[dated sometime mid first week of June]
Jun. 1st, 2014 12:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pylades_drunkThe first day of June, he'd woken up feeling not quite right: a little melancholy and everything just a little too sharp, too much, even good things. It's not a feeling Grantaire's unfamiliar with, and he'd pushed it aside as just the way he is sometimes. It had clung to him all day, seeping into conversation, dragging his feet.
And then he'd spotted the date and it had come back to him like a rush. Marius in love, Gavroche running in to announce Lamarque was dead, the way it had settled around them like silence and the way Enjolras had stood up in the middle of the room to announce that this was their time.
Their time. That was the last week he would see them alive, and he'd spent about half of it drinking through their plans, a little skeptical of the point of it, a little terrified, and a little bitter he wasn't being included. He'd watched them, he'd drunk with them, but in the end he'd stomped off and they'd died there, and he's here.
The next few days on the island seem almost like a dream, smiles and the farce of pretending to be all in one place. Of being happy, and how is it that he's allowed that? To forget, even for a moment?
He knows it's unfair: making excuses -- classes, laundry, food -- and just wandering with his thoughts. When he finds himself going back to a hut he's barely seen in weeks except to move clothes around, to sit and drink and stare at his sketchbook, he can't stand himself for it. He wants to go home - back to Tunny's place, and when did he start thinking of that as home? - and say everything, but even the idea of comfort stings.
And then he'd spotted the date and it had come back to him like a rush. Marius in love, Gavroche running in to announce Lamarque was dead, the way it had settled around them like silence and the way Enjolras had stood up in the middle of the room to announce that this was their time.
Their time. That was the last week he would see them alive, and he'd spent about half of it drinking through their plans, a little skeptical of the point of it, a little terrified, and a little bitter he wasn't being included. He'd watched them, he'd drunk with them, but in the end he'd stomped off and they'd died there, and he's here.
The next few days on the island seem almost like a dream, smiles and the farce of pretending to be all in one place. Of being happy, and how is it that he's allowed that? To forget, even for a moment?
He knows it's unfair: making excuses -- classes, laundry, food -- and just wandering with his thoughts. When he finds himself going back to a hut he's barely seen in weeks except to move clothes around, to sit and drink and stare at his sketchbook, he can't stand himself for it. He wants to go home - back to Tunny's place, and when did he start thinking of that as home? - and say everything, but even the idea of comfort stings.
no subject
Date: 2014-06-01 07:57 pm (UTC)He walks into the hut without knocking. Fuck it.
"Where the fuck did you go?" he says.
no subject
Date: 2014-06-01 08:13 pm (UTC)This time, he isn't sleeping before he lifts his head, and there aren't any soldiers for the fierceness in the room to be directed at, just him, which is so much worse and so much more fitting.
Tunny comes here looking for him too much, he thinks, looking up at him. His eyes go just a little guilty before the guard goes back up.
"Nowhere," he says, glancing away. The defensiveness is unearned but he can't help it. "Here," and he gestures widely.
no subject
Date: 2014-06-04 09:53 pm (UTC)"I can fuckin' see that," says Tunny and then feels a little pointless. What the fuck's he angry about anyway? It's not as though Grantaire owes him anything. But he misses him. And that? Is a shitty way to feel. "You were supposed to be...at my place. Dinner, remember?"
no subject
Date: 2014-06-04 10:10 pm (UTC)"I --" He swears, in French, and runs a hand through his hair. "I'm sorry," he says and looks up at him with no way to fix that. Just another thing to fuck up, to not be there for, just another reason Tunny shouldn't have bothered tracking him down.
"There are a lot of places I should be, right now," he says, rhetorically, shoves the sketchbook away from himself on the table.
no subject
Date: 2014-06-06 08:52 pm (UTC)"Yeah, well, not all of them have got six year olds in them, asshole," says Tunny, leaning back against the wall and folding his arms across his chest, trying to swallow down his aggression, trying to temper the rage with love.
no subject
Date: 2014-06-06 11:29 pm (UTC)Grantaire almost laughs. There were, actually, seven maybe. He can vividly imagine Gavroche and the girls together, a whirlwind of grinning blonde havoc: he feels sick.
He couldn't hate himself more if he tried. Tunny leaning and looking at him across the room is such a familiar gesture made so foreign by barely-restrained anger that his chest hurts. Some other time he'd do anything to change that back. Even now part of him is begging to.
Doesn't Tunny get it, who he is, who he's let into his life, who he dares to call good/i>? No, of course he doesn't.
"What do you want me to say," he says, getting up, frustrated. "That I'm sorry that I wasn't there? I am, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Today, yesterday, six months, two centuries, it's what i do-" he's dangerously close to crying, and he doesn't cry, ever: he cuts himself off and stares at his hands.
no subject
Date: 2014-06-09 06:27 pm (UTC)"Oh, Jesus," says Tunny, rolling his eyes, pushing away from the wall. "Is that what this is? Some...shitty self-pity kick? Because believe me, Rob, I am the fuckin' king of those, but you don't get to..." He gestures, grasping for the word. "You don't get to come into our lives and then just...cut out when you feel like it. You don't get to do that to us."
no subject
Date: 2014-06-10 07:11 pm (UTC)He's right. He's right, but it flares in Grantaire's chest anyway, especially hearing Rob coupled up with some shitty self-pity kick: it feels a little like taking advantage.
"When I feel like it," he says, the words hollow in his chest. "Is this what I prefer? Am I just desperate to be alone? Bored of you? You're not stupid. This isn't about what I want. You know what happens to people I love? They die." He picks up the sketchbook, riffles the pages open and lets it fall back down unlooking, pages and pages of Enjolras and Courfeyrac, Joly, Jehan and the rest; a few newer ones more often than not filled with Tunny. "They don't come back, they don't have a chance to fall in love, or laugh or plan or to tell me to be serious. They're gone. I didn't fight for them, didn't try; they died knowing I didn't even believe. Incapable de croire.. There's nothing that undoes that, not even here, and I don't get to forget that just because I didn't die."
He drops his head, unable to get their faces out of his mind, unable to reconcile the pain behindyou don't get to do that to us and when he looks back up he's just, lost. "I'm sorry," he says. "I'm sorry."
no subject
Date: 2014-06-12 07:43 pm (UTC)Tunny's jaw tightens but he stands there and takes it, the flipped through pages, the listed names. He doesn't pull away and his face doesn't flicker. He lets Grantaire get it all out and then he reaches out. His fingers curl around the back of Grantaire's neck and pulls him in against him, his cheek against his cheek.
"S'okay," he murmurs, his other arm wrapping around Grantaire's waist. "I got you."
no subject
Date: 2014-06-12 10:58 pm (UTC)Grantaire tenses for just a second as Tunny reaches for him, some last resistance to comfort, to deserving it. And then all at once he gives in, lets himself be pulled, wraps his arms around Tunny and hangs on to him like an anchor, like he's drowning. "God, I'm so sorry," he says again, and it's for everything, all of it, there's no part of this that can be disentangled, what he did and what he let himself do. He can tell he's crying but he can't stop himself.
There are so many parts to this: not knowing how to grieve, how to even begin, much less to be happy too; not feeling worthy of comfort, of care; and just plain fear, as well. Usually he's the one who's spontaneous, who says what he's feeling, who isn't fond of thinking too hard or keeping himself too safe. Right now, everything feels so incredibly transient. But Tunny's grip is solid, safe, and Grantaire just holds on.