Chapter Text
Some days he hates it.
Most days, Enjolras can tell you the minute differences between white, silver, cream, ivory, champagne and off-white. But today, the colours bleed together, making a blinding mess that gives him a headache.
There’s no colour up here, nothing to separate the dresses from the carpet. The only contrast comes from the black chairs and the dark suits of the mingling sales staff. Enjolras catches a glimpse of his red tie in one of the full-length mirrors and it’s like a beacon amongst all the white.
It’s excruciating, pressing against his temples, a throb of pain each time he forces a smile at a bride-to-be and he’s forcing the smiles a lot today.
All he wants is to collapse into one of the leather couches. Upstairs is large enough that he could find a nook to stop in, to take several deep breathes. A fitting room, maybe, or the stock room. Except the stock room is just rail upon rail of the same thousand dresses he’s been staring at since nine in the morning, and Enjolras just wants to escape it, just for one selfish moment.
Something in Enjolras’s chest constricts, and he thinks instantly of warm mahogany and burgundy carpet, of black waistcoats and floral shirts. His feet move without his consent, leading him straight to the staircase. He passes Combeferre, who makes no move to stop him, who would be the only one to try, and then he’s descending, two at a time.
It’s instantaneous, the way the relief spreads. The tension behind his eyes is loosened by the smell of finely woven wool and a lingering scent of aftershave. He drinks in the reds, the purples, the charcoals and the blues.
“Enjolras,” Jehan says, standing near the suits, and his voice sounds like music. His smile is warm, genuine, a sharp change from upstairs, and Enjolras feels welcome, despite having no purpose here. Jehan pauses, and it feels like he’s looking straight into Enjolras’s soul. “It’s Grantaire’s day off.”
His tone is casual, though knowing, and Enjolras stops looking for someone who isn’t there.
“I don’t know why I’m down here,” he confesses, though it’s not an apology. “I just.”
He stops then, not sure how to explain himself. Jehan seems to understand anyway.
“You just wanted to escape?” He says quietly, then reaches out and presses cool fingers against Enjolras’s temples, massaging. Enjolras, forever tactile, lets him. It’s soothing.
“I get it,” Jehan continues, with a smile, and Enjolras knows he does, remembers when Jehan was the bride’s favourite darling upstairs. “It’s like another world down here. I don’t blame you from wanting to break away from the monotony.”
The small, circling movements of Jehan’s fingers work to relieve his aching head, and slow his breath in a way usually only Combeferre can manage. He’s getting like this more and more regularly, feelings himself growing closer to breaking point. The stress is worse, his tolerance for the blind faith everyone puts in him becoming like a thread pulled too taut. Downstairs helps, the way everything has Grantaire’s lingering presence, the way Jehan seems infinitely happier than he ever did before, and Enjolras knows he spends too much time down here.
He knows that each time, it gets harder to return upstairs.