Before you start reading you should know that this opening scene is a suicide scene written in detail. The whole story overall will have themes of suicide and heavy emotional reactions. Be careful if you are easily triggered by these sorts of things in writing.
Grantaire's vision was beyond double. His body swayed back and forth as if he was on a ship out at sea, physically trying his best to stay upwards and avoid toppling over face first into the musty carpet of his living room. His hands, smeared with yellow paint, trembled along with his shoulders as the drunken realization of what was happening crashed down on him.
He was going to die.
Alone, surrounded by countless empty beer bottles in the middle of a shitty apartment with his stomach full of cheap alcohol, paint, and pills, he was going to die. He was going to pass on and no one was going to save him in time.
Everything hurt, his temples pounding with a sudden, intense headache. There was already a throbbing pain in his head before, but the realization of what was happening to him, his stupid mistakes leading up to these final moments of pure regret, made that pain a hundred times worse. His mind was a whirlwind of thoughts, the ability to focus on anything specific gone and replaced with static and fleeting thoughts of his friends, his joke of a father, his dead mother-
Suddenly, his wild thoughts subsided as his gaze rested on a scrap of paper that was crumpled up and discarded near the side of the couch.
In a flurry of uncoordinated motion, Grantaire lurched in the direction of the paper to grope at it. After getting a hold on it, he stumbled on his knees to the coffee table on the side of the couch in search of a writing utensil. Thankfully, there was a pen resting on the surface of the small table. It would have to do, and he hoped that there was still ink left in it. If there wasn't, he didn't know what he would do.
When he smoothed out the torn and wrinkled paper and dragged the pen across the surface, he nearly sobbed with relief when a thin line of black ink appeared.
The faded red and blue lines on the paper wouldn't stay still no matter how hard Grantaire tried to focus his vision. He had to write something, anything before he dropped dead. This was going to hurt his friends in general, but leaving absolutely nothing behind, leaving no last words, would hurt them even more.
Grantaire's mind, once again a swirling storm of jumbled thoughts, struggled to come up with anything to say. He was running out of time, his grip on the pen weakening and his body sagging, leaning against the unsteady table for support. Ugly sobs pushed their way from his lungs, every heave feeling like a punch to the gut.
He started writing in shaky, rushed strokes of the pen, trying to make his handwriting even remotely legible.
It was only one sentence. One sentence written in uneven, large lettering across the top half of the paper. A bitter chuckle fell from Grantaire's lips. He felt sick. Sick and twisted.
But it didn't feel complete.
The light was starting to fade from the boy's eyes, and without thinking it through, he wrote.
One final word. He wrote one final word that was so dear to him, crossing it out each time he finished writing the last letter due to fear.
After writing and crossing it out at least four times, he left it be; doodling something tiny next to the last letter.
His grip on the pen weakened, dropping on the surface of the coffee table with a quiet thud that sounded like thunder to Grantaire's ears. Finally finished with the note, he folded it over once and proceeded to slump down to the floor once more; collapsing as his strength suddenly vanished.
With his senses filled with the acrid smell of the unwashed carpeting and the aftertaste of alcohol and paint on his tongue, he closed his eyes; drifting off into an everlasting sleep.
I've been writing this for a few weeks in a small notebook with a Victor Hugo quote on the front ("There is nothing like a dream to create the future."). I'm still working on it, and I'm not too far into it just yet. I have more written in the notebook, but I'm going to continue to hand write it (since I get more done that way, and I don't get on my laptop as much because I'm exhausted from school, so I don't have much time to work on fics). I work on it when I can; in study halls, or if I have free time in class.
The upcoming chapters will have to do with even more tragedy, finding out, and the aftermath.
The title is a Van Gogh quote.