not really superhero, but from my mutant AU - although they totally are superheroes in this just from how hard these two have it.
The main difference between them is this: Bossuet knows; Joly doesn't.
No one quite knows when mutations first appear, though signs seem to point at after 10 or 12 years of life - Joly had explained one evening, more for himself than for Bossuet (Joly had wondered, aloud, when he last felt his mother's touch; Bossuet thinks, silently, that maybe he has always been like that).
But, to be fair, Bossuet had not known for a very long time, had not put the events of his life in relation to his dreams until the evidence became too much to ignore; that the dreams he dreamt in the middle of the night - unlike the ones he dreams while laughing and chatting in the backroom of the student cafe - always came true.
Knowing somehow made it worse (he has always been this way - more years, more nights, more dreams - did he cause this? and that? why did he never dream of their July Revolution succeeding?).
Joly knows this about Bossuet too: he might not have been there when Bossuet dreamt about his mother leaving, the house burning, his sister drowning, but he was there on the morning of Bossuet's twenty-fifth birthday, when he woke up from a dream in which his hair was falling off in clumps to his pillow covered in curls that would never grow on his head again. Joly had patted his back, then, careful (so careful, always so terribly careful) not to let skin touch skin, his expressive face filled with sympathy and pain and love as he said "I wish i could hold you".
Bossuet never dreams of Joly holding him, and he doesn't know if he should cry or be relieved.
(He does neither, because if his nights are filled with disasters waiting to happen, then, his days must be filled with hope: and he watches Joly, Joly who is as cursed as Bossuet is, sweet, kind Joly would could kill with a single touch, cover his own skin from the tip of his fingers to the sole of his feet so he can try to heal and help as many as he can; and for a while, Bossuet can busy himself with the dreams he dreams while he is awake (which might not come true - but they also might, and that in itself is almost reassuring) and laugh.
Courfeyrac smiles a little wider, nods, leans in for the kiss —
And then things start exploding.
this chapter of the mutant au is an interlude covering shaw's attack on the compound. warning for character death, misgendering, and me being just generally the worst courferre shipper who ever lived.
“Can we trust six of you not to completely destroy the place while we’re gone?” he asks. Agent Fauchelevent nods as he speaks, giving them all her best disappointed expression.
Pontmercy crumbles immediately, but all of them look at least a little chastened.
“We’ll be fine, prof,” Courfeyrac responds, giving them a mock salute. “Swear on our lives.”
mutant feuilly being a kind of technopath but instead of magically waving his hand and electronics fix themselves, he just has an understanding of how any machine or devise works and can fix just about anything by hand. he also sleeps a lot less than normal, like he can go a week or maybe two without sleep.
ohhh! I like that!
and I totally imagine him having this work room in his house.
and at any hour of the night there's light coming for that one small window, a warm, soft glow and he's just there, hunched over a tiny, delicate piece of machinery and tinkering and playing around with soft music playing in his earphones. and he could be there for days until someone reminds him to, like, eat something more than a handful of jelly beans and full pots of coffee :')
(also he likes to just close his eyes and visualize what he's working on - almost like meditation. Jehan thinks it's wonderful and he'd love to watch him work but Feuilly's kind of a solitary person and doesn't like to have anyone with him in his workroom unless it's to teach them something.)
Title: the most beautiful and difficult instrument
Fandom: Les Misérables
Word count: 14689
Summary: Lamarque’s facility for biodynamic youngsters was miles from his parents’ house in Aquitaine, literally on the other side of the country. They said they would visit, but Enjolras doubted they would find the time. He would be able to go home in the school holidays, but he wasn’t sure they would want him around anymore. His father hadn’t even come to drop him off.
Enjolras' voice draws peoples' attention even when he doesn't want it to. Grantaire can only echo what other people say.
PARIS, 1828. Mutations have been one of the world’s worst-hidden secrets - there are some who have visible mutations, the ones who are really, outwardly discriminated against, banned from cafes, jobs, education, even housing. Then there are the ones whose mutations are not visible, and they are everywhere - nobody knows their exact number.
In this era, there also exists in Paris, among other affiliations of that nature, the society of the Friends of the ABC, a society which has for its object apparently the education of children, in reality the elevation of man - every man, mutant or not.
The greater part of the Friends of the ABC are students, on cordial terms with the working classes. Here are the names of the principal ones. Some day, they will belong, undoubtedly, to history: Enjolras, Combeferre, Feuilly, Courfeyrac, Jean Prouvaire, Bahorel, Joly, Lesgle, Musichetta, and Grantaire. These young people form a sort of family, through the bond of friendship - and of a common secret…
Enjolras, the leader of the group, absorbs sunlight; it gives him energy, and even makes him glow. Charged up, he is stronger, more creative, faster than an average human being. He doesn’t need to eat or sleep or rest. He doesn’t age, can heal from even mortal wounds; he’s potentially immortal. However, if he isn’t careful and uses up all of this energy running around without getting any sunlight to ‘refill’, he’ll lose consciousness and eventually, die. His power has been with him since as long as he can remember - he wouldn’t really know how to function without it.
Combeferre, a medical student who has managed to keep his abilities secret, can manipulate oxygen. He is baffled and angry at the discrimination mutants face, because to him, the possibilities are endless and fascinating: he can boil water by manipulating the oxygen around it, create small fires and explosions from thin air, even reduce the oxygen around someone’s head to cause hallucinations - as well as increase it to help someone who’s having trouble breathing.
Feuilly's status as a mutant was betrayed by the owner of the orphanage in which he grew up: he can map any area with his mind; from areas as large as hundreds of square kilometres around a certain point to spaces as small as a key hole, he can project a perfect map in his head of the roads, the buildings, the walls, even the objects. Despite being unable to have any formal education, he has taught himself to draw maps, plans and mechanisms from memory with incredible precision, and has made of cartography - and reading about foreign lands - one of his hobbies.
Courfeyrac acts as something of a power-enhancer: technically, he has no practical special abilities - besides his natural empathy, his shining personality and stunning good looks - but is central to the group because his mere presence makes other people’s abilities more powerful, as well as allow them more control over them.
Jean Prouvaire's abilities are voice manipulation, and general sound manipulation, to a certain degree. He can modify the loudness, pitch, and tone of sounds - including his own voice - even to destructive levels, and control his voice to imitate basically any sound: explosions, gunshots, storms, other people’s voices and animal noises. Despite the potential destructive power of his abilities, the kind-hearted poet prefers by far using them to tell stories, calm people down, or even play tricks on his friends.
Bahorel can manipulate his own weight and density, as well as those of objects that he touches. A brawler and a revolutionary by nature, never one to pass unnoticed in a crowd, he can make his own hand heavy and hard enough to break someone’s neck with a slap - or so light that he can basically sneak in anywhere without a sound, whenever it is needed.
Joly is not certain of the full extent to his abilities, but that he knows: absorbs other people’s life force by touch - depending on the length of the skin-to-skin contact, he’ll take their memories, their energy, and after only a few seconds, their life. He sees absolutely no positive aspect to his ‘abilities’ - to him, they’re more like a curse, making him a danger for those around him. Despite that, he is a generous, cheerful and forgiving kind, and he is determined to help his friends and every single person live a healthy, happy life, no matter what their mutations are.
Lesgle, for the longest time, thought that he had premonition dreams; but it turns out that it’s actually the other way around: his dreams come true, no matter what they are. It’s lead to countless odd happenings in his life, but also tragedies for which he struggles a lot not to feel guilty for: accidents of all kinds, the loss of his home - and, at twenty-five, he dreamt himself bald and woke up with a blanket of hair on his pillow.
Both of them were helped by the arrival of Musichetta, who has a power-negation ability; like Courfeyrac, she doesn’t even have to be conscious for it to have any effect - her presence is enough. With her around, Bossuet’s dreams stay in his head, and not only can Joly touch her, he can also touch anyone as long as he’s also touching her
Grantaire has hyper-heightened senses: especially his sense of smell, his hearing, his sense of taste, and his sight. For him, the world stinks, literally - he sees flaws in everything. He is also one of the unlucky ones: his mutation comes with permanent physical characteristics that out his status to everyone who looks his way. He is hairier than the average human, has pointy ears, sharp teeth, and glowing yellow eyes… and his incredibly sensitive hearing means he has to listen to every little comment people whisper when he passes them on the street.
