Work Text:
Jehan wakes up, and it’s dark; he doesn’t know what time it is at first, has a moment of not knowing where he is or when he went to bed. But he can smell food, outside, and someone is humming. Either he has a really strange burglar, or one of his friends has let themselves in.
He has half a mind to just let whoever it is do whatever it is they’re doing, but after a while he drags himself to his feet. His notebook is lying open where he threw it on the floor after a few false starts, and he kicks it aside with one toe and peers out.
The light burns his eyes a little. In the little kitchen, Grantaire is poking something in a pan, humming to himself. He has a streak of green paint on his cheekbone.
“He awakes,” R says with a smile. “I’m making eggs. I bought food, and then I thought, you might wake up and be hungry, and I certainly am, so: eggs.”
“You broke into my apartment to cook me breakfast,” Jehan says tentatively.
“Well, no one can have too much food. I mean, I suppose someone can. But I suspect you can’t.” He flips the eggs over. “There are clean clothes, too. You were asleep for a while.”
“R. That wasn’t -- necessary.” Jehan is overwhelmed, a little, by competing emotions: a familiar well-met surge of despair that he has become someone about whom others worry and maybe should, and intense love for his friend, and he hangs onto the doorframe and allows both to exist at the same time.
Grantaire plates the eggs. "I know, but you would do it. And have, and more than that. Besides, if not now, when?" He turns around. "I mean that literally. The muses have kissed my face and taken me dancing this week."
"And they inspired you to make me eggs?" His mouth edges into a smile.
"No,” he says, loftily, walking over, “I asked them, where is my good friend Jehan, who you love so much, and who is so often with you, and they said, we cannot see him, as the dark lady finds him too enchanting and wants him for her own, but you know her well, Grantaire, perhaps you can bring him back to us as we have so very many things to tell him."
Jehan softens. “You’re beautiful,” he says with a wry smile. “And next week you’re going to be a complete disaster.”
“I’m not beautiful. Beauty isn’t for me. I traded it for an invincible liver,” Grantaire says. He hands Jehan the eggs and raises an eyebrow. “You’re hungrier than you think you are.”
“That’s presumptuous.”
“No, it’s experienced.”
Jehan looks at the eggs and realizes he’s absolutely right: he can’t remember when he last ate, and egg yolk soaking into toast sounds kind of amazing. “But you were inspired, R, you were painting -- “
“Yes, and you were trying to write, and both of those things will still be here when you’ve eaten, and showered, and read something.”
That sounds like a lot. “Let’s start with eating,” he mediates, and Grantaire nods totally contentedly as if Jehan had made the idea up himself, and gets himself a plate.
Later on, Jehan’s lying with his head on Grantaire’s shoulder listening to music, and he says, “I kind of love you, you know,” and R smiles, and mumbles, “You don’t have to sweet talk me, I’ll make you breakfast anyway,” and kisses his head.
“Practice for Enjolras,” Jehan jokes, and smirks at him upside down, and Grantaire says,
“No, just a poor man’s Courfeyrac,” and makes a face at him.