I own 2 books and ½ books, about 11 cast recordings, and a handmade Jean Prouvaire doll, but I do not own the characters.
A pen scratched the paper over and over in a constant rhythm. Then he realized for the last paragraph he had just been scratching the paper in a constant rhythm. His ink had run out. He stopped and riffed through the bag at his side for an inkwell. As he did so a small grunting noise came from the back of the room. No one was here, or so he thought. The last ABC to leave before him was usually Combeferre and the man, as always, was oblivious to the nightly 'adieu' he got from his friend. Turning towards the noise, he saw what had made it. The café's drunk, Grantaire. Grantaire, or R, was still passed out as he was most nights from his heavy drinking. The night owl sighed, forced himself to turn away from his writing, and walked over to the poor drunkard.
"Enjolras…" he murmured still asleep. The man's upper torso was pushed forward onto the table still clutching his half empty bottle of wine closer as if it was a lover.
Grabbing the top of the chair the first man flipped it. His only thoughts in his mind where of the republic, no remorseful thoughts about his coarseness with R even dared enter his mind. He was always coarse with him, why care tonight?
After the drunkard landed the first man turned to go back to his seat, longing to be back in his world far away from the drunken world of R's. Grantaire made a few bewildered noises and muttered the revolutionary's name among a few curse words.
As the writer sat back down there was shuffling footsteps heard coming up from behind. Stumbling in a few directions, but ultimately ended up behind the filled chair. His hands brush up against the man's back as he finished filling the pen.
"If you flip my chair, R, when I land I will stab you in the leg with my pen." There was the usual amount of harshness in the man's voice as he said that but the drunkard didn't care. He never really cared, he only cared that the man had given him the time of day. The blonde hadn't even bothered to turn around to address the drunk. If he had he would've noticed a fire in the man's eyes, ignited by his night of drinking and fueled by the blonde's several speeches and glances, although angry, addressed in the drunkard's direction.
"I would never think of it, Apollo."
"Don't call me that. And get your hands off of me." With that the man called 'Apollo' swatted the drunkard's hands away, still not turning around. He tried to go back to writing but had forgotten what he was writing about because of the drunkard's advances. After reading the sentences repeatedly before it he remembered.
"Hey, Enjolras, do you know of the time?" Enjolras erupted from his chair and pushed the drunkard away from him. When Grantaire had said those words Enjolras had felt them upon his left ear. Grantaire was probably no more than an inch from him. Wine cast, called such by his immense drinking, had stumbled back from the hands of his leader and was now sprawled out upon the floor.
Enjolras pulled out his pocket watch, "3 a.m., go home R." With that said he sat back down. As he went to grab the pen he realized that R was acting weird today, different from his usual not caring attitude. R barely ever made contact with him on a day-to-day basis. Why was he thinking so much about R today? He ignored the unanswered question that still burned in the back of his brain and went back to work. 'So such still to do,' he thought.
Then Enjolras hair fell innocently in front of his angelic face. The hairs were a tad bit shorted than the rest so they refused to be corralled into his black hair ribbon like the rest. But when he pushed them out of my eyes, they fell back. The process repeated, and repeated. His blonde locks were much longer than the current fad, so much that many of his friends almost teased him about it. But he never really bothered to go to a barber to change that.
"Your hair is so beautiful, like spun gold." R said with the same schoolboy sort of shyness in his voice that he had when he addressed his Apollo. It wasn't very often; Grantaire never really liked the feeling of rejection. It stung. It stung so badly he would want to drown his mind with the drink. Drowning it so much that most of his time would be spent in a sleepless, drunken slumber. Then he would often wake up feeling depressed. So depressed that once he almost threw himself off a bridge and into the Seine.
But his Apollo still ignored him. Why waste the energy on the cynical drunk? It got harder to ignore him when Grantaire tried to get up. Struggling noises of him trying to pick himself off the floor filled back room of the café and Enjolras ears. But he still didn't care. Then R managed, with the help of a few chair legs, to get up and shuffle towards Enjolras. Throwing caution into the wind, Grantaire ran his filthy hands though the Enjolras' long shiny golden pony tail.
Like before, Enjolras angrily got up from his chair and was about to push R away, harder this time, but something stopped him, R's lips. When Apollo had gotten up Grantaire had pressed his lips into Enjolras'. It stunned him for a few seconds. The absinthe stained lips of R's covered the sober ones of Enjolras. R tried to make the kiss last as long as he could taking in all the details he could remember. But to Grantaire, the kiss was all he had very imagined. Feeling the lips of the one you love over own. But Enjolras cut it short pushed him away, not even returning the kiss.
"What the hell, Grantaire?!" Enjolras grabbed the front of the drunk's shirt and part of his unbuttoned vest. But Grantaire was still as happy as can be. He smiled dumbly as in a daze and pointed upwards.
"Be more careful of where you stand." Was his answer and in a point of the finger handsome Enjolras got what he had meant. He had pointed to a bit of mistletoe strung up above his chair.
"Damn that Prouvaire." Enjolras muttered under his breath. Jehan Prouvaire was the romantic of the group. In Enjolras rational brain Jehan was most likely culprit who had strung it there. But if Enjolras had been paying attention earlier in the evening he would have seen that Courfeyrac had strung it there as a joke.
Enjolras grabbed the mistletoe and chunked it across the room. With that done he grabbed his papers. The top one had ink spread across it. His hand had knocked over the inkwell accidently when he had gotten kissed. With a few curse words he quickly assessed the damages, only the top page. He blew on the pages before he packed them away. The top one was blow on repeatedly when Grantaire decided to speak up from behind.
"Do you any need help, Apollo?" R said it softly and tried to help, but again his hands were swatted away the marble ones that Enjolras owned.
"Leave me alone, Grantaire. Can't you do that? Can you do at least one thing correct and leave me alone?! Insolent drunk," Enjolras said that with such furry it made Grantaire wish he hadn't even gotten up that morning. All he did was kiss the man why was he so upset? Maybe his lips were too rough, or maybe it was because he had been drinking earlier. The only answer to that question in Grantaire's mind was that he had done wrong.
When Enjolras had picked up the last of his things and turned to leave Grantaire was already drinking. He had managed to almost empty the bottle he was clutching earlier.
Grantaire had the very essence of hurt and despair written across his face. The man was once so full of life, but now after all of what Enjolras had done to him over the time, belittled and crush him verbally, he was a broken man. The blonde ran out of the room, out of the Café Musain and didn't stop till he was in an alley a block or two away.
The encounter had scared him, scared him because he cared. It was the first time his heart had felt something in a very long time. The cold facade Enjolras had built up around his heart when he was a young boy had melted when R had kissed him. It melted so much that Enjolras' heart was screaming for him to run back into the café and apologize for all his wrongdoings and ask the man to take him back. If R had kissed him again Enjolras wasn't sure he would have been able to stop himself from kissing back. When he had seen Grantaire's depressed face and attitude it had made him feel guilty. Why?
'What is happening? I've never felt anything towards the man till now,' thought Enjolras. He's never felt anything towards anyone before. He was numb. Numb to everybody but him now. The barricade that kept the love of Paris from him was falling. It was crumbling and Enjolras was helpless to stop it from becoming a pile of ruble.
He started to walk again to clear his tormented head; he had just turned the corner when a few prostitutes that were standing there talking turned their attention to him. "Hello monsieur," a blonde said addressing him, "Want a bit of company tonight?"
Her friend, a red head, looked at him smiling broadly, "You don't want her. We can have more fun together, just you and me, beau."
"I don't want company." He said sternly pushing past them both and speeding up his gait so they wouldn't peruse him further. But in truth he had lied. He did want company, just not with them, with R.
I wrote this a while ago, but I did change a lot of things since then. Manly the fact that this is told from a third-person point of view, originally Enjolras was telling the story!
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