Chapter Text
Grantaire had lived in France for 2 years. He was born and raised in Dublin. He liked Ireland, and it was his home, but that was all it ever was. His childhood home, a place to visit and reflect on how far he'd come. He wanted to escape. He wanted to leave his family and his school and go somewhere new. He wanted to get off this island and see the world.
He'd always loved the idea of Paris, the city of love, art, and light. So when he got the opportunity for an exchange program at the Paris College of Art, he jumped at it. Paris was the city of light, love, and art. Three things that Grantaire really didn't have enough of. He love the brightness, the beauty, the revolution of Paris. He loved the romance, the passion, the history. He had only ever left Ireland five times, always going to London on holidays. He had only ever seen photos of Paris, so it was surreal to think that he was doing this. That he was actually moving there. That he was going to live there. He packed his bags, said goodbye to his few friends and good riddance to his family, hired a tiny flat, and got on the plane to France.
Paris isn't the romantic beautiful city it's made out to be. It's dark and dusty and full of smoke and the people are rude and it rains a lot. And Grantaire absolutely loves it. He spent his first few weeks in Paris like Alice In Wonderland, unable to believe that he really gets to spend his life here. He marvelled at everything, how pretty and romantic everything was. He painted the streets, not the fancy boulevards or the Eiffel tower, but the side alleys, the dirty squares, the students smoking against brick walls, the polluted river banks of the Seine, the clueless tourist crowds flocking around the Arc De Triomphe glued to their phones. Everything in Paris was so paintable and romantic in its irony. He had finally done it. He had escaped Ireland and gone to a place that he loved, a place of adventure, a place where he mattered.
There was, of course, another reason he loved Paris the way he did. Four months after he moved, he was walking to his next class when he saw him. Waving posters in the air and shouting in French, he was the most beautiful thing Grantaire had ever laid eyes on. In that single glance, he fell to heaven. He approached the man like the pigeons that flock to stray pieces of bread near the fountains, as if this man was all he needed to survive. That day, he learnt the man's name. Enjolras. He couldn't quite pronounce the complicated French name in his rough Irish accent, so he spent that night replaying the way he'd said it and learning to pronounce it.
Enjolras was everything Grantaire ever needed. He'd spent his whole life searching for his purpose, searching for something to do that would make him matter to someone. And he found it in Enjolras. Enjolras was his purpose in life. Worshipping him and loving him was all he was born to do. This beautiful, statuesque angel of a man was all Grantaire believed in. Grantaire's preconceived notion of Paris was entirely fake and constructed, yet it existed, not in Paris, but Enjolras. Enjolras was the light, the love, the art, the romance, the passion, the history, the brightness, the beauty, the revolution. Enjolras was his Paris.
Instantly, Enjolras became his muse. He still painted Paris, but rarely. He only painted Enjolras, trying in vain to capture the way Enjolras made him feel, his inner and outer beauty, his angelic radiance. It was always a shoddy imitation, but Grantaire couldn't stop. His flat was filled floor to ceiling, with canvases depicting his angel.
Desperate and ready to do anything to spend more time with Enjolras, he joined the social activism group that Enjolras was a part of. That was what he really loved about Enjolras. The fact that he believed so blindly in his ideals, that he was so passionate about them. Grantaire had only really cared about vague concepts, abstract things with no rhyme or reason, like art. But Enjolras knew exactly what he cared about , and defended it. Enjolras could make Grantaire believe, and Grantaire could believe in Enjolras. They were separate but connected, like the duality of art and politics.
So Grantaire reapplied, as an international student, at the Paris College of Art. He sold his paintings to pay his rent and spent a lot of time with Les Amis de la Société de l'ABC, as they called themselves. Grantaire found himself being good friends with a lot of them, even if he was only really there for Enjolras. They were a laugh, and the drinks were free. So, he stayed.
His best friends within the group were Bahorel, Bousset, and Courfeyrac. The sarcastic clowns of the friend group, they often joked around while being a little bit tipsy. Feuilly, Joly, Combeferre and Enjolras always rolled their eyes at them. Grantaire wished that the eyerolls Enjolras gave him could be the same exasperated but loving ones the others were giving their boyfriends, but unfortunately not. He confided in them about his love for Enjolras eventually. Bahorel had figured it out first. After an hour of watching him watch Enjolras, he had softly said to him, "You love him, don't you?". Then he told the other. Courfeyrac had suspected for some time, but Bousset was absolutely oblivious an almost fell off his chair in shock. He often ranted to them about Enjolras' perfection and radiance, and ignore all their advice on asking him out. He couldn't simply ask Enjolras out. He was as untouchable as the angel statues in the churches. So, he stayed in the group, admiring from a far, being an annoying nuisance in the distance.
The only problem was, as much as Grantaire loved France, as much as he loved Paris, he couldn't speak French. At first he had been exited with the prospect of learning a new language. He had always thought French was so romantic and beautiful. But when he sat down to learn it, he couldn't even begin to wrap his head around the complicated grammar and pronunciation. Slowly, he started giving up. Almost everyone that was important in Paris, that is to say, the Friends of the ABC, spoke English. Enjolras and Combeferre made the executive decision to speak English in their meetings for the sake of Grantaire, and Feuilly, who was from London. The difference between the two is that Feuilly was actually making an effort to learn French.
Enjolras spoke perfect English, or maybe his English was terrible and Grantaire assumed everything he did was perfect. He had a soft Parisian accent, rolling his rs and compressing his vowels. Grantaire loved his voice no matter what he was saying or what language he was speaking, but he adored when he spoke French. He would often eavesdrop on his and Combeferre's conversations, just to hear the dulcet and romantic tones of Enjolras speaking French, the way his voice deepened and became faster. The other member used slang constantly, the harsh, lively French of the Parisian youth, speech peppered with words like "flemme" or "bof" or "meufe". But Enjolras spoke the real French, "le francais de Moliere" as the others teasingly called it. Yet another thing Grantaire loved about him.
Enjolras was as much like French then he was Paris. Romantic and beautiful on the outside, but harsh and complicated on the inside. Grantaire loved him in theory, but was too scared to approach him in reality. Enjolras was larger than life, he was the language, the city, the ideologies, the sky. In short, he was Grantaire's everything. He didn't know how he'd bear walking the streets of Paris without him. Every time Enjolras looked at him, even briefly, the whole world disappeared and he was swept up in the heaven that was this man. So that was why he had stayed in Paris. Not for the art, not for the language, not for the atmosphere. For Enjolras. And that was why he never learnt French, not just because it was too hard, but because he couldn't bring himself to be able to fully grasp Enjolras, to accept that he's not an untouchable god, to accept that he's really just a man that doesn't love him.