#{{ with that i close tumblr for the night im 2 emo bye im gone goin'

[marbresauvage]

glittE/R // love festival event chatzy

with: enjolras & grantaire @la-vie-dure location: idk wherever the people-painting is happening during the event content warnings: talk of & imagery of death & violence, some anxiety and depression manifestations tl;dr: this was gonna be really cute with R painting enj with rainbows and glitter but they done fucked it up and now everybody’s emo about it and yET THEY STILL HAVEN’T PROPERLY ARGUED IT’S BEEN M O N T H S

Enjolras 's rainbow had rubbed off of his face, and so he approached the painting area thing, and was subsequently taken off guard, having not expected to see his boyfriend. "Oh. What're you doing here?" A pause. "Not that I'm not glad to see you, I just wasn't expecting...to see you..."

Grantaire had been concentrating on painting his own face and had not noticed Enjolras walking up to him until he heard his voice. He decided to continue painting his face, dipping his brush into the yellow paint to continue painting the pansexuality flag while glancing at Enjolras through the mirror. "Any reason to paint my face and body is a reason for me to join in with the fun, mon amour," he commented easily, his lips curling up into a smirk.

Enjolras cocked his head, approaching more before electing to simply put his arms around R's waist, pressing a kiss to his shoulder. "I'm glad you're getting into it. What are those colours for?"

Grantaire set the brush down for a short moment, leaning back against his boyfriend before turning his head to kiss him on the cheek. "Don't get used to it. I still don't believe that any of this is going to make a real change." His words were spoken softly, hoping that Enjolras would notice that he was not out for confrontation. Not today. "I have been told that these colors," he pointed at the pink and yellow that were already on his face and nodded down to the blue that was going to be added after, "represent something called pansexuality. Simply said it means I am attracted to whoever I am attracted to, no matter their gender, sex or identity." When he finished explaining, he shrugged and ducked his head slightly before picking his brush up again to continue his work.

Enjolras did not confront R today, choosing instead to exhale. They had their differences of opinion, even after all this time, but yelling at him wasn't the way to convince him he was wrong. So he didn't. Not today. "-- There's a word for that? Good. That's good. It's nice to know there's a word for things." Still with his arms wrapped around Grantaire's midriff, he watched him work.

Grantaire did not hide the surprise that he felt when Enjolras decided not to comment on what he said first. He rinsed the brush and dabbed it on a tissue to get rid of the excess of water before dipping the brush into the blue color, not at all being bothered by the fact that his boyfriend's arms were still wrapped around him. "It is interesting just how many new words there are," Grantaire replied, "But yes, it is nice to have a word to define you instead of having to explain it over and over again." He finished with the blue, cleaning the brush again from the color and setting it down before twisting around to face Enjolras. He still wasn't done with his face but that could wait. "Do you want anything painted on you?"

Enjolras continued to watch Grantaire work, pleased to be in this situation. "I'm glad that you've found your words, mon amour. It's one of the more pleasant things about this time." The question surprised him, though, because he'd actually managed to forget that he had a reason for coming in here. His eyes were wide. Like a deer. "Oh-- Right, that was why I came in here. It's difficult to be aggressively gay when your rainbow has removed itself from your face."

Grantaire smiled softly and nodded in agreement before his lips curled into a proper, amused grin. "Aggressively gay?" He repeated, amusement coloring his voice. "I can promise you that what I will paint, will not 'remove itself' from your face unless you want it gone." There wasn't a lot that Grantaire prided himself on but using the right body paint? That was one thing he knew. "Do you just want a flag on your cheek or anything else?" He asked while nodding over to the portfolio that was propped up on his table. "I can do any of these or anything else."

Enjolras nodded firmly. Aggressively gay. That was the aim, and the attainment. Yes. At the next question, however, Enjolras cocked his head, pausing and not looking at the portfolio, but not looking at Grantaire's eyes either. Perhaps...yes. Disengaging from the arms of his boyfriend, Enjolras untied the flag he wore as a cape, and removed his shirt deliberately, folding both and setting them down as he jutted his jaw and held his hands out splayed to his sides as he met and held Grantaire's gaze very Deliberately. "I trust you with this, implicitly, and am proud of you. So, I believe as it is frequently misquoted from a movie, paint me like one of your French boys."

Grantaire tilted his head slightly when Enjolras started taking off the flag. It made sense to take it off, Grantaire supposed - but before he could finish the thought process, he noticed that his boyfriend started to take off his shirt, too and that... well, alright, he could deal with that. His eyes had widened slightly and for a short moment, he let his gaze wander a bit before shaking his head slightly. Not only was this a public space but if the person in front of him would have been anybody else, he wouldn't let this happen either. He could do this. Clearing his throat, he just nodded - not trusting his voice - before turning around to gather his supplies. Mon dieu, he hoped that it wasn't apparent that his cheeks where flushed. Grabbing the brushes he planned to use, he turned back around to face Enjolras - and whilst doing so, he almost knocked the cup of water off the table. Sending a small, almost embarrassed smile Enjolras' direction, he let his eyes wander again - but this time, he was in full artist mode. Scanning the skin that was available to him, he froze when he noticed the scars on Enjolras' body. Eight of them. Scattered over his upper body. For a moment, Grantaire needed to close his eyes, knowing exactly what they were. Bullet holes. Ignoring the echoing sound of guns in his ears, he started to map out in his mind just how he would paint the canvas in front of him, trying not to pay too close attention to the scars. He hummed quietly, nodding to himself once an idea had formed. Grabbing his color palette and adding the rainbow colors on it. "I'm going to start with your face," he explained, his voice having slipped into a professional tone, "I am thinking of painting rainbows right here," he said, using a clean brush to softly indicate where he meant: just below Enjolras' eyes. Looking down at the colors on the palette and back to Enjolras' face, he hummed again. "Do you mind glitter?"

Enjolras stood still as he waited for Grantaire to decide what he would do, a little confused by the lack of actually saying anything, but then the contents of the cup almost went everywhere, and Enjolras offered a returning smile, exhaling with the knowledge that this was okay. Good. He knew where Grantaire's eyes were drawn to, but he kept his chin up as he nodded, regarding R with confidence. "That sounds good. I trust you with this. Implicitly. Also, I am very much in favour of glitter. It gets everywhere and is difficult to ignore."

Grantaire averted his eyes for a moment, not being able to look at Enjolras when he so openly put the trust in him. It was such a polar opposite of anything that he had been used to before... Grantaire shook his head again. This was not the time, today was a happy day. He could do happy. With a smirk on his lips, he winked at Enjolras, "So what you're saying is that glitter and you are one and the same." He teased before taking the glitter and adding it to the color on his palette. Once he was satisfied with the glitter/paint ration, he stepped closer to Enjolras. "If you could please look up while I'm painting, that would be a great help." He said, waiting for his boyfriend to do as he said.

Enjolras nodded in return, utterly unabashed. "-- Precisely. Glitter and I are very similar in personality. Thank you for noticing." He did as bade, turning his eyes skyward and holding still. Very still. He'd been compared to marble before, and now the comparison was apt indeed.

Grantaire shook his head and laughed softly. "You are one very strange man, mon chéri." While he spoke, he had dipped the brush into the blue glitter color and painted the first stripe from the eye down until just below the cheekbone before moving onto the other side, repeating the motion. "I might just start calling you Glitter from now on," Grantaire teased, not wanting to just stand in silence while he painted. Cleaning the brush, he moved onto the green color and adding the next stripe which was about an inch longer than the blue stripe. He continued painting the rainbows on Enjolras' face, the stripes painted on to create a slight downward curve on each cheek. Once he finished, he set the paint aside, rubbing his neck. "I'm not completely done yet but you can take a look into the mirror and let me know if you like what I've done so far?"

Enjolras smiled a little, but tried not to move his face too much, something which he was rather adept at, honestly. "At least Glitter is one of your more sensical nicknames, mon amour. I'll allow it." When instructed, Enjolras looked in the mirror, and nodded. "Yes. Yes. You're very good at this, R, I like it."

Grantaire ducked his head at the compliment. "I'm glad," he mumbled, not expecting Enjolras to hear the words. Taking a deep breath, he turned to face his boyfriend again. "How do you feel about color on your lips, my beloved Glitter?"

Enjolras tilted his head at the question, considering it. "-- I'm willing to try it. Like I said, I have every faith in you."

Grantaire swallowed down the insecurity that threatened to spill out of him and instead he focused on the task at hand - meaning, getting the lip colour ready. His boyfriend wanted to look Aggressively Gay, so Grantaire would help him. Switching the brush to a lip brush, Grantaire got the lip colors needed and the glitter ready to apply after. "Alright," he started, "could you please part your lips slightly?"

Enjolras did as bade, with a degree of Enjolraic Intensity™ that only he was capable of.

Grantaire felt the heat in his cheeks again and wetted his lip while he tried to concentrate on just applying the color instead of noticing just how intimate this felt.

Enjolras exhaled as his heart pounded, keeping his eyes on his boyfriend as he painted his lips.

Grantaire dug his teeth into his bottom lip in concentration as he finished applying the color. He ignored the growing urge to just lean forward and kiss Enjolras and instead sprinkled the glitter on the lips. Turning to get a tissue, he offered it to him. "This is to get excess color and glitter of the lips, you just need to shortly press your lips on it and it should be all set."

Enjolras looked at the tissue. Back at Grantaire. Instead of doing that, he simply pressed a chaste kiss to Grantaire's own lips in lieu of putting the tissue to his mouth. "How's that?"

Grantaire couldn't hide the small, pleased grin at the action. "I don't think it was enough pressure," he replied easily, the mischief clear in his eyes.

Enjolras smiled, and obliged, pressing a second, more confident, yet still chaste smooch to Grantaire's lips. "Better?"

Grantaire hummed and nodded. "If I was cheeky, I'd say no but I don't want you to lose all the color of your lips already." With only a short hesitation, he lifted his hand up to cup Enjolras' jaw and leaned over close enough so that their lips almost touched again. "So for now, I'll put a ban on more kisses." He stayed this close for another second, teasing, before pulling away to turn and get a bigger brush to get started on the upper body.

Enjolras blinked. Wait. What just happened? He was left with the distinct impression that his boyfriend was a very rude individual, and exhaled, clearing his throat and electing to say nothing in favour of folding his arms-- When he then realised that that wasn't a good course of action with the paint around and, frowning, he tried to figure out what to do with his hands while Grantaire worked. "Hm," quoth he, eloquent as ever and with pink cheeks. The fuck was he meant to do with his hands if he couldn't put them in folded arms? Uh. For now he'd settle for clasping them behind his back, holding still save for some mild fidgeting. Okay. Okay, this was fine. This was doable. Damnit, who'd've thought that asking his boyfriend to paint him would lead to flusteredness?

Grantaire hadn't noticed any of the inner turmoil of his boyfriend and had instead switched his color palette out for small tubs instead - as he needed them for the rest of the painting. When he turned to look at Enjolras again, he couldn't help but smirk at the blush that was clearly visible underneath the paint. So he wasn't the only one affected by this. Good. "Let's do this," Grantaire said, more to himself, as he stepped close to Enjolras again. "This might take a bit of time," he said honestly, "but I can promise you, you'll definitely look like a walking rainbow flag when I'm done."

Enjolras nodded, but did shift a little, moving his fingertips around his hands in smooth motions. "Okay. Nothing on my sides, though, I won't move but I can't promise that if you touch my sides. So, unless you want me to mess up your work, do not touch my sides, okay?"

Grantaire nodded and filed the information away for later, in case he needed it for teasing. "Nothing on your sensible sides, got it." And with that, he started working with the slightly more liquified colors to create a look of the colors running down Enjolras' body. Grantaire hoped for the end product to look like melted colors swirling together to make Enjolras' front look like a storm of rainbow color. Working on the body, he hadn't quite paid attention as to where exactly he put the globs of liquid color for it to run down his boyfriend's chest but when he stepped back to get more color, he realized that he had used the scars as starting points. To anyone who didn't know that Enjolras had scars there - and even more important what those scars were - it wouldn't be too obvious but to him it looked like wherever a bullet had pierced his love's skin, a different color of the rainbow had been bleeding out. It was morbidly beautiful and haunting.

Enjolras Knew. He knew the locations of his scars like the back of his hand, knew precisely where he'd been shot and how many times and how it had felt. So...yeah. He knew what Grantaire was doing, even if he didn't, and his hands tightened around each other as he turned his eyes skyward once more. It felt nice to be painted on. It did. But suddenly he couldn't help but feel excruciatingly vulnerable here and now.

Grantaire noticed the slight tension in Enjolras, so he decided to finish it up as quickly as possible and once he was done, he leaned forward to place a quick kiss on Enjolras' cheek - just below the rainbow painting. "Only your back is left now, mon ange. Do you have more patience or do you want to just leave it at this?" If he was being honest, he was nervous as to what Enjolras would say. While the painting had not been intentional, he was worried that he might've crossed a line that he shouldn't have touched by a mile.

Enjolras leaned into the cheek kiss, brief as it was, and closed his eyes, his brows slightly furrowed as he thought about it. "I am not a patient person, R...but stillness, I can do." A nod, and he turned around, now clasping his hands in front of himself, though his shoulders were tense. "I trust you."

Grantaire cleared his throat to cover up that his breath hitched. Just how many times would Enjolras tell him that he trusted him? And just how many more times would it take for him not to feel overwhelmed at the thought alone? "I won't betray your trust," Grantaire replied quietly, switching back to the color palette. "After all, you are the only one I believe in. This is something that has not changed." With that, he started to paint on the back - this time using black first as an outline. The plan was to paint rainbow colored wings that covered half of Enjolras' back - to make him look like an avenging angel. Which was something that he would not say out loud.

Enjolras 's frown did not dissipate as Grantaire worked. "I..." an exhale. "I still think that you should believe in yourself more than you believe in me."

Grantaire surprisingly did not stop painting and just kept going, finishing the outline. "There is no reason for me to believe in myself," he said casually, shrugging slightly before stepping away to clean the brush and give the outline some drying time before he continued. "But you should not focus on what I believe in or not, mon amour. There are more important things that need your attention, I'm sure."

Enjolras turned when Grantaire dismissed what needed his attention, still frowning, and strode over, fixing him with an Enjolraic Expression. "Grantaire. You do not get to decide what it is that I choose to have my attention on. I care for you. It is a different way of caring than the sort involving fundraising and fighting, but I care for you nonetheless. Yes, I believe in you. But I also try to believe in myself, because if I don't, then why would I keep going? I love you, I am willing to go to jail with you, but you cannot make me the only one that you believe in. It isn't fair to either of us. We don't have to talk about this, but...please...at least think about it."

Grantaire stoically avoided looking at Enjolras when he came over. Right now, he almost wished that they would've gotten into an argument earlier. That would've been more pleasant than... this. Despite him trying, he couldn't completely fight off the self-deprecating laugh. "You're right, we don't have to talk about this." Was all he said. Because talking about how he viewed himself? That was something so far down on his list of priorities. "Can you please turn around again?" He asked, feeling relieved that he could hide behind Enjolras' back and his painting.

Enjolras swallowed. Yeah. He'd fucked up. So, he did as bade, and turned around, biting the inside of his lip and clasped his hands in front of himself again, pushing his thumb over his knuckles rhythmically.

Grantaire sighed softly as he got back to painting. He carefully filled out every single feather in a different color, ensuring that it looked just like he had imagined. After a minute of silence, he started to feel uncomfortable. Silence was something that he did not prefer. "Tell me about your plans for the day?" He asked, quietly, carefully.

Enjolras stood. Not expecting to be Engaged again, he turned his head to the side at the question, not enough to look at him, but enough to clearly have reacted to it. Slowly, and still pushing at his knuckles, he responded with careful words; "I have a petition. It's...to indicate public support for a more directed and applicable support system for LGBTQ youth in the area who do not have the ability to openly get the help that they need. I'm getting signatures. It's not a lot, but...it's a start. What about you?"

Grantaire hummed to acknowledge that he had heard. It didn't come as a surprise that Enjolras had found another cause that he believed in. That was something that would probably never change about him and - Grantaire wouldn't want to have him any other way but... "A petition? There surely must be another way. The higher-ups couldn't care less about a piece of paper with names on them. They'll have a laugh and toss the paper into the bin." Grantaire shrugged just as he finished up coloring the wings in. "I'm probably just going to stay here all day and go for some drinks tonight."

Enjolras didn't know what he'd expected. Hurt bubbled hot in his chest beneath the bullet scars, his jaw clenching, but he forced it down, forced himself not to argue with Grantaire on this. Not today. Instead he waited for the ministrations on his back to be done, and he scooped up the flag and shirt that he'd set down, tying the shirt into his belt loop and clutching the flag in his hands. Only then, safe with a flag-shaped barrier in his hands did he turn, and meet Grantaire's gaze. "The other way is with blood, Grantaire. I have to try, and...if it fails, I'll try again. And I'll keep trying. You know this. I'm not asking you to do the same. I'm just asking you to respect that this is something I have to do. So please, don't shit on my decisions. I try not to shit on yours. Thank you for the paint, it's beautiful. I'll see you later, Grantaire. Remember to hydrate yourself." And turning once more, exit stage right.

Grantaire flopped down on a chair when Enjolras had left, hiding his face in his hands. Letting out a groan, he decided that, yes, he needed a drink. Or five. Marie would probably indulge him in the beginning and once she'd cut him off, well, he knew of this other place. He couldn't remember if he had flinched when Enjolras had mentioned the 'other way'. After everything he had foolishly hoped that Enjolras wouldn't be willing to throw himself into the crossfire again. He should've known. And he knew that if it got this far? He'd be right beside him again.