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He has stopped to run an errand on the way to a meeting, and has walked for another ten minutes without finding his way back to the right road. In increasing frustration, he swings round another street corner and nearly barrels into a guy with a guitar. There is a moment of awkward contact as their shoulders brush, and Enjolras can already feel the bruise from the head of the guitar coming on. Embarrassed, he thrusts a coin into the open guitar case in apology, and hurries on. Nonetheless, the song floats after him, and after twenty paces he stops and glances back.
Even without a shred of musical awareness - or, god forbid, talent - Enjolras is enthralled.
He doesn’t avidly marvel at the guitar playing, the acoustic melodies, the carefree strumming. He hasn’t memorised the battered burnish of the instrument, or the shape of those calloused fingers.
The singing doesn’t leave him gasping for air. His voice is so natural, smoky and low and sometimes it is as though he is going to let loose a gravelly laugh in the middle of a song. The musician’s voice might as well be scribbled into the dictionary under ‘husky’, because Enjolras is having trouble trying to describe it any other way. Not that he has ever been tempted to gush about that voice to anyone aloud.
He doesn’t go and obsessively google the songs afterwards.
He doesn’t learn the lyrics off by heart.
He doesn’t keep a record of the musician’s repertoire at the back of his folder of law lecture notes.
And he certainly he doesn’t keep taking the same detour every day just to see the musician again. This doesn’t make him late for class. Much.
* * *
Then Enjolras realises. It’s not just the music that’s getting to him.
Because one day he walks past and he doesn’t even hear the music. He comes out of the brisk strides across those twenty metres of pavement right by the busker as though he’s hurtled over the edge of a waterfall. He can’t remember what he had been thinking before or what the song was or where he’s going anymore because his head is now fit to burst from the split-second’s glance at those inky curls and those goddamn lips and holy fuck, those blue eyes.
The musician couldn’t be more infuriating if he tried.
* * *
He’s called him R in his head, only because the capital letter has been daubed on the top side of the guitar case (and Enjolras can’t just approach him and ask his actual name, definitely not).
He’s not completely devoid of courage. Every day he skirts close enough to drop some money in the case, let his eyes slide down at the level of the busker’s ripped-jean-clad knees. He catches a new song every morning, and hangs back out of sight but still in earshot just to listen to it all.
It’s like he suddenly has no self-control. No consideration for societal norms, for the boundaries between admiration and creepiness. It’s like an addiction, it’s like being on crack. Enjolras just can’t help himself.
Once, he stops to re-tie his shoelaces. It is a prime position for - casual - surveillance, his eyes drifting surreptitiously sideways, his fingers fumbling slowly over the laces. A knot, a pause, a bunny ear loop, a lopsided double knot, a stop-to-untie-it-and-begin-again. (Is this a purposeful failure to dawdle more, or just one that’s occurred because he’s been paying no attention to the task? Enjolras isn’t sure which is the more pathetic. He decides to stop deliberating.)
* * *
And then there is the day R plays You’re Beautiful.
(Enjolras is one of the fortunate few to be blissfully ignorant of the once-popular James Blunt whine, but when he later goes home to google the song he reaches the conclusion that R’s version is performed a thousand times better. He’d also changed the lyrics to ‘he’ instead of ‘she’ again, which gives him a shameless surge of something like hope, unless Enjolras is so delusional now that he’s purposely mishearing things.)
I saw your face in a crowded place
And I don’t know what to do
And how is it fair that it seems to speak directly to him? How can it be that half the words apply? Is this a joke or is it just torture? Does R remember him? Does R know?
Why is he reading into everything?
* * *
“Enjolras, are you humming?” Courfeyrac asks, eyes narrowed.
Enjolras clears his throat defensively. But it is too late. As Courf turns, gaping, to the room at large, his exclamation is triumphant. “Dude. Enjolras is humming.”
There is a moment of awful silence when everyone ponders whether Enjolras is dangerously ill and/or possessed, followed by a raucous round of snorts, oohs and aahs and a “No fucking way!”
He refuses to comment.
(“James Blunt?” Jehan questions in Enjolras’ ear later, when conversation has long since moved on, the discussion turned to their upcoming rally. The poet’s eyebrows are arched. For someone who listens almost exclusively to Evanescence, death metal, and classical compositions, Jehan has always been terribly aware of most pop music. Enjolras would not put it past him to be able to recite all the lyrics in one breath. It’s actually quite frightening.
He’s scared to think what Prouvaire might be reading into from the song choice.)
* * *
The meeting finishes early evening, and before he knows it, he’s walking back down that same street. He doesn’t do this. There are plenty of quicker ways home. Once a day is more than enough; how much more transparent does he want to be?
Enjolras carries on in a march, almost hoping that R won’t be there this time.
He is.
He could sneak past, pretend he’s just forgotten this is where the musician stands, ignore his usual routine. But he can’t manage it, even though he knows he’s reaching a new low. As he drops the coins in - his donation from earlier is still in there, which mildly diminishes the guilt, but he doesn’t have any more notes left in his wallet - the song fades to lazy strumming, and the busker speaks. It is a first, and Enjolras nearly trips over in surprise.
“Back again, Apollo?”
Apollo? Enjolras’ brows crease, mouth silently forming the unexpected word.
Where he looks utterly taken aback, R looks amused.
“Want your song again?”
“Er,” Enjolras manages, nonplussed as to whether R is really actually speaking directly to him. And he isn’t sure why the guy seems to think Your Song is a favourite - though maybe it is, because that feeling inside was a little bit funny and the lyrics just marginally too easy to pretend they fit - but R has not begun to strum Your Song at all.
My life is brilliant
My love is pure
I saw an angel
Of that I’m sure
Somewhere before the end of the first verse, Enjolras has already fallen to a halt, and his feet Just. Won’t. Move. Again.
They don’t break eye contact the whole song.
The singing this time is almost conversational. There is a throaty laugh between breaths, and curls falling into his face. Somewhere in the song R gives up on the guitar, but carries on with the rest nonetheless.
The street is near empty and once he has tried to get his body functioning again, Enjolras digs around in his pockets, trying to find something else to give, because that was practically a private performance and undeniably awkward and ridiculous and astounding and bloody perfect -
He finds a tenner scrunched in his jacket pocket, and pull it out. R bats his arm away before he can hand it over. “But -” Enjolras protests.
R scrapes up the money already there, sets his guitar down and shuts the guitar case. He snaps it closed and smirks.
“It’s hardly fair that you keep paying me to stand and stare, and I’m granted all that for free.” He remarks. His eyes travel over Enjolras in that maddeningly insouciant manner of his.
It is more than enough to make the blond blush, and he curses R for it. Cheeks hot, he retorts lamely, “I don’t know what you mean. I just like the music.”
“Oh?” R responds, unconcerned. One hand propping up the guitar case, his other snakes out to nudge Enjolras’ forearm. Laughing, he adds, “And I just like you.”
Enjolras’ eyes widen a fraction.
“About time that you bought me a coffee, don’t you think?”
It is long overdue, Enjolras thinks. Long overdue.
“I don’t know.” He says thoughtfully. “With all the money I’ve already given you... you should really be the one to pay.”