piggybunny12 asked: EXR--Point of No Return from Phantom...or really anything from Phantom. I saw it last night and all the sudden it's sophomore year of high school again for me...
Not gonna lie, baby, I have not…actually seen Phantom of the Opera, but I googled the song and Tried. Yeah, yeah, I’m a heathen, I know. I am Trying. And this. Oh god. I make SUCH a rule about not writing smut except on specific request, so I just…stopped before it progressed to actual sex. But rest assured that’s where this goes, and if you’re interested I’m glad to write it.
“Combeferre, make sure our weapons are prepared,” Enjolras was saying, the sort of rapid-fire rattle that commanded effortless attention. He’d worked his way through every present member of Les Amis and then some by now, even little Gavroche getting instructions as they readied themselves for the next day’s march. That just left… “And where the hell is Grantaire?”
“Madame Houchloupe commandeered him as waitstaff,” Courfeyrac said with a wicked grin.
“What?”
“He means that she asked him to fetch more wine from the cellar, it’s crowded tonight,” Combeferre translated with a sigh. “He’s probably still down there.”
“We are—this is not the moment for his antics,” Enjolras snapped, a scowl writing itself deeply into his features.
“He’s been gone barely ten minutes,” Joly said, waving a hand. “If you’re so thrice-blasted worried, go find him yourself.”
“I am busy–”
“For the love of all that is good and holy, Enjolras,” Jehan said, frowning in clear exasperation and brushing his braid back over one shoulder. “It would do you some good to stop pacing and actually go somewhere, even if that’s just down to the cellar to find R. Please,” he fluttered one hand at him, “begone, oh fearless leader.”
Enjolras swallowed the rest of his sentence, affronted, and gave his jacket a twitch. “Fine,” he said sharply. “I’ll be back shortly—with Grantaire.”
The Musain was busier than usual, Enjolras had to admit that much as he wove through the crowd to the door behind Madame Houchloupe’s counter, leading down to the wine cellar. She saw him, but waved him on with a pitcher in one hand.
The wine cellar was dim, but not dark, lit by a torch in the stairwell that shivered in the wind from the door and a lantern set on one of several barrels. The walls were hard earth, and the room smelled like…rain, Enjolras decided after a moment. Enjolras blinked, adjusting to the light, and had to squint in order to see Grantaire’s silhouette against a wine rack.
He’d expected to see Grantaire seated on the floor, drinking, but he was standing upright with his back to the staircase, forehead leaned against one arm where it was braced against the wine rack. He looked worn, as if his bones ached, and when Enjolras cleared his throat, he didn’t twitch.
“I’ll be right up, Madame,” Grantaire said into his arm. His voice was rough—Grantaire’s voice was always rough, the distinct scratch of alcohol, but this was different, a raw sound.
“It’s me,” Enjolras said, for lack of anything better to say.
Grantaire’s spine straightened into his usual easy stance and he turned, a crooked smile already upon his face. His eyes were overbright in the torchlight, as if he was feverish, and his cravat was untied, loose around the line of his neck. He swept Enjolras a half-mocking bow and said, “Ah, Apollo. Come down to grace those of us in the gutter, I see.”
Enjolras attempted and failed to smother a sigh. “What are you doing down here, Grantaire?”
“Fulfilling my destiny,” Grantaire said, and this time the humor in his voice fell short and flat, into something bitter.
Enjolras marshalled a cutting remark, something to shake Grantaire out of his foolish melancholy, but when he spoke, it failed to reach his tongue.
“Your destiny of holding up a wine rack?” Enjolras asked, a trace of a smile on his lips.
Clapping a hand to his heart, Grantaire gasped in dramatic shock. “What? The golden god of the sun, making a joke?”
“I have been known to have a sense of humor.”
“Never in my presence,” Grantaire said, smiling again. “I can die at ease now.”
The humor faded from the room all at once, this time, and for a moment Enjolras was shaken. It wasn’t so much that Enjolras never thought of Grantaire as a man of passionate emotion, but he seemed so at ease with his uncaring attitude that Enjolras never imagined that Grantaire might be one, either. The solemn look on Grantaire’s face shattered the image of a drunkard only there for convenience, and Enjolras realized with a sinking feeling that he didn’t know how to deal with this version of Grantaire. The belligerent cynic, yes, that Grantaire was easy, Enjolras lived for the fight and Grantaire put up a good one. Even the riotously cheerful drunk was manageable, admittedly by pawning him off on Joly and Bousset. But this Grantaire—serious, isolated, and sober in every sense of the word—unnerved Enjolras somehow.
“Are you so sure that we will die, then?” he asked, trying to muster anger at Grantaire’s faithlessness or even some spark of the humor from before. Instead his question is all too sober itself, drawing him down the last two stairs until he stands just outside arm’s reach of Grantaire.
“Everyone dies, Enjolras,” Grantaire said. “Some of us simply hurry to meet the Reaper early.”
The shadows thrown by the flames from the lantern danced on Grantaire’s face, over the twice-broken nose and the scar down his cheek. For a moment, he was unrecognizable—Enjolras wasn’t given to flights of imagination, but Grantaire, all his sharp angles lit to leave stark shadow beyond and his blue eyes glittering, looked otherworldly. Then he shook his head, wild curls flying, and the look was gone, leaving only Grantaire, unremarkable and uncommonly clear-eyed.
“What are you doing down here?” Enjolras repeated.
Grantaire watched him for a moment, and returned, “Why did you think you had to come and fetch me?”
“I…” Enjolras tried to think of a better way to say you were missing again, and a kinder way to say you haven’t shown a splendid degree of reliability, and any other way at all to say I worried you might drink yourself to death alone.
Evidently, Grantaire didn’t need him to say anything, appearing to read it off Enjolras’ face, and said, “That is what I’m doing down here.” He offered another smile, this one more like a rictus than anything else. “If you don’t give me any instructions, there’s a limit to how badly I can fail.”
“Perhaps I just wanted your company,” Enjolras said, and the contrary words sat uncomfortably true on his tongue. Grantaire laughed outright at that. “You think you only have worth if you’re doing something for me?”
“Of course,” Grantaire said, taken aback. “I have little else to claim. You have said as much yourself, and accurately.”
Enjolras didn’t altogether know how to answer that. It made him uneasy, the thought that Grantaire believed so little of himself, that Enjolras had contributed to that belief.
“I don’t have any orders for you,” Enjolras said.
“I don’t blame you,” Grantaire returned, a bitter shock of something like hate, inwardly directed, on his face. “I don’t suppose you had any lofty aspirations for our last day of peace, Apollo,” he said, absent-minded. “Anything to attempt before we die.”
Enjolras blinked at the sudden change of subject, and words pressed against his lips. Kiss you. He almost backed away in surprise at his own mind’s betrayal—he’d never even considered such a thing, before. Grantaire was…Grantaire, he told himself sternly, and felt a prickle of alarm when this statement seemed as strong an argument for as against.
Grantaire was still talking, but Enjolras was distracted, the internal revelation unveiling a tangled mess of emotions he’d never registered before.
“Enjolras?” Grantaire asked at last, shaking him out of his reverie. “Are you all right? You seem distracted.”
“I’m…fine,” Enjolras said slowly, feeling something in his chest click into place. Enjolras was usually a planner, given to plots and schemes over impulsive action, but…well, Grantaire had asked. And when Enjolras reached out a hand to lace with Grantaire’s, he didn’t pull away, allowed Enjolras to pull him closer. And when Enjolras leaned up to press a tentative kiss to the corner of Grantaire’s mouth, he went very still, as if trying not to disturb a wild animal.
Grantaire’s eyes were wide, the pupils infinitely dark in the torchlight, when Enjolras pulled back.
“Enjolras,” Grantaire said, voice as tight and controlled as Enjolras had ever heard it. “May I ask what you are doing?”
“I…” For the second time in as many minutes, Grantaire had rendered Enjolras speechless. “I wanted to,” he finally said, helpless.
“You…”
This time, when Enjolras pulled Grantaire into a kiss, Grantaire kissed back, one hand at the small of Enjolras’ back, the other barely daring to touch his face.
“We won’t die tomorrow,” Enjolras said when they pulled apart to breathe.
“We will,” Grantaire said, half-wild with it, his eyes dark and angry and desperate as his hands moved up to grip Enjolras’ shoulders. “We will, please, Enjolras, stop this.”
“No,” Enjolras almost snarled, and kissed Grantaire again, teeth and tongue, until Grantaire’s grip was bruising. “You. Have. No. Faith,” he bit into Grantaire’s stubbled jaw.
“You’re a dreamer and a madman,” Grantaire said, twisting them deftly until Enjolras was pressed against the bare earth of the wall. “And we’ll all die for your madness because you asked it.”
“That’s cruel,” Enjolras breathed into the space between their lips.
“You’re cruel,” Grantaire said, and Enjolras wished he could disagree. “You know I would give you…anything it was in my power to give,” Grantaire said, barely even a whisper—a supplication. “So what do you want from me, Apollo?”
Enjolras was cruel when he needed to be, he knew that much, and just this moment he was selfish, he wanted. And Grantaire, broad-shouldered Grantaire whose tongue was always bitter with cynicism and wine, was so willing to let Enjolras break his heart if it gave Enjolras something he wanted. And so Enjolras dragged Grantaire close and said, “This. I want to have this, and then I want you to never speak of it again.”
“As you wish,” Grantaire said, and kissed him.
