【ER】Golden Rule

"...What did you say?" Enjolras asked.

Grantaire sighed.He watched him standing on his porch, holding his spare key, a black barrette in his blond hair by his left ear that he'd taken from Grantaire's bathroom that morning.The concealed metal pin on his shirt collar was also Grantaire's, because they had creased Enjolras' collar last night and hadn't had time to iron it in the morning.He raised his hand to place his briefcase on the shoe cabinet by the door, looking so skillful and natural, as if he had lived here his whole life.Grantaire took a deep breath and looked at him.

"I said, I think you should move out." He shook his head and said.

Enjolras frowned.

"Why?" he asked, walking towards Grantaire, putting out a hand as if to take his arm, "...are you angry? Because I'm so late? I'm sorry, it's just that I was slapped Jean's case stalled—"

Grantaire took a step back, avoiding Enjolras' hand.

"No," he said softly, feeling a sweet but bitter pang of Enjolras actually apologizing seriously for missing an appointment after such a day, "No. I've forgotten what theater..." He waved Waving his hand, he took another step back, "It's those news. Enjolras, you saw those news."

Enjolras frowned at him.

"News?" he said. "You mean the candid photo?"

"Photo." Grantaire nodded, "I don't think it's right for you to continue living here. Actually..." He took a deep breath, his chest hurting—a dream!Only existed for less than a day. "It didn't seem appropriate for us to continue dating either."

Enjolras froze.Two seconds later, his jaw tightened, and a look of bewilderment and hurt appeared in his eyes at the same time.

"I don't understand," he said curtly. "Why? Did the prosecutors say anything to you?" He reached out to Grantaire again, this time grabbing his shoulder. "Is someone bothering you?" ?”

"No." Grantaire cut him off quickly.There's no point complaining now, and it only takes him two seconds to decide that Enjolras will never know that he's just lost his income and is on the verge of being fired. "Nothing happened," he said, reaching out again. Pushing away Enjolras' hand - if Enjolras continued to care about him so much, he was worried that he would change his mind in the next second.Yet, he said to himself, think of the abuse those people had made of Enjolras, and how important a public image was to a trial lawyer.Think of Éponine, think of what to do with her courage so insulted.Think of Valjean, if Éponine was telling the truth (and he was absolutely convinced that she was), and of the perils he would face when he lost his testimony. "I just think," he swallowed, "you've seen what they said. It's not suitable for us to be together anymore. At least in this situation, we shouldn't..."

"Oh." Enjolras cut him off with a tense voice.He doesn't try to touch Grantaire anymore. "So it's just because we've been abused online."

"'Just'," Grantaire repeated dryly.

"'Just,'" Enjolras said, "why care what they say? I never care what they say."

"But I care," Grantaire said, "I care about them—" They put your face on a nasty video They say you win witnesses by sleeping with me They say you defy justice They say you insult justice How ridiculous because you're the only person I know who deserves those words so well—“…forget it,” he said. "I can't stand it. I don't like it."

Enjolras stared at him closely.Grantaire could feel agitation and a tinge of unexplained anger gathering on his beautiful brow.

"You don't have to care about that at all," he said. "It's stupid to stop anything we're doing for some public opinion. Look, the reason I'm so late today is because I went to see Valjean, and I suggested that he Change the defense lawyer in this situation, but he insisted to continue to let me defend - he said that because I was the only one who believed in him, he trusted me, and only I continued to represent him to reassure him. Wouldn't that be enough ?Let the others talk. As long as I'm doing the right thing and the right thing to do, a little dissent is nothing—”

A little dissent!Grantaire thought desperately.Lucky Enjolras, you don't have to stop your work for that, and poor Themis, you think your justice faces only a little dissent!Who are those people?They laugh at your nobility, they codify your virtues, they despise your ideals, and they don't care or take any interest in your own ardor or character.If you lose this case, it's in their favor, but if you win this lawsuit, I'm afraid you will bear more infamy.why don't you run awayWhat else do you want to protect?Protect Vajang?Protect justice?To protect all these mobs who belittle and despise you?

"...Why don't you quit the case?" Grantaire said softly.

Enjolras frowned even tighter. "Exit? Why? It's not necessary. Listen, it's not a difficult thing to solve. It's just opinion, let them talk. If I'm worried about the jury being affected, I can apply for a jury reshuffle and an adjournment Trial, or even transfer to another jurisdiction. The case will not be hindered too much...”

"...I'm not worried about the case at all!" Grantaire couldn't help but shouted, I'm worried about you, you personally, you are desperate to charge in this, and you don't even know who the enemy is, or There are no enemies at all, because it's all so pointless, "It's not like you have to—"

"Wait," said Enjolras, interrupting him, "you quit the case, didn't you?"

His eyes look so reproachful and disappointed that Grantaire winces at them.

"Yeah. I quit," he said, and the look made him uncomfortable, "Hey. Why are you looking at me like that? I'm on the opposite side of you. It's easier for you not to be in it -"

"...But what I want is not 'smoothness' at all!" Enjolras roared.It was the first time he had spoken in this tone since moving into Grantaire's house, and Grantaire could see his whole body tensing up, his eyes burning with anger, his face in disbelief The humiliated look again, "What do you think I want! Grantaire, I swore to fight for a fair trial from the first day I went to court. This kind of justice does not rely on the prosecutor opposite me to raise the white flag and give it up Victory comes! I want Vajang to have a fair trial, I want him to get a notary process, but what are you doing? If you do, those statements - wins and losses about how we trade a case - aren't true Is it gone?"

Grantaire took two steps back.He felt something explode in his head, maybe it was anger, maybe it was fear, maybe it was all the nausea from those online comments - he was dizzy, and he held on to the wall next to him to stabilize himself.Enjolras also thinks he wants to use a case to please him?Or is Enjolras questioning his lack of courage and spurning his cowardice?His heart was pounding, and he was terrified because Enjolras made him understand that he had said the wrong thing and touched the scales of an angry lion; he was also surrounded by anger and absurdity, and he looked up at Enjol. Ra, majestic, furious, so indestructible, it seemed that the flames would tear him apart when they came at him, and he wouldn't even frown at the burn, because pain was but a breeze to his heart...

"I'm so sorry!" he shouted hoarsely, "I'm sorry! The spokesperson of justice in the world! Great revolutionary! You have a heart, but it's probably made of steel or even diamond. Those spearheads and knives will break when they fall on it. , and you are invincible." He shook his head and shouted, he said what he thought of, and said again, "But is it an obligation to have such a hard heart? I'm really sorry that I ran away. Really I'm sorry I'm not a revolutionist like you, I'm sorry I can't look at those things and not care. I'm tired of it, Enjolras, tired of shouting for some people who despise me at all, I stand there to protect What? Protecting a set of procedures? Protecting a little abstract right to trial? Forget it. I hate people, I hate flipping opinions, I hate juries who are stupid and credulous, and there's nothing in the world I want to do for them. I've been through it all: revenge, insults, and cars that are scratched like your house was smashed. You saw me seven years ago? Come on! You thought I had courage, but now that courage is Phantom. Just think of it this way! Your holy judicial system will still function without me. Don't worry, Courfeyrac will find a stronger prosecutor to replace me. Don't worry, you will get your opponent and a dignified victorious."

He's done.He gasped.They stopped talking.After a while, Enjolras spoke.

"Do you think I've disrupted your life?" he said softly.Grantaire looked up to see annoyance, bewilderment, and hurt beneath those blue eyes. "What you've been through—you don't want to be a part of it anymore. I put you back in that life again."

Grantaire said nothing.He neither refused nor denied.Not really that, he thought.His own life didn't matter at all, but he couldn't accept that he was an occasion for people to hurt Enjolras.Or hurt Éponine Thérardier, or Jean Valjean, whose own emotional life was nothing compared to all the harm it might do.But at this moment, he couldn't explain it.

"Yes," he said at last, "I have changed, Enjolras. I used to think that justice was pure gold, but then I found out that there was ashes in it, and there was a lot of ashes. Beneath the light, there was a stench. , After beauty comes hypocrisy. As beautiful as the concept of people's rights is, so ugly is the individual human mind." Only you are completely pure gold, completely beautiful, and completely aboveboard.How am I supposed to watch people try to melt you down and not do anything? "I'm not interested in protecting them. I don't want to be involved in this anymore."

Enjolras looked at him.After a while, he took half a step back and lowered his eyes.

"I'm sorry you were forced to participate in these things," he said, still tensed, but sounding bewildered. "You're right. If you continue to stay with me, you'll always have to face this. I've been prepared for a long time, but you...and you're not." He tightened his lips, "I'll move away . But I will continue to represent those people, the unpopular, the poor, the odds. I always will."

I know, Grantaire thought bitterly.That's why I love you.And you will not love me anymore, because you have seen through my cowardice.He watched Enjolras pass by his side and enter the guest room, where there was the sound of packing clothes and daily necessities.He looked up out of the dark window, there were many stars tonight, trembling in the cold wind, looking so cold even though it was already a late spring night.

Enjolras moved out that evening.After he left, Grantaire went straight upstairs and collapsed on the bed, wrapping himself in a ball of bedroom quilts.He didn't turn on the light, looking at the pillow that they knocked off the bed last night and the two beer cans rolled aside in the dim night, he felt that the room was so empty and so quiet.He took out his phone and sent Eponine a message.He said sorry.

Eponine's reply came quickly, "Don't be stupid," she said.She replied so quickly, she must have been in front of the phone screen all day, watching those unsightly remarks ferment alone. "I'm sorry." She followed up with another message, which Grantaire knew was for testimony.What is there to blame now?She probably suffered no less psychological torment than Grantaire or Enjolras.

"Don't be stupid," Grantaire replied.

The next morning, Eponine sent another message. "Why don't you prosecute this case anymore?" She must have seen Enjolras.Grantaire didn't reply to her.

She didn't ask any more.

Even though it was so easy to rush to Grantaire's door and knock on his door because he couldn't reply, she didn't do it again.

In this way, Grantaire didn't have to go to work for the time being.This instead confused him.He drank all the wine in the bottom of the refrigerator, so he ordered another case.Courfeyrac sent a message to worry about how he was doing. He couldn't think of what to say, so he had to laugh at himself and said, "At least my wine cabinet is still full."In the first week, he received a lot of harassing and abusive emails, but he didn't even read them and deleted them all.As for those in the mailbox, it was more difficult to deal with, he had to screen the contents one by one.Still, he felt a burst of neurotic pleasure one time the postman yelled hysterically at his door about who put dog shit in a package that was sent to him.Harassing calls also came in endlessly. At the beginning, he would pick them up and identify them. After the terms "garbage" and "queer" made his ears callused, he refused to answer all the strange numbers. (Sometimes he worried that he had accidentally intercepted Enjolras' calls, but checking the blocked list showed him that the cell phone system was functioning frustratingly normally.) The harassment lasted for more than half a month, and then gradually lessened.This shows that people are slowly forgetting about some "worm in the judicial system" and thinking that he is not worthy of their more righteous energy.His beard had grown back, and he had trimmed it according to some fashion magazine, but it turned out to be so ugly that it made him feel even more dull.He made up his mind to tidy up his bookcase, only to make it even more messy.He sat in the ruins of the books he had created and spent a week rereading the thin ones with less than two hundred pages.He fires the Filipino girl who cleans the house, not because he suddenly has a conscience about exploitation, but because a salary account that only goes out and doesn't come in is starting to worry.More than a month passed like this, and summer came, the sun was shining brightly, and the streets were blindingly white.But Grantaire lay on the cold floor feeling like he was slowly rotting away.

"The boss wants to know when you're willing to reflect and come back to work," Courfeyrac said during one visit.

"Reflect?" Grantaire says, his hands covered in pencil marks, because he's found a new hobby this week, drawing ugly little doodles of everyone he knows in his sketchbook. (This of course does not include Enjolras, oh, and Enjolras shouldn't have "ugly" scribbles. Also, he shouldn't be in Grantaire's sketchbook. In fact, he shouldn't be in the Anywhere in Grantaire's mind. For the past year or so, he has been the hidden pillar of his spirit, even though Grantaire never thought he could actually touch the lips of a god, but It's better to have fantasies and aspirations than nothing. But now that he's not here, the fantasies and aspirations are gone, leaving a big hole where the pillars stood. Grantaire forbade himself to think about that hole because he felt That will make your own spirit rot a little faster.)

"Like a formal and public apology or something. ... Hey, is that me? You made me look so ugly." Courfeyrac leaned over to look at his sketchbook, "and, they have a new case , Reckless murder is what you are good at."

"Not interested," Grantaire said.

Courfeyrac sighed.

"You do know they could still fire you, right?" he said, "and I know your bank account, you can't stand being out of work for too long."

"Maybe. Of course." Grantaire just answered him absent-mindedly.

Courfeyrac looked at him.And Grantaire continued to scribble and draw in his sketchbook.

"Did you know that Enjolras applied to restructure the jury in the Valjean case?" he said suddenly.

Grantaire's eyes widened.

"Oh, oh. No, you can't say that name now," he said. "It's the equivalent of 'Voldemort' in my house, you understand? Don't mention him."

"'Enjolras,'" said Courfeyrac.

"Are you going to fight me?" Grantaire said.

"Just thought you needed to know about it," said Courfeyrac, taking the sketchbook from him. "The case was adjourned because he applied for a reshuffled jury. The reopening is scheduled for September." He seems to have decided to use the time for something else. Do you remember that little boy? Eponine's nephew?"

Grantaire sighed.He felt that sick feeling in his stomach return.

"I remember him," he said. "Is the kid all right?"

"Not very good," said Courfeyrac. "Mrs. Thenardier has been harassing him and Eponine. Enjolras wants to do something. He wants to sue Mrs. Thenardier. Unlawful detention, crime of injury, etc. Kind of. The materials were sent to the procuratorate a few days ago. He wants us to prosecute."

"Oh." Grantaire said softly. "Are you going to accept it?"

Courfeyrac shook his head.

"No, no one wants to do it," he said. "It's not easy. After all, Thénardier imprisoned the child more than two months ago, and they have no comprehensive evidence. Besides, if Madame Thenardier just There's a good chance she won't get punished for helping her husband. It's too minor! It doesn't even count as a misdemeanor. No one wants to bother."

Grantaire bit his lower lip. "Oh," he said.

Courfeyrac looked at his face.

"Just tell me in case you want to come back and do something someday, okay? Drinking with Marius is so boring, and Jolly is going to talk all the time about how I'm going to get cirrhosis at 40." He sighed , but soon showed a smile. "Okay, I have to go. Call me anytime?"

Grantaire rubbed his thumb against the stripes on the pencil shaft.

"Of course." He said softly.

After seeing Courfeyrac off, he got out of the bar that night.For fear of being recognized, he recently stopped visiting his once favorite place.He's changed to a location that looks poorer, messier, and more disordered, where most people's eyes look unfocused from drugs, and most people look like they're not sure they'll live to see tomorrow.A straw-haired, round-faced man asked him for a light with a cigarette, and Grantaire let him into his car.They found a hotel nearby.As it turns out, Grantaire couldn't orgasm all the words Courfeyrac had stuffed into his head.He thought a lot for no reason in that short moment, including whether he should use his bank card that had not been credited for a long time to help this man who looked poorer than him pay for the room, including whether the street where the hotel was located There's more chaos in the area where Éponine lives, including what Enjolras would do if he was there--yeah, he'd ask the round-faced man if he was drunk, if he was knocking//Hey, Does it look like 25 years old but actually under [-]?Yeah, he'd go into those bars and talk to everybody, and he'd try to save them.Every.

They were lying in bed at the end of the night, the hotel's central air conditioning seemed to be broken and the room was damn hot.It was nearly six o'clock in the morning, and Grantay hadn't slept all night, lying on the sticky sheets, feeling a little more rotten.He got up and touched his shirt, wanting to get out of here quickly.At this moment, the round-faced man suddenly spoke.

"You're the prosecutor, right?" he said.

Grantaire felt his hands and feet turn cold.

"No, you're mistaken, I—"

"I know you are," the man said.He lit a cigarette and put it between his lips.Grantaire turned his head and saw deep shadows under his eyes in the morning light, and there were some livid pinholes under his upper arms.A young pale junkie. "Don't worry, I'm not here to trouble you."

Grantaire said nothing.He waited for the man to finish his cigarette.

"...she's telling the truth, isn't she?" he said suddenly.

Grantaire froze.

"Who?"

"That girl named Thenardier," said he, "is she telling the truth?"

Grantaire looked at him in surprise.

"I don't know," he said finally. "Maybe."

The man didn't speak, he took the cigarette butt out of his mouth and pressed it on the bedside table.

"I used to be like her." He said suddenly, "I used to live at my aunt's house, and her men often beat me up. They told me to steal things, and asked me to sell some 'jams' and 'D goods' for them." Grand Thiel knew that what he was talking about was a synonym for illegal//drugs, "They threatened me: If I said it, I'd get the cops too. Sometimes I didn't like them and I would run out and sleep in the park. There used to be an abandoned shed here, now it's taken down. It's warm in there." Grantaire could hear him speaking like Gavroche, a mix of bum slang and standard words with a little schooling. , "I ran out on my own as a teenager. I stopped going to school. I fought underground." He pulled up one of his lips to show Grantaire his missing tooth, "and then there was no I do. I work part-time during the day, but I lose it all at night playing cards. I don't know where my aunt is now, maybe she's dead. It doesn't matter, I don't know if she will die that day." He looked at Grantaire. With a glance, he showed a funny and malicious smile, "Don't worry, I'm clean and I'm not sick." He paused, then took out another cigarette, "I'm just rotten to the bone."

Grantaire bit his lower lip.He took a deep breath and felt his hands shaking, so he clenched his fists.

"Why are you telling me this?" He said as casually as possible, "I can't help you." Enjolras couldn't help you either.he thinks.There are too many people in this world that no one can help.

The man shook his head.He didn't answer Grantaire's words.

"The girl has a nephew, doesn't she?" he said, whether he was asking Grantaire or talking to himself, "will he become like me?"

Grantaire took a step back, knocking over the water glass on the table.

"...I don't know," he said, "...can't answer you."

He looked at the young man: he was still sitting on the head of the bed, with the back of his pinholed hand holding a cigarette to his mouth, and the white smoke wrapped his young and haggard face.Blue-black eye circles fell under his slack eyes, and Grantaire felt the eyes of Azma, Eponine, and Gavroche appear, all looking at him from within.

"I should go." He murmured and fled in despair.

He rushed downstairs and settled the room bill at the front desk.He originally wanted to leave more money, but in the end he gave up because he was worried that the other party would feel insulted.It wasn't until he got into his car that he realized if he valued his dignity too much, and maybe two hundred dollars felt better to the crack boy with the missing teeth.His temples were throbbing with hangover and lack of sleep, but he had a nervous lucidity.He drove all the way to the neighborhood where Eponine lived, and stopped in front of the cafe where they often met.He didn't know what he was going to do, he just felt like he wanted to see her, or the boy he'd thrown paint balloons with.That's when he realized that he didn't even know the exact address of Eponine's apartment.He glanced at his watch, it was past seven o'clock.The sun shone into his car from the street and hurt his drunken eyes.He opened the car door and walked towards the cafe, hoping to meet Eponine on the way to work.

At this time, the glass door of the cafe opened.

Gavroche stood by the door.It was not Eponine who came out with him, but a man.The man Grantaire was very familiar with. He had a handsome face, blue eyes, and a storm brewing under the majestic high forehead, and his golden hair shone brightly in the morning sun.

Grantaire froze.He looked at each other steadily.Why do people always see the sun in the morning?

"Grantaire?" Enjolras said in surprise, "Why are you here?"

TBC