Chapter Text
He’d been aware of things happening around him for what felt like forever. Beginning when he’d first been sculpted, rough-hewn from marble with his creator muttering under his breath, he'd felt it: strong, patient, callused hands chiseling his features more and more finely, sunlight on his stone, careful fingers adjusting hair that would not move out of habit.
Spoken low, close, muttered, the name Enjolras came to be his own, ascribed by his sculptor in fits of frustration and affection. He grew used to being touched, handled, edited, the sculptor's hands and tools commonplace to his limited senses. The last day familiar hands touched him was the last time he heard his name. Around him, the world turned, voices ebbing and flowing as his sightless eyes let in glimpses of light and shadow. Time melted around him, nothing more than flickers of light to distinguish each passing moment from the next.
All at once—how long it had been, he couldn't say—the seconds crystalized, precipitating out of hazy solution in a grand cacophony. Searing heat cracked through him, fissuring white marble as the ceiling collapsed.
The light disappeared. Time suffocated under the rubble.
His senses faded away back into near-nothingness.
The distant, muffled chatter of voices filtered through the detritus of years crushing him into the Earth, and, moment by moment, the weight began to lift, light filtering in from what must have been the sun. There were impressions, nothing more, of his world shifting heavily when he was lifted and moved by thick work gloves and ropes, scars from collapse exposed raw to the air. Fabric caught him and lowered him in pieces—disparate, disorganized, disjointed pieces—into a crate, and again his low-contrast vision went dark. Unfamiliar noises clattered outside the crate, a metallic roar and a continuous hum vibrating what seemed like the whole world.
An interminable age later came the clatter of a box lid opening and a final, jarring thud as he was set upright on a workbench, vague shapes visible and coming into better focus the longer he was exposed to light, air, sound.
A male voice addressed him by the tag he’d felt tossed in at the top of his box.
“Greco-Roman Statue of an Unnamed Man,” the words came, and he could hear the man’s rough, concentrated smile through his official title. “Well, Mr. Unnamed, looks like you got Humpty-Dumptied.”
And then there were hands on him, real, human hands, not concealed behind thick protective gloves, and the starved expanse of his marble sang with the touch. The man’s hands were warm, careful as they stroked over his cheekbones, his ears, the stone at the nape of his neck. Familiar, almost, and he hummed with the quiet approval of a craftsman as his fingertips brushed over Enjolras’s eyebrows. He sat back in his chair, a vague shape in the middle-distance, and Enjolras drank down every drop of him he could make out.
“God, you’re gorgeous, y’know that?” he asked, and no one answered. “Almost no chip damage at all on your face, you’re just…” he sighed heavily, the ruffle of one hand roughly through his hair just barely audible as he rested the other on Enjolras’s shoulder, warmth from his skin bleeding into his stone. “You’re just in a few pieces right now, buddy.”
And then a sentence Enjolras hadn't known he had been waiting for, hoping for, since his marble figure was shattered countless years ago: “I’m gonna fix you.”
It was, to put it gently, incredibly slow going. Enjolras had placed the room he resided in as a workshop of some sort, the familiar tools of sculpting all, ostensibly, present. Gradually, he’d learned the man with the capable hands and rough voice was called Grantaire, picking up bits and pieces as he’d wound up narrating the better half of his life to Enjolras’s not-quite-lifeless ears.
Every day when he came in, though the hour was always different, he’d greet Enjolras in the same way: a clean hand stroked over his hair, come to rest on his cheek for a moment before he patted it softly and said, “time to get to work, buddy.”
The first few days were, by far, the most embarrassing.
It had begun with a few days of paperwork, of description of his condition—once again remarks on his beauty, interspersed with tales and gripes from his own life and what amounted to a lot of stories about failed relationships—and followed with Grantaire washing the rest of him, his long-missing torso and limbs. That hadn’t been quite objectionable, though one passing quote had stuck in his mind, of Grantaire saying, “damn, you’re hung for a statue from this time period.” He’d found himself, not for the first time since he’d woken up from the emptiness, wishing he wasn’t confined to stone so as to laugh at his impunity, smile with him, see him smile properly instead of through the haze of light and shadow permitted through his marble-carved eyes.
Then the time had come for Grantaire to wash his bust, and he’d assumed that it wouldn’t feel like much.
He’d underestimated the shock to his system Grantaire had been, with his gentle, confident hands taking him off the workbench and settling him between his legs where he crouched in a basin, wiping him softly in broad strokes with a sponge, then more finely with a brush, rubbing carefully with his fingernails through the singled-out strands of his stone hair, humming tunelessly as he worked. As he cleaned his eyes carefully, gentle strokes of the cleaning brush rasping until more light flickered through, the restorationist's silhouette began to take shape. He stood crookedly as he worked, unruly hair never in the same place twice.
The first chink of true, bright light, unfettered by stony haze, broke through at the top of his vision, near-blinding and wholly captivating. It was a soft, warm yellow where it trickled in, and inch by tantalizing inch more revealed itself as Grantaire’s ministrations forced motionless shivers through his consciousness.
The workroom revealed itself in pieces, the ceiling speckled with water damage coming to him first, his gaze still held firmly upright by the nature of his carving. Next came a row of cabinetry, bland and brown with peeling labels he hadn’t been able to make out properly before.
Then came Grantaire, features creased sharply, and Enjolras wished he could draw in a sharp breath at his appearance.
He’d called Enjolras beautiful for days now. He’d placed careful, practiced hands on his carved face and called him perfect, flawless, had taken meticulous notes on him while singing along (poorly, though Enjolras couldn’t be a proper judge of that) to the music on the radio that had just gone outdated. Hours passed of him wandering blurrily from desk to workbench and back again, and through it all he hadn’t been able to see him, not clearly, never as more than a vague sense of of contrast against the light.
Now he could.
Those days of haziness felt like a waste, but now Grantaire’s keen brown eyes focused on him, watery from concentration, and his hair seemed even more a mess now that it had been thrown into sharp relief. He let the singing melt into talking, at first just describing his day, the weather outside—it’s been raining a lot lately, he’d say, or workshop today was brutal.
Every time, he addressed Enjolras as though he knew he could hear, knew he was listening, and he found himself forgetting he wasn’t… couldn’t… talk and let him know he was there in the stone.
Grantaire, evidently, didn’t mind, and chatted with him anyways.
Work progressed inch by inch, a matter of weeks and days rather than hours and minutes. From what Grantaire had told him aloud in the studio, there had been serious damage to his legs, one of his arms had splintered in half, and, he'd apparently at one point, had wings.
"Those are nowhere to be found, though," Grantaire said, "crushed into dust under the rest of the temple." From there, he muttered something else, just too soft for Enjolras to hear any more than angel.
After a few minutes’ restless work out of Enjolras’s limited line of vision, he incidentally dragged his workstation to where he could see him clearly, one leg tucked under himself as he pattered away at his computer, what must have been a few hours passing as he sang off-key and typed intermittently.
As he patched up the area around his knee (Enjolras could see, and rather wished he couldn’t; the edge of the broken-off stone had been marred and chipped away by the decay of years, and a well-worn crease on Grantaire's forehead deepened as he cleaned dirt out with a handheld laser), he chattered about his friends, their classes. Joly, he learned, was a medical student, along with a man called Combeferre, and his best friend, Éponine who called sometimes—he gestured to his phone with the plaster knife, and Enjolras remembered vaguely the sound of a higher voice through the device, though he wasn’t quite sure how it worked—was learning about computers.
Since Grantaire had turned him around, he could see the steady progress of his body. It was unsettling, sending still chills through him, to see the line where his bust had cleaved away in jagged marble crags reassembled onto a wooden scaffold. He did his best to avoid focusing on it too hard, to ignore the sickening sensation that sloshed through him whenever he contemplated what it meant, to be in stone pieces, parts of him missing entirely underneath collapsed rubble.
Somehow, the facts of his limited existence had never nagged at him like this before, lost in the fog of almost-perception or simply uninteresting to him. Now, an unfamiliar ache throbbed underneath his stone skin—wishing for something more, though he couldn’t put the right words to it.
To talk to Grantaire, maybe, to thank him. (Tell him that he rather liked his hands on him as he worked.) He silently scolded himself, sending the thoughts far away as his attention flicked back to the hands now steadily replacing the wooden brace holding his torso upright with his last freshly-cleaned leg.
Grantaire stepped back, a considerate frown on his face as he balanced a hand on his hip before turning back to the workbench.
“Gonna get you properly put together tonight,” he said, as he held Enjolras’s disembodied hand in one of his own, carefully brushing plaster into a structural crack at the base of his thumb. “This arm and, well,” he looked up from his work to give him a soft, goofy smile, and Enjolras could have sworn he felt himself blush under the gentle gaze, “you. And then you’re gonna go out on exhibit. They’re all gonna love you, man.”
With a sigh and a wistful glance, he stood up to affix his repaired arm to the rest of Enjolras’s body, held up with braces just at the edge of his view, and a surge of protectiveness raced through his consciousness. He’d liked his time here with Grantaire, learning for the first time about life since he’d been sculpted, gentle hands touching him when necessary and sometimes simply for companionship, fingertips drumming across his shoulder as he scrolled through his phone.
He returned with a plaster smear on his apron and stared consideringly at him for a moment, something quiet and conflicted in the set of his brow. He sat down softly, eyes still fixed on Enjolras, and for an aching, painful second he was reminded that Grantaire didn’t know he could see him. He didn’t know he’d been listening all these weeks, held captive in a marble cage. And he’d talked to him anyways, told him about his life and his friends and what he was doing to his pieces at any given moment.
“I’m gonna move you now, I think.”
Anticipation buzzed through him, coming in waves as Grantaire's familiar hands tightened around the raw edges of him, one under his chest and one grasping the stump where his left wing had once sprouted. He hefted Enjolras’s bust up wordlessly, holding him carefully to his chest, and set him gingerly atop the body he’d been torn from a lifetime and a half ago. The raw edges slotted against one another with a sandy thud, the wet squelch of cement an unpleasant sensation.
“Just gotta seal this—you up now.” He turned, plaster knife in one hand and even more cement, and gently worked around and under Enjolras’s edges.
Grantaire rocked back on his heels, looking him up and down fully together for the first time, thumbs hooked through his belt-loops. A warm glow of pride spread across his face, and he bounced lightly forward, nearly leaning in to snare Enjolras in a hug before catching himself and shifting his weight, tanned face flushing.
“I promise,” he began, before exhaling hard and letting his eyes fall shut, “I promise I’m gonna come visit you once you’re out on exhibit. And I’ll come see you tomorrow morning before they take you out there, and—” he broke off and shook his head, running dusty fingers through his wild hair.
“I’m talking to marble." The words stung. "No offense meant of course,” he added, gesturing to Enjolras, “but I’m… I’m gonna go home now.”
He paused as he turned towards the door, a question in the set of his shoulders before he spun around on one heel and took two quick, decisive steps back to Enjolras.
Grantaire’s eyes flashed with nervousness, then resolve, and he leaned forward and kissed Enjolras’s cold, immobile mouth, eyes sliding shut in the split second their lips were pressed together.
He wanted, desperately, to respond, to give him something back instead of simply feeling the heat leach out of Grantaire’s warm mouth onto his still lips and setting him ablaze, but he was pulling back already, blush creeping up his cheeks, and Enjolras wished he could chase him. A gentle, considerate thumb came up to stroke over his cheekbone, and Grantaire smiled at him again, but there was something cracked about it, flaking apart like dried plaster.
Enjolras could feel words tearing at his throat, now, achingly close to breaking through his immobile lips, but Grantaire shut the lights off before anything managed to fall out.
“G’night,” he said into the darkness, voice choked, and let the door slam closed behind him.
And Enjolras was completely, totally alone, with the ghost of Grantaire’s lips lingering in the slightest warmth against the stone of his mouth.
The darkness pressed in. It should have been cold, should have held shadows against his stone skin with no movement to bring reprieve. He was used to darkness; the darkness of being buried in sand, of the temple he once stood in passing into obscurity, the dusty, heavy air of the archaeologist’s trucks and transports he’d been wrapped up in when they found him, the entombing stillness of museum storage as he'd sat in waiting.
The room wasn’t still now.
He felt, more than heard, two quiet thuds, soft and unsteady. Then two more, stronger, and he felt the first, thawing movement of energy through his weary marble limbs.
It was as though spring was dawning over his whole body, color seeping into his skin in the half-light of the red emergency exit sign, his insides crystallizing and beginning to flow with organic motion. Apprehensively, he wiggled his toes, and eyes slipped shut at the sensation. A rusty groan broke past his throat, and he opened his mouth to gasp in a breath, chest heaving.
The air hit his system all at once, and he winced from the unfamiliarity of it all, the overwhelming, crashing sensations that broke over his head and forced him to stagger from the scaffolded pedestal Grantaire had so lovingly set him on, clutching at his newly-grown ribs as he slumped against the workbench.
It was too much, all of it, the red light too bright and the air through the vents too loud and his skin was aflame with sensation, the temperature of the room untempered by stone.
He took another breath, slower and measured, and stood up of his own free will for the first time. The ache in his ribs faded as he straightened himself up, and he cautiously removed his steadying hand from the edge of the workbench. His patched-up knee buckled as he put more weight on it, and a jolt of fear shot through his chest as he caught his balance uncertainly.
For a moment, Enjolras considered taking stock of his current situation, but the thought of doing so made his head spin, and instead he tottered over to the worn office chair at the desk to collapse unceremoniously. The colors were brighter than ever before, even in the relative darkness, and he stretched his hands out before him to observe. First he twitched each finger, reveling in the simple sensation of muscles working under his skin, then he made a fist and clenched it softly.
His face broke into a smile, and the stretch of his cheeks burned for a moment before he started to laugh, the outburst growing more and more confident with every passing second, and he let his eyes close until his ribs ached from the exertion.
Enjolras shivered involuntarily, and jumped at the intrusion. He’d seen Grantaire shiver in the past, grumbling about the building’s finicky air conditioning before lunging for a cement-splattered sweatshirt he left in a heap on the desk and pulling it over his head.
Slowly, he tugged the sweatshirt over to himself, holding it up to inspect it—it was deep green, emblazoned with “MUSEUM STAFF” on the back, and the cuffs were stiff and crackly from weeks of getting dragged through the cement he used to patch Enjolras up. Without further consideration, he stuck his head in the bottom and wriggled into the sleeves, flinching hard as the fuzzy fabric snagged over wrinkled scars on his back but breathing in the scents that clung to the clothing, smells new and intense and unfamiliar.
He stood up again, holding onto both armrests of the desk chair as he got his footing, and a lightning bolt of pain flashed through his knee where Grantaire had patched him up. The sweatshirt fell just past his thighs, and though he hadn’t noticed any shame about being exposed, having himself covered up—even just a little—eased his fresh nerves. Satisfied, he sat back down, tucking his right leg up underneath himself in a mimicry of what he'd seen Grantaire do and stretching his fingers wide again, watching the ripple of stretching skin.
It was as comfortable as he’d ever been, half-curled up in the desk chair in a well-worn sweatshirt, and he settled in to wait for morning to dawn.