Archive of Our Own ^beta

Fade up: the desk. 

Jean “Jehan” Prouvaire standing next to it. 

The desk is found, fixed, like so many of the things that feature in the poet’s apartment. Jehan is not particularly interested in participating in the endless ethicless march of capitalism, and so instead fills their space with things that were deemed worthless but have clawed their way back with a little care, the way they’d nurture a succulent. This desk is on the side of the motorway, a leg broken off, not taken care of in use or disposal. 

Jehan sees it while driving. Their car can barely fit another passenger, let alone an entire desk. However, they are the kind of person that imbues memories and emotions in things, making materialism mystical through a supreme, keening-sharp empathy. 

It comes to the point where Jehan is sitting on the side of the road, running a long-fingered hand over the scarred wood of the desk and tearing up, throat tight. 

Ostensibly, there's no physical possible procedure for the rescue mission that Jehan wants to conduct. Yet they have learned not to discount the kindness of strangers, and by waiting next to the desk with their thumb out for twenty-seven minutes, their life changes. 

This is how Jehan meets Grantaire. 

They see the van first, the rattle-rattle-crash-crash, scraped-paint, Sharpie-graffitied, old, charming, ineffably beautiful van. It chugs along the right lane until its tires slip over the rumble strip and into the grass, stopping a few feet from when Jehan stands. The window rolls down with a whir that Jehan thinks contains multitudes. 

“Hey,” says a rough, gruff voice. “What’s up? Your car break down?” 

“No,” Jehan says. “I want to rescue this desk.”

Quick cut, comical cut, to ten minutes later. Long shot—cars whip by, tires humming on pavement. 

“Sorry, I’m sorry, fuck, I’m so sorry,” Grantaire says, standing by the side of a different stretch of motorway with the desk in his van, but the van stubbornly immutable. “I was literally on my way to go deliver the painting that was going to get me the money to get this piece of trash worked on.” He stares at it mournfully, shaking his head of wild curls and rubbing at his scratchy beard like he can’t quite believe his luck. 

“It’s okay!” Jehan says, and means it. “If it’s a time crunch thing, we can just put the desk back and I can put the painting in my car and drive you.” 

Grantaire is already dialing on his phone. “No, no, it’s fine. I just…this is really a call I’d rather not make.” 

It is one of those situations that Jehan senses is a bit tip-of-the-iceberg. Just given the tone of what Grantaire says…and the fact that even though he says it’s a call he doesn’t want to make, he only presses two buttons before putting the phone to his ear. Whoever this is, Grantaire has them on speed dial. 

The following half a conversation speaks worlds. 

“Hey. Yeah, I…yeah, I knew you were in class. You still answered, though, so don’t complain that much….This is important, okay, I need your help…Yes, your help specifically. You’re the only one with a car big enough. My van broke down….Yes, you told me so—I guess you’re Al-Kutbay as well as Apollo, do you want me to put it in writing?…I’m on the side of the A1 with a painting, a renegade desk, and someone named Jehan Prouvaire.” Jehan waves, cheerily, and Grantaire grins before turning back to the conversation. “Yes. No. Okay. I owe you, like, six.” He hangs up, and then gives Jehan a sheepish smile. 

“Who was that?” they ask, after a second of debate whether the question would sound too intrusive or not. 

Grantaire flushes red, and Jehan tilts their head, inferring quite a bit. “He’s, ah. A friend.” 

Though Jehan is the type of person to ask someone about how they feel about death within seven minutes of first meeting them, they know that here, they are relying on Grantaire, so perhaps risky conversations should be avoided. In addition, their impression of Grantaire is that they like him very much, and would be interested in getting to know him better. So instead of pressing for more detail, they simply give a little smile of acknowledgement, and go back to looking at the desk. 

Conversation, after that, slides back into casual territory--Jehan learns that Grantaire is an art student at Beaux-Arts, but sells pieces of his own on the side. They learn that Grantaire has a finger in every pie--he dances, boxes, fences, is an amateur barista, is an amateur bartender, is trying to give up drinking...they learn that Grantaire rambles. Jehan appreciates someone that can talk about themself. 

They also learn a little more about the mysterious person on the phone, who is apparently a) named Enjolras, and b) the leader of a student political action group that Grantaire is a core member of. 

“What’s it called? Have I heard of it?” Jehan inquires, at that little revelation. When Grantaire responds “Les Amis de l’ABC,” and points to a bumper sticker on his car spelling it out, Jehan laughs for a full thirty seconds. 

“I can’t say I’ve heard of it,” they say once they can form sentences again, “but at the very least, your name is a lovely pun.” 

Grantaire grins, almost sheepishly. “I know. I helped come up with it.” 

By the time another car pulls up, a van as large as Grantaire’s but with faded red paint, the two of them are talking eagerly about Arabic philosophy. Jehan’s not sure how they got on the topic, but they know that they like this new addition to their life very much, and though circumstance asks it to be a brief interaction, Jehan hopes to overhaul that. Grantaire is the kind of person that they would want to have coffee with, or get high with in the late-night. 

Grantaire is also, it seems, the kind of person to flush a bit and start shuffling his feet when the van pulls up and its owner gets out of it. Objectively speaking, Enjolras is beautiful--his hair hangs long and loose in blond curls (though Jehan still has him beat, with their mess of thick strawberry-blond hair down to the waist). In a poem they will write later, Jehan will describe his eyes in a two-prong, paradoxical metaphor of polar ice and blue-hot fire, and they will use language with corners to get across the cruel component to the eye-catching features of this new arrival. 

Jehan, unlearning prejudice, expects the voice that comes out of the shapely lips to be harsh and austere. Probably sourced from movies with beautiful, kempt Germans barking in stereotypically harsh tongues, they reflect briefly. Regardless, they are proved wrong--when the young man speaks, it’s mellifluous. There are definite notes of authority, but it’s assuring rather than overbearing. 

“Salut,” is what he says, looking to Grantaire briefly and then extending a hand to Jehan. The poet appreciates perhaps most of all the absence of microaggression--his eyes don’t dart to Jehan’s “feminine” attire; there’s no hesitation in the proffered handshake. “I’m Enjolras.” 

“Jehan Prouvaire,” the poet introduces themself, and uncaps their water bottle to take a sip. Enjolras’s eyes immediately go to the array of stickers adorning the litre-bottle, various poetry quotes and pictures of authors. Some feature social justice slogans (“#BlackLivesMatter”) and some feature surrealist gender humour (“I transgend to the northeast.”) Enjolras reads them with a smile on his face instead of the usual confused frown and head-tilt, and that’s when Jehan knows that Enjolras, too, is a person that they could definitely be friends with. 

“Anyway, let’s get all this in the back,” Enjolras says, turning back to Grantaire. 

He nods. “I figured we’d just leave my crap van here. Not like anyone’s going to steal it, and I’ll call the mechanic to tow it to the garage near my building.” 

“I told you that you should have taken the ride from me when I offered,” Enjolras says, with a thin blond eyebrow raised. 

Grantaire rolls his eyes. “Again, you’re the god of wisdom. Don’t rub it in. Let’s just get dear Prouvaire’s desk in, and then the painting.” 

And they do. Grantaire goes into the back of his van and pulls out a large canvas wrapped in a sheet while Jehan and Enjolras lift the desk through the door and into the car. It fits, just barely, with plenty of space underneath for Grantaire’s painting. Enjolras takes the art from him, starts to put it in, and then pauses for a moment. “Can I see it?” he asks, and Jehan watches as Grantaire’s eyes widen a little. 

“I, uh. I mean...I guess so?” Enjolras pulls at the sheet until it comes off, hanging off one corner. 

“Wow,” Jehan breathes as they approach, leaning closer to look at the detail. It’s a night scene in Paris, a market that Jehan recognizes and goes to frequently, all twinkle-lights and urban fantasy, the kind of playland that people fantasize that Paris is. The expressions of the people, though, counter this--some are smiling, but most aren’t. Most have the trademark bored-busy-haughty expression on their features. It’s fascinating, and the technique is clearly there (though Jehan knows much more about poem technique than that of the brush). 

Enjolras’s expression is less readable, but when he turns to Grantaire, he gives him a small nod. “It’s lovely,” he says, with a weighted sincerity, and Grantaire rather looks like Enjolras has detached the sun and handed it to him. 

“Merci,” he manages, and Jehan hides their smile. 

The painting is re-wrapped by Grantaire’s big, careful hands and then slid into the back of Enjolras’s van. Jehan gets the address where they’re headed to drop off the painting and gives the address of their apartment to drop off the desk, and then the three of them part ways. Only insofar as Enjolras and Grantaire are in Enjolras’s car and Jehan is in their own, though--the poet follows the red van to the painting drop-off, and the red van follows the poet to their building in a delightful mirroring of events that strikes Jehan as eloquent. They haven’t met people that they’ve been intrigued by this much in a long time. 

So, after the desk gets put in the service elevator and all three of them ascend to Jehan’s floor, they offer Enjolras and Grantaire a cup of tea.

A close-up on the closing door of Jehan’s apartment, then a fade into the hustle and bustle of a Parisian evening, not unlike the first painting of Grantaire’s that the poet saw on the side of the highway.  Focus on a café front, a steamy window reading Café Musain in slightly cracked script. 

It is two weeks after the Great Deskapade, as Grantaire has taken to calling it, and Jehan Prouvaire is at their fourth meeting of les Amis de l’ABC. At the first three, they hadn’t spoken much at all; the group already has such a rapport that it’s a bit difficult to elbow in. Jehan doesn’t feel actively excluded by them, and understands that they’ve been friends for multiple years, and that this is only natural. 

Still, Jehan has met the rest of the wonderful core group--Enjolras, of course, who leads the meetings, and his two right hands, Courfeyrac and Combeferre. Courfeyrac is an articulate spark of a young man, with wild curls and a Spanish accent. He had been elated to find out that Jehan spoke Spanish. Combeferre had followed that revelation with a playful request for Jehan to learn Gujarati so that he could have someone to talk to in his native language as well. 

(Jehan finds a program the day after this meeting and makes a mental note to start trying. They’ve always been gifted at languages.) 

There’s Joly and Bossuet, who are always together, and Musichetta who comes when she doesn’t have to work. All of them are good-spirited and Jehan is fascinated by Bossuet’s bald head, which apparently is natural, not shaven, despite the fact that he’s barely twenty-two. There’s Feuilly, who’s sweet and as freckled and nonbinary as Jehan (though ze has much redder hair), and Bahorel, who might be the most muscular person Jehan’s ever met. There’s Cosette, Éponine, Marius--all of them, the whole group are lovely, and the conversations that they have set Jehan’s mind on fire. 

And they all use Jehan’s pronouns. No slip-ups. Not a single instance of misgendering. Even entering into a space where all the attendants are self-described activists, Jehan hadn’t had such high expectations. 

Still, most of them feel at arm’s length to Jehan, except for Grantaire, whom they have been talking a lot with after meetings. It’s a lovely way to spend their evenings, with warm drinks and difficult, cathartic conversation. 

Tonight, the fourth meeting, somehow the group gets on the topic of cissexism at the medical school that Joly and Combeferre are studying at, and how there’s pressure to make research binary-gender for financial reasons, not to mention that the people running the labs are all cisgender and majority heterosexual. 

Jehan believes in some idea of predetermination, though they don’t necessarily assign it to a religious or spiritual body. It comes up as a feeling, an electricity somewhere in the vicinity of their shoulder joints, urging them to stand, to speak, to do something. Of course, there’s the usual flash of anxiety that accompanies being in an only slightly familiar setting with only slightly familiar aspects. 

Jehan takes a deep breath, and then speaks. “Hi, ah...I think that...” They are moved by the urge to apologize for speaking up and have to quash it, since they don’t believe in apologizing for speaking and invalidating one’s own words. A deep breath. Restart. “This is a complicated question, something that we can’t address from one direction alone. If...if for example someone were to conduct a study with a gender spectrum involved, there might not be the statistical capabilities for analyzing the data, which, um, brings up the question of whether we need to analyze based on gender in the first place.” 

Jehan is never sure when to start and when to stop talking about this sort of thing, especially because so far as they know, Feuilly is the only other non-cisgender person in the room. They naturally look to zir for support. Feuilly nods, and mouths Keep going! 

“In my opinion,” Jehan continues. “I mean...if I had my way, it would start from birth, with biological sex not being treated as dichotomous, since there’s a lot of fluidity there as well as the way that people internalize their gender identity. If we diversity neonatal healthcare such that it’s based on an individual biology rather than an arbitrary and unexamined sex assignment, then, well. Some of the other barriers would begin to break down naturally after that.” 

A few snaps. Enjolras’s head is tilted--a common tic when he’s thinking, Jehan has noticed. “What sort of action, theoretically, could someone take to try to institute that?” 

Jehan takes another full inhale. “It would require a triple-prong approach. First something in policy, to eliminate the requirement for sex or gender to be written on a birth certificate. Second, something in medicine to encourage doctors to specify care, and likely examine babies more completely. Third, a social campaign to try and get parents to detach from the age-old obsession with knowing the binary gender of their child. It’s not...obviously it wouldn’t be easy, but that’s how I think it could be done.” 

More snaps, a soft whistle from Grantaire, who’s grinning like the devil over in his corner, sketching. Jehan knows from a peek earlier that he’s drawing Enjolras. 

“Definitely something to think about,” Enjolras says, and writes it down in his notes. 

The conversation progresses from there, people adding on and thinking up tactics and trying to identify possible problems. It’s the first time that Jehan has let themself lose themself in the colloquy, has really felt integrated into the wordplay. People ask them questions, and they respond and laugh and go through three cups of tea without even thinking about it. 

It’s the kind of thing that they reflect on later, first with a radiant sense of belonging, second with a definite “where the fuck have these people been all my life?” 

And that is how Jean Prouvaire joins les Amis de l’ABC. 

The present, now--no more cinematography talk.  Out of memory, and into reality. 

Jehan, at two in the morning, lights a stick of incense. 

They read something, a long time ago, about how scents can open up different channels in the mind, let different sensuous experiences pour in. And since Jehan is in the mood to write, but writing isn’t quite coming, novel sensuous experiences feel like an advantage. Athletes take steroids, they write on a piece of scrap paper, and are penalized and demonized and dehumanized. Artists take drugs, and are lionized and deified and electrified. Is it fair? It’s a start. Not what they want, but a start. They pin it to the wall. 

The smoke from the incense curls up towards the ceiling, batting briefly at the windowpanes but finding no passage. By all accounts, it’s a good time to write in Paris—the hum of the city has quieted, though the lights haven’t quite died. It’s dark in our poet’s apartment, though, save for their desk lamp, covered with a scarf so the light is gentle, purple, arcing out over the scratched and burned wood of that old, saved, wonderful desk itself. 

Yet still, the words are stopped up, somewhere in the region of Jehan’s fingers, holding their favourite pen a centimeter above a piece of paper. After a long few moments, they drop it back onto the desk, and a drop of ink splatters over the wood, a perfect little droplet that quivers for a second upon impact and then coalesces and sits, innocuously. Jehan, often captivated by miniscule and mundane occurrences, is transfixed by it. 

They remember all of it--the desk, the cars, the looks, the uncertainty, the friends, the home. They are filled, as they often are these days, with a quiet, dreamy sense of contentment. 

For their phone is filled with text messages, and their Facebook is active with articles shared, and their evenings no longer have to be spent alone. Grantaire sends them Snapchat selfies of himself and Enjolras, who still haven’t gotten their shit together (Courfeyrac passes Jehan notes about it frequently in meetings). They have people that are willing to read the terrible first drafts of their poetry and always will provide hugs and well-wishes. They feel supported. They feel like they have someone to celebrate with on the days where they feel good about themself, and someone to talk to when the world feels too mixed-up and large. They feel better than they have in a long, long time. 

And so Jehan Prouvaire, filled with a soft sense of poignancy, rushing somewhere in their chest, begins to write.