Chapter Text
You’ve always sort of felt like you must have been someone in a previous life.
Not necessarily someone particularly important, even, but maybe someone who mattered to one who was.
And you actually didn’t believe in reincarnation — well, you don’t believe in reincarnation, really. Not at all.
Except then you read “The Libation Bearers” (because you are a massive asshole who absorbs all things Classics-related like a fucking pretentious sponge), and you almost felt something actually click inside you. He’d had one line, and that was it, but you’d felt it — a kind of familiarity like you had said those words. Which didn’t even make sense, because it’s not even something you would say, but still. You felt like you’d found yourself in Pylades.
After that, you tore through everything: Sophocles, Homer, Euripides. “Iphigenia in Tauris” made your heart beat faster than it should have. When you read Lucian, you cried. It was like you missed him. Which is absurd. Orestes was never even real, you’ve tried to reason with yourself, and you never knew him. You can’t miss him.
Still, you do. Like an aching inside you, like a hole.
You miss him.
It’s absurd. It’s ridiculous. It’s what brings you to the museum every week at two o’clock on sundays, like you’re attending church or something. You gaze at his likeness in paint and marble and you ache for him. You come here to find him, but you never actually expect to.
Until today.
He’s standing in front of your favorite painting: the Bouchot, the one where you’re — no, he’s — protecting him while shadowy, half-exposed figures fall away in the background. He’s just standing there, his hair like gilt, his shoulders set like a goddamn Greek hero, his fingers absently tapping on the strap of his bag draped over his chest. He’s there. He’s here.
Orestes.
No.
Yes!
Enjolras.
It’s like a tsunami, sweeping you away. You imagine — no, you remember France and the revolution, the barricade, the guns, his hand in yours. His smile. You can’t breathe, your head is spinning, you can’t see. Tears are filling your eyes and you can’t fucking breathe.
You want to touch him, to take his hand, to ask him if he permits it. But what if he doesn’t remember you? What if he pulls away?
What if you’re wrong?
You’re not wrong. It’s him. He’s here. You can feel him.
Before you can pull yourself together enough to even blink away the tears in your eyes, he turns and starts to move away. He doesn’t stop at other paintings, it’s like he was just here for this one and now he’s leaving.
You rasp out a word, too quiet to hear. Wait. No. He’s going, he can’t leave.
“Wait!” you finally gasp out, but you’re still too quiet. You manage to shout, “Don’t go!” Not without me.
He stops, and turns around to stare at you, a kind of quiet, bemused disdain etched across his face and you nearly grin because you know that expression on that face and the haunting blue of his eyes so well, but you just cry harder. He’s looking at you like you’ve lost your mind, and maybe you have, but he’s here.
You stumble up to him, reaching out to grasp his arm before he can stop you, and for a moment, he jerks back. But then he looks at your face, where tears are now streaming down your cheeks, and his deep blue eyes flicker with something wild. You feel his hand grip your elbow. And then he smiles.
“It’s you,” he says, and you want to respond, but you can’t stop crying. His arm pulls out of your grasp as his hands come up to hold your face and neck, his thumbs brush against your skin and you feel like you could faint.
Then he leans in and you can’t breathe again. His lips press gently against your cheek, over a trail of your tears, and then he’s slipping his arms all the way around your shoulders, one hand in your hair on the back of your head, and drags you in to him, embracing you and holding you so tightly you want to die in this moment because he’s here and he’s holding you and nothing can ever, in your whole life, be better than this. Your arms, thank god, respond quicker than your brain, and have wrapped around his waist, holding him too. You sob into his shoulder and his fingers circle reassuringly on your scalp.
“Enjolras,” you gasp against his shirt.
“Pylades,” he breathes back. He sounds like music feels in your gut.
You shudder. “Orestes?”
You can hear the smile in his voice. “Grantaire.”
“I love you,” you tell him, still sobbing, because you didn’t ever tell him last time and damned if you’re going to do that again.
“I know,” he says back, and it’s more than enough for you. Then his lips are next to your ear, and he whispers, “Thank you. For last time. Thank you.”
You turn your face into his neck and cry even harder. And he holds you tighter.
He’s here.