Work Text:
There is a beginning to every ideology. There are moments in your life that define how you perceive and relate to the world. This process begins with your first breath.
Unfortunately, while Enjolras was a truly precocious child, he was also a decidedly boring one. As the only son of a well-to-do family, he had his every need tended, and his every want fulfilled. He was left desiring nothing, except for perhaps a small smattering of attention. For Enjolras, the idea of poverty, the idea of suffering, had not yet been revealed.
This blindfold of comfort was unceremoniously ripped from him upon his exit from his parisian boarding school for reasons never disclosed to him by his parents. He likes to pretend it was so that it was that he was closer to them, but his high school friends always joke that it was in vain hope to get him to lose his metro-sexual tendencies and his half-french half-british accent. Enjolras didn’t really seem to care either way about the change. He liked learning for learning's sake, he didn’t really care where it came from. He was then, under the misguided belief, that the quality of education that was available in a given place was alway the same.
His school had alway taught him of the diabetes endemic in India, or the AIDS endemic in Africa, or the poverty and struggles of the unhealthy and the unprotected, and like any good son, he was affronted by the injustices of the world. He joined Amnesty International. He went to blood drives. He even raised money for UNISEF. But he never felt that sense of righteous indignation that motivates people like Dr. Martin Luther King Jnr, Che Guavera or the lesser known Trita Parsi, Sylvia Mendez, and Dr. Tom Little. Because to young Enjolras, these struggles were distant and not relevant.
Older Enjolras laughs outright at his younger self's naivety.
His new public high school was highly ranked for it’s international baccalaureate program, but also catered to a lower-socioeconomic group based on it’s location. In short, it’s short red lockers with glitching locks was a stark contrast to the always glittering white hallways from his old school. It was in these dingy halls that he met Bousset.
Bossuet was a kind but unlucky fellow. Orphaned at an early age, and placed through a series of less than exemplary foster homes, people always expected Bossuet to be dark and brooding. And while it’s true that his countenance was darker than Enjolras, Bossuet always approached life with a certain resigned happiness. Good things and bad things were taken in the same breath, as he expected both of them with equal certainty. Bossuet was more reserved than Enjolras, and ran in different circles. In fact, they probably would not have met at all if it wasn’t for the fact that the pair were placed together for Chemistry labs. In between preventing Bossuet from killing them both (he had a unique talent for making non-flammable material highly explosive), and taking overly detail notes about potential systematic errors in the lab procedure (Enjolras is a killjoy), the two rapidly found themselves becoming friends.
This, in and of itself, wasn’t notable in any respect. Although, as a transfer student halfway through sophomore year, the school alway had a perverse interests of the coming and goings of Enjolras. But, Bossuet was a likeable if unlucky fellow, so no one paid any heed.
No. Their budding friendship isn’t of much import, nor is a detailed account of their admittedly interesting highschool years required. What matters is that Enjolras was rapidly introduced to what life could have been like if thing had gone a bit differently.
This rude ripping away of the blind-fold left Enjolras floundering, and confused. But then, it made him angry.
This anger consumed Enjolras. The idea that someone like Bossuet, someone bright but unlucky, could suffer at the hands of a system meant to liberate them shocked Enjolras to his very core. Like many, he began to notice the horrible systemic problems so very obvious in his own high school. Like many, he was shocked at the problems that he had been so blind to.
But, unlike many, Enjolras was not content to let things lie.
Bossuet, having had the most exposure to the deadly competency that was Enjolras, was not half as shocked as the rest of the world when Marshall High School became the first ever public school to adopt standard based grading, to offer financial support for students pursuing upper level classes, to offer free access to Kapling or Princeton testing prep all on behest of a young blonde boy. Bossuet wasn’t even surprised when Enjolras accidently arranged a protest about the heavy emphasis on high-stakes assessments, while just ranting at Bossuet during lunch.
Something about the young blonde made people listen. Enjolras always attributed the way people shut up when he began talking to his accent, but anyone who watched him would be able to tell wasn’t the case. Enjolras came alive when talked. He glowed with a unique sort of vibrancy when he came alight with his passions. But, it was more than just the visceral attraction when he spoke that caused people to be motivated to his causes. There was a sort of object eloquence that resonated when he spoke. You found yourself not only agreeing, but moved to action by his words.
Enjolras was unflinchingly dedicated and unforgivingly decisive. As most people grow into themselves in high school, Enjolras grew up into his cause.
Something about coming to it so late in his life, or perhaps something about Enjolras himself, made him dedicated to the point of obsession with his cause.
But this isn’t a story about the perils of the education system. Because people don’t read stories about the perils of the education system.
No. This is much better than that.
This is a love story.