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Most days, he doesn’t take the Metro. Enjolras would rather walk to university than take the subway, but today he’s running late (studying for exams), and the Metro is the quickest way to get to the part of Paris he needs to be in at the time he needs to be there.
But, even though the train will take him to the school and will certainly get him there on time, he can’t help but fidget, looking around nervously for a clock (even as his phone rests in the pocket of his jeans), meeting no one’s eyes and ignoring the texts he is, apparently, getting, presumably asking where he is.
(He likes to be early, thank you very much.)
And the jittery sensation of not being there now is causing him to bounce on the balls of his feet, as well as judge waiting patrons for being completely calm about waiting. (And there’s this one person resting on a bench with a wine bottle at their feet, using a worn black knapsack as a pillow, arms crossed over their chest, a blue knit cap pulled over their eyes—dark curls poking out from beneath it.)
Honestly, how can people sleep while waiting for a train? What if they miss it?
The person shifts as a child (under the keen watch of their father, seems to be) tugs on the sleeve of their green fleece jacket, pushing themselves up and pulling their backpack along with them, the blue knit cap being shaken off to reveal a young man with curls falling into his eyes.
The man and the child murmur to one another, though Enjolras is too far away to hear any more than that, but the man rolls his shoulders (in no sort of rush at all and the waiting is starting to make his palms sweat) and reaches into his backpack, his mouth moving animatedly as he pulls out a pad of paper and what looks to be a pen or a pencil.
And he begins to scribble.
(The motion of bouncing whilst the man sketches starts to make him ill—so he stops, watching the motion of the man’s arm and the slowly rising curiosity of the child.)
The train pulls in as the man tears away a sheet of paper, handing it to the child folded in half, waving to them and the father as he sweeps his child into his arms. A squeal of delight meets Enjolras’ ears as he steps onto the train (finally) and his heart begins to ease its way back into a steady pace.
The doors slide shut behind him (ugh trains are so cramped, this is terrible) and when he glances back toward the platform, he finds blue eyes framed by dark curls looking back at him.
-
Grantaire wishes that people wouldn’t offer to pay him when he sketches things for their kids. He knows that when he was a child, his sister would hold his hand to keep him still (that was her reward for being four years older than him) at Metro stations and carparks and the like. The least he could do is save kids from the boredom that consumed him at that age.
It’s the only charity he’s good for anyway.
(But he really needs parents to stop offering him money, because one of these days he’s going to take it and he’s going to buy whiskey and he’s going to get drunk and that’ll just be a shame.)
The wine bottle at the end of his bench is judging him.
He can feel it.
So he crosses his legs, resting the pad of paper against his thigh while he draws—nothing in particular, at first, just anything besides Winnie the Pooh and storybook characters. But the lines turn into a jaw, turn into a face, turn into a face framed by curls.
Golden curls.
Curls of an angel.
(If, you know, I believed in that sort of thing.)
This is one of those things shitty romance novels advise for—which means that every other rational human being advises against it. Finding someone attractive is not the basis for beginning to sketch them and perhaps speculate on their lives and then perhaps speculate on their sexual orientation, leading to the inevitable idea that maybe they’d go out with me. No matter how Grecian the jawline or how straight the nose, or how the chin is clefted just so. Not the basis for romance.
Not even the basis for a conversation.
And surely not the basis for an interruption to a routine that has been serving him steadily since—all this. Train stations and bus stations and occasionally benches in the park (but not as often, that one, his pack almost got stolen one evening, very unpleasant experience).
But also the Metro 2 line platform is one of his favourites, if only because there’s this preschool girl that thoroughly enjoys drawing on his sketchpad while she waits with her mother and father in the mornings (funny story about this one, her father was completely unsettled—as is his right, of course—and Grantaire thought he might not live through that encounter).
And so here he is, weighing his options because he really was lovely (as evidenced by another sketch appearing on the page of said individual fidgeting like a nervous child) but he’s never seen him on the platform before and he is very attached to his schedule.
He settles, instead, on leaving the sketch of the young man’s profile on the bench, held down by his empty wine bottle, hefting his knapsack over his shoulder as the evening rolls around.
He’s certain he’ll remember that face as long as he lives—one picture shouldn’t be too hard to part with.
-
The next morning he is early and all is right with the world (now that isn’t true, and Enjolras remembers how untrue it is the moment he thinks it, because nothing is ever right with the world, not with all the nonsense and oppression that goes on every day—but in that moment of not having to be on the Metro, everything is fine). His readings are done for the week and he can take a breather in the room for his small activism organization (just a school newspaper, but one day, maybe a movement).
Relaxation had been his only plan as he absently searched news sites for information on his tablet, and so Feuilly wandering into the room with an odd expression on his face happens to be surprising enough to get his complete attention, his right index finger resting against the screen of the tablet.
“Something wrong?” Enjolras asks, realises it was a ridiculous question the moment a smile blossoms on his face.
“Did you take the Metro nine yesterday?”
“Yes,” he replies carefully, staring uncomfortably at the sheet of paper in Feuilly’s hand. “Why?”
He shakes the paper, folded in half and crinkled from transit, “this was left on a bench there. How come you didn’t tell anyone you were a model?”
He feels himself grimace before he can stop himself, taking the paper and unfolding it, finding an impressive sketch of his profile. (It is, however, missing the small scar behind his left ear, but if that had been there, he would have been disturbed—so it isn’t a critique.) The collar of his coat it turned up, probably from the agitation he was feeling on the platform. (And the name Apollo is written beneath it, a small R tucked away at the corner of the page.) “I don’t model,” he murmurs as an afterthought.
“Someone thought you were.”
He snorts, handing the drawing back to Feuilly, who tucks it away rather than throwing it out (though that would be the better option—really, it would). “Someone was just bored.”
(He doesn’t think of blue eyes and dark curls.
He doesn’t think of a sleeping shape on one of the benches.
He doesn’t, so you can kindly take your accusing stare elsewhere.)