Chapter Text
Eight weeks to Christmas
It's not like he's happy to have lost his job. The timing's crap, for one thing. Happy holidays! Your services are no longer required. These very large security guards will see you out. But it isn't until Grantaire is standing in the subway station with a box full of his desktop possessions that he understands. The rising flutter in his chest isn't panic--it's relief.
In retrospect, laughing to oneself on a crowded subway platform is not necessarily appropriate behavior, but once he starts, he can't seem to stop himself. Fuck it, he is happy. Even though this means ramen noodles and Bud Light for the foreseeable future, even if he has to update his resume and look for a job and interview for a job and convince someone to actually hire him--he's happy. It's an altogether foreign feeling.
And he's got a fairly decent severance package, too, which should get him through the holidays. He might not have to start the ramen-and-Bud-Light diet until after the new year.
He manages to calm the laughter by the time the train pulls in. It's too late for the lunch rush and too early for commuters, so there's space for him to sit down and tuck the box beneath his seat. He catches furtive looks from the other passengers, all clearly wondering what he'd done to get fired. Everyone knows what it means when you see someone clutching a box of office supplies on the subway, and there's an awkwardness in which everybody notices and pretends not to notice at the same time.
He goes home, and he pours himself a glass of whiskey. After a while, and a couple of refills, he's still feeling oddly jubilant about the situation. He pulls out his phone and taps the Twitter app.
God bless corporate takeovers. #andseverancepackages #sayonarasuckers #ARTco
Eventually, he falls asleep on the sofa.
When he wakes up the next morning, the adrenaline rush is gone, replaced by a dull hangover and a sense of impending doom. The tweet, he realizes, might not have been the best idea.
When he goes to delete it, he sees that it's too late. There's a letter from HR in his personal email box. As it turns out, passive-aggressive hashtags can be considered violations of non-disclosure agreements.
So much for the severance package. Grantaire runs a couple of quick calculations, scribbling them out in the blank squares of an abandoned crossword puzzle, and discovers that he is fucked.
Really, really fucked.
Six weeks to Christmas
Two weeks after he leaves ARTco for the last time, he finds himself on a northbound train out of the city. He's got a pair of suitcases and a key to a storage locker that he'll probably never go back to. It's mid-November, and the fields outside the window are full of patchy, graying snow.
The sun has long since set by the time the train pulls into the station, and Grantaire's first glimpse of home is a smear of streetlights through a foggy window. He's the only one who gets off at the station.
It isn't much of a station, really, just a ticket window and a couple of vending machines. It looks empty, aside from a bored ticket agent who is unsubtly playing Candy Crush on his phone. Just as Grantaire's about to tap on the window and ask if the car rental place is still around the corner, he catches sight of a man with a short gray beard and a knit cap, sitting in one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs by the entrance. A polished wooden cane is propped against the wall next to him.
Despite himself, Grantaire smiles. "Jesus, Dad, you didn't have to come out here and meet me."
"Well, how the hell else were you going to get home?" he demands, rising to his feet to hug Grantaire. Grantaire returns the hug fiercely, pretending not to have noticed the hitch as his father stood up.
"I could have rented a car," he says, when he steps back.
His father claps him on the shoulder. "Kiddo, the car placed closed down two hours ago. It's Sunday night."
"Right." Green Bend is only two hours away from Manhattan, but it might as well be a different universe. It's amazing how quickly he forgets that.
"Can I get your bags?" his father asks, and Grantaire knows that he really means it, that he'd happily gather up the suitcases and try to manage the cane at the same time.
"I've got them," he says instead, hefting the suitcases again. "Lead the way."
There's only one car in the parking lot, and Grantaire stops dead at the sight of it. "I thought you were going to sell this thing," he says, eyeing the battered blue pickup suspiciously.
His father waves a hand. "She's still road-worthy. No reason to replace something that still works."
They're going to have to disagree about the definition of 'still works.' The radio, for example, hasn't picked up anything but static since Grantaire was nine, and as far as he knows the truck has never had a functioning dome light. Sometimes the starter conks out, and you have to pry out the ignition mechanism with the glove-box screwdriver and literally hotwire the damn thing to get the engine to turn over.
But there are plenty of ways a pickup truck can come in handy when you own a Christmas tree farm, so his father has never been able to rationalize getting rid of it. And since it would cost forty thousand dollars to buy a comparable truck right now, maybe keeping the truck isn't the worst decision his father could make.
"You gonna ride in it or just stare at it?" his father asks, swinging up into the driver's seat. Grantaire rolls his eyes and climbs in, wedging the suitcases in the foot-well on his side.
His father takes the scenic route through town, even though it isn't much more than a wide place in the road--there's only one major intersection, and Grantaire can count the number of stoplights within the town limits on one hand. Ten minutes outside of town, the neighborhood starts to give way to farms, and then to the massed pine trees that line the property of Grand Aire Tree Farm. His father turns down a long dirt drive, and despite the cold Grantaire cracks the window. They drive down a lane of half-grown trees, and Grantaire closes his eyes as he breathes in the sharp pine scent of home.
They bypass the gravel parking lot and pull the truck up behind the barn. Grantaire hauls his suitcases out of the truck while his father crosses the lawn to unlock the back door of the farmhouse. Grantaire wants to tell him to be careful, that he's only got one good hip as it is, but he'd get a middle finger for his efforts and he'd deserve it, too. He follows his father inside.
Twenty-seven is a little late to be doing the whole post-college move-back-home-with-your-parents thing, but as long as he can rationalize it as "coming home to help Dad at Christmas," it doesn't feel quite so pathetic. His old room hasn't changed since he was in high school--the few weeks he'd spent in it during breaks from college were never long enough to think about remodeling. Even last winter, when he'd come out to help his dad while his hip was healing, the room had just been a place to sleep for a few hours at a time before getting up to check on him.
There are fresh sheets on the twin bed, but the artwork on the walls is more than ten years old now, and the sight of his old efforts makes him cringe a little. The desktop PC is running a version of Windows that's several generations out of date--if it'll even boot up, considering the layer of dust on the tower. It's not important; he has his tablet, and the farm's wi-fi is just about the only modern thing that his father hadn't grumbled about purchasing.
Grantaire leaves his suitcases next to the bed, where they'll probably stay for a while--there's a certain inertia involved in unpacking, and he's not quite ready for that yet. He fishes the mostly-empty bottle of Ambien out of one suitcase and sets it on the edge of the nightstand, so he'll know where it is when he goes to bed. Then he goes back downstairs, so that his father doesn't have to climb the stairs to come and find him. When he'd broken his hip, Grantaire had suggested getting one of those chair lifts for the staircase. His father had cussed for five minutes straight. It's just as well--Grantaire isn't quite sure that the old stairs would support a lift like that.
His father is making coffee, and Grantaire absently sorts through a pile of mail on the kitchen table while the coffee maker hisses and sputters. "How's business?" he asks.
"It's early yet," his father says, which sounds evasive to Grantaire.
"That bad, huh?"
"I said, it's early. Too early to tell if business is good or bad."
"All right, all right." He'll see for himself soon enough, anyway. He hopes his father is still using the spreadsheets to keep track of inventory--the ancient log-books had definitely given the farm a nice old-fashioned air, but it had also given Grantaire a week's worth of migraines every year when it came time to make sense of his father's crabbed handwriting and inexplicable abbreviations. He'd convinced his father to switch over to Excel a few years ago, but he can't be sure he hadn't gone right back to the old way as soon as Grantaire got on the train back to New York.
He frowns at the envelope on the bottom of the stack. It's a big, official-looking manila envelope, stamped with a red capital URGENT over the flap. "Dad, what is this?"
He sets Grantaire's coffee mug down on the table for him--it says Espresso Patronum on the side--and wrinkles his nose at the envelope. "Oh, that," he grumbles. "Put it in the box with the others and I'll get the shredder out later."
"What others?" Grantaire looks in the box on the table and sees several other envelopes waiting to be shredded, all with similarly dire red stamps on the outside. "What's this about?"
"It's just the company wanting to buy us out again."
"What company? Someone wants to buy out the farm?"
"Group called Thenardier Enterprises. They say there's a natural gas deposit under our property, and they want to mine it, or extract it, or whatever. Used to be, a group would just offer to buy the place, but now they're getting lawyers involved."
"Lawyers? Why?"
"Eminent domain, underground property rights--something about shale oil. I haven't read any of the letters since the first one."
"Shale oil. They want to frack our tree farm?"
His father waves a hand. "Oh, people have been trying to buy this farm every year since you were a little thing. I've had more offers for this land than you can imagine, at prices that would make your eyes pop out of your head. But this was my daddy's farm--"
"And his mother's farm before that," Grantaire finishes, smiling. "I know. So you're not selling, right?"
"Damn right."
Grantaire opens the envelope and skims the dense text inside. It looks serious, but it might not actually mean anything. He'd need a lawyer to make any sense of it. And on that note... "Have you talked to a lawyer about this stuff?"
"Nah."
"So, what, you're going to ignore them and hope they go away?"
"I haven't exactly had a lot of time lately," he snaps, and the guilt practically stabs Grantaire in the heart. He could have been helping more--should have been helping. He should have told ARTco to fuck off last winter when his dad got hurt, instead of waiting for the corporate takeover to boot him out and coming home as a last resort.
"All right, I'll look into it," Grantaire says. "Maybe I can get in touch with someone." Someone inexpensive, he adds silently. The tree farm makes good money, but most of it goes right back into the farm--planting for next year, overhauling outbuildings, fixing whatever part of the truck goes bad this year. Their capital is pretty limited, at least until Christmas.
He wonders if Cosette is still working part-time in the greenhouse while she finishes school. Her father used to be the mayor of Green Bend, and if there's a reputable lawyer to be found in the area, he'll know.
But that's for later. His father sits down at the table, and Grantaire pulls out his own chair on the opposite side.
"So how many people do we have working for us this season?"
His father brightens. "We, huh?"
"What, did you think I was just going to loaf around this winter and let you do all the work? Fill me in, so I know who to keep an eye on."
"Well, there are six of them. Cosette and Bossuet, you know, and the others are high-school students who work after school. Dumb as a box of rocks, but good kids."
"Right," Grantaire says, hiding a smile behind his coffee cup. "Cosette's still running the nursery?"
"She won't let anyone else touch the plant food."
"Bossuet still forbidden to work the tree baler?"
"What do you think?"
"...I guess I'll run the baler, then. What else do you want me to do?"
He shrugs. "You know what needs doing around the place. You don't want me breathing down the back of your neck. Time comes, I won't be able to, anyway."
"Morbid much?" Grantaire huffs. He knows his dad is getting up there--he'd been a mid-40s surprise for his parents--but he doesn't like thinking about what the future might hold. Eventually he'll have to decide whether running the tree farm is what he wants to do with his life...or he'll have to sell the place.
Neither thought fills him with unbridled joy at the moment. The stress and the train ride have left him exhausted, even though it's barely nine. "Do you mind if I go on up to bed?" he asks.
"Not at all. We open at nine tomorrow."
So he should be up and ready to go by seven, at the latest. "Got it." He picks up his mug and dumps out the dregs of his coffee before sticking the cup in the dishwasher. "Night, Dad," he says.
He's halfway down the hall when his father speaks up. "I'm sorry about your job, kiddo."
"I'm not, really. But thanks."
"I'm real glad you're here, though."
He has to smile at that. "Yeah," he says. "Me too."
* * *
Six-fifteen feels earlier than it has any right to, considering he'd been used to getting up at five-thirty. He's just glad they don't have chickens anymore--the rooster had had a habit of going off at five-thirty every morning, regardless of the actual time of the sunrise.
He rolls out of bed and stumbles through a shower. He doesn't bother shaving; a decent scruff is good protection against windburn. There's coffee in the pot, which means his father is already up and working, turning on the heat in the barn and counting out the deposit from yesterday. Grantaire's always been a night owl--he's fairly certain that came from his mom, if that kind of thing can be hereditary--but his father has always been up with the sunrise.
He pours the coffee into an old plastic thermos and puts on a heavy canvas coat before venturing out into the cold. The farm looks deserted, and the sky is gun-metal gray with only a hint of light near the eastern horizon, but he can hear a few scattered sounds of life.
He angles across the lawn towards the glass greenhouse walls of the nursery, crunching through the thick layer of frost on the grass.
It's so warm and humid inside the nursery that he almost immediately overheats, and he yanks at the zipper on his coat with something approaching desperation. He can hear the Supremes playing over the speaker system, so Cosette is definitely here. She'll switch to the playlist of instrumental Christmas songs the minute they open, but not one second before.
He waves through the rows of live trees and wreaths and holly bushes before he finds her in the poinsettias, carefully watering them with the old metal watering can that had once belonged to Grantaire's mother. She's singing along when he walks up.
"Babylove, my babylove..." She breaks off and grins when she sees him. "Hey, stranger, how are you?"
"I have a favor to ask you."
She makes a face at him. "Hi, Cosette. How was your summer? How are your classes going? Oh, they're going great, Grantaire, thanks for asking. How's life in New York?"
"It sucks. I got laid off."
She fumbles the watering can. "Oh, no! Seriously? I thought you were just up for a day or two, I'm sorry--"
"Don't worry about it. I'm not exactly heartbroken over the situation. And...I don't know, it's kind of nice to be here for the holidays."
She smiles. "It's the best place, isn't it?"
"It's pretty nice." There have been plenty of times in his life when he thought the tree farm was literally hell on earth, but he thinks maybe he's grown out of that now.
"So what's this favor that's so urgent it's got you up before noon?"
"I need to know if you or your dad can recommend any lawyers in town. Good ones, but preferably inexpensive."
"Why? Is something wrong?"
"There's some shady oil company that claims they can get the rights to frack underneath the farm."
"Whoa. Wouldn't that, like, completely wreck the farm?"
"Pretty much. But they're sending really grim-looking letters and stuff, so I want someone with a law degree to look them over and see if we have anything to be worried about."
"Wow, yeah. I'll ask Papa tonight and see what he says. By the way, I'm sure he'll want to have you over for coffee as soon as he knows you're home."
"You mean he wants me to come over so he can theologically ambush me?"
"He enjoys a good debate, that's all."
Grantaire has to admit that he enjoys his conversations with Valjean, too, odd though they inevitably are. "I'll make sure to stop by."
He goes back outside, where the cold immediately worms its way beneath all of the layers he's wearing, and he crosses to the barn to check on all the equipment. The heaters are on, for whatever meager warmth they can provide, and the baler is in good shape. His father is tinkering with one of their chainsaws in a way that makes Grantaire wonder how exactly any of them still have all of their limbs attached.
"I thought you were a proponent of hand-saws," Grantaire says mildly.
"I am. But when they want the big twenty-footers, it doesn't make a damn bit of sense to go hacking away with a hand-saw for half an hour when you can have it down in thirty seconds with one of these."
"Fair enough, I guess. Just be careful, okay?"
His dad gives him a disgruntled look. "I've been running this farm since before your mama and I ever met. Go outside and make yourself useful, would you?"
"All right, all right," Grantaire says, throwing up his hands in surrender, and he smiles as he steps back outside.
It doesn't seem possible for time to pass as quickly as it does. He feels like he's barely finished his coffee when the first few customers come through the front gate. He gives them the practiced spiel about live trees versus cut trees, including the price for cut-your-own trees--a flat $60 this year, whether it's six feet or sixteen. One person goes out with each group. This early in the day, there are only three of them, so it's not long before Grantaire finds himself heading off with a younger couple looking for a seven-footer. He offers to cut it down for them when it becomes clear that neither one of them has ever so much as held a saw before.
He can't blame them; it's not exactly a glamorous business. Gloves or not, he always winds up getting scratched by the needles or poked with a stray branch. And even if he gets the tree back to the barn unscathed, there's the baler to deal with. It's deceptively benign-looking, all bright yellow plastic and foam wrap, but he's snagged the sleeve of his coat hard enough to rip the canvas fabric before. Between the scratches and the sap and the dirt from tromping through the field, he looks like a mud-caked serf within the first ten minutes of his shift.
So Grantaire isn't necessarily looking his best when the most beautiful man he's ever seen steps out of a car and walks up to the gate.
He's tall, or taller than Grantaire, at least, and his blond hair is the perfect sort of curly that falls in loose ringlets utterly unlike Grantaire's unruly mop of curls. It's long, and it's held back in a loose ponytail that should make him look like a metalhead or a Revolutionary War re-enactor. Instead, it just looks gorgeous. He's wearing an expensive black pea coat and black leather gloves that don't look especially warm, but look like they'd be great for cat burglary. He wonders if the guy is a cat burglar; Grantaire would definitely let him climb into his bedroom in the middle of the night.
He's alone, which isn't the norm for a trip to the Christmas tree farm, but the gloves don't let Grantaire see whether he's wearing a ring. Of course, the absence of a ring wouldn't necessarily mean anything, but it would at least offer him a sliver of possibility...
"Do you work here?"
"Huh?" He's been so lost in contemplation that he hadn't realized that the guy had come close enough to talk to him. "No, I'm just an evergreen enthusiast."
He raises an eyebrow.
"Sorry. Sarcasm isn't good business practice, I know. I'm Grantaire. Can I help you?"
"Grantaire. The owner?" the man asks doubtfully.
"His son, actually. Dad's in the barn, I think. Are you looking for a tree?"
"Not today. I'm a lawyer for--"
Grantaire rocks back a step, and his hands curl into fists entirely without his permission. "Are you working for Thenardier Enterprises?" he snaps. "Because if so, you can personally tell them to fuck off. We're not going to sell the property, and if you're the one drawing up those little scare-tactic memos, then you can fuck right off, too."
His lips part in surprise, and then they tip up into the faintest hint of a smile. "Well, at least I know I'm in the right place," he says mildly.
"Yeah, the half-dozen Grand Aire Tree Farm signs should have tipped you off. What do you want?"
"A minute to talk, if you have it. I swear I'm not working for Thenardier--in fact, my agency is trying to assemble a case against Thenardier Enterprises, and if you're having trouble with him then I'd like to offer you my services."
"I'm sorry?" Grantaire says. He does not say anything about the services he would like to render unto this tall blond stranger.
He pulls a crisp white business card out of his pocket and passes it to Grantaire. Enjolras, Bahorel, and Courfeyrac, it reads. Attorneys at Law. Instead of the traditional scale motif, there's an image that combines elements of Blind Justice with Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People.
It's a really nice card. Grantaire turns it over in his hand. "So are you Enjolras, Bahorel, or Courfeyrac?"
"I'm Enjolras," he says. "Sorry, I should have mentioned that."
Grantaire hands the card back. "Well, Enjolras, thanks, but we can't afford you."
"What?"
"Your coat is worth more than I made in a week at my last job. And my last job wasn't bad."
"There wouldn't be a charge. We'd just like to know how your farm has been affected by Thenardier Enterprises. You'd really be doing us a favor."
"You're kidding me, right?" Grantaire asks. "No charge? What exactly makes a--I'm going to say extremely successful--lawyer offer to work pro bono for people he doesn't even know?"
"I don't like Thenardier Enterprises," Enjolras says, his voice low and sharp. His eyes narrow in a glare, and god, he's even more gorgeous when he's angry. "Their business practices are appalling, and they've been squirming out of legal consequences for years now. They've had suits brought against them for environmental infractions, worker's compensation--you name it. But their pockets are deep enough to get them out of trouble every time, and I'm sick of it. I want to get them on something big enough to put them out of the picture, whether it's civil or criminal."
"How did you know?" Grantaire asks, when he can work a bit of moisture back into his mouth. "How did you know we were having trouble with Thenardier?"
"The company bought fifty acres of land adjacent to yours and has had surveyors running over every inch of it. I took a wild guess that they were interested in further expansion."
"You could say that." Grantaire thinks of the pile of letters in the office, and he's relieved that his father hasn't gotten around to shredding them yet.
"Do you have time to talk about what's been going on? I understand if you don't. We can make an appointment for later this week, maybe?"
The address of the law office had been in Manhattan. If he'd traveled two hours just to get here... "I'm not the one who makes the final decisions, but I can go find my dad, if you don't mind waiting for a minute."
"Not at all."
Grantaire tromps off to the barn, where his father is guiding an eight-footer through the baler. When he's finished, the branches are bound up close to the trunk, and it should be easy enough for the tree's new owners to get it tied down to the top of their car.
"Hey, Dad, do you have a minute?"
"Why? Somebody lose a finger?"
"No," Grantaire says, with a glance at the customers to make sure they haven't overheard. "Everyone's fine. There's a lawyer here."
His father's expression clouds. "For Thenardier?"
"He says he's working against Thenardier. And he's interested enough in what we have to say that he's promised there won't be a charge."
"A promise from a lawyer, huh? I'm sure that's got a lot of value." He scoops up his cane anyway. "Bossuet can handle things for a little while. Let's go hear what he has to say."
"Actually, I'm really more interested in what you have to say," Enjolras says, when they're all sitting at the kitchen table with cups of coffee. "How long have you been having trouble with Thenardier Enterprises?"
Grantaire's father shrugs. "It's been a few years, I guess, but lately they've been getting more insistent. They've got a lawyer of their own, thinks sending me letters full of big legal terms will frighten me into selling the land."
"Do you still have the letters?"
"Sure." He waves a hand at Grantaire. "Grab the letters from the shredder box, will you?"
Grantaire gets up, and Enjolras nearly chokes on his coffee. "You haven't already shredded them, have you?"
"Nah, I've been putting it off. Might be for the best," he adds, as Grantaire sets the box down on the table. There are a few pieces of junk mail in the box, but most of it is big manila envelopes from Thenardier's legal department. Enjolras pulls one from the box and opens it up, skimming through the pages inside.
He makes a surprisingly civilized sound of disgust. "Patron-Minette," he says.
"I'm sorry?" Grantaire's father asks.
"Thenardier has retained the legal services of a group called Patron-Minette. They're corporate lawyers, defending big business from the greedy common folk. They're good at what they do."
Grantaire isn't surprised to hear that; Thenardier can afford to hire the best. "The letter that I read says that they can do whatever they want underneath our property," Grantaire says. "Like we only own the first twenty-five feet down, or something?"
"Ad infernos," Enjolras counters, without looking up from the page. "That claim has no merit."
Grantaire mentally dusts off his high-school foreign language requirement. "Did you just say 'go to hell' in Latin?"
He does look up at that, flashing a brief smile. "Sort of. There's an old doctrine that says if you own property, you have the rights to that area up into the sky and down into the earth--from heaven to hell, essentially. Now, it's been modified over the last several hundred years, to allow for things like air travel, but courts will usually back the ad infernos rule if they're talking about anything that infringes on the first hundred or so feet beneath the surface. And since fracking would undoubtedly have a negative effect on your livelihood no matter how deeply it was done, there's no way they'll get a judge to agree with them."
"Whoa," Grantaire says.
"What?"
"Nothing, that was just really..." hot "...smart."
He shrugs. "That's what I'm trained for."
"Isn't fracking kind of illegal here, though?"
Enjolras' expression sours. "It is for now. That could change any day. There are lobbyists working to repeal it--and plenty of them are in the pay of Thenardier Enterprises."
"Wonderful."
"That's not to say there isn't hope, though," Enjolras adds. "It's just going to take some work on our part. Would you mind if I took these papers back with me? I can make copies and bring the originals back to you. I just need to have a copy that I can make notes on and share with my partners."
"No need for that. You could just scan them here," Grantaire's father says.
"You have a scanner?" Enjolras doesn't quite hide his surprise.
Grantaire grins. "I admit that we live in the sticks, but we own a business and this is the twenty-first century. There's a flat-bed in Dad's office, and I've got an empty flash drive you can use."
"That would be fantastic--if you don't mind."
Grantaire shows Enjolras into the office and points him in the direction of the scanner that's hooked up to his father's PC. It's not new by any means, but does its job. Grantaire leaves Enjolras scanning page after page of the letters and goes out to brew another pot of coffee.
"Where did you find him?" his father asks.
"I didn't. He found us."
"Well, if that's not serendipity, I don't know what is." He takes a sip of coffee. "I don't believe I saw a ring, did you?"
Grantaire's not going to say he didn't notice that as soon as Enjolras took his gloves off, but he refuses to read into it. "Dad, please. He's helping us out here, don't play matchmaker."
"All right, if you say so." He goes back to his coffee, and Enjolras comes out of the office a moment later, with the original letters under his arm. He lays them down on the table.
"Is that all you need?" Grantaire asks. "Is there anything else we can do?"
"I think this is enough for now. I'll probably need to talk to you both again after I've gone through these. Is there a phone number where I can reach you?"
Grantaire fetches one of the farm's business cards from a drawer. He flips it over to write his own cell number and email address on the back. "That's just about every way you can get ahold of us," he says, sliding it across the table to Enjolras. "One of them is bound to work at any given time, and it's a lot less time-consuming than driving all the way out here, I imagine."
Enjolras tucks the card into his pocket. "I'll be in touch, then--probably sometime later this week." He stands up, and Grantaire and his father stand up, too. "Thank you very much, Mr. Grantaire," Enjolras says, holding out his hand for a handshake.
"Call me Phil," Grantaire's father says, and Grantaire stares. He can count on one hand the number of people outside Green Bend who are allowed to call his father Phil.
"I'll, uh, walk you out to your car," Grantaire offers. "I should go make sure everything's still running smoothly, anyway."
They step outside, and Enjolras shivers, ducking his head down against the collar of his coat. "I'm sorry to have kept you away from your work."
"Are you kidding? If you can help us with Thenardier, any amount of time spent will be worth it."
Enjolras smiles. "I'll do my best."
After he drives off, Grantaire makes his way back to the nursery. Cosette is sweet-talking a customer into buying a fresh evergreen wreath to go with their poinsettias, and he lets her work her magic before he approaches her.
"Cosette?"
"Hm?"
"Um, don't worry about finding us a lawyer."
"You've already got one?" she asks, blinking.
"Looks like it."
"Well, then." She kisses him lightly on the cheek. "I'm glad to hear it."
"So am I. I think," he says doubtfully.
He gets an email from Enjolras the following afternoon. Well, it's from a Gmail account called EBCassociates, so he's pretty sure it's from Enjolras.
I went through the papers last night, it says. Grantaire wonders when exactly Enjolras finds time to sleep, or if he's fueled entirely by dark roast.
I still have a few questions I need to ask, so would it be all right if I came back out to the farm next week? I understand that you're in the middle of the busiest part of your season, but the sooner we can hash out our case against Thenardier Enterprises, the sooner things will be settled for the farm. Please feel free to give me a call.
It's followed by a block signature with phone, fax, and email, but attached at the bottom of the email is a note and another phone number.
If you need to contact me after hours, this is my cell phone. Call any time.
Grantaire can't help but smile. It doesn't mean anything really, and he'll never be able to bring himself to use it, but technically Enjolras just gave him his number.
The thought keeps him warm for twenty minutes.
* * *
Grantaire is surprised to see Enjolras, not the next week, but only three days later. It's Thursday, one of the slowest mornings of their week, and Enjolras is not alone. Two other people are with him, an extremely tall and broad-shouldered guy in a brown leather jacket, and a small, wiry man with a Santa hat pulled down low over the tops of his ears.
Grantaire comes out to meet them. "Hey! I didn't think you were coming out until next week--not that it isn't good to see you. And you brought company?"
"It wasn't my decision," Enjolras replies, his lips twisted into a wry smile.
"Are these the other lawyers?"
"To my continuing chagrin, yes," the tall one says, holding out a hand. "I'm Bahorel, and this is Courfeyrac."
Grantaire shakes his hand, then Courfeyrac's. "Hi. I'm Grantaire."
"Oh, and Marius is...where's Marius?" Bahorel asks, frowning as he looks back over his shoulder.
"No idea," Courfeyrac replies, looking supremely unconcerned. "He'll find his way back. He's like a passenger pigeon."
"Those are extinct."
"Messenger pigeon."
"Homing pigeon?"
Courfeyrac brightens. "Yeah, those!"
"Marius is our intern," Enjolras explains. "He's a law student."
Bahorel nods. "I keep trying to talk him out of it, though. It's a terrible fate, to be a lawyer."
"But you're a--" Grantaire begins.
"Yeah, I know. Anyway, Courf and I decided that Marius needed a road trip. You'd think the kid had never left the city before, the way he was gawking at everything on the way up here."
"He also made us stop three times," Enjolras says.
Courfeyrac snorts. "Yeah, because you insisted on making a coffee run before we left!"
This all seems a little too light-hearted for a business meeting, and Grantaire is increasingly confused as to the reason that they're all here. "So, is there some kind of trouble? Is the case more serious than you thought?"
"No, it's not," Enjolras says reassuringly. "They just insisted on coming out to see the place themselves."
"Because we need a tree!" Bahorel announces.
Enjolras sighs. "We do not. It's culturally insensitive. We can't put a tree up in the office--we have clients who don't celebrate Christmas, and I'm not going to make them uncomfortable by putting up a religious symbol in our office."
"But it's festive!" Courfeyrac argues.
"Courf, you're Jewish," Enjolras says, despairing.
"So we'll hang a dreidel on it. Come on, Enje!"
Grantaire clears his throat. "Arguably, it's a pagan symbol, anyway. The Yule-tree, you know? Evergreen being a symbol of rebirth and all. Christianity just appropriated the midwinter festival in order to ease the forced transition to monotheism."
"See?" Courfeyrac says, rounding on Enjolras. "It's Christian and it's pagan, so it'll offend everyone equally."
"Or you could just put it up in your own apartment, like we suggested," Bahorel says.
Enjolras hesitates, clearly on the point of giving in. Then he shakes his head. "No, I'm sorry. I just don't see the point in sawing down a living tree just to prop it up in the corner to die."
Courfeyrac whines and covers his face with one gloved hand. "Oh my god, how are you this tacky? You just insulted Grantaire's livelihood to his face."
Enjolras whips around, his eyes wide and his cheeks pink with either cold or embarrassment. "No, I didn't mean--I don't object to it in principle, I just--"
"I get it," Grantaire says, holding up a hand to forestall the tide of apologies. "No offense taken. But you know, if the thought of cutting down a tree bothers you, you could just get a live one."
Enjolras blinks. "You can do that?"
"Yeah. We keep them in the nursery. The root ball is wrapped in burlap, so it doesn't make a mess, and then at the end of the season all you have to do is dig a hole and drop it in."
"Ah. Unfortunately, my eighth-floor apartment is sort of lacking in lawn space."
"So come out here," Grantaire says easily. "We've got a hundred and ten acres--you can plant it anywhere you want."
"I bet he can," Courfeyrac snickers.
"And then you'll turn around and sell it to someone else next year?" Enjolras asks skeptically.
"What, you're not into recycling?" Grantaire returns. "Okay, don't worry. We'll put up a plaque or something, to preserve it for posterity." At least until Thenardier gets hold of it, he thinks, and his smile fades.
Courfeyrac makes a gagging sound. "Okay, we're going to go pick out a tree. You two can stay here and flirt like twelve-year-olds. Come on, Bahorel."
Enjolras, whose face is definitely a bright shade of red now, ducks his head and makes to follow them towards the greenhouse. Grantaire decides to join them, for guidance and moral support. He falls into step beside Enjolras.
"So how high are your ceilings?"
"What?"
"You don't want to buy a ten-foot tree only to get home and realize that you have eight-foot ceilings."
"Oh. Well, they're...high," he says carefully.
Grantaire grins at him. "I already know you're rich. You don't have to apologize for having twenty-foot cathedral ceilings in your penthouse apartment."
"It's not a penthouse!"
Courfeyrac looks back over his shoulder. "It's a hipster boho converted factory loft space," he says, blithely ignoring the furious glare that Enjolras directs at him. "So I would say the ceilings are like fifteen feet? In the main area. The lofted part is about half as high, of course."
"Of course." Grantaire really likes Enjolras' friends. They make Enjolras blush, and he's very pretty when he blushes. Actually, Grantaire has yet to see an emotion that does not make Enjolras look pretty. "So we could go as tall as thirteen feet or so, but you probably don't want to have to decorate thirteen feet of tree. We can look at something in the nine to ten-foot range, maybe? You'll need a stepstool to get the topper on it, but not, like, a ladder truck."
"Okay," Enjolras says. "This is your area of expertise--I'm in your hands."
Bahorel has a brief coughing fit, and Grantaire is no longer entirely certain that he loves Enjolras' friends.
The nursery is warm and humid, and contains a bonus Marius. At least, Grantaire assumes this is Marius. He seems to be composed entirely of freckles and elbows, and he's peering through the branches of a row of live trees.
"Marius!" Bahorel booms cheerfully. Marius turns around so fast that he snags the sleeve of his coat on a tree branch. He ducks his head immediately, like he's been caught doing something wrong.
From the next row of trees, Grantaire hears someone humming the Supremes.
"Ohh," he says.
"Oh, what?" Marius says. He looks nervous, but that might just be his default expression.
"Don't creep on Cosette."
"I wasn't--I didn't mean to be--I just...I saw her but I didn't know what to say to her, and then she started coming down the row so I ducked into this one..."
"Hello is a good start," Grantaire suggests, and then he nudges Marius out into the aisle. He waits long enough to hear his stammering hello, and then he leads the other three back towards the larger trees.
"I swear, he's much more articulate than that in a courtroom," Enjolras says.
"It's true," Courfeyrac says. "Once I heard him say a complete sentence without blushing."
It takes them almost half an hour to pick a tree, most of which is Bahorel and Courfeyrac arguing over the relative fullness and circumference of their three "finalists." Enjolras has long since retreated to a corner with his cell phone, reading emails or the news or whatever while the other two bicker. Grantaire hopes Enjolras has a good data plan.
It comes down to a heated game of rock-paper-scissors, which Bahorel wins. The tree he picks really is the best of the three, in Grantaire's opinion, which he long ago learned to keep to himself. Bahorel helps him haul it over to the baler while Enjolras pulls the car around. It's a sedan, not a minivan or an SUV, which means that transport is going to be...interesting, to say the least. Grantaire is glad he's not the one driving it home.
Enjolras helps Bahorel carry the tree out to the car, and then he ducks back inside to talk to Grantaire. "I'll be honest, this wasn't entirely a pleasure cruise," Enjolras says in a low voice. "We drove around the perimeter of Thenardier's property before we came here. I wanted to get an idea of what we're dealing with, and Bahorel and Courfeyrac needed some context, too."
"Did you see anything interesting?"
He shrugs. "Nothing conclusive. Although if the surveyor's map I downloaded is correct, Thenardier is fudging his property lines a little. Keep an eye on the eastern edge of your property where it abuts his, okay?"
"Will do."
"And I'm sorry we've wasted so much of your time again."
"Are you kidding me? This is kind of my job," Grantaire says.
"I guess. What do we owe you for the tree?"
Grantaire shakes his head. "Forget it."
"No--we can't just take the tree."
"You can, and you will. You're already helping us out with Thenardier for nothing. The least I can do is get you a tree. Oh, and a wreath. Cosette makes them herself," he adds. "She always makes sure to tuck some juniper in them, so it smells especially good."
"Grantaire..."
"Nope, we're not discussing this. Tree. Wreath. Yours. Go home."
"We will, as soon as we find Marius."
Grantaire grins. "My best guess? He's still in the nursery with Cosette. You'd better go and make sure she hasn't intimidated him to death."
"You say that like it's a joke, but Pontmercy would be the first to tell you that he's sort of hopeless with girls."
"I can sympathize. I'm sort of hopeless with guys," Grantaire replies lightly. He immediately regrets it when Enjolras' head shoots up. "Sorry, was that over-sharing?"
"No, not at all. I just--I need to go find Marius."
And Grantaire has officially scared him off. Of course the cute ones are always straight or in a relationship...or nervous bordering on homophobic. Oh well.
He expects Enjolras to take the long way back from the nursery, so that he doesn't have to talk to Grantaire anymore, but five minutes later he walks past, accompanied by a slightly dazed Marius and carrying a wreath.
"Did she get your number?" Grantaire calls after him.
Marius' only response is a slow, disbelieving nod as he walks to the car. Enjolras pauses to talk to Grantaire again. "So we agreed that Tuesdays are good days, right?"
"Yeah. But you don't have to come all the way out here. I could drive down, or we could meet in the middle--or we could even Skype, if that's easier."
"I don't mind it," Enjolras says, shaking his head. "I've always thought I was a city person, but...it's nice to get away from it, sometimes."
"Sure, whatever you want." His tone fails him, and the words come out much too sincere, but Enjolras doesn't seem to have noticed.
"I'll see you on Tuesday morning, then," Enjolras says. "Maybe without the rest of this rabble." He looks back to where Courfeyrac and Bahorel are squabbling about the best way to tie down the tree to the top of the car.
"Good luck getting that thing back to the city," Grantaire says cheerfully.
Enjolras eyes the preparations with something very close to despair in his eyes. "Yeah...thanks."