Wishing you a good, holy year and paradise at the end of your days.

In Toulouse, where Grantaire was from, those were the words spoken at the stroke of midnight, with an offering of mistletoe and a kiss. In England they just kissed, which Grantaire thought a shame - the words were good, if only they would work, which they never quite did.

The kissing, too, was never quite as holy and sainted as the formula would have you believe. Sometimes he had to suffer aunts, sometimes baby cousins. There were years when he was luckier and his target was both his age and relatively pretty, but still the kiss failed to deliver. A smack of lips, a fiery explosion inside his chest and there! Gone, leaving only a fleeting sensation of warmth.

The custom was upheld in Paris too, but Grantaire had moved away from airy kisses and expressions of goodwill. Many times he had told himself off for still being fond of that silliness. What was the point? A minute of happiness did not outweigh the months of misery that followed.

And yet, as he sat in the Musain on that frosty morning of the 31st, Grantaire was twirling a few leaves and berries in his pocket. He didn't quite know why. Perhaps he just missed the weight of a paintbrush in his fingers.

Enjolras was already there, his cheeks sweetly reddened from the cold outside, actually laughing with Courfeyrac and Joly who seemed determined not to let him work that day. Grantaire watched, unable to look away, gazing at the blue eyes glinting with pleasure, the lips extended in a charming smile, his whole face lit up from underneath like a delicate paper lantern.

Normally Enjolras shone, just then he was radiant. Grantaire watched, the mistletoe berries crushed between his fingers, the intense warmth that every past kiss had given him now multiplied into one transcendent feeling.

Perhaps, a thought flew across his brain, it was Enjolras that would bring him paradise at the end of his days. But before he could even contemplate kissing him the idea vanished, evaporated in the paradise of today.

A minute of happiness was only not enough when the happiness was not complete.