Archive of Our Own ^beta

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. 

Chapter Text

As a habit, Grantaire didn’t go places early. It wasn’t how he operated; part of why he’d taken the job at the museum was their policy that as long as he got work done, they’d leave him a copy of the key and replace his tools when they got too worn. As such, he wound up half-nocturnal most of the time, but hey, he restored statues for a living, and those don’t need much daylight. It was safer to get somewhere two minutes late than to be on time or—God forbid—early, and have someone think of him as reliable.

That said, he walked quicker this morning, got to Bahorel’s apartment twenty minutes early (he was just down the stairs, but it was still unusual), and couldn’t suppress his shock for a few seconds as Bahorel swung open his front door—lucky bastard, Grantaire always thought, having an apartment on the first floor—and joined him on the street. He’d expected his friend to still be in bed, but the company was welcome, and his presence soothed a twanging in his nerves he hadn’t even noticed until it was gone. They walked to work together most days, Grantaire to the museum and Bahorel to wherever he’d landed himself a job that week, half in silence and half cracking jokes or catching up on recent life events.

Bahorel was a good friend, consistent in his inconsistency. He tended to dress for whatever job he was working that day, and had worn the same battered, fleece-lined leather jacket overtop since Grantaire met him. Today, he wore his customary jacket over a dark green sweatshirt Grantaire had never seen, with POLITECHNIKA WARSZAWSKA emblazoned on it in white.

They fell into step comfortably, only half-paying attention to the route, and Grantaire nudged him with his shoulder gently. “What’s up with Poland?”

Bahorel glanced down and his smile softened, sweeping his long hair back absently before he spoke. “It’s Feuilly’s,” he explained, fiddling with the silver band on his left ring finger, “he’s back from studying there, said I could have it as long as I didn’t catch it on fire like—”

“—like the last four times you tried to cook?” Grantaire was joking, mostly. Bahorel rolled his eyes, over-exaggerated, and they lapsed into silence as they walked, remembering; it was becoming a Christmas Eve tradition for things to catch fire, most often some article of clothing and on one notable occasion, Jehan’s hair.

They came to a pause at a street corner, and Grantaire absently smacked the crosswalk button as his thoughts wandered to the day’s work in the restoration room. Some clay-work old enough to be crumbling of its own volition. A helmet—he’d need to hand that over to the girl next door, metal wasn’t his thing.

Greco-Roman Statue of an Unnamed Man.

He’d been stuck on that statue overnight, thoughts turning back to cold stone under his hands—his lips—and the last item on his list today, filling out the paperwork to sign him over to the museum properly. Put him out on display, subject him to the hungry, grasping eyes of the public.

The silence between them stretched out, and Grantaire searched for something to talk about as they walked. He couldn’t very well say “I kissed a marble statue and now I feel nauseous when I think about putting him out on display” aloud without coming across as a few pancakes shorter of his already-skimpy stack.

Instead, he hooked his thumbs through his belt loops and nodded absently at the sky. “Work’s been a lot, lately. How’s…?” he trailed off, and waited for Bahorel to finish his sentence with this week’s job of choice.

“Interior design! It’s been really fun, I’ve learned a lot more about kitchen decór than I ever wanted to, and I’m working with that girl Courfeyrac’s friend is dating, the pink-haired one? Actually,” he said, rubbing at the side of his jaw, “I’m headed ‘bout a half hour past your stop if you want to call for a bit while I walk, God knows you don’t have anyone to talk to in that workshop of yours.”

Grantaire bit his tongue—he'd done plenty of talking in the workshop as of late. “Sounds great, Baz,” he said, and it really did sound great. Bahorel was a comforting person to be around in his own way, and he’d been the only of Grantaire’s friends from undergraduate to stick around in his life in graduate school.

The museum came into view ahead, and a tightness caught Grantaire’s chest in a vice grip. Something felt off. The weather was normal, pushing just the uncomfortable side of crisp, and the sky hung like a wet towel over the city. So, too, the museum looked the same—normal. He shook off the sensation; it couldn’t be anything serious. If it persisted, it might be worth a call to his psychiatrist.

“I’ll drop you off out back, then you better call me, no standing up your date to the phone-call-and-walking prom.” Bahorel caught him by the elbow jokingly, and they walked arm-in-arm to the bolted back door of the museum. He was a good half a head taller than Grantaire, and walked absurdly fast on long legs as Grantaire hurried to keep up, pulled along by their linked arms. He dropped Grantaire’s elbow, raised a hand in a joking salute, and then shouted “Call me!” as he turned away, hands stuffed in his jacket pockets.

Grantaire grinned to himself and dialed up Bahorel’s contact as he dug through his jeans pocket for the skeleton key to the museum’s back door, early to work and, for once, fully uncaffeinated.

The door jiggled open and he pulled it sharply to get it over the sticky jamb. Bahorel picked up as he walked down the museum’s back hallway, past administrative offices still dark behind the windows and storerooms labelled with tags ranging from “Australopithecus – Czech Pottery” to “Snakes of the Nile Delta Exhibit.”

“Well, fancy that, a call from R!” Bahorel’s voice crackled through the line, and Grantaire could hear him smiling. “Now, I’m not here to distract you from playing with your Play-doh, remember.”

“Sure you’re not,” he tossed back, and Bahorel exhaled a sharp laugh over the phone.

His workroom was last on the right. The door was still bolted shut, and he dug for the deadbolt key in his pocket to unlock it, waiting to hear the click–THUNK of the bolt giving way before pushing hard with his shoulder. He pressed his phone between his cheek and shoulder as he tugged his denim jacket off of one arm at a time, listening to Bahorel humming softly and tunelessly over the line.

“Grantaire?”

Grantaire jumped out of his skin and bashed his elbow on the door frame, dropping his phone with a clatter.

Two notable things were off about the restoration room that he hadn’t caught at first. First, Greco-Roman Statue of an Unnamed Man was missing from its pedestal. Secondly, but equally jarringly, a lean—stunning—blond man sat curled up in the desk chair, watching him appraisingly and wearing his faded-out sweatshirt.

There isn’t nearly enough caffeine in my veins for this, he thought. He bent down to pick up his phone, and could hear Bahorel’s tinny, concerned voice before he even got it back to his ear.

“—are you okay? What happened? Grantaire?”

He flipped the phone around until the microphone was by his mouth. “I’m… gonna have to call you back, Baz,” he said, and pressed the end call button before his friend could do any more shouting or, worse, questioning.

The man in the chair cocked his head. They were alone in the restoration room, and for a museum intruder, he looked significantly less frightened at being caught than Grantaire would have anticipated. (And significantly more pantsless, although his sweatshirt was long enough that it wasn’t exactly a problem.)

Adrenaline pulsed through his body, and his thoughts consisted of a scramble oscillating between fear for his statue—when did he start thinking of it as his statue, anyway?—and the acknowledgement that the intruder was attractive, unafraid, and wearing his clothes.

“Where’d the statue go?” he blurted, and then: “did you steal it?” For added emphasis, he gestured at the pedestal between them, still covered in plaster dust and spots where the cement had dripped as he worked. His thoughts sorted themselves out slowly, and after the initial shock, his heartbeat was gradually slowing down to something manageable again. He let himself wobble over to the workbench and lean back, one hand braced to support himself, and bright, glittering eyes watched him the whole way.

The man in the chair looked down at his hands, turned them over to scrutinize them, and looked back up. “I’m the statue,” he said softly, almost revelatory, and Grantaire froze.

“You’re… no. You’re not.” He couldn’t be. But the similarities were unmistakable, now that he looked closely. He knew the bone structure in his face too well, had felt it countless times when they were marble. His eyes, too, were the same, but far more piercing and bright when they were blue, and alive, and watching Grantaire comfortably from his vantage point in the desk chair. “Are you?”

Rather than respond to his question aloud, the man simply nodded. As if that settled any of the matters at hand.

Grantaire wasn’t generally one to believe in myths, or legends, or ghosts, or fate. Or religion. But Greco-Roman Statues of Unnamed Men turning flesh-and-blood overnight, apparently, didn’t fit his track record of cynicism, and he hoisted himself shakily onto the workbench, folding his hands together to process.

“You can call me Enjolras,” the man—statue—man offered as the silence dragged on, and his voice startled Grantaire out of his reverie.

“‘s that your name?” It certainly fit him better than what he’d been calling him up until then. Did statues have names? Was he wrong not to ask for Enjolras’s before? It took him more than a few seconds to realize that, prior to ten minutes ago, he didn’t know the statue he’d been working with for weeks had a given name at all, much less the ability to verbalize it, and quash the nervousness rising in his chest.

“For all I know.”

Well, that answered approximately nothing. But it was good enough for now, and having a name to the face was helping with the whole “you were made of stone” thing, anyways.

And then Grantaire’s brain started working, five minutes too late and five times too slow. "Okay, hold on." He rehashed what he needed to do today; overall, it wasn’t anything he couldn’t put off for another night. He’d bring the helmet next door, and the clay pieces and ceramics could wait.

Mostly, he had paperwork to do, that was supposed to sign over Greco-Roman Statue of an Unnamed Man officially, deem him repaired and ready for exhibit. Not alive, and blond, and looking far more concerned and beautiful than he had when he was made of several centuries old stone.

“I’ll be back,” Grantaire said, and he snatched up the box with the metal helmet and all its corresponding pieces. “Try not to turn back to stone.”

“Next door” was actually across the museum in a different wing. He called it next door because it used to be next door, and he’d regularly get written up for playing his music too loudly. Despite how lonely the workshop could get now, he vastly preferred it to the constant passive-aggressive emails. His thoughts whirled as he walked, helmet clinking gently in the box in his hands.

He had a living statue in his workroom.

Somehow, that wasn’t the part of this that was causing him the most trouble. He’d accepted, mostly, that Enjolras was a thing that existed and was now, for all intents and purposes, his problem.

He’d need to leave with him, obviously. Forge the paperwork, mark him “irreparable” or “lost” or “eaten by the museum monster that eats statues when they’re naughty.” (The liability papers did not, unfortunately, have a “spontaneously came to life and, as such, should not be displayed for public viewing” option. Three guesses why.)

He set the box down outside the metalworking department door and turned on his heel. Maybe they’ve forgotten all about him, he thought. The empty pedestal in the atrium, with a little white Coming Soon! sign sitting atop it, said otherwise.

Enjolras hadn’t moved appreciably since he left, but something in his posture loosened when Grantaire pushed back through the door.

Grantaire had time to come up with a plan on the way back, albeit tentative. The stack of paperwork sat behind Enjolras on the desk, and he crossed the workshop to get to it. It was the closest he’d been to Enjolras since he was stone, and up close he only grew more beautiful. Grantaire shook himself hard internally, and gently pushed the desk chair out of the way to reach the thick manila folder, label stuck on the front with GRANTAIRE—1329946021 scrawled on the front in the museum archivist’s handwriting. Enjolras swiveled slightly in the chair to his side, face inquisitive, and Grantaire shuffled out of the way so he could watch as he started filling in information.

“This was… this was meant to be the paperwork to sign you over to the museum so you’d go out on display today. Considering, well, everything, I’m going to lie a bit, and sign this all over to the office, and then we’re leaving, because you and I both need to be nowhere near this workshop when they come to investigate.” Every moment the plan could go wrong stuck out like a sore thumb, and he spoke quickly to cover it.

Enjolras’s eyes widened before his brows turned down into a scowl, creasing unmarred skin for the first time as he thought. “Lie about my whereabouts and condition, and then run away. Won’t you lose your job?”

Grantaire gritted his teeth. “Enjolras,” he said, and ignored how soft the new name felt in his mouth, “my employment is the least of either of our concerns right now.” It was a concern, though. He flipped the folder back open with Enjolras watching over his arm and kept filling in information, listing dates he worked on Enjol—Greco-Roman Statue of an Unnamed Man and the date he noticed the flaw that made him impossible to repair to the museum’s standard.

The next box threw him. “Describe the flaw,” he read aloud, before turning to Enjolras. “What’s gonna be up with you so bad that it justifies no one seeing you?”

He glanced down, again appraising his hands before stretching his legs out and wincing, sucking in a sharp breath. “My leg,” he said, and rested his hand gently on his knee. “It didn’t—I can’t stand on it right, is that bad enough?”

Grantaire nodded absently as he began taking notes: Statue left lower leg cannot be attached, degrading with attempts to repair. Permanent storage recommended. Original crate re-sealed and marked for permanent archive. “That sound good?” he asked, before registering what Enjolras said in full and wincing. “What do you mean your leg hurts?”

Enjolras took a finger and traced along the fault line that passed just under his kneecap, where, despite Grantaire’s best efforts, the plaster hadn’t lain quite right and the pockmarks from rubble damage were still easily visible. On Enjolras, it manifested as a jagged scar circling his leg, angry-edged and pink against pale skin. It was ugly, and Grantaire crushed down the urge to apologize over and over and focus.

“Oh. Um. I’m sorry about that.” I didn’t think you’d ever be able to feel it. He checked the wall clock, then his phone for the time. Someone from administration should be coming any minute to check on him, and collect the statue for display, and overall catch that he’s fucked up royally.

He kept a stack of sticky notes on the desk for exactly this reason: needing to leave quickly. “Can you hand me a pen?” Enjolras plucked one from the mug they were kept in, and as he passed it to Grantaire he caught sight of tiny, thin lines across his fingers, the same angry color as the plastered scar around his knee, and his heart clenched. I’m sorry I couldn’t fix you right, he thought, as he started to scrawl out a note to his boss. Satisfied enough, he stood up and stuck the note to the outside of their door.

The crate Enjolras had come in rested half-propped-up against the back wall, and he hauled it over. “I’m gonna put some stuff in here to make it weigh about as much as you, and then nail it shut, and then we really, really need to get out of here.” He’d fallen back into the habit of narrating everything he did to whoever happened to be in his workshop, and started when he remembered Enjolras could actually hear him.

“Some stuff” ended up being a bucket of hardened paint, five cinderblocks, and every spare piece of wood Grantaire had in the workshop. Carefully, he tried to lift the crate, and nearly dropped it on his toes. He grabbed the nearest hammer and a handful of nails out of the drawer and pounded the corners down until he was sufficiently confident they wouldn’t accidentally fall open, and tried dragging it over to the door. This time, he succeeded, and clapped plaster dust off of his hands, shaking his hair back out of the way.

“You ready?” he asked Enjolras, and then frowned. “You’re not ready.” The statue wasn’t wearing pants, still, and the thought brought a hot blush to his cheeks despite spending weeks with him naked already. It was different when he could see him back, he supposed, and his blood ran momentarily cold with one thought: could Enjolras see him the whole time? Hear him? Feel him?

Questions for later or, more likely, never.

He kept a spare set of clothes stuffed in the closet here, and the pants were old enough they might fit over Enjolras’s narrow hips without falling down after every step. He tossed them his way. “Put these on, and quickly.” Then he turned back, rummaging for whatever he could find; a derby hat that looked like a prop from a middle school play was the most useful thing to come of his digging.

When he turned around, Enjolras still hadn’t moved save for picking up the pants. He smiled sheepishly. “Can you… help? With these?" He nodded down to his leg. "I don’t think I can support myself fully yet.” He held the pants up, and if Grantaire didn’t know better, he’d say he was blushing.

Rather than following his instinct to tease him for blushing, he weaved back over and held out one hand for Enjolras to take, which he did with a surprisingly strong grip considering he’d gotten working muscles less than a day ago. With the other, he tugged the pants from his grip, settling a hand around his waist to help him upright, and they swayed closer as Enjolras’s hand tightened around Grantaire’s, leaning into his chest and breathing in quickly.

“One foot at a time, okay?” Enjolras nodded, blond curls whipping Grantaire in the nose, and he carefully shifted their collective weight so he could get Enjolras’s left leg into the sweatpants. Together, they pulled the waistband up over his hip, and Grantaire’s fingers brushed over skin as cold as marble.

“One more.” They were steadier now, Enjolras leaning hard into Grantaire with one hand holding tightly to his shirt and the other choking the blood from his fingertips. Foot in, pull it up gently, waistband over hips, and done.

He set a pair of sandals he’d found in the closet on the floor and helped Enjolras hold his balance as he guided his feet in, one hand on his hip as he wobbled. Absently, he wondered if his leg would ever get better—watching Enjolras struggle was hard, and the guilt throbbing in his chest told him he wasn’t going to stop blaming himself anytime soon.

They both breathed twin sighs of relief as they wrestled the second shoe on. “Thank you very much,” Enjolras said all too formally, and stepped back abruptly, soles of his new shoes slapping loudly against the linoleum.

Grantaire didn’t particularly want to admit to himself that he missed Enjolras’s hand around his already. “Anytime,” he said instead, followed by, “we should go.”

Enjolras took a single shaky step before gasping and shifting all his weight off his left leg, then wobbling unsteadily on his right. “More help, please,” was all he managed, and Grantaire wrapped an arm around his back for support.

They paused in the doorway to check over the room once more: the crate labelled Greco-Roman Statue of an Unnamed Man nailed shut with a hefty stack of paperwork on top, the actual Greco-Roman Statue of an Unnamed Man wearing a dirty sweatshirt and flip-flops and carrying an old derby hat, the sticky note on the door, and nothing else out of place. Perfect.

“Don’t make any noise,” Grantaire warned as they locked the door to the workroom. Enjolras’s sandaled footsteps echoed down the hallway, and he smiled half a nervous smile at Grantaire. The hallway felt longer than usual, and finally Grantaire led the way out the museum’s back door, turning the key to keep the emergency alarm off as he held it open to help Enjolras limp through.

Enjolras jerked to a halt just outside the door, barely feeling Grantaire’s hands catch him gently and keep them both upright.

The world was bright, too bright, overwhelming—the trees rustled too loudly, the sun was too bright, the breeze hit him from a thousand different angles. His senses ablaze, he staggered a step towards the sidewalk. Too many years locked away had made the world scream color and sound, a far cry from the monotone greys and blacks of airless rubble.

“Where are we?” he asked as he started to shuffle forward again tentatively. His steps were stronger than the night before, but his head was already starting to ache with the sheer everything of being outside.

Grantaire’s fingers tightened around his waist, and a twinge of pain shot through his ribs again. He pushed the sensation aside, leaning away from his grip to watch a girl on a bright blue bicycle race down the sidewalk. “Paris,” Grantaire said simply, and a grin split Enjolras’s face from ear to ear.

“I love it.”

He leaned back into Grantaire’s shoulder, keeping weight off of his scarred, damaged leg—it had started to ache again, sharp and persistent, and attempting to step with it sent black spots skidding across his vision—and they started to walk. They zigzagged through the streets, weaving back and forth as Enjolras looked everywhere at once, eyes hungry, taking in the city—Paris.

He drank down people walking with their heads bowed against the chill, the buildings flying all sorts of flags from poles—red, white, and blue bars, coupled with a few deep blue studded with a ring of stars and, hanging in the windows of a couple apartments, rainbow flags. Enjolras thought he knew the world from before. He’d seen thousands of people pass through museums, and yet outside with the sun and the wind was more than he’d ever imagined.

He felt… alive. There was no other word for it, really, as energy soaked into him, Grantaire’s steady, warm hand guiding them somewhere unknown. Home? Enjolras turned the word over in his head a few times, thinking about what Grantaire’s home might be like. Warm, he decided, not at all like a museum. Not like underground. He caught himself lost in thought, staring up at the leaves on the trees along the street, all brilliant shades of red and orange, with piles heaped haphazardly around the bases of the trunks.

Then, Enjolras tripped, and a vivid memory of breaking, cracking marble flashed through his thoughts, shoving anything else aside until he realized he hadn’t hit the concrete. Cautiously, he opened his eyes to Grantaire holding him upright, face white and still with shock. He waited for the pounding in his chest to fade, the ringing in his ears to quiet, and he shook himself off as Grantaire helped him find his balance again.

Grantaire looked at him askance for half a second, eyes wide with fear, and Enjolras caught the motion of his Adam's apple as he swallowed hard. “We’re nearly back home to my place,” he said, hoarse, and Enjolras clung to the concept of “home” as the aches in his body loudly recommended he stop moving.

Apparently, the echoes of living in a marble cage stuck.

They made it to the entryway of an apartment building, and Grantaire turned to look at him, brows creased with concern as he nodded towards the stairway. “‘S just two flights, and it’s not very steep. Can you,” he paused mid-sentence as Enjolras bent over, holding his knee tightly. “Oh. Well. Let’s try it.”

The pain he’d been ignoring got worse as they made their way up the stairs, and Enjolras found himself regretfully tugging Grantaire to a halt every other step.

They summited the last step just as Grantaire’s phone vibrated in his pocket, and he flinched. “Work, probably,” he explained, “asking how I screwed up a restoration badly enough they can’t put it out.” He cut off abruptly, and Enjolras felt Grantaire hoist him up a bit and half-carry him the rest of the way down the hall. He heard him grapple with the door, shivered at a change in the air on his skin as they stumbled into the apartment. Distantly, Enjolras registered that Grantaire’s home smelled similar to his sweatshirt—minus the sharp, dusty scent of plaster—and then he was being settled down on something soft and large and flat, and he only noticed he’d closed his eyes as he opened them to Grantaire hovering over him, concern knit into his expression.

“I’m gonna go and make, um. Lunch? Do you eat?” He broke off, running his fingers through his hair as Enjolras watched him fuzzily, the motion blurring across his vision as he failed to answer. “You can eat, probably. You’re human?”

Enjolras answered with a tentative nod—as far as he could tell, he was, at least—and Grantaire looked as though he were thinking very hard. “Good. Good, okay.” Something else soft was dragged over his legs, up his torso, and he let his eyes slide shut again. So far, Grantaire had taken care of him, and his whole body willed him to shut his eyes, block out .

Grantaire kept talking in the background, and as for Enjolras—he should be listening, really, remembering what Grantaire says and what he’s doing, asking where they are, asking what’s happened.

Instead, he throbbed with unfamiliar pain all over, and let himself slip into sleep as his new heartbeat forced blood through his body.

Grantaire had thought he was good at coping with new situations. Hell, go with the flow had been the only compliment his secondary school teachers had been able to give him, alongside such reviews as “challenging” and “distractible” and “prone to sarcastic outbursts.” (He was rather proud of that last one.)

But hot, former-statue men shouldn’t be considered a new situation. That was more along the lines of completely un-fucking-charted territory, really a “here be dragons” deal, and frankly, he should be getting paid for this.

Oh God, getting paid.

Technically, he’d stolen museum property today. Assuming that theft meant that whatever it was wasn’t with the museum anymore, and he had it instead, he’d stolen a statue, and it was wearing his clothes and tucked into his bed. The semantics of stolen, when the statue came to life and had free will, were where he started to get fuzzy on it.

He flopped down on the sofa and stared at the water-stained ceiling, letting out a long sigh and painfully aware of the fact that his bedroom door was still open. His cat chose that moment to make himself known. Alabaster, in his hairy, judgy-eyed glory, heaved himself onto the couch and huffed. “C’mon,” Grantaire said as he flicked judgemental yellow eyes onto him, “I’m doing my best.”

Unbothered, a coarsely-haired body flopped into his lap, letting out a wheezy purr like a deflating whoopee cushion.Distantly, he started to wonder things about Enjolras. Did he remember being put back together? Did he remember being built? The years in between? He'd taken sharp tools and lasers to that cold marble body, dremeled dirt out of the crevices lovingly chiseled into his figure. What that felt like, he couldn't exactly guess, but if it was anything at all like the dentist's little drill, he shuddered to imagine how it felt on his whole body.

Teeth aching from the sense memory of the wretched toothbrush drill, he tried to shake away the thought. Rapidly, another replaced it, stopping him in his mental tracks.

Did he remember Grantaire kissing him?

The question sent ice, then heat, then ice again through his veins, and his mouth turned chalky like he'd inhaled marble dust.

With a start, he stood up from the sofa, muttering, “sorry, Baz,” as Alabaster was nearly launched across the room, flicking his enormous tail with the kind of disdain he usually reserved for dogs and loud sirens out the window.

In the kitchen, Grantaire shoved drying dishes out of the way to splash his face, rinsing the imaginary sensation of dust out of his mouth, staring blankly at his hands as they dripped cold water back into the sink.

If he did remember, he’d say something. Right?

He hadn't left the counter a mess, necessarily, but with company here—company, he snorted, like it was his grandmother visiting—Grantaire busied himself with tidying up the counters and wiping away crumbs.

The kitchen was as clean as it could get. Grantaire, sleeves wet from washing dishes, flopped back onto the couch with a heavy sigh.

He fought the urge to go check on Enjolras as he slept.

After what felt like several days, but according to his phone had been about an hour, he gave up on ignoring half a dozen texts from Bahorel asking what the hell had happened earlier, pulling up their chat to answer. Swiping at the keyboard with one hand, he managed to get out something believable (he thought) about work, promising a phone call later to explain what had happened.

It would be nice to know what had happened, wouldn’t it.

With a groan he threw his phone onto the carpet, watching it slide across the rug to a stop near Alabaster, who licked himself loudly, wetly, and unconcernedly. He didn't seem particularly bothered by the stranger in their apartment, and Grantaire felt a pang of envy before kicking himself internally. Being jealous of his cat—that was a new personal low.

His stomach grumbled, and for a moment he considered whether or not a Pop-Tart was a good idea. After weighing the options, he decided against it, kicking back onto the couch to stare blankly at the ceiling with his hands folded on his stomach. Whenever the statue—man—statue—Enjolras woke up, he’d make him a real lunch. And they could talk about things, like the weather, and being a centuries-old marble structure, and stealing from government institutions.