Chapter Text
(He is on fire.)
It is far too early. The light of the morning is a fragile pink upon the hairs of the boy's back, and if he could wake up and notice it - not through the eyes of a man in this alcohol induced stupor - but through the eyes of the Artist, he would indeed be knocked quite speechless.
His fingers would twitch towards the torn rucksack on his back, fumbling blindly at the buckled fastenings in a dazed attempt to undo them. He would sit in the slowly breaking light and paint more of his own skin with charcoal than the page, and when the last dregs of water from his bottle are gone, he will substitute with his own saliva.
The paint would streak his jaw line; a dash of cerulean just beneath his ear, muddied yellow ochre in fingernails – a smudge of crimson climbing his left cheek bone. The only sign he was ever there would be the slightest indent in the moist ground: a couple dozen stalks of grass barely a city of bones waiting to spring up, reborn.
He would leave.
(stumble back home when the morning has fully broken; eyes wide and blinking in the light; the painting falls to the floor: forgotten.)
(But he doesn't, does he? He is dead to the world around him and absinthe pulses through his veins; his blood, his saviour.)
He has a few minutes left, lying on the dewy earth – untouched and unnoticed – free from the pain he will soon feel. The alcohol burns through his oesophagus, up, up, up; into his throat – he has seconds – mere fractions of the morning – it is coming, coming, here.
A man walks into the park.
He doesn't see Grantaire at first - he is distracted- but the body on the floor shifts within its stupor and he turns around, caught out. A smattering of vomit lines the few metres running up to the figure, but that is not what he sees, for there is something of far more importance that draws his attention.
The boy.
His skin is waxy – pale in this early morning spotlight, though with each step closer he sees it is tinged with an almost bluish hue – eyes sunken and hair slick with sweat. A winestain birthmark like a fresh bruise, hidden in the hollow of his left eye.
There is an empty bottle beside him. It scares the stranger to think how many came before.
He is almost a metre away, now, and he kneels beside the body.
The breaths come slow, though they are gloriously present, and that is more than he had originally hoped. The man – his name is Lesgle, one might add – presses a sweaty forefinger to the boy's neck and feels the irregular beat; a heavy bass pound of the drum in the early morning quiet. With his other free hand he roots in the pocket of his hoodie and draws out a mobile, tapping in the number he has grown to know so well in mere seconds.
The phone ring four times before he finally picks up. Joly's voice is tired, but Lesgle can practically hear his drowsy sideways smile.
"Bossuet. You okay?" He hears a long yawn, then: "Can't you sleep? Is it insomnia? I can get you pills for that, you know."
Lesgle could almost laugh if the situation were any less terrifying. He clears his throat; blinks, (twice, for good measure -) and begins.
"Joly. ...Um, there's a man. He – he's unconscious, I don't know how much he's drunk but I'm pretty sure it's more than is safe, and shit, J, I don't know what I'm supposed to do – ", then cuts off at the sharp intake of breath on the other side of the phone. He pictures the man sitting up in his bed, running a hand through mussed up hair, biting his lip in concentration.
Bossuet looks down at the body, and has to force down the vomit rising in his throat.
"Okay, Lesgle, stay calm. Where are you?"
"Regents Park, on, er – Clarence Way. I just got off my shift. "And then, in a smaller voice - "Joly, I think he's going to die."
There is a pause, and Bossuet can hear feet hitting floor, shoes clunking against wood, a door opening.
"I'm on my way. Enjolras is at the hospital – he's taking the later shift this week. I think -" and he halts, which is odd because once Joly has gotten started he never stops – and then his thoughts are interrupted with an almost inaudible: "What does he look like?"
Bossuet blinks.
The body beneath him is not the skin of some lifeless puppet cut at the strings. This is a person, he realises, a person with a life and goals and family; this is a person whose existence might be draining away with each passing second, and it will be all his fault - won't it? – because Lesgle was here and he could have stopped it before it got too bad. He could have arrived at the park earlier. He could have seen the body from the hilltop and called Joly then.
He could have saved him.
"I – he has, um. Dark hair. Kind of messy, loads of, uh, curls. He looks sort of pale, but I'm not sure if that's just the alcohol. He's wearing a darkish green hoodie –" and then Joly has interrupted him again with a choking breath, and Lesgle stops. "You – you know him?" he asks, but Joly just hisses something sounding awfully like "our," and the line is cut off.
Lesgle lies down on the grass. The world is beautiful at 2am, abnormally so. The air is hung with a warm breeze and the flow of the river washes in and out of earshot. He closes his eyes. Joly should be here soon.
The boy beside him doesn't move, but inside, he is burning.
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The hospital is surprisingly empty for a Saturday night.
Enjolras sips at his fourth coffee from the past hour. The stuff so present a part of him that Joly often jokes that he breathes the goddamned stuff , before quickly losing the mocking smile and listing an encyclopaedia worth of reasons as to why too much coffee can cause god knows how much.
All deadly, might he add.
His phone lets out a soft beep from the pocket of his scrubs. He runs a thumb across the screen, and the text he next receives shoots a sickening jolt of pain through his ribcage.
joly: bossuet has found r in regents. he's unconscious. i'm bringing him over
joly: i think it's worse this time, e
(He stops breathing.)
Enjolras can feel his insides swelling. There is an invisible force pushing harder and harder against the lining of his stomach; ceaseless, incessant in its cruel demand.
He is going to throw up.
The mobile slips from his fingers and drops to the floor. The screen flickers – the message it had shown just a few seconds previously blinking rapidly with an almost eerie knowing. The words flash, twice – and they are gone, yet the image stays imprinted in his retina for the rest of the night.
His coffee is left unnoticed. He is awake, now.
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The call comes 10 minutes later, but this time it's Combeferre who picks up the phone. He sees Enjolras lift his head just a fraction upwards - a subconscious movement that is immediately quashed when he realises it has happened.
(The Apollo fades to nothing.)
The bespectacled doctor holds the phone tentatively against his ear, as though it is a bomb just waiting to go off. Shrapnel from the ceiling, blood by their feet. Soaks their shoes and stains the linoleum.
He looks at Enjolras.
(He is a time bomb, the seconds ticking by fast.)
(Tick. Tick. Tick.)
The phone crackles with static. He hears Joly barking strained orders towards a panicking Bossuet: "hold his head up, warm his hands." The crunch of gravel sounds on path, the ignition starting up with a reluctant growl. "Check his pulse, is it even?"
The time bomb ticks away.
(Tick. Tick. Tick.)
"Joly?" He whispers, and the golden head shoots up once again. "Joly, shall I send out an ambulance?"
The man in the corner feels flesh ripped from bone. There is a lump in his throat that won't decrease, and he swallows through it, feeling bile rise up.
He has never felt an anger like this before, yet that is surely what it is.
(What else could it be?)
He fights the suppressing urge to claw the phone from Combeferre's sweaty fingers. He breathes in: This is nothing. He breathes out. Nothing Nothing Nothing.
It is far too early.
From across the phone, Joly speaks. "I've got it, 'Ferre. There's no one on the roads and I'm already halfway here. Just...just tell Enjolras not to beat himself up, will you?" Combeferre nods, but realises that Joly cannot see him. "'Kay."
The uttering is hardly more than a whisper.
The doctor presses the red button to signify the end of the call, and the silence that greets him is thick with heavily laid tension. His footsteps are unnaturally loud in his ears.
They have let this go on too far.
It is the second time this month, Combeferre recalls. Two incidents, 24 days. 14 since the last time. He is sure Enjolras would be able to tell you the hours and minutes - and hell - even the seconds, but he would never say it. Not out loud. His pride is something he takes far too seriously.
(14 days, 4 hours, 32 minutes and 7 seconds.)
(6. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1.)
Enjolras lifts his head.
His eyes are wide; unblinking. The next few seconds seem to move in slow motion - and if Combeferre is surprised at his friend's apparent sixth sense then he doesn't say anything - because there are wheels scraping against the car park tarmac and Enjolras is on his feet.
He can't let this happen. Not again, not now.
He tries not to picture the look on Enjolras' face when he discovers what Combeferre has done, and finds he can't. It is an expression gloriously familiar to one he has become accustomed to of recent.
He lets his eyes close, briefly, and when they open just seconds later - Enjolras is gone.
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"Hello."
Javert is sat stationary behind the smeared glass of reception. His hands are jittery with caffeine, eyes are hard with the ever present suspicion.
"G’morning," he growls. The usually pleasant phrase is laden with ice.
Combeferre scratches at the back of his wrist.
"I'd like to request a room change, please. With Dr. Enjolras. It - it's Ward 17? He, er, he knows the patient."
Javert continues to stare at him, eyes boring crescents of acid into the doctor's skull. "In what relation?"
There is a pause that corrodes away at the air.
He thinks of Javert, of his steel gaze and his astounding reverence towards accuracy. His lovingly sorted documents of doctors and their qualifications and their intimate to not so intimate families, down to every last clinical detail.
Javert coughs.
"He's, er... His - boyfriend. Partner. Significant other. I, uh -"
"I see."
The doctor nods his head, and is gone.
Enjolras is waiting when the stretcher is carried in. It's not entirely necessary - the man is question has been dragged the majority of the way, after all - but the blond is grateful for lack of theatricals.
He can't look at him.
It does no good. Grantaire is everywhere; he is living inside of Enjolras - his very essence is nothing if tangible in the air of these corridors - his scent and his warmth and his feeling of presence grinding the secluded world to a reluctant halt.
He turns around, and the sight of the motionless body is like a dull blow to the head.
He swallows down sick.
(This is his job, and it is nothing more.)
Grantaire lies on the faded stretcher, stinking and foul with the haze of sour alcohol.
Enjolras stands on weak limbs. Eyes down and hands that only function with the implement of caffeine, the sea of ever present muttering nurses draining to a dull whimper in his ears. Just a patient Just a patient Just a patient.
Combeferre enters the room, and the nurses disperse into nothing.
"Enjolras."
His voice is strained, yet it is naught but for lack of sleep. It seems like a bitter struggle to form coherent speech, but in reality it is only the slightest pause before Enjolras manages to utter a garbled: "'Ferre."
He stands in the doorway; immobile.
"Javert - he, uh, he just called me from reception. There's a ward change... You've been transferred to mine. 15, that is. I don't kn - "
"What?"
Combeferre stops.
Enjolras stares at him, jaw set into a cruel slash.
'I said, Combeferre," he begins, and then there is a pause as the information he has just received is forced up his throat and out - and he chokes out another "What?", but Combeferre is already walking up to a nurse and beginning to mutter instructions. His eyes are fixed on a point somewhere near his feet.
Time stops.
The Apollo is a statue, fixed to the ground in a pool of molten gold. Combeferre anticipates the explosion of scalding metal, the harsh spit of flame against his own soft, unbearably human flesh. He will stand above his brass counterparts and his copper suitors - a Greek God bathing in the light of his element, and he will crush the silent intellectual to powder.
The shorter man keeps his eyes on the floor; the peeling wallpaper, a stain on the pocket of his scrubs. Grantaire. It is hard to see the man the way Combeferre knows he is seen by another, but when he finally does, the blow is heavy against his chest.
Grantaire does nothing. He is dead to the world around him.
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Ward 15 is quiet; quieter than his. The patients here use the early hours to sleep, a decision that – though radically sensible in the extreme - seems quite foreign to Enjolras. He remembers the steady buzz of machinery, the pained shouts and cries echoing down corridors, blood thundering in his ears.
The silence here is deafening.
Each ward has 12 rooms, all varying in size depending on the individual's needs. His own ward – number 15 – had kept a room spare for the man that was so inevitably a part essential to the hospital's structure that Enjolras feels almost empty the rest of the time.
Room 11; it is as close to the entrance as is possible. Number 12 is for men who never stay for long and whose bed sheets are cleaned more often than the blond haired doctor would like to admit.
Grantaire will never go there, for that he is certain.
The man is as present a part of Enjolras' life as polystyrene tasting coffee and headache-inducing shifts; he is the offensively coloured scrubs they all are forced to wear, he is Combeferre and he is Joly, the Guardian on a Saturday morning when the flimsy curtains can't seem to keep the dusty streams of light from filling the woodwork of his bed frame with its drowsy presence.
He is everywhere; everything; in every move Enjolras makes.
The doctor swallows down a lump in his throat, as though it represents the thoughts he can't dare to think.
The procedure would go something like this: Grantaire would arrive, intoxicated and foul with the stench of a month's curse of absinthe and wine, Enjolras would berate both himself and anything in sight, (anything but Grantaire, for the disappointment in Apollo's eyes do all they need for the drunk) and the man would recover, slowly but surely.
The cycle repeats.
Two months clear – 4 days in recovery. 23 days clear – 6 days recovery. 4-and-something months – a week with no response. Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat.
On the rare occasion that His bed demands to be filled by a different life – or, a voice urges, what is left of a life – Enjolras feels that the dynamic of his day distorts; convoluted, wrong faces on the wrong bodies, sounds tinny and buzzing in his ears.
This Room 11 is empty. In fact, Combeferre's entire ward is gloriously silent in their slumber. He paces up to the clipboard that hangs on a wall near the entrance, and his shoes plant echoes through the corridor.
The Wards here are not like other hospitals: sorted into separate sections depending on injury or illness. The reason for this, Enjolras thinks – though he may be quite mistaken given the colossal amount of time since the hospital has been on its feet – is that it started out small. Even more insignificant than it is today. The quaint French town it locates in now was practically a hamlet.
It has grown since then, ward by ward. The hamlet grew into a village and the village grew into a town, until it no longer was that everyone knew each other with such familiarity.
And that, it seems, is why they never changed it. Their hospital stored that old neighbourly sense of loving and of knowing, and other than more wards constantly being fitted; they have not laid a finger on the original order of the building.
(They are a family.)
His eyes flick to the clipboard.
Room 1 – Christophe Montparnasse, injured right side of body in car crash. Demands most attention, occupied by nurse.
Room 2 – Gavroche Thérnardier, fell down 5 stories of stairs. Both arms and right leg in cast.
Room 3 – empty.
Room 4 – Charles Myriel, heart attack. In coma.
Room 5 – empty
Room 6 – Cosette Valjean, breast cancer.
Room 7 – Jean Prouvaire, stab wound in gut. Occupied by nurse.
Room 8 – empty
Room 9 -empty
Room 10 – G. Courfeyrac, rugby injury. In recovery, needs wheelchair.
Room 11 – empty.
Room 12 – Fauchelevent, ribs crushed beneath a car. In coma.
Out of the 7 beds occupied, he is acquainted with 3. He had met the Gavroche boy earlier that day as he was admitted, wheeled in by a panicking Joly with a battered-in face and blood drenching half of his body. Enjolras had heard his voice; high pitched above Joly's baritone, a certain, distorted element of humour injected into his yells.
The second was Cosette. She is the slightest of things, with a shock of white-blonde hair that falls down her back in cascades of silk. He has seen girls like this before – trailing around with slack jawed boys at their feet, unbeknownst to the power they possess.
Her hair will be gone, soon. The side effects of her upcoming chemotherapy are painfully inevitable. Her face is small, her features delicate. She is, and will be, beautiful. He hopes they can see that.
His third, and favourite, (though he would never admit to it, Enjolras prefers to keep his professionalism to an extremely high standard, thank you) was Courfeyrac. The man is the pure definition of life despite the chair that keeps him restrained. He has been here a week, initially confined to bed and the care of a (soon blushing) nurse. He now dashes through the hospital corridors, skidding off corners and attempting wheelies in the chair that he so loathes beneath the cheerful façade.
Enjolras has reason to prefer it, here. He is rid of the stained section of wall that he can never draw his eyes away from, of the whining Mrs. Patel in Room 6. He is rid of walking further to the washroom, of passing an ever-glaring Javert on his way to the coffee machine. The nurse's voices are soft against the pound of his head.
Here he feels a fondness for patients that doesn't sicken his very core, for the fondness is relaxed and easy, and, though this assortment of people bear no outstanding difference to his Grantaire, seems vastly more appropriate.
He should be happy, yet his pulse is racing with an inexplicable rage. He can hear it in his blood: the quick thud deafening against the sinewy skin of neck. A rabbit dancing from the fox; hammer against cloth.
He closes his eyes – the thud is constant against his lids. He opens them – the light is blinding.
The curtains are thicker in his ward, Enjolras decides. It is dimmer for his headaches. That is all: his mind is a petty creation and yearns for trivialities. This epiphany is finalised with a resounding nod of the head, and the doctor walks down the hallway with something akin to determination.
His shift is over, soon. He will go home, and he will sleep, and he will rid himself of the creeping thoughts that seem to consume his every action, when the dark is overwhelming and it is so much easier to just let it be.
The painkillers feel heavy in his pocket, yet they are light as feathers down his throat.
When he later tests himself, the curtains drawn and the floorboards creaking, the word Grantaire hardly strikes a reaction.
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Marius Pontmercy is 23 years old and fresh out of medical school. The ground is springy beneath the soles of his shoes.
He has bagged a part time job as a nurse in the hospital of his local childhood town, the secluded expanse of trees and chimney tops and winding roads he had grown to know so well.
The hospital is well known here. As is pretty much everything located within the 5-or-so mile radius – but there is a sense of some almost surreal structure holding everything up that states the hospital must stay. It sits on a hill, bones weary with age and elbows creaking in the wind, yet it continues to loom over the crooked rooftops with the same fatherly glint in its windows.
The bus journey takes 6 minutes; he is counting down the seconds with a series of agitated glances at his watch. The woman next to him seems slightly irritated by the constant tapping of his feet against lino; the way he is bouncing (what he thinks is) ever so slightly upon the rough fabric of the chair, but he is too buzzed on caffeine to notice that there are even people watching.
She grimaces, and he beams at her.
When he arrives, the double doors slam behind him. The resulting echo reverberates around the room, but no one looks up.
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The nurse assigned to occupy Jean Prouvaire's room leaves her shift later that day blushing, and covered in the harsh violet scrawl of a man in supposed "recovery."
She finds sonnets on her wrist, haikus creeping in the gaps between her fingers. When she opens her purse she finds a cascade of paper cuttings, words in French and Latin and old English forming melodies upon her lips.
She imagines him there, propped awkwardly upon the hard mattress of his bed, swathed in metres of gauze and standard hospital gown cotton. She wants to stand him up and dress him in the costumes of a prince or his dame, for he shall thrive in either, to braid his corn gold plait with flowers and ribbons and twists of song.
Before she retires for the night she loads her bag with felt flowers and cuts of ribbon from her daughter's art supply. They are only a few steps behind being seen as gaudy – vividly coloured to a point of eye strain – but she places them down as gently as if they were fresh from the garden.
She hopes they will bring back the smile she can see lost in his eyes.
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Guillaume Courfeyrac: 21 and in his prime.
(No, that's not right.)
Out; he's out.
In and out of a lifetime, quick as a flash. The possibilities of premiership contracts and blushing girls with soft lips; backpacking 'round Europe with no plans or pre-conceived destinations: all gone in seconds.
The pillow is rock hard against the back of his head. The wheelchair sits dully in the corner, and it sickens him to see it.
The passion has gone out of his life, and his world is plunged into darkness.
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combeferre: it's under control, r is okay for now. he's in the drip. i'll call you later, ok?
combeferre: this isn't your fault, enjolras, so don't you fucking dare mope about this
combeferre: alright, i'm coming over. don't say you didn't ask for this
enjolras: I think you're forgetting that I don't 'mope,' Combeferre. There's no need to come round. Please refrain from texting me with no reason.
combeferre: i'll be there in 5
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Somewhere in London, there is a hospital. To some it may seem entirely insignificant, a mere blip on the whirl of countryside surrounding - yet to those who it serves and to those who it holds, it is something much, much more.
(It is hope.)
Somewhere within that hospital is a man. He is unseeing and unfeeling and so close to nothing that it is a somewhat apt portrayal of the hospital itself, yet the man (his name is Grantaire, one might add) lacks any of the hope that the hospital thrives in. He is a cynic, poisoned by drink, or time, or pain - it is hard to say which when no one is sure.
He might seem insignificant, and his pain might be more a part of him than blood, but he matters, and he is loved.
(Sometimes he just needs reminding.)
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He spins; he leaps; there is a light somewhere beyond these miles of darkness.
Reach out, go on, touch it.
It falls away.
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Around him, the world is turning. Lives are changing and growing and breaking with each ebb and flow of the tide, yet he stays stationary within his bed.
Grantaire is half a person: lost without his other. He is a beginning with no end in sight and he has lost his way through this thicket of words – stumbling into margins and tripping over footfalls in the commas; losing any sense of direction he may have once held with every passing breath.
And Enjolras?
Enjolras is each turn of the page. He passes by this tiny, half-a-person boy without a second glance; there is change in sight and he yearns it. He wants solid plotline and a sense of where he is going, not this watery, half baked idea.
He wants passion and change and revolution.
Grantaire falls, and ink seeps into flesh, and the story is forgotten.
The machine beeps.