Chapter Text
Winter might not feel so cold if not for the bitter wind, whipping past Grantaire’s fingers, already chilled to the bone. He keeps playing anyway, pushing through the last verse of that Bob Dylan song everyone likes to hear so much. His tip jar is half-full, a good day, and he only has four pieces left on display. Normally he’d stick it out until he didn’t have anything to lug home, but the chill has sunk in so deep it’s slowing his plucking, and his calluses have begun to break open. He mutters a quick thank you to no one, packs up the leftover art in a folded canvas, and schleps to the train taking him back uptown.
The shivers follow him even underground and away from the wind.
He misses the summer. Partly the warmth, but mostly the company. That summer, he spent most of his days lazing around with Eponine, Azelma Gavroche, and Cosette in the park by their apartment, keeping their beer and liquor stashed in water bottles and clever koozies as they picnicked without a care under the oppressive sun. Occasionally Bossuet and even Muschietta joined if they could convince her to step out from the Musain for a night. As the train jostles down the tracks, he recalls the last night of that chapter of their lives, when the cold began to creep in just after sunset, as they drank the last of their beers and smoked the last of their packs together and life was still mostly okay. Bossuet set off illegal fireworks and got the cops called on them and Cosette took the blame (only she could get off with a warning for that), Azelma pulled out her home tattoo kit and added another piece to Grantaire’s sleeve, Eponine kissed him on a dare, then Bossuet and Chetta kissed each other without, and they all fell asleep on the roof together to their party playlist still blasting. The crisp white outline of a corny three-dollar shark tooth necklace lingers faintly by his collarbone even now.
His fingers are still so cold by the time he gets home, he almost can’t turn his key in the various locks it takes to get into his darkened apartment. It’s so quiet inside. The radiator is off. His neighbors are silent. Even the constant sirens from the city have decided to take an interlude from their wailing. His bags clatter as he drops them unceremoniously on the floor and hopes to god everything is still intact, but he still can’t quite bring himself to care. For the first time this week, even the thought of a cold beer or a pull of cheap whiskey seems less inviting than the sweet, warm temptation of his bed. If he wasn’t alone, he might have expected someone to be proud. Instead, he just feels empty.
The sun set hours ago, but the day is still so early. A meal might do him some good, Grantaire thinks as he divests himself of the day’s clothes and collapses on his crumpled sheets. But he ignores his grumbling stomach as sleep overtakes him like a tidal wave, and as he sinks into the first good sleep he’s had in months, his dreams remind him of that flash of golden hair that has made his nights so restless.
He’s well and properly fucked.