Chapter Text
What a bitch.
That was what Grantaire was thinking about in class. She really had been a bitch all along, hadn’t she?
And it couldn’t have been a coincidence she dumped him for a college guy the day after he came out, right?
It was truly miraculous, Grantaire decided, how the mind could constantly keep itself occupied. Always shifting from thought to thought and somehow never focusing on the right thing.
Right now, for instance, he should have been focusing on the Mexican-American War debate they were having. Plenty of people were; the kid next to him was frantically scribbling down notes. When he looked over, it looked like he was writing in Russian, that’s how quickly he was writing. And Enjolras was yelling.
He was standing at his desk (everyone else was sitting. Grantaire didn’t know when he had stood up) and yelling, a crumpled piece of notebook paper marked to death with notes clutched in his fist like the battle flag of an ancient revolution.
“You can’t just start a war because you were offended-” he was saying.
Realistically, how was Grantaire expected to focus? The debate was honestly so dull, and he had just been dumped the period before.
The other kids on his team were looking at him expectantly, and he realized he had raised his hand without really noticing. “Well, uh, there had been a treaty stating-”
“Signed under duress!” Enjolras interrupted.
“Enjolras!” The teacher, looking harried as ever, snapped. “This is your third warning.”
He sat back down with a petulant scowl.
It was a dumbass debate. ‘Who was at fault for the Mexican-American War?’ The Mexican team won, obviously. It was so clearly the right answer; there wasn’t even any deliberation, no ‘who shot first, Han or Greedo?’ Clearly America was at fault, making it completely arbitrary for Enjolras to have been so invested in the debate.
As they packed up at the end of class Grantaire wanted to say something like “hey, you did good” as he passed his desk on his way out, but he knew that Enjolras wouldn’t like him for it- he had displayed open contempt for Grantaire ever since the first day of freshman year.
It didn’t matter.
At lunch he sat on one of the little picnic tables behind the cafeteria, the ones donated by the class of ‘65; his usual haunt. Him and Eponine talked like they always did and shared a bag of dried cranberries like they always did. It had been the same pattern since freshman year.
And, same as every day, that group sat on the bleachers, the social justice club (the one that he frequented with perfect attendance, god knows why), Les Amis de L’ABC, with Enjolras taking a fitting seat at the top of the rows of metal seats.
He always wondered what it would be like to sit with them. As much as he loved Eponine, it was kind of an objective bummer to sit with one person every single day for four years of high school.
“She’s a bitch,” Eponine said. “You’re honestly a saint for putting up with her shit for as long as you did.”
“Yeah, no, because she wasn’t a bitch when I was with her. I wouldn’t have dated her if she was a bitch the whole time.”
Eponine crunched a potato chip loudly. “Maybe not to your face. Sorry to burst your bubble, but she was always a bitch.”
“Fuck her,” Grantaire said weakly.
“Fuck her,” Eponine repeated enthusiastically.
Grantaire was in a bad mood by the end of the day. He had gotten a C on a math test, which normally wouldn’t have been so bad if not for the fact that he had looked over and saw that the kid who sat next to him, the one who rarely came to class and when he did, came high, had gotten an A-minus.
And, on top of it all, it was a Tuesday.
Meetings were held every week in Madame Buchard’s French classroom at 2:45 sharp, giving just enough time after school to pee and ‘meet with teachers if necessary.’ Or, in Grantaire’s case, stop by the Dunkin across the street for a chocolate frosted donut and a vanilla chai.
Like every week, Grantaire rolled into Madame Buchard’s room at 2:45 sharp with a casual, “afternoon, captain” in Enjolras’s direction. He had done it his second meeting with them, and, after witnessing the positively excellent shade of burgundy it made Enjolras’s face turn, had done it ever since.
Enjolras turned a little redder than usual that day. Grantaire grinned as he slid into his back-row desk.
Like usual, he had no idea what the week’s discussion was on. At this point, he considered the club purely as an extracurricular for college apps; he could write his essay on that walkout they had done earlier in the year over racist graffiti found in the third floor boy’s bathroom. Sure, he had only gone because he wanted to skip science, but he had gone, and that was all that colleges needed to know.
He had forgotten his sketchbook at home, like a dumbass, but he had a notebook that a family friend’s adult daughter had given him for his birthday two years ago. It said “GET IT DONE” on the cover. Grantaire had no idea what it meant- it had always felt vaguely threatening- but paper was paper, lined or not. Most times he just started drawing without knowing what it was going to turn out as. Today he decided, before his pencil had even met the paper, that he was going to draw the pattern on Enjolras’s shirt, an interlocking cage of assorted leaves and daffodils.
And maybe he had been staring at Enjolras for too long, trying to figure out the angle of the petals, because he said, loudly, enough to shock Grantaire from his reverie, “what do you think, Grantaire?”
They could have been talking about anything. The democratic primary, food insecurity, an upcoming bank heist. And Grantaire couldn’t just say nothing, because everyone was looking at him, waiting for a decent response. Not even a decent response- just a response. “I think,” he said slowly, hoping for a clue to drop from the sky like one of the ceiling tiles had on Marcus Robert’s head last year, “that we… should combine with the cooking club.”
If Grantaire looked close enough, he could almost see Enjolras’s soul leaving his body.
He really had no idea what Enjolras had against him. He vaguely remembered saying something in the bio class they shared freshman year, but he couldn’t recall what for the life of him and he didn’t know what he could’ve said that would’ve warranted the outright abhorrence Enjolras held for him for two whole years.
They’d had the same gym class junior year, and by then the hatred had seemed to subside. It was possible that they had been drawn together out of necessity as the only two class members disinterested in ultimate football, but Enjolras hadn’t actually been mad when Grantaire hit him in the head during their volleyball unit. That was part of the reason why he actually bothered showing up for the first meeting of Les Amis de L’ABC at the beginning of senior year.
Enjolras didn’t acknowledge his presence in those first few meetings, which Grantaire was thankful for. With Enjolras, he assumed, no interaction was good interaction.
~
There was supposed to be a vote during the next week’s meeting. It was March and Grantaire still didn’t totally know what they were voting on. Something about getting reusable trays for the cafeteria, he was pretty sure. But Combeferre took too long reading the vice principal’s response to their previous email and they ended up going over. Going over meaning they actually reached the 3:16 alarm Enjolras had set in case he somehow broke his obsessive addiction to checking his watch every ten seconds and they went past the 3:15 end time for meetings. Enjolras seemed genuinely surprised when the alarm went off; Grantaire was pretty sure he even jumped.
“Okay, everyone,” he announced once he had gathered his wits about him after the explosive shock of his alarm going. “We didn’t get to the actual vote, so we’ll just do that tomorrow at lunch. Sound good?”
A considerable number of eyes immediately landed on Grantaire. “It’s fine,” he said, because he felt like he needed to say something rather than sit there like a dead duck. “Just vote without me.”
“No!” Enjolras blurted. “What kind of democratic process would this be if we didn’t listen to the voice of the forgotten man?”
Grantaire kind of took offense to being the ‘forgotten man,’ but that did not override his apathy towards whatever fake-ass vote they were going to have. “Calm down, FDR. I probably wouldn’t have voted today, anyway. Just forget I ever existed and have your vote without me.”
“Dude,” Bousset cut in. “Just sit with us at lunch tomorrow.”
For a moment Grantaire debated the possibility of pushing back, of fighting with Enjolras about democracy for god knows how long. But Grantaire was not a driven person. So, as he always did, he chose the path of least resistance. “Okay. Fine.”
So on Wednesday he went outside and passed his usual table, feeling oddly guilty, taking a seat at the very bottom of the bleachers where nobody else sat.
“So,” Cosette was saying with the energy only a member of the student council could have, “have you all bought your prom tickets yet?”
A vague murmur of assertion came up around the group. Nobody wanted to put up with Cosette’s prom speil again. She had been insatiable ever since the announcement for the theme came out in December: Old School Elegance. Grantaire thought it was a stupid theme. And besides, tickets were more expensive than usual because their school spirit-lacking senior class didn’t spend enough money at the various fundraisers the council had held over the course of the year. All in all, it didn’t provide much incentive to attend.
“I’m not going,” Enjolras said.
All eyes turned to him. “Why not?” Jehan demanded.
Enjolras shrugged. “I don’t want to spend eighty dollars on tickets to a mediocre dance just so that the funds can go into the sports program like we know it will. I have better things to spend my money on.”
“It’s not a mediocre dance,” Jehan protested, who, although he was a junior and had yet to attend a prom, was completely convinced it was a magical staple of the high school experience. “It’s a celebration of your time in school.”
“A celebration of illegal drinking and unplanned pregnancy, maybe.” Enjolras took a sip of water, cool as a cucumber. He had the kind of bottle with a tally of hours down the side to make sure you drank enough water. “I don’t want to waste that much money on some outdated tradition.”
Grantaire could tell everyone wanted to interject based on the sheer amount of mouths that opened to speak, but because he had absolutely no sense of self-preservation, he mumbled, “I’m not going either.”
Jehan frowned. “What’s your righteous cause?”
“Same as Enjolras’s, basically.” Grantaire didn’t look up at him, but he knew Enjolras was making that face, the ‘don’t put my name in your mouth’ face. “I don’t want to have to work overtime just to go to prom when I could stay home and watch Netflix for free.”
“Netflix isn’t free,” Combeferre pointed out.
“It is if you mooch off your grandma’s.”
“So neither of you are going?” Courfeyrac said, pointing two fingers over to them. “That’s unacceptable. It’s- it’s like Jehan said. It’s a celebration of your senior year and you- Enjolras, you’ve worked harder than anyone I know. You deserve this.”
Enjolras deserved the world. Grantaire didn’t deserve jack shit. All he did was sit around and make everyone else’s lives miserable. He had nothing to show for his senior year, just a string of tardy slips and B-minuses. And the B-minuses were if he tried. He was never the kind of kid to get an A just by being smart, the kind that would have a big graduation party and wear their college’s t-shirt to class in June. He had nothing to celebrate.
“Will you guys just leave it?” Grantaire cut in, his knuckles white around his fork. “If we don’t want to go, we don't have to.”
“Look,” Enjolras said. “If eighty bucks fell in my lap right now, maybe I’d rethink it. But right now, I’m perfectly fine with staying home and watching Netflix like Grantaire said. Now please, could we talk about something else?”
There was a painful silence. Grantaire looked down at his lunch. It was French toast sticks, which everybody else loved. Grantaire had no idea why. Even just the smell of them made him feel sick. If he had been sitting with Eponine, they would split their customary bag of dried cranberries. Every other week Eponine stole a box from the supermarket where she worked, and Grantaire had grown to depend on them on days when the cafeteria food was spectacularly shitty.
“Let’s vote,” Enjolras said at long last. Everyone seemed very eager to change the subject. “If you think the school should abandon their use of styrofoam lunch trays in favor of reusable trays to keep non-recyclable materials out of landfill, raise your hand.”
To Grantaire, it seemed like half of the group raised their hands. But Enjolras counted heads quickly and nodded sharply. “Alright. If you believe the school should keep using single-use trays in order to avoid the energy consumption of a commercial dishwasher, raise your hand.”
Again, it looked like an even split. “Okay, it looks like reusable trays win by-”
“Grantaire didn’t vote,” Combeferre interrupted.
Enjolras fixed Grantaire with the full heat of his stare. “Why didn’t you vote?”
“Could you, uh, repeat the options again?”
For a moment, it looked as though Enjolras was going to tell him to fuck off, but his passion for the forgotten man won out and he said, “keep using styrofoam trays or not.”
“Oh. Uh, stop using them?” Grantaire couldn’t help but think that no matter what he said, it would be the wrong answer.
“Okay.” Enjolras looked harried, even just by their little interaction. “Okay. Reusable trays still win by three votes.”
Grantaire still felt the itch of eyes upon him. “Democracy!” He cheered weakly.
~
They had history next period. Lucky for him, Enjolras was already riled up from lunch, so Grantaire resigned to keep his head down for the entirety of the class period lest he do something too heinous to be ignored by the captain of the thought police. He put his earbuds in (hidden through his hoodie, thank you very much) and doodled in the margin of his notes, skulls and seashells and happy little forest creatures that he could show Jehan at next week’s meeting.
It worked for the majority of class and Grantaire thought that he could actually make it through without incident, given that he could survive five more minutes.
“Hey,” Enjolras said.
He looked up. The rest of the class had dispersed from their seats and were talking in small groups amongst themselves; Enjolras was standing directly in front of Grantaire’s desk. “Hey,” he parroted back.
“Would you be my partner?”
The words, any meaning of the combination of words that left Enjolras’s mouth, escaped Grantaire’s mind. “I’m sorry?”
Enjolras looked the same way he did every time he had to deal with Grantaire. A little irritated, a little weary. “For the project. Do you want to work together?”
“What project?”
“The 1920s project!” Enjolras said, a little too loud for the classroom. “We’re doing a project on the 1920s and I need a partner.”
Grantaire looked around the room. Sure enough, everyone else seemed to be coupled up. “What about Jack Clement?”
“I already worked with him. We can’t have repeat partners.”
Yeah, everyone Grantaire knew the name of was taken already. Grantaire, who hadn’t apparently been listening, had unknowingly drawn the short straw. “Sure.”
Enjolras looked genuinely relieved. “Great. What topic do you want to pick?”
Grantaire looked down at the list of topics that had been placed, not so neatly, on his desk. “I don’t know. Just not the politics one.”
“Oh,” Enjolras said, a little deflated. “I wanted the politics one.”
“Okay. Sure let’s do that one.”
“Great.” The bell was seconds away from ringing and both of them knew it. Grantaire began to pack up his bag. “Do you want to meet sometime to work on it?”
“The library tomorrow?”
Enjolras shook his head and bit his lip in thought. Grantaire looked away. “I can’t do Thursday. Or Friday. How about we meet at my house on Saturday? Damn, my mom has wine club on Saturdays.”
“We can do my house on Saturday.” Grantaire’s house was almost habitually empty, so it was a good chance that no one would ever have to know that he invited Enjolras to his house. Grantaire was willing to take that chance. “Also, what the fuck is a wine club?”
The bell rang and Enjolras looked up at the clock as if it had wronged him. “It’s a long story.”
Enjolras was gone like a flash from the classroom. He had probably never gotten a tardy slip in his life, worried that it would go on his permanent record or something.
Grantaire slowly shuffled after him, out into the crush of the hallway.
Enjolras was coming to his house.
What the fuck had he done?