Disclaimer: I do not own Les Miz. If I did… ::vanishes in fluffy fantasies of Courfeuilly:: ::clears throat:: I mean, please review, I like to know how badly I screwed up.
RenaudFeuilly was a simple man. Sitting with his fans in the backroom of the Musain, his skinny elbow almost showing through a threadbare coat smattered in paint stains, he felt content.
He laughed rarely, and when he did, it was a sort of serious laugh, his large ebony eyes fixing on someone and staring until the person grew rather uncomfortable. He didn't mean to make people uncomfortable. He didn't mean to be rude and stare. But he would find that he couldn't tear his eyes away when someone was speaking, joking, laughing. He was a serious sort, and he patiently resigned himself to the fact that he'd never gather a crowd about him like Courfeyrac could. Courfeyrac, he was the Pied Piper of the fables, luring anyone and everyone away from anything resembling work.
Feuilly disliked him immensely. Or at least, that is what he told himself every day, when he would draw his crowd of silly grisettes and foolish dandies. He would tell himself that whenever he found his eyes wandering rather inconveniently against his will to search Courfeyrac's face, to seek out the magic spark that seemed almost to radiate from his eyes in such a cliched way that it almost reminded him of Jean Prouvaire's poetry.
But Courfeyrac was NOT like poetry. Not one bit like poetry at all.
Feuilly focused more on painting his fans, in his little corner opposite Grantaire; both lost in their own worlds, which were a good deal less pleasant than the one their bodies resided in.
Feuilly couldn't say what Grantaire was thinking, he had disliked drunks ever since he was a child and avoided the older man as much as possible. But what he was thinking of was Enjolras's latest speech. Thinking on Enjolras made Feuilly smile slightly. Enjolras never minded when Feuilly stared.
Enjolras would stare back. Blue on black, almost a twilight.
He had spoken of the horrid conditions of the poor of Paris. He spoke with such fire and passion, he reminded one of Saint Michael, the supreme archangel.
BUT HOW DID HE KNOW?
The question knocked the wind out of him, sending him reeling, his fingers clenching, into a world of something darker than all the terror stories he had heard as a child had. The world of memory.
In a heartbeat, Feuilly was nine years old again. He was cold, his clothes were in tatters, his stomach was empty, and he had no one in the world.
His eyes still stared.
HUNGRY.
That's the word that he most remembered. Hungry.
Dry, cracked lips formed the word, a hoarse breath escaped from his scratched throat by chance, the taste of his own blood on his tongue. And forever, a gnawing feeling in his belly, it was in danger of folding in itself, he lifted his ragged shirt half expecting to see a black hole through his middle.
This was hungry.
"Buy a fan, Monsieur? Buy a fan? Buy a pretty fan, for a pretty Mademoiselle?"
This was hungry.
What did this beautiful angel, the only child of a wealthy family, sent off to Paris to be educated, know of cold, of pain, of hungry? Was this revolution his idea of a pastime, procrastinating as long as possible before writing his Rousseau essay?
Feuilly knew it wasn't true, that Enjolras felt more for the revolution than that, but he didn't care, he was nine years old, he was a poor orphan left with nothing and no one, and worst of all, he was HUNGRY!
RenaudFeuilly blinked back to reality.
Salty.
He had been crying.
He had been sleeping?
Dreaming?
He looked up into the face of Courfeyrac, noted for the first time the warm pressure of the man's hand on his shoulder. The kind expression in his eyes… was Feuilly still dreaming? No? Perhaps the man wasn't so bad after all…
"Are you quite all right, Feuilly?" Concern now? Concern for Feuilly? That was unheard of. Feuilly would get by! He always did.
He bit his lip, and hoped the lingering tears on his cheeks weren't too noticeable. "I'm fine, thank you."
"Come." Courfeyrac helped Feuilly out of his seat, where he stood with legs of jelly. "I'll buy you supper."
"No."Renaud Feuilly put up a hand and gave a tiny flicker of a smile, there and gone in an instant. "I'll buy YOU supper."
End.