[for eden]

[pylades_drunk]

Grantaire doesn't exactly smoke, although if attending recovery meetings started it as a habit, it'd be exactly the sort of irony he enjoys in his life. He doesn't exactly not smoke, either; it's a social sort of vice he isn't opposed to sharing with others, although if he has the choice between tobacco and other green things to calm his nerves, he'll smoke the latter.

Right now, there's the usual post-meeting clamor for caffeine and nicotine, and he stands in its wake, watching the attendees head appropriately far outside the building to smoke or stand around the coffee machine with styrofoam cups.

At first, Grantaire had left the meetings quickly after they were over, annoyed that he couldn't do this on his own and eager to rejoin the real world, as he saw it. He hadn't wanted to associate with other alcoholics, other people whose struggles reminded him of his failures. But months in, he's realizing more and more that some of the people here have more in common with him than some of those he'd befriended before he went sober.

He leans on the brick, tapping his fingers on his own cup, slightly over-roasted coffee an excuse more than anything else to linger. He etches a line with his fingernail into the side. He isn't always good at befriending new people, but he likes being around them. The meetings encourage disclosure; it's easy to feel close. It's not unlike the Amis, in a way: a very specific circumstance and set of people who he's found common ground with.

He glances over as a young woman comes through the door. Eden. He's seen her quite a bit around here, and though they haven't spoken much outside the meeting, he likes what he knows of her.

Offering a sideways smile, Grantaire raises his cup to her in hello.

Comments

[wishesandsmoke]

Eden has one of the more unusual stories in these meetings, she knows, being one of the few with a power. She was worried at first that the others wouldn't trust her as a result, that she might even be asked to leave, but Darrow is a strange place, which, for her, makes it a safe one. Her ability is part of her story, and it's as kept in confidence as anything else she shares. That in itself makes her feel like she belongs here more than in many other places in life. The other people in AA have become a community, a safe haven, for her.

These days, it's easier to focus more on the present when she shares. Her past and power are things that rarely have to come up anymore, though they never completely leave her. That's something she's learned to live with. The meetings help with that.

She smiles when one of the other attendees, one she knows only a little, lifts a cup in greeting to her, one she assumes is full of the same shitty coffee she's carrying. Even that, she likes now, mostly for the friendly familiarity of it. She's been drinking this coffee for years. "Hey," she says warmly, lifting her cup in return. "How's it going?"

[pylades_drunk]

"It's going," he says, with a small smile; it's his go-to answer, because it translates literally in French, and so it's pleasing in some symmetrical way. Things have been gradually getting better since June, though the trials of having roughly returned home, or seemed to, still crop up now and then, even -- or especially -- because life at home is so contented and stable. Trauma, he's learned, creeps in around edges.

But he's functioning, and he has a job he likes unexpectedly, and now he's just working on the bit where he keeps waiting for the other shoe to fall. Here, he thinks, people understand that, and so in this moment he gets a reprieve.

"Wondering a bit when I started to like this coffee," he adds, with a wider smile. "It's Eden, isn't it?" Even though he doesn't know much about her, names at least the meetings facilitate.

[wishesandsmoke]

Eden laughs, small and soft. "It grows on you, doesn't it?" she says and nods. "Eden, yes." These meetings are full of people she knows now, by name and by story, even the ones she's barely talked to outside of meetings. It's impossible, at least for her, not to walk away feeling a certain closeness to the others. They all have different backgrounds, different reasons, but they share something fundamental, not just the struggle of addiction, but the desire to escape it. It binds them together, kindred. It's good, she's long since found, to be here, a place where she feels understood.

"Grantaire, right?" she adds after a moment. He's been coming for a while now, and she feels a certain pride for him as she does for any of the others who are here trying their best to deal with this. It's an uphill battle always, even after years for her, and just fighting it is a victory in her eyes.

[pylades_drunk]

He smiles at her laugh. Always, it's a pleasure to him to make someone else laugh, even if it's something as simple as a wry bit of small talk. Later, his mind will dissect whether it was a true laugh or her humoring him, but right now, it feels good.

"It is," he nods. "You even pronounce it right," he adds, smile widening a little mischievously. It's not actually something that bothers him much anymore, but it was strange at first when he started doing things here that involved having his name on documents, and people didn't infer the French pronunciation.

"It's strange, isn't it, to enjoy just watching people afterwards," he thinks out loud. "I do. I feel like I know everyone here a little bit, like they -- or you -- know me. But we're not really friends outside of this space. A little liminal, you know? Do you ever spend much time with anyone from here?"

[wishesandsmoke]

Eden watches him as he speaks, a soft smile on her lips, and nods. "Liminal," she echoes. "That's a good word for it. Everything's so... in-between sometimes." She feels like that a lot of the time, now that he says it. So much of her life feels like she's in a perpetual state of observation, reaching out now and then to try and be part of the world, rarely quite making it. She's an actress. Sometimes it seems to her like that extends well beyond the stage.

"I don't. I've been coming for years now," she continues, "and there are people who matter a lot to me, and yet I feel like — it's true, we're not exactly friends. But they know things about me I've never told even my closest friends." Even now, she keeps it to herself much of the time: the way she was raised, the time she spent unspeaking, the powers she wielded against the world, the way she died. It's all too much, too heavy, she sometimes feels. Like it's unfair to share that with people who haven't signed up for it. Like it's safer just for her to carry it all alone, except when she's here or talking to her therapist. Even then, it seems at times an imposition. But then, she supposes, they all must feel that way. That's the point of being here, to share what they can't anywhere else, to seek support.

[pylades_drunk]

He nods, smiling back. It's good to be understood; sometimes he can get lost, a bit, in metaphor, and can feel foolish talking at length when he's sober, even now. Her patient watch as he speaks, the way she agrees with the assessment, it looses a strand of that knot of not-belonging that keeps him the observer so frequently at times.

"Years." He raises his eyebrows, smiling. He might have heard that before, but he's not sure. There's a certain equalizing principle about the way they introduce themselves, even though sidling into his first meeting he'd felt awkward amongst those already there. Since, new people have arrived; others have departed, and some, like Eden, have stayed. "That's impressive."

Perhaps it should be more impressive if this place wasn't necessary anymore, but Grantaire thinks, if he didn't come back, it'd be more likely because he'd given up than that he'd remained sober.

"I know what you mean." There are many things he hasn't brought up even here, yet, especially as regards Darrow trickery; but some of the things he has, he wouldn't share with Courfeyrac, Combeferre, or Marius. They wouldn't understand, coming from the same place and time, or they'd feel guilty when they don't need to. Or Edgar and Neil, for that matter. They're not things they need to worry about, the way his mind works against him.

"It makes us something, though, doesn't it? Comrades, maybe," he suggests. They certainly both have battles to fight. He sips his coffee for a moment. "I'm not very good at making friends, anymore," he confesses, "without doing it through some excuse. It used to always be at bars, you know? Or over a long conversation and some wine. I'm all right at keeping myself away from all that, but not so good at the other part."

He glances at his cup. "Maybe coffee's the new stand in," he suggests with a little smile.

[wishesandsmoke]

"Maybe it is," Eden says, her smile warm in return. "I was always the same. I didn't really have friends growing up, not until I left home, started going to bars and clubs. It was like I had to learn it, how to make friends, and then you get sober and the rules change again."

She's gone to clubs since she stopped drinking. It's a mistake, she knows it, and not something she'd advise anyone else do. She knows the path is different for each of them, that some people can manage that kind of temptation. She did, however narrowly. In those days, she'd been intoxicated by someone else, following wherever Lily led. Without these meetings, she's not sure she could have managed not to go back after she lost Lily or again when Luke vanished. There's companionship in places like that, without a need for anything deeper. But then, she knows, it would be empty that way. She needs the deeper things, the connection. It's why losing them almost tipped her over the edge back into drinking. Without them, she was alone again, just like before.

The meetings are a godsend that way, though she's still not all that certain about any higher power exactly. If there is one, she thinks it might just be the nature of the world, the magic of existence, not some old man shaking his fist from the clouds. Whatever the identity of the deity, though, it's the people that count. A sense of belonging. He's right, of comradeship, a feeling they're brothers-in-arms in the same confusing war.

"But I guess this is as good an excuse to make friends as any. It's a hell of an icebreaker, that's for sure."