Chapter Text
Sometimes he catches himself doing battement tendus behind the bar.
And then he pushes himself away, finishes mixing someone’s drink, sweeps around the side to go stack up dirty glasses around the pub. It’s pathetic to call it fun, but it is fun, equal to the childish challenge of teetering book-towers at the library. Grantaire piles the glasses high, from his outstretched palm up to his chin, some of his old agility to hand as he dodges the more boisterous patrons and swirls the stack back into the kitchen.
He narrowly avoids a heart attack when he reappears behind the bar and is met by a thunderous slap on the counter and the accompanying roar: “Grantaire !”
Not every friendly greeting is quite so capable of striking paralysing terror into anyone who hears it. The entire pub plunges into nervous silence. The newest customer doesn’t seem to notice.
Waiting as talk stirs up once more, Grantaire salutes the bearded, biker-jacketed, Herculean hulk of a man, turns away and then slides a whiskey towards him. “Alright?” He says, with an easy grin. “How’re you? How’s Law?”
“A most cruel mistress,” Bahorel returns, taking an emphatically long draught of his drink. “Best lesson I’ve ever learnt is still to ignore every goddamn battery law and make your point clear by breaking a nose or two.”
Grantaire laughs. Bahorel needs no encouragement there, but that doesn’t mean Grantaire has it in him to disagree, either. “And that’ll see you breezing through the Bar one day, I’m sure.”
Bahorel shudders. Given he has managed to be ‘studying’ for an actual decade already - with as little discernible progress as possible - he isn’t sure any exam is too looming a worry. (Bahorel and ‘worry’ are oil and water, at any rate, and his natural nonchalance towards his life plans are the only reason Grantaire feels comfortable baiting him about law school in the first place. Because as far as life plans go, he’s really not one to talk.)
“Listen, man, the only bar in my vocabulary is this one. Anyway, what time are you off?”
“In -” Grantaire compares the clock on the wall with the time on his phone, “- twenty or so. Why?”
“I’ll stick around while you close, yeah? I’ve got a proposition for you.”
One of Grantaire’s eyebrows rises in... suspicion or interest, he isn’t really sure. “Alright,” he agrees, giving Bahorel an apologetic half-wave as he moves away to tend to a waiting patron.
As the twenty minutes inch by, Grantaire tosses around a few theories, but in the end doesn’t dwell on the mysterious proposition just yet. Whatever it is, he isn’t sure that it’s ever wise to go along with Bahorel’s brainchilds, although the usual brainchilds are a) entirely spontaneous and b) have the benefit of drunkenness. He doesn’t know whether a planned plan is going to be better or much, much worse.
The last regular is out the door and Grantaire is halfway finished wiping down tables when Bahorel, who has been helpfully tidying the chairs, drags him towards the last two left out, sits him down and snatches the cloth so there will be no fidgeting.
“So.” He says.
“So,” Grantaire parrots back. “Shall I guess?”
“Nah, you’d never get it.” Maybe it’s the way Bahorel’s looking pensive, taking his time - or maybe he’s just knackered, brain at half-capacity right now, unequipped to deal with propositions of any kind - but something in Grantaire’s stomach is already churning.
That is probably a bad feeling.
Bahorel laughs, and finally gets it out. “You know the Arcadia?”
Grantaire squints. “Your Arcadia? The theatre?” Technically Bahorel’s parents’ theatre. Mr. and Mrs. Bahorel have the strangest assortment of properties in the city, bought with the money they aren’t throwing at the law school with the sort of helpless but farfetched hope of seeing their son do something useful. Grantaire doesn’t know how they made their money originally, but they certainly don’t seem to like letting it sit around. Property investing was not it, as far as he knows, though they sometimes buy up places for serious redevelopment. And occasionally just because Mrs. Bahorel ‘has always wanted’ to own a converted warehouse. A block of studio flats. A disused train station. A Portuguese patisserie. An alpaca farm.
And a run-down theatre.
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“Yeah,” Grantaire says. Definitely a bad feeling.
“Well, they’ve been renting it out, but the drama kids’ workshop had to be shut down months back, that old stand-up comedian kicked the bucket or moved to the Bahamas, I don’t know, and the last production - that singing one? With the people dressed as weird cats? -”
“Cats,” Grantaire tells him, with his best straight face.
“Whatever, but it was a flop. Absolute crap. The guy spent too much on costumes, apparently, and then he set the stage on fire, like what the fuck -” There’s some intense hand-waving going on now.
He could listen to Bahorel criticise amateur musical productions all night.
“Anyway, they’ve had no interest since then, no one to hire it out, and they’ve been thinking of selling it on.”
“Shame,” Grantaire offers, not unsympathetically.
“There’s been no interest in buying it either, though - those motherfucking cats have cursed it - so what they really want now is for someone to do something there. While it’s empty anyway. The alpacas are still their priority right now, but they said they might have the theatre spruced up a little, if someone’s actually using it. I think they’re hoping someone will eventually see its potential.”
“...Right.”
“See what I’m saying?” Bahorel prods. “Man, they said you should do something with it.”
Grantaire did not see that coming in the slightest. Taken aback, the laugh tears out of him. “Me?”
Bahorel stares at him pointedly.
“Like, put on a show or something. Maybe even get people to come see it, if you want. Dude, they know you were into all that stuff. They thought, like, ballet. That’s sophisticated shit, even if it’s awful it’ll be better than anything else they’ve had in there.” He is looking terrifyingly earnest about this. Grantaire feels slightly queasy.
“Were being the operative word.” He was into all that stuff. Ballet. The arts. Being on stage.
It’s been a long time since then. That is a different world.
“Yeah, they know.”
“So they want the place put back on the map by a guy who fell off the ends of earth six years ago?” Grantaire says slowly, dumbfounded. “Makes sense.”
“They’re all about their comebacks. You know, the ‘oh, one more, for old time’s sake’ deal. Pretty sure they’re both still hanging their hopes on a Beatles reunion - though I don’t know what they’re after, Lennon and Harrison to chime in from beyond the grave? Sense isn’t their special strength.”
“That’s nice of them and all,” ...or is it horrifyingly presumptuous of them? But as well as Bahorel’s parents know him, they don’t know him, don’t know how this is already dredging up memories he has tried so hard to banish. Memories he would have tossed right into the fire, if only there was as tangible a satisfaction to that as seeing all the show programme souvenirs with his name printed in them shrivel into ashes. “But...”
“Dude, they want to pay you to use it. You could do what you like, put on anything.”
“Anything?” Grantaire asks, still half-convinced this is all a joke.
“Anything.”
“Alright.” He skims through an off-the-top-of-his-head list of ridiculous ideas, wanting to at least get a laugh out of this before he shuts it down. “A classical dance adaptation of Legally Blonde, you as Elle Woods. How’s that?”
“Much as the world is waiting to see me on stage - or to see me blond - I am allergic to even song-and-dance depictions of law, and am going to have to let this one go. But yeah, sure, you could do that.”
He pauses, and flips back into frankness. “I know this is way out of left field, and probably the last fucking thing you want to do. But there’s no pressure, you know? My parents don’t actually care. It’s already tanked, there’s no more damage that can be done. I mean, for some reason they vetoed my proposal of converting it into a fight club, but -” He sighs deeply. “I figure they’ll get round to selling it one day, but they’re not expecting anyone to make money out of it for the time being. Christ, they just don’t like it sitting around collecting dust. So, look, do whatever you want.”
Grantaire gives a noncommittal hum.
Bahorel eyes him. “But my parents will pay you for pissing about if that’s all you do there, so you’d better not say no. Don’t be an ass, just smile and nod and take their money. I mean, God knows why they trust you over me. You’ve beaten out their own flesh and blood and become their favourite son without even trying, you bastard.”
“I’ve been waiting for a good time to tell you that I’m your father’s secret lovechild for years,” Grantaire plays along, more wary about committing to the actual request. He thinks he would feel a hell of a lot worse about taking their money with nothing to show for it, but Bahorel isn’t nearly as oblivious as he pretends to be. Making rent is murder in this city, and neither pub nor library gig are star candidates for covering it. “I guess the truth is finally out.”
“Goddamnit, Jon Snow!” Bahorel leaps out of his seat, then breaks into a grin. “I’ve gotta go, but think about it, yeah?”
He fishes some keys out of his jacket pocket and deposits them on the table.
“Think about it. Boxing on Monday, right - I’ll see ya!”
After Bahorel’s departure, Grantaire sits a while, idly digging the tip of one of the keys into the wooden table. Heaving a sigh, he eventually stands, slips the set of theatre keys into his pocket and locates the pub ones instead.
Outside, he lets the night air wash over him in cool relief.
The next morning, he has the first shift at the library, so between rolling out of bed, attempting to munch on a banana whilst cycling through city traffic without dying - not a recommended activity, but one Grantaire dares to try far too often - and making it in the nick of time, Grantaire hasn’t had a chance to think about Bahorel’s proposition.
But as soon as he has a heap of returned books to reshelve, he has little else to do but think.
Doing ballet again. Thinkingabout doing ballet again. This is ridiculous.
There’s an ache in his legs, from more than the cycling. It is imagined, he knows, a false jolt back to that feeling of unadulterated exhaustion that he used to know. The kind that comes after hours of dancing - performing - the kind of fatigue that cuts right to the bone, that is shaking limbs and a melted brain, that is feeling ready to sleep for a thousand years but also alive, so alive, when every last dreg of emotion is depleted and still that blistering hunger insists, keep going.
He squints hard at the shelf until he gives himself a headache, and as he finally slots in the book where it is supposed to be he’s forgotten the ache. All he can feel now is anxiety coiled in his stomach, clenching at his insides. Lest he forget, he used to feel this too.
He can’t focus on anything, so when he ducks out on his mid-morning break, he digs his phone out of his pocket and thumbs through to Bahorel’s name. Bahorel’s parents won’t really care, so he can’t feel too cut up about this. Part of him, still, wants to put it all into words and give them a real excuse... but he can already feel the words piling up and up and up, until there are a mountain of them and all meaning has been buried somewhere in the avalanche. People have been waiting for him to make proper excuses for the past six years, and Grantaire has not. Satisfactory explanations: why is he so bad at them?
In the end, he deletes the message, starts over, sticks to simplicity, and sends it.
R: thanks, man, and i mean that, but i’m gonna have to say no to the thing. i don’t really have the time for ballet right now. tell your parents thanks from me, though, and good luck with the theatre.
After that, he manages to do his job without feeling like he might be accosted and made to walk the plank out of a sixth-storey window at any moment.
“Yeah, but you didn’t like it, did you?” Gavroche points out, the next afternoon.
Didn’t like it, now there’s the understatement of the century.
“Just because I found ballet school a soul-crushing, life-sucking black hole, doesn’t mean everyone does,” Grantaire answers with a laugh. The last thing he wants to do is project his own problems onto the kid, whose greatest pleasure seems to be leaping around the studio (er, the living room, adapted by means of removing the furniture, pulling up the moth-eaten rug, and adding a sea of mirrors to the walls) in the afternoons under Grantaire’s lacklustre supervision.
He might have sworn off ballet - might have gone full kamikaze in breaking from it - but his connection to that lost world hangs, not-quite-severed, by a last pair of threads, namely Gavroche and Eponine. He can’t bring himself to be bitter over it, just like he couldn’t bring himself to move out from their shared flat when his career went down in flames. What would he have done without the two of them, anyway, trying to move on? He would have been a stranger in his own life.
Eponine is still living a version of the life he used to, and managing a million times better. That said, she is barely twenty-five with sole responsibility of her pre-teen brother, juggling raising Gavroche with her gruelling position with the city ballet. It is the least Grantaire can do to hold down the fort, and so, when he’s not working, he babysits her brother.
Of course, the kid would kick up a storm of a fuss if anyone confronted him with the notion of being babysat. Not like he’ll let anyone do much on his behalf, to begin with: he is happy to get himself to and from school, is already a more deft cook than his sister, and if wits are in question, he is lightning, more than a match for all the adults he comes across put together. He would be perfectly happy to potter around the flat by himself, but Grantaire knows Eponine is rooted by her fears of what might become of him without any structure, so Gavroche-sitting has become their dedicated daily ballet practice. Grantaire also knows that Gavroche looks up to no one in the world more than his elder sister, so is determined to follow in her footsteps.
“It’s a challenge, but it works for some people. It could be the best thing that ever happens to you,” Grantaire continues, trying for neutrality. Gavroche flies across the room in a grand jeté, and then adds a spontaneous pirouette, missing the wall by centimetres.
“I might not even get in,” he says matter-of-factly, wheeling around. “And ‘Ponine can’t afford it if I don’t get a scholarship.” And Gavroche didn’t need to be told that, he just knows.
“You’ll get one.” Grantaire promises him, just as matter-of-factly. He watches Gavroche nonchalantly chassé into a pas de chat, can’t imagine the banal pressures of ballet school causing so much as a scratch on him.
“And she can’t go back to Dad for anything. It was bad enough when she was going for ballet, but imagine if he finds out about me. He’ll go ballistic.” He mimes a head exploding.
Knowing what he does of Mr. Thenardier, Grantaire can’t disagree.
Mind you, the man isn’t exactly one for checking up on his children, so it’s doubtful that he’ll ever find out.
“Whatever happens, we’ll figure it out,” he offers, with feeling. “Here.” He lunges for Gavroche’s foot as he saunters past, who is abruptly forced to shift his balance as his turnout gets adjusted, and Grantaire receives a real grin in gratitude.
Usually, Eponine gets home for dinner, and then Grantaire leaves for his shift at the pub. Tonight, however, he’s not working. Instead he and Gavroche are off to the opera house.
It’s the opening night of a new mixed programme, and Grantaire suppresses the nausea at being there, being back, as they skirt around to meet Eponine at the stage door before the show. She pulls them into the hallway, her makeup and costume already on and in the midst of breaking in a pair of pointe shoes. “It’s hell in here,” she informs the two of them, though her eyes are alight even as she adds, “no one can find a whole rack of costumes - or the conductor - and Miss ‘I’m-BFFs-with-the-entire-Bolshoi’ is having a meltdown in the dressing room right now.”
“Just the usual, then,” Grantaire snorts. Eponine rolls her eyes in answer and asks Gavroche something, but Grantaire misses it, because someone has accidentally barrelled into him.
“Hey, sorry,” the guy says, clapping Grantaire apologetically on the shoulder. He shrugs at the dancer, but looks up and there he is - tanned, curly-haired, Mexican-Colombian - practically a Carlos Acosta in the making. He flashes white teeth in nothing short of a beam. “Grantaire?!”
“Courfeyrac, my man,” Grantaire replies weakly. Someone down the hall is calling for him, but Courfeyrac hasn’t let him go yet.
“Shit, it’s amazing to see you,” he exclaims. “I was starting to think Ep was living with a ghost -”
Another yell for him. Grantaire raises his eyebrows, not quite able to stifle his grin. Courf pauses to plant a kiss on Eponine’s head and exchange a “Merde” with her; laughing, she shoves him off on his way. “See you all afterwards!” He calls, pointing back expectantly at Grantaire before he is carried off by the current of the bustling corridor.
Eponine and Gavroche are already eyeing Grantaire when he looks back at them.
“Thanks for coming,” Eponine says.
Grantaire nods.
He is trying not to feel overwhelmed. It’s not the first time in six years that he’s been standing in this old building, not the only time he’s seen an old friend again, but, apparently, the longer it gets, the worse it feels. And being here so soon after Bahorel’s out-of-the-blue offer... it is a lot. A lot of ballet, all at once. The fates poking fun about a path he couldn’t take.
He’d been offhand in telling Eponine about Bahorel’s proposition, and so she’d been just as offhand in answer. (“Fuck off, why didn’t he ask me instead? I could have done the solo they didn’t give me, for starters,” she’d quipped.)
So she gets it.
“See you later.”
Together, he and Gavroche seemingly make up a rather more irreverent corner of the audience, fighting over the last few Maltesers and laughing riotously as their neighbours side-eye them, as if pegging that the two of them will be trouble. They’re not, of course: the moment the conductor makes his entrance, they fall back, silent, while the prim and proper woman to their right manages to keep rustling in her handbag whilst the orchestra strikes up.
With Gavroche as a fortunate distraction, Grantaire hasn’t glanced at the programme yet; all he’s heard has been an Eponine-eye account of rehearsals. He does know, though, that first up tonight is a classic George Balanchine piece.
Any Balanchine choreography is iconic, obviously. But at the same time, Grantaire has always thought Balanchine’s Apollo to be full of poses, almost too much static, too much stepping - regardless, it’s one of those roles any male dancer would kill to play.
The curtain rises, and light falls upon Apollo.
He looks young, which would be slightly surprising casting for any other principal role, but here can only work in his favour as he plays out the childish god - light, airy, innocent. He strums the lyre experimentally, surprise soon becoming delight, and his eyes are alive with a smile as he herds up the three female muses, looking to them to be taught.
With the muses’ instruction in poetry, mime and dance, Apollo matures, an impossibly good student, refining his early, almost clumsy, sprightliness until he’s just annoyingly impressive, and the one utterly in control.
Knowing intimately what it’s like to be onstage - to be on that stage - Grantaire feels the way a filmmaker must feel watching a film, seeing every individual, deconstructed part, always being acutely aware of what the rest of the iceberg looks like, lurking below water. It is difficult to divorce himself from the ritual and routine of it all, to not see the wings, the crowds of people working backstage, to not picture the mirror view from the stage, pick out dancers’ steps and to know a little of what it feels like. He doesn’t watch ballet often, from this angle. He does it for Eponine, sure, but otherwise it isn’t the easiest thing to enjoy.
But now Apollo is alone onstage, and - damn, he’s good. There is - something about him, something that allows Grantaire to forget. For a moment here and there, he isn’t considering the mechanics any more, doesn’t have to compulsively count the music in his head. He doesn’t have to think at all.
As Apollo spins, bluish spotlights turn to warmer yellow, swathing him in sunlight. His costume is a simple white, his hair a shock of gold, his skin burnished still further, darker than bronze.
But it is the way his body moves, though: he is like marble enchanted into flesh. A Bernini come to life. Pygmalion’s peerless Galatea. And despite all that, it doesn’t feel like posturing, it just looks natural. Always perfectly centred and working every breath into his movements, he leaves no room for fumbling, never seems to miss his mark.
Gavroche has leaned towards him and whispered something else in his ear, but Grantaire cannot feign irreverence now, and doesn’t answer, can’t look away.
It’s a relief when the curtain falls, and they move on to the next piece.
And at least Eponine’s there now, partnering stage-left. Another pair mirror them on the other side, but it is the central couple whose pas de deux is most elaborate and most technical. She’s one of the muses from earlier, back again to show off her skill. And Grantaire realises that this is who he’s heard so much about. It is her first year with the ballet here, after a year or two in Sydney, and she is already the darling of the ballet masters. She’s leapt in as a first soloist, a clear sign that the company sees potential in her to progress into principal roles.
Eponine had been counting on that promotion.
Instead she’s been stuck where she is for three years in a row. Grantaire isn’t sure why: after all, she dances her part exceptionally well, and she and her partner here - Feuilly - are well-matched. Either of them deserve the opportunity to do more.
But that’s not always how it works in this world, and that’s only one reason on the epic list of why he’s better off gone from it.
Chewing on his tongue, he forces himself back into watching the scene, his eyes nearly always fixed to Eponine and Feuilly. There’s no sign of Apollo among the dancers in this act.
Grantaire isn’t sure whether he blames Eponine’s ability to barter household favours or Courfeyrac’s talent at puppy-dog eyes more for this, but the fact remains that after the third piece, they all traipse over to a bar across the road for the opening party. It’s really a low-key affair, journalists wildly outnumbered by family and friends, and most of the dancers are so knackered it’s a wonder they aren’t swaying on their feet without a drink in them, but, as most of them get the night off tomorrow while the alternate cast perform, they may as well take the chance to deviate from their routine where it is offered.
He feels a little more at ease once he has propped himself by the bar and downed two drinks while Eponine makes her rounds. He’s happy enough to loiter here, mostly to avoid having to bump into old acquaintances and friends. If Courfeyrac’s still here, he doesn’t doubt there will be others, and the last thing he wants to deal with are questions of how he’s getting on now, what exciting things is he up to, probably a ton of travelling and maybe TV work, right? Listen, no one he has ever spoken to since his departure has received his unironic answer of ‘bartending’ without an awkward laugh and frown of consternation, so forgive him for not bothering.
Just as he begins to contemplate a third drink, his gaze catches onto a shock of blond curls, and instantly he just knows there is an invisible fisherman somewhere gloating over the hook, line and sinker that Grantaire has just swallowed like he’s been practicing with circus knives all his life.
How unfair is it that anyone can have such a presence on and off the stage? He’s tall without seeming towering, but there’s something unearthly about him still. In proper light, his hair is even blonder, his skin even darker. He’s a little less poised now, perhaps - he’s slouching a fraction, not quite smiling, a hand slung across his body, curled around his opposite arm - but there is a burning earnestness in his eyes as he congratulates another dancer. Maybe not quite Greek god anymore, but, shit, he could probably still pass for a demigod, at least.
Well, fuck that.
Grantaire hastily casts around for a different subject. Finding none, he backs up, wondering where Eponine has gotten to now - abandoning him here like a lost duckling - and nearly treads on someone’s toes in the process.
“Sorry!” He exclaims, at the same time she does.
“Terpsichore, isn’t it?” He realises. She is small and slender and exceedingly pretty, hair still held up in a shiny bun. Perhaps it’s just a side-effect of ballet, but there is something almost birdlike in the way she holds herself so lightly, as though her limbs are made of air.
She beams. “Well, yes,” she says, “though I do get Cosette more often. It’s lovely to meet you.” She holds out her hand. Grantaire takes it, and it is possibly the fiercest handshake he has ever felt.
“You were spectacular,” he offers, grinning but sincere, entirely forgetting that he is supposed to bear a grudge against her. “Grantaire,” he adds, hoping against hope that some scandals never reached Sydney, or wherever it was she’d been working before. “I live with Eponine.”
He waits for something snide to come so that he can unleash some snark in his head and start to hate her. But Cosette’s face lights up as though he’s just mentioned her dearest friend in the world. “Oh, Eponine! She’s the absolute queen of the barre,” she exclaims. “And wasn’t she wonderful tonight?”
Grantaire feels an iron grip on his elbow. Speak of the devil.
But Eponine hardly seems to register Cosette at all. “R, have you seen Gavroche?”
“Um -” He scans the room hurriedly. It’s not a huge place, and Gavroche isn’t the only kid there, but the gaggle of young ballet school girls there are all congregated in a booth, giggly and half-asleep, a couple of parents cornered in as human pillows.
Just as real concern has begun to hammer him, however, he catches sight of her brother at the bar, just about in earshot. He points, silently.
“What do you think you’re doing, kid?” The barman is asking, frowning down at Gavroche.
“Mate,” Gavroche says, settling a defiant elbow on the counter, “I’m getting a vodka for my wife.” He jerks his head behind him. Grantaire follows the helpless barman’s gaze towards the company’s very Russian and very middle-aged ballet mistress, and stifles his snort as best he can.
Eponine cracks a smile, crumpling in relief. Somewhere amidst this Cosette has melted away to a different conversation, though when Grantaire spots her again she shoots him a hopeful thumbs-up.
“So,” Eponine nudges him. “Go on then. The honest verdict. No holding back.”
There is a chance she wants his judgement of Cosette, but Grantaire decides to congratulate her instead. He can’t overdo it, or she flat-out won’t believe it. “Thought you were on point. Feuilly seems to agree with you better than the last guy you had, what’s-his-name. You two were pretty great tonight, not even a slip-up on the old shoulder sit.” He nudges her back and she nods, pleased.
“What did you make of Apollo?” She asks next.
Grantaire knows she means the piece as a whole, but really, what else is there to say?
“Oh, god.” He groans. “Him.”
“Right? He’s ridiculous.”
“Ridiculous is an understatement.” Grantaire counters. Eponine rolls her eyes, as though she can sense the impending tirade. He carries on anyway. “I mean, way to overdo everything. He must have practiced every night in his sleep or something, that’s just not natural. Or he’s got some kind of built-in magnet in his core that forces everyone to be looking at him all the time. Christ, why haven’t you talked to him in class? I mean, I can see why, but maybe he’s trained in some top-secret dance hypnotism. And the poor muses, you know? All that work put into their parts and their own families probably don’t remember that they were there. Like, who the hell does he think he is?”
“Enjolras,” says a voice beside him. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”
Grantaire glances to his left in tortured slow-motion, the expression on Eponine’s face an entirely unhelpful confirmation. Sure enough, it’s him. Enjolras, apparently. Enjolras doesn’t extend a hand. Grantaire doesn’t blame him.
“Eponine,” Eponine offers crisply, when it becomes evident that Grantaire is still computing. Okay, but - who eavesdrops on conversations about them and then just decides to go up and introduce themselves?
“I think I’ve seen you in class,” Enjolras observes. There are a lot of dancers there, but she shrugs in probable confirmation. “Congratulations on tonight.”
“We were just saying how good you were in Apollo,” she returns, which, technically, they were.
Enjolras, for some totally strange and unknown reason, doesn’t seem to have interpreted it that way. “It’s fine,” he says. “I don’t mind hearing honest feedback.”
“Okay.” Grantaire has come to life again. “Yeah, well, I thought you got that godly arrogance down pat,” he says dryly, “and we were just wondering whether you actually learned to play the lyre.”
Enjolras just stares.
Oh, how Grantaire loves every chance he gets to come crashing down in flames.
“I mean, I suppose I have a couple of quibbles.” Made-up quibbles. No one in their right mind could have quibbles with that fucking performance.
“What are they?” Enjolras insists.
Maybe the golden god has never been talked at like this before, or maybe that his tensed jaw is the only thing belying his utterly impassive expression is proof of his practice at receiving it. And maybe Grantaire’s just a complete shit (though no need for uncertainty there), but that only makes him want to try harder.
“I saw a wobble in that arabesque, after the -” he illustrates the spinning section with a circling finger. “You were a little late to get up from your kneeling, with Terpsichore. And you have a thing,” he deadpans, “with one of your fingers. It likes to stick out.” It is with an awful kind of glee that, after his mimicry of someone sipping from a teacup, finger splayed out awkwardly, he catches Enjolras furtively glancing down at his own hand. (Okay, so, there’s nothing even wrong with his finger placement.)
“And you are?” Enjolras challenges, when he meets Grantaire’s gaze again.
“Enchanted to meet you,” he drawls.
Eponine has been standing there in exasperated silence, merely lifting one of her eyebrows higher and higher, and any moment now it’s going to shoot right off her face.
“You’re not a journalist, are you?” The other dancer queries, evidently bewildered.
“Nope,” Grantaire says, perfectly satisfied to leave it there.
“Of course he’s not,” Courf says, swanning into their conversation with dazzling aplomb. “R, I hear you’re back.”
What?
“Directing, though, right? Or is it choreographing?”
What? He glares at Eponine, but she seems to have no clue where Courfeyrac has been getting his information either.
“At the Arcadia, come on.”
Fucking Bahorel.
Eponine has opened her mouth, hopefully to shoot Courf down as bluntly as usual. Enjolras is suddenly surveying him even more curiously.
“Oh, right.” Grantaire feigns. “Yeah, it’s - a bit of both, actually.”
What?
“Who for?” That’s Enjolras asking.
Curse Grantaire and his over-exercised bullshitting faculties. “I’m freelancing, in fact.”
“Jesus, that’s awesome.” Courf declares. “Have you worked out what you’re doing, then?”
Grantaire has considered what he’s doing for approximately two seconds, which is obviously a reasonable period of time in which to come up with a successful and original idea for a ballet. He’s decided he’s a genius, with an idea already on the tip of his tongue, but as he opens his mouth to impart it, he sees Enjolras’ expectant expression, and lets Rickrolled : the Rick Astley parody ballet slide away for a rainy day. No. He’ll go for something more serious. Laudable, not laughable. Shock Apollo here with something classy. Classic. Sure.
“Yeah. I’m adapting the Iliad.”
...Homer’s goddamn Iliad, no sweat.
Eponine tries to cover up the sound of choking. Courf, on the other hand, whistles, impressed. “Man, that could be so cool.”
Enjolras is more sceptical. “Really?”
“Yep.” Grantaire nods, and lets out a laugh at how calm he is staying in the midst of this nightmare. Possibly to stop himself crumpling over in this disbelieving laughter, he adds, offhand, “Auditions will probably be soon, if either of you have a little time for extra dancing.”
“Let us know.” Courfeyrac is beaming. Enjolras doesn’t seem to know quite what to say.
“Will do.”
Well, that went well.