolras, swooping out of absolutely nowhere.

“You two have fun,” Eponine says, and with that, she wanders off like the traitor she is.

Prom is boring. Why had Grantaire never stopped to consider that? The past two and a half months have been a madcap struggle to make it here, but at the end of the day, it’s just a big room full of the people they go to school with, some lame snacks on one side. There should at least be a bouncy castle, he thinks. He got a black eye for this; it doesn’t seem like too much to ask.

Beside him, Enjolras slouches uncomfortably. “Do you—want some punch or something?”

“Not really.”

Grantaire casts around for someone else to talk to—Jehan or Joly or Bahorel—but he hung back too long, they’re lost in the crowd. Probably there are other single people somewhere in the room but all Grantaire can see is wall to wall couples. The air is thick with Axe and perfume. It’s all the irritating parts of regular life but magnified, and in dumber clothes. 

Enjolras must notice the couples thing, too, because he reaches down and takes Grantaire’s elbow, as if that is all it takes to blend in, as if it doesn’t make them stand out more.

The DJ is half-asleep at his equipment, blasting away on a playlist of top 40 hits from five years ago. Parent chaperones circle the dancefloor, trying to intervene when the moves get too raunchy, but they’re fighting against a storm of blind, surging hormones. They might as well stop the tide with a kitchen sponge.

Grantaire can only imagine how all the thrusting and ass-shaking must look to Enjolras—a pit of cheaply-scented debauchery. But when he glances over, Enjolras is busy studying the decorations, which are mostly crepe paper. Grantaire feels cheated of the hilariously judgey expression that has got to be his right to witness. Surely that is the main perk of being Enjolras’s prom date in the first place, he tells himself.

“Do you wanna dance?” says Grantaire.

Enjolras startles, because apparently the crepe paper is just that fascinating. “What?”

“Do you wanna—” Grantaire inclines his head towards their bumping, grinding peers, and Enjolras follows the motion and swallows visibly, eyes widening. The very quality of how his arm is wrapped around Grantaire’s arm changes, tenses. “Never mind,” Grantaire says. The sound is absorbed by the noise of the room, the chatter and giggling and outdated bass beats.

“What?”

“It was a joke.” Grantaire is desperate to be heard that he overshoots on volume and almost yells it. 

“Okay,” says Enjolras, quiet but distinct, polite. He turns away to stare at the crepe paper some more.

Grantaire twitches. What do people actually do at a prom? ‘Spike the punch bowl’ is the first thing that comes to mind, but Grantaire’s driving. Dancing is officially ruled out, now and forever. It’s too loud to carry on a real conversation, and anyway, what is there left to say? Grantaire is out of lines. The machinery of prom ground them together and then left them stranded here, no instructions. He wishes, for the millionth time, that he was at least wearing comfortable shoes. 

Enjolras says nothing. They’re standing arm in arm in the middle of a crowded room and nobody is watching them. They have maybe four hours left of their pretend relationship, but there’s nothing left to act out, no goals, no audience and no point.

Grantaire yanks his elbow free. Enjolras looks down at him. The room is full of girls in brightly colored dresses and boys in dark suits, and it’s all kind of warping together in Grantaire’s vision, a kaleidoscope with a terrible soundtrack.

“I’m gonna,” Grantaire says. He jerks his arm behind himself. “I’m gonna be back in five minutes, I just have to, uh, go to the bathroom or something—”

“What?” Enjolras says again, like an old person.

“Back in a sec,” Grantaire yells, although in the final few hours of this sham, he can’t think why it would matter.

Enjolras nods and Grantaire barely sees it, already shoving his way to freedom.

There is a side hallway, off the main entrance, that is nothing but display cases full of information about Lithuania. At the moment, it is Grantaire’s favorite place on earth. It’s got a lot of selling points: it’s cool and quiet, and nobody can look at his eyes or fail to get his jokes or say anything about the way he rests his forehead against the smooth, chilly glass.

Lithuania is a small country in Northern Europe. It’s bordered by Latvia, Belarus, Poland, and Russia. It is home to nearly three million people, and Grantaire feels an embarrassed pang for never having known about them before now. It doesn’t seem right that he could live for seventeen years and miss stuff like that, entire countries. He has a sudden, queasy sense of just how little of the world he’ll ever experience, a paper-thin wedge: the billions of people he won’t meet, all the places he’ll never go. 

He shivers. How long has he been out here? He didn’t think to check his phone first, so he has no way of knowing, and no way of guessing how much longer he can stay until it becomes a problem. He’d fake some fast-acting stomach flu except he’s everyone’s ride home.

He uncrosses his arms, moves on to the next display case.

“What are you doing,” someone hisses behind him, and Grantaire jumps before he realizes that it’s just Jehan.

“Did you know Lithuania was the first Soviet republic to declare independence?” says Grantaire.

“Everybody knows that,” says Jehan, dismissive. “I meant, what happened back there?”

Grantaire closes his eyes and sighs. “Nothing,” he says as Jehan pulls a phone from his pocket and starts typing. “What’re you doing?”

Jehan doesn’t look away from the screen. “Letting people know I found you, since the last time you disappeared with no warning was enough of that to last us all forever.” He types for a long time. He’s a very slow texter. After an eon, he puts away the phone and frowns at Grantaire. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” says Grantaire.

“Are you and Enjolras fighting?”

“No.”

“Because I saw you shout something and leave, and he was standing there—”

“I didn’t,” Grantaire starts, although in retrospect it might have been a dick move to abandon Enjolras to the gaping jaws of the crowd. “It’s, I get how that looks but he’s not—Enjolras is fine.” He can taste the bitterness in his own smile. “Enjolras is doing great.”

“How would you know that,” says Jehan, voice climbing, “you’re not in there. You didn’t see how he looked when you left—”

“Whatever, he’s probably just mad about something, like that’s news,” says Grantaire. “Maybe he’s plotting to overthrow the prom king and establish, like, a prom president—”

“Don’t be a dick,” says Jehan. “You’re not actually that good at it.” Grantaire isn’t sure what happens with his face just then, but it makes Jehan stop and soften his tone. “Look, I get that he can probably be clingy and overprotective, and whatever you said, I’m sure it didn’t come out of nowhere, but this is really stressing people out, so can you guys try to—”

Grantaire buries his hands in his hair and takes a deep breath. If Jehan’s upset, that means Courfeyrac is hardly having the best night of his life either. After all this work, all the times Grantaire didn’t screw up, he’s still about to ruin their prom. “I can’t tell you what’s going on,” he says, “but I swear you don’t need to worry about it, okay? There’s no problem. He’s fine, I’m fine. Go back inside and I’ll just—”

“What,” says Jehan, “spend the rest of prom hiding from your boyfriend?”

There’s no point. There’s no point to any of it. Grantaire is too worn out to convince anyone he’s happy, and too tired to invent a plausible reason to be sad.

“He’s not,” he hears himself say. He scrubs at his face with his hands. “Jehan, he’s not my boyfriend.”

“Oh my god,” Jehan hisses, “I am gonna try to be supportive in a second, but first, I have to. Did you need to break up with him in the middle of prom?”

“No,” says Grantaire. He slides down the wall, lets gravity seat him on the floor. “We were never together, okay? We never dated.” Nothing changes, to say the words out loud, but somehow it feels like cutting down a tree, or yanking a plant out by the roots. 

Jehan frowns down at him for a beat, then joins him on the hard tile. “Uh, does Enjolras know you guys never dated?” he says slowly.

“It’s not a metaphor.” Grantaire sighs again. “Yeah, he knows. It was his idea.”

“To...never date?”

That, too, thinks Grantaire bleakly. “To pretend like we were.”

“Okay, Grantaire,” says Jehan, forehead wrinkling. “I am gonna need so much more information—”

And so Grantaire takes a deep breath and tells him everything. 

Or, not everything, because it’s a long story and Jehan probably has plans for the rest of his life. Cat burglary and tomato farming. But Grantaire gives him the rough outline, the Cliff Notes.

“So yeah,” says Grantaire, “now we’re here.”

Jehan opens his mouth. He closes his mouth. The look on his face is indescribable. He opens his mouth again.

Grantaire winces. “I know what you’re gonna say—”

“Do you,” says Jehan shrilly, “do you, Grantaire?”

“Um.” Maybe not.

“Why would this seem like a good idea?” says Jehan.

“Oh,” says Grantaire, “No, it didn’t, but I didn’t know what else to do—”

“Other than pretend to date Enjolras.”

Out loud, it does sound a little stupid. “Yeah.”

“For three months.”

“Two and a half,” Grantaire corrects, automatic.

Jehan shakes his head. “Oh my god, your heart was in the right place, but I can’t—where was your head? Where was his head? If you wanted to show your support of my relationship with Courf, you could’ve, for instance, told us you supported us—”

“You guys weren’t together yet,” says Grantaire. “And he thought if there was, like, a same-sex couple already going to prom, Courfeyrac would be more likely to ask you—”

“Yeah,” says Jehan, “and then I asked him instead. Weeks ago.”

“We—” Grantaire’s not sure why he’s never stopped to think about this, but there wasn’t a great reason to maintain the pretense after Jehan and Courfeyrac started dating. “We wanted to make sure you guys would last until prom,” he says.

Jehan gives him that look again. “Why?”

“I don’t know.” Grantaire squints at the floor. “It seemed—important? We wanted you guys to have fun together at a dance, it just—”

When he glances over, Jehan is kneading the bridge of his nose with both hands. “I appreciate it,” he says. “I do. You were trying to help, and I promise that means a lot to me. I don’t know how much longer Courf and I will be together, but—”

“What?”

“I don’t know.” Jehan sighs. “I mean, I like him, but I’m 16, you know? I don’t—” He pauses. “Was your plan to just keep doing this indefinitely, until Courf graduates or we break up?”

“No,” says Grantaire heavily. “No, this is the last night.”

“Ah,” says Jehan. “Okay.” He pats Grantaire on the back. “But you’ll still see each other all the time. Meetings, for one thing.”

Grantaire lets his head rest on his knees. “I’m not gonna go to meetings anymore, either.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s gonna be a bad breakup,” he gets out. “Because that’s—easier than—”

“Okay,” says Jehan, rubbing between Grantaire’s shoulder blades. “Shh shh, it’s okay, I get it.”

“You can say it,” Grantaire sniffles, “you can go ahead and say how fucking dumb I am—”

Jehan keeps rubbing. It reminds him of Fantine, although Grantaire can’t say why. “That’s not the word I’d use. Anyway,” Jehan adds, wry, “if it’s any consolation, you’re exactly as dumb as he is.”

“At least Enjolras didn’t pretend to date someone he’s in love with,” says Grantaire into the fabric of his own ridiculous dress pants.

Jehan’s hand stills. “You haven’t told him anything about how you feel, have you?”

Grantaire shakes his head.

“You realize you have to, right?” says Jehan.

“No, I don’t,” Grantaire says, peering up at him. “Oh my god, why would I do that?”

“If someone liked you, wouldn’t you want to know?” 

Jehan says it so calmly, so reasonably, that Grantaire wants to scream. He inhales and exhales through his nose instead, wipes at his eyes.

“If I tell him now, after everything, that’s gonna look so creepy, like I was tricking him into—”

“So your reason for not telling him is that you should’ve told him sooner?” says Jehan. “Do you see the problem with that argument.”

“He’s gonna hate me, Jehan,” he says quietly. “He’s gonna—it was starting to get easy, to talk or hang out or whatever, and if he knows, he won’t—”

“Okay,” says Jehan. “Where do I even. Oh hell, okay, let’s count.” He holds up a finger. “One: you don’t know that. Two,” he continues, “Enjolras does not understand human feelings, but if you think he would hate someone for liking him, that’s, uh, that’s on you. Three: you’re not planning on talking to him again anyway, so what are you losing?”

“But he could just, he could forget me and be fine with it,” says Grantaire, “or he could remember me as this creepy, creepy guy who—”

“Grantaire, look at me,” says Jehan. “Look at me. You draw people pictures of ducks for fun. You snort when you laugh. You’re the size of a terrier. You couldn’t be creepy if that was your goal.”

Given that Jehan’s clothes never fit, it can be hard to get a sense of his true dimensions, but now that they’re both wearing more or less the same thing, it’s undeniable that Jehan is a little taller than him.

Grantaire straightens his back but even sitting, Jehan’s shoulders are still an inch or so higher. “It’s messed up,” Grantaire insists. “It’s so messed up. Wouldn’t you be creeped out if you learned this random person you didn’t even like had all these gross feelings—”

“No,” says Jehan, firm. “Stop. Sorry Grantaire, I love you like a brother, but. Do you ever listen to yourself speak? Ever?”

“What do you—”

“‘This random person’, oh any random dude off the street that he faked a relationship with for a very long time—”

“He didn’t pick me,” says Grantaire. “Jehan, I was his last choice, okay? I was his last choice, which I know because he told me I was his last choice, everyone else was busy that weekend and he literally considered Craigslist before he—”

“Yeah,” says Jehan. “Yeah, you know, that isn’t so surprising given that he didn’t know you back then, and you seemed quite set on not helping him out with that—”

Grantaire twists his hands together. “Is this you being supportive right now,” he says, “because not that you aren’t, like, nailing it, but—”

Jehan rolls his eyes and throws an arm around Grantaire’s shoulders. “Shut up, you weird little baby bird. My point is, do you think there is maybe a possibility that in the, what I’m thinking would have to be, considerable amount of time it took for you guys to coordinate a fake relationship that fooled all of your closest friends and his closest friends, do you think there’s a chance at some point in there you both relaxed enough to actually realize you could have fun together, which is, by the way, what I said from the very beginning, why does nobody ever listen to me?”

Now that Grantaire thinks about it, that line of reasoning from Jehan does sound distantly familiar. “Did I, like.” He claws at his tie. “Say something dickish about hugs and friendship bracelets?”

“I don’t remember,” Jehan says, “but it wouldn’t, y’know, shock me?”

Grantaire chews on his lip, trying to imagine making that joke today. It wouldn’t work, even in his own head; Enjolras likes both friendship bracelets and hugs, so the absurdity doesn’t really—

“Is this the sound of me being right?” asks Jehan, and Grantaire shrugs. “You said yourself it was getting easy to talk to him,” Jehan continues, “so is it such a wild possibility—”

They’re looping back to their original argument, and Grantaire finds firmer ground. “If he had fun too then I definitely can’t ruin it by telling him—”

“So instead you’re just gonna let him think you’re being weird now because you don’t wanna be friends?”

“That’s not—” Grantaire frowns.

“You didn’t witness Courfeyrac trying to cheer him up after you left,” says Jehan. “It was grim.”

Grantaire pulls himself to his feet. “He’s sad?”

“Do you ever listen to what anyone—” Jehan sighs and stands. “Yes, Grantaire. He’s sad. Remember when I thought you dumped him?”

“So my choices are either ruin it by doing nothing or ruin it by confessing all my stupid—”

“Either you ruin it by doing nothing or you take a risk and maybe it will be fine,” says Jehan. “Those are your choices. Be brave, baby bird. Fly.”

Grantaire breathes out through his nose. He thinks about Enjolras, curled up glumly in the passenger seat, all the times Grantaire vowed to himself that if he knew how to make Enjolras feel better, he would. All the promises Grantaire made with ease because at no point did it occur to him that life might call his bluff. Would he do anything to fix it? Even if ‘anything’ meant looking Enjolras in the eye and saying—

“What if I’m a baby chicken, though,” says Grantaire.

Jehan groans in frustration. “You asked him out in front of the whole cafeteria,” he says. “You can do this. It will be fine. I can’t picture Enjolras being angry about this. Honestly—”

“What?”

“Talk to him,” says Jehan. “It won’t be terrible. I don’t want to promise a reaction from him because I’m still, you know, sort of—piecing my fragile reality back together, but I would be stunned if Enjolras was a jerk about it. Also, we need to hang out tomorrow so you can explain to me how you guys managed to pull this off, because talk about long cons.”

Grantaire feels himself almost smile. “Thank you,” he says. “That’s, uh.” He stops. “Actually, I can’t do tomorrow, I told Eponine—”

“Popular,” says Jehan, and Grantaire shakes his head. “Monday, then. Give me a ride home and we can watch this Dracula movie I found, it’s incredible—”

“Have you learned your own address by now?” Grantaire says, remembering that night of driving in endless circles on the way back from Joly’s movie night. Maybe Jehan remembers it too, because he grimaces. Then his mouth drops open. “What?”

“In Joly’s basement, when you guys hooked up—”

“Pretended to hook up,” Grantaire corrects.

“That hickey, was that stage makeup, or—”

“No.” Grantaire fights the urge to hide his face in his hands. “The, uh. The hickey was real.” 

Jehan says nothing. He’s pressing his lips together very hard. 

Only then does Grantaire realize just how that must sound. “I wasn’t, like, taking advantage, okay. It was his idea—”

Jehan’s mouth has gone white. He closes his eyes. “Grantaire,” he says. “Grantaire. Please talk to him. Please. Talk to him. Please.”

“What—”

“Talk to him,” says Jehan. “C’mon, let’s go back inside, so I can find my boyfriend and you can find Enjolras and, in the name of all that is good in this world—”

“Talk to him?” Grantaire guesses, stomach roiling. His hands shake and sweat. All he wants to do is curl up in a ball somewhere, but Jehan’s right, there are two options left, and only one of them is worth taking.

Jehan knocks their shoulders together. “Smart boy.”

The room is packed, too full to spot Enjolras right away. In the time Grantaire was moping and picking up vital facts about Lithuania, the crowd at least doubled. Curse American teenagers and their constant tardiness, Grantaire thinks wildly. If he wants to do this, he needs to do it fast. He feels weightless, but in a frantic temporary way, like a balloon that’s been inflated but not tied. Given any time to think, and the courage Jehan pumped in will sputter out again.

“Courf!” Jehan shouts, and then Courfeyrac is pacing over to them, and Grantaire turns his head so they can reunite in peace or whatever. Courfeyrac’s hand is on Jehan’s back and Jehan whispers something in his ear that hopefully isn’t, “Oh hey, did you know Grantaire and Enjolras’s whole relationship is a huge sham?” but the conversation doesn’t seem long enough for that, and anyway, Grantaire thinks, toeing the ground, they might not even be talking about him. Rumor has it there is an entire world beyond Grantaire’s ridiculous life.

Courfeyrac turns to Grantaire. “Don’t know where he is,” he says. “He went to get something to drink and didn’t come back—”

Grantaire nods. His internal organs flop around in his body. ‘Get this over with,’ he thinks. ‘Be brave for five seconds and get this over with.’

“Thanks,” he says, shoving himself in the direction of the refreshments. It means cutting across the dance floor but there’s no time to worry about that, because Grantaire is racing against his own cowardice, and any second his resolve will fail.

He stretches to his tiptoes, struggling to see over the clusters of heads. It’s dim, and above him, the disco ball flings specks of light in a woozy circle, helping nobody. The DJ is playing some down-tempo pop song, a woman’s voice crooning about forever, and Grantaire dodges past the awkward lurkers on the sidelines, past people making out, past couples having their first dance and moving so goddamn slow that it feels like he’s fighting his way through a forest of sequins and body odor.

He’s breathing hard by the time he emerges. The refreshments table is long and white and covered with cheap snacks in fancy bowls, and Enjolras is nowhere to be seen.

“Goddammit,” he says. “Are you serious?”

“Are you looking for someone?” a guy sneers. Grantaire turns. It’s Eddie.

Grantaire balls his fists at his sides. “Where is he?”

“You don’t know—” Eddie starts, but Grantaire is done, he is so profoundly done with all of this bullshit.

“Where the fuck is my boyfriend?” he says, “and before you answer, keep in mind I never technically promised not to sue you.”

“Jesus, chill,” says Eddie, but he also takes a step back. “He went outside.” He nods towards a side exit.

“Why?”

“I don’t know, to cry?”

Grantaire can feel his lip curl but there’s no time to stay and defend Enjolras’s honor. “Fuck you,” he yells over his shoulder, diving back into the crowd and wrestling his way through another dozen personal moments, that treacly ballad still hanging in the air around him like a bad smell.

His lungs burn. His eyes water. His heart hurts. He weaves and elbows and dodges and stumbles back out on the other side, and only then does it occur to him this could maybe be a trap. Side door left of dance floor, he texts Jehan. If I’m not back in 10 min, come get me. Then he takes a deep breath, squares his shoulders, and wrenches open the door.

It’s a parking lot, chilly after the jungle heat of hundreds of bodies. Enjolras is standing under a sodium light, looking somehow more intense than usual with the color bleached out of him. Grantaire is so relieved to see him again, just to take him in with his own eyes, he doesn’t immediately notice they’re not alone.

“Enjolras, I need to—” he starts.

And then five feet away, Mike whirls around. “What the fuck are you doing, freak?”

Grantaire’s brain-to-mouth filter is still a few paces behind, wrestling through the dancefloor. “Enjolras,” he says, “so help me, if you’re cheating on me with Mike—”

It’s a bad joke in so many ways, not just stupid but dangerous, and Grantaire knows this even before Mike flashes him a murderous look and Enjolras hisses,

“Get back inside.”

“Listen to your gay boyfriend,” Mike snarls, and there’s only a few things this could be, an ever-shortening list that condenses into one possibility around the way Enjolras’s fists clench, the way he’s glaring at Mike, the fury coiled in his posture.

“Are you guys fighting?” says Grantaire, and Enjolras doesn’t spare a glance in his direction, just grits out,

“Grantaire, back inside, now.”

His heart is pounding so loud his ears throb and it’s a struggle to stand, just to keep that much gravity at bay. Mike is a bully and Mike is dangerous but Mike is also a coward, he thinks. Mike fucked with Jehan because he knew Jehan wouldn’t call for help. He only ever threatened Grantaire when he thought nobody else was around. He stopped once he knew the odds weren’t in his favor.

“No,” says Grantaire.

“This is none of your business, go,” says Enjolras coldly, and Grantaire crosses his arms like he can ignore the way his stomach drops.

“It is until the end of tonight,” he says.

“Two hours,” says Enjolras, still not looking at him. “What’s the difference?”

“The fuck are you—go run back to your pansy little friends,” Mike shouts.

Enjolras takes a step towards Mike and Grantaire realizes then that this is not a rescue, that Enjolras wants to attack.

“Enjolras,” says Grantaire, “you can’t do this.”

“Yeah?” says Enjolras. “Are you sure?”

“Please, it’s not worth it—”

Enjolras grits his teeth. “You didn’t hear what he said—”

“Yeah, and I don’t care,” Grantaire says. “Nothing’s worth—”

“Grantaire, please,” says Enjolras, voice almost cracking, and somehow that’s what gives Grantaire the strength to push on.

“Listen to me,” he says. “Please, please listen. If you do this, you won’t get away with it—”

Grantaire can’t believe he’d forgotten; it had been scored into his mind for so long. In his first attempt at freshman year, back in the beginning when he’s still cared, he’d made a diorama out of marshmallows for some kind of extra credit project in French, and Mike’s older brother John had ripped it apart on the bus, thrown fistfuls out the window and laughed. Grantaire had made some kind of protest, you can’t or I’m telling, and John had just grinned with that savage joy of informing a little kid there’s no Santa Claus, and said—

“His parents are on the school board,” Grantaire tells him. “His dad goes to the same country club as the superintendent, they play golf every Saturday. If you hit him, it’ll look so bad for everything we’re—everything you’re—Enjolras, it will look so bad.”

“Shut up,” Mike says. 

Enjolras shakes his head, eyes wide. “What does it matter,” he says. “I never met with the superintendent, I’m not part of the group arguing for you, and after tonight, we’re nothing—”

This was the intent from the very beginning, Grantaire realizes. This is why Enjolras sat out the appointment on Friday. It had nothing to do with trying to contain his anger. It was about leaving that anger a back door. 

If Grantaire was only hurt, he could sink into that feeling until speech was impossible. Thank god for the growing part of him that is instead wildly pissed off.

“Enjolras,” he says, “of course it reflects on us. If you do this, they’ll try to make it some fucking West Side Story thing where both sides are to blame and not the bullshit it—”

“Shut your fucking mouth, homo,” says Mike.

“Don’t talk to him like that,” Enjolras yells, and Grantaire rests his hands in his hair and laughs like a crazy person because there’s certainly no reason left for Enjolras to defend his honor.

“If you want to ruin any chance we have for getting justice,” Grantaire starts, “be my guest and—”

“Do you think the superintendent did anything to help us?” says Enjolras. “Do you—Combeferre said he wouldn’t even look them in the face, and if that—” He sneers at Mike “if that’s the school board, what’s left to ruin? At least this way, someone gets what they deserve—”

“Like you can even land a punch,” sneers Mike, and Enjolras stiffens, shoulders bunching under his suit jacket.

“Enjolras,” Grantaire shouts, “he wants you to hit him!”

Mike glares at him. “Get the fuck out of here.”

“Something fucking weird is going on,” says Grantaire. He thinks back to that night at his house, the way Mike stepped aside the minute Enjolras came into sight. It wasn’t just a matter of numbers, Grantaire thinks. Mike would never push someone like Enjolras, someone who might have the means to truly push back. “Has he ever even given you shit before? Why would he start now?”

“Shut up,” Mike says again, eyes darting.

Enjolras freezes. “Golf every Saturday,” he says, and for no reason Grantaire can see, Mike goes pale. “And the day after my friends finally talk to the superintendent, the son of his golf buddy picks a fight.”

“Yeah?” says Grantaire, confused, but Mike has a distinctly hunted look about him.

“So how would Mike know about it? Because the superintendent warned his parents this morning, and then his parents told him, or maybe he overheard,” Enjolras says. “And then he goes out and tries to discredit us, even if it means getting hit—”

Mike says nothing.

“If we were doomed, why would they keep talking about it?” says Enjolras. His eyes are shining. “If there’s no hope of us winning, why’s everyone so scared? What do they know that we don’t? Who else is on the school board?”

They turn to stare at Mike, who is grinding his teeth together.

“Get out of here,” Enjolras tells him.

“I’m not going anywhere,” says Mike.

Grantaire rolls his eyes. “Or we’ll tell the whole school you cornered us to ask for a threesome.”

Mike looks physically ill. “Nobody’ll ever believe you,” he says. Sweat beads on his forehead, darkening the edge of his shirt collar.

“Most people won’t, yeah,” says Grantaire. “But somebody will. It’s a big school. A lot of people. And some words stick, y’know?”

“You sick perverts,” says Mike. “Fucking wishful thinking—”

“Look, I’m dating that guy,” Grantaire says, gesturing at Enjolras. “I’m into smart, funny people who smell good. You’re pretty clearly not my type.”

“My parents are gonna make sure your whining for attention never gets anywhere—” Mike spits.

“You sure about that?” says Enjolras. 

“Freaks,” says Mike.

“Bye,” says Grantaire.

Enjolras starts to take a step forward, and Mike is scuttling for the door, mumbling to himself on the way out. It’s not quiet; Grantaire could probably make out the words if he wanted. He doesn’t have the energy for it. The door swings shut. 

Up in the sky, the moon is almost perfectly cut in half. 

“I need to talk to Combeferre about this,” says Enjolras, more to himself than to Grantaire. “And Jehan and—” 

Any second now, he’ll be heading inside again. Grantaire can feel his window closing. His stomach lurches. “Wait,” he manages.

Enjolras turns back to him. “Thank you,” says Enjolras, a little stiffly. When he meets Grantaire’s eyes it feels forced, like it’s taking all his willpower to keep looking Grantaire in the face. Only Enjolras could make eye contact sting like that, thinks Grantaire. And only Grantaire could be stung by it. “That was—that would’ve gone seriously wrong if you hadn’t shown up, and it would’ve been my fault.” Enjolras bites his lip. “Thanks. That was, uh.”

“What’d he say?” Grantaire asks. “To make you that angry.”

“It.” Enjolras’s hands are in his pockets. His gaze sweeps to the ground and up again to Grantaire, deliberate. “It doesn’t matter, never mind.”

If it made Enjolras want to punch someone, it had to be something, Grantaire thinks. He can sense a dodge in progress, but he doesn’t have the right to push. At any rate, it’s not like there’s a shortage of stuff to discuss.

Grantaire closes his eyes. “Before you go in, we need to talk,” he says. 

When he opens his eyes again, he’s still said it.

Enjolras blinks. “Okay,” he says, expectant, and that’s when Grantaire realizes that in order to bring this whole mess to light, he needs to not only come clean but shape all his confessions into words and vocalize them right to Enjolras’s face. All of his nerves descend on him at once. It’s like getting hit by a sandbag, but all over.

“But first, I need to sit down,” says Grantaire.

Enjolras dubiously surveys the parking lot, the blacktop littered with garbage.

“You can stand, whatever,” Grantaire says. He drops to the ground, braces his spine against the rough brick of the Lithuanian Cultural Heritage Center, and takes a deep breath. Words. This is gonna be so terrible. He exhales, shaky, and breathes in again. He hugs his knees. There’s no point in trying for dignity at this point. Enjolras has seen him cry. “Look—”

“Did Jehan say something to you?”

Grantaire peers up at him. “Yeah, why?”

Enjolras shrugs, hands still jammed in his pockets. Grantaire can’t tell if he’s working through the leftover adrenaline from the fight, antsy to start plotting the next move, or just really eager to end this conversation.

All of the things Grantaire needs to say curdle at the back of his throat. “I wanna be friends,” he gets out. It comes out wavery, almost a question.

Enjolras’s face contorts for a moment. “Don’t let Jehan bully you like that,” he says at last. “That’s not—I’ll talk to him.” He starts for the door.

“Don’t—can I please just get through the whole thing before you—” Grantaire sighs. “Don’t go,” he says in a much smaller voice than he was hoping for. 

There is no answer except for the absence of footsteps on pavement. Grantaire digs a knuckle into his unbruised eye. He doesn’t want to deliver this speech to Enjolras’s shoes but he can’t think of an easier alternative.

“I really do want to,” says Grantaire.

“Oh, suddenly?”

Grantaire sits up, surprised by the acid in his voice. “No, for a while,” he says, and Enjolras makes a sound that is almost a scoff. “C’mon, dude, don’t you think I’d know whether or not I wanted to be friends?”

“Yes,” Enjolras says pointedly. “God, you’re a smart person, and I can see that, but sometimes I really wish you’d do me the same courtesy—”

“I don’t think you’re stupid,” says Grantaire. “When have I ever implied—”

He breaks off because Enjolras isn’t listening, just pacing the blacktop. “How many times do you think you need to say it?” he’s saying. “I know I’m stubborn, I know it can take a while sometimes for something to sink in, but at some point, even I get it, Grantaire, given how very very hard you’ve worked to make it obvious.”

Enjolras swallows. He’s blinking hard. Watching him is like a kick to the stomach, an impact that knocks all the air out and leaves a bruise. Grantaire stares and says nothing.

“I’m so tired of this,” says Enjolras, shaking his head. His eyes are fixed to a single point in the sky. “I really, really am. Everything. Lying to my friends. Lying to my parents. But even more than that, I am tired of telling myself there’s something I can do about this.”

“What are you—”

“I get it,” Enjolras says again. “It’s not like I don’t know. I’ve told you so many things, things I’ve only told my closest friends, things I’ve never told anyone, and you listened, and you said the right stuff back, and I’d think, ‘Well, this time is different. This time, it has to mean something.’” His lip trembles. He pulls it taut. “And then, every single time, you’d turn around and say, ‘Hey, good news, soon we don’t have to see each other anymore!’ Or, ‘Oh, I’m definitely never coming to meetings again.’” His throat works. Even in the bleaching light, his face has gone patchy. “‘Hey, wouldn’t it be completely insane if we were friends or something? God, Enjolras, isn’t it just—beyond any possible imagining?’”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Grantaire insists. 

“No?” says Enjolras. “Then how did you mean it?”

Grantaire winces. “I didn’t think you’d care?”

“I’m not a robot,” Enjolras snaps, crossing his arms.

“More like, how a ship doesn’t have to worry what a barnacle thinks of it,” says Grantaire, “or a dog isn’t gonna stress out about a tick’s opinion—” Enjolras makes a face, and Grantaire sighs and returns to the important point. “I promise I wanna be your friend, man.”

“And the reason you’ve never acted like it before this second—”

“Yes I have,” Grantaire interrupts. “All the freaking time. I’ve hugged you more in the last 48 hours than I’ve hugged anyone in years—”

“Three times?”

“Yeah,” says Grantaire.

Enjolras seems to deflate slightly. “That’s, you were under so much stress.”

“Have you ever hugged someone you didn’t like?” says Grantaire. “It doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t help.”

“Then why go to all this effort to pretend you didn’t want to talk to me,” says Enjolras, so halting and unsteady that all Grantaire wants is to try for hug number four. 

There’s no avoiding it, he realizes. Grantaire should’ve known there wasn’t going to be a way to do this cleanly, to come out with a scrap of dignity intact. He bows his head.

“Look,” says Grantaire wearily. “I’m gonna tell you a secret. And if you still want to hang out after that, if you’re okay with it, we can definitely be friends, and I—um, I’d really like that.” He takes a gulp of air. “And if you don’t, that’s okay, too. I’ll understand.”

Enjolras nods.

Grantaire screws his eyes shut. 

No matter what happens, tomorrow he’ll play Call of Duty with Eponine and Monday he’ll watch a movie at Jehan’s house. He’ll work on Astrocat and he’ll draw his own stuff too and he’ll give Gavroche too much sugar and maybe he’ll drag Eponine downtown to the art museum this summer. 

Long-term, his life is not over. It’s just the moment he’s in now that sucks, and time is a shitty, slow bridge, but it will eventually carry him somewhere else.

“So,” he starts. “Uh, back in March, when I asked you out? Or pretended to ask you out. I did it because I wanted to help Jehan and Courfeyrac, and because I was, like, fed up with all the bullshit at school. Including my own bullshit. But the thing is.” He bites his lip, but it’s too late to stall anymore. “I also, I’d kind of—had this huge crush on you. Pretty much since that first detention.”

Above him, Enjolras is silent. Grantaire presses on. “And man, I know how gross that sounds, but like, that wasn’t my reason to do it. Honestly, it was a reason not to do it, because I didn’t really wanna spend time with you back then. And not,” he hurriedly adds, “it wasn’t your fault. I just, I didn’t like who I was around you. Like, I’m not normally that much of an asshole—”

“I know,” says Enjolras, distant.

“And in retrospect, of course I should’ve told you, uh at least before that time in Joly’s basement, that wasn’t fair, but I never tried to take advantage of the whole—the whole thing. If anything, it just made everything agony—” He breaks off. Enjolras is frowning, and Grantaire is not doing the best job making the case for their friendship. “I mean, I enjoyed a lot of it,” he admits. “But like, making jokes with you, getting your opinion on stuff, hanging out in my car. Shit like that. Also, if it helps, I feel weird about that, too.”

“But you liked me,” Enjolras says slowly, as if struggling to wrap his head around it. “Back when—”

“Yeah,” says Grantaire. “And like I said, if it makes things too weird, that’s fair. Or, like, summer’s in a month. Maybe I can skip meetings for the rest of the year, work through it by the time—”

Enjolras shakes his head. “Next week you’ll still be out of the closet. If you can stand to keep coming to meetings, you need to. You don’t wanna seem vulnerable to people like Mike.”

“If it’s awkward, though,” Grantaire says.

“I’ll work through it.” Enjolras squares his jaw into his most determined face. “Just, like—” His forehead creases. “Um. Can I ask when you stopped?” he says quietly.

“What?”

“You said you had a crush on me.” Enjolras frowns again, like he’s waiting for Grantaire to contradict him. “And so I just wondered when—” He huffs. “You know, it isn’t really any of my business, never mind.”

Only then does Grantaire catch onto the grammatical shuffle he’d been playing. By sticking with past tense, he built himself an escape hatch without even trying, and this is his opportunity to clear the air while still escaping most of the consequences. It’s very tidy. On some level, it’s the smart thing to do.

On the other hand, he could quit lying to Enjolras.

Grantaire grips his knees. “Here’s the thing,” he says. “I never stopped.” The world doesn’t end. He keeps going. “Hell, I like you more now, knowing how weird you are. And funny and cool and—yeah, it’s only gotten way, way worse.” He stares at the blacktop, at the tiny stones and grit encased in the tar, and tries to swallow around the heaviness in his throat.

No response.

“Sorry,” says Grantaire. “I really am gonna try not to make it a big thing, but—”

“Grantaire,” says Enjolras, oddly strangled, “can you stand up, please?”

“I don’t actually know,” Grantaire tells him.

“Okay,” Enjolras says. “Okay, that’s—” and then he’s dropping to his knees in his fancy prom suit until he’s in Grantaire’s space and Enjolras is smiling, which doesn’t make any sense but it’s nice, since it implies he’s not righteously furious, and then Enjolras is very carefully reaching up to fit his hand to the side of Grantaire’s face, thumb ghosting over one cheekbone which makes even less sense but is also nice, and when Grantaire starts to give him a helplessly confused smile, Enjolras beams like Grantaire has done something brilliant. “Grantaire,” he says. “Will you go out with me?”

“What,” says Grantaire.

“I thought you knew I like you,” says Enjolras nonsensically. “I thought you knew and we were, we were politely ignoring it—”

“What.” Distantly, Grantaire wonders if he’ll ever be capable of saying another word.

“How could you not tell,” says Enjolras, and his voice climbs in something like indignation but his thumb is gentle, stroking down Grantaire’s cheek. “I’ve been really obvious—”

Grantaire’s mind reels and reels. “Sorry, I’m still, like—” He makes a flailing gesture with one arm that Enjolras actually doesn’t see because their faces are too close. “Still processing?”

“That’s okay.” Enjolras is inches away. “But can you kiss and process at the same time?” he asks hopefully. He must’ve moved forward at some point, although Grantaire thinks he might’ve too, because he can’t feel the wall at his back anymore. Of course, he also can’t feel the ground or the outside air or really anything except for the way the pad of Enjolras’s thumb has come to rest on Grantaire’s lower lip.

“I think we should try,” says Grantaire.

It’s their first kiss that isn’t about anything else, which in a way makes it their first kiss, Grantaire thinks hazily as they bridge that last bit of distance. They don’t have to worry about how this looks or who they’re hoping to distract. He can just close his eyes and notice the cold tip of Enjolras’s nose and his much warmer mouth, the way their lips move together, kind of clumsy at first, and then less clumsy, and then Enjolras slides his hand to the back of Grantaire’s head and Grantaire gasps. It’s about half from the kiss and half from Enjolras’s fingers tangled in his hair, which feel really, really—

“Are you okay,” Enjolras says breathlessly.

Explaining would take way too many words, so Grantaire just leans in and kisses him again, as deeply as he can, and Enjolras must get the message because he hums, pleased, and presses closer and then the door opens behind them.

“Hey guys,” says Jehan, “everything alright?”

Grantaire breaks away to apologize for giving the poor dude a heart attack except when he checks, Jehan is not exactly slack-jawed and double-taking. Jehan takes in the scene—Grantaire sitting, Enjolras kneeling, their knees tangled together—and Grantaire notices for the first time that it must be uncomfortable, the way they were both stretching to make the angle work, but this had somehow escaped him until now.

“Did you talk to him?” Jehan asks, conversational.

“Yes, Jehan,” says Grantaire.

“Was I right?”

“Goodbye, Jehan,” says Enjolras pleasantly.

“Bye, kids.” Jehan whisks the door open. “Have fun kissing on the ground,” he calls as he disappears back inside.

“He didn’t seem very surprised,” Grantaire observes.

“He thinks we’re dating,” says Enjolras.

“I told him we weren’t,” Grantaire says, “that’s why he made me talk to you.”

Enjolras considers this. “He could probably guess how I felt, since I’ve been incredibly obvious from the second I realized I liked you.”

Grantaire shakes his head. “Sorry, when was this supposed lightning bolt?”

“The day you asked me out in front of everyone,” says Enjolras. At Grantaire’s uncomprehending look, he adds, “I don’t know. It was—brave, and principled. Also pretty hot?”

“Um,” says Grantaire. “I thought you were horrified?”

“Oh, I was.” Enjolras raises his eyebrows. Grantaire just continues to look uncomprehending. “Come on,” says Enjolras. “I almost asked you out a week ago.”

Something is starting to come back to him, a fizzy feeling that had deflated so completely he’d stopped thinking about it, cut off the thoughts like a severed arm.

“When we were singing that song in my van,” says Grantaire slowly.

“And the only reason I didn’t—”

“Was because I disappeared to get high,” Grantaire finishes. He pulls away, feeling queasy.

“Well,” says Enjolras. “You called me ‘dear.’”

It takes Grantaire’s brain a long, discombobulated second to work out why this is such a problem. Their word that meant ‘stop.’ Their word that meant ‘you’re going too far’.

Grantaire’s not sure what made him say it, what he was even going for. Enjolras had been standing there, furious and unbending, and Grantaire had wanted to hurt him mostly because he didn’t think he could. It had felt like yelling at the sky.

“I didn’t really,” says Grantaire, “I mean, you weren’t even touching me, so what would—”

“I thought you knew how I felt, and you were telling me to back off,” says Enjolras. 

“No,” Grantaire says, “No, no.” Holding Enjolras when they’re both still on the ground means more or less crawling into his lap but Enjolras doesn’t protest, just pulls him in. 

“I know,” Enjolras mumbles into his shoulder. “It’s okay.”

“Mmm-hmm,” says Grantaire. 

“I could’ve just told you in your van,” says Enjolras. And then returning to their original argument, because Enjolras can never let a point go unmade, “Also, you caught me checking you out two days ago—”

“What?”

“In my room, when you took off your shirt?” 

“I thought you were, like, disapproving,” Grantaire says.

Enjolras laughs. “No, I uh. Definitely approved,” he says, and Grantaire is filled with a sudden irrational urge to take his shirt off again, even though it’s chilly outside and they’re still at prom. “Can you confess something back?” says Enjolras. “This is terrible.”

“I bought Grapes of Wrath,” Grantaire tells him. “Went out and bought it immediately, read the whole thing in a night.”

“Did you like it?” Enjolras sounds almost shy.

“Dude, I’ve read it seven times,” says Grantaire. “I could probably recite parts of it by heart—”

Enjolras makes a wordless noise and then they’re kissing, much harder than before. Grantaire can barely even follow what’s going on but he gets his hands on Enjolras’s back, under the jacket, where he can feel the muscles moving through a thin layer of dress shirt. Enjolras has discovered open-mouthed kissing and his hands are back in Grantaire’s hair, and the next time Grantaire fully notices their surroundings he’s basically lying on the pavement with Enjolras on top of him and he is fine with that.

Enjolras pulls back a few inches. His lips are very red. “I don’t have a Steinbeck fetish,” he says.

Grantaire’s skin is buzzing, and his suit is no doubt getting dirty. There are rocks in his shoes. ‘Come back,’ he thinks. “Okay.”

“I just,” says Enjolras. “I just like you so much.”

“I like you too,” says Grantaire, laughing. It feels so good to say it, he’s not sure how he’ll be able to stop. Then Enjolras moves forward again, his thigh shifting between Grantaire’s legs, and some combination of the motion and his smile makes Grantaire shut up in a hurry. Grantaire’s hips twitch up, involuntary, and it is maybe the most mortifying moment of his life until Enjolras presses back.

Grantaire gasps again. Enjolras kisses him, and if it wasn’t for the fact that they’re still doing this on cold, grimy blacktop, Grantaire would probably assume it was some kind of unusually hot fever-dream.

As it is, though.

Reluctantly, Grantaire frees his mouth. “Hey,” he pants. “Hey, this is, uh, really really great but if we keep going like this, I just, um.” He’s struggling to catch his breath, and also to put a couple of inches between their bodies, which is tough because it’s definitely not what his body wants. “Maybe,” he manages to say, “maybe you don’t want to lose your virginity outside, in a parking lot, behind the Lithuanian Cultural Heritage Center?”

“Virginity is a cultural construct,” says Enjolras, lips moving down Grantaire’s throat. Grantaire shudders.

“Okay,” says Grantaire. He takes in a lungful of air. “But maybe I don’t want to lose my virginity in a parking lot by the Lithuanian—”

Enjolras pulls away, eyes wide. “Oh no,” he says. “Oh no, I’m sorry—”

“You’re cool,” Grantaire says from the ground.

“Do you, like,” Enjolras hesitates, sounding extraordinarily nervous, “want it to be, uh, more romantic, or—?”

Grantaire hides his face in his arm. “No, no, no,” he says rapidly. “No, god. I’m not talking flower petals and smooth jazz, just maybe. You know. A room with walls and a floor. A door. A ceiling’d be nice but not, like, essential, I guess?”

“That,” says Enjolras seriously, “is a very attainable goal.” Grantaire peeks up at him. “Will you go out with me?” he repeats. Grantaire laughs and sits up, trying to brush the grit off his clothes.

“Oh my god, of course,” says Grantaire. Then his face falls. “I’m not free until Tuesday, though.” It feels like an absurd amount of time to wait.

Enjolras must feel the same, because he chews his lip thoughtfully. “Are you free tonight?” he says. “Like, after you drive everyone home? My parents aren’t necessarily expecting me back until tomorrow morning.”

Grantaire’s face heats and Enjolras adds hurriedly, “Not that we have to—do anything like that tonight, we could just—hang out in your room and talk about Grapes of Wrath, and I wanted to ask about the Golden Compass anyway—”

“Yes,” Grantaire says. “Yes, oh my god, that is the perfect date, yes.” He laughs again, runs his hands through his by now impossibly disheveled hair. “Oh my god, your poor parents, thinking you’re out somewhere fooling around, when really you’ll just be, like, having a literary discussion—”

Enjolras coughs. “I mean, maybe a little fooling around, if that’s—”

Grantaire nods so hard he can feel it in his upper arms.

“We should probably go back in though,” says Enjolras, glancing sadly at the door.

“Yeah,” says Grantaire. “Just—give me a sec to calm down.”

“Want me to help fix your hair?”

“That won’t help,” says Grantaire. “I mean, it won’t help me calm down.” 

“Yeah?” Enjolras turns to look at him again.

The reminder of what they were just up to brings Grantaire back to how he ruined the mood. “Sorry,” he says again. “It really isn’t—I don’t give a shit about, like, romance—”

“It’s okay,” says Enjolras. “Really. I get it. I—”

“What?”

“I kind of wanted to slowdance with you,” Enjolras says in one breath. He rolls his eyes at himself. “I know it’s cheesy, I know it’s such a cliche, but I’d been thinking about it—”

Grantaire stands up. He takes off his shoe and shakes out the pebbles. He puts his shoe back on. “Enjolras,” he says. “That is a very attainable goal.”

Inside, it’s dark and warm and so loud that they have to talk into each other’s ears to be heard. Enjolras laces their fingers together and his face is resolute but his grip is shaky. Grantaire squeezes his hand.

“It’s cool,” he says.

“What now?” says Enjolras.

“Now we hang out by the dance floor until the DJ picks something that works,” says Grantaire. 

The disco ball spins. Enjolras watches it thoughtfully. “What’s wrong with this one?”

It’s too loud to pick out the lyrics, but Grantaire can tell from the familiar hook that the track blasting from the speakers is 50 Cent’s “Candy Shop.”

“This song is really objectionable,” Grantaire tells him. “It’s not a slow dance song.” He nods to the dance floor, where kids are gyrating and shaking their hips and moving all over each other. 

Enjolras doesn’t seem to notice. “I have waited two and half months for this,” he says. “I’m not gonna stand here all night waiting for the DJ to do his goddamn job.” The light in his eyes is so much more potent than a disco ball.

“If we ignored every other beat,” says Grantaire, “we could probably still—”

“Yeah,” says Enjolras. “Okay.”

They walk onto the dance floor. Nobody’s watching them, too busy bumping and grinding and occasionally rolling their eyes at the parent chaperone’s doomed attempts to keep tonight PG.

Grantaire puts his hands on Enjolras’s waist, and Enjolras follows suit, tucking Grantaire’s head under his chin. It’s basically how they were standing at Courfeyrac’s house, Grantaire thinks. He wonders if their friends will even be able to tell the difference between their fake relationship and their real one. He has a feeling the line there is less distinct than he would’ve thought. 

Enjolras’s hands are careful on his back. They sway to every other beat. Enjolras hums, tuneless and Grantaire can feel the reverberations. He breathes in and smells oranges.

“Hey,” he says. “Y’know, if it doesn’t work out with the school board—”

“It could,” says Enjolras.

Grantaire nods. “But if it doesn’t. Cosette’s plan—telling the press about what happened, making it a whole thing. We don’t have to, but if you’re up for it, I am.”

“Yeah?”

“For the record.”

“For the record,” Enjolras echoes. “Yes. Of course. Obviously. Sorry, how could you not tell I like you?”

“Fucking likewise,” says Grantaire. Then he ducks his head and giggles, because he can’t help it. “Sorry, this song is so dirty. And sexist, it’s terrible—”

Enjolras shrugs, serene. “I can’t hear the words.”

Around them, taffeta rustles against suit fabric and the bassline thrums. Every part of the dance floor but Enjolras smells disgusting. Some gravel remains Grantaire’s other shoe but it is very, very hard to care from inside Enjolras’s arms. 

From the speakers, 50 Cent is still discussing his penis. 

“Prom magic,” says Grantaire. “Enjolras, were you aware that tonight is the most magical night of our lives?”

“Fuck that,” says Enjolras, pulling him closer. Grantaire doesn’t need to step back to know that Enjolras is grinning, which is good because Grantaire also never wants to move again. “Fuck that. Things are gonna get so much better,” he says with feeling, and Grantaire smiles, closes his eyes, and believes him.