Work Text:
Grantaire is working on a commission portrait for a family with too much money and not enough sense to call him out on his high prices when his phone rings. It’s still that now-outdated pop song that Courf set for Enjolras’ ringtone months ago.
Another lifetime ago?
Possibly. Grantaire wipes his hands on the rag hanging out of his back pocket and swipes his finger upward on the screen. It leaves a beige streak anyway. Ah, well. Some things cannot be helped.
“Grantaire’s House of Kink and Art, how may we serve you today?”
“Grantaire! Uh,” Enjolras stammers and stops short, sounding worried. Grantaire’s smile fades from his face and he pinches his eyebrows together.
“What’s wrong, E?” His heartbeat speeds up with every second Enjolras doesn’t speak. Direct and blunt are two adjectives that make up Enjolras’ very foundation, so when he hesitates, it’s usually not a great sign.
“Well, uh, I think your sister is here at the Musain. She’s been asking around for you. I think it’s her…I recognize her from a picture I saw in the house when we picked up Annabelle.” It’s been two months since that night, and Annabelle seems to be doing well, or as well as a child can be who’s seen both of her parents overdose. Grantaire only gets the occasional middle-of-the-night call now from one of the Harrises. Annabelle started having nightmares the second night she was with them, and hearing Grantaire’s voice is often the only way to calm her.
Mostly, though, Belle is as strong and plainspoken as she ever was. Grantaire’s been up to visit with her twice, resisting the urge to go more often. He knows she needs to get acclimated to living with the Harrises, and him being there all the time as another authority figure would just confuse things.
“Oh my god, how’d she manage to get there?”
“I don’t know, but she is, and she’s kind of making a scene. I think she’s high or drunk or both.” Grantaire’s stomach drops. He loves his little sister, he does. He took care of her when their mother died and their father retreated into a bottle only coming out to throw punches and angry words. He made sure she went to school and was fed and had adequate clothing to shield her from the weather.
But, eventually, she fell so far down that she might have broken through rock bottom and kept going.
“I’ll be there in, fuck, I don’t know, but I’m leaving now. Just tell her I’m on my way and try to calm her. She won’t be dangerous.” Grantaire was already sliding his wallet in his pocket and grabbing his keys.
“Okay, R. Just try to relax. We’ll handle this.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” Grantaire really did not want all of his family’s dirty laundry aired out in front of their friends, but on any given day, most of them would be at the Musain at one time or another.
“Courf, Combeferre, and Bahorel.” Fuck. Fuck.
“Fuck.”
“It’s fine. Bahorel’s got her sitting down next to him now.” That was fast. He can almost see Enjolras giving Bahorel a vague nod and a hand motion and Bahorel just knowing what he meant. Their group of friends really is just one big incestuous, slightly psychic (at least with each other) family.
“I’m almost there,” Grantaire pants. He’s running. It usually takes him twenty minutes to walk there, but today, he’s sprinting as fast as his smoker’s lungs will allow. It’s really going better than he expected. He’s not even going to think about what’s going to happen when he gets there. Hopefully he can get her outside before they end up fighting about whatever it is that brought her in search of him.
“Okay, I’ll see you in a minute.” Grantaire hangs up and slides his phone in his pocket with some difficulty as he is still running full-tilt toward the Musain.
He has to take a minute outside when he gets there to catch his breath. Maybe now is the time to cut down his cigarette intake. Once he can breathe a bit easier, he swallows down the ugly feeling of anger and goes inside. He immediately spots Lori sitting silently between Bahorel and Courf as they talk animatedly around her. She seems to be fascinated by Courfeyrac’s sweeping hand gestures and Bahorel’s raucous laughter. He waits until he gets to the table before speaking.
“Lori,” Grantaire says quietly. It takes her eyes a few seconds to find him, but when they do, she light up and throws herself over the table at him. Enjolras and Bahorel catch the table before the toes of her shoes can tip it over, and Grantaire grabs onto her and drags her the rest of the way over it.
“R! I’ve been looking for you everywhere. I went to your old art studio and then to a couple bars and then to a little museum where I saw your name in the window.” Well, maybe it’s not the time to cut down on smoking because after this, he will need a lot of them.
“Lori, why are you here? What’s wrong?” he asks, evenly, noting the flush in her cheeks and the way her pupils are nothing but pinpricks. He’s keeping his anger lidded. It’s simmering away in his gut, but it’s contained. For now. Lori’s face crumples and she starts to cry.
“I need you to help me get Belle back. Please. I need her. I can’t make it alone,” she pleads. She’s clutching Grantaire’s forearms and has the top of her head pressed into his chest. It’s reminiscent of the way she used to hold onto him when she was afraid as a child. “I can get clean, I can, Grantaire, I can do it. I know I can, I just need Belle to do it.” Grantaire tries to move backward to steer her outside for some fresh air and fewer spectators, but she won’t budge. He’ll have to drag her out if he wants her to leave right now.
“I can’t help you, Lori and neither can Belle. You have to help yourself.” He wonders how many times he’s uttered these words to her since she started using. Her eyes turn murderous.
“Oh look at the high and mighty Grantaire doling out advice to his little junkie sister. Well, you might have been able to get sober all alone, but not everyone is as strong as you,” she grates out lowly and angrily.
“That’s not what this is, Lori. I can take you to rehab. You can go through it all again. But if you don’t want to make yourself better, then nothing’s going to work.” Lori turns sad again, wailing loudly.
“I can do it, though. I just need help. I need to see my daughter. Where’d she go? Do you have her?”
“No one told you?” Grantaire asks, genuinely wanting to know.
“No, the cops wouldn’t tell me and you wouldn’t answer your phone.” Tears are streaming down her dirt-stained face.
“She’s not with me. She’s with the only other family she has left.” It takes Lori a while to figure this out, like it’s some great riddle.
“Barbara and Allen?? You left her with those high-class assholes?!” Grantaire takes a split second to see what the rest of the patrons are doing. Most have left. Eponine’s newest hire, Kinsey, is behind the counter, unable to decide whether to ask them to leave or just keep wiping down the already spotless pastry case. Enjolras seems as if he’s fighting with himself to stay seated and let Grantaire handle this on his own. He appreciates it. Courfeyrac turns his head abruptly away when Grantaire’s eyes find his, as if he’s ashamed to have been eavesdropping. Like anyone in the entire building can’t hear them. Combeferre is staring very determinedly at his book, and Bahorel is leaning back in his chair, keeping a cool, appraising gaze on him and Lori.
“For fuck’s sake, Lori, Allen’s a schoolteacher and Barbara’s a receptionist. They took Annabelle in because they care about her, and let me tell you something.” The rage is starting to stream out, and suddenly, Grantaire is gone. It takes a lot for him to lose his temper, but once he’s there, there’s no stopping it. It’s something he unfortunately inherited from their father. At least he’s never hit anyone he loves. A few bar patrons here and there. Smack-talking gym rats, sure. But never his loved ones. Never his family and never his friends. He does have just enough self-control for that.
“The Harrises are basically fucking saints compared to what that little girl’s had to handle. What five-year-old should have to learn to cook for herself? Why should a little girl have to learn how to read and do math so she can go to the corner store by herself for food?”
“But, I just needed help! You know what our parents—“ she starts, getting in his face. He meets her head on and doesn’t back down, forcing her to retreat in the heat of his anger. He’s seeing red. How dare she come here and taint one of the places in his life that holds good memories with the past he so thoroughly shoved down into the dark? How dare she?
“This isn’t them, Lori. This is you. Yeah, our parents fucked us up, but it’s up to us to get past that or learn how to live with it. Our parents aren’t the reason you lost Belle. They aren’t the reason you won’t stay clean. That’s all you.” Lori is crying in earnest now, hunched and cowered under the weight of Grantaire’s words. Her hands are covering her face as she sobs. Grantaire takes a second to breathe and look at what his baby sister has become, and he finds that he pities her. His anger is abating slowly, even as he heaves for oxygen. He can see he was out of line, that it’s not her fault she managed to find one of his safe havens. He’s mostly mad on behalf of Annabelle.
“Belle deserves so much better, Sis. She deserves the world, and her grandparents might be able to give that to her. You can’t,” Grantaire says softly, reaching out to put his hand on her shoulder. That’s apparently the last straw, since she leans back out of his reach and then surges forward, shoving him with all her strength and runs from the café. Only his boxer’s balance keeps him from falling on his ass.
He stares out the door as it clangs backward against the wall and then slams closed again. His mouth is slightly open and his eyes are widened in surprise. Everything is quiet for a few long seconds. Then there are warms hands on his shoulders, guiding him to a chair, gently pushing him downward to a sitting position.
He doesn’t know what’s worse. Being a junkie who lost her daughter because she chose heroin over her child, or yelling at his junkie baby sister and telling her that her daughter deserves a better mom than her. He sure as fuck feels like the biggest asshole in the history of assholes.
“Grantaire,” someone says. His eyes snap up and Enjolras’ face fills his field of vision.
“What?” he asks, absently.
“Are you okay, man?” Bahorel has his phone in his hand, ready to call Eponine. Grantaire can see his thumb hovering over her name in his favorites list. Eponine would know what to do. She always knew how to handle Lori when she was high. It’s one of the skills learned with the family name of Thenardier. He snaps out of his reverie and meets Bahorel’s eyes.
“Don’t call Ep. She’s got her hearing this afternoon about becoming Gav’s legal guardian. She doesn’t need this shit on top of that.”
Enjolras cards a hand through Grantaire’s hair. He manages to restrain himself from pressing his face into that hand.
“But what do you need?” He thinks on it.
“I need to go talk to her before she does something stupid.” He picks at the cerulean paint caked on his thumbnail. “Because of me.” No one asks what he means. No one opens their mouth to tell him it’s not his fault. Every single person at this table knows without a doubt that Grantaire will not believe it.
“Okay, let’s go find her,” Courf declares. They all start to get up, moving as one group rather than individuals within a group.
“No, this is something I have to do. Alone.” He already knows where to go. He knows where the closest place to score is. He never used hard drugs, but he could find them if he needed them. Any street kid, current or former, could.
Enjolras kisses him and lets his hand fall as Grantaire turns and leaves. Reason #5,107 why Grantaire loves Enjolras: Enjolras always knows when to let Grantaire do something for himself and when he needs help without having to be asked.
Grantaire turns left and heads for the next neighborhood over, about ten blocks away. The university and historical districts are sprawling, contradictory clusters on the riverbank. Modernist structures sit adjacent to lines of four or five storefronts that have been there for over a hundred years. Go too far north, however, and you’ll hit the industrial district. Decades ago, Charleston was a major producer of textiles and machinery. Now, though, the university and arts are what sustain the city, and the industrial section is slowly dying. Low-income housing is located there. The soup kitchens and the shelters are there. Wear the wrong thing or say the wrong word there and you’ll disappear.
And, for some reason, it’s also where the bus station is located.
On his way to the nearest drug den, he notices a crying figure hugging her knees on the bus bench. Lori.
He sits next to her, not close enough to touch her but more closely than a stranger would. She doesn’t even look up.
“Fuck off, asshole. I’m not a whore.”
“That would just be gross.” She looks up at the sound of his voice and the hurt and sadness in her eyes cuts him to the bone.
“I checked on you in the hospital every day until they released you. I tried to have some of my old contacts keep an eye out for you after that, but they lost you about a month ago.” Despite his seemingly eternal animosity toward her, she’s still his sister.
“I know. Johnny K told me before I left to come up here. No one could tell me where they’d taken Belle, so I came up here to find you.” Her voice cracks like she’s been screaming.
“Ah, Johnny K. Does he still wear that ridiculous mustache?”
“Waxes it every day.” They chuckle together. Lori’s hands are already fidgeting and picking at the scabs on her skin. He puts his hand over hers.
“You’ve got to get help, Lori. And stick to it this time.”
“I know. I’m so sorry I came to you like that.” Tears fall down her cheeks again, but they’re silent ones.
“I’ve had worse. I’ve been worse. The things I said—“ he starts.
“No, you were right. No one’s ever said it like that to my face before. It hurt but I guess it needed to. Can you get me a bed somewhere? Like, here in Charleston?” She won’t look at him, but he can tell she’s terrified. The other times she tried rehab, she was excited to ‘show them she could do it’. Now, the naked fear that Grantaire remembers from the mirror when he got sober is reflecting back in her face.
“I can call around. I’ve got some friends who could help.” She nods. “You can stay with me until I find one.”
“No, I’ve done enough. I’ll be at the shelter up on Lee. Find me there.”
“Okay. Will you be okay until then?”
“I really don’t know, Grantaire.” He gives her a small grin for her honesty and leans over to hug her. She sobs again into his shoulder and grips him tightly. He runs his hand up and down her back, whispering, “It’ll be okay,” as he counts each vertebra in her spine. She’s so tiny. He flashes back to holding a crying Annabelle as he tried to put her in the Harris’ car two months ago. It killed him then. Now, this here, kind of feels like hope.
He’s getting more and more used to the sensation, but he’d never speak it aloud. Verbalizing things just makes them that much more unlikely to come true.
“I’ll come find you tomorrow. I’ll have something for you then.” She sighs and wipes her eyes on her t-shirt.
“Okay.” She gets up to leave and looks back at him. “I never thanked you for taking care of me when we were kids.” He gives her a funny look and raises his eyebrows.
“Okay?” he says, not sure what she means.
“I just wanted to say thanks. I never did. And for Annabelle. For trying to fix my fuck-ups. You’re the best person I know.” Then she turns and leaves before he can reply with a negative response. He makes his way back to the Musain. There are some calls he needs to make.