A.N: This is loosely based on A Song About A Person On A Train by Tom Milsom. I haven't proof-read it so I apologise for any mistakes. Also it is PURE ANGST.
The first time Grantaire sees his golden-haired Apollo, it is late on a Saturday night. Grantaire is riding around on the Métro to avoid going home to his flat, which – as of this morning – had no electricity, no food and no hot water. It was his own fault for wasting the little money he earned from his mediocre, shit-kicking job on booze and art supplies, which were fucking expensive. His last twenty euros was burning a hole in his pocket, and although it was another three weeks until his next payday, that twenty euros was supposed to pay for his rent, his utilities and groceries to make sure he didn't die of starvation (if lung cancer or alcohol poisoning didn't get to him first). Needless to say, Grantaire's outlook on the next three weeks of his life wasn't bright.
But then, his outlook on life was never bright.
He was sat huddled on a seat right at the end of the carriage, his feet up on the chair opposite him and his cheap, thin hoodie wrapped tightly around his body, incredibly insufficient for the cold December weather in Paris. He was the only person in the carriage but one; a teenage girl with scraggly dark hair in shapeless, baggy clothing was sat on the opposite end of the carriage, desperately screaming Teen Runaway. Grantaire would occasionally look over at her to see the same miserable, close-to-tears look on her face, her left eye incredibly red and swollen.
This made him want to laugh. But not at her – Jesus, he was an awful person, but he wasn't some sort of sadist - at himself. He thought he had problems, yet this girl looked like she carried the entire weight of the world on her shoulders. For one so young, her eyes were so tired, her expression entirely defeated.
It was seeing people like her in so much suffering that had caused Grantaire to become so embittered.
Some people were optimists. They had hope for the future of the earth, believed that mankind was inherently good even if they did occasionally get misguided, were always seeking to do more, see more, be more. These people saw brightness in humanity and sought to nurture it, encouraging it to blossom and reach it's full potential. They saw the best in everything, could take pleasure in anything, even the most simple and mundane.
Grantaire was not one of these people.
Grantaire despaired of humanity. He couldn't hope, couldn't see any brightness – he saw only the dark, bitter underbelly of society. The broken and the beaten. The Inherently Evil. There was nothing to nurture, no pleasure to be had. When Grantaire thought of humanity, he thought of the infinite numbers of people who were so desperate to come out on top that they would screw anyone over, even their own mother. Nothing was a simple pleasure anymore. Either it cost a ridiculous amount of money or you were treated like a freak for enjoying it.
Grantaire had nothing to believe in, nothing to save him or give him hope or inspire him. He knew he had reached his potential, he knew that the girl at the other end of the carriage had reached her potential – and it had stomped out every single bit of vitality they had left in them. Grantaire was nothing but a shell, the girl had no spirit, was half a person at best.
Grantaire felt like one of those characters in cartoons that permanently had rainclouds over their heads. He didn't like being so sceptical, so cynical of everything. He wished desperately that he had maintained the wonder and exuberance of his childhood, before the world had tossed him aside. He wished he wasn't so acutely aware of how awful everything and everyone was. But he was a hypocrite, because he moaned and he held it against humanity that they only cared for their own problems, but how he desperately wished he could live in his own little bubble and only have to worry about petty traumas, like how much milk he had in the fridge, or if his friends wanted to go to a party with him on a particular Friday night.
Grantaire hadn't being paying attention to where he was exactly, so when the voice over announces that the train has stopped at Liberté, Grantaire realises he has few precious stops left before the train terminated and he would be forced to either get off and crawl back to the hovel he called a flat or find another public area that was both warm and dry in which to spend the rest of the evening.
He decided he might as well make the most of this train journey as it was the very last train of the night and he would have to get off eventually, so he settled down further on the seat and wrapped his arms around his torso, resting his chin on his chest. His eyes were about to flutter shut when the doors of the train opened with a whoosh and the two men who stepped into the carriage stole his attention.
Grantaire looked up at them both and immediately he felt all the air leave his lungs, his mouth suddenly very dry and his cheeks very red.
The taller of the men was fairly non-descript; wearing little round glasses and a fedora over his long gingery hair, but Grantaire barely registered him before his attention was entirely captured by his companion.
There was no way this man could truly exist. Grantaire was not usually one for hyperbole (except he totally was), but he must have died, because such perfection is something you do not experience in the corporeal world. This man must have been some sort of God, an angel at least, because to give him a title such as 'human' would be wholly inappropriate and wildly insulting.
He was rather slight and wiry in a way that, teamed with his mink-blonde curls and pouty lips, gave him an almost effeminate quality that was only strengthened by the stubborn set of his jaw and the strong lines of his nose and brow.
The two seemed to be engaging in some light conversation, and although this angel's face remained neutral, his eyes burned with an intensity that – even when dormant – could leave an onlooker scorched.
Although Grantaire had neither a winning personality nor stunning good looks (too much alcohol abuse for either), he had always prided himself on his ability to create, and had found his newest muse. Grantaire's fingers itched with the desire to compose entire symphonies, write an epic tragedy, even carve statues out of marble and have them put in the Louvre to accompany the other depictions of the god Apollo, which all paled significantly in comparison to this reincarnation stood before Grantaire.
Looking at this Apollo felt to Grantaire like he was staring at the sun, and he hoped in vain that the image would be burnt into his retinas until he could find a suitable tool with which to capture his form, be it a pen or an instrument or a stick of charcoal.
It did not dawn on Grantaire how much of an idiot he must of looked with his eyes wide and his jaw completely slack, staring shamelessly at this total stranger until the said stranger's eyes cut over to Grantaire with all the precision of a laser and stared at the artist with such open contempt that Grantaire could feel his pathetic, blackened heart slither out of his chest and fall to the floor.
"Enjolras?" Their absurd staring match was interrupted by the fedora-wearing ginger, who pressed a hand to 'Enjolras' shoulder to re-gain his attention.
Enjolras.
Grantaire said the name over and over in his head. Grantaire imagined whispering it like a prayer and yelling it like a chant and found that it was the perfect combination of soft and harsh, just like the man before him with his terrible glare that contrasted with his blonde curls.
Grantaire shivered under the blonde's scrutinising gaze, who dismissed him with little more than a cutting glare before his attention was trained back onto his companion.
Of course, Grantaire thought to himself bitterly, someone so perfect would never want anything to do with someone that was little more than an abscess on the back of society. He had been scorned, and rightfully so. If Enjolras was the sun, Grantaire was Pluto – pointless icy rock in comparison to Enjolras' life-affirming fire. He had no place orbiting the blonde, yet there he was - miserably on the peripheral, important to nobody.
Though he desperately willed them not to, the two men hopped off the train at Créteil - Université without so much as a glance in Grantaire's direction. The artist in question could feel the doors close upon the last trampled fragments of his shriveled, pathetic excuse of a heart as it frantically tried to trail after his Apollo. With a groan the train carried on its journey, and all Grantaire was left with was the low drone of the engine and suburban Paris landscape that whizzed past, which served as no comfort to the cynic - for he knew he'd never see his love again.