Everyone look at how awesome my platonic soul mate is, she sends me fun prompts when I’m bored.  My concept of ‘complementary’ powers might be a little weird but whatever!  We’re going with it.  To the shock of no one, this got out of hand.

• Grantaire has the most useless power ever.  Ever. He’s confirmed this with everyone he knows.  
  
• It’s not nifty as hell, like Eponine’s talent for making tiny storms between her palms—if she ever meets her soulmate, that’s going to be awesome.  It’s not even one of those powers that seems useless or trivial in the moment but will obviously turn into something amazing when the person meets their soulmate. Like Joly, for example.  The ability to cure headaches and hangovers? Not very impressive, although eminently useful.  Flash forward, enter Bousset and Musichetta and one skin-to-skin touch, and boom, one fully-fledged healer, on a silver platter.  
  
• And then there’s Grantaire.  Who can make pictures move.  As long as he’s the one holding the pen.  What the hell is that?
  

• It’s a good parlor trick, is what it is.  He’ll sketch up stick figure cartoons for his friends, or birthday cards that will dance when they’re opened, but that’s about the extent of his ability.  It’s fortunate that he likes to draw and paint anyway, because otherwise it would be genuinely useless, Grantaire always insists.

• “Here,” Grantaire says, careless, as he slides a napkin across the bar to the girl crying over her cell phone, on her third martini of the night and smudge-cheeked.  The comic-style girl on the napkin blows a kiss at the girl, and she giggles through her tears.
• “Here,” Grantaire says, dismissive, and tucks a folded piece of paper into Joly’s pocket as the med student scrambles for the door.  He unfolds it before his exam and sees a positively lifelike drawing of a human skeleton doing what is unarguably the Electric Slide. He’s grinning when he walks into the test.
• “Here,” Grantaire says, icy, and drops a receipt beside a man’s beer as he flirts with an increasingly out-of-it young woman. The stick figures on the receipt are hastily rendered, but one of them drops something into the other’s drink, and the man goes pale as Grantaire sends Eponine to collect the girl.
• “Here,” Grantaire says, solemn, as he presses a sticky note to Eponine’s forehead where she’s sprawled half-sleeping on his couch, and she flips him off in perfect unison with the hand drawn on it.
• Like he said.  Parlor tricks.

• And then there’s Enjolras.  Enjolras hasn’t met his soul mate either, Grantaire knows, and God help him he wants it to be him.  Grantaire doesn’t get lucky like that, he’s not meant for someone as brilliant and shining as Enjolras, but he still wants. He’s always been too much of a coward to catch Enjolras’ hand in passing, press skin against skin and see if there’s a jolt of power, though, so he sits in the back and drinks and draws images of suns surrounded by dancing stars.
  
• Enjolras’ ability is one of those that makes people uneasy, a hazard to self and others—his voice, when raised with anger or some other strong emotion, cuts through the air like a blade and plunges anyone within earshot into a deep unconsciousness.  Normally, Enjolras speaks with a steady, rolling rhythm that suggests years of practice and catches attention as easily as breathing.  If he’s desperate, though, at a riot, sometimes he’ll scream, ringing and raw, and in the second before Grantaire drops, he thinks it’s beautiful.
  
• Grantaire knows he’s pathetic, thanks very much.
  
• Anyway.
  
• That’s why he’s keeping such a close eye on Enjolras at the rally.
  
• Not because of the screaming thing, because of the pathetic thing. He worries, okay, and while Grantaire would very much like to be wrong about people (much as Enjolras might think otherwise), that doesn’t mean he trusts them.  So when the cops turn up, he insinuates himself through the crowd until he’s right behind Enjolras, and when things go sideways in the tazers-and-mace sort of way, he grabs the first red limb in sight and pulls as hard as he can. Enjolras half-falls into him—because Enjolras isn’t weak by any stretch of the imagination, but Grantaire is sturdy and broad-shouldered and powerfully muscled in a way his fearless leader just can’t match.  Grantaire’s hand slips down his sleeve to clamp around his wrist, skin to skin, and for a split second he thinks he’s been tazed after all, electricity shooting through him to mingle with the adrenaline.

• “Holy fuck,” Grantaire breathes, like he’s been punched and had the wind knocked out of him.
• Enjolras isn’t looking at him, his eyes sweeping the shattered protest in alarm.  “Where are the others?”
• “I…”
• “What,” Enjolras snaps, just harsh enough to suggest that his control is starting to slip.  “We don’t have time for this right now.”  Grantaire can’t seem to pull himself together, too shocked to even release Enjolras’ wrist.  “Grantaire.”
• “Right,” Grantaire says, dragging the fragments of his composure together and letting go of Enjolras.  Enjolras tugs his hand away, still searching for the others.  “I saw Bahorel and Musichetta get some of the others away on the other side, Combeferre and Courfeyrac left with the rest. It’s just us.”
• “Of course it is,” Enjolras mutters.  “All right, come on.”  He doesn’t look back to see if Grantaire is following him, because Grantaire is always following him.

• Eponine finds Grantaire at his and Joly’s apartment that night, with a bottle of whiskey at his elbow, a blank piece of paper on the table in front of him, and a charcoal pencil in his shaking hand.  He can’t make himself draw anything—he’s not sure what it’ll do, and he’s not sure he wants to know.

• “What’s up?” she asks, eyeing the bottle of whiskey and arching an eyebrow.
• “I met—I don’t–”  He takes a deep breath, lets it out, and sets the pencil down, clenching his hands into fists.  “I found my soulmate,” he says quietly.
• God bless Eponine, because she doesn’t instantly bubble over with delight.  Instead she takes another look at the situation and her own hands curl dangerously at her side, a lazy, tiny grumble of thunder accompanying the movement. “Who is it?” she asks, sweeping over and sitting down beside him with a clatter.  “Do I need to go beat them up?  I can do that.”
• Grantaire manages a shaky laugh.  “Enjolras.  It’s Enjolras.  I grabbed his wrist at the protest and—I’m sure.”
• Eponine frowns.  “He didn’t say anything when we met up afterward—that bastard,” she says in a tone of revelation.  “Did he just ignore it?”  Grantaire shrugs—maybe Enjolras didn’t notice, maybe he ignored it on purpose, hell, maybe it’s a one-sided bond.  Such things exist, although they’re rare.
• “Does it matter?”
• Eponine sighs and reaches out to take the paper away, collecting the pencil as she goes and setting them aside.  Then she grabs the whiskey in one hand, Grantaire in the other, and drags him off to his bedroom, where they curl against each other and drink and don’t talk.  If Grantaire trends toward the dangerously depressive and slightly tearful around three in the morning, well, Eponine doesn’t mind and Eponine won’t tell.

• So now things change, the sort of apparently minor but functionally earthshaking change that draws attention slowly and irrevocably. Grantaire stops drawing.  He’s too unsure of what might happen, and he doesn’t want to deal with the inevitable questions.  
  
• Joly and Bousset notice first, because they live with him and they’re used to his doodles littering every nominally flat surface, and he’s not sure what Eponine tells them, but they don’t ask questions.  The others pick up on it, one by one, and some of them ask about it, but when he gives them a crooked smile and a shrug and says he’s not feeling it lately, they don’t push except to offer encouragement.
  
• Jehan gives him a peck on the cheek, leaving a splash of emerald green there, and settles in beside him to talk about his latest favorite book.  Grantaire has always envied Jehan’s ability to leave colors smeared across the skin of others, a unique shade for every moment.  When Jehan is feeling particularly affectionate, Les Amis look like they’ve been doused in paint.
  
• Eponine starts coming to meetings more regularly, always sitting beside Grantaire in the back and alternating between cajoling him into laughter and shooting covert glares in Enjolras’ direction.  Grantaire appreciates her loyalty, but strictly told her that she’sforbidden to confront Enjolras directly.  If he doesn’t want to acknowledge it, Grantaire doesn’t blame him and won’t force him.  
  
• It’s not an ideal solution, but it’s a solution and…well, it’s not like Grantaire’s feelings on the situation have changed.  He’s been in love with Enjolras since about twenty minutes after meeting him, and he’s known Enjolras’ feelings on him since about twenty minutes after that, c’est la fucking vie at this point.  Eponine thinks that’s an unhealthy perspective, but she’s not judging, or so she’s told him several times.
  
• Things come to a head at another rally, months later, and honestly Grantaire’s starting to think that he should just never go to protests, ever, because they are clearly bad luck.  Or he’s bad luck and the protests are innocent in this whole thing. Possibly the whole universe just sucks.
  
• Anyway.
  
• The rally goes, and Enjolras talks, and then the cops turn up and things take a remarkably familiar turn, and Grantaire almost just sits down because he doesn’t really want to know how much further downhill this could possibly go.  Sit-ins are a thing, Les Amis have done them, surely he can do a sit-in on his life.
  
• But Enjolras comes darting up to him, all golden hair and red coat, and Grantaire gravitates toward him like a planet toward a sun.

• “We need a distraction,” Enjolras says, breathless. “We’re having trouble getting everyone out.”
• “What do you want me to do about it?” Grantaire blurts, because Enjolras does not ask him for help.  It’s up there with flying barnyard animals on the probability scale.
• “Help me find the others and see what we can come up with,” Enjolras says, and Grantaire follows him, because, well, that’s what planets do.  Gravity.

• There’s a scrap of paper in his pocket, folded up into a small square.  It’s a sketch of a dragon he did several weeks back, the only one he’s done, but he folded it up and pocketed it before he could see what the image did.  He’s not sure why he pulls it out now, as they collect the others, Joly and Bousset, Eponine, Bahorel and Feuilly.  Combeferre is already trying to think of a distraction, a way to get around the police hemming them in, when Grantaire passes his hand absently over the drawing and it explodes.
  
• He drops the paper with a yell and the others scramble back as the dragon writhes out of the page, a massive creature all in stark white and black, with broad wings and a canny look in its eye.  It takes flight and spits fire, and the police are suddenly desperately busy with something quite other than the protesting students.
  
• Grantaire just stands there, mouth open in shock.  Eponine grabs him by the collar and tows him away, Jehan in her other hand.
  
• Once they’re outside the fractured police line, they vanish into the crowd and join the throng of people gaping at the dragon—Grantaire’s dragon—as it breathes fire at the police and spirals up into the sky.
  

• “Grantaire,” Joly breathes, “what did you do?”
• “I have no idea,” Grantaire said, staring.  “I just…drew something.”

• The dragon doesn’t last long, folds up into nothing within just a few minutes, but it’s still a dragon. By the time the police pull themselves together, the protesters have evaporated like they were never there, and Les Amis have bundled Grantaire off to the Musain.
  
• Eponine is generous enough to install him at his usual table—he’s still a little too much in shock to function—with a whiskey in his hand before the interrogation starts.
  
• Because the universe is terrible, Enjolras kicks it off, storming up to Grantaire.

• “Why didn’t you say you’d met your soulmate?” he demands, sharp, and Eponine inserts herself in front of him with a wordless snarl that pushes him back a handful of steps.  “Who is it?” Enjolras asks, and his voice is strange in a way that takes Grantaire a moment to parse.  It’s emotion, he realizes, Enjolras’ voice is rough and loud with feeling, and the reason it’s strange is because no one is unconscious.
• “Apollo, your voice,” Grantaire says before he can think better of it, at the same moment Enjolras’ hand flies to his throat in surprise.
• “I—I haven’t had to try to control it in months,” Enjolras says in a tone of shock.  “I didn’t even realize.”  Grantaire remembers the way he’d held the rally spellbound before the police arrived, as if his passion had crept through and wound around them.  Now that Enjolras knows, he kind of can’t wait to see what that gorgeous voice is going to turn into.
• “Months,” Grantaire repeats faintly, and Enjolras’ face goes calculating.
• “About two and a half, I’d say,” he says, eyeing Grantaire, and Grantaire is breathless again.
• “Holy shit,” Grantaire says, and in the corner of his vision he sees Eponine—God fucking bless Eponine, has he mentioned how much he loves her—ushering the others out of the back room like they’re children.
• “Grantaire,” Enjolras says, voice very steady.  “Who’s your soulmate.”  Grantaire presses his lips together and Enjolras says, edging on angry in a way that would previously have laid Grantaire out, “Tell me.”
• Grantaire lets out a breath, sets his drink down with a click, and says, “I wasn’t going to tell you, I figured—I figured you knew and you were disappointed so you weren’t saying anything.  I wasn’t—I wasn’t going to make you acknowledge me if you didn’t want to.”
• “When?” Enjolras asks.
• “The other rally.  The one where I grabbed your arm.  I didn’t—how did you not realize?”

• Enjolras shrugs and says something about adrenaline, but Grantaire is barely listening because he’s much more focused on the way Enjolras is brushing past the table toward him.  Enjolras reaches out, wraps his hands around the heavy green cloth of Grantaire’s jacket, and drags him to his feet.  Grantaire’s taller than Enjolras, something they usually both ignore, and Enjolras rocks up onto his toes to press his lips against Grantaire’s.
  
• Grantaire kisses him back, because of course Grantaire kisses him back.  He’s tentative at first, but then, hell, if this is a dream or a hallucination he might as well go for it, and he presses one hand against Enjolras’ back to deepen the kiss.
  
• It is, hands down, the best experience of Grantaire’s life.

• “No matter how much you go out of your way to get under my skin sometimes, I could never be disappointed that you’re my soulmate,” Enjolras says once he pulls away, firm and a little breathless, which Grantaire tries really hard not to be smug about.
• “Are you sure?” Grantaire asks seriously, searching Enjolras’ face for the sign of a polite untruth.  “I would understand if you were, I wouldn’t really want to be my soulmate.”
• “Then you, unsurprisingly, are wrong,” Enjolras announces, and pulls Grantaire back to him.  Grantaire goes.
• The door of the back room creaks open an inch or two some thirty seconds later and Eponine declares to the people who are obviously clustered outside, unsubtly eavesdropping, “Every last damn one of you owes me twenty dollars.”

• Grantaire considers flipping her off, but opts to drop his hands to Enjolras’ waist and pull him closer instead. 
•  They fall together perfectly, like gravity.