"Is your life just one more lie?"

Enjolras glared at Grantaire as he finished his drunken chorus, not noticing how the rest of his friends' melodies and words faded into the background at the two men locked eyes, the cynic and the revolutionary. "You don't mean that," he stepped forwards and snapped. Grantaire just scoffed, and walked away.

"No wait—" Enjolras reached out to grab Grantaire's arm, flinching when it was ripped out of his grasp. R's stare turned to a harsh, hateful glare, and Enjolras tried to meet it but it was so damn hard when he was so obviously unable to despise the other man back. If only he could - if only he didn't have to put up with the throbbing of his heart and the butterflies in his stomach as they argued for countless hours, exchanging harsh words as if they meant nothing and yet everything at the same time.

"You have no clue what you're doing to me," he murmured weakly, letting his rejected hand fall loosely by his side. They were standing impossibly close still, and yet R felt so far away it hurt.

Grantaire's harsh, hating expression crumbled and his face turned soft, and wistful. Enjolras watched, breathless, as the cynic lifted his own hand and gently placed it on E's cheek, caressing it melancholically with sad, beautiful brown eyes. "No... you have no idea what you're doing to me, mon ange." he responded, just as soft and weak. Enjolras, without thinking twice, leant his cheek against Grantaire's warm, calloused hand and sighed brokenly.

Was this all they ever would be? All they ever could be? Two men, arguing passionately day and night, filled with so much hate and love towards one another that the two cancelled each other out, leaving only a faint whisper of what could have been, what would have been, what should have been? What might have been, if they only had been a little more forgiving, a little more kinder to each other? The thoughts made the prospect of his upcoming inevitable death at the barricades a lot easier to bear; perhaps in another life, Enjolras and Grantaire would be.

"We would have made a wonderful love story," Enjolras heard Grantaire whisper, and the blond Apollo felt his heart shatter into a million glass pieces that splintered through his body and tore it apart from the inside.
"Yes," he managed to respond, voice nothing but a breathless murmur. "A love story almost worthy of Jehan."

Grantaire's hand squeezed once and then fell away, leaving Enjolras' cheek cold and bare against the rain that would almost certainly ruin their gunpowder and along with that, their hopes of surviving the next day. The two man wrapped each other into a tight, desperate embrace and together they walked into the empty Musain.
"Sleep off your absinthe," Enj commanded gently. "Then come find me when you wake."

Later the next day, Grantaire awoke to find his friends dead. The floorboards above him creaked and he was filled with a foreboding sense of dread as he quickly trembled up the wooden stairs and was met by a silent, glaring Enjolras facing a firing squad.

"Vive la république!" he said, in as strong a voice he could muster as Enjolras' determined yet also loving blue eyes found his own broken brown. A shiver of fear caused his Apollo to shake slightly and Grantaire felt his heart slow and almost stop - this was how they would die. If Enjolras would let him love him one more time, and make sure he didn't spend his final moments alone, then he would be okay. Enjolras was his cause worth living for. And now, Enjolras would be his cause worth dying for.

"I'm one of them." He pushed through the firing squad of the National Guard and waited until he was all but five feet from his leader in read. Pouring all the love he could into a single glance, he asked Enjolras, "Will you permit it?"

Enjolras smiled, and in return R smiled too as they clasped hands, together finally. To what might have been, and to what will be in another life, he thought. His thought was not yet complete when the report sounded.