here i stand, on the edge of the ledges i have made

[pylades_drunk]

[dated to the week of May 21st-May 27th, specifics TBD.
content warnings include: alcoholism/addiction and discussion, depression, self-loathing]

Grantaire can't remember, now, if he had thought anything was amiss that morning, when it began. Gavroche hadn't been in when he had woken up, often up with the sun if he came to sleep in what he's beginning to think of as their apartment at all, with the weather so nice and the Elephant available. He'd gone to work for the lunch shift... And it was Tintern, where someone had said something. The manager on duty, with a slap on the back.


"Grantaire," he'd said, turning him in away from the customers, and R had immediately recognized the tone of voice as disapproving, though he didn't know why. "You're a funny guy. And you know you're a good bartender. But -- some kinds of humor aren't right for the setting, you know? Go home and change."

R hadn't a clue what he was talking about; he'd removed his jacket to stare at it blankly, and Marie was the one who read out the words on his back: now clearly printed to her just as if it had always been written on the layer below the one their manager had seen.

afraid to be more than
J U S T A D R U N K

It had caught him in the gut, and he'd laughed -- what else was there to do? -- at her tentative, concerned-suspicious expression. But he'd gone home, all too aware of every glance his way. Every laugh loud and sharp in his ears, the world bright as if through some wide-open aperture, even his own heart amplified.

He'd wanted a drink. Badly, by the time he got home, hands shaking on the lock. And he'd hated that more than even the idea that there was something on him, some brand he couldn't see no matter how he tried. Hated how predictable he was. How perfectly true to type.

This could be nothing other than a Darrow trick. Something to get at his head; and if he knew this place at all, it would go away. Like the objects that showed up, or the way people disappear, or the city stole people into other worlds sometimes. None of it ever pleasant, really. But it was just playing with him. Besides, didn't he say the same thing - just a drunk - about himself? He laughed when his best friends called him Winecask, about choosing a profession by what he liked best. How could this hurt him?

He'd fought off the urge to soothe his nerves all night, just to do it, nonetheless. Got the pets and Gavroche fed, even if it required a bit of a dance to make sure he sat down first and got up last. Capable, even responsible, he told himself. Managing, anyway. Nothing to these words, just an insecurity emblazoned on his shoulders for a day.

R'd ventured out the next day, ready for a day off, to distract himself with friends, good cheer. Then he'd heard the words; whispered in uncertain tones by someone behind him to their friend. The nature of the sort of things included in all his potential plans -- congratulatory champagne with Dorian, a night out with Courfeyrac, pizza and beer with Edgar -- seemed to echo in their whispers. More than that, he'd seen other phrases on other people's backs. Secrets. Truths. Things he knew they wouldn't say out loud.

Just a drunk.
It felt more insidious as he slunk back home. Not the truth of it, but its companion: afraid to be more creeping inside his pounding head and into his veins. Incapable of it, more like. There were things he enjoyed that didn't require being drunk, certainly, but thinking about braving the streets to get food or go practice fighting seemed overwhelming. He began a painting and couldn't stand the sight of it within twenty minutes. He thought about calling Edgar and couldn't conceive of letting him see this.

The words have morphed into his father's, Enjolras', his own in his mind. Incapable de vouloir, de vivre, et de mourir...

The first time Edgar had called him, it had made Grantaire feel a little nauseous: what could he say? What could he even offer? Like this?

He'd ignored the phone. Waged a war with the liquor bottles on the cabinet, surrendered halfway through the evening, drunk his nerves to quiet and then stupor. He woke on the couch to dawn and silence, a blanket draped over him and his head on a pillow where Gavroche had clearly taken care not to wake him, come in and back out again, and in that moment he hated himself so viciously he couldn't even breathe.

He smashed the remaining bottle across the sink and watched it drain through the shards with a sense of terror and certainty as though he were watching his soul exit his body.


Who knows how many hours it's been now? He can feel his hands trembling, but he can't tell if that's his own worthless melancholy or the last of the alcohol leaving his body. The phone has turned into a hated, feared drone. He knows he's being awful, ignoring everyone, hiding away: he wants to reach out and he can't. Perhaps that's good: they should know the truth of him.

Comments

[humanresource]

He'd called once, twice, three times now and Grantaire wasn't picking up. After all the shit that was happening, the words on people's backs–on his own back–Edgar had been checking in with everyone. Curtis' secret was across his back for all to see. Neil's too, though they'd carefully not exactly talked about it. One word and one word only was branded across Edgar's back and he tried not to acknowledge it was there: expendable.

"Grantaire," Edgar said into the phone as he hurried up the front steps of the Bramford. "You're not picking up your fucking phone and I'm freaking out some." Someone walked out the door and Edgar wedged himself in before it locked so he could hurry over to #4.

"Grantaire, I'm outside your door."

[pylades_drunk]

It takes R a moment, seated on the ground against the wall, to process that he's actually hearing Edgar's voice. For it to cut through the numb fog. He freezes, caught.

Edgar sounds worried, not angry; why couldn't he just be angry?

"The door's not locked," Grantaire calls, rough with the quiet of having not spoken in a while, and then hauls himself upright, pulse a pound in his chest and head. He pads toward the door shamefully.

[humanresource]

Edgar let himself in and closed the door behind him, uncharacteristically careful in his motions as he did. In the half-light, Grantaire looked wretched and Edgar could smell alcohol in the air around them. That in itself was not so unusual to him. Grantaire liked to drink and it had never bothered Edgar overmuch. It wasn't as if he was some Kronol junkie.

But this time, with secrets on everyone's backs, it didn't seem quite right. Something about the alcohol smelled stale and unpleasant and Edgar swallowed, looking over at Grantaire.

"What's yours say, then?"

[pylades_drunk]

He looks at Edgar sidelong from the shadows, as though a wary dog or some other beast, and not feeling made of much more sophisticated stuff. He's abruptly very aware of the wreckage of the darkened room: yesterday's shirt thrown over the couch, the shards in the sink, empty bottles on the floor. A half done painting he'd sliced into viciously with a knife that still sits there, askew.

R twists a grimace of a wry smile. "Nothing that should surprise anybody."

He has a hooded jacket on that he can't remember grabbing, sometime in the last day while his nerves felt too exposed to air. He doesn't delude himself that Edgar wouldn't see the message if he left it on, but R buys himself a minute taking it off and turning. Maybe it just feels more sickly, satisfyingly painful to have Edgar see the message show itself against bare shoulders.

[humanresource]

Edgar looks around and what he sees in those objects is sadness. Grantaire looks as if he's hurting, really hurting, and the sight of it twists in Edgar's stomach. The words are worse. "Afraid to be more than just a drunk," he reads. Edgar's faace scrunches up and he tries to understand the accusation of those words, the cruelty they imply.

Turning around, Edgar lets Grantaire see Expendable written across his own shoulders. Of all the words this place could have chosen, Edgar can't see how that one's a secret; he's known it his whole life.

"I think you're being a little hard on yourself," he says humorlessly.

[pylades_drunk]

He's heard the whole sentence read out to him once (most of the time, what people have noticed from behind him is just a drunk, murmured in confused or bemused tones, almost worse than the way it repeats in his head ad nauseum in familiar voices). Hearing Edgar say it, that rhythmic accent he's come to associate with the best parts of Darrow, is worse, and his shoulders tense, defensive.

"I don't want pity," he says, sharp, even though he knows that's not quite what's in the other man's voice. He can't bear softness. He wants to build a wall, stop feeling so much, stop Edgar from learning love from such a ruin as himself. Quarantine himself with himself. But didn't he drink through the first barricade? he thinks bitterly. How would he know how to build such a thing?

R turns back, sighs, and rubs his neck. "I'm sorry." Edgar turns, then, in response, and shows him the word written across his own shoulders.

Expendable. Grantaire can't keep himself from reaching to hover his hand over the word, staring, brush his fingers across Edgar's back. "But mine's true," he protests, honestly a little confused. He can imagine Edgar feeling that way, maybe, though it feels like a wound in his chest to even think of. But it's not revealing any truth: if anything, Edgar is too important.

[humanresource]

"Good, I haven't got any," Edgar says flatly. Pity is for smaller, weaker things than Grantaire. He shakes his head, even as Grantaire's fingers trace the letters on his back.

They're both true but Edgar's is truer. Even he can pick out the difference between a hard fact and someone's own statement is fear. It's no different from how Curtis had feared being the leader, even when everyone had known he should be. Grantaire isn't just a drunk but it's scary to be someone else.

But what's on his back?

Edgar scoffs.

"It's true. I have a grand career of being cannon fodder."

[pylades_drunk]

Good. He'd rather be derided, right now, for his own weakness, for his selfishness in not calling, but he's doing rather a good job of that himself, and he doubts that Edgar will join in.

He cares more about the words traced on Edgar's back, anyway. "You're not. I --" Need you. Grantaire puts a hand at the base of his neck, rests it there before turning him. "If you'd failed to notice, no one's reviewing your C.V. here." He shrugs bitterly, squints at the ground. "And you're preaching to the -- dead. But I drank through my friends dying, first, instead of fighting."

He raises his eyes to Edgar's.

[humanresource]

"Dead leading the dead," Edgar says, shrugging. "But you were there." He can't see any point to it. Plenty of friends had died all around him and it hadn't changed his fate in the end anyway.

Reaching out, he mimics Grantaire and cups the back of his neck too. "I don't give a shit about what happened to you or what you did or didn't do. What the fuck does it matter? Can't fix that." The past was set and he couldn't see a way or reason to try and change it.

[pylades_drunk]

It's not the way Grantaire sees it, not the way he'll ever see it probably, but he's feeling too awful to argue.

Edgar's touch is comforting, it always is, and he takes a breath, leaning his forehead in to stand like that, hands on necks and heads together. Pulse to pulse. The sentiment, the touch is so exactly what he wants, and it's a little awful. "You deserve someone who's better than --" he waves with his free hand to encompass the wreck of the room, of himself. "All this. Who can fix anything."

[humanresource]

"Oh fuck off, I'll decide who I deserve," Edgar said, because he didn't know how to be soft or gentle. He cared about Grantaire and he didn't want better, whatever that was even supposed to mean.

Besides, they were both witnesses to a failed revolution. Edgar couldn't think of anyone more suited to him. Grantaire understood.

"And I want you, okay? So don't be an idiot." He leaned forward, forehead on Grantaire's. "Come on."

[pylades_drunk]

His manner, abrupt, a little dismissive, is better than soft words right now, and it almost draws a laugh from Grantaire. Edgar's capable of making his own decisions, even if Grantaire thinks they might be heading him right toward another -- well, trainwreck. It's hard not to want to protect him from it.

"I don't know why you do," he admits in a shaky exhale, "but I know you do." He loops his free arm around Edgar's waist, suddenly, as though dancing. More as though an anchor: he feels abruptly unsteady. How could Edgar be expendable, when he's all that's keeping him upright?

"I want you too. I want to be good for you," he admits, and looks up, at a loss.

[humanresource]

"Do I need to write you a manifesto?" Edgar asked. "Damned revolutionaries." Of course, they were both included in that category and Grantaire knows it. It doesn't matter if they died on the front lines or died hiding. The point had long pased relevance.

"You're already more than just a drunk to me." Maybe the rest of the world should have a chance to see that but Edgar figured it wasn't his job to change Grantaire anymore than it would have been to change Yona's habits. The idea dawned on him then, a sun that had begun rising when he spoke to Neil.

"And I'm more than expendable to you."

[pylades_drunk]

That does make Grantaire laugh, a little louder and sharper than he means to, everything a little close to the surface. "Christ," he says. "If you did, it had better not be about that." Damned revolutionaries indeed. Edgar absolutely has the same passion and fire about things that he found so compelling in Enjolras; he just also happens to be more forgiving.

"I--" He stops himself from fighting with Edgar about it, trembling a little with the way his words stretch in his chest. The second statement is easier.

"Much more. To me, to Neil." To anyone who knows him well, he thinks defiantly, but Grantaire can tell from the way that Neil jokes, the little smirks they pass between them when they talk about Edgar flippantly. He can confidently count Edgar's other lover among that number; he'd be a little upset if he couldn't.

He hates looking at it, though, and he peers at the words upside-down over Edgar's shoulder, tucking his head against his neck, drawing a line through the words. "It's a lie," he says, thinking. "You ought to have the truth."

[humanresource]

"At least I'm not the woman I saw across the road. I have a second family because I hate my husband." Edgar made a nasty face because what a rotten life the woman must have had and how much worse to have it broadcast that way.

"I was expendable." That was still a truth. Because he had been to other people in another world. But not here. Not to Neil, who'd climbed into his lap the other day, and not to Grantaire, who held him now.

And what about the words on Grantaire's back? Like Neil, Grantaire's spoke to fear, to hating himself. "Why're you afraid?"

[pylades_drunk]

Grantaire pulls back to look at him with a raised eyebrow, making a face. "I suppose at least she's found love somewhere?" It is horrible. Maybe it'll do her a favor in disguise, but a secret like that, revealed so abruptly...He's lucky, to not have alienated the people he cares about most, with his, at least. Even if he feels he deserves it.

R makes a grumbly sort of noise, somewhere between begrudging assent and distaste. He doesn't think he can agree readily, unless it's to agree that certain others in Edgar's life before had some pretty poor priorities.

He takes a long breath. Why're you afraid? It's such a simple question, and one that's hard to talk about. "Come here?" he asks uncertainly, stepping back toward the couch and reaching out a hand for Edgar. He wants to be close, but not standing. Not having to. He moves back, inviting space on the couch for Edgar to sit or curl up as he pleases, and chews on the inside of his lip a little.

"It --" He swallows. "Do you know how long it's been, since I've been -- 72 hours, say, without some kind of drink? 48, maybe?" He's usually the one of them that runs warm, but his teeth feel like they're about to chatter. He answers himself. "A long time." Even on the island, even while Darrow was being strange to everyone else... "I don't think I even know."

[humanresource]

When Grantaire settles in the couch, Edgar quickly sprawls over him. He rests his head on Grantaire's chest even as his limbs bend at peculiar angles to accommodate himself and Grantaire. It's squashed and peculiar and it's them so he doesn't really mind.

"What's the longest you've gone then, over the last couple of days." It isn't his job to tell Grantaire not to drink. Is it? Alcoholism had never been a real concern in the Tail. Kronol junkies were in a higher class of passenger. Theoretically, he knows it's bad but he doesn't necessarily know why.

"Do you want to try to be more? Or we can leave it and pretend this never happened."

[pylades_drunk]

Grantaire settles an arm over Edgar's waist, shifts to accomodate. There's no graceful way to curl together on a couch, not really, but the weight of Edgar on top of him feels safe.

"Saturday, to whenever it was last night that I started drinking," he says, and makes a bitter face at himself. Technically, from falling asleep Friday night, through to Sunday evening should feel like a long time, given the way he'd just described himself, but the nature of the way he'd gotten drunk last night almost made it not matter. It had been some combination of angry and oblivion-seeking, proving a point to himself. And it had worked, Gavroche having to care for him rather than the other way around. He hates himself for it.

"It's not the -- arithmetic, of it," he tries to explain. "I suppose that's daunting, but it's -- that's who I am. I'm loud and raucous and too-honest, and is that because of the drink, or is it just a reasonable excuse? I'm sad, and I drink myself to sleep, and I care for someone and I drink enough to not care, or to say so. So many choices I've made -- so much of myself I only look at through a glass --"

He isn't even sure where it ends and where he begins.

He looks up. "No -- I do. It's not whether I want it or not. I must be. I can't go on pretending I can be a good lover to you, a brother to Gavroche, a friend, and do this every time I'm unhappy. But I don't know how to be that. I don't know if I still go on adventures like that. Still say the things I believe, still have inspiration to paint, still make a living." His hands are trembling. "I don't know if I'm someone you'd want to be around. I know I'll be miserable to be around, to be frank."

[humanresource]

Edgar supposed he ought to say something bright, cheery, or encouraging about the length of time but it seemed a little stale when the evidence was all around them of a truly spectacular bender. The slashed canvas, he though, was the saddest part of it but it was only one crack in a room full of broken.

He and Neil had talked about what they were to each other, thanks to the writing on their backs, but that was something he and Grantaire already knew. This time, the question was about who Grantaire was when left on his own.

There were things you were supposed to say in this situation but he didn't know what.

"I've been a right piece of shit," Edgar said. "I've been a goddamn mess and I know I was miserable to be around. What's your point?" Grantaire had and did still love him.

[pylades_drunk]

Edgar's quiet as he rambles, and he knows it's a damned mess to try and respond to. At this moment, the fact that Edgar's come to haul him out of the corner he'd had himself sitting in - figurative or literal - means as much as anything he could say to be cheery.

He snorts softly. "You've had a bit more thrown at you, amoreaux." Those gelatin blocks, the other city's revelation: they're intense and traumatizing, not the same as Grantaire's weak succumbing to melancholy. He runs a hand through Edgar's hair, watches it spike up between his fingers and go soft again. "And..."

And what: he can't say the way he feels, as though it should be evident. That Edgar deserves it, because he deserve anything Grantaire has the capacity to give him, and that's the same reason he deserves not to have to cope with Grantaire.

R tips his head back and squints at the ceiling for a moment before he looks back at Edgar. "And if I'm not?" he asks. "If you're wrong that I'm more, that I aim for something higher than my nature, put you through misery, and all I do is fall back to -- to this, because this is who I am?" He waves at the room. "Or that I do succeed, and I'm not the same? You don't know that, whatever happens, you'll still --"

[humanresource]

"Remember that bit about how we're both from failed rebellions. I don't see how our hands aren't even at misery poker," Edgar said. His conversation with Neil about the words on their backs had made him oddly calm, circumspect about it.

For a moment, all he could do was close his eyes and enjoy Grantaire's fingers running through his hair. It was probably a mess, because it was always a mess, but he liked the way Grantaire petted it.

"I don't think I'm wrong about you. And if things go to shit, then we figure it out." Edgar was used to that and to coping with it.

Anyway, there were services in Darrow weren't there? It wasn't like Grantaire had to do this alone.

[pylades_drunk]

Edgar's blunt, almost nonchalant calm in the face of Grantaire's anxiety-induced mania is almost bafflingly steady. It's steadying, and R takes a long breath.

"We figure it out," he echoes softly, choosing to put his weight on the statement. Trust, faith, it's something that doesn't come naturally to him, and when he finds himself doing it his instinct is to discredit it or back away. But he wants to.

"You amaze me, a bit, coeur," he says, and kisses the top of Edgar's head, tucking his face in to breathe him in.

Expendable. More like the opposite. He draws his fingers down over Edgar's back, thoughtful. "Can I do something?"

[humanresource]

Edgar, himself often prone to mania and twitchy energy, knew it better in others than himself. He tried to be what Grantaire needed, tried to be what he'd needed and never gotten.

"There's programs and shit," he said, giving voice to his thoughts. "Solidarity and all that."

He couldn't remember what coeur meant off the top of his head, but he had a guess. It was enough. Edgar smiled and looked to Grantaire. "Yeah, what?"

[pylades_drunk]

"Programs?" Grantaire isn't familiar with the concept; at home, most of the artists and poets and, frankly, most people he knew drank. Everyone drank: it was safer and much better tasting than the water. If you were so inclined, it became a crutch or a companion; if you were something else entirely, you had no need of that, a division he'd seen frequently in Enjolras' arched brow.

He isn't familiar with the idea of aid beyond sheer will, or even how one is supposed to do this.

R sits up, slowly to give Edgar some warning, and says, "I want to put something new there. Paint," he explains, because that's vague. "Something I think is true." He chews on the inside of his lip. "Will you let me?"

[humanresource]

Yes, Edgar thought. If it stopped the drinking, then yes. If it made Grantaire feel better, yes. If he could cover up the hateful word on Edgar's back, then yes.

He nodded.

"I'd offer to do the same, but I can't paint worth a damn."

[pylades_drunk]

R gets carefully to his feet, heading over to where his art supplies are still a mess. "Everyone can paint, if I can." He makes a pained face at the knife in the canvas; pulls it out in one gesture, refusing to let himself think too much about it or what he'd felt in that moment of destruction.

Instead he picks up a little jar of acrylic and a paintbrush, busying himself with choosing a color that suits how he thinks of Edgar. "If you want to. Just takes fingers and pigment, like a child who hasn't learned not to create yet."

[humanresource]

"Doesn't mean I should." Paint, Edgar knew, cost money and he didn't want to waste it. Furthermore, knowing his luck, he'd probably end up with paint all over Grantaire, his sofa, and the cat in the space of ten minutes.

Best, he thought, to leave it to the professionals.

"I haven't learned to create. That's the fucking problem," he said, smiling, pleased with Grantaire's distraction. "How do you want me?"

[pylades_drunk]

Grantaire shrugs at him. Perhaps the kind of art that became a career is for trained hands only, but Grantaire can hardly call this a career. He does it because that's what his mind does.

"You inspire," he suggests, with a little smile, still terse but starting to relax. "That's harder than creating. But I could teach you what I know, if you wanted."

He huffs a little exhale of a laugh and thinks about it. "On the floor," he decides, "on your stomach."

[humanresource]

"I'm taking a pillow," he said, pretending to grumble. The more the tension bled out, the easier it felt to flirt and tease; the more important it felt to act as if things were fine. If he could just act it, maybe they could get themselves to believe it. The foundation might be a farce but at least it would be a step toward making things all right.

Settling on the floor, Edgar laid his head comfortably down and looked his way, smiling faintly. "What do I inspire?"

[pylades_drunk]

"Shirt off," Grantaire adds, belatedly, grabbing a tumbler of water sitting on the table -- from who knows when? -- as he comes back over, watching Edgar as he lays down.

"Me," he offers, simply, settling on his knees to straddle Edgar's waist. His chest still aches, like the effort of heart against ribs is too much, but the little motions of them around each other, this dance, it's familiar.

"A hundred thoughts," he admits, softening the confession with a long stripe through the word expendable. He couldn't prevent himself from being honest right now if he tried. "Images, hopes, fears, dreams. Each more foolish than the next."

The word shows up through the stripe, as though he paints over wax.

[humanresource]

Edgar laughed and sat up to squirm out of the shirt and then settled back down. Without looking, he could hear and then feel Grantaire settling above them.

For a minute, he just listened. His skin prickled with the frankness of Grantaire's words as much as the paint and Edgar really wondered if that was what it was to be in love. Images, hopes, fears, dreams. And foolishness.

"How do you know you love me?" he asked, giving voice to his thoughts. "I know that you do. I just don't know what that means, sometimes."

[pylades_drunk]

Grantaire chews on his lip, thoughtfully. "It's hard to say what love is," he starts, apologetically, "though the poets have been at it for decades." He starts to decorate the line, elaborating it with swirls and leaves. He can't block out the letters, but he can obscure them.

"It's not just physical attraction: I felt that for you from the first day we met, and i think you know it. And it's not simply enjoying your company, though I do."

He thinks about how hard he fought not to love Edgar. How that felt. That moment in the snow laughing and how that smile bursts in his chest.

"I want to keep you from pain," he says, carefully, squinting at Edgar's back. "I feel -- safe around you. Anchored, if a person could anchor someone like me." He paints an 'in'- before 'expendable'.

"And I want you to have that. To feel safe and happy, to know you're important and that I need you. Even if it means trying harder or that I can't be the one to give that to you. And I think that's what love must be."

[humanresource]

"We fucked the day we met," Edgar reminded him, laughing a little. They'd been so keyed up at fight club, somewhere on the line between fighting and flirting and easy to persuade to cross it right into fucking. It should have ended then. Most of what Edgar had done with his time then had been fucking, fighting, or eating. Living as lazily then as he could allow.

Then he'd stopped seeing Hild. Stopped seeing Joe. Neil and Grantaire had stayed, had become more deeply enmeshed.

"Sometimes I don't see what you could get out of someone like me." But Grantaire said that, said he felt safer and wanted Edgar to feel safer too.

He wanted to turn over to face Grantaire, to trace fingers over his cheeks and jaw. "Then I think I'm in love too," he said, sorting the words out carefully.

[pylades_drunk]

Grantaire chuckles, and it doesn't feel as forced as it did before. "I seem to recall, yes," he teases. "Did we trade names first, or after?"

He'd been done in by that smile even then; maybe there'd been a lot of adrenaline and physical contact pushing their rendezvous, but he hadn't gone home with everyone he fought.

"I wish you could," he says. "See it. I don't know --"

But then Edgar goes on, and he stills abruptly, throat tightening, breath dry in his mouth. Now? Here, with him broken and raw like this, in this wreck -- how could anyone, here, decide --

He's never had anyone say that, to him, ever. Any I love you seems very far away. Had his mother said it? Perhaps not ever.

R's eyes are fixed on Edgar's face, what he can see of it. He wants to be closer, damn the paint; he wants to -- but he can't move. His heart sounds loud in his ears, a desperate drill.

"Do you mean that?"

[humanresource]

Edgar breathed out, feeling Grantaire tense above him. Turning his head it was still hard to get a proper look at him but he managed. He'd never expected for Grantaire to look so shocked, as shocked as Edgar felt that he'd been able to say it.

"I do," he said, careful. "Shit, 'Taire. I don't know how to love someone. If I'm doing it right. I just know that it's different to look at you." It wasn't butterflies in his stomach or some strange and unsustainable elation. It was the fatigued and battleworn thing that held them together when terrible objects came from home or Edgar feared the winter. It was how they managed.

It was how he felt still. Safe.

[pylades_drunk]

Grantaire looks at him, overwhelmed, for just a moment before deciding he's had enough of this forced distance and throwing himself down onto the floor next to Edgar.

"I don't think there's a right way to love someone," he says, almost a little distantly, then looks up at him. "I don't care, if there is. I want your way. Ours. Whatever that is."

He lets out a breath he forgot he'd been holding. "No one's ever been in love with me."

[humanresource]

Careful of the still-wet paint, Edgar worm-crawled his way over to Grantaire, close enough that they could share the pillow and Edgar could drape an arm over his abdomen. He could sink into sleep right here, wake up curled against him, paint stains on the floor, the mess around them to be cleaned up later.

"No one's ever been in love with me. It's a thing I've learned to like," Edgar said, stroking his fingertips along Grantaire's ribs. "You could too, I bet."

[pylades_drunk]

Grantaire sighs, curling into the contact and wrapping an arm around Edgar's waist. His whole body feels as though he's run a marathon, not simply sat here frozen in panic and self-loathing for however many hours before Edgar came.

"I do like it," he says, skin prickling a little under Edgar's gentle touch. It's one of the things he loves, the care Edgar gives without being asked for it. To someone else, he might look a little carefree and sharp-edged to be as gentle as he can be.

Yet despite how instinctively Grantaire knows, from this and other things, that he's cared for, suspected for a long time that his feelings have been returned, it's still not something he's learned to expect.

"It's just -- so much, here," he says, a little helpless. "Right now." He tucks his head in against Edgar's neck and kisses the soft skin at the curve of his shoulder. "I don't want you to have to love me like this," he admits, not quite brave enough to lift his head, "but I'm glad that you do."

[humanresource]

Edgar's hand tripped up Grantaire's chest, up to push hair away from his face. Ridiculous, curly mop. Edgar kept trying to nudge it away and it fell back into his eyes, making him laugh, low and gentle. This was love, he thought. Or maybe it was feeling safe, wrapped up in a tiny and secure world that belonged only to them, which was close enough to love for Edgar too.

"I'll still love you if things get shitty," he said. If Grantaire went into another malaise like this or Edgar got destructive. Or if, yes, Grantaire stopped drinking and put his body through the hell of recovery. He had no idea how bad it could get, really, but Edgar knew he'd been through worse situations than someone trying to get better.

[pylades_drunk]

Grantaire breathes out a soft laugh and blows at his hair. It's untamable, even more so than he, and always has been unless cropped short. He spreads out his hand against Edgar's back and tips his head up, leans in to nudge Edgar into a kiss.

That simple future makes his heart trip a little, his stomach turn over. I will love you. Part of him rebels, wants to fight, you don't know that, you don't know what it will be like, or how terrible I can be, don't promise things, but he's here still, isn't he? And anyway, Edgar is stubborn: he thinks he'd take it as a challenge. He pulls him close, holds on tight instead, shivers a little convulsively in exhaustion and emotion. "I love you." He murmurs it against his skin in the words that come directly from his head: je t'aime, je t'aimerais.

[humanresource]

He was still getting used to the idea of being loved, really loved. The further and further away he came from the Tail, the more he began to envision Gilliam and Grey's relationship as something twisted, made of convenience. That he'd once wanted that with Curtis seemed so far away from what he had with Grantaire. With Neil.

This felt real, natural. Happy.

"So what now?" he asked into Grantaire's hair. Did he stop drinking? Did they go to bed? Did they clean up the apartment as much as either of them was capable?

[pylades_drunk]

"I think I want to try," Grantaire says, caught in his head, in the idea of that hypothetical. "To be -- more than. I don't know what that means, you know, I don't know how much I have to do. If a cheerful drink with friends is all right --" (surely, surely that must be? Christ.) "-- or if to stop myself from being -- this, I have to be someone apart from everything I know." He hasn't known anyone who doesn't drink wine, at least. Even Gavroche. It's like water, ubiquitous. Enjolras might have only sipped, too involved in the revolution to value intoxication, but the idea of avoiding alcohol altogether is as foreign as it is daunting.

"I don't know. But I can't just do this. Challenge my friends to love me. Leave Gavroche to find me or you to get me home when I'm painting over my melancholy."

He realizes that he's rambling and that that may not have been as far in the future as what now even meant.
Grantaire huffs a wry laugh at himself and sighs. "You'll stay with me tonight?"

[humanresource]

"Then you should try," Edgar said simply. "I can help. Maybe." He didn't actually know how to help wean someone of drugs or drink. Neil never seemed to have an issue and Yona was likely to go feral on him for suggesting it. It left Edgar uncertain of what he could do. "I guess you can do one of those programs, if you liked." He had no idea what that entailed either.

Edgar nodded and moved up on an elbow so that he could bend and kiss Grantaire. "I'll stay. We can get a pizza or something." Something easy, comforting. Simple.

They could, probably should, clean up but that could wait.

[pylades_drunk]

"You help by being here," he says, "By thinking it's possible. I don't think there is a way to help any better." He doubts, quietly, than any program will help him with what the real task will be: having the determination to go through with it even when it's difficult, rather than set himself up to fail and turn the whole experience promptly into a joke, a funny story to tell about the Winecask. R doesn't relish the idea of meeting a bunch of strangers to discuss that they all have terrible habits or receive advice from someone who doesn't know him personally.

Maybe they know what they're on about. He'd rather just be able to do it himself.

He tips his head up to kiss Edgar. He hasn't eaten in -- a day, more maybe? Hasn't felt like it either, but the mention of pizza makes his stomach growl. "I think my body approves, at least."