Enjonine isn't my favorite couple ever, but I got a plot bunny :)
Bang bang…
Like a breath exhaled,
Then gone forever.
What he's always liked about classical music is the steady beat. It may not be very obvious nor very pronounced, but it's always there and it's always constant. If there's one thing Enjolras likes it's consistency. He could care less about the swells in the music or the crescendos of sound. As long as there's that beat, he's content.
She comes into his life like a wild drum solo that disrupts his quiet normalcy. One minute he has his iPod playing Mozart and the next he finds himself in a club with a dark shadow linked to his hand. If you ask him how it happened, he can't tell you. He is sitting in a café when a whirlwind hits him with all the intention of a hurricane. How else can this girl be described?
Éponine Thernardier is anything but consistent. She is anything but normal. She repulses Enjolras at the same time she attracts him. A moth, a creature of the night, is drawn to the light despite its usual surroundings. She's there before Enjolras knows her name. They're dancing wildly; not even what one would expect in a club. No, in Éponine's unique way she brings innocence to the dance floor. She grabs his hands and swings him about, laughing when Enjolras twirls her like a ballerina to the stuttering beat of dubstep.
She whispers her name to Enjolras as they exit the club, having done absolutely nothing but dance like children. Then she's gone, like she was never there to begin with.
The next morning Enjolras's life resumes. If he catches himself thinking about Éponine's dark eyes or her crooked smile, he exhales slowly and lets his emotions ease out of him in that same way. He puts in his earbuds and listens to Bach.
Classical is traditional. Traditional is steady. Steady is normal. Normal is consistent.
It seems like just yesterday,
How did I miss the red flags raised?
Enjolras sees her again in the middle of the night. He is walking home after a late-night study session with his friend Combeferre when he sees a figure wavering under the neon lights of a nearby club. She's familiar to him, her sporadic steps and graceful movements envelop him more than classical music ever does. He watches her as she walks to a side road and stands in the middle of it, laughing as if the traffic light told her a great joke.
He approaches her to get her off the road, and as he gently grabs her elbows he sees curious marks on her wrists. Marks that almost look like-
But they can't be. He refuses to think of this innocent figure being involved in anything like that. He can't deny that her pupils are far too small, though. And, when he touches her, she winces as if she's in constant pain.
She shakes him off and stumbles away, dancing and laughing. Her arms rise over her head as she dances in the middle of the road. It would be beautiful and tragic to anyone who had less denial. However, all Enjolras could see was the constant danger of a car. Headlights appear in the near distance and he doesn't think twice before seizing her around the waist and carrying her to the sidewalk.
In the moment that she meets his eyes, he sees the most curious emotion in them. Almost as if she was disappointed that he pulled her away from the car. But instead of asking her any questions, he seizes her pretty face in his hands and presses his lips against hers. It is a moment of bliss until a gust of wind breaks them apart, and when he opens his eyes she is gone.
He walks to his apartment by himself. His footsteps form a beat that is steady.
The beat is steady. Steady is normal. Normal is consistent.
Think back to the days we laughed.
We braved these bitter storms together.
They meet again in his favorite café. From her windswept appearance, she's been looking for him for some time. While he hasn't been looking for her, he's been thinking about her. He doesn't want to think about her, because she is random and inconsistent and everything that he is not. He is terrible in his cool way and she is wonderful and wild. He stands from his spot at the table and nearly pushes over a pair of teenage girls to get to her. When they meet by the door, he hugs her before he kisses her, for when they embrace she molds to him as if she is his other half.
They make love for the first time that day. He leaves his coffee and his textbook in the café in favor of grabbing her hand and pulling her to his apartment across the street. They end up in the bedroom, and in between kisses she begs him not to take off her shirt. Despite her protestations, he does.
What he sees is the thing that first breaks his heart. Across her beautifully-shaped torso are bruises and cuts. A swelling by her ribcage suggests that she's broken a rib or two. She looks down, ashamed and goes for her shirt. He raises her chin with his finger and kisses her softly. Then he proceeds to caress every bruise and kiss every scar, shoving her to the edge before he even touches her sex.
He is gentler than anyone she's ever had, which only adds to her pleasure. She finishes twice more before he finally ejaculates into her, proceeding to turn excessively pale on the realization that they had no condom. His shocked face is precious, and even with his cock so deeply buried in her, she feels the urge to giggle. She reaches up and strokes his slightly scruffy face.
"I can get a morning-after pill." She assures him, her tone light. He smiles down at her and very carefully pulls out. Even so, she winces, because it's been a while since she's willingly allowed anyone to be so intimate with her. He strokes her collarbone and asks the question nobody's asked her before.
"Did I hurt you?"
She responds with silence, because the heart beating in her chest no longer belongs to her in that moment. They are very nearly asleep in each other's arms despite the early time of ten in the morning when he remembers something vital. He jolts up, and for a moment she is greeted with unpleasant memories. She is terrified that someone's hurt him, but when she looks at Enjolras, he greets her with a smile.
"Let's get that rib looked at."
They laugh together at the Saturday morning cartoons, she is in his arms and happy. Although, she is shivering and he worries for her health. She assures him that she is fine, however her brow is glistening with a sheen of sweat and she appears to have trouble breathing. He places the back of his hand over her head and asks with concern lacing his voice, "Should we take you to the doctor?"
"No!" She shouts, a little too early. He looks at her skeptically, but she smiles a shaky smile to get him off her ass. It works, for the moment. As soon as he leaves for work, she collapses in tears. She managed to make it for the three weeks they have been together, but now she caves. There is a little clear bag in her boot with powder in it, and she runs to her shitty apartment to give herself sweet relief.
In the meantime, Enjolras sits in his cubicle at the law firm that he interns at. The background noises consist mainly of the click of keys as lawyers and secretaries waste their days at a computer. The clicks are stereotypical.
Stereotypical is steady. Steady is normal. Normal is consistent.
Make it stop.
Let this end.
Eighteen years pushed to the ledge.
He catches her when they are in their third month of a relationship. He doesn't know a lot of things, this twenty-two year old college student. He doesn't know that his girlfriend is underage. He doesn't know that she's been brutally abused from the moment she turned nine. He doesn't know that sometimes she want to die. He doesn't know that she loves him. He doesn't know that her escape comes in the form of a needle.
But now he knows that last one.
His purpose is to get back his knit hat that she borrowed, and she is stupid enough to have given him a spare key. Half of her dose has been ejected into her bloodstream when he speaks from the doorway, his tone cold and disapproving. "Éponine, what are you doing?"
She doesn't even falter, instead she keeps pressing gently until it's all there. When she looks back up, he's gone.
He chooses to forget about it. But when they begin to get frisky after winter finals and a familiar bag falls out of her bra, he stands up as if someone stuck a pin in his back and tells her to go.
She does.
He doesn't know that it's her 18th birthday. He doesn't know that she was planning on lowering her dose that day. In her anger, when she leaves, she uses her normal amount. When she leaves, silence fills Enjolras's apartment. He fills it up with a steady beat as he taps a pencil on his counter.
Because his beat is steady. Steady is normal. Normal is consistent.
Bang, bang from the closet walls…
Push me and I'll push back.
I'm done asking, I demand.
They get into an argument around their one year anniversary. It's over something trivial, but words are said that cannot be taken back. She storms out and he stays, regretting every single word. When she leaves, she buys some more, despite the fact that she's been cutting down considerably. She's almost made it to next to nothing.
But that argument pushes her over the edge. She watches from an alley and waits until he leaves for her to return. They share his apartment now, and she's too ashamed with the powder in her pocket to return while he's still there. Once she has the place to herself, she goes into the hall closet, the one place that is only hers.
He never goes in there because he doesn't want to disturb her privacy. Privacy and smack is all she wants right now.
The needle pricks her skin and slowly the drug fills her and quenches her pain for only a little bit. Then something is wrong. Something is terribly wrong. She collapses, unable to hold herself on her own two feet. Her hands begin to shake and she can't open the closet door. The needle falls from her clenched fingers and she feels something spilling out of her mouth. The darkness of the closet fills her and then there is nothing.
Courfeyrac is the one who finds her. She and Gavroche were supposed to have a sibling day, and Courfeyrac, being Gavroche's guardian, comes looking for her when she doesn't show. She is blue in the face and strangely beautiful in her broken way. He calls 911 and decides to not tell either Gavroche or Enjolras.
But nothing ever works out as planned, and Joly ends up being one of the paramedics. Whilst in the ambulance, he rings Enjolras.
At the time, Enjolras is in the café where they met in a swirl of emotions and mistakes. His phone makes out a jingle in his pocket. It's not a classical tune as it would have been a year prior. It's the same song they first danced to. And when he answers it, he hears nothing but breathing. And sirens.
"Joly?" He asks. The person on the other end is unable to respond.
"Enjolras…"
"Yes?"
"It's Éponine."
Enjolras turns to see the ambulance in front of his building pull away, and a tear-stained Courfeyrac standing there, looking him in the eye. And all he can think is that it's his fault. When he runs out of the café and after the ambulance, he sees as the lights and sirens turn off. He knows what that means and he collapses to the pavement in the middle of the road.
It's all his fault.
All he can hear is his heartbeat.
His heart beat is too steady. Steady is normal. Normal is consistent.
When he thinks of consistence, he thinks of classical.
He hates classical music now.
Bang bang on the coffin nails.
This is VERY loosely based on 'Make It Stop' by Rise Against. Everything I know about heroin is from RENT, so if I have anything wrong... Sorry.
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