#onfourwings

♬ a friend memory

Grantaire can dance a woman’s part as effectively as a man’s, or so he has taught himself, and he lets Lesgle spin him across the crowded floor and out into the street, where it is raining lightly in the dark.  Half the café is roaring in laughter; he doesn’t look the woman’s part, short and squat, which makes it all the more funny when he flutters too-short lashes and dips a curtsy as Lesgle guides him back in, lucky enough for mere moments not to smash him into the doorframe, although he hits his own head on the too-short mantle.

He isn’t so drunk that the room should be spinning, so he spins for it, and when his friend tries to dip him over his arm, he loses his grip and falls, dropping Grantaire, who catches himself on the floor just in time to roll out of the way of the other falling body.  The wood-boards of the floor are damp and dusty all at once, grainy with dirt as he pushes himself up amidst the sound and fury of laughter and catcalls.

                    Your luck could hold out only so long, Courfeyrac tells Lesgle as he helps him up, extending his other hand to Grantaire, who waves it off and stands by himself.

                    Thank you for the dance, Grantaire tells his friend when they’re both standing again, pitching his voice for falsetto to another swell of mirth from the rest of Les Amis.  If they didn’t all have some drink in them it wouldn’t be funny in the slightest, but Grantaire capitalizes on their drunkenness, no stranger to the way it makes things amusing that are not.

Joly, in the corner, has fallen asleep over the same table that Enjolras and Combeferre are quietly conferring at, but Jehan comes forward with a smile to slip an arm around his waist for the next dance.

                    I have a dreadfully unfortunate face for a woman, Grantaire tells him cheerfully in that high voice as he sweeps a bottle off the table as they pass.  Bahorel objects to the theft, but doesn’t take it back.  But then I am too simple to please to be a woman too.  What I lack in beauty I compensate for with easiness.

                    You make up for your lack of beauty with a remarkably good imitation of castrati, Courfeyrac tells him, stealing him from Jehan and graciously not remarking on his stumble at the surprise.  But can you sing us an opera?

                    Not without the removal of my crown jewels!  But for you, Courfeyrac, I would try.

He can hear Lesgle sputtering with laughter behind him, but Enjolras looks sour.  But then most thoughts of his friends feature a certain sourness from Enjolras.