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Enjolras didn't remember his dreams. The wisps of memory that he did manage to hold onto in the liminal moments between awakening and awareness were abstract and ephemeral. He would recall a concept, which would fade to a feeling, and then become nothing at all, leaving only ragged edges to hint at the empty space in his mind. The knowledge he had dreamed without the memory to prove it.
This was why he was surprised to find himself sitting on a flat, wooden bench in a train station he didn't recognize, when he clearly remembered going to bed in his room in Paris. Though Enjolras was certain he had never been here before, the place was disturbing in its detail. The walls were pale concrete, shaded yellow in the muted light of the ringed chandeliers that hung from a broad, arched roof tens of meters above his head. The intimidating expanse of stone was broken up by a series of uniform geometric patterns shallowly sculpted into the walls and ceiling. To his right, Enjolras saw two ticket stations, hollowed out of the wall and lit with a neon orange glow. Ahead of him, the corner of a sign with an arrow pointed deeper into the station, accompanied by words in an unfamiliar language. What most unnerved him was that, despite the dim light of a cloudy day filtering in through the massive dome window above the entrance, there was not a single other person in the station besides him.
Was this what all of his dreams were like? Enjolras wondered, with no small amount of trepidation. Him wandering alone through finely detailed, desolate locales? If they were, it was no wonder the memories so readily fled his mind upon waking. Not content to just stand still, he decided to head farther into the station, following the arrow on the sign. He passed through another large hall, smaller than the entrance, but still dwarfing his lonely form with its vaulted ceiling and pilastered walls. On the right, a number of booths running the length of the room suggested more ticketing services, each with an unoccupied chair and an unlit lamp. Weaving around more wide, flat benches scattered around the hall, Enjolras peeked out of the large windows to his left. Outside, he saw what should have been a busy city square. There were buildings, storefronts, cafes. But they stood utterly devoid of living souls. Buses and cars stood still on the streets, a metro line had stopped on its rails, the doors open as if it had just pulled into the stop. But, again, there was not a passenger or driver to be seen.
Enjolras swallowed hard and moved away from the windows. His shoes tapped faster on the tile floor, the sound echoing eerily around him. He left the ticket hall and the concrete passageway finally opened up into a large railway platform. It was open to the air, the only protection from the elements an angled glass roof held up by criss-crossing steel girders. There were four sets of parallel railroad tracks that ended at the building Enjolras had just exited, each with its own platform separating them.
There was a person on the fourth platform. Enjolras started when he caught sight of the figure in his peripheral vision, sitting on a metal bench facing the tracks, as if waiting for a train to pull into the station. They were too far away for him to make out any features, but the person was slouched forward, elbows resting on knees and chin pillowed in hands. Enjolras didn't see any bag or luggage nearby, though.
Abruptly, he shook his head. It's a dream, he scolded himself. Intensely detailed as it was, there was no use in trying to logic his way through it.
All the same, he was deeply curious about who it was in his dream, no matter how illogical their appearance. He briefly considered calling out to them, but the thought of trying to gain the attention of his own subconscious felt slightly absurd.
Instead, Enjolras dropped onto the railroad tracks, casting a wary glance down their empty length, and hastily scrambled across the loose gravel and up onto the second platform. He passed a sign on the second platform, covered with directions and maps and information that he couldn't understand. Enjolras vaguely remembered hearing that reading in dreams was impossible, but that didn't seem to be the case in his. The letters and words were all perfectly legible, simply in a language he couldn't read.
As Enjolras jumped into the hollow of the second set of tracks, his foot hit a large chunk of stone and sent it ricocheting off the metal rail with an echoing ping. The figure on the far platform raised their head at the sound, a jerky, startled motion.
And with a jolt, Enjolras recognized him.
Wanting to be sure, he heaved himself up onto the third platform and when he straightened, the other man was standing as well, now only one set of tracks remaining between them.
The two of them stared at each other a long moment before the man across the tracks spoke first.
"Enjolras?" He took a hesitant step forward.
"Grantaire."
And it was Grantaire, standing there in Enjolras's dream, casual as you please, having the audacity to look surprised at Enjolras's presence.
"What are you doing here?" he demanded, feeling patently ridiculous as soon as the question left his lips. For what reason did anything appear in a dream?
Instead of answering, Grantaire laughed, just as Enjolras might have expected. He flushed, but Grantaire didn't seem to be laughing at him.
The other man ran his hands roughly over his face then tugged at his hair, mussing his already well-tousled dark curls. "This is so fucking embarrassing," he groaned, "Even for me."
Enjolras didn't really know how to respond to that. He was still barely wrapping his mind around the idea that he was dreaming...about Grantaire? Was that another thing he didn’t remember? A surge of confusing and contradictory emotions rose in his chest at the thought, but he determinedly pushed them back, not ready to deal with that at present.
"I'm sorry," he eventually muttered.
Grantaire swung his head to look at him, his eyes wide. "No, don't apologize to me, this is already strange enough!" He laughed again, nervously. "As if this isn't the weirdest fantasy I've ever had. Er, not that I usually..."
Aware that he was well on his way to becoming a space heater, what with all the blood rushing to his face, Enjolras tried to wave off Grantaire's trailing explanation with a frantic hand, his tongue suddenly in knots. This was just mounting evidence that allowing him to forget his dreams was a mercy from the universe.
"...really I should be the one apologizing not that it does much good to a figment of my admittedly crass imagination. I don't suppose you could pass it on in real life, huh? Because I doubt Enjolras appreciates that I—"
"I'm right here," Enjolras interrupted, feeling that his temperature and color had normalized enough to speak again.
"Sure, sure, I just mean—"
"Besides," he barreled onward, "You're in my dream. This—this is my dream." Enjolras gestures at the deserted station.
Grantaire looked confused. "Um, no, it's definitely mine. I fell asleep in this train station." He points to where he had been sitting. "On this bench."
"That's..." On some childish instinct, Enjolras pinches his forearm. Ow. "You're telling me I'm stuck in someone else's dream, your dream?"
Grantaire raised his hands in half-joking defense. "Believe me, I would never be so bold as to tell you anything—"
"I'm coming over there," Enjolras said and jumped into the hollow of the tracks.
"Uh, yeah, okay...oh, here."
Grantaire leaned down to offer Enjolras his hand and, when Enjolras took it, easily pulled him up onto the platform beside him. His palm was warm and callused just like Enjolras remembered. Though, why would it be different?
He must have had a strange expression on his face, because Grantaire quickly let his hand go and took a step back. The awkward space between them remained as Enjolras perched on the edge of the bench. Grantaire slumped down beside him, stretching his legs in front of him and reclining against the hard, metal backrest, his body one long, lean line like a firm brushstroke of ink.
Grantaire raised an eyebrow and Enjolras shifted his gaze to the empty tracks. "It's been awhile."
A huff of breath. "Yeah, I guess it has. Been about...how long exactly?"
The question was playful, teasing, but Enjolras answered seriously. "Four months next week."
"How the time flies," came the cheeky response. "Is this why you busted into my dream, Enjolras? To make small talk? You could always just text me. Unless I end up in Norway, I guess."
In spite of himself, Enjolras smiled. "I don't really know what else to say," he admitted, "I could tell you that I miss you and that I want you to come home soon because it's not the same here without you, but if this is just my dream..." he trailed off.
There was a long silence and Grantaire didn't move next to him. A frisson of nerves ran up Enjolras's spine and he turned to face the other man. "Grantaire?"
The expression on Grantaire's face drove the breath from his lungs. His dark eyes were fixed on Enjolras as if he were an impossible image who, were Grantaire to lose focus for even a moment, would vanish in the space between blinks, a victim of the fleeting nature of dreams. He looked almost surprised, his lips slightly parted, but there was also something unbearably fond in the tilt of his head and the fine crinkling of his eyelids.
He caught Enjolras staring back and, in an instant, Grantaire rearranged his expression back into the irreverent grin he had been wearing earlier. "That's so sweet of you to say, Enj. I've decided you can visit my dreams anytime you like."
"Unless this is my dream."
"I've never seen the real waking Enjolras be so emotionally forthcoming, so you have to be a figment of my imagination."
Ignoring that the observation wasn't untrue, Enjolras rolled his eyes. "And just when I believed you could be serious."
"Alas, I am incorrigible." But Grantaire sat up and his mirth faded to a gentler amusement. He looked like he wanted to say something further, his jaw working briefly, but he only rubbed the back of his neck, staying silent.
The surreality of the entire scene suddenly hit Enjolras in one dizzying moment. It was so unlike Grantaire to bite his tongue. In this dreamscape, everything Enjolras might have anticipated seemed to be turned on its head. Grantaire was holding back and he himself was hesitating. What was real and what was imagined blurred together and twisted apart.
Enough, Enjolras decided. He wouldn't allow himself to become someone he didn't recognize, no matter how strange the circumstance. If Grantaire really was present, just as Enjolras was, the difference between dream and reality was nothing but an illusion. And if it turned out he was alone...well, then he could consider it good practice.
"Then you don't mind if I ask directly," Enjolras said, "when are you coming home, Grantaire? And why do Joly and Bossuet get regular updates on where you are, but I don't?"
"You caught onto that, huh?" Grantaire said, sheepish.
Enjolras shot Grantaire the driest sidelong glare he could muster. "What do you take me for?"
Grantaire laughed, visibly more at ease. "That's the fearless leader I know and love. Tongue sharp enough to run a man through and the look to match." He ran a hand through his hair, the unruly waves still refusing to stay in place. "Here's the thing," he continued, "I want to know for sure this is real. Then I'll give you your answer, Enjolras."
"Even if I had any means of confirming that, why is the burden of proof on me?" Enjolras protested.
Grantaire grinned cheekily in response. "Because you asked the question." Riling up Enjolras seemed to be just the thing to put him back in good spirits.
Somewhat at a loss, Enjolras rifled through his increasingly chaotic thoughts, hoping to stumble across a hint of a thread of a wisp of reason. He couldn't even fully convince himself that this wasn't just his brain's wishful thinking; how was he supposed to persuade the world's most determined skeptic?
"What if..." he began, nerves flaring again with what must have been an audible crackle, "what if I told you something only I could tell you? Something no one else would know?"
Grantaire raised an eyebrow. "I'll hear it."
Enjolras let out a long breath. He took a long pause to meticulously order the words that would follow, feeling that everything hinged on him finding the exact right order and inflection. "On the day that you left," he said, "we all went to see you off at the train station. And I pulled you aside, alone for a moment, when everyone was buying pain au chocolat because Bahorel insisted you have your last taste of Paris for the foreseeable future..." he risked a quick glance at Grantaire and was gratified to see him still smiling.
"And I said I wouldn't touch anything unless it was chocolatine." Grantaire's eyes crinkled at the corners.
"Yes, you did." Enjolras forcibly pulled his gaze away from Grantaire's face, steeling himself. "I pulled you aside and said I understood why you were leaving and I was glad you were doing it and that..."
Grantaire watched him with unwavering intensity. "And that...?"
It spilled out, more forcefully than he had expected but, then again, he had been running the scene through his mind on repeat for four months now. "And that I would be waiting for you when you decided to come back," Enjolras said, his tongue a burning brand, "I promised you. I meant it then and I mean it now and I'll still mean it when we or you or I wake up."
Several emotions flashed across Grantaire's face, too quick for Enjolras to make sense of, before he tipped his head back to the glass ceiling, closing his eyes. He let out a long breath and Enjolras didn't dare move.
"Well, you're nearly right," he finally said.
A cold, heavy stone dropped in Enjolras's stomach. "Nearly?"
Grantaire's voice was so gentle it hurt. "What Enjolras said to me was 'I'll be waiting for you when you come back home.'"
"That's what I said to you."
"...More or less."
"Then, you remember it?"
"I remember." Grantaire sighed and opened his eyes. "And that's why it doesn't prove anything. This could still just be my subconscious telling me what I want to hear."
Frustrated, Enjolras grabbed Grantaire's forearm and squeezed tight. "Then what, what?" he demanded. "What will it take for you to believe?"
Grantaire looked at him with a wry twist of his lips. It was a look that said Enjolras was too clever to be asking such foolish questions.
The piercing trill of a train whistle split the heavy silence, so suddenly that Enjolras jerked in his seat, gripping Grantaire's arm even harder, if that was possible. "What the—"
"That's me, I'm afraid." Grantaire made to stand, but was stopped by Enjolras's hold. He patted the top of one of his hands, a polite request, and Enjolras quickly obliged to release him.
"But, wait, you can't go yet, not this time—"
"I can't miss the train, Enjolras," Grantaire interrupted, suddenly looking distracted. He turned and then paused. Enjolras could have sworn that his image was literally wavering at the edges. It wasn't just Grantaire, he realized, looking around. The glass roof wobbled and swam, like he was looking through a heat wave.
Before Enjolras could say anything more, Grantaire turned back to him. He reached into his pocket and, leaning down, swiftly pressed something into Enjolras's open palm, then curled his fingers over whatever it was.
"I don't know if this will work," he said. "I'm sorry, I can't—" Another deafening blow of the whistle drowned out the rest of his words. Enjolras tried to hold harder to Grantaire's hand, but he slipped away, walking hurriedly down the platform.
"Grantaire!" Enjolras tried to stand and run after him, but he couldn't move. The detailed station began to dissolve around him, the tracks warping and buckling before his eyes. The brick walls fell away, the ground going with it, until he was sitting on a bench spinning alone through nothingness.
He had barely drawn breath to cry out when—
Enjolras's eyes snapped open and he sat up in bed so fast his head spun, his sheets twisted around him, his breath coming in loud pants.
For one agonizing moment, he remembered everything. Every daunting detail in perfect clarity.
"Grantaire," he muttered, his voice still rough with sleep, and grabbed his phone, tapping through his contacts with unsteady fingers. It was early—very early—but he didn't care.
The phone rang once, twice...three times as Enjolras waited, barely breathing. The memories were already fading, it was as if he was watching them escape from his mind, painfully aware as each one slipped away. The call went to voicemail, Grantaire's voice in his ear again.
"You haven't reached Grantaire, leave a message, terms and conditions apply."
Enjolras opened his mouth to spill everything but...he couldn't quite remember what it was he wanted to say. They had been sitting, talking together. He needed to ask Grantaire something, or maybe tell him something. He remembered gravel crunching under his feet, a sense of overwhelming urgency.
He sat, frozen, with his phone pressed against his ear until he realized he was breathing creepily down the voicemail line. "Um," he started eloquently, "Sorry, I'm sorry, can you, uh, can you call me when you get this? Please?" He remembered at the last second before hanging up to add, "This is Enjolras...bye."
Dammit, dammit! Why couldn't he remember?
His next call was to Joly, heedless of the early hour, and gratified to hear a sleepy "Hello?" on the other end.
"Joly! Do you know where Grantaire is? I think he's traveling and I need to know where he's going next."
"Enj..." Joly mumbled, "what in the world is going on?"
"I just really need to talk to him. I know he keeps you thoroughly updated. Did he tell you where he's going next?"
There was a rustling of bed covers over the line. "Hold on, let me turn my brain on," Joly said, "He said something about a residency in Stockholm for new media art. Enjolras, is something wrong?"
"No, nothing's wrong, I've just been thinking recently. About—" he stopped himself from saying homecomings, not sure where the word suddenly came from, "—things."
"Well...okay then, if you're sure."
"I'm sure. Sorry about waking you, Joly. And thank you."
He tossed his phone aside and pressed his palms to his eyes, hard. There wasn't much else to do until Grantaire called him back, but he certainly wasn't getting back to sleep now. He swung his legs over the side of his bed, freezing when something crinkled unexpectedly with his movement. Carefully running his hands over his sheets, Enjolras found nothing, but when he patted himself down, the crinkle sounded again.
In the pocket of his pajama pants was a crumpled, ragged slip of paper that definitely hadn't been there when he had gone to bed. Enjolras smoothed it out, half hopeful and half terrified.
It was a train ticket stub. Not in a language he knew, but one that looked familiar all the same. However, Enjolras didn't care about what he couldn't make out, because what he could read was the destination: PARIS.
And a time of arrival, set for later that same day.
Enjolras passed the day in a daze, forcing himself to keep his eyes off the clock and his mind in the present. He couldn't keep himself from straining to recall any other detail about the dream he knew he'd had, to no avail.
He also found himself thinking about Grantaire, about the last time Enjolras had seen him. Enjolras was convinced he had been a part of his dream, but, in truth, Grantaire had been invading his thoughts well before showing up in his dreams. His time away had done nothing to alleviate that, but it certainly had given Enjolras a certain amount of clarity regarding those thoughts. Too little, too late, maybe.
He worried at the ticket stub until the cheap ink began to rub off on his fingers. Either way, he would have some resolution.
The appointed time found Enjolras pacing the designated platform at Gare du Nord, his body buzzing with nervous anticipation. His eyes roamed restlessly over the crowd, catching on every head of dark, curly hair that passed him by. Each sighting sent a premature thrill running through him, only to inevitably fizzle into disappointment over and over again.
And then, he heard the piercing trill of a train whistle and he turned.
He was there.
Enjolras hadn't realized until that second how desperate he truly was. Grantaire was there, a duffel bag slung over his shoulder, dark circles under his eyes, looking at Enjolras with complete astonishment.
It was like Enjolras had just stepped onto the tracks and been hit by a train. He remembered. Involuntarily, he let out a wild laugh, then slapped a hand over his mouth, embarrassed.
"It was real," he said. His voice was soft, but he saw Grantaire flinch as if he had yelled.
His feet carried him forward and then he was face to face with Grantaire, who was real. Enjolras gently took his hand and pressed the ticket stub into his palm, following the echo of memory.
"I still mean it," he said, "Say something, Grantaire."
Grantaire moved, finally, dropping his duffel to the ground. "What can I say?"
"Don't say anything, then." Enjolras, tired of holding back, took a step closer. They were practically sharing breath now.
And Grantaire grinned, then kissed him. His lips were warm, dry, and tasted like train car coffee. Enjolras kissed him back with every ounce of intensity he had been bottling up and setting aside for four months. He forgot they were standing on a crowded platform, he imagined they were alone, back in the abandoned station in his—their—dream.
He almost missed the sharp pinch of pain in his arm entirely. "Ow! What—"
Grantaire said," Just checking." The look on his face was familiar, his eyes dark and tender as he drank in Enjolras standing before him.
"You bastard." Enjolras pulled him back in, determined not to be sidetracked by the interruption. Instead, he took the opportunity to kiss Grantaire again, this time slow and lingering. "Welcome home."