Work Text:
Do you know that feeling that you’re missing something from your life? Well, Enjolras had lived his whole life with that feeling. Every day. Every moment. He didn’t know what was missing, why it was missing, but still, he felt a void inside his soul, and he knew that if he didn’t fill it as soon as possible it would have consumed him from the inside.
That’s why he left his small town as soon as he turned 18. He had always hated everything about it, about his residents, their passive and insignificant lives. He couldn’t have fit in anyway, with his long blonde curls and his weird ancient name. Enjolras. The little kids at his local school always made fun of him, they called him Count Enjolras. But he didn’t feel like his name belonged to a count. He felt like it belonged to a warrior, ready to die on a barricade.
So he left and travelled around the world, looking for something that could fill the void. And, somehow, he ended up in Paris.
Grantaire loved and hated Paris at the same time. Beautiful, so full of history, full of art. But so noisy. The people walked down the streets ignoring that not so long ago human beings fought and bled and died on those very same streets. But he couldn’t leave. He felt a void inside him and he somehow knew that only something that could have been found in Paris could fill it. The problem was that he didn’t know what that was.
Anyway, he started to draw. First on papers, he doodled anything, everywhere. On newspapers, on sketchbooks, even on the corners of notebooks during class. Then he moved away from his parents’ house in a tiny flat near the centre, and he met Eponine. She was tall and beautiful, she smoked cigarettes and read tarots, the incarnation of the word badass, and they immediately became best friends. And Grantaire felt like the void in his soul had become a little bit smaller.
Enjolras’ void, on the other hand, was getting bigger and bigger. He couldn’t sleep, because when he did he had the same nightmare over and over again: he was holding somebody’s hand, thight, he didn’t want to lose him (he knew the hand belonged to an him), but then there was a deafening sound, like an explosion but worse, and he kept losing the grip on the other hand, no matter how hard he tried not to lose it.
Due to the lack of sleep, he often got lost in the streets of Paris, those streets he didn’t know but somehow felt familiar. At the beginning he did it at night, but he hated the silence. There was something about the silence that made him panic even more that the deafening sound from his dreams. So he began to wake up at six in the morning, even though his shift began at ten, and just walk around Paris. At seven the city was beginning to wake up, and he loved the buzzing sound that the city made in the morning. It was during one of those morning that he ended up on Rue de la Chanvrerie. And he saw it. He saw himself on a beautiful mural on the wall of a cafe. The man in the murales (it was not possible that it was him, was it?) was leading a group of fierce men and women during a riot. He was dressed with clothes from the 1800’s, and Enjolras felt like he belonged to that image trapped in time and space.
-It is beautiful! You have to keep doing this!
Eponine was radiant. She was standing in the freezing wind of a January night, staring at Grantaire’s latest creation: three men, one holding a book, one holding a red flag, and one raising his fist to the sky.
-’Ponine, this is my third one, do I look like I plan on stopping anytime soon?
-Gavroche loves your art, he says that he wants to become a painter just like you!
Grantaire scoffed -I wouldn’t call myself a painter, or an artist whatsoever. I don’t create, I just draw what I see in my dreams.
-Then I have to tell Montparnasse to not change his dealer, because the dreams you dream after you smoke my stuff are lit.
-Yeah…
In three months, Enjolras became obsessed with the murals. They felt familiar, the artist felt familiar, even though he didn’t know anything about him (again, he didn’t know why, but he knew it was an him.). He just signed his paintings with a capital R.
He started having dreams about a man, a man that he didn’t know. In those dreams, he either yelled at him or stared at him in awe; but the weird thing was that they were dressed like the people in the murales.
The murals started to spread around Paris. They started to appear near the centre and in the suburbs, but it was obvious that they were from the same artist. Because of the capital R, and because they were always the same subjects. Men and women, and sometimes a child, fighting for freedom. And that man, that blonde man, that looked so much like him.
-She looks like me!- exclaimed Eponine.
-ssssh, they’ll catch us!
Enjolras woke up sweating after a nightmare, and he heard voices outside his window. at first he thought of a fight between drunk people, but then he heard laughs.
-why did you choose this house? It’s in such a random place, they’ll never find it! The last one you did became viral on Instagram and Tumblr, they’ll think that you disappeared!
-whatever, ‘Ponine.
Enjolras’ heart began to beat faster. Without knowing why, he grabbed his shoes and his coat.
-Who are these people anyway? Like, one is obviously you, but the blonde one? You keep drawing him, is he your dream boyfriend?
Grantaire laughed and kept drawing, even if he felt pain in his heart.
-Oh my God.
Grantaire turned around and saw him.
Enjolras was speechless. A million images began to appear in his head like a movie, but he knew they were memories. His memories.
Grantaire stood up and started walking towards the man of his dreams. It was real. He was real. Real.
They both felt the void in their hearts filling with light.
-Hi...