Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

~

 

It starts with Grantaire finding himself in the musty darkness of a derelict house in one of the less touristy areas of Paris, watching a young hunter hack an unfortunate vampire’s head off.

Naturally, the creature is struggling, and as a result the first slice of the machete only slashes its throat wide open. It lets out a gurgling shriek and there is a spray of blood like a fountain. The blade descends again and again until its neck ends in a gory stump and its severed head stares blankly at the ceiling, fangs still bared.

There is a beat of stillness, and then the hunter – who is hardly more than a boy – gets to his feet. Even in the dark, Grantaire can see the blood splattered across his face and the front of his shirt, and the beads of it caught in his hair. He is breathing hard and looking down at his kill with something like triumph gleaming in his eyes.

Grantaire has a tendency to frequent this area – he feels a certain sense of belonging in the most awful of places – but it was not the sounds of a hunter-vampire death-match that led him into this particular building. His tastes are not so morbid, and it was really something of a nasty surprise to stumble into such a violent scene, especially considering the beauty of what brought him here.

It was the boy’s soul.

He had sensed-seen-felt it from streets away, a human soul burning so bright and pure, and it had drawn him in like an anglerfish’s lure. Even in the midst of the grisly business of decapitation, he had found himself simply staring at it. It shines like a star.

And not like a star as humans understand them – not one of those tiny pinpricks of light. Grantaire has seen stars up-close, blazing and flaring and almost too brilliant even for him to look upon. That is what he is reminded of now. He can’t remember the last time he saw a human who burned quite so brightly.

He thinks it’s unfortunate that this magnificent soul belongs to a hunter.

Still, he is fascinated, and that is a rare thing these days.

The boy does not see him watching – Grantaire is very good at going unnoticed when he wants to. For now, he leaves the blood-stained human to clean up the mess he’s made.

 ~

Grantaire takes up his usual place in the dimmest corner of the Musain. It’s an old haunt of his, though he hasn’t visited in a while. It was the closest establishment he could think of that caters almost exclusively to hunters looking for their next job, and he thinks he won’t have to wait long for he-of-the-blazing-soul to appear.

He’s not wrong. The boy – Grantaire supposes he really should consider him a man, but he does look so very young – comes in barely an hour later. He’s nicely cleaned up – no trace of blood in his curling hair or on his crisp white shirt. You’d never guess he was a killer, looking like that. He pauses briefly at the top of the stairs before heading directly for a table where another young man is sitting with his fingers flying over the keys of a laptop. Grantaire knows this one – Combeferre, almost a permanent fixture here, forever monitoring the length and breadth of France (and, indeed, the rest of mainland Europe) for potential cases.

He settles back and drinks deeply from the wineglass in his hand. Even from this distance, he can hear their hushed conversation perfectly. He learns that he-of-the-blazing soul is called Enjolras, and that he suspects that the vampire he just killed had friends in the city. Combeferre agrees – they both think there’s a nest, and they want to track it down.

Grantaire does his best to suppress a smile. They’re right, and they’re wrong. The ill-fated vampire had indeed been part of a small group, but they’re nomadic – arrived in Paris last month, and preparing to leave already. And they’ll clear out double-quick when they realise their comrade has been most rudely beheaded.

In a perfect world, he could simply tell Combeferre and Enjolras this and save them some time, but alas – it doesn’t do well to let on how much you know in the presence of hunters.

He waits until their discussion begins to wind down and they agree to reconvene the next day. Combeferre starts to pack away his laptop, Enjolras stands to go, and Grantaire rises and sets a fresh bottle of wine down on their table.

“We have a new face, I see,” he says with his best smile. Enjolras does not return it, and just regards him with narrow-eyed suspicion. “You haven’t introduced us, Combeferre. How neglectful of you.”

“I didn’t notice you skulking,” Combeferre says, amused. Enjolras shoots him a questioning frown, as if silently asking whether he needs to draw a weapon. “No, don’t worry, Grantaire’s a regular here. Doesn’t do much in the way of monster-killing but he does like to hear everyone else’s exploits.”

“Their tales are my ambrosia and nectar,” Grantaire agrees. He’s been a regular here much longer than Combeferre knows – since long before Combeferre was born, in fact, with periodic breaks to ensure that no one noticed his failure to, say, age.

“This is Enjolras,” Combeferre offers when the man himself does not.

“And I’m not one for telling tales,” Enjolras says shortly. Some added insult along the lines of ‘not to an apparent wine-guzzling layabout such as you’ is unspoken but heavily implied.

“Not even in exchange for a glass of wine after a hard day’s hunting?” Grantaire says, uncorking the bottle. He’s being irritating and he knows it, but he also knows that to back down now would be to lose Enjolras’s attention completely, and that can’t happen. That soul is the brightest and most beautiful thing he’s seen in too many long years, and he can’t allow it out of his sight again.

“I don’t drink,” Enjolras replies. Grantaire can’t help it – he laughs.

“Wow, you really must be new to this game,” he says, ignoring the flash of mute fury in Enjolras’s eyes at his mirth at his expense. “Give it maybe a year. The thought that you once turned down a free drink will horrify you.”

“Enjolras has been hunting for at least three years now,” Combeferre puts in quietly. He looks like he’s fighting down a smile.

“And even that is more information than I’d normally share with a complete stranger in a bar.” Enjolras makes another valiant attempt to extract himself from their company. He makes it to the top of the stairs this time before Grantaire’s next words freeze him in place.

“Let me guess. Your mother?”

Enjolras peers at him over his shoulder. He’s still frowning, suspicious and now halfway puzzled as well, but Grantaire is dismayed to realise that, even so, he’s beautiful. He doesn’t know if it’s the effect of that supernova of a soul, but in any case, it’s hypnotic, and he knows that he is lost.

“My mother?” Enjolras repeats. He clearly thinks this is some sort of insult and looks about five seconds away from punching Grantaire in the jaw.

“It’s your age that makes me assume as much,” Grantaire explains, sitting himself down at Combeferre’s table. “In my experience, it tends to be a parent with people around your age. And, for one reason or another, murdered mothers seem to be a much greater motivator than fathers.”

“What is he talking about?” Enjolras asked, his sharp gaze flicking to Combeferre.

“Your hunting origin story, of course,” Grantaire says with a grin.

“The reason you started hunting,” Combeferre kindly interprets. “A lot of people start after someone close to them gets killed by a monster of some kind.”

“There’s always someone who got killed,” Grantaire corrects. “The plotline is always the same. It’s the details that make or break the story.”

“No one got killed,” Enjolras says. Grantaire raises an eyebrow.

“Family matter, then?” he suggests. “Some great-great-great aunt got eaten by a werewolf and now the job of fighting evil has come down the generations to you?”

“No,” Enjolras says. He’s facing them properly again now, looking torn between anger and sheer incredulity.

For the second time that night, Grantaire tilts his head back and laughs. He can’t remember the last time he laughed so much.

“In that case,” he says finally, “you definitely should not be hunting.”

Enjolras positively scowls at him, and that golden soul flares deep red for a moment. He’s furious, and that’s good. That means he’ll stay, because he now has a point to make.

Sure enough, he strides back to the table, hauls out an empty chair and plants himself in it, his eyes never leaving Grantaire’s face. It’s probably meant to be intimidating, but his attention is more flattering than anything else.

And Enjolras tells his story.

Unsurprisingly, he is different; he is possibly unique. He spoke true: he has no tragic back-story to produce as justification of his decision to hunt. Grantaire has listened to countless hunters passing through the Musain, and various other holes-in-the-wall just like it, and their tales have, after some time, begun to blur into one endless whine about murdered parents or siblings or spouses or friends. Their bitter tears and vows of revenge are such a bore, and vengefulness is such an unpretty trait. Grantaire finds them almost embarrassing, if he ever briefly allows himself the gall to pass judgement on any creature other than himself. They are like mocking reminders that, despite all their modern-day technology and fancy clothes and preoccupation with slips of paper to which they had assigned value, humans are still not so far removed from the wild animals of the earth, which also have a tendency to become savage when threatened by a predator.

Though animals, of course, only act out of self-preservation. They have no concept of grudges or revenge, and they certainly never start to enjoy the act of killing. Those particular vices belong to humankind alone. Sometimes Grantaire despairs with them.

But Enjolras is a revelation; Enjolras is a strange and beautiful anomaly. He discovered the world of monsters and hunters completely by accident.

“There was a cemetery that I cut through sometimes to get home,” he says when Grantaire presses him for details of this chance encounter. After so many years of hearing the same tedious, woeful tales, this is wonderful and fascinating and he wants to know everything. “One night, I saw a man throw a match into an open grave and burn the bones there. I asked him why, and he told me.” He pauses. “He was very drunk. If he hadn’t been, I expect he would have lied.”

“Hunters do that a lot,” Grantaire agrees. He himself is not nearly as drunk as he’d like to be, though tonight it is bearable since he has this captivating human boy to distract him from the gaping vacuum echoing hollowly at his core. It is difficult for him to get drunk when in company, anyway. Even the sullen, uninterested patrons of the Musain were likely to notice that the amount of alcohol it took to make his head feel just pleasantly fuzzy was enough to kill a normal person. Or two.

“He told me I should forget it. That I shouldn’t get involved.”

“He was right about that,” Grantaire says with a half-smile and a nod. “But you didn’t listen.”

“Of course I didn’t.” Enjolras looks startled and revolted by the very idea that he could have simply continued on with his normal life – could have walked away from the crazy drunk in the graveyard, finished his studies, maybe got married and had a few kids. That was unthinkable, apparently.

And here is why: because Enjolras believes in the basic goodness of people – people everywhere, people he will never meet or know – and, by extension, he believes that they don’t deserve to be eaten, eviscerated, mangled or horribly killed in any other fashion by the creatures that lurk in the dark.

It’s obviously all very clear and logical in Enjolras’s head; soon almost everyone in the Musain is listening (with something between amusement and contempt) as he tries to explain himself. Until now, he seemed only irked by Grantaire’s insistence upon conversation; now, suddenly, Grantaire has his full and undivided attention. He gets the impression that Enjolras could speak passionately about the validity of his cause to absolutely anyone. Anything, even. A donkey. A wall.

It seems that it is as simple as this: people are good, and monsters are bad. The moment that he learned the truth about the world’s ugly, secret dangers, Enjolras ceased to truly be either. That knowledge had been given to him, had armed him and turned him into a force, and he had to choose which side he would fight against. To know the truth was to take on the responsibility of protecting others from it. To know the truth and to ignore it would be a crime – Enjolras uses the word ‘sin’, which Grantaire finds interesting. He asks if this is a religious venture. Enjolras says it is not. He is not serving God, he is serving humankind, because that is what he is meant to do.

A moral compulsion, then. Grantaire has always been dubious about human morals. They are so prone to change and, often, complete reversal. Though Enjolras’s bright eyes and steadily shining soul suggest that he will remain steadfast to this belief until it inevitably kills him.

He looks unspeakably frustrated when, even after his sermon is done, Grantaire continues to look at him with the same bemused expression. Enjolras thinks he doesn’t understand. He’s wrong; Grantaire certainly understands what he’s saying, in an objective sort of way. What he can’t do is believe in the (certainly beautiful and certainly wistful) idea that people are worth fighting for. That strangers who have done nothing for Enjolras are worth his life. Grantaire has been around a long time. He has seen horrors. He cannot blindly and wholeheartedly love the human race.

He was supposed to, of course. He chances a closer look at Enjolras, suddenly suspicious, searching for any sign that he is anything more or less than a normal human. He sees nothing except that glorious golden light – that steady beacon of belief and certainty and determination.

But perhaps, he thinks darkly, it was not chance that caused Enjolras to meet that drunken hunter in a cemetery that night. Perhaps there is still a higher force meddling in the lives of humans. Because, to Grantaire, Enjolras seems a lot like the bright-burning, fierce and proud soldier that he himself was always meant to be. A perfect product of Heaven’s factory line.

“I think that you’re mad,” Grantaire says finally, when Enjolras seems quite finished. “You hunt simply because you can. That’s ridiculous.”

“No, it’s the whole point,” Enjolras insists. His cheeks are flushed red. Grantaire can tell he wants to stand up and shout at him but is doing his very best to remain composed. “If it’s within my power to save people and I choose not to, what does that make me?”

“Sensible. Self-preserving. Normal,” Grantaire says bluntly. He downs the rest of his wine, though he knows it won’t help. It isn’t nearly enough. “You were not dragged into this world, you chose it, and that’s ridiculous too because it’s the last thing anyone should choose. Hunters lead miserable lives and then they die in a pool of their own blood. The ones who fight for revenge die for nothing. And you,” he pauses, shakes his head, “you will die for less than nothing.”

Enjolras gets to his feet again. He’s had enough. His soul is a red-black maelstrom of anger and disgust and disappointment.

“And you?” he says bitingly. “When you finally die, sick and old in your bed, what will you be dying for?”

 And to that, Grantaire has no reply. Enjolras nods once, decisively, and then he’s marching down the stairs before anyone can stop him.

Grantaire smiles ruefully to himself. The scenario Enjolras described will, of course, never come to fruition. Age is no threat to Grantaire, and there is no sickness on this Earth that could harm him. If he carries on the way he has all this time, he will live forever.

And so, really, the question is: what is he living for?

And the obvious answer is: nothing, at the moment. But he does have a plan to change that.

He follows Enjolras out of the Musain.

He finds him easily, despite the speed he’s stomping along at. Finding any ordinary person in Paris would be like looking for a specific piece of hay in a haystack. Finding Enjolras is like looking for the part of the haystack that’s on fire.

“I can help you,” Grantaire calls down the street to him. He sees Enjolras jump and then turn to face him with a glare, all the more angry for being startled.

“What could you help me with?” he snaps.

“With your quest to cleanse the world of all evil, of course,” Grantaire replies, trying to keep his smile from looking too sardonic. “With your grand cause.”

“The cause that you think is stupid and pointless and not my responsibility at all?” Enjolras says.

“That one, yes.”

“Leave me alone,” Enjolras says irritably, resuming his stride.

“I have a weapon that would be immensely useful to you,” Grantaire goes on, following him step for step. “A weapon that can kill anything.”

“There’s no such thing.”

“But there is.” Grantaire’s blade appears in his hand, and Enjolras will surely wonder where he was hiding it all this time, but at least he didn’t see him produce it from nowhere. Enjolras turns quickly, his well-honed hunter’s danger-senses obviously perceiving that a weapon was drawn. His eyes find the blade, glinting in the orange glow of the streetlights.

“What is it?” he asks, looking curious despite himself.

“I’ve picked up many interesting things on my travels,” Grantaire says with a small shrug. “I don’t know where it comes from, or who made it. But I do know that it works.”

Ah, the lies. How he hates all the lying. But there is truth there, too – it will kill anything, and that is the part that Enjolras has to believe.

It seems that it would wound Enjolras’s pride to give in and walk back to him, so Grantaire goes to him instead. He offers him the blade and he takes it gingerly. Grantaire sees the small, blue-white starbursts of surprise in his soul at the feel of it in his hand – its weight and balance and the way that its surface feels warm and oddly charged.

“What is it made from?” he asks. “Silver?”

“No. No one knows exactly what it’s made from.” Grantaire knows, of course, but no human language has the words to describe the raw material that makes a blade like his.

“Then how does it work?”

“Easy. You stab things with it.”

Enjolras shoots him a withering glance.

“I mean,” he says, “how does it work?”

“Does it matter? What’s important is that it does work,” Grantaire says.

“I only have your word for that.”

“How true.”

“You expect that to be enough?”

“Hardly,” Grantaire says dryly.

“Then what?”

“Take it,” Grantaire says simply, taking a step back. “Give it a try. See if you can find anything it won’t kill. Give it, say, a month. Then we’ll have a talk.”

“About what?”

“About you keeping it.”

Enjolras turns the three-sided, tapering blade over in his hands, looking sorely tempted despite his spoken misgivings. He can feel it, Grantaire thinks. Consciously or otherwise, he can feel how powerful that sword is.

“Why would you give me this?” he asks finally. Grantaire chuckles.

“Because I can,” he says, because he’s quickly discovering that teasing Enjolras is fun, and he can’t resist.

When Enjolras next looks up, he’s gone.

 ~

His name, of course, is not really Grantaire.

Grantaire isn’t even the name of the human man who once owned this body. That man had been good and brave and his soul had happily gone to Heaven when given the chance. He would not sully that good man’s name by using it as his alias while he hides down here like a rat in a sewer.

‘Grantaire’ is an invention; it is almost a joke. Because he has not forgotten his true name; the name that the entire Host sang glory to on the day of his creation. A name of great power that means ‘God is my comforter’; ‘God is my mercy’.

He isn’t sure whether he feels he has become unworthy of that name, or if he simply wants nothing to do with it any more.

In any case, it will always be a part of him, and so he thought he might as well keep the first letter.

And so he is just ‘R’.

And so he is Grantaire.

 ~

A month to the day later, Enjolras returns to the Musain, and doesn’t look entirely surprised to see Grantaire waiting for him in his habitual corner. He bypasses Combeferre’s table and heads straight for Grantaire’s, and Grantaire has to try not to smile.

“Happy hunting?” he enquires as Enjolras reaches him. He doesn’t sit down, but presses both his hands flat on the table and leans over it, his eyes (blue, Grantaire notes distantly) boring into Grantaire’s.

“What is this weapon?” he hisses. “It kills vampires without decapitation, it banishes ghosts better than iron, it kills werewolves even though it isn’t silver.”

“Goodness, you have been busy,” Grantaire says with raised eyebrows. “I did tell you. You’ll find it kills demons, too.”

“Demons,” Enjolras repeats, sounding a little faint.

“Yes.”

“Nothing kills demons.”

“The blade does,” Grantaire says with a shrug. He has another bottle of wine and two glasses waiting on the table. He pours one for Enjolras and slides it across to him. He makes no protest this time; just sinks slowly into a chair and curls his fingers around the glass’s stem.

“Where did you get that blade?” he asks at length.

“Very far from here,” Grantaire replies. It’s not an answer, but he suspects that Enjolras has a more pressing question for him. He’s right.

“And how long have you had it?” Enjolras asks.

“A very long time.”

“And you just kept it? Never did anything with it?”

“Oh, it’s seen battle aplenty,” Grantaire says. He’s not sure if he should be proud or horribly ashamed of how much blood has been spilled by his blade, but either way he isn’t willing to lie about it.

“Combeferre said you don’t hunt.”

“You could say I’m retired, I suppose,” Grantaire says, and that much certainly is true.

“A little young to be retired, aren’t you?” Enjolras says with clear disapproval, and Grantaire has to fight down a laugh because good God, if you only knew.

“Maybe,” he agrees. “So. Do you want it?”

Enjolras blinks.

“The blade?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“I- of course. Any hunter would want it.”

“I’m inclined to let you keep it,” Grantaire says after a casual sip of his wine – as if he isn’t literally giving away a part of himself. “On one condition.”

Enjolras’s eyes narrow, and Grantaire just has time to see his soul blossom bright orange with sudden panic before he finds himself with water sloshing over his face and soaking the collar of his shirt. He sees the small flask that Enjolras has produced, cobra-fast, from his pocket, and he laughs. Holy water.

“No, no. I’m not a demon. This is not that kind of deal,” he says, wiping his face with his sleeve. Enjolras doesn’t apologise for drenching him; just recaps the flask and stows it away somewhere in his coat.

“I had to be sure,” he says shortly. “You have to admit, it’s more than a little suspicious. A stranger showing up and offering me something so powerful.”

“You don’t know what I’m asking for in return yet,” Grantaire reminds him with a grin. “Maybe you won’t consider it such a bargain once I say.”

“What is your condition, then?” Enjolras asks.

“Let me come with you,” Grantaire says simply. Enjolras just blinks at him again.

“What?” he says.

“You travel around, don’t you?” Grantaire prompts. “If you only hunted in Paris, I’d have seen you in here before now.”

“Yes. Combeferre finds most of the cases and tells me where to go next.”

“So let me come with you,” Grantaire says again. “It’s not smart to go around fighting monsters on your own.”

“Almost all hunters work alone,” Enjolras says, confused.

“Doesn’t make it any smarter.”

“Why do you want to come with me?”

“I’m bored. And it seems like it could be...an adventure.” Grantaire is still smiling, and he can tell that Enjolras thinks he is simultaneously avoiding the question and making fun of him, and he’s not wrong.

“You think what I do is stupid,” Enjolras points out.

“Not stupid, ridiculous,” Grantaire corrects. “In a sort of...‘no human being should be that selfless and idealistic and self-sacrificing’ way. You’re crazy, but it’s sort of amazing.”

Enjolras looks slightly stunned by that.

“What do you care what I think, anyway?” Grantaire goes on. “You get the sword, and you get the pleasure of my company as a bonus. Win-win.”

Enjolras looks horribly torn, but Grantaire knows he’ll agree. He wants the blade, needs it – he’s probably already started imagining all the good he can do with it, all those precious human lives he can save with such a weapon.

“You’re not allowed to slow me down,” Enjolras says finally, with an air of defeat.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Grantaire replies.

“And don’t think I won’t be watching you,” Enjolras says coldly. “I don’t trust you. And if this is some bizarre trick or trap, believe me: I’ll end you.”

“Understood,” Grantaire says, doing his very best to disguise his glee. Enjolras nods curtly and leaves to talk to Combeferre – probably to plan his (their) next move.

Grantaire settles back, drinks some more wine. He’d been planning to open a bottle of something stronger, but now maybe he won’t need to. Not tonight, at least.

He knows what he is; he knows this is part of his programming. He was built to worship, to follow and obey. And those things still come easily to him, even if he is just a broken wreck of what he used to be, and even if nothing he once believed in holds true anymore. Enjolras has belief enough for them both. Grantaire has drifted in the dark too long, watching humanity putrefy around him and drinking his human vessel into a perpetual numb stupor. Always hoping, deep down, for some reason to continue existing, some purpose he could give himself over to.

He thinks he’s found it now.

Enjolras, he-of-the-blazing-soul, thinks that he can save this slowly rotting world. He is elbow-deep in the blood of monsters because he loves, because he believes with such intensity that it turned his soul into a star.

And Grantaire will follow him to the ends of the earth.

He has no faith left in God, and so he will believe in Enjolras instead. And he will follow him and protect him until Enjolras, ever the proficient hunter, realises what he really is, and kills him with his own blade. 

Chapter Text

 

 

 

~

 

Grantaire knows that, after reluctantly agreeing to let him tag along on his monster-hunting travels, Enjolras has a second and much more in-depth discussion with Combeferre about his trustworthiness. Grantaire knows because he hears them, despite the fact that the conversation occurs in a closed-off back room of the Musain, where the two of them assume they are safely out of earshot.

It seems that Enjolras has worked himself into a temper trying to puzzle out Grantaire’s motives. He blurts out the details of their agreement to Combeferre in a furious rush and, in his agitation, fails to provide much context. Combeferre, ever the level-headed voice of reason, suggests that he sit down and try that again, starting from the beginning.

Grantaire, sitting at the bar nursing a bottle of truly shitty wine, can only hear them (he could watch, too, but he feels slightly less guilty if he allows them some measure of privacy) but, in his mind’s eye, he can practically see Enjolras pacing the room, his hands in fists and his soul giving off roiling sparks of conflicting colours. He seems to yield to Combeferre’s calming influence, however, and the next time he speaks, he gives a much more straight-forward account of the situation. He tells Combeferre about everything he doesn’t already know, and he shows him the blade.

Again, Grantaire cannot see them. But he feels it the moment Enjolras hands the blade over for inspection. He always knows exactly where his sword is.

He feels a brief flare of concern, then, that this little undertaking will be over before it is even begun. Combeferre is a guiding light to so many of the hunters who pass through Paris, with his impossibly in-depth knowledge of so many elements of the supernatural, and if anyone could identify his blade, it's him.

But that's impossible, Grantaire argues with himself, because humans have no records of such a thing. Most of them don’t even believe in his kind, and those who do have unfortunate delusions of fluffy wings and harps and all-encompassing love for mankind, all of which are entirely inaccurate. Especially that last one.

His worry is unfounded; Combeferre is quick to admit that he’s never seen nor heard of anything the likes of Enjolras’s new weapon. He's fascinated when Enjolras lists all the things he knows it can kill, and even more so when he adds that Grantaire had claimed it could even kill demons. Combeferre’s interest is more scholarly; he wants to know what the blade is made of, who could have made it, what kind of witchcraft or old magic could possibly have imbued it with such deadly power. Enjolras has already ceased to care about any of those things. He’s tried and tested it, he knows it works, and he wants to keep it.

Which brings them back to the subject of Grantaire.

Despite assuring Enjolras of Grantaire’s harmlessness that first night they’d met, Combeferre is understandably mystified to hear of his sudden interest in hunting – or, at least, in travelling around with a hunter. He tells Enjolras everything he knows – that Grantaire has been a familiar figure in the Musain for years, and that he has knowledge of the supernatural and the hunting community but has never seemed inclined to put the knowledge to any good use. He's quick to add that, as far as he knows, Grantaire has never caused any harm, either, but that doesn’t seem to comfort Enjolras much.

“He hasn’t changed his mind about anything,” Enjolras says with frustration. Grantaire thinks he's pacing again. “He has no concept of the greater good, or putting a cause before yourself. He still thinks that is...ridiculous, was his word. He sits and does nothing and yet he looks down on us. But now he produces this weapon from nowhere, puts it in my hand and says that he wants to...I don’t know. Follow me around and watch me put it to use. Why?”

“Maybe he likes you,” Combeferre says, and Grantaire has to bite back a peal of laughter because he can just imagine the look Enjolras sends him for that.

“Did you have any idea that he was in possession of this blade?” he asks instead of dignifying Combeferre’s suggestion with any sort of response.

“If I’d have any idea that a blade like this existed, you would have known about it.”

“How did he come to own it? And where?”

“I don’t know, Enjolras.”

“He said that he’s travelled a lot.”

“It’s possible. He’s been known to disappear for months at a time.”

“But for what purpose? Where does he go? Does no one know his history?”

“No. Really, Enjolras, sit down. Wearing a groove in the floorboards isn’t going to help anything.”

Enjolras grumbles but seems to obey.

“All anyone knows is that he comes here frequently, listens to the hunters’ stories, and looks at them with the worst sort of pity,” Combeferre says. “He considers hunters to be the damned of mankind. The walking dead, I suppose.”

“But that’s not-”

“I’m just saying. The fact is that Grantaire thinks of hunters that way, and yet he surrounds himself with them. That in itself is illogical. Maybe going with you is just...the next illogical step.”

“...No,” Enjolras says after a moment of consideration. “No, there’s some other factor we don’t know about.”

Grantaire’s lips twitch into a half-smile. Clever boy.

“We can only work with what we know,” Combeferre sighs. “Yes, this could be a trap. He could have some unsavoury ulterior motive. He could, in fact, not be human at all, though there are ways to confirm that. You know all this. But if you want to keep that blade, and I know that you do, then it’s a risk you’re going to have to take.”

“This has not been a helpful conversation.”

“Your only other options are either to return the blade to him, or break your word and take off with it.”

“I’m not a liar or a thief,” Enjolras snaps, before pausing. “Except when I have to be. You know.”

“In the line of duty, yes,” Combeferre says, sounding amused. “Anyway, I agree, stealing it would be ill-advised. If he’s had such a weapon all this time, who knows what else he might have at his disposal.”

Enjolras groans.

“I don’t like complications,” he says. “I don’t like not knowing what I’m getting into.”

“Protect yourself,” Combeferre says. “Until we know more, that’s all you can do. You’ve got your anti-possession tattoo. We’ll make new hex-bags. We’ll test him with silver, holy water, iron, and anything else we can think of.”

“And then?”

“And then you’ll have a travelling companion, I suppose.” Combeferre sounds like he might be smiling. “And we’ll see what we see.”

And that, apparently, is the end of the discussion.

After that Grantaire is summoned to that same back room, where he submits to their various tests with good humour. Really, the hardest part is keeping the shallow cut they give him with a silver knife from healing right in front of their eyes.

Quite quickly, they run out of things to poke and prod him with. After one last splash of holy water just for good measure, Enjolras abruptly instructs him to meet him at Gare de l’Est at eight o’clock the following evening. He takes his leave, calling over his shoulder for Combeferre to get Grantaire up to speed on the case.

Grantaire listens dutifully while Combeferre tells him where they are going and how they are getting there and describes the string of mysterious deaths that they’ll be investigating. When he’s been thoroughly briefed, Combeferre gives a long sigh, plucks his glasses off his nose and starts idly cleaning them.

“I don’t suppose you’d just tell me what this is all about?” he asks.

“You’re worried?” Grantaire says.

“This is very out of character for you. As far as I can tell, anyway.”

“Maybe. I suppose you could say it’s a case of ‘not even I can do nothing forever’.”

Combeferre smiles faintly.

“Why Enjolras?” he asks. Grantaire laughs and gets to his feet.

“Maybe I just like him,” he says.

“You wouldn’t be the only one,” Combeferre replies. He's as calm and collected as ever, but his tone has a certain hard edge to it. Grantaire looks at him and reads protectiveness, and a quiet ferocity he’d do well to stay on the good side of.

“I don’t know if it counts for much,” he says, “but I promise you that I won’t let any harm come to him.”

And that much, at least, is completely true.

~

Now, Grantaire and Enjolras are on the night train to Munich. Their compartment has two narrow beds at opposite ends of the car, and a small table in between. They’re both sitting at the table just now, though Grantaire has pushed his chair back a little to give Enjolras, who is visibly twitchy, some space.

At Munich, they will change trains, and the next one will take them on to Budapest, where their case is. It’s going to be a nineteen-hour journey. A plane would get them there a lot faster, but Grantaire knows that flying is not any hunter’s favoured mode of transport, because good luck to anyone who tries to get monster-killing paraphernalia through airport security.

The first hour of the journey passes in tense silence, with Enjolras keeping his eyes stubbornly trained on his case notes or his laptop screen. Grantaire chooses not to bother him. He’s content enough to watch the passing scenery and quietly bask in the warm glow of the starburst-soul that had started this whole adventure – even if its usual vibrant gold is being partly obscured by a growing grey cloud of apprehension and prickly annoyance.

He can pinpoint the exact moment that Enjolras gives up on brooding. That swirl of grey is swept unceremoniously to the side and just as quickly replaced by vibrant, determined red.

“What exactly are you planning to do when we reach Budapest?” he asks, snapping his laptop shut. Grantaire blinks at him.

“My first stop will be the nearest liquor store, I expect,” he replies. Enjolras’s lips thin.

“I mean in regards to the job,” he says. “Are you following me around Europe strictly as a spectator or are you actually going to be of assistance?”

“I’m going to be your backup,” Grantaire says simply. “I’ll be helping.”

“Even though I’ve never needed backup before.”

“Yes.”

“Can you fight?”

“Yes. You’ll see.”

“You’ve hunted before?”

“I’ve killed plenty of monsters.” And non-monsters, for that matter, and the memories make the bile rise in his throat.

“Ah, yes. Before you ‘retired’.” Enjolras leans back in his seat, folds his arms and surveys him coolly. “You just...stopped.”

“It may come as a surprise to you,” Grantaire says mildly, “but killing, for whatever reason, does lose its novelty after some time.”

That makes Enjolras pause. It seems it genuinely never occurred to him that a person could simply get tired of the bloodshed.

“You’re fighting against a tide of evil that can’t be stopped,” Grantaire tells him. “You’re just one man. You’ve shown up to the aftermath of an earthquake with a broom. You could fight your whole life and not make a dent in the number of monsters crawling this Earth. When you realise that, maybe you’ll just stop, too.”

The fire is back in Enjolras’s eyes, and in his soul. For the first time, Grantaire shuts his eyes against its brilliance. Nothing should burn that brightly in the face of hopeless odds.

“You’re saying I can’t save the world on my own?” Enjolras asks.

“Of course you can’t.”

“Maybe that’s true. But maybe that’s okay. I just need to save as many people as it’s within my power to save.”

Grantaire looks at him bleakly.

 “You could do so much, and yet you choose this,” he says, shaking his head.

“I’m saving people! What more could I do? What could be better?”

But what about you? Grantaire wants to scream at him. You’re so beautiful and full of love, but you’ll never have a home or a family and when you die, you’ll die bloody and screaming and you’ll realise it was for nothing-!

Except that isn’t going to happen.

Enjolras isn’t going to die like that.

At least, not before he figures out that his travelling companion isn’t human and skewers him on that wonderful blade that kills anything.

They both recognise that they’ve reached an impasse, and they fall silent. Enjolras only manages to keep quiet for a few minutes, though.

“Anyway, you’ve just chosen the exact same thing, haven’t you?” he says. Grantaire laughs a little.

“I suppose that’s true,” he concedes.

(It isn’t, but he thinks it might be early days to come out with something like ‘actually, I chose you because it seems that I’m a very foolish moth and you’re the flame that’s going to burn my wings off’.)

There is another brief silence, but Grantaire can tell by the grim tendrils of wispy purple-blue in his peripheral vision that Enjolras is simply preparing himself for another round of verbal sparring.

“I want to know how you came by the blade,” he says suddenly, as if he might surprise an answer out of Grantaire.

“I didn’t come by it,” Grantaire replies. He keeps his gaze fixed on the reddening sunset beyond the window. “It’s mine. I’ve always had it.”

“You said you found it when you were travelling.” Enjolras’s voice is accusing.

“I don’t think I said that, exactly.”

“You said it was from somewhere a long way away from Paris.”

“That’s true.” Grantaire allows himself a glance in Enjolras’s direction; unsurprisingly, his soul is practically bubbling over with curiosity and impatience and the type of mistrust that is only born of the suspicion that you are being lied to. “The blade is mine by birth. It’s from my home. And that’s a very long way from Paris.”

“Where?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“It’s a family heirloom?”

“Something like that.” More like a family tradition, really, in that every single family member carries one.

“So you’re from a family of hunters?”

“I’d rather not talk about my family.”

And those might be the truest words he’s spoken in quite a while. To his surprise, Enjolras doesn’t pursue that particular question. Maybe family isn’t his favourite subject either.

They then proceed to have the same conversation about five times over. The pattern goes like this: Enjolras asks for details about the blade, Grantaire is evasive. Enjolras persists; Grantaire teasingly scolds him for looking a gift-horse in the mouth. Enjolras asks, again, why Grantaire would give him his sword, when he barely knows him and seems to disdain what little he does know. Grantaire tries to think of a reply that isn’t ‘because I can’t save you and this is the next best thing’. Enjolras scowls and fumes and says that he can’t very well travel with someone that he can’t trust, and he certainly can’t trust someone whose actions make no sense and whose explanations for those actions are about as substantial as smoke. He insists that he needs to know more – about Grantaire and the blade and everything – and thus the cycle begins again.

Five times.

“It’s late,” Grantaire says before round six can begin. “We should get some sleep.”

Enjolras shoots him a dark look that promises this isn’t over. He’s a riotous jumble of colours – an eye-stinging combination of scarlet fury and electric-purple frustration beneath a grey fug of exhaustion. Despite this, he goes to his bunk and sits with his laptop on his knees, furiously typing away at something or another. An email to Combeferre, no doubt. Grantaire knows they had agreed for Enjolras to make timed check-ins with Combeferre at the Musain during the course of their travels, just in case Grantaire decides to try and murder him halfway across Germany, or something.

He can tell by the stubborn and wildly distrustful look in Enjolras’s eyes that he won’t be sleeping tonight.

Grantaire, of course, doesn’t need to sleep.

He figures it’s going to be a long night of pretending.

~

They finally get into Budapest at about two o’clock the following afternoon. As Grantaire predicted, Enjolras did not sleep for the entire journey. Instead, he drank coffee and read the case notes until he must have been able to recite them word for word. Therefore, as they disembark from the train, he is grouchy and over-caffeinated and slightly unsteady on his feet. Just for added effect, it’s raining. Enjolras glowers at the sky.

“It’s a beautiful city, no matter the weather,” Grantaire offers.

“We’re not here as tourists,” Enjolras says, pulling out a map upon which Combeferre has marked the route from the train station to their hotel.

“No, we’re here because three people are dead and no one can explain why. We’ll deal with that first, of course. Doesn’t mean we can’t admire the architecture before we leave. Visit the palaces, stroll along the banks of the Danube.”

“That would be time-consuming and pointless.”

“You wretched philistine,” Grantaire says with dismay that is only half-faked.

Enjolras fixes him with a sour look over the top of the map before turning to lead the way. Grantaire follows without question. He finds after a moment, however, that he does actually have one question.

“Enjolras?”

“What?”

“Do you speak Hungarian?”

“...No.” Grantaire can’t see Enjolras’s face, but the edges of his soul glow faintly pink. He laughs; Enjolras ignores him.

“This is going to be fun,” he remarks.

He hums ‘The Blue Danube’ all the way to the hotel.

~

Grantaire does speak Hungarian. He speaks all human languages – and, for that matter, all non-human ones. But he can’t tell Enjolras that. And he feels that Enjolras might consider his ability to chitchat with the Budapest locals to be a little bit too convenient, and so he keeps his mouth shut.

He decides he needs to ascertain which languages Enjolras does know, and based on that he can decide which ones Grantaire-the-less-than-average-human should know. For now, it can wait.

Their hotel room is basic but clean and perfectly adequate. Grantaire knows that hostels are the cheapest places to stay while travelling around Europe, but the very thought of Enjolras slumming it in a bunk bed in a room with six strangers is enough to make him agree with whoever opted to pay for them to have more private accommodation. Enjolras isn’t coping very well with sharing space with one stranger.

“Maybe you should take a nap before you start any monster-hunting heroics,” Grantaire says as Enjolras adjusts his coat one last time. The blade is concealed in an inner pocket.

(He doesn’t dress like a hunter. He’s too clean, too smart, too bright and vivid. It’s the coat, mostly. The dark jeans and today’s grey shirt look more like an ensemble for a casual dinner party than for the often messy business of monster-killing, but they’re passable. The coat is red. It’s like a warning. Enjolras isn’t planning on hiding from any creature. The monsters will always see him coming, and if they’re smart, they’re the ones who’ll hide.)

“Why would I do that?” Enjolras asks. His face is pale and his eyes are bloodshot. His hands are jittery, probably from that last espresso he gulped down like it was water.

“Because you’re tired.”

“I can’t waste time.”

“Why not? We can’t do anything until tonight.”

Enjolras shoots him a questioning look. He shrugs.

“We can’t pose as police officers or journalists or any of those popular hunter aliases when neither of us knows the language,” he says. “Combeferre said the plan was that we’d break into one of the victim’s homes after dark.”

“...There has to be something I can do now,” Enjolras mutters, making to stride past him. Grantaire catches his arm. Enjolras tugs it out of his grip immediately, but he does stop.

They each have a key-card to the hotel room. Grantaire pulls his out of his pocket, holds it up for Enjolras to see, and pointedly throws it down on his bed.

“I’m going out,” he says, heading for the door. “I’ll meet you downstairs at eleven. Until then...well. This door’s locked from the inside. Sleep with the blade under your pillow, if you like. Just sleep.”

And he leaves.

He figures that they’re going to have a problem, if Enjolras doesn’t learn to shut both eyes around him soon.

 ~

Grantaire had taken the time to read over the information Combeferre had gathered about the case here, because knowledge is power and he suspects his best chance of remotely endearing himself to Enjolras is by making himself useful.

This is only practical, of course; it’s already become apparent that travelling together is going to be mightily unpleasant if Enjolras doesn’t trust him. But over and above that, he can’t deny that he simply wants Enjolras to like him.

After all, who doesn’t want their god to smile upon them?

He snorts.

The information they have to go on is this: three people in the same neighbourhood have died in the last month, all under the same mysterious circumstances. The victims, none of whom knew each other, were all discovered in their own homes. Neighbours claim to have heard no disturbances, and there was no sign of forced entry. The bodies showed no sign of injury except for one very small puncture-like wound on the throat. Autopsy had found the corpses to have been cleanly drained of blood.

The normal superstitious people of Budapest are whispering about vampires, of course. But that doesn’t fit. Vampires aren’t very good at sucking their victims completely dry. And they certainly don’t do it neatly, with the face full of fangs they have.

One of the newspaper articles regarding the deaths had featured a brief interview with the flatmate of one of the victims. Her name is Karina Hegyi, and she claims she was working the late shift at one of the local bars before she came home and found her friend dead on the floor.

The newspaper had been kind enough to provide the name of the bar. Grantaire wonders if they’re open yet.

He goes to find out.

~

He’s sitting on the hotel’s front steps with a new sketchbook propped in his lap when Enjolras steps outside at eleven o’clock sharp. Grantaire sensed him coming a mile off, but obligingly jumps a little when he taps him lightly on the shoulder.

“Good morning. Good evening. Whichever,” he says, clambering to his feet and stowing the sketchbook and his handful of drawing pencils in the bag slung over his shoulder. Enjolras’s eyes follow his movements, curious.

“You’re an artist?” he asks. Grantaire laughs, shakes his head.

“Just a hobby,” he says. “Keeps me out of trouble.”

And that is true; when he’s feeling at his lowest, he can either drink or he can draw, and he always feels slightly less disgusted with himself when he manages to go with the latter option.

They fall into step, with Enjolras navigating the dark streets with a level of confidence that makes Grantaire wonder how much time he spent studying the map instead of sleeping. He doesn’t look so exhausted now, though, so he won’t complain.

“I spoke to victim number two’s flatmate earlier,” he says. Enjolras shoots him a small frown.

“You did?” he asks.

“She speaks some French,” Grantaire says, and he hopes they aren’t here long enough for Enjolras to discover that particular lie.

“What did she say?”

“Mostly what we already know, but there was one thing that didn’t make it to the papers. Sounded too crazy, I expect.”

“That sounds promising,” Enjolras says and, given his line of work, he isn’t even joking.

“It turns out the dead girl’s father also died not too long ago. Nothing suspicious or supernatural about it,” he adds when Enjolras looks at him sharply. “It was a heart attack. His third, apparently. But Karina – that’s the flatmate – says that for a few nights before her death, her friend told her that she’d seen her father. That he came to the apartment.”

“A ghost?” Enjolras’s frown deepens. “It wasn’t a ghost that killed her, though.”

“No,” Grantaire agrees. “Could be that she was just dreaming. But I thought I should mention it.”

“No, of course. It could be important,” Enjolras says with an absent nod. “Thank you.”

 Grantaire fights down a proud smile. Then he feels like an idiot. Or maybe a dog that got a pat on the head for successfully playing ‘fetch’ for the first time.

The plan is for them to break into the home of victim number three – Kujbus Fodor, fifty-three year-old banker – purely because he lived alone and they won’t run the risk of scaring Karina Hegyi or victim number one’s widow. The house is big but the security isn’t too hard to get past. Once they’re inside, Enjolras throws him a small flashlight and the exciting process of looking for supernatural residue – which could be anything, really – begins.

An initial sweep reveals a whole lot of nothing. Enjolras starts hunting for hex bags, but Grantaire doesn’t expect he’ll find any. It doesn’t seem like there’s anything here, except a lingering sense that something nasty paid a visit recently. It’s like a slick of dark oil in the atmosphere, and his Grace recoils from it.

He walks the perimeter of the front room, examining the windows and any other possible points of entry. He feels more than a little humbled when he gets to the front door and sees what they missed on their way in.

“Enjolras,” he says quietly. He directs the beam of his flashlight onto the door-handle, and they both stare. The area around the keyhole is scorched black.

“Something came through the keyhole?” Enjolras says disbelievingly, crouching down for a closer look. “What could do that?”

Grantaire makes a non-committal noise. Something is nagging at the edge of his mind, though. He knows this; he’s read it somewhere, or it’s built into his programming. He’s sort of designed to smite all things evil, after all. The answer just seems to be buried rather deeply in his mess of a brain.

“...Do you think they’ve cut off the electricity yet?” he asks with his hand hovering over the nearest light-switch. Enjolras looks alarmed.

“Someone could see,” he says. “This house is meant to be empty.”

“Just for a second,” Grantaire says. He flicks the switch, and the lights do indeed come on; good old Mr. Fodor must’ve been paid up until the end of the month.

The walls of the front hall and the living room are painted pale cream – except right now, in the sudden glare of the electric lights, they’re actually more of a dirty yellow colour, patchy and slightly blackened at the corners. Like smoke-damage. Like the keyhole.

Grantaire turns the lights off again quickly, but doesn’t miss the way Enjolras presses his lips into a thin, exasperated line.

“Really?” he says. “The paramedics and police missed that?”

“The guy was a bachelor,” Grantaire says, trying not to laugh at Enjolras’s obvious disappointment with the Hungarian emergency services. “Maybe they assumed he was a heavy smoker and not very house-proud.”

Enjolras just shakes his head.

They start to prowl around for further clues, when there’s sudden loud knocking at the front door, accompanied by a lot of shouting. To their credit, neither of them cries out in fright. Grantaire can understand what’s being said and so knows that it’s just a well-meaning neighbour who saw the lights and is hollering that he hopes no one is in there looting a dead man’s house. To Enjolras, however, it all must just sound like a slightly terrifying rabble. Grantaire wishes he could reassure him, but he totally doesn’t speak Hungarian.

They hurry out the back door, and make it back to the hotel with no further mishaps.

~

When they are safely ensconced in their room, Enjolras calls Combeferre to fill him in on what they found. Grantaire sits on the edge of his bed and doesn’t pay much attention to what’s being said. He’s thinking, thinking, thinking. He knows what killed these people, and it’s bothering him that he can’t call it to mind.

It’s not until he remembers victim number two’s recently departed father that a few of the pieces fall into place.

He looks up; Enjolras looks like he’s about to hang up.

“Wait,” Grantaire says. “Can Combeferre find out if someone close to victims one and three died recently?”

Enjolras blinks.

“Like that girl’s father, you mean?” he asks.

“Yes. Can he find out?”

“I don’t think there’s anything Combeferre can’t find out,” Enjolras says dryly, bringing the phone back to his ear and passing the request along.

“Do you know what this thing is?” he asks after he ends the call.

“...No,” Grantaire says. He might – he’s almost sure he does – but what he’s thinking of is rare and obscure and not something Grantaire-the-less-than-average-human would be likely to know. As much as he freely admits he’s pitifully pining for the approval of Enjolras-the-above-average-and-bright-shining-human, he thinks it’s safest not to look too competent.

“None of the victims knew each other, or frequented any of the same places, if Combeferre’s information is right,” he goes on when Enjolras just looks at him, waiting for a better answer. “This could be what links them.”

Enjolras nods, looking thoughtful.

“Feuilly always told me to look for the connections,” he says, maybe more to himself than to Grantaire.

“Hm?”

“He taught me a lot about hunting, when I was just getting started.” Enjolras’s eyes are full of far-off admiration.

“Ah, a tough, battle-hardened mentor,” Grantaire says with a grin. He tries to imagine the sort of man that Enjolras would look up to. “I’d like to meet him someday.”

“He’s dead,” Enjolras says. Grantaire’s smile drops right off his face. “Poltergeist in Ukraine. About a year and a half ago.”

 “Are you going to avenge him?” Grantaire asks. Goads, maybe. Enjolras refuses to be baited.

“I’m going to carry on his good work,” he says. He looks awfully content with the idea of doing the very same work that got his teacher killed.

“Of course you are,” Grantaire says. It’s wonderful and it’s horrible and if he could rip out his Grace and give it to Enjolras to protect him, he would.

“Combeferre said he’ll call in the morning with whatever information he finds,” Enjolras says in a rather transparent attempt to change the subject before Grantaire starts lamenting his life choices again.

“Right,” Grantaire says, getting to his feet and shouldering his bag again. “You should get some more sleep, then. The three gallons of coffee you drank on the train must have worn off by now.”

“What about you?” Enjolras asks, which is nice of him and all, but the dancing electric bursts of unease in his soul are enough to tell Grantaire that he’ll keep one eye open all night again if he stays.

“I’m going out.”

“Where?”

“Wherever I can get a drink.” It’s only after he says it that he realises that is his intention. Enjolras’s mouth twists with disapproval, and Grantaire really doesn’t want to hear any criticism of his lifestyle from the boy who’s so eager to throw himself into a monster’s jaws in the name of justice, so he makes his escape quickly.

“You forgot your key,” Enjolras says as he pulls the door open.

“I know,” Grantaire snorts.

~

The hangover the following morning is really quite astounding.

It would be the easiest thing in the world to just snap his fingers and make the headache and churning nausea disappear, but he doesn’t do that. He never does. Penance, and all that.

It’s close to noon when he knocks on their hotel room door, and he figures it doesn’t matter since most of their business is conducted by cover of darkness anyway, but Enjolras still gives him a sort of disappointed-and-despairing-parent look when he sees him. He splashes holy water in his face again before he lets him in.

“Thanks, I needed that,” Grantaire says, throwing his bag down on the bed while the water drips from his hair into his eyes.

“You should really check me, too, after we’ve been apart,” Enjolras says, unapologetic as ever.

“I think I’d know if you were possessed.”

“How?”

“Because a demon wouldn’t try to drown me every time I move.”

“Don’t be childish,” Enjolras says shortly, but Grantaire catches the faint flush of pink in his cheeks and aha, victory. “Since 2006, there’s been a dramatic increase in reports of demonic possession and-”

“I know, Enjolras. It’s fine. Holy water dunkings are fine.” Grantaire pinches the bridge of his nose and wishes for twenty boxes of aspirin. He remembers 2006 very well. A Devil’s Gate had been opened. He doubts many hunters know that, but he knew the moment it happened – he felt that rush of evil spewing out into the world like a plume of volcanic ash. North America, if he wasn’t mistaken. For the last few years, there’s always seemed to be something going on over there. He’s happier not knowing exactly what the hell the deal is.

“Did Combeferre call?” he asks.

“Yes,” Enjolras says. His soul, which had gone a dark, sulky orange-pink, brightens. “You were right. Victim number one’s brother died in a car accident two months ago. Victim number three’s mother passed away in hospital the month before. Cancer.”

“Right?” Grantaire isn’t massively surprised but he supposes he should make an effort to appear so.

“So Combeferre did some more digging and he thinks he knows what we’re hunting.”

“Great.” Grantaire drags himself over to the room’s small, rickety table where Enjolras has spread out all his notes. “Is it something ugly?”

“It’s called a lidérc.” Enjolras consults a piece of paper – judging by the hurried, almost illegible scrawl covering it, it’s information he took down from Combeferre over the phone. “There seem to be about a hundred versions of the legend, but one thing they all have in common is the idea that it saps the life from its victims.”

“The blood,” Grantaire says, nodding. Lidérc, right. Sometimes called ördögszeterõ – the form they were hunting, anyway. The names had come back to him late last night, somewhere near the end of his fourth bottle of pálinka.

Speaking of, he hopes Enjolras doesn’t somehow hear the currently emerging news story about the liquor store two miles from their hotel whose entire stock delivery of pálinka mysteriously vanished last night.

“There’s not much concrete information about what it looks like in its natural form, though fire is mentioned a lot. And there are stories of it taking on the appearance of a dead relative or lover of its victim in order to gain access to their home.” Enjolras’s mouth twists in distaste. Grantaire thinks he’s going to quite enjoy killing this thing. “And supposedly it enters houses through the keyhole. Everything...fits.”

“Hmm,” Grantaire says. He tries his best to look engrossed in the notes covering the table, but he can feel Enjolras’s eyes boring holes into his head, and eventually he has to look up and meet his gaze.

“You knew already, didn’t you?” Enjolras says. He looks torn between grudging amusement and total exasperation.

“I wasn’t sure.” Grantaire shrugs, like hey, no big deal, everyone knows a little bit of Hungarian folklore, right?

“Do you know anything else, for sure or otherwise?” Enjolras asks. “Like how we’re supposed to find it?”

“They haunt graveyards,” Grantaire says. He immediately worries that he answered too quickly, and has to remind himself that his aim is to seem like a human, not an idiot. “Where’s the map?”

Enjolras digs it out and hands it to him. He flattens it out and finds where either Enjolras or Combeferre has circled the locations of the three victims’ homes. These circles form a rough triangle, and Grantaire bites back a smile, because it’s almost too easy; there’s a cemetery almost slap-bang in the middle of it. He points to it.

“...Tonight,” Enjolras says with a quick nod. Grantaire can tell that he’s battling the urge to run over there right now. He has a sudden mental image of the two of them emerging bloody but triumphant from a crypt and walking straight into the middle of a funeral. Yes, tonight is a good idea.

“Will the blade kill it?” Enjolras asks.

“Yes.” Grantaire wonders when he’ll get around to accepting that it really can kill anything.

“...Okay,” Enjolras says. “Okay.”

This leaves them with most of the day to themselves. Enjolras still doesn’t seem inclined to do any sightseeing – he sits at the table with a book (the Grimorium Verum, Grantaire notes) and reads it with all the silent intensity of one who is trying to commit every word and symbol to memory. Grantaire chooses not to complain about his disinterest in the cultural landmarks of the surrounding city since he himself still isn’t feeling so fantastic. He’s content to lounge on his bed and sketch while Enjolras crams all that knowledge into his brain and glows.

~

Watching Enjolras kill things is really a lot more captivating than it should be.

They had little trouble finding the lidérc – they’d been searching the cemetery for less than half an hour when it emerged from one of the old tombs, presumably to go and claim another victim. It was kind of hard to miss. Grantaire felt that maybe he should have warned Enjolras that its natural form was, in fact, something vaguely resembling a skeletal, spidery-limbed human being whose insides were on fire, complete with cracked, blackened skin and eerie orange glow and unpleasant burning smell. Most people might have been unprepared for that.

Enjolras, of course, isn’t most people, and his only response to this hideous figure is to raise an eyebrow – as if to say ‘well, that’s different’ – before shooting it in the chest. It shrieks, more in outrage than actual pain, and turns its bulbous ember-eyes on them.

It regards Enjolras for a moment and then it shifts, changes – the fire fades and it becomes a normal man. Grantaire doesn’t recognise him but he isn’t meant to; this show is for Enjolras, not him. He wonders if this is Enjolras’s dead teacher. Though, if the last time someone close to him died was over a year ago, that makes him a rare specimen among hunters.

Enjolras looks utterly unimpressed. He shoots it in the head this time.

“I’m sure you’re having fun with that, but bullets aren’t going to kill it,” Grantaire says.

“I had noticed,” Enjolras says, stowing his gun and taking out the blade. “Still planning on being useful?”

“Certainly.” Grantaire raises his own gun, which Enjolras had exasperatedly shoved into his hands back at the hotel when he’d discovered he was unarmed. “Don’t get yourself set on fire. Please.”

The creature comes at them, and Enjolras goes forward to meet it. It abandons its disguise and shifts back to its monstrosity of a true form – it opens its mouth in a ghastly screech and flames spew from the toothless hole and its long, needle-tipped tongue.

Grantaire aims for its eyes, and his bullets find their mark.

It lashes out blindly with one clawed hand; Enjolras ducks and then drives the blade up and through its chest. No hesitation, not a hint of uncertainty – he moves like they’ve done this a million times, like it’s a dance he’s practiced until he doesn’t even need to think about it anymore. He’s only been hunting for three years, Grantaire remembers. Is that long enough to have developed this kind of lightning-fast instinct? Or was Enjolras just born for this – could humans be designed to fight and kill, in the same way that Grantaire and his kind were-?

Enjolras’s soul practically sings as the creature gives one last roar before it dies. Before Enjolras can even try to pull the blade free, its body turns to ash, which Grantaire thinks is quite courteous of it. Less clean-up for them.

Enjolras stands looking down at the pile of dust with satisfaction. After a moment, Grantaire joins him.

“Do you think it’s dead?” he asks.

Enjolras doesn’t reply, but Grantaire sees the corners of his mouth twitch just a little, and that’s enough for him.

~

The very next night, they’re back at the train station.

“I can’t believe we’re really leaving without seeing any of the sights,” Grantaire complains. He’s seen them all before, but he considers art to be one of the few things that humankind has got right since they came down out of the trees, and he never gets tired of it. “Buda Castle. Memento Park. The Palace of Art.”

“Pointless,” Enjolras reminds him. “Time-consuming.”

“What, you’re not even allowed to enjoy the world you’re working so hard to save?” Grantaire says.

Enjolras blinks, like he’s really never thought of it like that before.

Their train arrives before he has time to wonder about it too much.

They get settled in their compartment, and Enjolras sits on his bunk and calls Combeferre to ask if they should come back to Paris or stop off in Munich, is there anything near there that needs hunting? Grantaire shakes his head and tunes out his voice, leaving him in peace to make arrangements to throw himself into more life-threatening situations.

As the train pulls out of the station and they start to leave Budapest behind, he absent-mindedly starts humming ‘The Blue Danube’ again. After some time, a balled-up piece of paper hits him neatly on the head.

“Be quiet,” Enjolras says. He’s lying down with his back to him. “I’m trying to sleep.”

Grantaire smiles.

“Alright,” he says.

Chapter Text

~

Enjolras, as it turns out, speaks French, English, passable German and a smattering of Spanish, which he’s working to improve.

This is one of many things that Grantaire learns about him in the three months following their first awkward journey to Budapest. Other highlights include:

1: Enjolras is not a morning person.

2: Actually, that’s not strictly true; whether or not it’s morning has nothing to do with it. A better assessment of the situation would be that Enjolras is a terrible grouch and muttering-shuffling-zombie when he wakes up, which is often not, in fact, in the morning since he’s also not very good at going to sleep at a normal time.

3: The only cure for points 1 and 2 is coffee, and Enjolras likes his best with milk but no sugar. He also likes flavoured lattes but seems embarrassed about the fact, as if it’s somehow insolent of him to enjoy something for its taste rather than its purpose.

4: While working a job, Enjolras has a tendency to forget to eat. Grantaire finds it more than a little bizarre that he, who doesn’t need to eat or sleep, is suddenly the sole hope for getting this wayward, workaholic human to eat three meals a day and sleep at least five hours out of every twenty-four.

5: Enjolras claims to have no interest whatsoever in art for art’s sake, and ignores all the galleries and fantastically detailed cathedrals and every other place of cultural interest that they pass on their travels. He does, however, seem quite curious about Grantaire’s collection of sketchbooks.

Despite his best efforts, Enjolras still hasn’t managed to pry any information from Grantaire about his background, though he’s certainly learned plenty about his habits. He frowns when Grantaire disappears for the night to drink and stumbles back the next day with a bottle still swinging from his hand, but he doesn’t try to stop him. Grantaire almost wishes he would. He wonders if he’d be able to stop, if Enjolras asked it of him.

He also learns that Grantaire speaks French, English, Russian and ‘a little bit of Dutch’, because that is what Grantaire tells him. In hindsight, he wishes he’d thrown a little Romanian into the mix too. It feels like they have to go there every other week because yet another vampire has decided they are the new Count Dracula and taken up residence in one ruined castle or another.

They hunt a lot of things in those first few months, because Enjolras pesters Combeferre for every possible case he’s got wind of. In addition to vampires, werewolves and lidérc, Enjolras now knows for certain that Grantaire’s blade will kill zombies, rawheads and ghouls – though the ghoul incident is one that neither of them likes to think about too much.

(Long story short: the thing had just finished gorging itself and was lying in its crypt like an overstuffed maggot, and stabbing it turned out to be sort of like popping a balloon. Full of rotting flesh.)

Grantaire likes to think that he’s a good sport about these hunts. He lets Enjolras take the lead, and if he figures out what they’re hunting first, he only drops as many hints as it takes for Enjolras to solve it on his own. (Because one day Enjolras will kill him and so Grantaire has to help him learn as much as possible before that happens.) He even lets himself take a few hits when things get especially exciting, and then lets the battle-wounds heal the slow, human way. There’s a certain camaraderie that comes with patching themselves up together after a messy hunt.

They have one incident where they find themselves in serious conflict with each other: they are investigating a haunting in Smolensk, and the ghosts doing the haunting turn out to be the spirits of two young children. No one has been badly hurt or killed yet, and Grantaire sees a couple of kids who were too scared to go with a Reaper rather than dangerous vengeful spirits. He wants to try talking to them, to see if they’ll move on by themselves. Enjolras looks at him like he just suggested they cycle a tandem back to Paris instead of taking the train. Salting and burning the bones would be a lot more efficient, he says.

Efficient, yes, Grantaire agrees. Pleasant for the spirits? Not so much.

But Enjolras doesn’t care about that, because there are people to protect and many more monsters out there, and this is just another job that they need to get done as quickly as possible.

Grantaire stares at him, tight-lipped, and he wants to tell him ‘I’m not even human and I think I’m better at this empathy thing than you are.’

It’s the first time that he truly sees just how consumed by the cause Enjolras is. He has no concept of individual cases or exceptions to rules. No one and nothing is above his system. There are human beings and there are creatures-to-be-killed, and there is nothing in between.

That night, when he’s sure Enjolras is sleeping, he flies to the construction site where the supernatural activity is supposedly occurring. They’re building a mini-supermarket, but there used to be an apartment building here, before it burned down. Fatalities: two. Children.

They hide from him at first. But they’re dead, and he doesn’t need to worry about burning out their eyes, so he lets his Grace shine through his human skin just a little; lets the shadows of his wings loom large over his shoulders. They come running to him, then, smiling and with eyes shining. They’ve been waiting for this, he realises with a sick lurch in his stomach. Their parents told them that when you die, angels will look after you. Of course they wouldn’t go with their Reaper, who was probably some shady-looking guy in a dark suit.

He sits with them and tells them stories of what Heaven is like – because maybe the system is broken and maybe the angels are too, but the individual Heavens of human souls remain untouched, and for that he is thankful. As they stare up at him, rapt and utterly trusting, it reminds him of a time long ago – so long ago – when mercy was still the name of the game and he understood his place in the universe. He feels a little nostalgic, remembering who he once was. He supposes that, given his origins, it’s not so surprising that he tends more towards compassion for lost souls than Enjolras.

The children go into the light, still smiling. Grantaire goes back to the hotel.

The next day, Enjolras burns their bones. Grantaire says nothing but takes quiet satisfaction in the knowledge that the action is a total waste of his precious time.

They don’t speak for a few days after that.

Grantaire gets over it first, by reminding himself that Enjolras is human, and that humans are inherently imperfect, and he shouldn’t hold that against him.

~

Things go smoothly enough for a while. And then, of course, they don’t.

Grantaire is on his way back to their hotel room, bearing morning coffee and breakfast doughnuts, when he first becomes aware that there is a problem.

They’re in Cologne (ah yes, another city, another cathedral for Enjolras to take no notice of) and, having taken care of the local werewolf problem, they are currently awaiting new orders from the Musain. Grantaire has been schooling himself not to listen in on every conversation Enjolras has, because even he figures that’s unnecessary, invasive and more than a little creepy, but he does tend to keep one ear sort of lazily turned in Enjolras’s direction just in case of trouble. As a result, as he climbs the stairs to their room, he can’t help but overhear what sounds like Enjolras having an argument with Combeferre.

Enjolras and Combeferre, arguing.

The concept is bizarre enough to make him stop dead in his tracks. A man behind him nearly walks into his back and swears at him at great length in German before going on his way. Grantaire ignores him.

Things-he’s-learned-about-Enjolras, number 6: Enjolras and Combeferre do not argue. They are colleagues with a common aim in mind and, over and above that, they are friends. Grantaire had been delighted to realise this; he knows the loneliness of this life can make people hard and cold. He likes that Enjolras has a friend, and especially one like Combeferre, who does not generally engage in fieldwork and is therefore much less likely to die horribly any time soon.

And yet, as he manages to get himself moving again, it’s undeniable; that’s Enjolras’s voice coming from above, and he’s close to shouting.

Grantaire quickly tunes the sound out as best he can, so that he at least can’t hear exactly what’s being said. Because, again, invasive and creepy. But by the time he reaches their door and starts fumbling for his key-card (because, yes, they’ve reached that stage, he no longer needs to lock himself out of their room to give Enjolras peace of mind), he and probably the rest of the guests in the corridor can’t help but hear every word.

“...I mean, I’m in Germany, I can be there by tonight! Don’t even try to tell me you’ve got anyone else closer who- what? Of course I know that. I know!”

Grantaire comes slinking inside at this point. Enjolras notices him but hardly acknowledges him. The red-black-acid-yellow turbulence of his soul almost seems to be coating the walls of the room.

“Combeferre. I’m going,” he says with sharp finality. “If you disapprove, then don’t feel like you need to help me.”

He hangs up and throws his phone down on his bed. He then stands and glares at it, as if it is personally to blame for whatever just happened.

“...I found a Starbucks,” Grantaire pipes up after a few moments of painful, ringing silence. He approaches Enjolras as one might approach a bear that’s just stumbled out of hibernation, and keeps his distance carefully even as he leans over and sets the vanilla latte on the bedside table.

(7: When there’s something wrong, Enjolras won’t tell you about it until he decides you need to know. Asking questions is not advised.)

Enjolras ignores the coffee, which is a bad sign. He strides over to the table, where he’s got his laptop set up. He’s been fighting to get a decent wi-fi signal since last night. Grantaire supposes they both better hope he succeeds, since he just threw a tantrum at their guide.

 “Do you have any idea how over-priced this stuff is?” Grantaire says, following him with the latte in tow. “Maybe you don’t, you never make the coffee run. Let me tell you: you’d think it was made with gold-plated beans. So drink up, grumpy.”

The look Enjolras sends him might have struck a lesser man dead on the spot. He’s scariest when he doesn’t even scowl. It’s a perfectly neutral expression, but it’s all in the eyes. Chilling.

Grantaire just laughs at him.

“Don’t bite the hand that feeds you breakfast,” he says, placing the box of still-warm doughnuts down on the table too. Enjolras wrinkles his nose.

“Can’t you ever pick something with an iota of nutritional value?” he says.

“Sorry, you’re right,” Grantaire says, flopping into a chair and grabbing his sketchbook. “With the complete lack of physical exertion in your life, you really need to watch your figure.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Oh, eat your doughnuts.” Grantaire flaps a hand at him. “I promise to get you a nice, exciting granola bar tomorrow.”

He doesn’t speak again until he’s seen Enjolras finish his coffee and consume at least one full doughnut. Only then does he feel it might be safe to do so.

“Do we have a new case?” he asks.

“Yes,” Enjolras replies. He sounds calmer, and his soul looks somewhat soothed. The magic healing power of caffeine and vanilla-flavoured syrup, Grantaire supposes. “Possible ghost activity at a university.”

“Where?”

“Lyon.”

“Ah, back to our own fair France.” Grantaire has decided to claim France for his surrogate-homeland. He likes it there.

“Yes,” Enjolras says again. He looks oddly hesitant, and for a minute Grantaire thinks he’s going to tell him what it is about this job in Lyon that has him and Combeferre at each other’s throats, but in the end he only says, “Thanks for getting breakfast.”

“Can’t have you fighting evil on an empty stomach,” Grantaire says with a faint smile.

~

Cologne to Lyon is a relatively short journey by their standards – Grantaire thinks this might actually be the first time they’ve had two consecutive cases in neighbouring countries – but still, naturally, involves several hours on trains. Daytime travel means no sleeper compartment, which means travelling in a carriage full of normal people, which means strictly no discussion of the case while on board. As a result, the ride is mostly silent. Grantaire desperately wants to ask Enjolras all sorts of questions – what did you do before you started hunting? What did you want to do? What did you enjoy before this became your entire life? Did you have a favourite author, did you play an instrument, was there someone you were in love with? He wants to know an Enjolras who is more than just a killer of monsters; a boy who once, doubtless, had a brighter and very different future ahead of him. But he can’t ask any of those things, because Enjolras will only counter with his own questions, and he has no answers to give him.

It wouldn’t be the hardest thing in the world to create a fictitious past for himself, but keeping secrets somehow feels slightly less treacherous than telling outright lies.

So they are quiet, and Enjolras taps away at his laptop, and Grantaire sketches absently. He’s drawing a woman sitting opposite them. She’s middle-aged and greying and looks exhausted – is dozing with her head leaning against the window, in fact – but, with the sunlight catching her eyelashes and cheekbones just so, she appears radiant. Grantaire wonders if he’s the only one who thinks so. Humans are so strange about ageing. He, with his eternally unchanging appearance, considers the marks of old age to be achievements people should be proud of.

He doesn’t expect Enjolras will ever wear those particular marks.

“What are you drawing?” Enjolras asks. He says it off-handily, but it isn’t the first time he’s asked. Grantaire gives his usual answer.

“Nothing.” He closes the sketchbook. Enjolras’s eyes don’t shift from his laptop screen once, but he frowns.

“You’re so secretive about that thing,” he says.

(8: Enjolras does not like secrets.)

“You don’t like art,” Grantaire reminds him. “You wouldn’t appreciate it.”

He almost laughs out loud at the indignant flash of dark red that remark inspires in Enjolras’s soul.

“I might,” Enjolras mutters.

“Admit it, you’re just worried that almost every page is a drawing I did of you while you were sleeping,” Grantaire says with a grin.

“Oh, forget it,” Enjolras grumbles, and Grantaire feels bad, because maybe he really is interested, or maybe this is him trying to play nice and make conversation.

“It’s not really all that interesting,” he says, sliding the sketchbook onto the keyboard of Enjolras’s laptop. He blinks in surprise before turning it carefully, almost reverently, to the first page. Grantaire doesn’t think he handles it like someone who thinks art is a massive waste of time.

In truth, there are no drawings of Enjolras in there, mainly because drawing Enjolras with graphite pencil would be sort of like painting a sunset with a pallet consisting only of black, white and grey. To Grantaire, the golden soul that lured him to the slums of Paris like a hapless insect will forever be as much a part of Enjolras as his physical self. If they ever set up camp somewhere long enough for him to get paint, then Enjolras might unexpectedly find his likeness in his work.

He watches Enjolras’s face as he flips through the different sketches. Though he isn’t looking for approval, he feels an unexpected pulse of warmth in his chest when one page in particular earns a smile.

He isn’t self-conscious about his art; he simply has a rather strange relationship with it. Because how can he ever know for sure if his talent comes from himself, or is some kind of residual muscle-memory left behind in this body by its original inhabitant? He doesn’t know if his vessel was an artistic man. But he also doesn’t know if angels actually have the capacity for creativity. They weren’t intended to ever have hobbies, after all.

He finds drawing to be soothing; it has always been a balm for him, ever since he exiled himself here. It allows him to exist in a particular moment; to focus on one thing alone instead of everything at once. But he does not know if his work truly belongs to him, or if it is just one more thing he has stolen. And for that reason, he tends to hide it away.

Enjolras, as ever, seems to be the exception to his rule.

“Do you never draw?” Grantaire asks him. “Or did you, before?”

“No. I was always awful at it. My teachers at school were happy to let me do my maths homework in art class rather than waste their paper.” Enjolras closes the sketchbook almost reluctantly and hands it back. “You’re good, though.”

“I’ll paint your portrait one day,” Grantaire says. “Ten feet tall. Just you in your red coat, standing on top of a mountain, with a blade in one hand and a vampire’s severed head in the other. I think I could make it tasteful.”

“I think you’re an idiot.”

“I think you’re probably right.”

“I expect you were considerably more popular with your art teachers than I ever was, though?” And there it is – the question. Grantaire supposes it’s his own fault; he did start it. Enjolras’s tone is light and casual again, but Grantaire can practically feel him watching him out of the corner of his eye.

“...No,” he says finally. “It’s a hobby I only picked up recently. When I was younger, I don’t think there was a single person in my life that would have approved of me producing any sort of art.”

This isn’t technically a lie. Is it just an evasion, then? Or a lie by implication? Oh, how the lines do blur.

“Oh.” Enjolras looks unsure exactly how to respond to that that. “That’s a shame.”

There are no further attempts at conversation.

~

Grantaire begins to feel an unpleasant, dawning realisation of what the problem is almost as soon as they arrive in Lyon.

Enjolras doesn’t have a map, and he definitely hasn’t consulted Combeferre for directions, and yet he leads them through the streets with suspiciously practiced ease. He hasn’t phoned ahead to book a room anywhere, he just ‘knows a place that’ll have vacancies’. He glances around as they walk, affording his surroundings a level of attention that he normally reserves only for sites of recent brutal murders.

As far as Grantaire is aware, Lyon does not have some kind of recurring ghost problem that would have caused Enjolras to hunt here time and time again, resulting in this kind of familiarity.

He has a bad feeling. But he doesn’t ask.

When they are settled in yet another cheap-but-relatively-cheerful hotel room, they finally fall to talking about the case.

“There haven’t been any attacks so far,” Enjolras says. “Just sightings.”

“Sightings? Of what?”

“People are calling it a ghost, but that could be wrong. Normal people seem to blame anything they don’t understand on ghosts.”

“Normal people,” Grantaire repeats with a small smile.

“...Shut up,” Enjolras says after a moment. “You know what I mean.”

“So how many sightings have there been?”

“Two, that we know of.”

“Two?” Grantaire raises an eyebrow. “That’s not much to go on. That could easily be nothing. It’s a university full of bored students. Ghost stories liven up any old building.”

“We can check, can’t we?” Enjolras shoots him a frosty look. “Or would you rather we wait until someone’s dead?”

Grantaire puts his hands up in surrender.

 What he wouldn’t give to know exactly what it is that’s got Enjolras so wound up. It might make it easier to avoid tripwires like this in their conversations.

“EMF sweep, then?” he asks. “Where on campus did people see this ‘ghost’?”

“Two different places,” Enjolras says. “Two different buildings, in fact.”

Grantaire doesn’t bother pointing out that ghosts are generally tied to one particular place, because Enjolras knows that, and if he wants to investigate anyway, then Grantaire isn’t going to argue.

“The first was in one of the girls’ bathrooms-” Enjolras starts, and Grantaire’s squawks of protest – because a haunted bathroom, really? Wasn’t that one getting kind of old? – are pre-emptively cut off when his phone starts ringing. They both freeze, because they both know it’ll be Combeferre, because Combeferre is pretty much the only person on the planet who has Enjolras’s number.

“...Oh, answer it,” Grantaire says after about four rings. “Be a man.”

Enjolras sets the phone on the table as if he expects it to explode and puts it on speakerphone. This is normally how they do things, now, since it means Combeferre can pass along information to both of them at once.

“Yes?” Enjolras says in such a ridiculously stiff and formal voice that Grantaire has to furiously bite the inside of his own cheek to keep from laughing.

“I assume you’re in Lyon?” Combeferre says. He just sounds annoyed, but resigned. That’s a good idea, Grantaire thinks: resignation. Do not try to fight Hurricane Enjolras. It’s just not worth it.

“Of course.”

“Right. If you’re going to insist upon taking this case, I have a contact in the city for you.”

“A contact? Who?”

“Her name is Éponine Thénardier. She’s our eyes and ears in Lyon, and the one who brought this case to my attention. She’ll be able to give you more information. She’ll hear if there are more sightings or attacks, too.”

“Where can we find her?” Enjolras doesn’t look overly thrilled by the prospect of working with a third party. (9: Enjolras, by nature, is not quick to trust new people. It took Grantaire a month or two to be promoted from ‘possible sociopath’ to ‘probable ally’, after all.) He won’t turn down inside information, though. He’s distrusting but pragmatic.

“She works in a bar on Rue des Casernes. Very popular with students. Mostly law students.” Combeferre’s voice has a warning edge to it that Grantaire can’t quite make head or tail of.

“Well, it is right next to Jean Moulin’s Law building,” Enjolras replies through closed teeth and oh dear, how does he know that?

The answer is obvious, of course, but Grantaire does hate to assume.

“She’ll be there tonight if you aren’t too tired after the journey.”

“We’re fine,” Enjolras says shortly. He only casts Grantaire a questioning look after making this statement, but he supposes that’s better than not asking at all. He just nods. “We’ll go tonight.”

“I’ll call ahead to let her know,” Combeferre says. He pauses a moment, and then adds, “Be careful.”

He tells them that before every job, of course, and it’s sound advice. It just sounds like he’s talking about something other than not getting killed this time.

~

The bar is called The ABC, and it’s a far cry from the ‘rustic aesthetic’ of the Musain. This place is all chrome furniture and soft indie music and neon backlighting behind the bar. It’s very obviously aimed at the student crowd, with brightly-coloured laminated signs advertising cheap vodka mixes and, apparently, two cocktail jugs for the price of one on Wednesday nights.

Grantaire doesn’t think he’s ever seen Enjolras so uncomfortable. And he’s seen Enjolras standing in a crypt covered from head to toe with a ghoul’s innards.

“Do you want a beer or something?” Grantaire asks him tentatively, because maybe just a little bit of alcohol would be enough to stop Enjolras from vibrating out of his own skin.

“We’re not here to drink,” Enjolras snaps back at him.

“It’s a bar. We’re going to look pretty strange if we don’t drink.”

Enjolras ignores him and marches up to the bar. There are a few people serving there but only one girl, and for the love of all that is good, Grantaire hopes that’s Éponine, because any normal civilian would probably be frightened by the approach of such a handsome and yet murderous-looking young man. He follows quickly, in case he needs to intervene.

Luckily, this is indeed Éponine. She’s a very pretty girl – brown hair, brown eyes, olive skin – and also gives the impression that if anyone was to start any trouble in this place, she’d be the one dealing out black eyes and broken noses and sending them on their way. Grantaire thinks he’s going to like her.

“You’re Enjolras?” she says. He nods and offers her his hand to shake, as if this is a business meeting.

“And I’m Enjolras’s number one fan,” Grantaire says, coming up behind him and waving. Her lips quirk slightly.

“Grantaire, yeah?” she says. “Combeferre told me.”

He gives her a little bow. Enjolras looks at him as if to say that he’s finding his antics quite mortifying.

“We can talk in private out back,” Éponine says, throwing down the cloth she was using to mop up the assorted puddles on the bar. She calls to one of the boys on duty that she’s taking her break now, and then gestures for Enjolras and Grantaire to follow her. She leads them out the back door, and then immediately sprays them both with what Grantaire can only assume is holy water. Angelic senses or not, he has no idea where she just produced that water pistol from. He’s impressed. He’s also highly amused by Enjolras’s startled spluttering.

“I could say something about karma, but I won’t,” Grantaire says with a contented smile, drying himself off with his sleeve.

“Alright,” Éponine says, stowing the water gun and producing a packet of cigarettes. “What do you want to know?”

“Everything you’ve heard,” Enjolras replies.

“There’s not much,” she says with a shrug, sitting down on the back steps and lighting up. “Two girls at the university are claiming they saw a ghost, one in the bathroom in the library, the other in a corridor in the Languages department. The two girls don’t know each other but their stories are similar. They both say they saw a dead woman. I haven’t spoken to either of them personally, but these stories spread like wildfire, especially when there are essays due and people want some excitement in their day.” She pauses to blow out a cloud of smoke, peering up at the two of them shrewdly. “To be honest, I didn’t think Combeferre would send anyone down here unless there was at least one more reported sighting. Y’know, two could be a coincidence, three’s a pattern, all that.”

“Hunting something down before anyone gets killed isn’t an opportunity that arises very often,” Enjolras says, frowning.

“What I don’t understand is why Combeferre would need to send anyone when there’s a local hunter already here,” Grantaire says, because his general impression of Éponine is that she is more than capable of handling anything that comes her way, supernatural or otherwise, and that she doesn’t seem the type to be daunted by mere rumours of a ghost.

Éponine snorts.

“I’m no hunter,” she says, looking amused by the very idea. “If you two want to get yourselves killed for people you don’t even know, then be my guest. Me, I’ve got a brother to watch out for. If a case is a straight-forward salt and burn then, sure, ‘Ponine can do that for you. Apart from that, no thanks.”

There’s a pause, and then Grantaire sits down next to her on the stairs.

“Explain,” he says with a wide smile. “Please.”

“Explain?” she repeats. Grantaire can practically feel Enjolras rolling his eyes.

“He likes to hear people’s stories,” Enjolras says. He sounds apologetic, like a stressed parent with an errant child.

“This one sounds good,” Grantaire says. “Enjolras’s was interesting but it had a very dull ending that I’ve heard about a million times before.”

Éponine tilts her head back and laughs. Enjolras looks slightly affronted.

“My story wouldn’t make a very good movie,” she says, stubbing out her cigarette on the concrete step. “I found out about this whole ‘world’ when my parents got killed. Vengeful spirit.”

“I’m sorry,” Enjolras says. She snorts again.

“Don’t be. I wasn’t too heartbroken over it.” Grantaire thinks that maybe she’s lying about that, but there is certainly venom in her voice. “They were not loving parents. They were not good people. I’m almost sure that the ghost that killed them was the spirit of someone whose death they caused in the first place.”

“Oh,” Enjolras and Grantaire say in the same moment, because there isn’t much else you can say to that.

“A hunter came along and sorted out the ghost problem. Just so happened that he was connected to the Musain. He dropped me and my brother off there, because we had no money and no one could figure out exactly what to do with us.”

“And?”

“They asked me if I wanted to hunt. I told them they could go fuck themselves.” She smiles sweetly. “But your friend, Combeferre. He has this grand idea of having someone in every city who can keep their eyes open for supernatural activity. Watchers, he likes to call us.”

And ah, yes, that sounds like Combeferre. Enjolras is going to try and eradicate evil all by himself until he burns himself out; Combeferre is working to create a system that will minimise the damage that evil can do and make the good guys’ response to it that much quicker. He and Enjolras are like a modern-day Tortoise and Hare.

“Why get involved at all?” Grantaire asks.

“Because it was a good offer,” she says simply. “I mean. You know the guys at the Musain are running every money-laundering scheme in the book to keep guys like you on the road, right? The deal was that if I agreed to keep an eye on things down here, the Musain would get me everything I needed to live here. Apartment, fake credit card, enough fake references to get me the job at the bar. I won’t complain. Fair deal.”

Grantaire sighs happily.

“That was a much better story than yours,” he informs Enjolras.

“I’m so glad you liked it,” Enjolras says dryly. “Is there anything else we should know about the case?”

“Not that I know. There might not even be a case,” Éponine says. “I’ve got the names of the two girls who saw the thing. I’ll try and talk to them for you tomorrow.”

“I could do that,” Enjolras says with a puzzled frown. Éponine gets to her feet and dusts herself off.

“Don’t get me wrong. You’re very cute.” She pats Enjolras’s cheek, and the fact that she does so and gets away with it is enough to permanently endear her to Grantaire. “But lots of college girls aren’t comfortable with talking to strange men, no matter how pretty they are.”

“Don’t be sad, Enjolras,” Grantaire says as they head back inside. “We can check for EMF tomorrow, if we can sneak into the buildings.”

Enjolras just grumbles something under his breath.

“Do you guys want a drink before you go?” Éponine asks them. “First one’s always on the house for hunters who could, y’know, die tomorrow.”

“Yes,” Grantaire says at the exact same moment that Enjolras says, “No, thank you.”

“Oh, come on, you can have one drink and still be a fine, upstanding citizen,” Grantaire says.

“I’ll see you back at the hotel,” Enjolras grinds out. He turns on his heel to go.

“Why are you so terrified of bars?” Grantaire asks with equal measures of amusement and exasperation. “I mean, the Musain’s a bar. You don’t clam up there.”

“It’s not the fact that it’s a bar that’s the problem, it’s...” But Enjolras doesn’t finish that thought; he catches himself and stops abruptly, as if realising he almost gave away some vital state secret.

“I need to go,” he says instead.

He doesn’t get far, though. In fact, he maybe only gets about ten steps before there’s a crash of breaking glass, and a shout so loud that, for just a moment, everyone in the building stops to look.

“Enjolras!”

The sudden noise startles Grantaire so badly that his first instinct is to find the source of the danger and eliminate it but when it sinks in that someone in this student bar just shrieked Enjolras’s name, that’s enough to make him pause in his preparation for smiting.

He looks around, and it’s fairly obvious who did the shouting. There’s a young man—early 20s, well-dressed and with a mop of expertly and painstakingly coiffed dark hair—standing with the glinting, jagged remains of the glass he'd just dropped scattered around his feet, and he’s staring at Enjolras with his mouth hanging open.

Enjolras, for his part, has frozen. His soul is flashing warning-yellow with panic. When he turns, slowly, Grantaire sees that his face has gone the colour of milk.

For an impossibly long moment, nothing happens. The two of them just stand and stare at each other, while Grantaire and Éponine wait tensely by the bar to see if this situation is going to descend into violence.

It doesn’t.

The boy steps over the broken glass and makes his way over to where Enjolras is still standing looking shell-shocked. When he reaches him, the boy stares a minute longer, and then he grins.

“Enjolras,” he says again, like it’s the only word he knows, or the only one his brain is capable of providing his mouth with at this point in time.

Enjolras’s lips move a little, but he still says nothing, and that’s just not like him at all. Grantaire never thought he’d see him lost for words.

The boy starts laughing, then, and he suddenly pulls Enjolras into a back-breaking hug, still saying his name over and over, like a chant or a prayer. Grantaire only has a second or two to be alarmed by this new development, before something even more unexpected occurs: Enjolras hugs him back.

“...I think I’ll have that drink now, Éponine,” Grantaire says, leaning back against the bar while Enjolras and this laughing stranger cling to each other. “It’s starting to look like I’m going to need it.”

Chapter Text

~

Grantaire’s policy of not eavesdropping on Enjolras’s private conversations is on temporary hiatus, because hell if he isn’t going to hear every single word of this exchange.

The boy releases Enjolras from his crushing embrace but grips him tightly by the shoulders, as if afraid he’ll vanish into thin air if he doesn’t hold onto him. He’s still laughing, a soft, jittery sound of pure shock, and Grantaire thinks he might be halfway to crying, too.

“Oh, God. Oh my God. I thought I was seeing a ghost, or...” he’s saying. “God, Enjolras, is it you? Really you? Am I finally just losing it? Are you…?”

“It’s me.” Enjolras finds his voice at last, though it’s a weak and croaky shadow of its usual self. He looks like he isn’t sure whether to smile or throw up. “Hello, Courfeyrac.”

Oh, we have a name, Grantaire thinks. That’s something, at least. Not much, but something.

“Hello?” Courfeyrac repeats in a strained, high-pitched voice. “‘Hello’, he says. Fucking hello! Enjolras. Enjolras. You can’t just—I thought you died.”

“Oh.” Enjolras swallows hard. He moves his lips but nothing else comes out. Courfeyrac is staring at him like he can’t believe the reality of him, even as Grantaire sees his fingers dig harder into Enjolras’s shoulders. His arms are trembling slightly between them. The noise and bustle of the bar continues around them but they seem oblivious, Courfeyrac looking at Enjolras like he’s an impossibility, like the sight of him has short-circuited his brain, and Enjolras looking back with something like terror in his eyes and ringing in his soul.

“Enjolras, say something, you have to say something,” Courfeyrac is pleading. “I can’t—I see you but it’s been three fucking years and I’m still ninety percent sure I’m hallucinating and…”

“I’m here,” Enjolras says when Courfeyrac trails off, and Grantaire has never heard him sound so gentle. “I shouldn’t be, but I’m here.”

“Oh my God, Enjolras.” And Courfeyrac seizes him in a hug again, and Grantaire can practically hear the air being forced from Enjolras’s lungs but he just stands there and takes it. Grantaire sees him shut his eyes briefly, as if trying to commit the embrace and the moment to memory. “You’re alive. You’re alive! You’re alright. I think I’m crying. Why am I doing that?”

“I don’t know,” Enjolras says. Courfeyrac pulls back once more and surveys him.

“You’re crying a little too,” he observes.

“No, I’m not,” Enjolras says, hastily scrubbing at his eyes.

“What a heart-warming scene,” Éponine says dryly. She sends one of the guys from the bar to clean up the mess of broken glass. “This is more drama than we usually get in here in a month. I don’t suppose you know what the hell’s going on?”

“Can’t say I do,” Grantaire says. “But I feel like I might have to step in and intervene soon.”

He’s not wrong.

“I really need you to start talking,” Courfeyrac is saying. “Make this make sense, Enjolras. You were just gone, you’ve been gone for so long and I never—I thought—We all thought…” He chokes out a wild, sobbing laugh. “Where the fuck have you been?”

Grantaire has seen Enjolras go up against all manner of monsters without so much as flinching in fear, but the look of panic on his face now is so intense that he has to try very hard not to find it hilarious. He looks like a deer caught in the headlights of a UFO. And his voice seems to have abandoned him again, which is just poor timing. How can it be that Enjolras, who can convince a police officer that he is an Interpol agent without actually producing any documentation to prove the fact, suddenly can’t think of a lie?

Grantaire grabs his tumbler of whisky, pushes himself off the bar, and goes valiantly to the rescue.

“Everything alright, Enjolras?” he asks companionably, slotting himself in next to him and clapping him on the back. The touch is enough to jolt Enjolras from his daze, at least; he turns his head and looks at Grantaire oddly, as if wondering exactly when he thinks the two of them reached the stage where impromptu physical contact is permitted.

Courfeyrac frowns a little at his arrival, and looks like he might be trying to catch Enjolras’s eye to silently ask is this guy the problem, is this why you disappeared for three years, do you need me to scream for help?

“Hello,” Grantaire says with his best smile, holding out a hand to shake. “Enjolras seems to have forgotten his manners. I’m Grantaire.”

“Courfeyrac.” His grip is firm, but Grantaire can feel his hand still trembling a tiny bit.

“Oh, this is Courfeyrac?” Grantaire somehow forces himself to smile even wider. “It’s great to meet you. Enjolras has told me all about you, of course.”

Enjolras is looking at him like he fears he’s gone completely mad now, which is not helpful at all, but fortunately Courfeyrac doesn’t seem to notice. And as Grantaire had hoped, that little lie makes him relax just a little.

“All good, I hope,” he says.

“Of course!” Grantaire doesn’t think it would kill Enjolras to pitch in and help him out here, but he doesn’t seem terribly inclined to do so. “And wow, this is incredible. I know you said you thought we might find him here, Enjolras, but on our very first try? What are the odds?”

“You were looking for me?” Courfeyrac says, turning back to Enjolras, who manages a nod in between casting frantic, questioning looks in Grantaire’s direction.

“I’m sure he already told you that he’s not meant to be here,” Grantaire goes on. “But he just couldn’t stay away any longer. I mean, it’s been, what, three years? That’s a long time to not know how your friends are doing.”

He doesn’t think it’s too much of a stretch to guess that Enjolras and Courfeyrac are—or were—friends. He also doesn’t think it’s too insane to assume that Courfeyrac isn’t the only friend Enjolras has in Lyon. And if this situation turns out to be exactly what he thinks it is, he and Enjolras are going to have words later.

“It is a long time.” Enjolras speaks up at last and hooray, better late than never, Grantaire supposes. “I just—I needed to make sure you were alright. You and the others.”

Courfeyrac smiles at him but it’s a pained smile, and Grantaire silently hopes that it’s sending daggers of guilt straight into Enjolras’s heart.

“But why aren’t you meant to be here, Enjolras?” he asks. “I don’t understand. Did you have to go away?”

“Yes,” Enjolras replies without hesitation, but then he just stops. Did he not come up with a suitable lie in preparation for a situation like this one, or can he just not bring himself to lie to a face that’s clearly so happy to see him? Grantaire doesn’t pretend to know. All he knows is that the protection of Enjolras’s top-secret monster-hunting alter-ego seems to lie squarely with him.

He leans in towards Courfeyrac, who looks at him curiously. Grantaire raises his eyebrows meaningfully at him.

“Witness protection,” he says in a confidential whisper.

He isn’t even touching Enjolras anymore, but he still feels him stiffen from head to toe after those two words leave his mouth.

If you wanted a better cover-story, you had plenty of opportunity to spit one out, Grantaire thinks wryly.

Courfeyrac’s eyes go comically wide.

“No way,” he breathes.

Grantaire nods sombrely.

“What happened?”

“Classified,” Grantaire says with a mournful shake of his head.

“Enjolras, are you okay?”

“I—yes. I’m...coping.” Enjolras sounds like he’s speaking through gritted teeth.

“Were you even allowed to stay in France? Where did they put you?”

Grantaire just shakes his head again. Courfeyrac puts his hands up apologetically.

“So, you understand, it’s of the utmost importance that you don’t tell anyone you saw us here,” Grantaire adds after taking a sip of his whisky for strength. “This is a very secret, very illicit road-trip. You wouldn’t believe the trouble he’d get in if they found out.”

He has no idea who ‘they’ might be, but Courfeyrac just nods furiously.

“Of course, yeah, I get it,” he says, and then pauses. “But, Enjolras, can I at least tell the others that you’re not dead?”

“No. No, that’s...I mean, it’d be better if you...” Enjolras trails off rather pathetically and clears his throat. “You can’t tell anyone you saw me. Please.”

Courfeyrac’s face falls but he nods reluctantly.

“...How are they?” Enjolras asks softly. He’s very pointedly not looking at Grantaire, as if he finds it unspeakably humiliating to be heard asking such a human question by someone who knows him as a hunter.

“Yeah, good, everyone’s great!” Courfeyrac assures him with a shaky smile. “Joly’s still dying of ten different diseases every week. Bossuet’s still a disaster-a-day waiting to happen. And Marius is in love, if you can believe it.”

Enjolras bows his head and lets out a quiet laugh. It’s a sad sound. Grantaire knows what it means: Enjolras thought he’d buried these people; these memories. But now he’s here and Courfeyrac is right in front of him and suddenly it feels like he’s hardly been gone. Grantaire knows, because he understands. He’s been homesick often enough.

“You two should catch up,” he says, pulling away from Enjolras’s side. “As we’ve established, three years is a long time.”

“No,” Enjolras says immediately, taking a panicked-looking step backwards. “No, I...we can’t. I can’t. I’m really not supposed to be here. And I just wanted to make sure everyone was okay, and they are, and we should go.”

“Enjolras, don’t,” Courfeyrac says, sounding horrified. He reaches for him again, but Enjolras takes another step back.

“I really need to go,” he keeps saying. Courfeyrac manages to catch his arm when he turns and tries to make a break for it.

“Wait a second, just wait!” he squawks. He produces a pen from his pocket, pushes up Enjolras’s sleeve and starts scribbling something on his arm. “This is my number, okay? If you ever, y’know, need something, or...or if you change your mind, if you...” He trails off. Enjolras just looks at him. Grantaire is trying not to look at his soul, because it’s a mess and it’s making him feel queasy. The gold shine is almost completely obscured by heavy, inky blue-black.

“Stay, please,” Courfeyrac says, miserable but hopeful. “Please, can we talk, can we just—”

Enjolras just shakes his head—once, twice. “I have to go,” he says, and then he’s pulling his arm free and disappearing into the crowd and almost running for the exit. He doesn’t look back. Grantaire takes one look at Courfeyrac’s face and he thinks he can understand why he wouldn’t.

“Enjolras, wait,” Courfeyrac calls, going after him, but he proves too slow—Grantaire sees him run out onto the street and look from side to side frantically before his shoulders slump in defeat. Grantaire slips out the back way before it can occur to Courfeyrac to come back inside to question him. On his way back to the main street, he stumbles upon Enjolras pressed against the wall around the side of the building, in hiding behind a row of dumpsters.

“Hey, there you are,” Grantaire says. “I think you gave him the slip.”

“Don’t talk to me,” Enjolras snaps, pushing away from the wall and stomping off down the alley.

“What did I do?” Grantaire asks, affronted, hurrying after him.

“Witness protection?” Enjolras hisses at him. “Of all the ludicrous stories—!”

“I didn’t see you coming up with anything better. And he bought it, didn’t he? And you have to admit, it was kind of funny—”

“Nothing about this is funny!” Enjolras stops in the middle of the street and jabs an accusing finger at Grantaire’s chest. “You shouldn’t have got involved! It’s nothing to do with you and it’s not funny!”

“Woah, hey.” The hurt and anger and bone-deep misery pulsing out of Enjolras’s soul are so much more than Grantaire had expected. He’d wanted to be angry with him, but suddenly he can’t. He wants to reach out to him instead, offer a hand to hold, a shoulder to lean on, but he knows Enjolras would never allow himself to be comforted in such a way. “Enjolras. It’s that bad?”

“Leave me alone,” Enjolras mutters, starting to speed-walk along the pavement again.

“Enjolras, hey, don’t be angry,” Grantaire says in alarm. He touches his wrist experimentally and, as expected, Enjolras snatches his arm away. “I’m sorry. You’re upset? Of course you’re upset. I was trying to help, really.” He plants himself in front of Enjolras, walking backwards in time with him when he doesn’t stop. “I didn’t even know what was going on. Still don’t know. Come on, don’t be mad. I promise to get you whatever you want for breakfast tomorrow.”

Enjolras finally takes pity on him and his backwards-walking and stops. He sighs heavily.

“...I should’ve told you earlier,” he concedes quietly. “Just. There are so many students here. I never thought I’d actually run into someone who...y’know.”

Grantaire hums in agreement. Enjolras folds his arms across his chest.

“Aren’t you going to ask?” he says, looking steadily at the ground beneath his feet.

“Will you tell me if I do?” Grantaire counters.

Enjolras sighs again. They start walking, side by side this time, neither trying to leave the other behind.

“You were a student here,” Grantaire says. It’s not a question.

“Yes.” Enjolras’s voice is soft and far-away.

“You had friends here.”

“Yes.”

“That’s why Combeferre wanted you to stay away. He wanted to avoid...well. The exact thing that just happened.”

“He felt that my personal attachment to this place and its people might affect my judgement and make me less...reliable,” Enjolras says stiffly.

‘Less reliable’. Translation: even more fiercely determined to fight the good fight than usual. Even more likely to throw himself in harm’s way.

“And yes, he also thought it would be detrimental to all concerned if I was to be recognised,” Enjolras goes on.

“I don’t know about that,” Grantaire says cautiously. “Courfeyrac seemed pretty happy to see you.”

Enjolras’s soul seems to shrivel slightly at the mere mention of his name.

“But he can’t see me,” he says. “He shouldn’t have seen me. It’s been three years. Another three years, and maybe he would have stopped thinking about me completely. Now he’ll have to start again.”

And so will you, Grantaire thinks but does not say.

“I really didn’t think I’d run into anyone,” Enjolras says. “I insisted on taking this job because I want to protect him and the others. Combeferre thinks that a personal attachment is a bad thing but I disagree. What’s the sense in me fighting for strangers if I can’t also fight for the people I care about when the need arises? This is what I do, and I’ll take twice the care that any other hunter would to make sure that this place is safe before I leave.” He pauses and glances at Grantaire, as if checking that he’s not laughing at him. “I had to come here. I had to make sure they were okay.”

And you want to see them, Grantaire thinks. And that’s okay. You can say it. You’re a boy who grew up far too fast and you miss your friends.

“You don’t need to protect them from the shadows,” he says. “They can still be your friends. Call Courfeyrac, arrange to see them. You don’t need to cut them out of your life just because this is your life.”

“Of course I do!” Enjolras says, suddenly furious. “They’re civilians! Hunters can’t be attached to civilians. Because that makes them your weak spot. And sooner or later, some monster or other is going to decide they want to find your weak spot and tear it apart. You know that.”

And Grantaire does know, he knows it as surely as he knows his own name, but it just doesn’t seem fair.

“You could tell them the truth,” he says lowly. “Teach them, arm them. They don’t need to be helpless.”

“I wouldn’t drag them into this for the whole world,” Enjolras says with utter finality. “I want them to be happy, and I want them to be safe. I don’t want them to have anything to do with this.”

Grantaire stares at him.

“You know,” he says in disbelief. “I always thought you were in some bizarre state of denial, but you actually know how awful the hunting life is.”

“It’s not the life for everyone,” Enjolras says shortly as they reach their hotel.

Grantaire manages to restrain himself until they’re shut inside their room, and then he resumes.

“You hate it, don’t you?” he says. “You act like it’s this great, honourable crusade, but when you stop and think about it, you hate everything about it.”

“No, I don’t hate it.” Enjolras suddenly sounds calmer and less morose, probably because this is more like one of their usual arguments. “It’s hard sometimes. It’s not a comfortable life. And it took me...a while to get used to the killing. It’s ugly, but it’s necessary. I know you don’t understand it, but I am happy, more or less. It feels like I’ve found what I was meant to do. I have a purpose. I spend every day doing something that makes my life meaningful.”

“Your life was meaningful anyway!” Grantaire explodes at him. He never normally raises his voice, and Enjolras gets such a scare that Grantaire sees his hand twitch instinctively for a weapon. “You had friends here, you had a real life! It’s not just Courfeyrac, I heard him list those other names. You meant something to all those people and you threw that away! You left them all behind without a word, as if they were nothing, so that you could embark on a suicide mission because it makes you feel validated—?”

It’s his turn to get a shock when Enjolras steps right into his personal space and clamps a hand over his mouth.

“Stop shouting. You’re going to get us kicked out,” he says firmly. He does not, Grantaire notices, look angry, which is interesting.

“Sorry,” he mutters when the hand is removed. “Shit. I need a drink.”

“No, you don’t,” Enjolras says. He sits down on his bed with his back against the headboard. “You need to listen.”

“I’m listening.”

“This was my decision. Okay? And maybe you think it was the wrong decision. Maybe, to you, finishing my studies and getting a good job and settling down in a big house somewhere would have been the best use of my time. But it’s my life, and this is what feels right to me. And you can have your opinions but you don’t get to decide what constitutes a good and meaningful life.”

Enjolras’s soul is flaring again, gold and bright and so sure, and Grantaire lets it fill up his vision and wishes he could lose himself in its fearless shine. Some part of him wonders if Enjolras is right and thinks, dismally, that he might be. Maybe this is the only sort of life Enjolras could ever feel fulfilled with. Everyday drudgery, whilst certainly safe and considerably more comfortable, just wouldn’t suit him. Could someone with such a fierce and blazing soul—someone so overflowing with protective love for people who wouldn’t even notice when he was dead—ever choose to be normal?

“When you think about how much you want to keep your friends safe, do you get this crazy feeling inside?” Grantaire says, leaning his forehead against the cool glass of their room’s single window. “Like your heart is so far up your throat that you might just puke it up?”

“...Yeah, something like that,” Enjolras says, sounding a little mystified.

“I’ve got that feeling twenty-four-seven with you, you heroic psychopath.” Grantaire chuckles without much humour. “So you’ll have to excuse my periodic outbursts about your disgustingly self-sacrificing choices.”

He hears Enjolras shift uncomfortably.

“I don’t understand why you care so much,” he says. “About me.”

If you could see yourself through my eyes for just one second, you might understand.

Grantaire does not say that.

“I figure someone ought to,” he says with a shrug, pushing away from the window and going to sit on his own bed. “You seem to be at the bottom of your own list of priorities.”

Enjolras rolls his eyes.

“...You do miss them, don’t you?” Grantaire asks him. He doesn’t need to specify who he’s talking about.

Enjolras’s soul dims.

“Of course. It was hard to leave them behind,” he says, looking fixedly at his knees. “I’ve known Courfeyrac for almost as long as I can remember. It’s been beyond strange to be without him.”

“Tell me about them,” Grantaire says, smiling, because he finally has irrevocable proof that Enjolras is far more human than he shows, and he wants to hear about a time when that side of him was perhaps on display all the time. He wants to be able to picture Enjolras, younger and far less burdened, laughing with this group of friends who have been left to assume him dead.

“You want to hear about my friends?” Enjolras asks, raising an eyebrow that quite clearly says that if this is Grantaire feeling sorry for him, he can take his sympathy and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine.

“They sound like a colourful bunch,” Grantaire says. “Especially the one with all the diseases.”

And, to his surprise but delight, Enjolras tells him.

He talks about Joly, a medical student with an unfortunate case of hypochondria and various other neuroses, who still manages to be the most cheerful and good-spirited person you could ever hope to meet. Then there’s Bossuet, who never seems to find his way out of trouble but who never stops smiling, either, and who has been practically joined at the hip with Joly since Enjolras met them in high school. And they are all very protective of Marius, who is, in fact, the same age as Enjolras, but has always seemed younger. He was home-schooled and had turned up to university blushing and shy and awkward. Courfeyrac had immediately taken him under his wing, and while Enjolras admits he hadn’t been terribly impressed by this decision at first, he’d come around quickly enough.

Which brings them to Courfeyrac, of course: Enjolras’s closest friend since the age of seven. The two of them aren’t much alike, Enjolras explains, but maybe that’s why they go together so well? Without Enjolras there to be serious, Courfeyrac might never have actually buckled down and studied at school to get the good grades that secured him his place at the university here. And without Courfeyrac there to provide some light relief, Enjolras might have studied so much that he’d have caused himself to have a nervous breakdown.

Grantaire finds that easy to believe. It seems only natural that Enjolras has always put two hundred percent into absolutely everything.

“We struck a good balance, I think,” Enjolras says. He’s looking at the ceiling. He’s remembering. “Without each other, we both might have turned out completely insufferable, in our own way.”

Grantaire doesn’t say that maybe they still need each other’s influence; that he thinks that Enjolras has forgotten how to laugh without his more light-hearted friend, and that for all they know, Courfeyrac could have forgotten how to take the important stuff seriously in Enjolras’s absence. He doesn’t say it, because although it’s true, it would only be cruel.

A strange thing happens while Enjolras is talking. It’s as if with every word that passes his lips, every time he smiles or looks melancholy as he recalls a particular character trait or incident, spaces are being filled. Gaps that Grantaire had not previously even been aware were there—empty spaces in his perception of Enjolras that had allowed him to think of him as an unknowable hunter-deity rather than a man—are suddenly being filled with childhood memories and tales of university escapades and the many quirks of a lively group of friends. For the first time, Enjolras becomes fully human in Grantaire’s eyes.

He’s not certain that this is a good thing, for either of them.

When Enjolras finally falls asleep that night, it’s the first time Grantaire sees him sleep poorly. Enjolras doesn’t suffer from the insomnia or night terrors common to hunters; he isn’t haunted at night by the things that he’s seen or the things that he’s done because his certainty that what he does is right and good and making a difference is strong enough to overpower the horrors. But tonight, he’s restless. He dreams—unpleasantly, judging by his pinched brow and his frantically roving eyes beneath his eyelids. He tosses and turns and tangles himself in the sheets.

“Tough day, huh?” Grantaire says in a whisper, getting carefully to his feet. He pads across the room silently and stands over Enjolras’s bed. He agonises only a moment before laying a hand gently on Enjolras’s forehead. He quietens immediately; his frown smoothes out and his breathing slows. Grantaire smiles.

“Look at me, using the unfathomable power of Heaven to give you sweet dreams,” he says out loud. He pulls his hand away. “I think that means I’m officially doomed, don’t you?”

He is, and he knows he is.

Following dutifully along behind Enjolras the Hunter has been easy for Grantaire. That kind of mindless devotion to a concept, to an ideal, is built into the very essence of what he is. It’s quite literally what he’d been made for.

Except Enjolras isn’t just a hunter anymore. He isn’t just he-of-the-blazing-soul; he’s more than just a beautiful and frustrating and captivating oddity. Now he’s a boy that Grantaire can see in his mind’s eye—a boy who studied too much and always took everything far too seriously, who had a friend that reminded him to smile and who stuck with him all the way into adulthood, who met an old drunk hunter in a graveyard and decided to throw away everything he’d worked so hard for because he wants to keep other people safe even if it means that he can never be safe.

Angels can love. It’s part of their programming; to love their Father and each other and all of humankind. But it’s a cold, distant thing; an almost tiresome matter of business. They do it the same way that humans breathe or blink or pump blood. Automatically, dispassionately. It’s just there.

That’s not what Grantaire is feeling now.

He thinks, with some dismay, that some final piece of a puzzle he wasn’t even aware he’d been putting together has fallen into place, and he might love Enjolras. The more human kind of love. It’s an unfamiliar, burning, urgent and unspeakably tender feeling. And it is one thing he was certainly not built to feel.

This wasn’t the plan at all.

“Oh, shit,” he whispers into the quiet darkness.

~

Grantaire concludes that the only way to cope with a monstrous epiphany about experiencing a brand new and undoubtedly forbidden emotion is to think about it as little as possible. Which means, of course, that he can think about literally nothing else and has to spend the entire night schooling himself to act normal while internally waging war with himself over being possibly the first wavelength of celestial intent ever to go and develop a crush on a human.

He thinks he manages pretty well, come morning. He suspects he might have something of a frazzled, wild-eyed look to him when Enjolras actually wakes up but since, as he well knows, Enjolras is decidedly not a morning person, he’s fairly sure he avoids suspicion. Enjolras barely looks at him before grabbing some clean clothes and stumbling to the bathroom, at which point Grantaire makes his escape to pick up the morning coffee.

He’s a little more collected by the time he gets back. Which is lucky, because Enjolras is a little more awake.

While they’re eating breakfast, there’s a knock at their door. They exchange confused glances and then Grantaire goes to answer it. Enjolras is probably panicking and thinking that they were followed back here last night and now all his old friends are waiting out there to ambush him; Grantaire just hopes it isn’t the hotel manager coming to tell them that their neighbours have complained about the shouting last night. Though even that would be a welcome distraction from all the current noise about feelings whirling around inside his mind.

It turns out to be a young boy—around eleven, maybe—that Grantaire is fairly certain he’s never seen before. Nonetheless, he finds himself on the receiving end of a winning, toothy grin.

“Important correspondence from your Watcher,” the boy says with put-on formality, holding out an envelope.

“Éponine?” Grantaire says in surprise before it clicks. “Ah. You’re her brother?”

“That’s right.” The boy’s grin widens. When Grantaire reaches for the envelope, he jumps back and takes it out of his reach. “And did you know my sister doesn’t give me anything for running errands for her? You should give me something.”

“We have pain au chocolat?” Grantaire says, amused. The boy’s face lights up.

Enjolras looks highly perplexed when Grantaire comes back inside with a strange child they do not know. His gaze flicks towards his bag, where Grantaire knows his flask is currently stashed.

“If you even think about pouring holy water over a kid...” he starts mock-threateningly.

“No worries,” the boy says brightly, lifting up his shirt to reveal what is definitely an anti-possession tattoo on his chest.

“They got you inked already, huh?” Grantaire says with a grim smile.

“All my friends are really jealous,” the boy chirps.

His name turns out to be Gavroche, and he relinquishes the envelope without complaint once they sit him down at the room’s tiny table and ply him with pastries. Grantaire watches while Enjolras reads the enclosed message with his lips pressed into a thin line.

“One of the original two witnesses came to The ABC last night. Éponine got talking to her,” he says finally. “It was the girl who saw the thing in the bathroom. She told Éponine that she saw it reflected in one of the mirrors and that it was a woman.” He pauses and wrinkles his nose slightly. “A dead woman. As in, dead and decaying.”

“Nice,” Grantaire remarks. “Sounds more like a campfire ghost story than actual ghost activity, though.”

“Maybe,” Enjolras says absently. “There was another sighting yesterday, too. Éponine only got wind of it after we left.”

“Let me guess,” Grantaire says, letting his head fall back and sighing at the ceiling. “Different witness, different place, same description?”

“Yeah. Same building as one of the others, though. The Bourg.”

“Do you think we’ll be able to get inside to look around?”

“...I will,” Enjolras says. When Grantaire raises a questioning eyebrow, he takes his wallet from his bag and produces a card from it. Grantaire laughs.

“I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to return your student card when you decide to become a college drop-out,” he says before holding out his hand. “Hand it over, I want to see your photograph.”

“Why?” Enjolras asks, puzzled, but he complies.

“Because awww,” Grantaire says. Seventeen year-old Enjolras stares unsmilingly up at him. His hair was longer back then, and his face a little rounder—he actually looks closer to fifteen. “Look at that cute little face!”

“I don’t even look that different,” Enjolras says, snatching it back.

“Yes, your face is still very cute.” Grantaire smiles widely, because possibly-maybe-kind-of being in love with Enjolras doesn’t make teasing him any less fun.

“There’s no security at the main entrance, so getting in isn’t an issue. The staff just has a policy of demanding student ID from anyone they don’t recognise caught wandering the halls,” Enjolras says, wordlessly forbidding any further discussion of his face.

“I’ll tag along, anyway,” Grantaire says. “If anyone asks, you can tell them I’m your Russian pen-pal who is very interested in studying here.”

“If anyone asks, I’m telling them you’re not with me,” Enjolras says dryly.

“Ouch.”

“Also, I want to know how Éponine knew where we’re staying,” Enjolras says. “Did you tell her?”

“No.” Grantaire blinks. “I thought Combeferre told her.”

“Combeferre doesn’t know either,” Enjolras points out.

Their perplexed silence is eventually broken by a giggle. They both turn to see Gavroche wearing a very proud smile as he chews his (well, their) food.

“We got stalked by a pre-teen?” Grantaire says, impressed despite himself. He supposes they’d been too busy fighting like a couple of kids themselves last night to have noticed. Enjolras looks appalled.

“We need to be more vigilant,” he says.

Gavroche just smirks.

Éponine had concluded her message with strict instructions for them to make sure that Gavroche got to school on time, in return for her being kind enough to send them information via him rather than waiting until their next rendezvous at The ABC. Grantaire is almost sad to see him go—he’d found the kid pretty funny, and he’d turned out to be an excellent distraction. Now he’s alone again, with only Enjolras and his own mixed-up, messed-up and terribly inconvenient feelings for company.

The best course of action, he decides, is to ignore the problem entirely.

Or drink the problem away.

No, he’ll ignore it. At least until this job is done.

Then he might try drinking it away.

Walking a child to their school gates had proven to be another one of those things that Enjolras apparently finds more discomfiting than killing monsters with a sword, and he mutters something about passing on his cell-phone number to Éponine later.

“Or you could call Combeferre and get him to tell her right now,” Grantaire suggests as they start towards the university.

Enjolras says nothing.

“Are we still not talking to Combeferre?” Grantaire asks.

“...I’m not very good at lying to him,” Enjolras says finally.

“Oh, last night, right.” Grantaire doesn’t think Combeferre is really the ‘I told you so’ type, but he imagines it would sting Enjolras’s pride nonetheless to admit to him that his concerns regarding Enjolras’s ties to Lyon had been soundly justified on their very first night here.

“I’ll tell him everything after the case is closed and everything’s back to normal,” Enjolras says. “He’d only worry and try to convince me to leave if I told him now.”

“Éponine will probably tell him that you got hugged by a random student in her bar,” Grantaire says. “She didn’t know what that meant, but Combeferre probably will.”

“Shit,” Enjolras groans, quickening his pace.

~

Getting into the building is easy, as Enjolras had said it would be. And, of course, since Enjolras already knows the layout, it doesn’t take them long to find the approximate location of the alleged ghost sighting.

Enjolras has an EMF detector, which Grantaire recognises as the sort that Combeferre puts together at the Musain during his brief moments of respite from research and delegating cases and just generally keeping the hunting community halfway organised. He makes these things mainly from old cell-phone parts and distributes them to any hunter dumb enough to be tracking ghosts without one. Grantaire wishes he had been at the Musain when Enjolras first arrived, probably still looking about sixteen, brimming with enthusiasm and determination but without experience or knowledge or equipment of any kind. Combeferre had probably had to tie him to a chair to stop him from rushing out to save innocent citizens before he was properly prepared.

The EMF meter is silent and unresponsive today. Enjolras slowly walks the entire length of the main corridor of the Languages department, which is thankfully empty for the moment, but there’s nothing.

“Either there was nothing here to begin with, or the spirit hasn’t been back here since that last sighting and the traces of it have faded,” he says quietly.

“If it’s a ghost, the only way it could be so mobile would be if it was attached to an object instead of a place,” Grantaire says. “And if it’s an object that a student is carrying, you’ll never find it.”

“Hmm.” Enjolras doesn’t appear to be listening. His attention has been caught by the line of large windows running the length of the corridor. These windows look directly onto the building next door and, presumably for this reason, the glass is tinted. Their own reflections look back at them instead of an outside view.

“The other girl said she saw it in a bathroom mirror,” Enjolras says thoughtfully.

“Of course she did. That’s how haunted bathroom stories go.”

“Maybe.” Enjolras turns abruptly and strides off in the opposite direction. “We should check the site of the latest sighting.”

The latest sighting, as it turns out, was in the Law department, though that’s hardly a surprise, since this is a Law building and the vast majority of it is devoted to that particular area of study. The corridors are quiet and no one even gives them a second glance, but Enjolras is visibly on edge. Grantaire doesn’t think that even their luck could be so atrocious that they’d meet his friends twice in the space of twenty-four hours.

They pass a large student notice-board on one wall, and Enjolras halts mid-step. Grantaire tries to follow his line of sight to see what caught his attention and, oh.

There’s a large sign advertising an upcoming Valentine’s themed night at the student union, with various related games and contests, including a prize for ‘the most sickeningly loved-up couple’. Surrounding the notice are photos of all the couples who have apparently been nominated for this prestigious award. Grantaire is willing to bet he knows which one caught Enjolras’s eye.

“Is that your Marius?” he asks, because of course it is. The picture, labelled ‘Marius Pontmercy + Cosette Fauchelevent’, shows a sweet-faced young man smiling adoringly at a girl who is laughing and trying to hide her face from the camera.

Enjolras nods. The photo has been cheaply printed in grainy black and white, but Grantaire doesn’t doubt that it’s still more than clear enough for Enjolras to see just how much his friend has changed and grown up in his absence. And found love, too, by the looks of it. Marius, who had needed Enjolras’s guidance in almost everything when they’d first met, has managed to attain something that Enjolras has doomed himself never to experience.

“He looks happy,” Grantaire says. Enjolras manages a small smile.

“He does,” he agrees, and they move on.

When they reach the part of the building where, according to Éponine’s sources, the ghost was last spotted, Enjolras doesn’t even bother with the EMF detector. He sees those same tinted windows and just nods once, decisively.

“We can go,” he says.

“What did you see?” Grantaire asks, bemused, as they head for the exit.

“Quiet,” Enjolras says. “I’m thinking.”

~

He continues thinking all the way back to the hotel, and then for a further half hour in the room, too. Grantaire keeps his mouth shut and leaves him to it. When Enjolras is puzzling out the answer to something related to a case, he takes being interrupted with the same kind of offence that a bomb disposal officer might express if someone pulled a party-popper next to their ear while they were deactivating an especially tricky IED.

At last, just when Grantaire is starting to suspect that this might get lengthy and that he should probably go and fetch fresh coffee, Enjolras comes out of his reverie.

“I need to talk to Éponine again,” he says.

“Yeah?” Grantaire says, looking up from his sketchbook.

“Yes.” Enjolras’s fingers are tapping out an erratic beat on the tabletop. He clearly wants to go now, but it’s still early, and they don’t even know if Éponine will be at The ABC tonight. “I don’t think it’s a ghost. Ghosts don’t typically look like they’re...rotting.”

“But you think there’s something?”

“I think it’s a wraith.”

That makes Grantaire sit up straight. He’s not afraid of wraiths—they pose no threat to him, after all—but he does find them particularly distasteful amongst their monster brethren. Sucking humans’ brains dry with that retractable spike of theirs is just unnecessarily gruesome.

“Those things are predators,” he reminds Enjolras. “No one’s been killed.”

“No one at the university has been killed,” Enjolras corrects. “That’s why I need to talk to Éponine. If there have been deaths elsewhere in the city, she might have heard about them.”

“She’d have told you if there had been any strange deaths.”

“They wouldn’t look all that strange, though,” Enjolras says. “It’s easy to miss the puncture wound from a wraith. No pathologist is going to be looking for it. And if I’m right, it’s probably preying on people whose disappearance might not immediately be reported.”

“What are you thinking?” Grantaire asks him.

“It’s been sighted three times at the university now, but no one there has been harmed.” Enjolras steeples his fingers in front of him as he talks and it should look ridiculous but he somehow manages to pull it off. “So, if it is a wraith, it isn’t using the university as a hunting ground. So why is it there at all? It’s cloaking itself, too. I know they usually disguise themselves as humans, but this one seems to be trying to go completely unnoticed. A mirror always shows a wraith’s true form, though, so three people have seen it in a reflection. But most places on campus—lecture halls, classrooms, even most corridors—don’t have mirrors. The fact that it’s been sighted three times does not mean that it’s only been there three times. I think it goes to the university a lot.”

“Why?”

“I think it’s looking for a specific person,” Enjolras says with a slow nod. “It’s looking for someone and it doesn’t want them to know that it’s coming.”

“Which is why it’s hunting elsewhere, and discreetly.” Grantaire nods too. The logic is sound, at least.

“I need confirmation of nearby deaths, though. Deaths which could conceivably be wraith victims. Otherwise the theory falls flat.”

“Well, you know who always has that sort of information at their fingertips,” Grantaire says, a smile playing on his lips.

“We have no way to contact Éponine beyond sneaking into her brother’s school and asking him. Personally, I wouldn’t like to have to explain to the authorities why I was stalking a ten year-old.”

“I don’t mean Éponine and you know it.”

Enjolras shoots him a betrayed look. Grantaire just shrugs.

“You want information,” he says. “And honestly, even if Éponine did tell him what happened last night, he won’t bite.”

This earns him another sulky look, but Enjolras doesn’t argue. He calls Combeferre.

“Morning, you two,” he says, on speakerphone again, when he picks up.

“Morning,” Grantaire replies brightly, mainly to annoy Enjolras, which is always fun. “How is our beloved Paris today?”

“Busy. People have been calling non-stop since before six. Got a group down in Macedonia; seems a bunch of lamia decided they’ve had enough of Greece and are wreaking havoc there instead. Bizarre.” Anyone else would probably sound harassed, but Combeferre doesn’t do harassed. “What’s happening in Lyon?”

“Possible wraith,” Enjolras says. “I need to know if there have been reports of any disappearances or unexplained deaths nearby since the sightings began.”

“A wraith?” Combeferre repeats, surprised. “Why a wraith?”

“Because the facts seem to point towards that answer, of course,” Enjolras says just a bit snappishly. “Why else?”

Combeferre sighs.

“Enjolras, listen. I know you were recognised last night—”

“It’s not a problem.” Enjolras’s blue eyes turn stormy. “We dealt with it.”

“And I know that seeing one of your old friends probably made you even more determined to keep them safe. But you can’t let that cloud your judgement. You need to be realistic.”

“I’m being perfectly realistic. I’m looking at the evidence that has presented itself and I’m interpreting it accordingly.”

“When I called to tell you about this ‘case’, it was purely out of courtesy to you, because I know your background,” Combeferre says. “I didn’t expect you to run straight down there and, honestly, I didn’t expect you to find anything, least of all something as dangerous as a wraith. It’s probably nothing, Enjolras.”

Enjolras doesn’t reply. He turns on his heel, snatches up his bag, and walks out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

“He just walked out, didn’t he?” Combeferre says with another sigh.

“Sure did,” Grantaire replies.

“You’re with him all the time,” Combeferre says. “So you’ll know better than me. How does he seem to be coping with...this?”

“He’s worried about the people he knows here—which, I have to admit, is taking some getting used to. But he’s not hysterical. He’s not imagining danger where danger is not.”

“Two students claiming they saw a ghost does not mean a wraith.”

“Three students, now,” Grantaire corrects mildly. “And it seems likely that they all saw it reflected in a mirror.”

Combeferre pauses.

“Do you think he’s right?” he asks.

“I think we could all know for sure whether he’s right or not if we found out if there have been any deaths nearby.”

“Of course there will have been deaths nearby. People die all the time,” Combeferre says. “There’s no way to know for sure whether someone was killed by a wraith beyond breaking into the nearest morgue and checking the bodies yourself.”

“...Why didn’t I think of that?” Grantaire mutters, getting to his feet.

“Grantaire?”

“We’ll call you later,” he says. “You know, once Enjolras cools off.”

“What are you going to do?”

“The usual. Solve the case, save some folk, you know how it is.”

“Don’t get arrested.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t let Enjolras get himself arrested.”

“Okay.”

“And please, watch out for him. I know he doesn’t make it easy, but try.”

“You’re worried about him,” Grantaire says with a grin that he is quick to guiltily smother. He just thinks it’s a little bit funny that, a few months ago, Combeferre had been worried about him being a threat to Enjolras, and now he’s looking to him to ease his concern about Enjolras being a threat to himself.

“I always worry about him.” And Grantaire likes that about Combeferre; that he can say that so straightforwardly, and mean it. “But whether there’s a case in Lyon or not, this will be hard for him. He wasn’t born to this life like I was. It must be difficult, seeing how your own little corner of the normal world has moved on without you.”

Grantaire, remembering how Courfeyrac had held onto Enjolras’s shoulders with a white-knuckled grip, isn’t so sure that this particular corner of the world has moved on, but he doesn’t say so.

“Like I said,” he says. “We’ll call you later.”

Chapter Text

~

Enjolras finally comes back to the hotel, looking relatively calm, late in the afternoon.

“I hope you ate lunch,” Grantaire says absently.

“I was at the library,” Enjolras says, which Grantaire takes as a ‘no’. “I needed to use the internet, since it seems I’m doing my own research for this case.”

“Find anything?”

“Yes. According to some of the more obscure bestiaries, there is a particularly rare type of wraith which can actually make itself invisible instead of just taking human form.” He pauses. “Well, what it actually said was that it can project a perception-distorting aura which renders humans unable to see it, but it amounts to the same thing.”

“But it still feeds with the wrist-spike to the brain?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm.” Grantaire reaches over and picks up Enjolras’s phone, which had accompanied him on his visit to the morgue. “I have a present for you.”

“If it’s more pastries...” Enjolras starts threateningly.

“I’m afraid not.” Grantaire throws the phone to him. “Check the photos.”

Enjolras looks first at the phone, then at him.

“It’s nothing weird,” Grantaire says when he realises that he is being looked at with suspicion. “Well. I’m sure a normal civilian would find it very weird. But I think it’ll be relevant to your interests.”

After one more mistrusting frown, Enjolras starts to look through the photos saved on the phone. His expression becomes one of disbelief as he scrolls through the several pictures Grantaire had taken of various John and Jane Does with a hard-to-spot but distinctive puncture wound at the base of their skulls.

“Where did you get these?” Enjolras asks.

“Local morgue,” Grantaire replies.

“How?”

“I snuck in.”

“How?”

“By being very sneaky.”

“That’s not an answer,” Enjolras says angrily. Grantaire shrugs and tries to look as unassuming as possible.

“What, do you want a blow-by-blow account? It was a perilous mission, but I survived. And look, you’ve got your proof. You’re right. It’s a wraith.”

Enjolras looks set to argue the impossibilities of a broad-daylight morgue break-in, but then the phone in his hand starts ringing. He glances at the screen and then throws it back to Grantaire.

Combeferre, then.

“He’s not cooled off yet,” Grantaire says when he answers.

“There’s been an attack at the university,” Combeferre says. “Éponine just heard. It just happened, she says the ambulance is still in the street.”

“Someone’s dead?”

“No, injured. A professor. And screaming about ghosts, according to all the hysterical students pouring into The ABC. You two should get down there before they clean things up.”

“Where?”

“The Bourg building. No word yet on which floor. Just follow the crowd, I expect.”

“Right.”

By the time he hangs up, Enjolras is halfway out the door again.

“How’s your blade against wraiths?” he asks as they go.

“For the final time,” Grantaire says, “it kills everything.”

~

Following the crowd to the scene of the crime turns out to be extremely easy. The building, which had been so quiet that morning, is buzzing with panic and confusion. There are police officers trying to keep people out, but Enjolras knows a back door, and they soon join the gathered throng of morbidly curious students on the third floor. The police are trying to disperse them, but to little avail.

A small section of the corridor is cordoned off, and within the cordon there are a few small puddles of blood on the tiled floor. Enjolras isn’t looking at the floor, though. He’s staring, transfixed, at the notice-board on the wall.

Another poster for the Valentine’s themed night. Another cluster of photos of Jean Moulin University’s most sickeningly loved-up couples.

Someone, or something, has smeared an ominous, bloody ‘X’ over Marius’s face.

Grantaire winces. Without a word, Enjolras turns and runs for the stairs. Grantaire follows, ignoring the odd looks they’re getting for their haste.

“Enjolras, calm down,” Grantaire says when they’re back on the street.

“No,” is the blunt reply. “Marius? Why is Marius suddenly involved? He has nothing to do with anything!”

“Well, apparently that’s not the case.”

“There is absolutely no reason for him to be a target! Since when do wraiths even choose specific targets?”

“I don’t know. But, at the very least, this gives us somewhere to start with tracking the thing,” Grantaire says.

Enjolras shoots him a fierce look over his shoulder. “I won’t use Marius as bait.”

“You don’t have much choice. If the wraith is going after him next, all you can really do is stick close to him and wait for it to make its move.”

“I don’t even know where he lives anymore.” Enjolras shakes his head in annoyance. “How am I supposed to find him?”

“That’s obvious,” Grantaire says. “You call Courfeyrac, you tell him you want to see everyone—”

“No.” Enjolras cuts him off sharply.

“Then what?”

“...I know where he used to live,” Enjolras mutters. “We should at least check there first.”

They both know that students tend to relocate quite frequently, and that if Marius and his Miss Fauchelevent are as grotesquely in love as their photograph suggests then there is every chance that they now have a flat together somewhere, but Grantaire doesn’t argue. He never does, when Enjolras is so supremely agitated.

“You better lead the way, then,” he says instead.

~

The building that Enjolras leads them to looks almost too upmarket to be student accommodation. That doesn’t come as much of a surprise, though, since Enjolras had given Grantaire a brief breakdown of the situation on their way here: Marius is supported by a wealthy grandfather (which all but eliminates any chance of him being somehow connected to the hunting world through his family; there’s no such thing as a rich hunter) and, at the time when Enjolras up and left Lyon, had been in the process of arranging to share one of these flats with Courfeyrac, who also comes from a fairly affluent family.

“And you’re sure this is the place?” Grantaire asks.

“They made me help them choose a flat,” Enjolras says. For a moment he looks rather haunted by the memory. “Believe me, I remember which one they eventually settled on.”

“Alright.” Grantaire rocks back on his heels. “So how do we establish whether or not your Marius still lives here?”

Enjolras frowns and twists his mouth from side to side as he thinks about this.

“We could knock the door and then run and hide,” Grantaire suggests with a grin.

“No.”

“I could pose as a travelling salesman.”

“Shut up,” Enjolras says absently, his eyes fixed on the building with single-minded concentration, as if he could see through the walls to find his answer if he tries hard enough. Such is his absorption that Grantaire (who really can see past the walls and knows for a fact that Marius is safe inside) is the first to notice the figure hurrying towards them. He wordlessly takes hold of Enjolras’s sleeve and tugs him across the road and into a narrow alleyway between two houses.

“I think Marius still lives here,” he says in response to Enjolras’s questioning look, gesturing towards the newcomer, who approaches the building at a swift pace, which is fairly impressive considering the high heels she’s wearing.

Despite having only seen a poor quality, monochrome photograph of her before, both Enjolras and Grantaire can see quite clearly that this is Cosette. She looks slightly out of breath as she pushes one of the buzzers on the control pad next to the building’s front door; a moment later the door clicks open and she ducks inside.

“...Alright, now what?” Grantaire asks finally.

“I don’t know,” Enjolras says. He starts to pace back and forth, so far as that is possible in this narrow space. “We wait?”

“We wait for the invisible wraith to show up,” Grantaire says, sliding down the brick wall at his back to sit on the ground. “Right.”

~

“You know, I’m not sure exactly how effective we’re being out here. We can’t even see inside,” Grantaire says after at least an hour of waiting. It’s getting dark and the temperature is dropping, and neither of those things affects him particularly, but Enjolras must be cold and painfully bored and his feet must be getting tired, since apparently he’s far too dignified to join Grantaire on the ground.

“What do you suggest?” Enjolras replies. “That I knock on the door and tell him I’m paying him a visit for the first time in three years because a monster is trying to kill him?”

“That could be fun.”

This turns out to be unnecessary, though; a few minutes later, the front door opens, and Marius and Cosette emerge. They step out hand in hand, smiling every time their eyes meet, and it looks like the front cover of a romance novel.

Enjolras and Grantaire follow the happy couple from a safe distance. Out of the corner of his eye, Grantaire can see Enjolras’s soul thrashing in a whirlwind of mixed emotions in response to being so close to one of his old friends but having to remain hidden. Grantaire wonders what he wishes he could say to Marius, right now. Marius and Cosette are oblivious to them; they talk in quiet tones as they walk and look at each other more often than at where they’re going. It’s fairly obvious why their photograph was up all over the university—any person feeling remotely cynical about love would look at them and feel just a little sick to their stomach, Grantaire not excepted. They finally reach a restaurant, and the tissue paper red and pink hearts plastered onto its windows remind Grantaire that, oh yeah, today is Valentine’s Day.

Just as they reach the door of the restaurant and Marius holds it open for Cosette, she pauses and falls back. Enjolras and Grantaire watch, puzzled, as she stands on tiptoe to whisper something in Marius’s ear. Grantaire can hear her telling him to wait for her inside, without offering any explanation as to where she’s going or why, and that strikes him as a little odd. Marius in turn looks bewildered and seems to protest; Cosette smiles and silences him with a kiss. She ushers him inside the restaurant and then begins to retrace her steps, coming back down the street towards Enjolras and Grantaire. They slip into a side street, but are more confused than concerned, since there is no risk of Cosette recognising Enjolras. Grantaire wonders if perhaps she lives nearby and forgot something at home. He can’t think of any other reason for her to leave her beau waiting, especially when Valentine’s Day was clearly made for couples like them.

Cosette’s reasoning becomes clear when she swoops into that same side street, brings the spike of her high-heeled shoe down on Enjolras’s foot and, before he (or indeed, a very dazed Grantaire) can recover, produces a small, gleaming knife from the folds of her beautiful cream suede coat and presses the blade to his throat. Enjolras, backed up against the brick wall of the tall building throwing its shadow over the whole scene, can only stare.

“You think you can follow him?” Cosette—the girl who had laughed and hid her face because she was embarrassed to have her photo taken—says, her voice calm but frosty. “Did you think I’d allow that?”

“What?” Enjolras manages. He sounds slightly strangled but he can be forgiven for that, considering the knife pressing against his windpipe.

“Don’t move,” she says when Grantaire comes forward. “I’ll hurt him.”

“No, you will not.” Grantaire’s voice is as coldly calm as hers as he closes his hand around her wrist, too quickly for her to do anything about it, and pulls her and her knife away from Enjolras and his very delicate throat. She looks a little stunned by his strength. Enjolras just looks stunned.

Grantaire catches Cosette’s other arm when she brings it up to strike him.

“I can ignore a lot of things,” she’s saying. “I could ignore the sightings, I could even ignore that poor professor being hurt. But you threatened Marius, and that was your mistake.”

“We aren’t the ones trying to harm your beloved,” Grantaire tells her.

“You were following us,” she counters.

“We were,” Grantaire agrees. “You’ll have to forgive us. We didn’t know that Marius was already under the protection of a clearly very proficient hunter.”

Cosette pauses.

“You’re hunters?” she asks.

“You’re a hunter?” Enjolras wheezes, limping over.

“Are you alright?” Grantaire asks him, taking stock of the way he’s gingerly keeping his weight off the foot Cosette stomped on, and the thin thread of blood on the skin of his throat.

“Fine,” Enjolras says shortly.

“Is that a silver knife?” Grantaire asks Cosette.

“Yes.”

“Look.” Grantaire jerks his head in Enjolras’s direction. “You cut him. No reaction to the silver. He’s not a wraith.”

“A wraith?” Cosette repeats, and now it’s her turn to look confused. Grantaire releases her arms, because confused is a step up from enraged and potentially homicidal.

“That’s what’s coming after Marius,” Enjolras says. “Not me.”

“If you know that, why haven’t you killed it yet?” she asks.

“Why haven’t you?” Enjolras shoots back. She looks defensive.

“I’m not a hunter,” she says. “Not exactly.”

“Could have fooled me,” Grantaire says, looking at the knife with wry amusement. She wordlessly holds out her hand; understanding, he offers her his own. She makes a cut across his palm.

“And, you see, I’m not a wraith either,” he says when she’s done and satisfied that the wound is normal.

“Wait. That warning was for you?” Enjolras says in sudden realisation. “It’s you this thing is really after?”

Cosette presses her lips together and looks shamefaced, saying nothing.

“Who are you? Really?” Enjolras demands, and Grantaire can understand his anger—Enjolras gave his friends up to keep them safe and away from the world of hunting, and one way or another, despite his efforts, this girl seems to have dragged Marius in dangerously deep.

Cosette, looking distressed, opens her mouth to answer. But, of course, that’s when Marius, who must have gotten too worried to wait any longer, rounds the corner and sees his girlfriend flanked by two strange men, and a knife. It doesn’t matter that she is the one holding the knife; at first, he just sees a knife. He panics. He runs towards them.

“Cosette!” he calls.

“Marius,” she says faintly.

“Oh, no,” Enjolras says, because there is no way out of this. Both he and Grantaire take a step back as Marius reaches them and pulls Cosette into his arms.

“Are you hurt?” he asks her.

“No, no, I was just...” she trails off and makes some vague gesture towards what Marius probably thinks are her attackers. He looks up and his eyes are blazing, but only for a moment. Very quickly, his whole expression morphs from furious to just plain stupefied. Grantaire is getting the strangest feeling of déjà vu.

“Enjolras?” Marius says.

“Um,” Enjolras says.

“Wait, Enjolras?” Cosette repeats, looking between the two of them. “That’s Enjolras?”

“Hi?” Enjolras says.

“Hi?” Marius squeaks disbelievingly.

“Marius?” Cosette says pleadingly and everyone is so lost, and Grantaire just has to laugh.

“Three years, and he says ‘hi’!” Marius is spluttering. “I don’t. Even. Know what to do with that.”

“You’re Enjolras?” Cosette asks, giving up on Marius for the time being. “The one who disappeared?”

“Yes, that’s me, so you should definitely not try to kill me,” Enjolras says, and of course that brings everyone’s attention back to the knife still in Cosette’s hand.

“Why do you have a knife, Cosette?” Marius asks, and Grantaire thinks it speaks volumes about how much he loves her that he asks that question with nothing but dazed curiosity.

She gives a deep sigh, offers Marius a reassuring smile, and then turns to look at Enjolras and Grantaire again.

“A wraith?” she says.

Enjolras’s golden soul pales to a crystalline, silver-blue of cold anger. Had he thought they could still lie their way out of this? Keep Marius safe and in the dark? Maybe. Grantaire thinks their chances of coming up with any halfway credible story were slim. But Cosette has made the choice to come clean for them, and Enjolras doesn’t look inclined to be forgiving about it.

“Almost definitely,” Grantaire says.

Cosette bites her lip, turns back to Marius. He’s clearly been totally thrown by this exchange, but he just waits patiently for her to explain.

“I’m afraid dinner will have to be cancelled,” she says. Marius blurts out a short laugh.

“That’s right,” he says. “I forgot that five minutes ago we were going for dinner.”

“Instead,” Cosette says, “I think it’s time you met my papa.”

~

There are a few surprising things about their walk to Cosette’s home.

The first is that Marius and Enjolras do not talk. Grantaire is initially confused by this, thinking that Marius seems distinctly underwhelmed to see Lyon’s prodigal son compared to Courfeyrac. But a closer look makes him realise that Marius is going along like a man lost in a dream. Occasionally he glances over, sees Enjolras, and jumps, as if he’d forgotten he was there, or had started to think he’d imagined him completely.

The reunion would come later; right now, there is just too much going on for Marius Pontmercy.

The other surprising thing is Enjolras himself. He doesn’t pester Cosette with questions, or try to rouse Marius from his befuddled state. He just lets Cosette lead the way and falls back to, bizarrely, fuss over Grantaire.

“Let me see your hand,” he orders, and Grantaire obeys. Enjolras grimaces at the cut on his palm, which is perhaps a little deeper than necessary for a does-silver-burn-you test. As usual, it’s taking quite a lot of Grantaire’s concentration to prevent it from just healing right here and now.

“That’s a clumsy cut,” Enjolras mutters, digging in his pocket and producing a paper handkerchief. He wads it up and presses it to the wound. “Make a fist around that. Try to staunch the bleeding. We can dress it properly when we get back.”

“It’s not so bad,” Grantaire says. “I hope that tissue was clean.”

“You’re so funny.”

“It is a clumsy cut, though,” Grantaire says, lowering his voice. “I don’t think she’s ever put that blade against human skin before tonight.”

“She’s well-trained,” Enjolras says. “But no, I don’t think she’s had to put the training into practice before.”

“How’s your foot?” Grantaire asks, noticing that he’s still limping slightly. “Broken?”

“No. Just bruised, I think.”

“I’m surprised it’s not impaled on her shoe, what with the way she came storming in,” Grantaire says with a chuckle.

“I was careless.”

“Give yourself a break. If I’d been the one closest to the main street, she’d have got me just as good.”

“I don’t know about that,” Enjolras says, shrugging. “You handled her pretty well back there.”

Grantaire blinks, because that had almost sounded like a compliment. Enjolras is looking at him with narrowed, almost accusing eyes.

“You were almost cool,” he says, shaking his head in disbelief. Grantaire’s lips twitch.

“Did you just call me cool?” he asks.

“Almost cool,” Enjolras corrects.

“Where did you deduct points? Teach me to be cooler."

This unusually spite-free bickering is interrupted by Marius, who seems to be having a moment of lucidity. He turns around from where he and Cosette are walking ahead.

“I’m sorry, but who are you?” he asks Grantaire. “Maybe that was covered already. If so, I missed it. I’m very confused.”

“It’s Grantaire,” he replies, amused.

“We’re colleagues,” Enjolras offers, shooting Grantaire a sideways glance that says that if he even thinks the words ‘witness protection’, Enjolras will kill him. Marius looks at Enjolras and seems to see him for the first time yet again.

“And you’re really, definitely, actually Enjolras?” he says with the terrified smile of a man who can’t quite believe what he’s seeing.

“Definitely,” Enjolras assures him. Marius’s smile widens.

“I knew you weren’t dead,” he says just as Cosette opens a gate and leads them up the garden path to her house. It looks very ordinary, and not nearly dilapidated enough to be a hunter’s temporary dwelling. Grantaire is curious.

Cosette pushes the front door open and flicks on the light.

“Papa,” she calls. “I’m home. And I brought guests.”

There’s some clattering from further inside.

“We have a strict no-guest policy in this house!” a man’s voice bellows after a moment.

“We’re making an exception,” Cosette says, leading them into the hallway. As they pass over the threshold, Grantaire notes with interest all the various runes and sigils carved into the doorframe.

A man emerges from another room. He’s tall and broad and just generally imposing, and his hair is greying but age does not appear to have weakened him in any way. He looks like he could snap any one of them in half. Marius seems to feel this the most keenly, if his suddenly pale face is anything to judge by.

“Papa,” Cosette says, taking Marius’s hand. “This is Marius, whom I’ve told you lots about already.”

“Pleased to meet—” Marius starts in a papery whisper.

“You know that you do not bring people back here,” the man says, ignoring him completely in favour of fixing Cosette with a severe frown.

“And this is Enjolras and Grantaire,” Cosette goes on, gesturing towards them. “They’re currently hunting a wraith at my university.”

The man’s face goes slightly purple.

“Hunters?” he says, his voice quavering with barely-restrained fury. “You brought hunters here?”

“A wraith, papa,” Cosette repeats deliberately. “At my university.”

“I...” The man pauses, torn, but is not deterred. He rounds on Enjolras who, once again, has the misfortune of being closest. “Out. I want you out. Your kind brings nothing but trouble, and I don’t want any trouble here—!”

“Sir,” Enjolras says, not flinching even as the man towers over him. “Trouble is already here.”

“Someone’s been hurt, papa,” Cosette says.

“Actually, five people have been killed,” Grantaire puts in. Cosette whirls to look at him with horrified confusion. “Just not at the university. This monster was trying to keep a low profile there.”

“And it might help if we knew why,” Enjolras says.

Cosette’s father looks from Enjolras’s determined stare to his daughter’s imploring face, and visibly deflates.

“Alright. I’ll tell you what I can,” he says. “Then, you go.”

~

The man tells them to call him Valjean. He is a former hunter, and he is not really Cosette’s father.

“I did what every hunter does eventually,” he says as he takes three glasses from a cupboard. “I failed. I was supposed to protect Cosette’s mother, but I didn’t. And she was killed.”

He produces a large silver flask with a crucifix engraved on its surface, and pours the water from it into the glasses, which he pushes towards Enjolras, Grantaire and Marius.

“Drink,” he orders.

“See, this is how civilised people do it,” Grantaire says, taking a sip.

“And you just stopped hunting after that?” Enjolras asks, ignoring him. He and Marius also swallow a mouthful of the water, proving beyond all doubt that they are not demons, though of course Marius doesn’t know that and looks very confused by the whole thing.

“I stopped,” Valjean confirms, sitting down opposite them at the large kitchen table. “I failed to save this woman, and there was her child, frightened and all alone in the world. I could have left her there, or at the mercy of child services, and gone on hunting, but when I sat down and thought about it, that didn’t seem right.”

Enjolras frowns questioningly. Grantaire dearly hopes that no orphaned child is ever left at his mercy.

“You don’t understand that?” Valjean says to Enjolras. “That’s because you’re a certain type of hunter. You only care about the numbers. About how many monsters you can kill, how many people you can ‘save’. I could have left Cosette, gone back to hunting, and gone on to save another hundred lives. But I would still have abandoned a child who needed me. And so it would still have been wrong. I see in your face that you think that’s stupid. Well, you’re young. Maybe one day you’ll learn for yourself that doing everything you can for one person can be just as important as doing what little you must for many.”

“Why is there a wraith at the university here?” Enjolras asks shortly. He doesn’t like being lectured to. Grantaire considers adding that to the list of things he knows about Enjolras, but in the end decides that it’s fairly self-evident. “It’s looking for someone. Who?”

Cosette, standing behind Valjean, sighs.

“Me,” she says.

“And why is a wraith looking for you?” Enjolras asks.

“Because it wants to kill me,” she replies simply.

Marius makes a strangled squeaking noise.

“All wraiths want to do is feed,” Grantaire says. “Why does this one want to kill you specifically?”

“Because,” Valjean says with a bleak expression that makes him look truly like an old man for the first time, “there is no such thing as an ‘ex-hunter’. No one gets out of this life once they’re in it. Not really.”

“You mean you’ve encountered this wraith before?” Enjolras asks. “You were hunting it?”

“I encountered its offspring,” Valjean says. “And I killed it. It was one of the last jobs I worked before I stopped.”

“Wraiths can have offspring?” Enjolras looks revolted by the mere thought.

“They don’t turn people like vampires or werewolves,” Grantaire says. “They must reproduce somehow, or we wouldn’t still be hunting them.”

“After taking in Cosette, I was doing my best to lie low,” Valjean goes on. “I had been reckless; my hunting had attracted the attention of the law. Hunters look like serial killers to any police officer who happens to notice them. But suddenly, there was a child who was relying on me. I couldn’t go to prison. We had to disappear.”

“But the wraith found you,” Enjolras says. He looks almost sympathetic which, for Enjolras, is impressive. Of course, what happened—is happening—to Valjean is Enjolras’s own worst nightmare: the hunting life catching up with you, and those you care about getting caught in the crossfire.

“It did. It wanted to kill me, but then it saw Cosette. It decided that killing her would be a much better punishment for me. It could see that I loved her like my own child.”

“But you didn’t kill it.”

“I couldn’t kill it!” Valjean says angrily, as if Enjolras has failed to understand the fundamental lesson here. “I was being watched. By God, there’s a high-ranking police officer in Paris who, even today, would probably arrest me on sight for a series of murders committed by a shape-shifter I once hunted! Back then, I was practically a fugitive. I couldn’t have killed that wraith without it being noticed.” He shakes his head. “Instead, we ran.”

“We’ve been running a long time,” Cosette says quietly. She sits down beside Valjean and takes his hand. “We never settled in one place. Nowhere ever felt safe for long.”

“It was always the police we were hiding from, though,” Valjean says. “I never thought I’d see that wraith again. It’s been years. How can you be certain that it’s anything to do with us? It could be a different one.”

“I think it’s the same one, papa,” Cosette says. “But even if it isn’t, and even if all of this is just a horrible coincidence, this wraith has issued a threat, and for that reason alone, I want it gone.”

“A threat?” Valjean repeats, his expression darkening. “Towards you?”

“Towards Marius,” she tells him.

“What?” Marius looks up, startled, at the mention of his name.

“I won’t stand for that,” Cosette says firmly, looking her father in the eye.

“If you want to keep the boy safe, then go upstairs and pack a bag,” Valjean says bluntly. “We can’t get involved. We’ll move on. We’ll leave in the morning.”

Cosette stands up, goes to Marius, and urges him to his feet. He complies, and he follows her towards the door without question, despite the undoubtedly confusing and terrifying conversation he just heard.

“Excuse us a moment,” Cosette says, and then she leads Marius out of the kitchen and shuts the door behind her.

“You don’t need to run away again,” Enjolras tells Valjean. “There’s no need for you to get involved directly. We can kill this thing without your help.”

Valjean shakes his head again.

“When the past comes knocking, it’s best to be on your way,” he says.

“I’m curious,” Grantaire says. “Why did you train Cosette as a hunter if you never intend for her to do any hunting?”

“For my own peace of mind,” Valjean replies. “It makes me feel better to know that she can protect herself against anything, supernatural or otherwise. Really, she’s in the least danger from the supernatural. She carries a charm that conceals her completely from almost all monsters.”

“And that’s why the wraith can’t find her, even after it traced you two to Lyon?” Grantaire says. Valjean nods.

“It must have realised that it was never going to find Cosette just by looking,” Enjolras says. Grantaire can practically see the gears in his head turning. “It got impatient and it blew its own cover. And it threatened the only person, besides you, that it knows Cosette cares about to try and get her to do the same.”

“Where does one find a charm that makes monsters so completely blind to you?” Grantaire asks lightly. “It sounds like a very useful thing to have.”

Valjean sighs heavily. Grantaire just looks at him expectantly, already half-knowing but wanting to hear it out loud.

“Cosette was ten years old when her mother died,” he says.

“Ten years,” Grantaire repeats. “How interesting.”

Enjolras looks at him strangely. He just shrugs.

“She was killed by a hellhound,” Valjean says.

Enjolras’s eyes narrow, because he knows what that means. Most hunters do.

“It is my belief that, not long after Cosette was born, her mother made a deal to ensure her safety,” Valjean says. “I don’t know the circumstances; I hardly spoke to the woman. I don’t know how she knew about crossroad demons or why she felt she had to make such a terrible bargain to protect her daughter. But it would seem that that is how you procure a charm to repel all monsters.”

“I think we’ll pass,” Grantaire says, and Enjolras nods grimly.

That’s when Cosette and Marius come back into the room.

“I’m not leaving,” Cosette says simply.

“What?” Valjean asks.

“I’m not leaving this city,” Cosette reiterates. “This wraith will follow wherever I go, sooner or later, and in the meantime it will continue to kill people. In that way, I will bring death wherever I go. I refuse to be responsible for that.” She glances at Marius, as if looking for courage, and he smiles at her. She smiles back. “And I have a reason to stay here now. I won’t leave.”

Valjean frowns and opens his mouth to argue, but before he manages a single word, he seems to realise that it’s hopeless. It’s probably the way that Marius and Cosette are gazing at each other.

“I won’t have you hunting,” he says instead. He swings his arm in Enjolras and Grantaire’s general direction. “You’ll let these two handle it. If they want to put themselves in danger, that’s their affair.”

“I’ll help them any way I can,” Cosette says agreeably, as if she isn’t stating her intention to do the complete opposite of what her father is asking.

“You’ll stay out of it!” Valjean says, slowly turning red. “I was a hunter once, Cosette; I know how they work! They’ll use you as bait, with no regard for your safety. You’re not just an ‘innocent civilian’, and so you are expendable so long as you help them get a clear shot at killing the thing.”

“Enjolras wouldn’t do that!” Marius exclaims indignantly, and it’s the first time he’s managed to speak with any kind of conviction in the presence of Cosette’s father, and it’s enough of a surprise to make Valjean blink and look at him mutely.

“...He wouldn’t,” Marius repeats in the wake of this sudden silence, wilting slightly under Valjean’s gaze.

“You know each other?” Valjean asks.

“Marius is an old friend,” Enjolras says with a faint smile in his direction.

Valjean sighs again, looking like he’d enjoy nothing more than to wash his hands of the whole convoluted situation.

“If you let her get hurt, I will find you,” he says finally, fixing Enjolras and Grantaire with a glare full of deadly promise. He stands to leave the room, but not before shifting this fearful look towards Marius as well. “That goes for you, too.”

Marius nods frantically and lets out a long breath of relief when the door shuts behind Valjean, who has clearly had enough of them all.

“...I told Marius the truth,” Cosette says after a moment. She seems to have picked up on the fact that this is what Enjolras was trying to avoid, and she stands tall and looks him directly in the eye, daring him to pick a fight about it. Enjolras remains silent, which is almost worse.

“The whole truth?” Grantaire says mainly to ease the growing tension. “That was very quick.”

“I expect most people need more convincing,” Marius says with a wobbly smile. “But I know for certain that Cosette is neither a liar nor a lunatic, which leaves only one possible conclusion.”

“I’m sorry it’s not a more pleasant conclusion,” Enjolras says quietly.

“Monsters?” Marius says, shaking his head in disbelief. “I feel like I only just grew up enough to stop believing in those.”

“I had to tell you,” Cosette says apologetically. “I couldn’t ask you if you wanted me to stay without telling you exactly what that entails first.”

“It’s funny that you thought you had to ask at all,” Marius laughs.

Cosette blushes and ducks her head. It’s hard to believe she’s the same person who held a knife to a man’s throat less than an hour earlier.

“That’s where you’ve been all this time, Enjolras?” Marius asks. “Hunting...vampires and ghosts and...things?”

“Yes,” Enjolras replies. His soul is churning and conflicted; he’s unhappy, he’s angry, he’s scared for Marius, but above all there is a wave of relief, and spikes of resultant guilt. Keeping secrets is exhausting—Grantaire knows that all too well. No wonder Enjolras is feeling a certain liberation at being able to turn to someone he knows and just tell them the truth.

“Why?” Marius asks curiously. “What on earth made you decide to go off and do that?”

“I found out about what’s out there, and what those things do to people,” Enjolras says. “I couldn’t know and not do anything about it.”

“...Yes, that sounds like you,” Marius says with a nod. “You should have told us! We were so worried when you were just gone. Everyone was a mess. Especially Courfeyrac.”

“I didn’t want to put you in any danger.”

“While you were throwing yourself headfirst into danger?” Marius laughs again. His laughter is slightly giddy, bordering on hysterical, but no one is about to blame him for that. “That sounds just like you, too.”

“Not very sensible. But if he was sensible, he wouldn’t be Enjolras,” Grantaire pipes up, grinning.

“Exactly, exactly!” Marius says. He sits down next to Enjolras again, beaming, and says again, “I knew you weren’t dead. But, at the same time, I can’t believe you’re alive.”

Enjolras manages a small smile.

“I’m sorry I worried you,” he says. It occurs to Grantaire that Enjolras might have honestly underestimated how important he was to the people in his life when he made his decision to become a hunter. Had he expected them to shrug and just forget him? Had he thought it wouldn’t hurt them? Didn’t he understand that he was loved?

“Does anyone else know you’re here?” Marius asks. He doesn’t try to hug Enjolras like Courfeyrac did—he seems much more reticent in that regard—but his unfading smile and bright eyes, raptly fixed on Enjolras’s face, are enough to show that he’s no less happy to see him.

“...Courfeyrac saw me last night,” Enjolras says. “At The ABC.”

“Oh.” Marius nods. “Okay, that makes sense.”

“It does?”

“The two of us still live together, and—well. He’s, um. Not exactly been himself since last night.” Marius shakes his head. “I suppose you told him he couldn’t tell us he saw you. That was cruel, Enjolras. You know he can’t keep a secret to save his life, and a secret like this must be eating him alive.”

Enjolras looks sheepish.

“It’s really something of a relief to finally meet you,” Cosette says smilingly. “Those boys talk about you a lot. I almost feel like I know you.” She pauses. “Sorry about your foot.”

“It’s fine.”

“And, uh, your throat.”

“Also fine.”

“And, oh, your hand, Grantaire,” she exclaims. Grantaire wishes they would all forget about it already so that he can just let it heal. “Here, let me just...”

She rummages in a cupboard and comes back out with a first aid kit. While she expertly dresses the cut—more training from Valjean, no doubt—the conversation switches quickly from Enjolras’s miraculous reappearance to how they’re going to tackle the wraith problem.

“I don’t want to use anyone as bait,” Enjolras says.

“It sounds bad, when you put it like that,” Cosette says. “But since we know for a fact that the wraith is coming after me—and, by extension, Marius—it only makes sense for us to be involved somehow. How else will you ever find it?”

“I don’t like it,” Enjolras mutters. “And anyway, even if we succeeded in getting it to come out and attack you, it could just conceal itself again as soon as it realised it was being hunted. Somehow, we need to force it into visibility. If we can’t see it, we can’t fight it.”

“It can’t see me, either,” Cosette reminds them. “Not while I’m wearing this.”

She reaches under the collar of her dress and pulls out the silver chain around her neck. Hanging from it like a pendant is a small cloth bag; her hard-bought charm, presumably. Some kind of modified, super-powered hex-bag, Grantaire supposes.

Enjolras looks at it with the particular brand of intensity that tells Grantaire that he’s having a thought.

“Cosette,” Enjolras says. “Does this wraith know you have that charm?”

“I don’t think so,” she replies with a blink.

“And does the charm only work for you?” Enjolras asks. “Could someone else wear it?”

“Oh my, I think Enjolras has a plan,” Grantaire says with a smile.

“I think so too.” Cosette has clearly caught onto Enjolras’s train of thought. Her eyes shine excitedly. “I see no reason why it wouldn’t work for someone else.”

“All that remains to be seen is, while someone else is wearing the charm, will the wraith make itself visible to you?” Grantaire says. “If it stays concealed, we’ll have a problem.”

“I think it’ll want me to see it,” Cosette says. “Apparently it’s been looking for me for over ten years. I’m pretty sure it’s going to want to do at least a little monologue after all that effort.”

“I don’t want to take any chances,” Enjolras murmurs, shaking his head. “We should have a contingency plan. Wraiths can always be seen in mirrors. If we could lure it to an enclosed space, it could be possible, with enough mirrors, to create a space where it can’t hide.”

“There’s a cheaper, easier and much less visually confusing solution,” Grantaire says. “I think you’re forgetting that, although it’s invisible, it’s still...corporeal.”

“What do you suggest, then?” Enjolras asks.

Grantaire grins.

~

“This is a terrible plan.”

Enjolras’s voice, crackling through the phone pressed to Grantaire’s ear, is full of resigned acceptance that they’re going through with this terrible plan in any case and all he can do is be as prepared as he can be for when it inevitably goes to shit. It’s taken them a few days to figure out the logistics of this plan and put it into motion, and Enjolras has done little but lament how awful it is in that time.

“It was mostly your idea,” Grantaire points out. “I hardly contributed one little detail.”

“I know. But.”

The words ‘but your one little detail makes the whole thing so ridiculous that I fear for us all’ never leave Enjolras’s mouth, but Grantaire can fill in the blanks on his own. He has to admit, Enjolras’s face when they’d gone to an art store to pick up the required ten bottles of cheap poster paint had been a hilarious and perfect study in agonising regret.

“Don’t worry,” Grantaire says. “It’s going to work.”

“There must be a more dignified way to do this,” Enjolras goes on.

“We spent quite a lot of time today getting Marius’s apartment prepped,” Grantaire says, trying not to laugh too much at the growing desperation in Enjolras’s voice. “If you pull the plug now, I will take all that paint going to waste as a personal affront.”

“I’m not going to call it off,” Enjolras grumbles. “It’s ridiculous and it’s terrible, but it’s in motion now.”

“And it’s going to work,” Grantaire says again. “Have Marius and Cosette left the restaurant yet?”

He knows they haven’t; he can actually see them, two little specks sitting at a table right next to the window and doing their very best to act natural. However, Enjolras thinks that Grantaire is holding the fort back at Marius’s apartment, not on the roof of the high-rise opposite the restaurant. Enjolras himself is in the cafe approximately twenty-three floors beneath Grantaire’s feet, keeping an eye on the proceedings and, as far as he is aware, keeping Grantaire updated on their progress.

“Not yet,” Enjolras replies. “It looks like they’ve finally finished eating, though.”

“Give them a break, they have to make this look convincing.”

“...Do you think the wraith is watching?” Enjolras asks, his voice dropping almost to a whisper, presumably so as not to alarm the people sitting near him.

“Definitely.” Grantaire can see it, too, from his vantage point. It’s standing in plain sight, unconcerned, since none of the humans going about their business down there can see it, but its perception-distorting cloak does nothing to hide it from an angel’s eyes. It’s watching Cosette hungrily. It shows no sign of being remotely suspicious that she’s suddenly become so easy to find, which is good because it means that Enjolras, who currently has Cosette’s charm hanging around his neck, will almost definitely have the element of surprise when the crucial moment comes.

Grantaire grimaces as he watches it prowling back and forth. He’d like to kill it, right now. It’s highly aggravating that he can’t, purely because it would be impossible to explain to Enjolras afterwards.

It’s a tremendous game, playing at being human, but sometimes it’s hard to play at their pace.

“I hope it wasn’t watching the night Cosette apprehended us,” Enjolras is saying. “If it saw us...”

“No point in worrying about that now. Just hope it didn’t,” Grantaire says. He knows it didn’t; it hadn’t been there that night. He assumes that, despite its grand threat, it hadn’t actually tracked Marius down at that point.

“Wait, I think they’re leaving,” Enjolras says just as Grantaire sees the tiny figures of Marius and Cosette stand from their table and move towards the door. The moment they’re on the street, he hears the screeching of a chair being pushed back through the phone, and then he can see Enjolras too. Marius and Cosette start to walk, and the wraith follows them, and Enjolras does too.

Grantaire, on his rooftop perch, is tense. Enjolras and the wraith can’t see each other, which at least means that the power of Cosette’s charm isn’t exclusive to her, but it also means that Enjolras is unknowingly almost walking shoulder to shoulder with the monster, and Grantaire doesn’t like it. He has no idea what would happen if one of them happened to bump the other. Would it break the wraith’s illusion of invisibility or the spell protecting Enjolras or both or neither? Whatever the case, such an occurrence is unlikely to end well. Enjolras wouldn’t come to harm if things went south, of course; Grantaire could be down there, ready to smite, in half a second. But, oh goodness, there would be no talking his way out of that. And it’d be a shame to take an angel blade to the heart when he’s only just discovered his first taste of what might be real, proper, human love.

He still thinks that his being in love with Enjolras is, more or less, an absolutely terrible thing. It complicates their situation. It should’ve been an impossible eventuality, too, which only makes Grantaire suspect that this is just another instance of the universe showing him the middle finger for all the things he’s done to offend it over the years.

It doesn’t feel terrible, though.

He flits from rooftop to rooftop, keeping as close as he can to the outlandish procession below. They are working under the assumption that the wraith will not attack Cosette in a public place, because such a display could, y’know, attract the attention of hunters. They chose Marius’s apartment as their base of operations because, well, Valjean doesn’t exactly know about their plan and would probably disembowel them all if he caught wind of it, never mind if they asked if they could use his house for it, and apparently Courfeyrac is never home before three AM on a Friday night and so they should have time to clean up the aftermath before he gets back.

They reach Marius’s building without any mishaps, and Grantaire assumes at that point that it should be safe for him to fly back inside the apartment, where he has ostensibly been the whole time.

Naturally, his feet have barely hit the floor before he hears a cry from the stairwell.

“Two seconds,” he mutters furiously, running out of the door (being very careful where he steps). “I leave them alone for two seconds and—”

He falls silent as he reaches the top of the stairs and takes in the scene unfolding before him. The wraith, clearly impatient for its long-awaited kill, has materialised. Its initial lunge at Cosette was either highly inaccurate or intercepted by Marius, because he is the one with the new bloody gash running from his right shoulder across his torso. He seems unconcerned about the injury, though; he’s busy staring, slack-jawed, at the horror that has just appeared two stairs behind him. Telling someone about the existence of the supernatural is one thing; the first time they lay eyes on something as ugly as a wraith is quite another. The thing is grinning—or at least, Grantaire assumes it is, it’s rather hard to tell when so much of the flesh around its mouth is rotted away—and its wrist-spike is already extended and dripping with Marius’s blood.

“Do you remember me?” it says to Cosette, making a show of licking its sparse lips and oh, gross, how is it even talking with holes rotted clean through its tongue? “Have you had nightmares about me all these years? Don’t you worry. I’m here to put an end to all that.”

Cosette, who’d been right about the thing wanting to monologue at her, has drawn her silver knife; Enjolras, behind the wraith, has likewise drawn Grantaire’s blade. He looks ready to strike, but is clearly uneasy about that long bony spike, which is now directed towards Cosette and dangerously close to her throat. One wrong move and Enjolras could accidentally cause her to be impaled.

Grantaire sighs and pulls out the silver knife—a spare of Enjolras’s—that he’d been issued with. Cosette and Marius are blocking his shot to a slightly woeful extent, but it’s still easy enough to throw the knife so that it embeds itself with a satisfying thunk in the wraith’s upper arm.

It screams. The whole building must hear. Not good.

“Everyone inside, now,” Grantaire orders, because the last thing they need is witnesses.

The wraith is still howling in pain as the skin around the buried knife begins to smoke and sizzle, filling the stairwell with an unimaginable stench. Cosette and Marius take advantage of its distraction and scurry up the stairs and past Grantaire. He hopes they remember to watch where they put their feet.

Grantaire is just wondering how he can signal to Enjolras that he should get into the apartment too without giving his position away when several things happen at once: Enjolras lunges for the wraith, just as the wraith twists to pull the knife out of its arm, with the result that Enjolras’s blade only grazes it instead of plunging clean through its chest. Naturally, this means that the wraith still can’t see him, but it sure knows that he’s there. It hisses furiously, wrenches Grantaire’s knife from its arm and throws it back at him (and misses) and promptly turns invisible again.

“Oh—shit.” Grantaire picks up his knife and tries his very hardest to look like he can’t actually see the wraith. “Don’t let it touch you, you know that’s how they mess with your brain.”

Enjolras has his back to the wall and is sidling up the stairs with Grantaire’s sword brandished in front of him, and he just looks at Grantaire, perfectly communicating, without saying a word, something along the lines of ‘wow, I can’t see the fucking thing, remember?’

Grantaire can see it, though, and he can see that it isn’t interested in either of them. It wants Cosette, and it’s going after her.

It’s hard to let it walk past him towards the apartment, but he relaxes a moment later when he hears a tell-tale sloshing sound, closely followed by a loud clang and an outraged shriek.

“I think it tipped the bucket,” he remarks.

“No, really?” Enjolras snaps. He’d clearly hoped to kill the thing before it came to this. “Come on.”

They hurry to rejoin the action—as soon as they’re inside the apartment, Grantaire shuts the door behind them, only hoping that the skirmish on the stairs didn’t attract too much attention.

His expertly rigged bucket is lying on the floor in a small puddle of red paint. Considering how much had originally been in the bucket, the wraith must be absolutely coated in it right now, which is exactly what they want.

They follow the red footprints straight into the living room just in time to see Marius make some poorly judged attempt at heroism by putting himself between Cosette and the wraith, only to immediately be thrown clean across the room. He crashes into a shelf unit full of DVDs, which thankfully does not fall on top of him, and then he wisely stays down.

“Stay between him and the wraith,” Enjolras says sharply, and Grantaire obeys, positioning himself in such a way that he is shielding Marius but is also close enough that he could dive into the fray should anything go wrong.

He doesn’t think this is anything that Enjolras and Cosette can’t handle between them, though. The wraith is still technically invisible but everyone can see it clearly, given that it is covered in a layer of bright red paint. It’s not quite the colour of blood but it’s close enough to make its already hideous face even more ghastly, and Grantaire finds himself thinking, absurdly, that they should have picked a different colour.

“You think you can kill me?” it screeches as it bears down upon Cosette, who backs away step for step but keeps her face set in a grim, determined frown. “I’ll crack your skull open, and I’ll deliver your pretty corpse to the man you call father, and—!”

It doesn’t get to finish because, with slightly terrifying suddenness and precision, Cosette stops backing away, shoots forward, and very efficiently slices its throat with her silver knife.

The wraith stares at her through the paint dripping down its twisted face. It makes a few hollow gurgling noises. The wound starts to smoulder.

Then Enjolras stabs it through the chest from behind, and it’s definitely over.

The paint-covered body slumps to the floor, which they at least had the foresight to cover with newspaper. Wraiths, unfortunately, are not one of those considerate breeds of monsters that just vaporise after you kill them, and so they’ll have some rather tricky clean-up to do later. But for the moment, everyone seems quite content to just get their breath back.

“I can’t believe you do this for a living, Enjolras,” Marius wheezes finally from his place on the floor.

The post-kill tension breaks. Enjolras laughs a little; Cosette smiles and hurries to her fallen hero’s side.

“Are you alright?” she asks, helping him to sit up. “I told you to stay behind me.”

“I’ll be fine,” Marius assures her. “Sorry about that. Instinct, or something.”

They all laugh at that, and Enjolras shakes his head.

That’s when the front door opens again.

“I’m back,” Courfeyrac, who is approximately five hours early, calls as he steps inside. “Doctor Joly sent me home. Said he diagnosed me with Clearly Not Feeling It Tonight. Honestly, he’s probably ri—”

He stops talking abruptly when his foot hits the bucket just inside the door, at which point he seems to notice that something is amiss. He takes a few slow steps forward and looks into the living room and stares at the four of them, frozen in place and covered to varying degrees in red paint.

“Marius!” he exclaims, looking wounded. “You had a party without me?”

“I...what?” Marius manages.

“How could you, after everything I’ve—wait, is that Enjolras?”

Enjolras is looking at the ceiling with a sort of serene despair, as if silently imploring God to just beam him up now.

“Enjolras, how can you be here if—wait, is that a dead body?”

“So this kind of backfired,” Grantaire says to no one in particular.

“Maybe we should move into the kitchen,” Cosette says with a very calming smile, taking Courfeyrac by the shoulders and steering him from the room.

~

It takes them a few hours to, first of all, assure Courfeyrac that there isn’t a psychotic serial killer among them, and then to convince him that, yes, monsters exist and killing them, like the one currently lying on the floor of his living room, is actually kind of Enjolras’s job. Considering how easily he’d bought the witness protection story, Grantaire is sort of offended by his sudden scepticism.

During the time it takes for Courfeyrac to accept the reality of the situation, Cosette tends to Marius’s chest wound, ascertains that he is not suffering from concussion or any broken bones, and then starts making tea for them all. Halfway through she changes her mind and breaks out a large bottle of vodka instead. Everyone is grateful.

“I can’t decide if being, like, a vampire slayer is more or less cool than being in witness protection,” Courfeyrac says.

“I’m not a vampire slayer,” Enjolras replies.

“You do slay vampires,” Grantaire points out.

“Well, yes, among other things.”

“Witness protection?” Marius says confusedly.

“Never mind,” Enjolras says.

“So let me go over this one more time,” Courfeyrac interjects, pouring himself a rather generous shot. “Some drunk guy in a graveyard told you that monsters are real, so you decided you were going to be all heroic and dedicate your life to fighting them. And you decided not to say a word about this to anyone—not your parents, not me, not…” He shakes his head, downs his shot and pours another. “And then you figured that the best way to make sure that no one else decided to be as stupidly heroic as you was to take off without any warning or explanation and leave us all to assume that you’d met some gruesome end and were lying dead in a ditch somewhere.”

“Sounds about right,” Grantaire says lowly with a faint smirk, earning himself a scowl from Enjolras.

“You know, it would actually have been less fucked up if you'd actively faked your own death,” Courfeyrac says. “At least we would’ve...The worst part was not knowing.”

“I’m sorry," Enjolras says quietly. "I wanted to keep you far away from all this. Being involved in any way is dangerous."

“Did you never think that maybe the best way to stop anyone you know from getting involved in this was not to get involved in it yourself?” Courfeyrac asks, draining his glass again and slamming it pointedly back on the table. “Why do you think it’s okay for you to run directly into mortal peril but not anyone else?”

“Such an excellent point.” Grantaire thinks Enjolras might actually hit him if he doesn’t shut up soon but it’s just so refreshing to be in a room with someone else who shares his feelings about Enjolras’s life choices.

“I know this has been hard on you, Courfeyrac,” Cosette says. “But—well. If Enjolras had never become a hunter, that wraith in there probably would have ended up killing me or Marius or both. Enjolras was the one who figured out what it was, and came up with our plan to stop it.”

That seems to take the wind out of Courfeyrac’s sails a little. His soul is a sparking mess of wildly conflicting feelings, tempered only by numb shock and the effects of the vodka, but in the end he just snorts and shakes his head. He reaches over and claps Enjolras on the shoulder.

“You’re an idiot," he says. "And you’re brilliant. I missed you so much and if you ever pull something like this again, I’m going to dress up like a steak and go wander around the wilderness on a full moon night until a werewolf finds me. You’ve been warned. Are werewolves real?”

“Yes,” Enjolras replies. He’s trying not to smile but he’s failing quite badly.

"Good, as long as we're agreed."

“I can’t stay here," Enjolras says. Grantaire sees Courfeyrac's soul plummet into darkness, sees him visibly fight to keep the smile on his face.

"More scary monsters to kill?" he asks.

"There are always more," Enjolras says.

“What a lovely thought,” Courfeyrac remarks. “Alright, fine, but you have no excuse for not keeping in touch, now. I mean, cat’s out the bag, Enjolras. I know. Marius knows. You’re not going to put us in any additional danger by calling every so often to let us know you haven’t died.”

“But...” Enjolras starts but he is completely ignored.

“Furthermore, it would be totally unfair to keep Joly and Bossuet in the dark,” Courfeyrac barrels on. “You have to let them in on this too, and personally I think the easiest way to do that would be for you to come out with us tomorrow night.”

“Courfeyrac, this ‘below the radar’ job has been enough of a train-wreck as it is,” Enjolras says tiredly, pressing his fingers to his temples.

“Enjolras,” Cosette says smilingly. “My papa and I aren’t going anywhere, remember? If any monsters come sniffing around here, we’ll be ready.”

“And there’s Éponine, too,” Grantaire reminds him. “I’d say Lyon is one of the better-fortified cities when it comes to defending against the supernatural.”

“But they won’t always be in Lyon,” Enjolras says desperately. Grantaire groans.

“Enjolras, if you deny yourself absolutely everything, you’re going to end up bitter and twisted just like every other hunter I’ve ever encountered,” he says. “No offense to your dad, Cosette, I’m sure he’s a great guy.”

“He is. And he’s bitter, too,” she says.

“Alright, fine,” Enjolras grinds out. “I’ll...fine.”

Courfeyrac grins in triumph and knocks back another shot of vodka.

“Just, at least tell Joly and Bossuet in advance,” Enjolras says. “I’m done with giving people heart attacks when they see me.”

“Sure,” Courfeyrac says. “But, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll leave it to you to explain to them where you’ve been these last three years.”

Enjolras just puts his head in his hands.

~

They have a few orders of business to take care of first, of course.

They get rid of the wraith’s body by cutting it up into manageable pieces and then taking those pieces to a secluded place and setting them on fire. The actual cutting up of the body ends up being left to Enjolras, Grantaire and Cosette because Marius and Courfeyrac look more inclined to vomit than actually provide any help.

They pay another visit to The ABC. They bring chocolate for Gavroche and a new friend for Éponine. She and Cosette shake hands, and Grantaire thinks any monsters in a hundred mile radius would do well to duck and cover.

They call Combeferre to update him on their progress.

“I think I owe you an apology,” Combeferre says as soon as he picks up the phone.

“You can assign us a new case any time now,” Enjolras says. “We’re done here.”

“Enjolras.”

“Also we have a new contact for you: Cosette Fauchelevent, she’s the daughter of an ex-hunter and she’s offered to help Éponine keep the peace around here.”

“That’s great. But—”

“Her father calls himself Valjean. You might want to see about getting the police completely off his case and—”

“Let the man speak,” Grantaire groans. “Please.”

Enjolras glowers at him but falls silent.

“I won’t make excuses. I was wrong to doubt you,” Combeferre says, straightforward as ever in admitting his own failings. “I should have known that hunting in a place you have a personal connection to would only make you even more effective, not less. It won’t happen again.”

“Right.” Enjolras looks mightily uncomfortable. “Good. Okay.”

“I think that means he still loves you,” Grantaire puts in.

“Who asked you?” Enjolras snaps, while Combeferre just laughs.

Grantaire doesn’t accompany Enjolras when he goes to meet his friends, because he figures this is something for Enjolras alone, and he is not part of it. He does watch, though—through the window, from a safe distance—when Enjolras walks into the bar and they all look up and see him. Clearly, Courfeyrac did not actually forewarn Joly and Bossuet, because there is a lot of unmanly shrieking and so much hugging that Enjolras is nearly bowled over, and oh, he’s laughing and his soul is warm and gold and filling the world with light, and he’s so beautiful.

Grantaire smiles and quickly flies back to the hotel. He decides that this is one thing he really shouldn’t intrude on.

Enjolras comes creeping into their room in the early hours of the morning.

“Don’t worry about tip-toeing,” Grantaire tells him, amused. “I’m awake.”

“Oh.” Enjolras finishes crossing the room with less stealth. He kicks off his shoes and collapses into bed fully clothed. He looks exhausted, but he’s happy. Grantaire can feel it radiating from him in gentle waves.

“You’ve had a good day,” he remarks. “Patched things up with Combeferre, reconciled with your civilian friends. You’re on fire.”

“Mmm,” Enjolras says into his pillow before turning his head to the side. “You should’ve come tonight. There were drinking games. You would’ve won.”

“I’m not sure whether to take that as a compliment or not,” Grantaire chuckles. “Did you win?”

“No,” Enjolras replies.

There’s a lengthy silence—so lengthy, in fact, that Grantaire thinks Enjolras has fallen asleep, and jumps slightly when he suddenly speaks again.

“I thought you left, you know,” he says. “I didn’t think you’d come back.”

“What?” Grantaire raises an eyebrow. “When?”

“In Russia, that time.” Enjolras waves a hand at him impatiently, as if this should have been obvious. “You were angry at me.”

“Russia...? Oh, right. The ghost kids.” Grantaire hasn’t thought about that in a while. He isn’t even angry about it anymore; not now that he knows that Enjolras’s policy of nothing being above the cause extends to even himself and his own happiness. That makes it something for him to be sad about, not angry. “What made you think of that?”

“Talking about patching things up,” Enjolras says, whatever that means.

“Right.”

“I woke up and you were gone.”

“I just went for a walk. I couldn’t sleep,” Grantaire lies. “I thought you were sleeping.”

“I really thought you weren’t coming back,” Enjolras says again. His voice is quiet and plaintive and Grantaire decides that he is both a little bit drunk and a big bit tired because otherwise they would not be talking about this.

“You thought you’d got rid of me, huh?” he says. “Were you relieved?”

“No,” Enjolras says almost petulantly. “Don’t do it again.”

“...Alright.” Grantaire is a little puzzled, but then, drunk people can be puzzling, as he well knows. “I won’t.”

“Okay.” Enjolras turns onto his other side, facing away from him, and promptly falls asleep.

Chapter Text

 

 

 

 

~

 

Enjolras’s friends wave them off when they leave Lyon. Enjolras does his very best to look largely unmoved and just slightly mortified by them (especially Courfeyrac, who is blowing kisses) but Grantaire can see the sharp pangs of regret in his soul as their train pulls away from the station.

They go to Poland. They hunt a vengeful spirit. Enjolras is unusually glum; at first Grantaire thinks he is simply missing his old companions and the brief taste of normality he had when reunited with them, but in the end it turns out that, as usual, it’s all his fault.

“Lyon was a complete fiasco,” Enjolras says finally. “You ended up getting almost my entire life story and I still don’t know a thing about you.”

“That’s why you’re sulking?” Grantaire says, his lips stretching into a disbelieving smile.

“I’m not sulking,” Enjolras says. “It’s just not fair, that’s all.”

Grantaire looks at him for a long moment, torn between the pleasure of having his attention, his curiosity, and the lies lies lies.

“I was a soldier,” he says finally. Enjolras blinks and looks up from his laptop.

“A soldier?” he repeats, and it’s true, so does it matter if Enjolras naturally imagines tanks and machine guns instead of searing Grace and the wrath of Heaven raining down upon the Earth-?

“Yes.”

“French military?”

“No.”

“Where, then?”

“Doesn’t matter.” Grantaire evades, because he doesn’t want to lie. When this charade reaches its natural conclusion and he is dead and gone, he wants Enjolras to be able to look back and know that he was never truly lied to.

“Of course it matters.”

“No, it doesn’t. All armies are the same, when you get right down to it. A bunch of mindless drones following orders they don’t really understand, but which they nonetheless know in their hearts to be wrong.”

Enjolras is watching him carefully now.

“Wrong?” he repeats.

“I deserted,” Grantaire tells him bluntly, and that is true too. It’s strangely cathartic to say it out loud. It’s the first time he’s ever done so, he realises dimly. “The orders became too terrible. The whole operation was falling into chaos. The ones in charge forgot their duty and became power-hungry. Vicious. I couldn’t bear to be part of it. So I ran.” He pauses to take a strengthening swig from the flask which Enjolras had given him for holy water but which he finds much better use for. “Been running a long time.”

Enjolras considers this.

“It all sounds very corrupt,” he says at last. Grantaire laughs.

“That’s one way of putting it, yeah,” he replies.

“That’s good, though,” Enjolras says. “You didn’t give in to it.”

“Didn’t fix it, either,” Grantaire snorts. “Ran away and hid. Just got myself out. Not very brave soldierly behaviour.”

Enjolras makes a non-committal sound that somehow manages to convey that this is still more than he would have expected of Grantaire.

“Are they looking for you?” he asks.

“They think I’m dead. I made sure of that,” Grantaire says, and ironically, that’s the only reason he hasn’t been cut off from Heaven and the power of the Host. No sense in cutting off a fallen soldier. And as long as he doesn’t go performing any big flashy miracles – something that would require a great big chunk of Grace – it’ll hopefully stay that way.

“Hm,” Enjolras says, going back to whatever he was up to on his laptop. “Good.”

His face is carefully expressionless, but his soul is quietly pulsing with triumph and satisfaction.

They hunt a witch in Slovakia. Combeferre sends them up north; they hunt a changeling mother and her hideous brood in Denmark, then ghosts in three different towns across Finland. A string of bizarre murders in Estonia turns out to be ritual sacrifices to a resurgent minor pagan god, and Enjolras learns first-hand that Grantaire’s blade works on those too.

There is a three-week period where Combeferre has no jobs to give them. He has rooms rented all over Paris for idle hunters in such a situation, and Grantaire just thinks it makes a nice change from hotels, but Enjolras feels useless and twitchy with inactivity and spends the whole time in a state of agitation. He can probably sense that, actually, there are plenty of jobs out there, and this is just Combeferre forcing him to take a break.

Grantaire buys paint and tries to put Enjolras on paper and canvas, but no colours are bright enough and in the end he gives up, tears up all the failed attempts and goes to the Musain, enjoying the opportunity to go there to drink instead of for a case briefing. He’s careful to make sure that no one notices the exact volume of his alcohol intake, but in the end it doesn’t matter, because Enjolras shows up and drags him out the door before he can even consider getting properly plastered. It’s the first time Enjolras has come looking for him, and it’s probably just because he feels he needs to save someone during this period of enforced inactivity, but it makes Grantaire very happy, because he loves Enjolras, and Enjolras can never love him back but, as it turns out, he doesn’t want Grantaire to drink himself to death, and that’s lovely.

Enjolras shouts at him and it’s something about appearances and how no one is going to think they’re an efficient team if they see Grantaire staggering around drunk and his face is flushed and his soul is on fire and he’s so very beautiful. It worries Grantaire just how often he thinks those exact words. He thinks it’s a shame that his artistic talent, stolen or otherwise, isn’t enough to capture all that light and fire and beauty.

Combeferre eventually realises that this period of ‘rest’ is actually becoming more stressful for both of them than any hunt could ever be. He relents and packs them off to the south of Spain to hunt a poltergeist, which they do, and in record time, such is Enjolras’s enthusiasm about being back in the field.

They’re still there when it happens.

Grantaire cannot hazard a guess as to what it actually is.

First, there is a strange and terrible sound. It reminds him of a piece of fabric ripping, but so much louder, so much worse. Enjolras does not hear it, doesn’t wince as the juddering vibration of it cuts the air, and that makes Grantaire worry because that means it’s not a natural sound; it’s something only he can hear and that usually means it’s something potentially catastrophic.

(After all the last time there was a terrible sound only he could hear, it was Lucifer’s cage breaking open and unleashing his less-than-pleasant older brother upon the Earth.)

He doesn’t have much time to ponder the worrying sound, however, because very shortly afterwards a rather more pressing incident occurs and sends its shockwaves around from the other side of the world to assault his whole being: the archangel Raphael dies.

It’s sudden and explosive and makes him wince and clutch his head. The destruction of an archangel’s Grace is impossible to ignore, and he shouldn’t know that but he does because he felt Gabriel die two years ago and how are the archangels dying, how can that be?

Enjolras looks at him oddly, because Enjolras doesn’t know that the most powerful remaining angel in Heaven just expired. Grantaire mutters something about a headache.

“Well, that won’t help,” Enjolras says when Grantaire starts fumbling for his flask.

“No, but it won’t hurt either,” he replies, draining it dry.

He never held any especial love for Raphael, who was always cold, pedantic and disdainful even before such things became fashionable among angels, but of course the inborn, automatically-programmed love is still there, whether he wants it or not, and the death is a shock, at the very least. It leaves him stunned and dazed.

In hindsight, he realises that he had been supremely stupid to think that would be the worst part of his day, because when does he ever catch a break?

Not much later, he’s sitting in their hotel room, distracting himself with some abysmal game show on the small and ancient television set while Enjolras is elsewhere, making a private phone-call to Combeferre or perhaps Courfeyrac, who had demanded regular updates in exchange for him not calling Enjolras’s parents and giving them his number. It’s early evening, and it is June, so it’s warm and slightly sticky even with the room’s clunky AC running. It’s quiet; they’re in a tiny town, and the sound of crickets outside the window almost completely drowns out the noises of distant traffic.

And suddenly, his head is full of screaming.

Very loud, terrified and very brief screaming. He flinches but it’s barely a second before the terrible cacophony is cut off cleanly, and the ensuing silence is a thousand times worse.

His connection to Heaven is tenuous at best. It’s safer that way. He doesn’t tune into the communication frequencies – why would he? – and he uses the bare minimum of his Grace; keeps his head down. They think he’s dead, and so much the better.

But he is still connected, those mysterious threads that link all his brothers and sisters together in one big spiders-web are still coiled around his very core, and so he hears their piercing screams and he feels it when, without warning, they are snuffed out in their thousands like so many candles in the face of a hurricane.

Distantly, he is glad that the connection is so weak. If it were at full strength, he thinks he would have screamed too.

His whole body jerks violently with the shock of it. It hurts, it aches. Something just killed thousands of angels, wiped them out in one fell swoop, and he can feel it, and what could do that, what in all of creation could do that?

He trembles.

He flies.

The communication frequencies erupt and he can hear the panicked, garbled shouting of those still alive despite not actively trying to listen in. There is sound and image and oh no he sees it, someone saw and they are transmitting the image en masse, he sees a garden with a wide expanse of grass stained almost totally black with the ashy imprints of dead angels’ wings, and there’s a single kite fluttering in the sky and what?

They’re whispering now, frightened and awed, and they’re talking about a new God, who has risen up and visited his wrath upon the unworthy of Heaven, and Grantaire tries to shut them out because there is no God, not anymore, and he doesn’t want to hear about any monster committing mass murder of his kind under a false name like that.

He doesn’t think there’s enough alcohol on the planet to blot out this kind of horror, but that doesn’t mean he can’t try. He can raise a glass – or a bottle – to every last one of his dead siblings.

It’s the first time he forgets about Enjolras. He doesn’t think that Enjolras will come back to the hotel and find him gone and maybe find that a little concerning. There is only one bar within walking distance of their hotel and Enjolras might look for him there, but he isn’t there, he flew far away without thinking and staggered into the first place he found, and his glowing, golden human is far from his mind.

It takes far too long for the alcohol to start affecting his vessel, fuzzing the edges of his mind and throwing a thin cloak over his human senses. It can’t touch his inhuman core, though, and it still cries out in agony, and he can’t even imagine how much he’d have to drink to drown it out. And whatever small relief he finds, it won’t last, it never lasts; already he can feel his Grace burning up the alcohol in his blood, recognising it for the poison it is and seeking to purge it from him.

He keeps drinking.

He knows other angels have been walking the Earth for the last few years. 2008, they touched down. He felt it. He heard it. That was the first time a brother’s cry had resonated within him despite his best efforts to remain deaf to them all.

“Dean Winchester is saved!”

Well, whoop-dee-doo for Dean Winchester, whoever he was. His rescue seemed to spark an utter shitstorm. Angels on Earth for the first time in centuries, seals being broken left, right and centre. Oh, and a rather half-hearted attempt at an Apocalypse. Grantaire admits that one had startled him. For a while he’d thought it was all really going to end, and maybe he could finally just burn and be at peace, but in the end it had all come to nothing. Like everything else.

He’d felt it when those angels on Earth – all in North America, because it was always North America for whatever reason, but even that was uncomfortably close compared to them being on another plane entirely – died, one by one. The first had been a shock. But then, there was a sort-of Apocalypse going on. Big brother Lucifer was walking among men. Circumstances seemed to be unpleasantly conducive to the killing of angels.

He kept his distance. He let them die in an anonymous flash of Grace; he turned away and did not see. He didn’t want to see, didn’t want to know if it was a brother or sister he’d once held a particular fondness for. The only one he’d felt distinctly was Gabriel, and that hadn’t been a matter of choice.

Heaven is dying, he thinks bleakly. It started rotting from the inside out a long time ago, and now it’s just dying.

It’s late at night by the time it occurs to him to return to that tiny town in the south of Spain. He retains the presence of mind to fly to a discreet location and then walk back to the hotel. A good thing, too, because Enjolras sees him coming from their window and comes storming out to meet him.

“Where have you been?” he demands, furious. “You can’t just take off without a word, how was I supposed to know if you’d gone off to drink yourself stupid or if something had happened?”

“You’re not my mother,” Grantaire says, because he can’t tell him the truth, he can’t say that a sizeable chunk of his family seems to have been vaporised, and so naturally the only solution is to be snarky and evasive.

Enjolras clearly thinks that remark was too petty to merit any kind of reply.

“Get inside,” he snaps instead.

“No,” Grantaire replies, because the thought of that hotel room suddenly fills him with horrible claustrophobia. For a long time he’s been able to pretend that he fits within this tiny human skin, but today has been one long, painful reminder of what he really is, and for the first time in a long time he wants to reach beyond his vessel, wants to spread his wings properly and be free of the disguise, but he can’t, he can’t.

“No?” Enjolras repeats in obvious disbelief. He’s not used to Grantaire denying him much and, well, he probably can’t understand why anyone would want to hang out in the hotel’s parking lot rather than in their room.

“No,” Grantaire affirms, sitting down and leaning back against some stranger’s car. Luckily no alarm goes off.

“Grantaire, you can’t just sit out here,” Enjolras says. He sounds impatient and irritated, but his real anger is quickly fading and being replaced by uneasy confusion, because this is strange behaviour, even for Grantaire.

Grantaire just hums vaguely. He’s looking at the stars overhead. He half-expects them to start going out, too, because why not? Heaven’s falling out of the sky, Earth is as messed-up as ever, why shouldn’t everything just start unravelling completely?

Enjolras huffs in annoyance and leaves. To Grantaire’s surprise, he reappears a few moments later, with a bottle of water fresh from the hotel’s chilled vending machine.

“Sober up,” he orders, shoving the bottle in Grantaire’s direction.

“You don’t know much about alcohol, do you?” Grantaire says, but he takes it anyway.

“Just don’t choke or anything,” Enjolras mutters, and it’s suddenly unbearable that he is an angel, meant for such great things, and here is a human looking at him like he is utterly pathetic. But then he remembers what it means to be an angel, he remembers what angels do, and he wilts.

It was better in the beginning, he thinks sadly. He was better in the beginning.

“I wasn’t always like this, you know,” he mumbles, because he wants Enjolras to understand, somehow, that he had purpose once, too. That, once upon a time, he also burned bright.

“You weren’t always a self-pitying drunkard?” Enjolras says. Grantaire hardly hears him.

“I used to believe,” he goes on, still staring up at the stars above them. He does this less frequently these days, since he has his very own star to watch. “The faith I had back then, it was beyond anything you could ever imagine.”

“I resent that,” Enjolras says, but his voice is milder. “What did you believe in, then, long ago?”

My Father. My family. The idea that everything could be good.

“God,” Grantaire replies.

“God?”

“Yeah.” Grantaire keeps his eyes fixed on the sky, but it’s with anger, not admiration, because He isn’t up there. He isn’t anywhere. “I really thought He was here. And even if we never saw Him, I believed that He was at least watching. I thought that we were safe, and everything would always be alright, because He was looking after it all. But then...”

“...Then?” Enjolras prompts. Grantaire tears his gaze away from the night sky to look at him instead, and wonders how he could ever put it into words, even if Enjolras did know the truth about what he is. Humans are so fleeting, in the grand scale of things. How could he ever make one of them understand what it had been like; the endless millennia without word from his Father, while the archangels – the most beautiful and holy of them all, the ones created to love the most – turned bitter and power-mad and began to claw at each other’s throats? It would be unfair to expect Enjolras to even imagine it – how an empty hopelessness had wormed its way into his core as he watched the fierce brilliance of Heaven turn cold and grey and steely, as one by one his brothers and sisters forgot the love and joy with which they had been created and began to sneer at the Earth below, and most of all at the humans, so beloved of their absent Father. Heaven became twisted beyond all recognition, and to protest was to incur the wrath of the most warped angels of all; the ones who would scritch-scratch their way into your mind and scrub it blank until you were suitable to be a pawn in their endless war-games again.

The only escape was to run away and pray they didn’t catch you.

And the only reward for succeeding was eternity without a family or a home.

And now this; now there are no archangels left – Michael and Lucifer aren’t dead, he’d have noticed that, but they certainly aren’t anywhere in Heaven or on Earth – and his brothers and sisters are being exterminated in their droves like vermin.

He loves Enjolras, admires and respects him, but Enjolras could never understand how that feels.

“I stopped believing,” he says finally.

“You woke up one day and decided you didn’t believe in God anymore?” Enjolras asks, quirking an eyebrow. To Grantaire’s unending surprise, he sits down next to him. “What, just like that? Come on. I’m having a hard enough time imagining you as a God-fearing man. At least explain what created the hopeless cynic I see before me.”

His words are as unkind as ever, but his tone is gentler than Grantaire is used to. He isn’t sure quite what to make of it.

“I didn’t stop believing in His existence,” he says slowly. “There are certain things I still believe to be true. That He created the Heavens and the Earth, and all that.”

“But?”

“But I don’t think He’s here anymore.” He shrugs, as if it doesn’t matter, as if the why of it hasn’t been tearing him apart for centuries. “I don’t think He’s been watching over us for a long time. He finished creating, and He left.”

“Why would you just decide that?” Enjolras asks. He’s half-smiling, as though he simply finds this slightly strange but amusing. Grantaire can see the swirls of colour in his soul, though: he’s curious, and he’s troubled.

“Because I’ve seen things,” he says. He’s a little shocked to hear his voice tremble; he’s more shocked to feel his eyes wet. “Things that no God would ever allow to happen to the children He’s supposed to love.”

He hears Enjolras hum softly, turning this over in that quick but still very human brain of his.

“I always wondered if you’d seen something terrible,” he says after a moment. “You have that...look to you, after too much drink. I won’t ask what it was.”

Grantaire wasn’t aware he had any sort of look to him. He wonders what Enjolras sees when he deigns to look at him while he has a bottle in his hand. And he thinks about the physical age of his vessel and does some quick calculations, trying to guess which human atrocities in recent history Enjolras probably thinks he was witness to. He can’t know that Grantaire has seen all of them. Every single horror since the dawn of their species, and the horrors only get worse as their technology improves and their imaginations and hatred grow-

“I think you’re wrong, though,” Enjolras goes on suddenly. “To stop believing because of it.”

“Of course you do,” Grantaire snorts.

“I don’t say so out of any faith of my own,” Enjolras says. “I’ve never had much time for higher powers; what’s important to me is what I see in front of me. I just think your logic is wrong.”

“Go ahead, then. Out-logic me,” Grantaire says with a watery laugh. Because it’s funny, isn’t it? A human picking apart an angel’s thoughts about God.

“The fact that terrible things happen doesn’t mean that your God is gone,” Enjolras says. “It just means that He isn’t interfering in our affairs.”

“You’re suggesting that He just doesn’t care?”

“No.” Enjolras sounds a little exasperated. “Grantaire, what would be the sense in God creating humankind and giving us free will if he was then going to influence us at every turn? That would make the Earth nothing more than a giant doll’s house, with all the people being moved around as He sees fit. It would be wrong, and it would be pointless. People who believe call Him our Father. And that makes sense, I think. All parents have to let their children go. If there is a God, and He’s watching, I’m sure He cares, and I’m sure our crimes wound Him. But we are not playthings. For better or for worse, He has to let us move forward on our own.”

Grantaire stares at him; at his glowing soul and earnest eyes and determinedly set mouth, and he has to fight the urge to drag him close and kiss him soundly, to love him in the way humans understand best.

“I wish I could believe the way you do,” he manages to say at length. “Even when all the facts seem to point to an unhappy answer, you still find some glorious, optimistic alternative.”

“It’s only logical,” Enjolras says, turning his face away. Grantaire would have thought he imagined his blush, if not for the rosy flare in his soul, too. “I suppose you’d rather believe in nothing than be logical?”

“It’s alright. I don’t need God anymore,” Grantaire says. “I have you.”

“I’m sure He’d be delighted to know that you consider me a suitable substitute,” Enjolras mutters, and, despite the day’s traumas, Grantaire is faintly delighted to see that pink stain in his soul spread and darken.

“Take up my sword,” he says with a sage nod. “And with it, you shall perform my miracles.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not how it goes,” Enjolras says in his best you’re-so-irritating voice, but against all odds he’s smiling, and Grantaire can’t help it: he loves him with all his being.

He thinks that, maybe, he could be happy, just like this, until either he dies or the universe takes that one last step and collapses in on itself.

But not tonight. He can’t be happy tonight.

~

Enjolras gets him inside eventually. Grantaire lies on his bed and stares at nothing and wishes, for once, that he could sleep. He thinks humans are lucky, that they have that opportunity to escape the noise of their own minds for a while.

He can feel Enjolras watching him and wondering, but in the end Enjolras sleeps, because he is human and has that privilege. Grantaire is left with nothing to do but lie in the darkness and know that what was once his home is crumbling and that he isn’t brave enough to go back and show his face there to find out what happened. He wants to fly but he told Enjolras that he wouldn’t leave in the dead of night again. So he stays. He tries to stay halfway sane by focusing only on the sound of Enjolras’s steady breathing.

He’s not much better the next morning. Enjolras notices, of course.

“What’s wrong with you?” he asks, and his voice is clipped and sharp but that’s because he’s now getting worried that something might be seriously wrong. Grantaire knows because his soul gives him away. He imagines that other humans must have a very hard time interpreting Enjolras.

“Nothing,” he replies.

“Did something happen when I left you here yesterday?” Enjolras persists. “I was only gone for half an hour.”

“Nothing happened.”

“Then what?” Enjolras is becoming frustrated, impatient; he can’t bear to know that there’s something he doesn’t know. “This isn’t like you.”

Grantaire gives a startled laugh.

“This is exactly like me,” he says, because when has he ever done anything besides hide from the problems of Heaven and drink to try and forget?

They stay in Spain a few more days, and then their next case takes them to Ukraine. During the time it takes them to get there, Grantaire doesn’t stir from his dismal lethargy. When they are settled in yet another hotel in yet another city (where are they, anyway? Kharvic? He wasn’t even paying attention), Combeferre calls. Says there’s something going on in the US, and Grantaire tries not to laugh because wow, big surprise there. Enjolras asks what this has to do with them. Combeferre says that it’s made the international news, and that makes Enjolras sit up straight.

A few moments later and Enjolras’s laptop is being inundated with a combination of news reports and amateur video footage that Combeferre has siphoned from various sources. At first the news stories contain just your standard brand of crazy: some crackpot has stepped up and declared himself ‘the new God’.

Enjolras blinks when Grantaire suddenly joins him at the table, looking much less lackadaisical. He wants to see this.

That’s when the reports start moving towards their kind of crazy: according to witnesses, this guy strolled into a church, killed the preacher without ever laying a hand on him, completely transformed a stained glass window, and touched a pew and left it with a scorch-mark.

There’s no video evidence of any of this. But the Reverend of that church is undeniably dead. And there are photos of the stained glass window, and it’s no artistic interpretation of Jesus Christ that Grantaire has ever seen.

The reports only get bigger and crazier after that. Whoever – or whatever – this guy is, he’s disbanded the KKK (though, judging by the footage Combeferre managed to find, ‘dismembered’ might be a more appropriate word), he’s wiped out a bunch of New Age motivational speakers and, on a less violent but perhaps still more concerning note, he’s healing leper colonies in India.

“He’s not confined to the US?” Enjolras says, alarmed.

“It’s why I thought you should know,” Combeferre, still on the phone, says. “This could become our problem.”

“No, it can’t be the same thing. The reports are too close together. Nothing could get from North America to India that quickly.”

“Nothing that we know of,” Combeferre corrects.

Enjolras falls silent and lets the horrifying implications of that sentence sink in.

“What could do this?” he says finally, quietly, maybe just to himself. “Can there really be something we’ve never heard of that could be this powerful?”

Grantaire stares blankly at the shaky phone-camera footage of the ‘disbanding’ of the Ku Klux Klan, which is playing on a loop. It’s a little difficult to see through all the people running and screaming and occasionally exploding, but there is a figure at the epicentre of the chaos, clearly in control of the unfolding terror. To a human observer, he simply looks like a man; a little above average height, dark hair, a serious and sombre expression, dressed in an unspectacular suit and tan overcoat.

Long time no see, Castiel, thinks Grantaire, who can see past the unassuming vessel.

His brother has become a monster – that is, if angels aren’t already monsters to start with. He is certainly not God. Powerful, yes, but in some unnatural, twisted, hideous way. Grantaire has to try not to physically recoil from the sight of his blackened, diseased-looking Grace. Whatever he did to attain this power, it’s slowly consuming him.

Grantaire remembers an upstanding soldier and a proud garrison captain, whose actions and decisions were always tempered by a compassion and respect for humankind rare among angels.

He wonders what happened.

He also wonders just how despicable it makes him to be just a tiny bit glad, amidst all the death and destruction, that another angel has fucked up even more than he has.

“Grantaire,” Enjolras says suddenly. “Do you have any idea what we might be dealing with here?”

“None,” Grantaire replies, which is only slightly less succinct than ‘some kind of deformed souped-up angel’. “But if it ever comes our way, let’s just hope that blade of mine can kill it.”

~

They do not encounter Castiel while they are in Ukraine. He’s far too busy killing corrupt religious leaders in various other places around the world.

They don’t encounter anything else in Ukraine, either. The case turns out to be nothing, and maybe that’s for the best, because Grantaire still isn’t feeling much in the mood for killing things.

He doesn’t know if it’s the daunting thought of the crazy God-monster currently devastating the globe or the double frustration of not only being unable to stop it but also having nothing to hunt in the meantime, but after a few days, Enjolras snaps.

“So you don’t want to tell me what’s wrong. Fine. That’s fine.” He’s standing over Grantaire’s bed, where he’s lounging miserably, as has become habit. Enjolras glares down at him. “Keep your secrets. Let it eat at you. It makes no difference what you do inside your head. But if you don’t get it together soon, I will leave you behind. You’re being useless, you’re not focused, you’ll get us both killed. I don’t need you like this.”

Grantaire hears his teeth click together as he snaps his jaw shut after that last sentence. He probably didn’t mean to say it. After all, that almost made it sound like, when Grantaire isn’t being an uncommunicative deadweight, Enjolras does need him.

Grantaire stares up at him, dumbfounded. More astounding than that little slip of the tongue is the fact that, while Enjolras’s mouth is saying ‘you are being useless and I need you to not do that’, his soul is dim and wretched and full of almost child-like confusion, and it is saying you are scaring me and I need you to stop it please please please stop it.

It’s a strange sort of moment for Grantaire.

Countless numbers of his brothers and sisters are dead, Heaven seems ready to just fall out of the sky, and one of his surviving siblings has gone nuclear and is dealing with the daddy issues they all have in the worst way possible.

But, on the other hand, Enjolras is very much alive, and apparently Enjolras needs him to be okay.

Maybe he can do that, then.

He gets up.

“Where are we going?” he asks.

Enjolras’s soul brightens almost instantly. So does his expression, for that matter, but he appears to be doing his utmost to fight that.

“Combeferre said he’d call soon with a case,” he says.

Combeferre does indeed call.

“I’m afraid it’s Romania again. The usual,” he says apologetically.

They both groan.

~

After they kill Dracula #12, they see one more video of the thing that calls itself God.

It’s a segment of security footage that Combeferre somehow got his tech-genius hands on. The quality is poor, and the video occasionally shorts out completely, as if the camera itself couldn’t even stand to bear witness to the unfolding events.

The short version: there is a campaign office full of people, and then there is a campaign office full of dead people.

It is Castiel’s vessel that turns and smiles at the camera, but it is not Castiel anymore. Grantaire knows angels, and that thing is not an angel. He doesn’t know what it is, which frightens him more than anything else, because that means that it is older than him and, besides Death himself, Grantaire has never heard of anything that predates angels. There isn’t meant to be anything that old.

However, American hunters must be a resourceful and creative bunch. Either that or some immense higher power intervenes; Grantaire doesn’t know which. All he knows is that he hears another one of those tremendous tearing noises, and then the new God is never heard from again. Combeferre is relieved; Enjolras feels, perhaps, a little cheated.

If Grantaire reaches out – very, very carefully, so as not to be detected himself – he finds he can still feel Castiel out there. Not a God-monster anymore, just an angel again.

He is curious, and in the end his curiosity wins out. During one of his morning coffee runs, he takes flight and goes to where he can feel Castiel’s Grace pulsing weakly.

He stays hidden. He finds his brother in a forest. His vessel’s coat is missing, the rest of his clothes are soaked. He looks dazed and lost and seems to be wandering with no destination in mind.

Why doesn’t he snap his fingers and dry off, Grantaire wonders. Why is he wandering around on foot when he could simply fly wherever he wants to go?

The obvious and only answer is that Castiel has forgotten that he can do those things.

As Grantaire watches, a woman – a very normal human woman – appears. At first she looks afraid of the strange dripping-wet man walking in circles, but then she sees that he looks more afraid of her, and she sends a kind smile his way.

Grantaire thinks he’ll be alright.

“You were gone a while,” Enjolras comments when he gets back to their hotel room.

“Yeah, sorry, there was a serious queue,” Grantaire says, plopping a caramel latte down in front of him.

“But everything’s okay?” Enjolras asks.

“Yeah,” Grantaire tells him. “Everything’s fine.”

Chapter Text

 

 

 

 

~

 

Three months after the New God Fiasco finds Enjolras and Grantaire sprinting through a graveyard in the dead of night in the lovely little French commune of Dreux, because their first attempt at killing the zombie they’re hunting went pear-shaped and apparently this is Plan B.

“Is it just me or do we spend a lot of time running through cemeteries in the middle of the night?” Grantaire asks, doing his best to sound out of breath.

“Do you feel like stopping?” Enjolras replies just as their undead pursuer lets out a guttural, enraged screech.

“I’m just saying, we’re going to get a reputation,” Grantaire says. They reach a large stone plinth with a (highly inaccurate) statue of an angel on top and, without needing to exchange a word, they both duck behind it.

“A reputation for what?” Enjolras says, pulling out the handgun he brought along for skull-destroying purposes. “Multicultural necrophilia?”

Grantaire blinks at him, faintly astonished.

“Enjolras,” he says. “You made a joke!”

“Move!” Enjolras barks at him as the zombie catches up to them and comes around the statue behind Grantaire. Enjolras shoves him hard to the side and Grantaire only just has time to remember to let himself fall – because being as immovable as the stone angel looming above them might be a little suspicious. He brought it on himself, he thinks gloomily as he makes a show of smacking his shoulder against the stone plinth and then falling to the ground. He sometimes forgets that Enjolras doesn’t know that he always knows exactly where the monster is and is therefore, among other reasons, never actually in any danger.

Meanwhile, Enjolras takes aim and fires three bullets into the zombie’s skull, which already has a deep graze along one side where his original shot went wide. The result is ugly and slightly explosive and there may or may not be small flecks of undead brain scattered all around them, but the thing is down, at the very least. Enjolras sucks in a deep breath and lets it out slowly.

“Really, I’m proud of you,” Grantaire says, pushing himself into a sitting position just to be slightly further away from the downed zombie. “You were almost funny.”

“You need to be more careful,” Enjolras says sternly.

“Don’t you think it’s unfair that these things run so fast?” Grantaire says, nudging the corpse with his foot. “Think how much easier life would be if all the movies were right and they just...shuffled.”

Enjolras sighs.

“Help me get him back in his grave,” he says finally, stowing the gun away.

They drag-carry the body back to the grave it crawled out of, and Enjolras produces an iron stake and stakes the guy in his coffin just to make doubly sure that he won’t try crawling out again. It takes them most of the night to fill the grave back in and make it look relatively normal and undisturbed.

“If I ever find out who it was that decided to try their hand at necromancy, I swear I’ll...” Enjolras mutters venomously as they finally trudge, muddy and with blistered hands, back to their hotel in the early hours of the morning.

“It’s only a little place, only about thirty thousand people,” Grantaire says, as they thankfully manage to get back to their room without being spotted. They left the shovels in the cemetery but their general appearance still seems to scream ‘recent grave desecration’. “I’m happy to wait here if you want to go question everyone in town.”

Enjolras just grumbles under his breath before calling first dibs on the shower. Grantaire doesn’t argue.

~

They’re only an hour or so from Paris, so they drop into the Musain in person for a change to pester Combeferre for another case. At least, that’s what Enjolras is there for. Grantaire heads straight for the bar.

Enjolras likes it when they can actually visit, because it gives him a better chance to look at all the cases Combeferre has heard about recently. Grantaire suspects that this is the one reason Combeferre doesn’t like it when they visit, since he has his own mysterious but clearly very effective system for assigning cases and it probably messes things up to no end when Enjolras comes in and demands whichever one appeals to him most. Grantaire isn’t a hundred percent sure what Enjolras’s exact criteria is. The most heroic job, maybe. Or the most perilous. The one that will allow him to save the most people. The one that will make Grantaire wish he could just lock him in a cupboard and go smite the monsters himself.

He asks for whiskey.

He’s aware of Enjolras and Combeferre just out of the corner of his eye, at Combeferre’s habitual table next to the wall on which his enormous map of Europe is mounted, annotated with pinned-on photos and notes related to possible cases, all of which would be really hard to explain if a civilian ever wandered in here. Grantaire supposes they have preventative measures to stop that from happening. He isn’t paying attention to what they’re saying, instead choosing to rediscover his old hobby of listening to the conversations of the few other hunters in attendance that day. They aren’t a very lively bunch; mostly older men, haggard and scarred and dull-eyed, the type who hate the job and the life but bitterly soldier on anyway because they’ve got nothing else. Their souls are sludgy-grey-brown, without light or vibrancy, hearts turned cold. This type used to depress Grantaire in a distant sort of way, and he’d look at them with disinterested pity and consider them dismal justification of his decision to give up on humanity. Now the mere sight of them sends an icy chill through him. Is that all the future holds for Enjolras, despite all his fierce determination and maddening idealism? How long will it take for the grim reality to grind him down and suck the life out of him and snuff out all that blinding light-?

Grantaire drains his glass in one burning gulp and signals for a refill.

He knows the moment Enjolras leaves Combeferre’s table and crosses the room towards him. He always knows – he could recognise Enjolras’s footsteps from a mile away, and the approach of that hot-burning soul always fills him with something like relief. Still, he absorbs himself in studying the knotted wood of the bar until Enjolras taps his shoulder, at which point he looks up obligingly.

“You done?” he asks.

“For now.” Something is off – Enjolras’s neutral expression looks oddly schooled, and he isn’t meeting Grantaire’s eyes. “We’re going to be here a few days.”

“How come?”

“Combeferre thinks he has a case for us, but he wants time to gather more information before he sends us out.” And, wow, Enjolras is definitely lying, and Grantaire is sure he has a great reason for that so he won’t ask, but he can’t help but find it scientifically baffling that Enjolras can lie so perfectly to anonymous authority figures and yet fail so utterly when it’s anyone he actually knows. Grantaire remembers him saying that he isn’t very good at lying to Combeferre. He wonders if he should feel flattered, that he is apparently now the same in that regard.

“Yeah? Sounds to me like he’s slipping.” He glances briefly towards Combeferre, who looks every bit as studious and painfully well-organised as ever. “Where are we going, then, once we’ve got all the necessary data?”

“Amsterdam.”

“No way.” Grantaire grins at him. “It’s been a while since we’ve been somewhere fun.”

“Fun? You’re going to hunt,” grunts the bearded man two barstools down. “Not to get your little pricks wet in the damn red-light district.”

Grantaire sees Enjolras’s eyebrows go up minutely.

“Is that your idea of fun?” Grantaire asks with exaggerated surprise. “You dirty old man.”

The old hunter scowls at them, as if they were the ones who butted into his private conversation. The few others at the bar – probably friends of his – look up from their drinks too. Even Grantaire, who has perhaps more lax standards than most, thinks they all look pretty wasted for this time of day.

“Not that anyone asked you in the first place,” Grantaire goes on. “I forgot old bastards like you think everyone else should be just as miserable as you are.”

“Shut your fucking mouth, boy.”

“Or what?” It’s times like these that Grantaire wishes he’d picked an older vessel because there are few things worse than being perpetually in your mid-twenties and having guys like this think they can talk down to you.

“Call yourselves hunters?” the man mutters venomously, and this is kind of weird because Grantaire’s been surrounded by assholes like this since time immemorial but he doesn’t think one has ever tried to pick a fight with him before. “You don’t know the meaning of the word. It’s a game to smart-ass kids like you.”

“Yeah, yeah, young whippersnappers like us should respect our elders, I know.” Grantaire rolls his eyes and turns away, losing interest.

“Sir, I can assure you that the job is always our priority,” Enjolras puts in, and Grantaire realises that this was never about him and always about Enjolras when the old man rounds on him with a kind of vicious triumph in his eyes.

“Don’t you talk to me!” he orders, jabbing a finger in the general direction of Enjolras’s nose. Enjolras, to his credit, doesn’t flinch. “I know you. The stupid kid who thinks he’s God’s fucking gift. I was in here when you came prancing in for the first time. What was it, three, four years ago? Looking like some little girl who lost her way in the dark. I figure you’re only still alive because you can’t find anything to fucking hunt. And I’ve heard you in here, spewing your crap about good and evil and saving the world. What planet do you live on? Don’t talk to me. You don’t belong here.”

He goes to take a satisfied sip of his beer, only to have the glass ripped from his hand, the contents thrown in his face and his collar seized.

“It sounds like you have some things to get off your chest,” Grantaire says pleasantly while the man splutters and Enjolras stares. The man’s friends get to their feet, and the barman watches them all nervously. The man in Grantaire’s grip gives a wheezy laugh.

“Yeah, that’s another thing,” he says. “At least the rest of us can fight our own damn battles. Travel alone, hunt alone. You needed to hire the fucking resident drunk here to be your bodyguard.”

“Let the man go, Grantaire,” Enjolras says.

“You sure?” Grantaire says. “Sounds to me like maybe he’s got more to say.”

“Let him go,” Enjolras repeats.

Grantaire shrugs and obeys, releasing the man’s collar and letting him slump back into his seat.

That’s when Enjolras throws the first punch, and all hell breaks loose.

Grantaire did not see that coming, but he rolls with it.

Some time later, it’s actually Combeferre who throws the final punch and brings the whole melee to an end. Grantaire, who has never seen Combeferre engage in any sort of violent physical activity, finds himself very impressed with his right hook, which knocks a man clean off his feet. Perhaps no one else there has ever seen Combeferre resort to violence before either, because everyone seems to freeze mid-brawl in shock.

“Enjolras, Grantaire,” Combeferre says curtly, shouldering his laptop bag and gathering up his mountainous pile of notes. “Let’s take this elsewhere.”

Neither of them argues. They’ve made their point, anyway. Enjolras’s nose is bloody and his lower lip is split and Grantaire allowed himself a few superficial injuries so as not to look suspicious, but they’re both looking pretty good compared to everyone else who decided to join the punch-up.

No one tries to stop them from leaving. They descend the stairs in ringing silence.

“...You shouldn’t take sides in this,” Enjolras mutters when they get outside. “They all need your help too.”

“Maybe. But not even I’m immune to a little favouritism,” Combeferre says with a faint smile, patting him on the shoulder.

They go to Combeferre’s flat because it’s closer than their hotel and they were getting some funny looks, wandering around Paris dripping blood from their faces and knuckles.

“So,” Grantaire says as he waits his turn at the bathroom sink, where Enjolras is currently washing his face. “What was that all about?”

“It’s nothing new,” Enjolras says. “They don’t like me. They never have.”

He states it factually, like it’s something that doesn’t bother him, but if there’s one thing Grantaire knows about humans, it’s that no one likes to be disliked. Enjolras’s soul is the mottled purple of a fresh bruise.

“Yeah, well, don’t you worry,” Grantaire says, pulling Enjolras’s hands away from the cut on his lip, which he’s poking at and only making worse. “The fucking resident drunk likes you just fine.”

“I’m sorry that they’ve decided that you are, by association, now deserving of their disdain,” Enjolras says. He pointedly doesn’t respond to the reassurance, but Grantaire sees the tiny, pleased flicker in his soul and has to work very hard to look like he isn’t secretly swelling with pride.

“You think I want the approval of guys like that anyway?” Grantaire snorts as he holds a wad of tissue under the tap before pressing it firmly to Enjolras’s bleeding mouth, all the time wishing he could just send the tiniest burst of Grace through his fingertips to heal him. “I mean, his idea of fun in Amsterdam is the red-light district. That’s a city of culture, you know? What a barbarian.”

Enjolras rolls his eyes.

“They don’t understand you, is the issue, Enjolras,” Combeferre says, joining them in the small bathroom with a first aid kit. “Your motives don’t make sense to them. They’ve lost everything and they hunt out of spite. For them, killing is its own reward. You hunt to save people. To make a difference. They hate the world. It probably offends them that you want to save it.”

“Is that why Enjolras is your favourite?” Grantaire asks with a grin.

“There are plenty of reasons why Enjolras is my favourite. His ability to hold a decent conversation about things other than hunting is definitely one of them,” Combeferre says with a quiet laugh. “Alright, let’s see the damage.”

He checks the two of them over – because of course Combeferre is absurdly knowledgeable about every kind of physical injury imaginable, it’s unthinkable that there’s any area of study he isn’t well-versed in – and eventually reaches the conclusion that they will both live, Enjolras’s nose isn’t broken, and none of their battle-wounds require stitches or serious medical attention.

“It’s fairly impressive, though,” he says as he dabs antiseptic on Enjolras’s grazed knuckles. “You two have gone your last four hunts with no serious injuries, and then you come back here and get yourselves beaten bloody.”

“Hey, considerably less bloody than the other guys,” Grantaire points out.

“I can’t even get my supposed allies to be on my side,” Enjolras says sullenly. “What a mess.”

“You’re not the problem,” Combeferre assures him. “Those guys, they’re of the old generation. They owe allegiance to no one. You’re young and optimistic and passionate. And that confuses them so much that they can’t help but hate it.”

You burn too bright for them, Grantaire wants to say but he knows Enjolras wouldn’t understand. They swamped themselves in the dark and you hurt their eyes.

“Anyway, they’re a minority,” Combeferre adds. He apparently deems them both suitably fixed up and starts packing away the medical kit.

“A loud and influential minority,” Enjolras says. Combeferre claps him on the shoulder again.

“Feuilly took one look at you and knew you’d be great,” he says. “Bahorel, too, though he’d rather poke pins in his eyes than tell you so. And you know I have every faith in you.”

“And Grantaire still thinks that an office job would have been a much better idea,” Grantaire puts in. “But I’ll admit you are disturbingly good at killing things.”

“You think I’m stupid,” Enjolras grumbles at him.

“How many times do I have to tell you?” Grantaire says. “You’re not stupid. You’re ridiculous.”

“What does that make you?”

“Doubly ridiculous for following you around anyway.”

“Don’t quarrel, children,” Combeferre says with obvious amusement.

“I’m going back to the hotel,” Enjolras sighs, pushing himself off the bathroom counter. “Sorry if we caused you any trouble.”

“Nothing I can’t handle,” Combeferre says. “They had it coming, really. Though you’ve never risen to their bait before. What was different about today?”

“Nothing,” Enjolras says just a little too quickly. “Just. No, nothing, really.”

“Okay.” Combeferre turns his face away so that Enjolras doesn’t see his smile, but Grantaire sees. “Like I said, they had it coming.”

“Right,” Enjolras mutters and then he’s gone, and in quite a hurry.

“Skittish today, isn’t he?” Grantaire comments.

“Don’t worry about it,” Combeferre says, still smiling that very enigmatic little smile.

“So you’re sending us to Amsterdam next, huh?” Grantaire asks because if Enjolras and Combeferre want to keep secrets, then that is exceptionally childish of them but no, whatever, it’s fine.

“Yes. It looks like some kind of spirit.”

“So was this your decision or Enjolras’s?”

“We reached a mutual agreement,” Combeferre says. “In the end.”

“How do you decide who you assign cases to, anyway?”

“There’s no hard and fast method to it,” Combeferre tells him. “All the hunters I know, they all have their strengths and weaknesses. There are certain monsters they’re each better suited to hunting.” His smile becomes slightly grim. “For example, I try my best to avoid ever sending Enjolras after a demon.”

“Why?” But really Grantaire already knows why; he pondered the question of why they never ran into demons quite early on in his and Enjolras’s travels – because it was one eventuality he hadn’t taken into consideration, and a demon would be quick to blow his cover – and it hadn’t taken him long to realise that it was something deliberate on Combeferre’s part, and he knows the reason.

“Because demons take human vessels, and it’s very hard to fight a demon without harming that vessel,” Combeferre says. “Enjolras would rather die than hurt an innocent person. He’d get himself killed.”

“Like a truly ridiculous idiot,” Grantaire says. “Are you sure he’s your favourite?”

“I’m sure.” Combeferre’s expression is fond again. “That little scene at the Musain aside, he’s been getting himself into much less trouble lately. By which I mean that, since you started travelling with him, I haven’t received a single dead-of-night phone-call from hospital staff with whom I have no common language asking if I’m willing to pay the medical bills of the young man bleeding all over their waiting room.”

“Must just be a fortuitous coincidence,” Grantaire says. He tries very hard to conceal the flare of protective fury that the image of Enjolras, alone and younger than he is now and injured due to his own ridiculousness, conjured in him. “If he’s finally learning to be more careful, that’s great, but that doesn’t sound like my influence.”

“Regardless,” Combeferre says, “I’m glad he’s got you with him.”

“He isn’t,” Grantaire replies cheerfully. Combeferre looks at him oddly for a moment before rolling his eyes skywards, and Grantaire isn’t quite sure how he’s meant to interpret that but he doesn’t ask.

“Are you going to need some back-up when you go back to the Musain?” he asks instead. Combeferre actually snorts.

“No,” he says. “Even the old-timers who choose not to utilise my services know that my system is good and that what I do is invaluable. If they started anything with me, they know they’d have a sizeable group of very angry, much younger and much more physically fit hunters to deal with. They don’t want that.”

Grantaire gives a short, surprised laugh.

“You’re actually kind of scary, you know that?” he says.

“I like to think so,” Combeferre says.

~

The next day, Enjolras and Grantaire don’t hear from Combeferre. Grantaire finds this highly suspicious, because he can’t think what could possibly be so unusual about this case that it would take Combeferre more than twenty-four hours to collect enough information to be satisfied with, but he maintains his stance of not asking questions about it. He does, however, ask Enjolras who Bahorel is, because he likes the idea that Enjolras might have another friend in the hunting world but finds it strange that, were that the case, he’s never mentioned him before.

“What?” Enjolras looks up from his book with a blink when Grantaire asks the question out of the blue.

“When Combeferre was trying to convince you that not everyone wants to punch you in the face, he mentioned a Bahorel,” he elaborates. “Who’s that?”

“Oh. He’s a hunter.”

Grantaire waits for further information. The silence stretches out uncomfortably. Enjolras goes back to his book.

“Oh, come on,” Grantaire says finally. “There must be more to it than that.”

“Is this your strange obsession with people’s ‘stories’ again?” Enjolras asks without looking up.

“I’m curious. I mean, you don’t know a lot of people.”

“I don’t need a lot of people.”

“You’re making me more curious by not telling me,” Grantaire informs him, a sly smirk creeping over his face. “Now I think it’s something scandalous.”

“Seriously?”

“Was it a forbidden love affair?”

“A forbidden-? No!” Apparently he now has Enjolras’s attention, since this causes him to slam his book down on the table. “I swear, what is it with people and dreaming up a love-life for me?”

Grantaire can’t help but throw his head back and laugh, and Enjolras pulls a sour face at him but it doesn’t make him stop any sooner.

“I’m sorry, I forgot you were on the phone to Courfeyrac this morning,” he says. “I’m sure he’s constantly reminding you of his disappointment that you’re not banging your way around Europe.” And he knows that because sometimes Enjolras will now complain to him – without any real annoyance, in Grantaire’s opinion – about the nonsense Courfeyrac talks. And Grantaire loves that – he loves that Courfeyrac talks inane nonsense to Enjolras to break their dreary everyday routine of, you know, killing things, and he loves that Enjolras will whine about it like a normal human being with normal human concerns. And he whines about it to him, of all people. That’s maybe Grantaire’s favourite thing about it.

“I met Bahorel through Feuilly,” Enjolras says shortly, clearly calling time on any further discussion of his romantic inclinations, or lack thereof. “They worked together a lot.”

“You two apprenticed together?”

“No, Bahorel got into hunting a long time before me.”

“So where is he now? Does he come to the Musain?”

“I don’t know where he is.”

And, oh, that doesn’t sound good. Grantaire tilts his head over to one side in a silent question. Enjolras sighs.

“When Feuilly died, Bahorel was...there. I mean, he saw. They were working the case together,” he says, eyes downcast. “I haven’t seen him since the...well, I don’t know if you’d call it a funeral. Combeferre told me that he just didn’t want to hunt anymore, after that. Said he’d had enough.”

Grantaire nods because, yes, that’s understandable, and if Enjolras had any sense he’d have taken that as his cue to get out, too. But, of course, that’s much easier said than done. Not many people get out of hunting. Not really. He wonders how this Bahorel is doing, trying to carve out a normal life for himself after everything he’s seen and done, and especially after a presumably extended period of hunting during which he did not officially exist.

He thinks of Valjean, hiding down in Lyon, still looking over his shoulder for police officers who think he’s a killer on the loose, still afraid that anyone who comes into his house might be a monster out for revenge.

He wishes Enjolras could have a safe and normal life, and he tells him so often enough, but deep down he knows it’s already too late. He knows there’s no getting out.

“I think Combeferre still checks up on him from time to time,” Enjolras goes on. “But I haven’t seen him.”

“Are you angry that he quit?” Grantaire asks.

“Not really.” Enjolras looks a little puzzled. “I’d rather he stayed, of course, but it’s his choice, in the end.”

“So all that stuff about having a moral responsibility,” Grantaire says with a humourless smile. “All those rules only apply to you? What makes you so special?”

(He knows exactly what makes Enjolras so special, of course; he knows that it’s the most beautiful soul he’s ever seen, a bright, proud streak of golden flame that would never hold others to the same painful and exacting standards to which it holds itself. But he doesn’t think Enjolras knows, or is even truly aware that he expects far too much of himself.)

“I...” Enjolras falters, frowns and looks away. “I don’t want to argue about this today.”

“That’s not like you,” Grantaire remarks.

“Talk about something else or stop talking,” Enjolras says, picking up his book again threateningly.

“What do you want to talk about?” Grantaire reaches across the table and pushes the book back down before Enjolras can bury his nose in it. “Our sight-seeing itinerary for Amsterdam?”

He’d really like to force the subject – to try, once again, to make Enjolras understand that he doesn’t have to push himself so very hard, that if he ever got sick of all the killing there would be no shame in it – but he can see that it’s making Enjolras’s normally fiery soul turn a despondent blue-grey and shrink in on itself. Maybe it’s the effect of recalling the loss of not one but two colleagues; he can’t be sure exactly. All Grantaire knows for sure is that it’s causing him no end of torment that he can’t stand up, go around to Enjolras’s side of the table and wrap him up in his arms, and coax the golden light back into his soul with touches and kisses and quiet words.

It’s not a new experience for him, to see unhappiness and know that he can’t cure it. He’s just never wanted to so badly before. He doesn’t think he ever experienced an ache like this before Enjolras burst into his world and turned everything on its head.

The endless wanting that comes with human love scares him a little. He’s not used to this bizarre desire to touch – finding solace with lips and hands and skin-on-skin is hardly what angels were made for.

But more powerful than this bewildering longing is the stinging knowledge that he can never have that with Enjolras. And so he supposes he’ll just have to annoy Enjolras’s dejection away instead.

As usual, it isn’t difficult. There’s already a small spark of yellow-orange irritation blooming amidst the smoky-blue.

“We won’t be doing any sight-seeing,” Enjolras snaps. “How many times do we need to go over this?”

“But it’s Amsterdam!” Grantaire says in the most irritating whine he can muster. “You can’t be in Amsterdam and not see Amsterdam.”

“You say that about every place we go to.”

“Not true. There was nothing I wanted to see in Lyon. That was on you.”

“We’re going to Amsterdam to work this case and then we’re leaving,” Enjolras says, and his voice is cross and his soul is spiky and barbed. “We’re not going to lose time because you want to drink yourself stupid, smoke yourself into a stupor and visit the red-light district.”

“Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of the, uh, Rijksmuseum. And, y’know, the various other places of cultural interest,” Grantaire says, amused.

“...Oh.” The irritation on Enjolras’s face and in his soul dies and is replaced by a faint pink.

“I wasn’t kidding when I said it’s a city of culture.”

“I- Sorry.”

“No you’re not, you’re just stunned that I want to waste time on something intellectual like art instead of plain old debauchery,” Grantaire teases, because he wants Enjolras to get mad, because he doesn’t understand why he’s flooding full of unhappy colours again.

“When we were in Bavaria, all you would talk about was Oktoberfest,” Enjolras mutters.

“And in Cologne it was the cathedral I wouldn’t shut up about,” Grantaire points out. “Give me some credit, Enjolras, I’m a man of eclectic tastes.”

“I know,” Enjolras says quickly, and if Grantaire was human and couldn’t tell for sure that Enjolras was himself right now, he’d be ready to splash him with holy water because he is not acting like himself. “I know, I didn’t mean to...”

“To imply that I’m a reprobate and a drunk?” Grantaire says. “Don’t worry, you’re not wrong about that.”

And he’s laughing and he’s still just teasing, and insults like that are like water off a duck’s back to him anyway, but Enjolras just looks progressively more wretched with every word he says.

“You’re not, though,” he mumbles. His face is red and his soul is just an indecipherable whirlwind of colours. “I mean, you certainly go out of your way to come across like that, but. You’re not. And I didn’t mean to sound like I think you are.”

Grantaire can’t help but just stare at him like he’s speaking some alien language.

“And I know you like art,” Enjolras adds when the silence starts to become excruciating.

“Are you feeling okay?” Grantaire asks him carefully. He can’t see anything wrong with him but he still feels like he should ask. It earns him an instant scowl.

“I’m fine,” Enjolras says.

“You don’t sound like yourself today,” Grantaire insists. “Are you still stressing about those guys at the Musain yesterday?”

“No! I-” Enjolras cuts himself off and gets to his feet with a noise of frustration. “God. Why do you have to make it so difficult?”

“...Make what so difficult?” Grantaire dares to ask. He feels like this conversation somehow got away from him very quickly.

“Being nice!” Enjolras snaps just before he storms out the door.

~

They’re summoned to the Musain the next morning, which is really something of a relief, since Enjolras has been sulking up a storm ever since Grantaire apparently rebuked his attempt at cordiality. Or maybe that’s unfair. Grantaire might have been avoiding him a little. It seemed easier to just stay out of sight and out of mind until they can go back to their old dynamic – the one where Grantaire makes himself as aggravating as possible and Enjolras just sort of sighs and wonders what he ever did to deserve such a travelling companion. Because wanting Enjolras to like him isn’t the same as deserving it, and maybe the idea of it is tantalising but the possibility of it becoming reality is actually kind of frightening.

When they reach the top of the stairs in the Musain, Grantaire is vaguely aware that Combeferre is not alone at his table. He thinks nothing of this, assuming that it’s just another hunter looking for a case or for information – Combeferre’s bottomless well of knowledge is in high demand, after all. However, the stranger doesn’t move away even when Combeferre waves him and Enjolras over, and as they approach, Grantaire briefly takes stock of this newcomer; he sees that it is in fact a young man, perhaps even younger than Enjolras, with coppery curls clustered around his head and shoulders. He’s dressed in an interesting ensemble of lime-green jeans, a bright purple sweater and heavy, pink-on-black flower-patterned boots. All Grantaire can think is that such an explosion of colour must be coming as a shock to the other surly patrons of the Musain, where even Enjolras’s occasional splash of red tends to raise scurrilous eyebrows.

They are about eight steps from the table when this colourful boy turns around, and Grantaire stops dead in his tracks. Enjolras hardly notices and goes on without him.

The boy looks at Grantaire, and Grantaire looks back, and in the same instant they recognise each other for what they are. The boy’s eyes widen and his mouth falls open slightly. Grantaire’s mind shrieks a belated warning of look out, that’s a psychic!

That’s probably very bad.

Grantaire experiences a moment of heart-stopping terror – thinking this is it, waiting to be denounced as not-human in a room full of hunters, right in front of Enjolras who has the only weapon that can kill him tucked inside his coat – but then, in a bizarre twist, the boy’s freckled face breaks into a delighted smile. For whatever reason, he seems to like what he sees.

Grantaire, amidst his confusion and tentative relief, supposes that means he’s the first angel the boy has ever laid eyes on, because he wouldn’t look nearly so happy if he’d ever encountered any of his siblings. For that matter, he probably wouldn’t have any eyes left if he’d ever encountered any of his siblings.

The boy’s grin is infectious and Grantaire can’t help but smile back at him before quickly pressing a finger to his own lips. Don’t say anything.

The boy replies with a small but enthusiastic nod. I won’t.

All this in a few seconds; Combeferre and Enjolras have barely finished saying hello to each other and are oblivious to the exchange.

“It’s good to see you again, Prouvaire,” Enjolras says, turning to the boy and holding out a hand to shake. He takes the offered hand but also, in true European style, leans up to peck a light kiss to each of Enjolras’s cheeks. Enjolras looks awkward but doesn’t fight it, suggesting that they’ve been here before.

“Good to see you too,” Prouvaire says brightly, still holding onto Enjolras’s hand. “But Enjolras, what have you done to your face? Was it a bad hunt?”

Enjolras says nothing, though he raises a hand absently as if to hide the scab on his lip and the various shades of purple and yellow doing battle for dominance of his face. His eyes shift to the side, as if to check if their bar-fighting opponents are here today. They aren’t, but Prouvaire seems to understand. Probably because, well, he’s a psychic.

“It’s okay,” he says. “It makes you look very rugged and tough.” His gaze slides towards Grantaire again. “But more importantly, it looks like you made a new friend on your travels. I feel neglected and replaced.”

“Oh, right.” Enjolras blinks. “This is Grantaire. He’s following me around Europe and making a nuisance of himself and sometimes helping on hunts.”

“Mostly the former,” Grantaire says, laughing. He too finds himself on the receiving end of a kiss to each side of his face, and although he considers it one of the loveliest of human greetings – far superior to the awkward show of dominance of the handshake – he thinks that, psychic or not, this boy must know absolutely nothing about angels to be so unafraid. “Are you telling me that Enjolras is cheating on you with me?”

“Jean Prouvaire is one of our on-call psychics,” Combeferre deftly puts in before Enjolras can retort. “He and Enjolras have worked cases together before.”

“And it looks like you’re stuck with me again, Enjolras,” Prouvaire says cheerfully. “Do you know I’ve never been to Amsterdam before? I’m pretty excited to see it.”

Grantaire has to fight down a laugh because he can see Enjolras wanting to repeat his usual mantra of ‘we’re going to hunt not to admire the scenery’ but holding it in because it’s Prouvaire he’s talking to and not Grantaire.

“What are we hunting?” he asks Combeferre instead of telling Prouvaire about the many places of interest in Amsterdam just to be annoying. “Something new? You’ve never given us our very own psychic before.”

“I can’t be one hundred percent sure as to exactly what it is,” Combeferre says, tapping away furiously at his laptop. “Definitely a spirit of some kind. People are reporting cold spots, strange noises, interference with electrical devices. The tourism board is loving it. They’re arranging special night-time ghost tours.”

“Great.” Grantaire grimaces.

“A really clever plan, I know. A good way to get a lot of people hurt,” Combeferre says with a nod. “Except, bizarrely, no one’s been hurt yet.”

“That’s what you’ve got me for,” Prouvaire pipes up. “If it’s a spirit that doesn’t want to hurt anyone, there’s no harm in trying diplomacy instead of just jumping straight to the salting-and-burning, right?”

“You’re our ghost-negotiator?” Grantaire says.

“Exactly!” Prouvaire is smiling at him again, and it’s such a sunny smile, and Enjolras looks a little puzzled by it. “And you two are my hired guns. In case it actually does turn out to be a vengeful spirit.”

“Your train leaves in a few hours,” Combeferre says, handing Enjolras an important-looking folder of papers – presumably what information he has managed to gather about the case. “If you two have any preparations to make, you should probably make them now.”

“We just need to collect our things from the hotel,” Enjolras says. “We’ll meet you at the station, Prouvaire?”

“Sure.” He nods happily. “I wanted to go for a walk around Paris anyway. It’s been a while.”

“It was nice to meet you, Ghost-Negotiator Jean Prouvaire,” Grantaire says, which earns him a laugh.

“It’s Jehan,” he tells him. “I think you need reminding of that too, Enjolras. I don’t like it when you’re so formal with me. Are we not friends anymore? Is it because you made a new friend?”

“Of course not,” Enjolras says. Even he doesn’t seem to be immune to the contagious power of Jehan’s smile. “Sorry, Jehan.”

“That’s better,” he says, looking satisfied.

Enjolras’s smile fades as he and Grantaire descend the stairs again.

“He seemed really pleased to meet you,” he says, shaking his head.

“Is that so surprising?” Grantaire asks with a short laugh.

“Yes,” Enjolras says immediately before flushing. “No, what I mean is that he’s normally very shy around new people.”

“Yeah?”

“He wouldn’t even look me in the eye at first.”

“You are pretty scary.”

“And it was definitely a while before he was ‘Jehan’ to me.”

“Guess that makes me special,” Grantaire says – and a scary human Enjolras may be, but how a psychic could find him scarier than something not human is quite beyond him and it’s something he’s going to have to ask about later.

“I guess so,” Enjolras says doubtfully.

~

If Enjolras has the most glorious soul Grantaire has ever seen, Jean Prouvaire has the sweetest. Grantaire watches it silently during the train journey, since they seem to have an unspoken agreement that they will talk after they get to Amsterdam and can be alone. At rest, it settles to a soft, pale blue and emanates a warm, buttery light, like a midday sky on a sunny day. It’s the soul of a poet and a thinker and one who just feels a whole lot about absolutely everything. Grantaire can easily see how it could change in the blink of an eye, becoming dark and stormy or cloudy-grey and despondent or joyfully lighting up with bright colours like fireworks. It’s sensitive and it’s loving, but in a quieter and more thoughtful way than the scorching and almost angry love that drives Enjolras on his quest to save the world and all who live in it.

He watches while Jehan chats animatedly about everything and nothing to Enjolras, who had been trying to read the case notes Combeferre had provided but has now clearly given up and is giving Jehan his full attention. Grantaire finds no small measure of amusement in this, since whenever he wants to talk and Enjolras wants to read, he gets told to shut up. It’s funny to see Enjolras being forced to act in a socially acceptable way for a change. He’s doing quite admirably; it’s clear that he likes Jehan and wouldn’t dream of snapping at him. Enjolras probably wouldn’t dream of snapping at most people. Grantaire just goes out of his way to make himself deserve it.

Grantaire had noticed, distantly, that Enjolras did not seem particularly surprised to see Jehan at the Musain, but he hadn’t had much time to wonder about it at the time: he’d been too busy either panicking that his cover was about to be blown or feeling smug that Combeferre apparently disagreed with Enjolras’s policy of indiscriminate hunting and had assigned them a psychic to mediate with the possibly-not-vengeful spirit. And all that is far from his mind now; his sole concern is the very interesting conversation he and Jean Prouvaire are going to have once they get off this train and are out of earshot of Enjolras. He’s not entirely sure he’s looking forward to it.

They change trains at Frankfurt. They manage to procure two sets of seats facing each other across a small table; Jehan sits next to Enjolras whilst Grantaire sits opposite them, and a few hours before Amsterdam Jehan falls asleep with his head on Enjolras’s shoulder. Enjolras does not appear surprised or bothered by this, though he does shoot Grantaire a look, as if daring him to laugh. Grantaire hadn’t been planning to laugh; if anything he has to fight the urge to coo. And he’s happy – even if Jean Prouvaire is inconveniently a psychic who can see past his human vessel, he is another person that Enjolras trusts and likes enough to let him distract him from his work and sleep half on top of him, and Grantaire is of the opinion that Enjolras can’t have too many people like that in his life.

Enjolras nudges Jehan awake when they reach Amsterdam. They grab their bags and stumble off the train and up the escalator into the airport and then outside and onto a bus. They’re staying in a hotel on Vossiusstraat, which they find after some wandering, and it’s even more basic than what they’re used to but it has a nice view of the Vondelpark. Combeferre booked two rooms for them – one for Enjolras and Grantaire to share like always, and one for Jehan. It’s late by the time they check in, and even Enjolras appears to have sleep on his mind.

“I’ll see you two in the morning,” Jehan says as they reach his door.

As they bid him goodnight, his eyes briefly lock with Grantaire’s. In that fleeting second, two very sharp images lodge themselves in his mind in quick succession: first, the nearby gate to the Vondelpark, and second, a clock reading 6.00AM.

It’s an instruction, and a pretty clear one. Be there.

Chapter Text

 

~

 

Six AM the next morning seems to take a long time to come. The hotel room is very small, with an uncomfortably narrow space between the two single beds, and Grantaire would much prefer to just wait in the Vondelpark all night, but Enjolras might wake up and notice him missing again, and he didn’t take too kindly to that last time. And so he stays in their cramped quarters and he waits and waits without really knowing what he’s waiting for. He has no idea what to expect at his and Prouvaire’s secret rendezvous. Nothing about the young psychic’s reaction to him has made much sense so far, and he supposes this will be no different.

He finally creeps out of the room at around half past five, just as the first slices of sunlight are edging their way across the floor. Enjolras, blessedly, does not stir.

The park is quiet. Grantaire knows that within the hour that will probably cease to be the case—there’ll be people on bikes cutting through on their way to work, maybe some jetlagged tourists wandering around looking dazed—but for now, it’s almost deserted. Not quite, though. There’s a boy already waiting by the gate.

“Hello, Jean Prouvaire,” Grantaire says as he approaches. “Fancy meeting you here.”

He’s certain that Prouvaire knew he was coming—being psychic and all—but he appears to be accustomed to doing the same thing Grantaire so often does himself; acting oblivious until the other person brings attention to themselves. At the sound of his voice, he looks up, and Grantaire finds himself on the receiving end of another hundred-watt smile.

“It’s Jehan,” Prouvaire reminds him.

“I hear you’re only ‘Jehan’ to your friends.”

“Well, we’re going to be friends, aren’t we?”

Grantaire just laughs quietly at that. A psychic should really know better.

“Let’s take a walk,” Jehan says, gesturing towards the park’s main pathway. “The trees are really pretty, aren’t they?”

“I didn’t think we were here to admire the scenery,” Grantaire remarks but he falls into step with him nonetheless.

Jehan rolls his eyes. “You sound like Enjolras.”

Grantaire blinks and then shakes his head.

“You’re right, that was quite an Enjolrasian thing to say,” he says. “I hereby retract it. Nice scenery is good no matter what you’re doing.”

Jehan nods contentedly in agreement, admiring the leafy branches overhead.

“So, are you ‘Grantaire’ to your friends?” he asks after a moment. “It’s not really your name, is it?”

“Do your psychic powers tell you so?”

“They do. And also ‘Grantaire’ isn’t a...” He trails off. Grantaire laughs again.

“Isn’t a what?” he coaxes. Jehan gives a laugh of his own, biting down on his own knuckle to hide his grin.

“I can’t say it,” he says, eyes bright with excitement. “You say it. Say what you are.”

“Don’t you know already?”

“Of course I do. I think I do. I can see.” Jehan sighs happily. “Your wings are so very beautiful.”

Grantaire jumps slightly; he’d known that Jehan could see something that marked him as inhuman, but he hadn’t been aware he was seeing quite that much detail.

“But I need you to say it,” Jehan goes on. “I’m scared I’m wrong. I’ve never seen anyone like you before. I was almost sure you didn’t exist. Please! Tell me.”

“Trust me when I say you’d be better off if we didn’t exist,” Grantaire says. Still, he opens his wings a little and can’t stifle a smile when Jehan gives an enraptured gasp. “You know what I am, but I don’t think you know what it means. I’m an angel of the Lord and I apologise in advance for the crushing disappointment coming your way.”

Jehan appears to hear only one word of that.

“Angel! I knew it. I knew,” he says, clapping his hands. “I can see your halo, too.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s lovely.”

“Thanks, I polish it myself.”

Jehan laughs with delight.

“So, ‘Grantaire’ isn’t an angel name,” he says triumphantly. “What’s your real name?”

“That is my real name.”

“No way.”

“I have another name,” Grantaire concedes. “An older one. But it’s not my name anymore.”

“What was it?” Jehan asks with imploring eyes. Grantaire shakes his head.

“It’s dead,” he says. “It doesn’t matter now.”

Jehan frowns for a moment, but then his psychically-aided judgement seems to tell him to let this one go.

“That’s okay,” he says, linking their arms together. “Grantaire is nice.”

Grantaire looks down at him; at his relaxed posture and cheerful freckled face and his clear blue, untroubled sky-soul.

“Why aren’t you afraid?” he asks finally. Jehan blinks.

“Why would I be?” he asks in return.

“You’re a psychic who works with hunters,” Grantaire points out. “And you know I’m only playing at being human.”

“The whole reason I’m here with you and Enjolras is that ‘not human’ doesn’t always translate to ‘bad’,” Jehan says. “I’m not scared of ‘not human’. I guess I’m scared of evil. And I know evil when I see it.” He unwinds his arm from Grantaire’s and reaches up to cup his face with both hands, peering into his eyes with a candidness that any regular human would probably find highly disconcerting. “You’re not evil.”

“Good to know,” Grantaire says weakly, and maybe it’s something of a relief to hear that, but ‘not evil’ isn’t the same as being good, and—

“Stop that,” Jehan says with a frown. “Don’t be sad. It’s a sunny morning and we’re going to be friends. Smile!”

Grantaire is helpless to disobey. Jehan seems to be an inspirer of smiles. Grantaire gets a certain feeling from him; a feeling that he hands out love to everyone and everything that will accept it from him, knowing that his supply will never run dry. It’s a trait he hasn’t seen in a human in a long time.

“That’s better,” Jehan says cheerily. His expression turns wistful. “Your wings are sort of faint. Like they’re not really here.”

“Well, they’re not, really,” Grantaire says, amused.

“Can I see them for real some time?”

“No,” Grantaire says immediately. Jehan’s eyes are light grey-green and he shudders at the thought of them going up in flames and leaving two blackened holes in his face. “You could get hurt. Our true forms can be...overwhelming.”

“Hmm. Yeah, I can understand that. Even like this, you’re pretty bright.” Jehan makes a show of shading his eyes. “That’s too bad. I bet they’re even more amazing for real.”

“I think you might be mad, Jean Prouvaire.”

“Call me Jehan,” he says insistently.

“Then you’re mad, Jehan,” Grantaire says. “To be so unafraid, I mean. To trust me even when you know that I’m lying to the people around you.”

“Oo-oh, yes. Enjolras doesn’t know.” Jehan nods as if he only just remembered this. “Why doesn’t he know?”

“If he knew, he’d kill me.”

“Would he?” Jehan outright laughs at that, and Grantaire isn’t sure why it’s so funny. “And it’s a secret because you don’t want him to kill you?”

“Only sometimes.”

“Are you his guardian angel?”

“No. There’s no such thing.”

“So why are you with him? If not to protect him and not to get yourself killed?”

Grantaire pauses. “I...no, it is to protect him.”

“So then you are his guardian angel.”

“That makes it sound like he was, I don’t know, assigned to me by Heaven,” Grantaire says. “Not the case.”

“No?”

“Heaven is a terrible place behind the staff door,” Grantaire tells him. “I hope you never have to see it from that side.”

Jehan regards him gravely for a moment. Grantaire can feel their minds brushing against each other, their thoughts gradually falling into a strange kind of synch, and it’s the closest he’s had to direct contact with one of his own kind in centuries. It makes him feel a little nostalgic, but not enough to make him forget the reality of what he ran away from. He isn’t sure if Jehan gleans some of the details from his mind through this natural osmosis, but after a short silence he nods.

“How long have you been with Enjolras?” he asks instead of pursuing the matter of guardian angels.

Grantaire opens his mouth to say ‘six months’ but Jehan snatches the thought right out of the air before he can make a sound.

“That’s a pretty long time,” he exclaims. “He must like you.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Grantaire says.

“I do.”

“He tolerates me for the sake of the greater good,” Grantaire tells him. “We have a certain arrangement.”

“That sounds shady,” Jehan laughs. “Alright, tell me. What’s the arrangement?”

“In exchange for being his tagalong, I offered him something I knew he couldn’t say no to,” Grantaire says.

Jehan looks at him expectantly.

“Angels are soldiers, designed to destroy a certain kind of evil which, by lucky coincidence, just happens to be the same kind of evil that hunters work to destroy,” Grantaire goes on. “An angel’s sword is just as specialised for the purpose as the angel itself. It’d make a very useful weapon in a human’s hands.”

Jehan, in his anticipation, once again skips to the punch-line.

“Enjolras is so lucky,” he says, mouth agape.

“Well, the downside is that he has to put up with me 24/7,” Grantaire reminds him, amused.

“I didn’t know angels said such mean things about themselves.”

“There’s a lot about angels you don’t know.”

“Then I look forward to learning,” Jehan says with a decisive nod. He frowns unhappily. “Are you sure we can’t tell Enjolras?”

“You’ll keep it a secret if I ask you to?”

“Of course.”

“Even though Enjolras is your friend?”

Jehan pauses and briefly does that peering thing again.

“You don’t like that!” he exclaims, looking torn between laughter and exasperation. “You’d rather I was loyal to him than to you!”

“He needs it,” Grantaire says with a shrug. “He deserves it.”

“You’re wonderful,” Jehan says and Grantaire really hopes, for his sake, that he doesn’t talk to everyone like this. Most people would not be accustomed to this level of sincere positivity. “I wouldn’t do anything to hurt Enjolras. If you think that keeping your secret is what’s best for both of you, then I’ll do it.”

“If he learned the truth, he’d kill me. He’d have to. It’s what he does. I wouldn’t stop him,” Grantaire says. “But, if I’m dead, I can’t protect him anymore, you understand? And I just...not yet. I want to look after him at least a little longer.” He chuckles under his breath. “I keep telling myself that. It was never meant to go on this long. But he’s...he’s just...”

He trails off, shaking his head.

“He’s amazing, right?” Jehan laughs. “Don’t worry, I think so too. I was a little scared of him at first, but not now. Only monsters should be scared of him.” He pauses a moment. “I think that’s something else Enjolras needs. People who aren’t scared of him. I bet you’re good for him that way.”

“I don’t take him terribly seriously, if that’s what you mean,” Grantaire says.

“Good,” Jehan says with another nod.

The first cyclist goes whizzing by them. They turn around and start to head back the way they came.

“He’s going to find out eventually, though, isn’t he?” Jehan says at length.

“Enjolras? Of course. He’s a hunter. He’ll get suspicious sooner or later,” Grantaire says. “Or, you know, he’ll do something phenomenally stupid and get himself beat up beyond repair, and I’ll have to blow my own cover putting him back together.”

“You can do that? Heal people?” The awe is back in Jehan’s eyes. He doesn’t wait for Grantaire to reply, instead just siphoning the obvious answer straight from his mind again. “Wow. What else can you do?”

“Kill people just by talking too loudly?” Grantaire says dryly but Jehan ignores him.

“And of course you can fly!” he says. “That must be...I can’t even imagine. What’s it like?”

“It’s...fast,” Grantaire says. “Less like flying as humans know it and more like...teleportation, I suppose.”

“Wow.” Jehan’s mouth is an almost perfect ‘o’. “...Can you take passengers?”

“...You want to fly?” Grantaire interprets and is rewarded with a beseeching smile. “Seriously?”

“If you can do it, you better take me sometime,” Jehan says, wagging a finger sternly. “Since I’m not allowed to see your wings for real. Consolation prize.”

“I’m still pretty sure you’re mad,” Grantaire says, shaking his head. “But if you’re really crazy enough to want me to zap you somewhere, we can talk about that later. Just now, Enjolras is going to need his first coffee of the day.”

“You bring him coffee?” Jehan’s expression is one of utmost exasperation. “And you really think he’ll want to kill you when he finds out the truth? If someone brought me coffee every morning, I’d just assume they were an angel. I’d want to keep them forever.”

Grantaire just laughs and lets him link their arms together again as they go in search of the nearest coffee shop.

~

When they get back to the hotel, Enjolras is awake and dressed but still bleary-eyed. They are laden with coffee and a lot more food than usual, since Jehan seems to have even stronger feelings about eating a substantial breakfast than Grantaire does, and because Jehan is human and actually does need to eat, Grantaire is happy to let him be the authority on the subject. Enjolras glances up at the sound of the door and frowns slightly.

“You look like you need this,” Grantaire says, handing him the largest of the cups of coffee.

“Thanks,” Enjolras says, but it sounds like an automated response and his eyes are flicking from him to Jehan and back again, like he’s surprised to see them together and is trying to figure out just when they became so amicable considering they barely spoke the day before.

“We got waffles,” Jehan announces, unloading his bags onto the very tiny table. “But also fruit because fruit is important. And you,” he points at Enjolras, “are not allowed to just inhale your caffeine and eat half an apple. It’ll be a long day.”

“He does that to you too?” Grantaire gives a long-suffering sigh. “Keeping him halfway healthy is exhausting, isn’t it?”

“He worries too much about everyone else and not enough about himself,” Jehan says. During the course of this exchange, Enjolras sinks slowly into a chair and stares between the two of them like he can’t quite believe this is happening to him so early in the morning. Even his soul is just a hazy muddle, too tired and dazed to even be annoyed.

“You’re very quiet, Enjolras,” Jehan says, sliding a waffle on a napkin across to him. “Are you alright?”

“I’m just revelling in my good fortune to be travelling with not one but two morning people,” Enjolras replies sourly. Grantaire just snorts, more than used to Enjolras’s charming morning manner, but he sees a single small, dark cloud suddenly blossom in Jehan’s sky-soul. Enjolras doesn’t see that, of course, but he does notice Jehan's small, worried frown. He sighs and leans over and nudges Jehan’s hand with his own. Jehan blinks and then the cloud just as quickly evaporates; he and Enjolras exchange smiles and he goes back to handing out food.

Grantaire, whose mind is still pressed snugly against Jehan’s, sends a questioning pulse his way. In response, he gets a flurry of images and a phantom approximation of Jehan’s voice explaining that physical contact heightens the transmission of thoughts, even with people he isn’t actively ‘listening’ to, and that was Enjolras’s way of assuring him that he was only joking.

Grantaire thinks that Enjolras is very lucky to have a psychic friend who can deal with his chronic failure at self-expression. Jehan hears that, of course, and sends a scolding but amused prod back at him.

“So what’s the plan, captain?” Jehan asks while he cuts up a banana with a knife that looks more suited for stabbing someone in the kidneys. He dumps the banana slices on top of the waffle he forced on Enjolras and then proceeds to drown the whole thing in syrup. Once again, Grantaire gets the distinct impression that they have been here before and Enjolras has learned not to put up a fight.

“One of those extremely irresponsible ghost tours is running tonight so, painful as it may be, we should probably be part of it,” Enjolras says, grimacing. “In the meantime, it can’t hurt to look at the areas where the most activity has been reported. Maybe ask some questions.”

“What’s our cover?”

Enjolras sighs heavily.

“Combeferre suggested we be paranormal investigators,” he says, sounding like he can’t quite understand why Combeferre would do such a thing to him. Jehan snorts with laughter.

“Your favourite,” he says. “So, we’re with the Daily Spectre?”

Enjolras groans but nods.

“...What’s that?” Grantaire dares to ask. Jehan just sniggers.

“It’s an online periodical detailing the ongoing investigations of a team of travelling ghost hunters,” Enjolras says dully. “By which I mean the type of ghost hunters who never actually find any ghosts. It’s completely real but also completely fake. Combeferre created it purely to back up the ‘paranormal investigator’ alias.”

“No way.” Grantaire grins. “Does that mean I can go online and read all about some of your previous exploits?”

“Sure, if you want to read the version where I heard a door shut all by itself and my night-vision camera picked up a mysterious moving shape outside the window that might have been a ghost but might also have been a plastic bag blowing in the wind.”

“Oh God, I remember that one.” Jehan had been enthusiastically shovelling a waffle into his mouth but he has to stop because he’s laughing so hard. “Poor Combeferre, he had to basically rewrite the whole thing to tone down your scathing and completely undisguised sarcasm.”

“Wait, you have to actually write the articles?” Grantaire is frankly offended that Enjolras never mentioned this goldmine of doubtless hilarity before.

“Combeferre says it would be obvious if he wrote them all and put different names on them,” Enjolras mutters. “And also he’s, you know, pretty busy.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll write this one,” Jehan says brightly, turning to Grantaire. “It’s so much fun. In the last one I wrote, we were in this really old house, and the spiritual vibes were so strong that I fell into a deep trance and saw visions of the house when it was new and beautiful and I witnessed the truth of how the lady of the house died and that was enough to send her spirit to rest. I thought it was very moving.”

“I don’t think I read your last one,” Enjolras says. “What was I doing while you were having this vision?”

“You were sulking because all your totally legit ghost-detecting equipment broke down and so there was tragically no evidence of all the amazing stuff that happened,” Jehan tells him.

“Devastating,” Grantaire chuckles while Enjolras rolls his eyes.

“Don’t worry, I’ll paint you in a more heroic light this time,” Jehan promises. “The spirit will try to lure me towards my untimely doom, and you’ll come running to my rescue. In doing so you’ll be forced to drop your camera, and so there’ll once again be no evidence.”

“Let’s not talk about anyone’s ‘untimely doom’ before we’ve even figured out what we’re dealing with,” Enjolras says dryly. “No point in tempting fate.”

He goes back to eating, since it’s fairly clear that he’s not allowed to go anywhere until he finishes what was put in front of him. He keeps tucking his slightly haphazard curls behind his ears, probably to keep them away from the food and particularly the syrup. Jehan eventually wipes his hands clean and gets up to stand behind him, producing a hair tie from nowhere.

“If you’re going to wear your hair long, you really need to invest in some specialist equipment,” he says, dangling the hair tie in front of Enjolras’s eyes.

“I don’t wear it long on purpose,” Enjolras protests while Jehan combs his hair back with his fingers and secures it in a short ponytail. “It’s annoying, actually.”

“You really don’t take any time out to take care of yourself, do you?” Jehan says, amused. “I can cut it for you later, if you want.”

“A morning person, a psychic and a barber,” Grantaire says. He wonders if Jehan felt the stab of strange, ugly envy that cut through him at seeing his and Enjolras’s obvious closeness; at how he can reach out and touch him so casually, so easily, and neither of them think anything of it. He hopes not. “I think we should keep him for always.”

The corners of Enjolras’s mouth turn downwards just slightly, but before Grantaire can try to figure out what that might mean, Jehan is laughing again.

“No way, I’m not cut out for living on the road like you hunters,” he says. “I have a cat, you know. I can only ask my neighbour to feed her for so long.”

~

One refreshing thing about posing as paranormal investigators in a current supernatural hotspot, in Grantaire’s opinion, is that they can quite openly walk around on the street with EMF meters in hand and no one even bats an eyelid. They aren’t even the only ones; he can see a few genuine (and presumably, spectacularly naive) ghost enthusiasts wandering around looking very serious, holding cameras out in front of them and keeping their eyes fixed determinedly on the viewfinder as they walk, because everyone knows that no spirit can hide from the lens of an iPhone. Their complete lack of ghost-hunting knowledge is just fine with Grantaire. So much the better for everyone involved if they never find anything.

There’s even a small circle of people gathered on the banks of one of the canals, conducting a very phoney-sounding séance being led by a very phoney-sounding self-styled medium. Jehan purses his lips in obvious disapproval as they pass but doesn’t comment. Grantaire sends him a comforting psychic nudge just to remind him that he is the real deal and should just laugh at hacks like that.

He doesn’t normally touch the minds of humans. It’s invasive and rude, for one thing. And furthermore, it just feels pointless. Most humans can’t reciprocate. So he could creepily sift through their every thought, but there’d be nothing in return, no connection, no bond. Maybe Jehan feels that way too, because he offered up that bond almost immediately. It’s not quite the same as connecting to another angel, but it’s good, it’s a kind of closeness Grantaire hasn’t been able to experience for too many long years, and he soaks it up. He’s careful not to push too hard, and he keeps a lot of his own mind screened off, because if Jehan were to poke too far into his extremely deep pool of memories he’d probably drown. But nonetheless, he loves it, and he can’t believe his own good fortune. Jehan must be the only psychic on the face of the Earth whose immediate reaction to seeing something non-human in human skin isn’t to scream.  

An obvious side-effect of practically living in each other’s heads is a rapidly developing sense of familiarity – that is, familiarity of the sort that normal humans might not feel until they’ve spent years together. Which is nice and everything, but Grantaire knows that their rapport is already striking Enjolras as distinctly weird, and that’s not good. He could laugh at how tenuous and pathetic his situation is sometimes.

“The reported activity isn’t limited to any one place,” Enjolras is saying, frowning at his notes and map. “Of course, now that it’s become tourist fodder, it’s difficult to tell which reports are genuine and which are just people trying to make their ghost tours more exciting.”

“They could all be real,” Jehan says. “I mean, it’s possible.”

“Like a possessed object? Something that could be moved around?”

“Let me look?” Jehan holds his hands out and Enjolras lets him take all the papers. Jehan smoothes them out on top of the stone wall of a bridge and starts reading. Once he’s studied the information thoroughly, he produces a pen from his pocket and starts drawing on the map. Enjolras doesn’t harass or question him; just leans against the wall and watches him work. Grantaire thinks that, despite Enjolras’s lack of psychic aptitude, he and Jehan must have established some kind of connection during the time they’ve known each other. Because Enjolras has only been hunting for going on four years, and he can’t have required psychic back-up very frequently in that time, and yet he seems to trust Jehan almost as much as he does Combeferre, with who he’s in contact almost every day.

Grantaire thinks he’d rather like to know the story behind it.

“I think most of the reports are real,” Jehan declares finally. “Look.”

He holds up the map, on which he has drawn what appear to be several concentric circles. Enjolras and Grantaire look at it blankly. Grantaire is halfway through psychically requesting an explanation when Enjolras says, “What is it?”

“...It’s a ripple effect,” Jehan says, looking quite offended on behalf of his diagram. “Apart from one or two random exceptions – fakes, I guess – all the reported ghost activity took place at a point on one of these circles.”

“How is that possible?” Enjolras asks, perturbed.

“Shockwaves,” Jehan says. When this earns him more blank looks, he shakes his head and points at the map. “At this point here, right in the centre, three streetlamps have...popped. Like, the bulbs actually shattered. Dogs drag their owners the other way and won’t set foot on the street. And it’s the middle of summer but people have recorded spots at sub-zero temperatures.” He shifts his finger to the outermost circle. “Whereas here, people are getting occasional static interference on their phone-calls and music players.”

“So whatever’s causing all this is at the centre point.” Enjolras nods in understanding. “The things happening further away are just...residual.”

“Pretty much.” Jehan nods. “It’s almost like, whatever it is, it’s sending out these waves of EMF. Like it wants to get noticed.”

“It worked,” Enjolras says with a shrug. “Where is that point on the map?”

“Not far,” Jehan says cheerfully, folding the papers up and tucking them under his arm. “I like this city. Everything’s within walking distance.”

~

Aside from three broken streetlamps, the centre point on Jehan’s map of ghost activity doesn’t look any different from any other street they’ve walked today. It runs parallel to a stretch of canal, just like approximately half of all the streets in Amsterdam. It’s also quite close to the red-light district and, on a possibly related note, has a row of charming boutiques displaying some very ambitious-looking sex toys in their windows. Grantaire is just pondering whether some risqué remark on his part would make Enjolras blush or just glower in distaste – is he embarrassed by sex or just above it? – when he feels the drastic shift in Jehan’s mind. He turns to him, startled, just in time to see his soul flood inky, starless black. He had placed one hand against the metal pole of one of the broken lights but he snatches it back now and claps it over his own mouth, doubling over like he’s about to be sick. His thoughts are in such an uproar that Grantaire has to temporarily block them out just so that he can keep his own mind together and help him.

“Enjolras,” he says as he goes towards Jehan, because they know each other, they’ve worked together before, and Enjolras might know what’s wrong. Enjolras, who had wandered off a little way with his EMF meter, looks up and says ‘oh’ before hurrying back to them, and Grantaire is pretty sure that was the ‘oh’ of a man who knows what’s happening but that might just be wishful thinking.

“Jehan.” Enjolras places a hand on his shoulder. “What is it? It’s bad?”

Jehan sucks in a deep breath, closes his eyes for a moment.

“...Sorry,” he says finally, uncurling from his hunched, pained stance and standing up straight. “Sorry, it hit me all at once. Took me by surprise.”

“What did?” Grantaire asks, looking at the streetlamp distrustfully.

“When a spirit interacts with an object, it leaves...traces,” Enjolras says without taking his eyes of Jehan. He looks ready to catch him – like he’s expecting him to fall any second. “Psychics can pick up on them.”

“This thing sure channelled everything into breaking that light.” Jehan’s voice sounds distant and dazed. He looks up at Enjolras. “I don’t think it’s vengeful. Not yet. But it’s so angry, and so scared-”

“Come on,” Enjolras says quietly, taking him by the arm and steering him away.

“No, no, I’m fine.” Jehan cranes his neck to look over his shoulder at the street he’s being led away from. “Really, it was just a surprise. I can find out more for you.”

“Later,” Enjolras says.

“I’m alright,” Jehan insists – but he isn’t, Grantaire can see that he isn’t; his soul is still shrouded in darkness, and when he reaches out to brush against his mind, he can feel it still reeling, stinging from the onslaught of foreign emotions.

“Humour me,” Enjolras says, and he’s trying to sound stern but Grantaire sees the faintest hint of a smile curving his mouth, and he thinks maybe he loves this Enjolras the most, the one who can be gentle and who puts his friends before the case, and he can only wonder why he works so hard to hide that side of himself.

“Enjolras,” Jehan says with exasperation, literally digging his heels in until Enjolras is forced to stop and turn to him. “This is what I’m here to do, remember?”

“That doesn’t mean you can’t stop when it’s hurting you. I’ve seen it before, when something bad hits you like that.”

“Then you know that I’ll live, right?”

“Of course.”

“So let me do what you brought me here to do.”

“But-”

“I’m all grown up these days, you know,” Jehan says, managing a weak smile. “I can decide when I need to stop.”

There is a slightly loaded silence, since it seems like this is a matter of pride for both of them, which makes it unlikely that either of them will back down. Grantaire, who can see the prickly humiliation and determination in Jehan’s soul and the fierce protectiveness in Enjolras’s, decides to be an idiot and intervene.

“Arguing?” he says with his best shocked expression. “Enjolras, I thought that was a special thing between you and me.”

Enjolras looks at him as if only just remembering that he’s been here this whole time and promptly goes red. Grantaire isn’t exactly sure what he’s embarrassed about: that comment, or the fact that Grantaire once again witnessed him acting like an actual human being with actual human feelings, or the fact that he’s clearly losing this argument. Maybe a combination of all three.

“...At least sit down for a minute?” Enjolras says finally, gesturing to a nearby bench.

Jehan hangs his head slightly, and amidst the ongoing tumult in his mind Grantaire can pick up on his faint annoyance and lingering shame, but his legs are shaking quite visibly and he seems to know a sensible suggestion when he hears it.

“Fine, but just for a minute,” he says. He delicately disentangles his arm from Enjolras’s and makes his own way over to the seat. Grantaire goes to follow, pausing when Enjolras doesn’t move.

“You coming?” he asks.

“I’m going to get him a drink or something,” Enjolras mutters. “Don’t let him faint into the canal while I’m gone.”

“I heard that,” Jehan calls.

“Slovakia,” Enjolras replies dryly.

“That was one time! And it was almost two years ago!”

Enjolras just sighs and walks away. Grantaire waves at his retreating back, a smile playing on his lips.

After a moment, he goes and sits down next to Jehan, who is looking sullenly at the ground beneath his feet.

“What happened in Slovakia?” Grantaire asks conversationally. Jehan sniffs irritably even as he hastily throws up some mental roadblocks to hide the memories from view.

“The same thing that just happened now, basically. I might have passed out and fallen into a frozen lake,” he says stiffly.

“Wow.”

“One time.” Jehan’s normally sunny soul gives a few angry lightning-flashes.

“Why are you upset?” Grantaire asks. “Enjolras is right, you’re not okay.”

“I am, though,” Jehan replies. “I mean, it hurts. Getting hit with strong echoes like that when I’m not expecting it is always a psychic sucker-punch, and I know you can feel that from me. But it’s been happening to me all my life, you know? I’m used to it and I can deal with it.”

“You’re forgetting that in Enjolras’s mind, he’s the only one who’s allowed to suffer,” Grantaire points out with a dry smile. Jehan sucks in a deep breath and blows it out noisily through his nose.

“He’d keep fighting even if he was missing an arm and a leg,” he complains. “But I get a headache and he drags me away.”

“Ah, let him fuss over you,” Grantaire says. “It’s a sign you’re a very privileged individual, you know.”

Despite his recent shock and the pain Grantaire can sympathetically feel pulsing between his temples, Jehan manages a smile.

“Would you like him to fuss over you sometime?” he asks. “I think he would, if you let him.”

“I don’t get headaches,” Grantaire informs him. That earns him a laugh and a light kick to his shin.

“That’s a lie,” Jehan says, pulling a few of Grantaire’s numerous hangover memories to the forefront of their shared headspace.

“That’s different, that’s self-inflicted.”

“Sure is.” Jehan delves a little deeper into those memories until the effort starts to put strain on his already aching brain, at which point Grantaire gently pushes him out. “You could heal yourself no problem, though. Why don’t you?”

“Like I said, it’s self-inflicted,” Grantaire says with a shrug.

“I bet it drives Enjolras crazy that you bring that on yourself.” Despite the fact that Enjolras is out of sight and can’t possibly hear them, Jehan leans closer and lowers his voice conspiratorially. “But I bet that doesn’t stop him wanting to fuss over it.”

He slips back into that shared pool of memories and quickly extracts a very specific one—it’s from that night in that tiny town in Spain, right after Grantaire felt thousands of angels being murdered and tried to drink it away, and Enjolras was so angry, but Jehan is focusing on the part where Enjolras handed him a cold bottle of water and sat with him on the hard ground until he was ready to come back inside—

Grantaire pushes him out again and throws up a wall between their minds.

“Give your psychic muscles a rest,” he says. “They’re having a rough day.”

“I told you, I’m used to it,” Jehan says even as he brings his hands up to massage his temples. “It’d be nice if aspirin had any effect on this kind of headache, though.”

Grantaire isn’t sure if it’ll have much effect, given that he isn’t sure if it’s strictly physical pain Jehan is suffering from, but he reaches out anyway and covers one of Jehan’s hands with his own and sends a tiny pulse of Grace through his palm. Jehan’s eyes snap wide and then fall shut with what looks like relief.

“Whatever you just did, please do it again,” he says, taking Grantaire’s hand and pressing it directly against his forehead. Grantaire laughs, glad to be able to help like this for once, and obliges. It’s just the slightest burst of healing Grace—any more would be accompanied by some glowing, which might draw some attention—but it seems to do the trick. Jehan sighs and sags against his side.

“You really are an angel,” he mumbles, leaning his head on Grantaire’s shoulder.

“That word doesn’t mean what you think it means,” Grantaire says. “I told you that.”

“Uh-huh.”

They’re quiet while Jehan recuperates. The addition of Grace seems to have, at least, accelerated the process—when Grantaire next prods tentatively at his mind, that raw ache is almost completely gone.

“...Earlier, you said to Enjolras that you’re ‘all grown up’ now,” he says suddenly.

“Well, I am,” Jehan replies. He seems to have made himself quite comfortable on Grantaire’s shoulder and doesn’t bother lifting his head now. “Though I suppose we both seem very tiny to you. How old are you, anyway?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Grantaire says. In all honesty, he’s lost track somewhat. “Does that mean you weren’t grown up when you and Enjolras met?”

Jehan snorts.

“Neither of us was,” he says. “I was seventeen. Enjolras was nineteen. He only thought that made him less of a kid than me.”

“What were you doing, running around with hunters at seventeen?” Grantaire asks. He keeps his tone light but he’s sure Jehan can feel the anxious protectiveness that’s currently squirming in his gut. “Didn’t your psychic powers tell you that was a bad idea?”

“Sure did.” Jehan laughs. “You might say the situation called for it.”

“You got caught up in a hunt?”

“Yeah, sort of.”

“Enjolras’s hunt?”

“I think it was mine before it was Enjolras’s, really. And he hadn’t been hunting long at that time.” Jehan pauses and dips into Grantaire’s thoughts again—after a moment Grantaire realises he’s checking whether he knows about Feuilly. “Feuilly was still calling the shots, back then.”

“You knew him?”

“Yeah. Not as well as Enjolras, obviously, since they travelled together.”

“What was he like?” Grantaire can’t deny that he’s been curious even since Enjolras first let slip about his deceased mentor.

“He was great.” Jehan throws a few fleeting images his way of a wiry man with reddish hair and enough matching stubble to suggest an impatience with regular shaving. His attire and bearing suggest an unassuming layman, but his eyes are calculating. Not always, though. In some of these snapshot memories, his face is kind. “He was pretty much the only reason that Enjolras survived his first year of hunting. And they both knew it.”

“He was younger than I imagined,” Grantaire remarks. For whatever reason, he’d automatically pictured Enjolras’s mentor as some grizzled veteran hunter—the man in Jehan’s memories can’t be much older than thirty.

“Does Enjolras not talk about him?”

“No. He doesn’t like to tell me much about anything.”

“Maybe you just go about asking him the wrong way,” Jehan says with a brief, faint glow of amusement in his soul. “But with Feuilly, he’s probably still too sad to talk about him much.”

Grantaire sends a pulse of scepticism through their joined minds and transmits his memory of Enjolras very dispassionately informing him of his teacher’s demise. Jehan sends a pulse right back at him—it communicates a feeling that Grantaire doesn’t have an exact word for, but it feels very close to the psychic equivalent of rolling his eyes.

“You don’t actually let Enjolras fool you, do you?” Jehan says. “I know he’s very good at pretending to care about precisely nothing besides the greater good, but I didn’t think your eyes would fall for that.”

“I have a policy of not looking into his head.”

“Well, so do I, unless he gives me permission. Maybe it’s just easier to see past someone’s bullshit if you knew them when they were nineteen and stupid.”

“So what exactly am I missing?”

“Being sad isn’t going to help him fight monsters, right?” Jehan says. “So no matter how sad he feels, he can’t let himself be sad, you know?”

“That doesn’t make much sense.”

“If Enjolras made sense, he wouldn’t be Enjolras.”

Grantaire hums his agreement.

“What was he like, back then?” he asks. It’s another thing he’s always very curious about. He regrets not getting a chance to ask Courfeyrac and the others in Lyon the same question.

“Enjolras?” Jehan laughs again. “He wasn’t so different. Just younger. Just as focused, but less experienced. Probably a bit more reckless.”

“Lord have mercy.” Grantaire tries very hard not to think about the sort of stupid things Enjolras must have done in his misguided youth. Jehan doesn’t show him any images, which is both a blessing and a shame.

“Really, I think he’s changed more since he met you than he did the whole rest of the time I’ve known him.”

Grantaire blinks.

“What do you mean?” he asks.

Jehan lifts his head at that, looking at Grantaire’s face as if to check if he’s being serious.

“Wow,” he says finally, settling back down with a theatrical sigh. “You two are horrendous at this.”

“At what?”

Jehan just sighs again.

They’re still sitting like that, with Jehan’s head cushioned on Grantaire’s shoulder, when Enjolras comes back. He looks briefly bemused by their closeness again but is quick to smother it—there’s something other than confusion in his expression as he reaches them, and Grantaire can’t quite pinpoint what it is but, at the very least, he can tell that it’s not a happy look. He tries to examine Enjolras’s soul for any clues there, but is surprised to find it extremely inconclusive—there are no clear emotions infiltrating its usual golden shine. The bright gold light looks oddly strained, though—like it’s currently just a thin lacquer wrapped around something else underneath.

And that means something’s wrong, Grantaire realises with a twinge of concern. Because that means Enjolras, who is not normally one to keep his emotions bottled up, is pushing something down so fiercely that he’s even hiding it from himself.

“Were your ears burning?” Jehan asks.

“What?” Enjolras says, handing him a bottle of water from the plastic bag in his hand.

“We were just talking about you.” Jehan finally sits up. “Grantaire was asking about how we met, and how I got sucked into hunting.”

“Of course he was,” Enjolras says dryly, sitting down on the other side of Jehan. “That’s his hobby.”

“There are worse hobbies,” Grantaire puts in.

“Maybe it’s a story for another time,” Jehan says. “We should tell it together.”

Enjolras makes a non-committal sound.

“How’s your head?” he asks Jehan. His voice sounds entirely normal. He’d be doing an excellent job of seeming just like his usual self if it weren’t for the fact that he’s sitting with a psychic and an angel.

“The same as it always is when this happens,” Jehan replies after taking a gulp of water. “It looks worse than it is, Enjolras. And I’ll need to take a closer look at this area sooner or later, you know. It might as well be now.”

“Woah, so dedicated,” Grantaire says with a whistle. “Don’t be so hasty, this might be your one chance to do some sight-seeing. Do you have any idea of the kind of life-threatening injury I’d have to sustain to get cut a break like this?”

Enjolras’s soul bristles and for a tense moment Grantaire is sure that something dark and ugly is going to punch right out from behind that golden layer. But it doesn’t; whatever it is, Enjolras reins it in, and his only outward response to that remark is a brief, cutting glance in Grantaire’s direction.

“No sight-seeing until the case is closed,” Jehan says. “I know the rules.”

“I don’t make rules,” Enjolras mutters, turning away. “You can both do whatever you like.”

“It’s my rule, then,” Jehan says, getting to his feet. This time, his legs don’t shake. “I couldn’t take it if someone got hurt because I was souvenir shopping instead of working.”

Enjolras doesn’t ask if he’s sure he’s okay or if he needs more time to recover, though Grantaire can see him itching to. Instead, he follows Jehan back to the point where all the supernatural activity seems to be stemming from.

“Did you get any information earlier?” he asks.

“Not much. It was all very chaotic,” Jehan replies. “It’s definitely a ghost, though. And, like I told you, very scared. Very angry.”

“Did they die here?” Enjolras asks, looking sceptically at the very unassuming street, which doesn’t seem to present many opportunities for a violent death. “Can you tell?”

“Difficult to say.” Jehan is frowning with concentration. Grantaire can see him erecting barricades in his mind, bracing himself in case of another psychic onslaught. “It would make the most sense, but these things hardly ever make sense, do they?”

“You’re telling me.” Enjolras makes a point of hanging back and not hovering over Jehan’s shoulder while he gets back to investigating. “Since we’ve established that it’s a ghost and it’s here, does that mean we can skip this ghost tour tonight?”

“Afraid not,” Jehan says. “It’ll be at least ninety percent bullshit, of course. But the guide must have some theory about who the spirit is. It could be a starting point.” He shoots Enjolras a wide smile. “And the intrepid paranormal investigators of the Daily Spectre wouldn’t miss it, would they?”

Enjolras pulls a face, probably without even intending to. His soul is still strange-looking—a thin skin of gold stretched over something much less pleasant—but his nauseated expression still makes Grantaire laugh.

“It could be funny, at least?” he says. “We can stand up the back and heckle.”

“You’re coming? I thought you wanted to go sight-seeing,” Enjolras says acidly. Grantaire looks at him, unsure whether to be amused or exasperated.

“You really can’t tell when I’m joking, can you?” he says. Enjolras just looks at him stonily. Jehan makes a small, pained noise.

“Horrendous, both of you,” he says under his breath.

Chapter Text

 

 

~

 

Jehan examines every inch of the street with the broken lights, but he doesn’t find much. Ghosts don’t exist in the same way as normal things, he explains; when they aren’t actively present and screwing with the living, they kind of blink out of existence. They’re just gone, and nearly impossible to find. And this ghost, whatever its story might be, is not there right now, if indeed this is where it’s supposed to be. The few echoes he manages to pick up – and he’s ready for them this time – are all equally angry and scared and they all contain the same two words: go away.

Enjolras isn’t much surprised by that. He remarks that most ghosts either try to kill anyone who gets too close, or they try to force them to go as far away as possible.

“They’re not very sociable, then?” Grantaire can’t help but say.

“Some of them are,” Jehan pipes up. “I lived with one for a long time.”

And, okay, that’s a story Grantaire definitely wants to hear later.

They spend the rest of the day on the internet, trying to ascertain whether any violent deaths have taken place on or near that street in recent memory, but there’s nothing. No murders, no suicides. They’re left scratching their heads, which doesn’t put any of them in an especially patient mood when the time comes for them to join the night’s ghost tour. Jehan does bring a reporter’s notebook, though. For authenticity, apparently. He also gives one to Enjolras, who takes it with a long-suffering sigh.

Grantaire knows it’s going to be a long night when the tour leader shows up wearing a dark purple robe with a hood. Jehan manages to keep a polite smile on his face, but Grantaire is completely aware that within his mind he is both recoiling with horror and shrieking with laughter.

“Oh, God,” Enjolras says under his breath.

“Yeah,” Jehan agrees. They position themselves towards the back of the gathered crowd, where they can hopefully at least lament the stupidity of this without being heard.

“Are there any other hunters here?” Enjolras asks. Jehan snorts doubtfully but scans the group.

“Not one,” he says after a minute or two. “Just a lot of people who think this’ll be scary but in a nice safe way.”

“It’d be nice if they were right about that,” Grantaire says.

“Should be easy to bullshit our way through, at least,” Enjolras says dryly. “Who’s doing the talking?”

“You,” Jehan says immediately, giving him a light shove towards the rest of the group. Grantaire remembers Enjolras saying something about Jehan being shy, and now – surrounded by strangers and with a high probability of those strangers wanting to talk – he’s seeing it for himself for the first time. Jehan’s soul is overcast and shrinking in on itself self-consciously; his mind is clawing at everything and nothing like an anxious cat. Grantaire, almost without thinking about it, reaches out and takes his hand, because he’s in Jehan’s head and knows he finds it a comfort.

“You’re not scared of these morons, are you?” he says quietly, nodding towards a small cluster of people who are passing round a bottle of New Age store-bought holy water (unsurprisingly, actually just normal drinking water) and splashing it on their faces ‘for protection’.

“Morons are usually the scariest sort of people,” Jehan replies, but he does laugh.

Enjolras looks down and sees their joined hands. He just as quickly looks away again, and says nothing, but Grantaire catches the twist of his mouth and the strange ripple in his soul. That gold veneer is getting thinner, he thinks. Maybe Jehan sees something too, because he reaches out with his free hand to take one of Enjolras’s. He’s shrugged off.

“I don’t think colleagues in the field of paranormal investigation hold hands,” Enjolras says. His tone is strangely curt. “Unless they’re conducting a séance, of course. Are we conducting a séance?”

“No,” Jehan says. He drops Grantaire’s hand. Grantaire shoots Enjolras a look, silently asking why he’s being a dick about it, but he is ignored.

While the tour guide waits for any latecomers, the gathered ghost enthusiasts mingle and swap stories and some of them – particularly a group of teenage girls here on holiday – want to know what the three of them are hoping to see tonight. With the girls, Grantaire is pretty sure it’s mostly Enjolras they’re interested in, but whatever.

And Enjolras is good at this sort of thing. He would’ve made a great actor, Grantaire thinks. Or a motivational speaker. Or a politician. He could probably have been President of France by now. He’s so utterly charming when he wants to be; all smiles and nods and exactly the words that people want to hear, and he speaks so ardently about things that Grantaire knows for a fact he actually believes are complete bullshit. He’s using terms like ‘the spirit-world’ and ‘otherworldly messengers’ and his blue eyes are shining earnestly and people are just eating it up. Grantaire thinks some of them are about to swoon. They’re all taking business cards for the real-but-fictitious Daily Spectre, and Grantaire is torn between being outraged that Enjolras never told him that he carries such things and just wondering exactly how popular Combeferre’s massive in-joke of an online magazine really is.

Jehan sticks close to Grantaire’s side the whole time, offering people shy smiles but saying as little as possible. He even pretends to make some notes just to avoid eye contact.

Finally, the guide calls for their attention.

“We are about to embark on our journey, friends,” he says, his toothy smile gleaming under his absurd hood. “I ask you to be prepared for anything, because anything could happen. But don’t be afraid! The spirits will not harm you. No, no, they never would. They are the souls of our ancestors, returned from beyond the veil to help us. Follow me.”

With a dramatic sweep of his robe, he turns and starts leading them down the first street. Enjolras’s amiable smile abruptly falls away the minute no one is watching him.

“I’d like to introduce him to a couple of the ghosts I’ve met,” he mutters as they walk. “See how harmless he thinks they are then.”

“Deep breaths, now,” Grantaire says.

It's every bit as painful as they'd expected. They are led along like a school field trip, drawing strange looks from ordinary tourists, who are probably wondering why their leader appears to be dressed up as a wizard or something. Said leader seems utterly unembarrassed; he swishes along in very spectacular fashion, and occasionally stops in seemingly random places – 'paranormal hotspots' – to regale them with largely fabricated tales of 'sightings' and 'encounters' that have occurred there. Combeferre did rigorous research about all recently reported supernatural activity in the city before he sent them here, and Grantaire is confident that he never mentioned anything about ectoplasm seeping up from between the cobbles, or bloody writing appearing on walls. This guy is full of so much crap that it makes Grantaire sort of want to tear his head off. He puts on a good show, in a magician-at-a-kid's-birthday-party sort of way – lots of sweeping arm movements and bulging-eyed expressions and dramatic pauses, and most people seem to be enraptured. When he suddenly lets out a theatrical yell and points at a nearby shadowy alcove, asking if anyone else saw the shadows 'moving', at least four people start shrieking and insisting that they did. Enjolras looks frankly appalled that someone can talk so much garbage and yet still hold the majority of their audience in such thrall. Jehan has spaced out completely and is currently thinking about his cat and whether his neighbour is feeding her enough.

Finally, after three of these stops, they reach the street they were investigating earlier, which is really the only one they have any interest in. Based on what they've seen so far, though, Grantaire is not massively hopeful that they're going to learn anything of use here tonight.

“We can leave after this part, right?” he asks out of the corner of his mouth.

“Yes,” Enjolras says without argument.

The street isn't near any bars or clubs, and at this time of night all the quaint little boutiques are closed, and so it is completely deserted apart from their party, which makes it perhaps slightly creepier than it was in daylight, but no less ordinary-looking. The guide launches into an enthusiastic account of all the strange things that have been happening here, on what is apparently 'the most haunted street in Amsterdam right now', as if maybe that's a sought-after title they hand out once a year. At least most of the things he lists this time are things they know actually happened. He makes a great deal of the broken streetlights, gesturing to them with utter finality, as if they are the ultimate confirmation of the existence of an afterlife. When he eventually pauses for breath, Enjolras clears his throat.

“So if there's a ghost haunting this area,” he says, and Grantaire can almost feel him battling to keep his tone pleasant and venom-free, “is there a theory as to who it is the ghost of?”

“I'm sorry?” The guide looks somewhat put-out at being interrupted.

“You said that ghosts are the spirits of our...ancestors.” Grantaire has to stifle a laugh when Enjolras forces the word out from between closed teeth. “So does anyone know who this particular ghost was when they were alive?”

The guide blinks at him, and then he chuckles jovially, which is almost definitely a bad sign .

“Oh, young man, you miss the point,” he says. Grantaire sees murder flash in Enjolras's eyes. “It is not the identity of a spirit that matters, but rather their actions. When we pass into the spirit-world, we shed all earthly things, including our living identities. We become simply essence – pure, spiritual energy. Spirits do not return to haunt those who might have known them in life; they return only to bring us vital messages from beyond the veil, to guide us.”

“...Right. My mistake,” Enjolras says. “And exactly what vital information are we supposed to interpret from the breaking of a few lights?”

There's a short silence, which Grantaire tries very, very hard not to break with the startled laughter he can feel bubbling behind his lips.

“Well, that's really not for me to say,” the guide says finally. He looks flustered and more than a little furious behind his showman's smile. “I merely celebrate and draw attention to the paranormal; you'd have to consult a medium if you want to truly understand the spirits.”

In a stroke of unbelievable luck, it turns out they have a bona-fide medium in the group with them tonight, and she is quick to volunteer her services. Grantaire can see that she doesn't have a psychic bone in her body, but she seems to genuinely believe that she does, and he'd really be happy to let her live with that delusion if it weren't for the fact that she is now explaining at agonisingly great length about how the destroying of the lights is a symbolic protest by the spirit-world against the living's dependence on technology and destruction of the natural environment.

He jumps when Jehan suddenly grabs his hand again – tightly, this time. Grantaire looks down at him and finds him looking back with wide eyes.

“Something's coming,” he says.

“Something?” Grantaire repeats. He casts a quick glance over at Enjolras, but he's still pretending to pay attention to the alleged medium. “What kind of something?”

It's around then that the temperature starts dropping, and fast. A few people in the group look around, puzzled, and rub absently at their arms.

“Jehan?” Grantaire says apprehensively. Ghosts aren't his specialty – given that they are not inherently evil and therefore are not something that can be destroyed with the correct application of Grace – but he gets the definite sense that something more than a little cold spot is about to happen here.

“There's someone in the water,” Jehan whispers. He's staring out at the nearby canal, at a dark patch of water left unlit by one of the broken streetlights.

“What?” Grantaire tries to follow his line of sight, and it takes him a moment but then oh shit, he sees. There's a person bobbing motionless in the water – only above the surface to the eyes, which are looking right at them.

“You can see her, right?” Jehan says, and Grantaire really isn't sure how he can tell it's a woman but he's willing to trust him on it. “But can normal people see her?”

“I don't know, ask a normal person,” Grantaire says just as the remaining streetlights start to buzz and flicker off and on. He hears a collective gasp from the group, intermingled with a few nervous giggles. It's enough to shut the medium woman up, at least, and Enjolras manages to extract himself and return to them.

“What's happening?” he asks. It's now so cold that his breath puffs out in a cloud when he speaks.

“There's a girl in the water,” Jehan says in a small, distressed voice.

“What?” Enjolras looks around wildly, as if wondering why no one is doing anything about that.

“I think he means a dead girl,” Grantaire says. “Our ghost.”

“Can you see her?” Jehan asks, pulling urgently on Enjolras's sleeve. “She's right there, can you see?”

“What? No, I can't see anything.” Enjolras shakes his head as his eyes search the empty surface of the water.

“Right.” Jehan nods absently. “That means no one else will see anything either, which is...probably best.”

“What's she doing?” Enjolras asks. The chains on the low fences bordering the canal start to sway and creak ominously despite the lack of wind, and his expression hardens. “What does she want?”

“I'd really need to ask her,” Jehan says.

“Don't you dare go over there,” Enjolras says sharply.

“I don't think she wants to come out.”

“Probably because she wants someone to come to the water's edge so that she can drag them in.”

“She hasn't hurt anyone yet,” Jehan points out. Just then, Enjolras's EMF meter, which has been humming steadily but quietly in his pocket for the last few minutes, starts crackling and wailing in earnest. He takes it out and looks at it grimly.

“That's never a good sign,” he says.

Most of the group are now huddled together like a spooked flock of sheep a small distance away, looking unsure whether this is all part of the show or not. The guide is trying to keep his cool and act like he sees this kind of thing every night, but he's stammering quite pathetically and he stops speaking entirely when the EMF meter starts making a ruckus and just stares at it uncomprehendingly. A few people are filming the events on their phones, but they suddenly scream in unison, and Grantaire doesn't know what they're seeing on-screen, but a second later all the phones start emanating white noise at a deafening volume. And, worse, a faint, hissing voice starts to seep through the static, and it's saying go away. Go. Away!

“I think we know what she wants,” Grantaire says.

“I really don't think we brought enough salt to make a ring big enough for all these people,” Enjolras says, watching the screaming, crying crowd with equal measures of concern and annoyance.

“You won't need to,” Jehan says. His voice is oddly serene, given the circumstances. “They'll be gone soon.”

That's when the display window of the nearest boutique explodes outwards.

“Oh shit!” Grantaire is quickest; he grabs both Enjolras and Jehan and hauls them down, instinctively tries to turn them away from the shower of glass because, hell, it doesn't matter if it hits him.

“What the fuck?” he hears their esteemed tour guide shriek. His voice gets fainter as he, along with the rest, turns tail and runs. “This is fucked up! Fuck it, fuck this!”

“You okay?” Grantaire asks Enjolras as the dust settles. He realises belatedly that his attempt to shield him with his own much less breakable body somehow turned into something awkwardly close to an embrace, with the two of them crouched on the ground with Enjolras's head practically tucked under his chin, and whoops. He stands up and backs off hastily.

“Um. Yeah, I'm fine, I-” Enjolras suddenly notices the one remaining member of the tour who is still standing gawping, and he glares at them. “What are you doing? Get out of here!”

The guy doesn't need to be told twice. Enjolras shakes his head, then freezes.

“...Where's Jehan?” he asks in a tone that suggests he already knows. He and Grantaire look at each other, and then simultaneously turn towards the canal.

He's there, of course. On his knees and practically hanging over the edge. He's talking.

“Calm down, please,” Grantaire can hear him saying, but Enjolras probably can't. “It's alright, they're gone, and they weren't going to hurt you anyway, and neither are we...”

“Oh my God,” Enjolras blurts out. He goes to run over there – and drag Jehan back by the hair, Grantaire supposes – but he only gets one step before Grantaire grabs his wrist and pulls him back. Enjolras stops short and looks down at the hand holding him back like he can't quite believe what he's seeing.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

“He knows what he's doing,” Grantaire says, gesturing towards Jehan. “You've got to let him do what you brought him here to do.”

Enjolras's mouth falls open.

“Are you serious?” he says, and he sounds furious and confused and betrayed. “There's a ghost in that water-!”

“And she might not be dangerous.”

“And she might be! Let go of me!” Enjolras is struggling against his grip now. It's to no avail, of course, but it feels strange and wrong to fight against him when every instinct tells Grantaire to give him what he wants – because that's what he always does. But he knows they'll never be done with this case if Enjolras won't let their psychic go and, y'know, be psychic.

“He wouldn't go over there if it wasn't safe,” he says. “He knows, Enjolras.”

“You don't know what he knows! You hardly know him! Why aren't you letting go of me?” Enjolras sounds frantic now, and his soul is an explosion of anger and fear and sheer disbelief. He pulls harder against Grantaire's hold; the look in his eyes is akin to that of an animal caught in a trap. “He's not a hunter! We're supposed to protect him! Let me go!”

And Grantaire does let him go, not because he's particularly convinced by his argument, but because he can see exactly how much distress he's in, and Grantaire can't bear to be the cause of that. He hopes Jehan will forgive him.

Before either of them can get to Jehan, though, the spirit suddenly comes shooting out of the water and clamps her hands on his shoulders. That's what Grantaire sees, at least. If she still isn't visible to non-psychic humans, then he isn't sure what Enjolras is making of the disturbed water and the fact that Jehan is now dangling dangerously far over the edge.

The ghost puts her mouth next to Jehan's ear and whispers something, but Grantaire can't hear what she says over Enjolras's startled shout and running footsteps. She then gives Jehan a powerful shove, of the kind that no living human could ever hope to match – it throws him backwards, clear over the chain fence, and leaves him sprawled on his back, wheezing for breath, on the cobblestones.

Enjolras is at his side immediately, saying his name over and over, looking perhaps more terrified than Grantaire has ever seen him. He clearly wants to offer assistance of some kind but is worried about just hurting Jehan further, and his hands flutter uselessly in the air.

“Ow,” is all Jehan has to say, as he sits up slowly with a grimace. “That hurt.”

“You're lucky she didn't kill you,” Enjolras says. His fluttering hands close into shaking fists. “She could have killed you, and I wouldn't have been able to stop it-” His eyes, bright and furious, find Grantaire. “What were you thinking?”

“I'm pretty sure he was thinking that you should trust your psychic,” Jehan says before Grantaire can even start to formulate a response. “She doesn't want to kill anyone, okay? She was never going to hurt me.”

“She just threw you across the street!”

“Not to hurt me!” Jehan snaps. He's rubbing at the back of his head, and Grantaire can distantly feel the throbbing pain there from hitting the ground, and he knows that it's only fuelling his annoyance. “I see more than you do, Enjolras! I know when it's safe and when it's not! If you can't believe that, then I don't know why you bothered bringing me here.”

He jumps to his feet despite his aches and pains and just walks away from them, the glass from the shattered shop window crunching beneath his feet. Grantaire feels like they should probably get away from here before the police show up to investigate that. Enjolras watches him go silently. He's breathing hard and his soul is more of a disaster-zone than Grantaire feels like decoding right now, but it's fairly easy to see that he isn't happy at all. Grantaire lays a tentative hand on his shoulder; Enjolras smacks it away with a vehemence that seems to surprise both of them.

“If you want to comfort someone, maybe it should be him,” Enjolras says shortly, pointing in the direction Jehan went. “Since it seems I'm the one in the wrong here.”

Grantaire snorts, puts his hands up.

“You know what?” he says. “Maybe I'll just go for a drink.”

“Right, yeah,” Enjolras says as he too starts to walk away. “I forgot that that's the answer to all your life's problems.”

Maybe that's a cruel thing to say, or maybe it's unfair, or maybe it's just true. Grantaire doesn't care. All he knows is that the warmly-lit bars of Amsterdam are a lot more welcoming than their cramped and ugly hotel room, and the same might be said for the company. He drinks and watches the laughing tourists, and then he drinks and laughs with them. He finds himself more interested in happy humans recently. Normally if he wanted to interact with humankind, he'd go to the most desolate, miserable hole he could find, perhaps because misery loves company, perhaps just to see his belief that life on this planet is a joyless punishment confirmed. But lately, he's started to notice people smiling more. He's even caught himself thinking that maybe the smiling moments aren't completely pointless in the face of the pain that is inevitably to come later. He doesn't know exactly what has caused this change in perspective, but it's certainly refreshing after so many years of steadfast pessimism, so he's happy to let it be what it is.

He falls in with a group of Irish students here on holiday; he tells them that he's from Norway, that he's on a gap year and backpacking around Europe, that he hopes to be a high school history teacher someday – he pulls the bits and pieces of his life story from stories and memories and just out of thin air, and if he contradicts himself once or twice they're all too drunk to notice. And it's nice, to lie like this, to play pretend when there's nothing at stake – to be someone other than himself, just for the night. If he adds enough detail to the story, it almost starts to feel real. And they like him – or the fake-him, or whatever – and they drink with him and they teach him bawdy songs (all of which he's heard a thousand times before, but he doesn't mind – he laughs with real delight and faked shock). And when they've had enough and go back to their hostel, he says goodbye and goes his own way. He doesn't go back to the hotel, because Enjolras is angry at him, and he's still wondering exactly why – because he thinks he put Jehan in danger? Or just because Grantaire didn't do as he was told?

He ends up perched, invisible, on the roof of the Royal Palace, watching the revellers go home to sleep and the working people waking up to start the day. He supposes it would be a better use of his time to go back to that street and see what he can find, but he'd hate to step on Jehan's toes. And, in any case, he'd much rather watch the sunrise.

Sometimes he wonders how it can be that he's seen literally millions of sunrises, and yet still finds them beautiful. Most days he doesn't bothering pondering it, though. It ruins it, he finds.

When it is officially, undeniably morning, he heaves a sigh of defeat and returns to the ground. He supposes he'll have to face the music sooner or later, and it might as well be now.

For the first time, he forgets to pick up coffee, which makes him question whether he's deliberately making this worse for himself. However, it turns out not to matter, because when he steps into the hotel room, Enjolras and Jehan are sitting at the tiny table, upon which there are already three cups of coffee.

Enjolras has short hair, he notices with slight surprise. It's a decent enough haircut, too, so he supposes that means that he and Jehan are friends again.

He isn't sure if they were talking before he came in, but there is most definitely a heavy silence as he comes inside and shuts the door behind him. Jehan looks up at him from his breakfast and offers him a sweet, sunny smile, even as he mentally assaults him with a hangover-aggravating, reproving psychic blow. Grantaire tries not to wince too obviously.

You shouldn't worry him like that, Jehan is telling him, and it takes Grantaire a moment to figure out he means Enjolras. He doesn't know you're invincible.

Grantaire sends a retaliatory rough nudge back at him, to make it clear that he's pretty sure Enjolras was not remotely concerned.

Enjolras doesn't look angry either, though, so that's something. He's still not right; his soul has gone back to the strange way it looked yesterday, with its thin film of normal gold stretched over something that he doesn't want to look at, but it looks calmer, somehow. More under control. He looks up at Grantaire with an expression he can't quite read.

“There's food,” he says, gesturing to the containers on the table. “If you want some.”

“No, thanks,” Grantaire says, because he can't summon the energy for the pretence of eating right now. He does sit down, though, and Enjolras pushes a cup of coffee towards him uncertainly.

“Thanks,” Grantaire mutters, not really sure what to make of this situation. He wishes it was a normal morning so that he could say something stupid about Enjolras's hair. It's cute like this, with the curls just brushing the tops of his ears. He liked it long too, though. And he thinks that, for a celestial being, he's really become far too interested in Enjolras's physical self.

He sips the coffee, just for something to do. It's strong and black and sugary, the way he always drinks it, because he doesn't need the caffeine but that doesn't mean he doesn't have a taste preference. He likes strong flavours, he likes to experiment with taste, because he likes to use his human vessel's senses to their full capacity. He wonders how they knew what kind of coffee to get him, then he remembers that Jehan probably got it, and Jehan is psychic.

The silence stretches on a little longer. Enjolras has stopped eating and is just sort of fidgeting. Just when it looks to be becoming unbearable, Jehan stands up and, without a word of explanation, psychically or otherwise, leaves the room.

Grantaire looks at Enjolras questioningly.

“...Sorry I shouted at you,” Enjolras says quietly. Grantaire blinks. Then frowns.

“Huh?” he says.

“This case has me stressed out. I'm used to hunting things, and that's not what we're doing here, and to be honest I don't really know what I'm doing. And then there's Jehan, and I worry a lot about Jehan, not because I don't trust him, but just...because.” Enjolras's eyes are fixed on the tabletop and his words are coming machine-gun fast. “But I shouldn't have got angry at you. So I'm sorry.”

“It's...fine?” Grantaire's frown deepens; he feels like he's awaiting the punchline here. “I shouldn't have, y'know, intervened. Wasn't my place.”

“No, you were right,” Enjolras says. “You were right and I was just...being stupid.”

“Are you alright?” Grantaire asks nervously.

Enjolras's soul comes very close to bubbling over with frustration – but it doesn't. He takes a deep breath, reins it in.

“No,” he says patiently. “I feel like shit. That's why I'm apologising.”

“You don't need to apologise to me,” Grantaire says.

“I feel like I drove you away last night,” Enjolras goes on. “That was shitty of me.”

Grantaire just shrugs, because maybe that's true, but he hadn't been angry, only avoiding Enjolras's anger. And he had a good enough night, in the end. He hadn't been planning on complaining.

“Have you slept at all?” Enjolras asks.

“Yeah, I slept,” Grantaire replies, because he can't be bothered faking a nap, either.

“Oh.” Enjolras blinks.

“What?”

“Nothing. You just...weren't here.” Enjolras shrugs.

“There are other beds in Amsterdam,” Grantaire reminds him. He's mostly joking and is taken-aback when Enjolras twitches slightly.

“Right. Right, of course,” Enjolras says hastily, looking away. Silence descends again. Grantaire takes another slurp of coffee just to make it marginally less painful. At length, Enjolras seems to find it in him to look at him again.

“Is the coffee okay?” he asks. Grantaire blinks.

“You got this?” he says. Enjolras shrugs and goes red. Grantaire finds himself smiling in merry disbelief. “You know how I take my coffee?”

“Don't say that like it's creepy that I know,” Enjolras complains, rolling his eyes and still red in the face. “We basically live together, don't we?”

“...Yeah, I guess we do.” Grantaire settles back and fights down a grin. Then, because Enjolras is huffing and embarrassed anyway, he reaches out and pulls on one of his curls, making it bounce. “And look, you've been shorn.”

“Yeah. Much more practical this way.” Enjolras rakes a hand across his scalp, and it seems crazy but Grantaire could swear he looks self-conscious, and if he was braver he'd tell him you're beautiful, you know, but he's not so he doesn't.

“Jehan's handiwork?” he asks instead.

“Yeah.”

“Not bad. Maybe I should ask him to give me a trim, too.”

“What for? Your hair never seems to grow.” Enjolras says it with mild annoyance and absolutely no suspicion, but it still makes Grantaire laugh far too nervously, and he's highly relieved when Jehan chooses that moment to come bursting back in.

“Are you two good now?” he asks from the threshold. He's already poking around in Grantaire's head and playing the whole conversation back for his viewing pleasure, but he makes a good show of being genuinely uncertain.

Enjolras doesn't say anything. It takes Grantaire a long moment to realise that he's waiting for him to answer. He's starting to regret not being here last night because seriously, did something happen to bring this on? He thinks Jehan might know, but Jehan is pointedly giving him absolutely nothing through their mind-to-mind link.

“Yeah, we're...fine? Good? Fantastic?” he says finally with a slightly panicked smile. Thankfully this seems to satisfy; Enjolras relaxes and Jehan gives a sigh of relief.

“Thank goodness,” Jehan says, coming back to the table and setting a laptop down at his place. “So we're all friends again. Unless you're cross with me?”

“I was never cross with anyone,” Grantaire says.

Of course you weren't, Jehan thinks but does not say out loud.

“What's happening with the case?” Grantaire asks in an attempt to restore some vestige of normality to this breakfast time.

“Still can't find any records of a recent violent death on that street,” Enjolras says.

“We were looking at it wrong, I think,” Jehan says, tapping away on the keyboard. “She wasn't on the street. She was in the water. So it could be that she died in the water.”

“You think she drowned?” Enjolras asks, frowning.

“Maybe.”

“Is that likely? How many people drown in the Amsterdam canals...?”

“Fifty-one in the last three years,” Jehan answers promptly, nodding at the laptop screen. “I mean, according to Google.”

“It's not a nice way to go, but would it be enough to trap a spirit here?” Enjolras says.

“It says here that all but one of those fifty-one drownings were reported as accidents,” Jehan says.

“Do you think this girl was the one exception?”

“No.” Jehan shakes his head. “I think that if you want to kill someone in this city and make it look like an accident, you make sure they end up in a canal.”

E njolras looks at him curiously; Grantaire does the same even though he's more or less getting a live feed of Jehan's thought process. Jehan turns his laptop towards them.

“There is a report of a woman drowning in the canal that runs alongside that street,” he says. “Her name was Rita Todosioska, she was here on holiday with friends, they were walking back to their hotel after a night out when she fell in the water. They were all drunk at the time, which I guess is why the police were so quick to call it an accident.”

“You don't agree?” Enjolras asks, scanning the report and the accompanying photo of the young woman in question.

“No, I don't.” Jehan's expression becomes grim. “I think she was murdered. It feels like she was murdered.”

“A non-violent spirit of a murder victim,” Grantaire muses. “Hm. Are we still calling her non-violent? She did throw you pretty far.”

“If she'd wanted to kill me, she'd have pulled me into the water, not pushed me away from it,” Jehan points out. “I think maybe she was trying to get me away from the water, since it's where she died. Maybe she feels it's dangerous.”

“Alright, so a non-violent spirit of a murder victim,” Grantaire says. “A rusalka?”

“Exactly.” Jehan nods.

“A what?” Enjolras looks slightly peeved, as he always does whenever there's a mention of a monster he hasn't heard of.

“Very specific type of spirit,” Jehan says. “From Slavic mythology, originally. Always female. Always tied to water.”

“Do you know how to deal with them?” Enjolras asks. Grantaire can practically hear him praying for it to be a simple salt-and-burn and feels sympathetic about the disappointment he's about to get.

“The only way she can move on is if her death is avenged,” Jehan says almost apologetically.

“What?” Enjolras looks about as despondent as Grantaire would have expected. “What does that involve?”

“Bringing her killer to justice, at the very least.”

Enjolras is silent for what feels like a long time, which is sort of ominous. Then he takes a deep breath.

“That's...not our area of expertise,” he says finally.

“I know,” Jehan says. “Avoiding the legitimate authorities is what hunters do best. And solving a murder committed by a human isn't something any of us have much experience at. Unless Grantaire was a homicide detective in another life?”

“Afraid not,” Grantaire says. “Psychic powers might go a long way, though. Gives us an advantage over other amateur detectives.”

“Finding out the truth isn't the problem, though; the problem is proving it.” Jehan sighs. “We can't exactly go to the police and tell them that I'm, y'know, super-psychic and that one accidental drowning was actually a murder and, oh yeah, I know who did it. We need evidence. Unless we're just going to go all vigilante justice on the culprit, but that's not really our style when it comes to human beings, is it?”

“Unfortunately, no,” Enjolras says.

“It's strange, isn't it?” Jehan says. “A monster kills a human, so you kill the monster. A human kills another human and...somehow it's different. Seems to me we should decide who's a monster and who isn't based on what they do, not on what they are.”

“No,” Grantaire says shortly. He knows this is aimed at him, and he knows Jehan means well, but...no. “Not every human is a murderer. Monsters are killers as a species. If a species is designed for nothing but killing, they should be hunted.”

He wonders if he'd be happy or horrified to see the angels hunted. They are still his family, in some distant, abstract way, and it pained him to his core when so many were wiped out by Castiel and whatever other monstrosity had infected his Grace, but he saw what they'd become before he left. Cold, pitiless and horribly cruel. Their disdain for humans had become boundless, and they killed them when the urge got too strong. They would wrap it up in sermons and excuses and talk of divine punishment, but Grantaire thinks that they just couldn't stand to see the human race doing too well. So they gave the orders to smite and kill, and the rest of them obeyed, and he wishes he could say that he was not one of those who obeyed but he was. He brought death upon the Earth along with his brothers and sisters, and he knows he will never forget the things he saw, the things they did. He remembers the countless bodies floating, bloated and with glassy half-open eyes, in the waters of the Great Flood; he remembers the agonised wailing of thousands of desperate people on the brink of death because all the water was blood and all the livestock had been struck dead with disease and locusts were consuming everything else. It makes him wonder how he can sit here with two humans and act as if he is their friend and not their natural predator. Surely that, along with everything else, makes him a monster?

“But there are exceptions, aren't there?” Enjolras says suddenly. Grantaire blinks.

“What?” he asks.

“There are exceptions. Monsters who don't want to hurt anyone, and so shouldn't be hunted.” Enjolras looks a little uncertain. “That's why we're here, right?”

Grantaire manages to laugh.

“Never thought I'd hear that from you,” he says. “But alright, yes, there are exceptions. But that still doesn't mean we can just hunt down and kill whoever murdered this girl.”

“We should probably worry about finding out who killed her before we worry too much about what we're going to do about it,” Jehan says. “One step at a time, and all that.”

“Maybe you two should go back to where you saw her, then,” Enjolras says. “See if you can get her to talk.”

“You don't want to come?” Jehan asks, frowning.

“If there's nothing to hunt, then I won't be much use.” Enjolras smiles and shrugs like this really doesn't bother him, but that thin gold layer around his soul looks so stretched and strained that Grantaire fully expects it to burst at any moment. “I'm sure I can find something to do around here. Research. Or something.”

Grantaire can't help but feel a little doubtful about that, as well as highly confused as to why he isn't the one being left behind, but the morning has been odd enough so far and he doesn't want to make it worse by arguing. Jehan looks like he wants to argue, but in the end just shakes his head like he really doesn't have the energy. He puts his laptop away, and then he and Grantaire head out onto Vossiusstraat.

“You know Enjolras thinks you slept in my room last night, right?” Jehan says as they go along.

“What?” Grantaire says.

“And you know this is him 'giving us space', right?”

“What?” Grantaire says again.

Jehan looks at him with a pained expression and says no more about it.

“Did you and Enjolras talk while I was gone last night?” Grantaire asks instead of pursuing whatever warped string of thought Jehan had been following.

“You know we did,” Jehan says, smiling faintly. “Not least because he wouldn't have got a haircut if we hadn't talked first.”

There's something like a locked door in front of the memories of the conversation, letting Grantaire know that it's something private, and he could break the door down without even trying but he doesn't and he won't.

“I can't help but be curious as to exactly what you said to him,” he admits. “He doesn't seem himself today.”

“He seems exactly like himself,” Jehan says.

“You think?”

“I know.” Jehan nods. “I didn't put any ideas in his head or guilt-trip him or whatever you're thinking. We just talked, and he decided what he wanted to do, and what he wanted to do was make things alright between the two of you.”

“I wasn't even angry,” Grantaire snorts.

“Maybe not, but disappearing for the night sort of makes it seem like you are,” Jehan says with a shrug. “With Enjolras, all I did was tell him that if he thought that was the right thing to do, he should do it and be clear about it. Not many people are lucky enough to have a mutually psychic bond going on, after all.” He nudges Grantaire's arm as they walk, sending a happy little pulse through their linked minds. “Most people have to work a little harder to understand each other. I'm all about good communication. You should think about that, too.”

Grantaire nods dubiously. He'd always known that humans are sort of odd – sort of fundamentally different from angels – but he was never truly aware of how very complicated they are until he met these two.

On the haunted street, the shattered glass from the night before has been swept up and the broken window covered by a large sheet of plastic. Apart from that, it's hard to believe that anything ever happened here. It looks utterly unassuming in the light of day.

“Do you have a plan?” Grantaire asks.

“I just want to try and talk to her,” Jehan says with a shrug. “She seemed really scared last night, but there were a lot of people here. Maybe she'll be more talkative if it's just me.”

“I'll hang back, then.”

“You don't think she'll want to talk to an angel?” Jehan asks.

“As I keep telling you, angels don't live up to the reputation that humans have assigned to them,” Grantaire says. He goes to sit on the bench where they sat together yesterday. “I'll wait over here.”

Unfortunately, it seems that their ghost is feeling even shyer now than last night. Grantaire can hear Jehan softly calling her by name as he walks up and down the water's edge, but he seems to get no response whatsoever. The ghost doesn't manifest – which is probably a blessing given that someone would probably notice something like that – and she doesn't reach out psychically either. It's like she's just gone again, and in the end Jehan comes to sit next to Grantaire with a defeated sigh. He was getting some odd looks from passersby, who probably think he's drunk or ate one too many brownies, but Jehan hasn't paid them any mind. Grantaire supposes that, sadly, he must be used to people looking at him like that by now.

“No luck, huh?” he says.

“I don't understand,” Jehan says, shaking his head.

“Maybe she's nocturnal,” Grantaire says, and he's only joking but Jehan frowns thoughtfully.

“Why, though?” he says. “There would have to be a reason. Why would she only come out at night?”

Grantaire hums and shrugs.

“Why does she come out at all?” he says. “Do you know why she appeared during the tour last night?”

“I...” Jehan pauses, looking doubtful. “She was scared. I thought she just didn't like the crowd.”

“Why, though?” Grantaire prompts. “Rusalki aren't known for being territorial. Why would she want to chase people away?”

“Do you know something?” Jehan asks him, prodding at his mind to see if he's hiding something.

“No more than you,” Grantaire says. “Some things just don't add up. I'm just asking the questions.”

Jehan is quiet for a long time. His thoughts are troubled and lead him in frustrating circles, but then, finally, there's a flash of inspiration so sudden and bright that Grantaire nearly jumps.

“She was saying 'go away',” Jehan says, twisting around on the bench to look out at the still water of the canal. “The echoes I heard, and the voice coming through those people's phones, it was 'go away', over and over.”

“Right?” Grantaire says uncertainly.

“When she pushed me away from the water, she didn't say 'go away'; she said 'get away'. 'You need to get away', that's what she said.” Jehan's thoughts are rushing by in a blur now. “It's...she's not scared of us, or crowds, or people. It's something else. It's here, it's something about the street and the water and night-time. Something about it scares her, and she's trying to keep people away.”

“She died here, in the water, at night-time,” Grantaire reminds him. “She doesn't have the best associations with this place. It could be that.”

“Maybe?” Jehan doesn't look convinced, though. “I wish I could ask her.”

“There's really no way for you to talk to her unless she comes out?”

“Technically I could summon her. We know her name and I have everything we'd need back at the hotel. But forcing her to manifest isn't exactly going to endear us to her, is it?” Jehan twists his mouth from side to side, thinking, thinking. “She might be able to hear me. Just now, I mean. She's tethered to this spot, so even if she can't or won't come out right now, she still might be able to hear.”

He seems to think it's worth a try; he goes back to the water's edge and he talks to the empty air – he addresses the ghost of Rita Todosioska in English, since he judges that is most likely to be their common language, and he tells her his name, and Grantaire's name and Enjolras's name, and he tells her that they are here to help her, and that he only wants to talk to her. He gets more strange looks. When he's done, he turns around to see Grantaire looking coolly at a trio of teenaged boys watching with raised eyebrows. Jehan just gives them a polite smile and tugs Grantaire to his feet.

“Don't worry about people staring,” he says as they resume walking. “I'm more than used to it.”

“Where are we going now?” Grantaire asks when he notices that they are heading in the opposite direction from their hotel.

“Anywhere,” Jehan says. “You know, I hear there are shops that just sell Dutch cheese around here. A whole shop. Just cheese. And you can try the cheese. We should find one of those.”

“Won't Enjolras consider that truanting?” Grantaire asks, amused.

“He might. But I don't think there's much else we can do about the case right now, is there? And I feel like we shouldn't go back to the hotel yet. I think Enjolras wants to be alone just now.” Jehan pauses and frowns. “Actually, I'm not totally sure what Enjolras wants. Even being psychic, he is very hard to get a read on. And he's even worse than usual just now. I don't think even he knows what he wants. But some alone time might do him good.”

“You know better than me,” Grantaire says. He's quite well-versed in the art of not having a clue what to do with Enjolras. “Am I ever going to get the story of how you two met?”

“It's not the story of how we met that you want,” Jehan laughs, sifting easily through their shared headspace for Grantaire's real question. “You want to know what came after. Why he lets me boss him around and such.”

“You two seem very close, and he isn't the easiest person to get close to,” Grantaire says.

“Well, that's hunters for you, isn't it? Danger follows them everywhere, so they keep everyone at arm's length. I always feel bad for them.” Jehan looks mournful, but then something catches his eye and his expression brightens. “Look, that shop has a lot of cheese in the window. This is promising.”

He scampers inside and is clearly delighted to find that the rumours were true and that there are in fact free samples of just about every type of cheese imaginable. Grantaire lets him go stuff his face, but watches him expectantly until he gives up pretending not to notice and sighs.

“It's awkward, okay? I don't know how much Enjolras wants to keep private,” he says.

“Maybe you shouldn't say anything, then. He doesn't like me to know much of anything,” Grantaire says. “He was ever so cross when I discovered the existence of his pre-hunting friends.”

“His college friends? You met them?”

“Glimpsed them, more like. I didn't talk to them much.”

“Still! I've never met them.”

“As I said, he was very cross that I did.”

Jehan snorts and rolls his eyes.

“If he really didn't want you to know they existed, he'd have made you wait in another country while he went to Lyon,” he says.

When they finally leave the cheese shop, Jehan unexpectedly relents.

“With Enjolras and I, there was a definite turning point,” he says suddenly. “When we first met, he wasn't sure what to think of me. And I thought he was so scary. It's funny in hindsight, because now I know that he was, like, just a baby hunter back then. A novice. But at the time he seemed so intimidating!”

“So what changed?” Grantaire asks.

“Nothing good.” Jehan shakes his head sadly. “It was after Feuilly got killed. I was...upset. He was always nice to me. And, y'know, saved my life a few times. But I wasn't as close to him as Enjolras was. Enjolras was a mess.”

Grantaire doesn't voice any scepticism. Just yesterday he'd doubted that Enjolras had grieved much for his mentor, but that was before he saw him completely lose his head because he thought Jehan might be in danger. And he finds himself thinking back to Lyon, and Enjolras's steely determination to protect his friends, and he knows that he was wrong to doubt. Enjolras doesn't let himself get attached to many people, but when it does happen, they become the most important people in his world.

“He was a mess, but he pretended not to be, and threw himself straight back into hunting. And, of course, immediately got hurt. You can't hunt if you're not focused. I...” Jehan hesitates. “I went to find him. I just had a feeling, you know? I'm not often psychic in that way but sometimes I just know I have to go somewhere, I have to do something. I knew he was in trouble. I found him in a hospital in Switzerland. Everyone thought he was dead, you know. His phone got broken while he was fighting whatever monster it was that got him, and he hadn't tried to call Combeferre from the hospital.”

And that, perhaps more than anything, gives Grantaire an idea of how bad Enjolras's mental state must have been at the time. He can't imagine Enjolras failing to check in with Combeferre.

“I made him come home with me, and I made him stay a while,” Jehan is saying. He smiles fondly as he remembers. He's pointedly not showing Grantaire any images through their mind-link, though; apparently the story is just a little too personal for that. “That was when he learned I'm not a pushover, and that was when I learned he wasn't so scary after all. He needed help, and I decided he was going to get it whether he liked it or not.” He laughs. “I held him hostage for a few months at least. Made sure he ate and slept. He learned to take care of himself because he knew if he didn't, I'd do it for him. It was...I don't know. It was a sad time, but we were both less sad by the end of it.”

“Thank you,” Grantaire says, which probably seems like a weird thing to say but it feels very important. “If you hadn't done that, I get the feeling that I never would have met him.”

Jehan blushes and ducks his head.

“Also,” he says, moving on swiftly, “he's not very good at understanding his own feelings. A lot of the time, I think he just doesn't want to look at them at all. He thought he could just ignore how sad he was, but he was wrong. He had to look at it, had to come through it. A psychic friend is helpful with that sort of thing.”

“That must have been fun for both of you,” Grantaire remarks grimly.

“I'm telling you this so that you understand for sure that he is only human,” Jehan says. “I think that you forget that sometimes, maybe. I know he tries to act strong, but he can't be strong all the time.” He shoots Grantaire a smile. “I need to know you're looking after him when I'm not around, okay?”

“I can usually protect him from monsters,” Grantaire snorts. “But I can't look after him like you do.”

“I think you're doing a pretty good job,” Jehan says contentedly. “I'm really glad he has you, you know.”

“I'm pretty glad too,” Grantaire says. “It's a shame, really, that he isn't.”

Jehan just rolls his eyes again.

“I don't know if this is a psychic hunch or just wishful thinking, but I don't think anything is going to happen with our ghost at least until it gets dark,” he says, latching onto Grantaire's arm. “So come on, I want to look at dumb souvenirs.”

 

Chapter Text

 

 

 

~

“I can't believe you bought ornamental clogs,” Grantaire remarks as he and Jehan finally leave the last in a long, long line of souvenir shops.

“What would you rather I bought? A t-shirt declaring how much I enjoyed the red-light district?” Jehan laughs, stowing his purchases away in his bag.

“They had some nice hash pipes.”

“Maybe I've already got one of those at home,” Jehan says, and Grantaire has to peek inside his head to see if he's joking or not. He isn't.

“Clogs, though,” he persists. “Sort of cliché.”

“They're pretty. It's a nice cliché,” Jehan informs him. He bought lots of tulip bulbs, too. He told Grantaire that his house has a big garden, and that he spends a lot of time taking care of it. Grantaire said he'd like to see it someday.

“It's getting late. Should we go back to the hotel?” Grantaire asks. Jehan hums for a moment.

“No,” he says finally. “Let's drag Enjolras out.”

“Out?”

“For food! We should eat out. Instead of smuggling stuff up to our rooms like barbarians.”

“Good luck convincing him,” Grantaire says with a dry smile.

“Oh, I'll convince him.”

And, somehow, he does. They pick a place (Italian – ironically, there appears to be a shortage of actual Dutch eateries here in Amsterdam) and find a table and after some time Enjolras joins them. He looks sort of confused by this notion they've taken – after all, eating to Enjolras is a matter of fuel and survival and necessity, not pleasure – but doesn't say anything about it. Grantaire considers standing up and making a big dumb show of pulling a chair out for him, but Jehan apparently sees what he's thinking and gives him a good, psychic smack.

Don't you dare, you'll spook him, he silently scolds.

...Whatever that means. Grantaire leans back in his seat and instead just raises a hand in lazy greeting as Enjolras sits down.

“Any particular reason for this?” he asks, eyeing the two of them suspiciously.

“I felt like being civilised,” Jehan tells him. “And I've seen how much pizza you can eat. Don't even pretend to be annoyed.”

“So you do have some foods you like more than others,” Grantaire says triumphantly. “I knew it.”

Enjolras blinks and looks at him oddly.

“I don't remember ever saying that I didn't,” he says.

“What? But.” Grantaire flaps his hands in frustration. “I always ask you what kind of food you want, and you always say it doesn't matter!”

“Well. It doesn't,” Enjolras says, shrugging.

Grantaire lets out a pained whine.

“There, there,” Jehan says, hiding his smile behind a menu. “I know all his secrets. He likes strawberries, too.”

“That's not a secret,” Enjolras mutters.

“You promised me you'd take care of yourself,” Jehan says chidingly, poking his arm. “That involves enjoying yourself occasionally, you know.”

“Where are we at with the case?” Enjolras asks, artfully changing the subject. “Did you two find anything?”

“No sign of the spirit,” Jehan tells him. “Current theory is that she only comes out at night, but I haven't figured out why that would be yet. Anything at your end?”

“Nothing,” Enjolras says dully. Grantaire isn't surprised. He suspects Enjolras was probably reduced to watching cat videos on youtube, if he stayed in the hotel all day.

“Maybe another tour will show up to antagonise her tonight,” Grantaire says. “That should keep us from getting too bored.”

“Not the same tour, though,” Jehan says with a snigger. “I don't think that guy is going to lead another ghost tour for as long as he lives.”

After some time, Grantaire is struck by the surprising realisation that this is shaping up to be a very ordinary meal. They eat, and are careful to talk about things that wouldn't sound concerning to any normal person who might overhear. Jehan laughs frequently; Enjolras less so, but he wears a small smile and his soul looks more relaxed than it has since they arrived in Amsterdam. The three of them look no different from any other group of people in this restaurant. For a moment, it'd be easy to pretend that they are just three friends here on vacation, and not a hunter, a psychic and a monster here on their own particular brand of business.

The illusion is shattered somewhat when he manages to steer the topic of conversation around to how Enjolras and Jehan met. Because maybe the part where they properly became friends was more interesting, but he wants to hear this part too – he likes to hear any story about Enjolras when he was younger, when he was maybe a little less consumed by the hunting lifestyle. Enjolras and Jehan exchange looks when he asks.

“You tell it better than I do,” Jehan says.

“But we've never told it before,” Enjolras says, looking puzzled.

Jehan rolls his eyes and promptly stuffs his mouth full of pasta before holding up his hands as if to say, oh dear, I seem to be unable to speak right now. Enjolras sighs.

“It was in...late '08?” he says with a thoughtful frown. “I hadn't been hunting for very long. Feuilly was still teaching me. And we got sent to this tiny little town in the south of France...”

“My town!” Jehan interjects brightly after mightily swallowing everything in his mouth.

“Jehan's town,” Enjolras agrees with a small smile. “Though I think, at the time, you'd have preferred to be just about anywhere else.”

“I wasn't loving life, no.”

“The place was crawling with demons,” Enjolras says. “I've never seen so many in one place. We knew something was weird almost as soon as we arrived, but when we realised that most of the town was possessed...”

“Not me, though,” Jehan says.

“No, you were doing a good job of lying low.”

“I wasn't doing a good job of much else though. See, at the time, I didn't know there were people out there crazy enough to want to hunt monsters full time, so I didn't know there was anyone I could call for help. All I knew was that something wasn't right and that I should duck and cover.”

“You can tell when someone is possessed?” Grantaire asks.

“Of course. I'd be a pretty useless psychic if I couldn't see something like that.”

“How did you manage to hide from them?”

“The ghost I lived with taught me how to make hex bags.” Jehan waves a hand flippantly and moves on before Grantaire can question that. “But anyway. The town was full of demons, I was hiding, and then my two heroes came charging to the rescue.”

“Not quite,” Enjolras says dryly. “We probably would have got killed or possessed ourselves if you hadn't come and got us off the street.”

“It was a team effort,” Jehan says happily.

“The demons had some...plan,” Enjolras goes on. “The town has one church. I'm sure you know churches are holy ground. For whatever reason, the demons were targeting the church. They were planning this ritual to...hm. To defile it, I suppose? Make it unholy. I don't know why that church or why that town but that's what they were doing.”

“What was the ritual?” Grantaire asks, already knowing.

“Killing everyone, basically,” Enjolras says. “I'm sure there was a bit more to it than that, but that was the part we were concerned about.”

“But you stopped them?”

“Yeah.” Enjolras's smile widens briefly – the lingering pride of a job well done and many lives saved. “Between the three of us, we pulled it off.”

Grantaire stares at the two of them in wonder. They're probably aware that they accomplished quite a feat that day, but he doesn't think they know exactly how great a feat. He remembers 2008 as a very bad year – the year the angels touched down on Earth for the first time in memory, and the year that the demons set about breaking the sixty-six seals necessary to free Lucifer from his prison. 2008 was like the pre-drinks before the Apocalypse party of the following year.

Defiling holy ground is one of the seals, that much Grantaire knows. Enjolras and his friends prevented a seal from being broken. He wishes he could impress upon them how big a deal that is. Even if it ultimately made no difference.

“Sounds like a great bonding experience,” he says instead.

“It was memorable, that's for sure,” Enjolras says.

“And then!” Jehan pipes up. “After all was said and done, the two of them went and got rid of my ghost.”

Enjolras says nothing, but his gaze drops to the table and his soul gives a small shudder, as if this is something he'd rather not be reminded of.

“Yes, you keep mentioning this ghost of yours,” Grantaire says.

“She haunted my house,” Jehan tells him. “When she was alive, she was psychic, too. She was nice. She taught me a lot of stuff.”

“Feuilly was worried she'd go vengeful, eventually,” Enjolras mutters. “And turn on you, maybe.”

“Uh huh. And you both thought I was a dumb kid caught under her spell, I know.” Jehan's tone is light enough, but Grantaire gets the impression that this is genuinely quite a sore spot between them. “Though I guess I encouraged that idea with all the crying I did after.”

“I still think it was for the best,” Enjolras says uncomfortably. “But we should have talked to you about it first. Given you a chance to say goodbye.”

“Yeah, life would be so much easier if people would just talk to each other,” Jehan says. Grantaire is almost sure that his eyes flick pointedly between him and Enjolras as he says it. “I guess it was for the best. I don't think she'd have gone vengeful, but she was trapped here and I didn't know how to...to...”

He trails off, looking over his shoulder and out the nearby window with a slow frown.

“...Jehan?” Enjolras says after a moment. Grantaire notices for the first time, with a feeling of trepidation, that they've lost track of time, and that it is very dark outside. Night-time.

“We need to go,” Jehan says. “She's shouting for us.”

“The ghost?”

“Yeah, I told her we'd help, told her we'd come...” Jehan shakes his head sharply and gets to his feet. “Something's wrong, we need to go.”

“Right.” Enjolras throws a pile of banknotes down on their table and they hurry out of the restaurant.

When they reach the haunted street, it is immediately apparent that something is indeed wrong. There is a small cluster of people gathered at the canal bank, staring into the water and making a lot of distressed-sounding noise. The spirit is floating in the water almost directly under their noses, but they don't seem to be able to see her – which means, presumably, that Enjolras won't be able to see her either. Grantaire is so grateful that they have Jehan here to non-suspiciously bridge their gap in perception.

The spirit notices them. She disappears, and then just as quickly reappears a little further upstream, closer to them. She reaches towards them with her pale arms but, as they had suspected, she seems unable to leave the water. She looks like she's crying. Grantaire, millennia-old angel or not, had had no idea that spirits could cry.

“Please, help,” she says. Water runs out of her mouth when she speaks, making her voice garbled. “Please.”

By now, the group at the water's edge have noticed them too, and one of them – a girl in her late teens – suddenly grabs Enjolras by the arm and starts wailing at him in Polish.

“My friend, he fell in, can you help? Can you get the police, can you get someone?” she's saying, but Enjolras doesn't speak a word of Polish and, as far as Enjolras is aware, neither does Grantaire, and they can only stare helplessly at her. Grantaire realises that none of the group can be older than eighteen, and they all look very drunk despite the fact that it's barely ten. Their first holiday without parental supervision, he supposes. It looks like it's going great.

“Someone's in the canal,” Jehan says, his eyes scanning the water's surface. “Someone's down there, and there's something...I don't know, something's weird...”

“Weirdness can wait. There's a person in there?” Enjolras demands, and Grantaire thinks, great, because Enjolras is going to want to go in there after them. He wouldn't be happy about that any day, but he's getting a series of psychic warning bells from Jehan – a rapid fire of signals that just scream that something is wrong here – and he knows that he can't let either of them near the water.

“Hold this,” he grunts as he shrugs out of his jacket and dumps it in Enjolras's arms.

“Why, what are you- Grantaire!” He barely hears Enjolras's yell as he steps over the low barrier and jumps into the canal.

The water is cold and suspiciously murky, and he's very grateful that he's not susceptible to any water-borne diseases. Their spirit is suddenly down here with him, and she's looking at him curiously. He wonders if she can tell he isn't human. Whatever the case, she seems to decide they have other priorities right now; she points downwards. Grantaire swims down, following the weak flicker of a human soul somewhere near the canal bed.

When he finds the kid, it suddenly becomes clear why Jehan was getting such strange and sinister psychic signals.

The boy didn't fall into the canal – not without help, anyway. His unmoving body is currently in the grip of a thoroughly ugly creature, with dully glowing red eyes that glare at Grantaire through the murk. Its body is thick and bloated-looking, like a long-drowned corpse, its face is wide and frog-like, and its skin is black and scaly and covered with odd, greenish growths. However, it clearly isn't stupid; judging by the sudden widening of its red eyes, it can definitely see that Grantaire is something more powerful than a human, and it drops its victim and disappears into the gloom.

Grantaire would dearly like to go after it and kill it and have that be the end of it, but given that he's unarmed, that might be a little difficult to explain. And anyway, he doesn't think the boy the thing dragged down here would last that long – his soul is already diminishing like the dying embers of a fire. Grantaire grabs him and heads for the surface.

When he breaks the surface of the water, he is met by a cacophony of screams. He blinks, thinking that something else horrific must have happened while he was underwater, but then he realises that it's just the group of drunk teenagers screaming and crying in relief.

Enjolras isn't screaming – Enjolras isn't saying anything. He's staring down at Grantaire with a wide-eyed, stricken look on his face and, Grantaire notices, Jehan has one arm wrapped tightly around his torso, as if he's been holding him back.

He swims for the bank and Enjolras and Jehan snap into action, reaching down to help him and his cargo back onto dry ground. Grantaire is sure to make a show of gasping for air, because humans need to breathe.

“What were you thinking?” Enjolras is saying. The group of kids are crowding round them and making a lot of noise, but he only really hears Enjolras. He sounds somewhat fraught. “I mean, you could've...what if...”

“Someone had to, right?” Grantaire says, pushing his dripping hair back out of his eyes.

“Are you alright?” Enjolras asks, and it's that same tentative, uncertain voice that Grantaire remembers from his unexpected apology that morning, that voice that makes him sound like he's on thin ice and is unsure how to proceed.

“Is he alright?” Jehan interrupts, indicating to the unconscious form of the boy Grantaire dragged from the canal.

“He'll be fine,” Grantaire says, laying the boy down flat on his back and dealing him a solid (and possibly Grace-imbued) thump to the chest with his fist. The boy jerks awake immediately and starts coughing up water. “See, he's good.”

“We called the emergency services while you were under,” Jehan says. “Which was fun since you're the only one who speaks any Dutch. But we should probably clear out before they get here.”

“Right, yeah.” Grantaire gets to his feet, and they leave the crowd of teenagers to fuss over their friend.

“Do you want this?” Enjolras asks him, holding out his jacket.

“Keep it dry for me, will you?” Grantaire says with a short laugh. Enjolras nods mutely and tucks it under his arm.

They're only a few streets away when they hear the sirens approaching. Grantaire can feel Jehan poking curiously at his mind.

“You saw something down there,” he says suddenly.

“Nothing good,” Grantaire confirms.

They both look at him questioningly. He shrugs.

“The good news is, you get to kill something after all,” he says, nodding in Enjolras's direction. “The bad news is there's a monster in the canal.”

They get back to the hotel, and the two of them set about questioning him while he just stands and drips all over the carpet. He tells them everything about what he saw, and when he's done, Jehan gives a loud groan and throws himself face-down on the nearest bed.

“Jehan?” Enjolras says, perplexed.

“Fire me,” Jehan's muffled voice says. “I'm the worst psychic ever and I deserve to be fired.”

“Um?”

“I should have been able to piece this together before someone else nearly got drowned!” Jehan rolls onto his back and waves his arms and kicks his legs agitatedly. He looks sort of like a flipped tortoise. “Rita, the ghost girl, she's not a rusalka, not exactly, she's....” He makes a frustrated noise. “The thing Grantaire saw, it's a vodyanoy. They're monsters that live in freshwater and...They drown people, they lure them to the water's edge and they drown them. And the people they kill, their spirits are trapped. The vodyanoy feeds off them.”

“So the ghost, she's...?” Enjolras starts.

“She's been trying to protect people this whole time,” Jehan says. “Vodyanoy hunt at night, so she only comes out at night. And she tries to warn people away from the water so that it can't kill anyone else.”

“And tonight she didn't manage.”

“That thing's feeding on her spirit,” Jehan reminds him. “She must be getting weaker. We need to kill it quickly, she's probably the only thing tethering it to that specific area. Once she becomes too weak, it could roam freely around all the canals in the city. We'd never find it.”

“We could go back right now,” Enjolras says.

“The police might be keeping an eye on that area tonight to make sure no other drunk tourists decide to go swimming,” Grantaire says. “Maybe wait until tomorrow.”

Enjolras grimaces – as Grantaire knows only too well, he hates waiting.

“Alright, so how do we kill it?” he asks, folding his arms.

“You have a blade that kills anything,” Grantaire says. “You don't need to ask that question.”

“There's one blade and three of us. If anything goes wrong, I want a plan B,” Enjolras says with a frown.

“I'm pretty sure daylight kills them but dragging it out of the water in the light of day seems like a bad idea,” Jehan says from the bed. “They say that seawater is deadly to them, too, so I guess salt?”

“How do you two know so much about such obscure creatures?” Enjolras asks incredulously.

“Are you kidding? Dark folklore is my lifeblood,” Jehan says with a grin. “Not sure what Grantaire's excuse is.”

“I listen,” Grantaire says. He psychically informs Jehan that he is very touched by the opportunities to come clean that he keeps providing him with, but that he should really stop doing that. “I'm going to go for a shower. That canal water was so not clean.”

Showering is one of a few human things that, while unnecessary for him, he has come to quite enjoy. He stands under the warm spray and listens to Jehan and Enjolras talking through the wall. After a while, Jehan excuses himself to go to bed, and so when he steps out of the bathroom, clean and in dry clothes, Enjolras is alone. He looks up as Grantaire pads into the room, rubbing his hair with a towel. Enjolras looks like he's trying to smile but isn't quite managing it.

“I still can't believe you did that,” he says finally. Grantaire laughs.

“Yeah, it was a bit heroic, wasn't it? Not so much my style,” he says.

“I didn't say that,” Enjolras says with a shrug, looking away. “Just. You didn't even think about it, you just went...” He gives a small laugh, and it sounds sort of shaky. “I was...startled.”

“Well.” Grantaire drapes the towel around his neck and lets his wet curls hang around his ears and forehead. “I knew if I didn't, then you would. And I'm much more expendable than you.”

“That's not true,” Enjolras protests with more heat that Grantaire would have expected. He blinks.

“You're the one who's going to save the world, Enjolras,” he says. “I'm just the tag-along.”

“No, that's- You're not any less important.” Enjolras looks frustrated, aghast; he gets to his feet and it brings them very close together, but not touching. He raises a hand, like he wants to grab Grantaire by the collar or shoulder to drive his point home, but in the end he just lets it hover meaninglessly in the air for a few moments before dropping it to his side again. “You're not expendable.”

“Alright,” Grantaire says carefully, gently, the way he always does when he says something without really thinking and Enjolras gets upset. “Alright. Okay.”

Enjolras's eyes are burning into his, his soul indignant and fiery, but then he looks away again, the muscles in the hinge of his jaw tensing.

“That thing could have killed you,” he says. He sounds almost accusing. Grantaire wants to say something like well, better me than you or Jehan, but apparently that kind of talk isn't going down so well today.

“We go up against things that could kill us almost every day,” he says instead. “It's sort of an occupational hazard.”

Enjolras sits down at the table again and puts his head in his hands.

“I'm going to be so glad when this case is over,” he mutters to the tabletop.

~

They spend a lot of the next day arguing over how exactly they're going to kill this thing. Their best strategy seems to be to let the vodyanoy lure one of them towards the water, let it think it has them, and then...well. Stab it in the face, Grantaire supposes. The question is which one of them should do the deed.

To his annoyance, Grantaire has to eliminate himself from the running pretty early in the debate.

“It saw me when I was in the water last night,” he admits. “And it knows I saw it, too. It'd be suspicious if I came back after that.”

More to the point, the thing would never show itself to him – it knows full well that he could vaporise it with a single touch. Luckily, Enjolras accepts the alternate version without question. He looks a little relieved, actually.

“Okay, look, the way these things lure people to them...” Jehan pauses briefly to chew thoughtfully on the end of a pen. “The old folk tales say that they play some kind of enchanting music, but it's more likely that they do something that messes with your mind. Otherwise why would anyone go near it? Grantaire made it sound pretty ugly.”

“Think giant inflatable frog from hell,” Grantaire says from where he's doodling in a corner.

“I might be the best at withstanding its mind-fuckery, that's all I'm saying,” Jehan says.

Enjolras is less than happy with this suggestion. It's written all over his face and in the smoky purple apprehension in his soul.

“If anything went wrong, we'd be kind of screwed, though,” Grantaire puts in. “We might not know until it was too late to help you.”

“Hm?” Jehan narrows his eyes at him, still gnawing on his pen. He's floating around in Grantaire's mind, as usual, and knows exactly what he's playing at.

“If Enjolras went, you could be in his head the whole time,” Grantaire says with a shrug. “You might even be able to help him fight off the thing's luring-whatever. And if it got him under its influence, you'd know straight away and we could jump in.”

“That makes sense,” Enjolras says a little too quickly. Jehan heaves a dramatic sigh.

“You're just eager to be the one in peril, as usual,” he grouches before pointing an accusing finger at Grantaire. “And you're very bad for encouraging him.”

“Maybe I just want to keep you safe, darling,” Grantaire says in amusement.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees something ripple across the surface of Enjolras's soul, too quick for him to discern. When he turns to look properly, it's gone.

“You just don't think I'd be any good at stabbing things,” Jehan retorts, a little too loudly, like he's trying to divert attention away from what Grantaire just said. Which is odd. “I could do it, you know.”

“I know you could,” Enjolras says. “I'd just prefer it if you didn't have to.”

“...Alright,” Jehan says. He only sounds a tiny bit sulky. “I guess I'd prefer if I didn't have to, too.”

And that settles it, apparently. When it gets dark, they head back to the street that they're all getting quite sick of seeing. Enjolras has Grantaire's blade hidden under his red coat, and each of them is armed with a tub of salt just in case things go awry. The plan is for Grantaire and Jehan to hang back – they figure Enjolras will make a more appealing target if he appears to be alone.

“It seems to target drunk people, too,” Grantaire says under his breath as they station themselves in a shadowy nook between buildings. “Maybe you should act drunk.”

Enjolras gives him a look before turning on his heel and heading out onto the street.

“You in his head?” Grantaire asks Jehan.

“Yeah,” he confirms. “He's thinking you're an idiot.”

“Really?” Grantaire says without much surprise.

“No. That's actually what I'm thinking.”

“What?”

“Shh, pay attention.” Jehan gestures towards Enjolras. He slowly walks the full length of the street; when nothing happens, he goes over and perches on one of the barriers near the water's edge, as if waiting for someone. Luckily, the place is deserted. Maybe the rest of Amsterdam is finally catching on.

For a long time, absolutely nothing happens. Grantaire shifts impatiently. Monster stake-outs are definitely the least glamorous part of any hunting job. He thinks Enjolras must be getting very uncomfortable, leaning against the metal pole of the barrier. He's doing an admirable job of pretending to be absorbed with his phone. Grantaire wonders what he's doing. Texting Courfeyrac? Playing Angry Birds?

Something in the atmosphere shifts.

“Wow.” Grantaire feels goosebumps rise on his arms as a chill goes through the air. “I think it's coming.”

“It is,” Jehan says.

“Warn him,” Grantaire says, nodding towards Enjolras.

“I know what I'm doing,” Jehan says, not taking his eyes off Enjolras once. “He knows. It's seeping into his head already.”

“You've got to keep it out,” Grantaire says.

“I'm trying. I need to concentrate.”

Grantaire takes that as his cue to shut up. He watches tensely as Enjolras turns slowly to face the water. Is he mind-whammied or just pretending to be? It's hard to tell. His soul looks clear enough, but his soul hasn't been such a great indicator recently.

The street is almost in complete darkness due to all the broken street-lamps, but there is just enough light for Grantaire to see a black, webbed hand slither out of the water and onto the bank. It's followed by a second hand, and the vodyanoy's bulbous, frog-like head. Its softly glowing eyes watch Enjolras very closely. He takes a step towards it.

“He's okay,” Jehan murmurs. “Don't worry, he's fine, I've got him.”

Enjolras is close enough for the monster to touch him now. And it does, it reaches out with one scaly hand and grips his left wrist, and Grantaire feels sick and furious and he wants to set the thing on fire. But Enjolras's other hand is slowly reaching for the blade, and it'll all be over in a minute-

That's when their ghost appears. Judging by Enjolras's startled jump, she's managed to manifest so that even he can see her this time. She gives an almighty shriek and lunges at the monster, which makes some hideous gurgling noises and releases Enjolras's arm under her onslaught. As soon as it does, she rounds on Enjolras with a glare.

“Get back!” she screams, raising a hand and sending him flying. The angle is unfortunate; rather than pushing him further away from the water, she succeeds in only pushing him further along the bank. He hits the ground with a pained sound, and the blade flies from his hand.

“You didn't tell the ghost this was the plan?” Grantaire demands. Jehan fixes him with a look to rival Enjolras's own.

“When did I have time to tell her this was the plan? Did you see me tell her? When was I meant to tell her?” he says, throwing his hands up as they both hurry out of hiding and onto the street. “And telling her might have warned the- you know what, never mind. Go help Enjolras.”

Enjolras has, by this time, managed to push himself up onto his elbows and is scrambling towards where the blade fell. Grantaire gets to him just as the vodyanoy's hand shoots out of the water and seizes him by the ankle. He lets out a small gasp as his feet hit the cold water, but Grantaire catches him by the hand before the monster can drag him any deeper. A strange game of tug-of-war ensues.

“Get the sword,” Enjolras grinds out between gritted teeth.

“Forget the sword,” Grantaire says, using his other hand to grab further up Enjolras's arm and pulling almost hard enough to raise suspicion about just how strong he really is. He thinks Enjolras might be too glad to be out of the monster's grasp to notice, though, and he's right.

“I've got you,” he says as he hauls Enjolras back onto dry land. Letting him go when that thing is still alive is an effort, but he manages.

The vodyanoy looks at him, lets out a screech and goes to make a hasty retreat, as he'd expected it would. But then, suddenly, it freezes. Its face takes on a stunned, dazed expression, and it floats near the water's edge, perfectly still.

“Kill it.”

Grantaire and Enjolras both jump at Jehan's voice; they both turn to see him staring very intently at the creature. They both understand at the same moment.

“You're in its head?” Enjolras says, sounding horrified.

“And working the controls,” Jehan says, sounding a little far-off and dreamy. “You need to kill it. Quickly.”

“Not while you're in there,” Enjolras protests. He snatches up the blade and advances towards the monster again. “Let it go first.”

“It might get away,” Jehan says. “Just do it.”

“No, you'll feel it!” Enjolras shakes his head furiously. “I'm not killing it while you're in there.”

“Enjolras, I can't hold it, you need to do it now,” Jehan says, and his expression is calm but there are tears running down his cheeks from the sheer effort of it.

“No,” Enjolras says, and Grantaire knows he won't do it, and he thinks that he never loves him more than when he shows that there are some things he puts before the job.

Ignoring his revulsion, he reaches out and grabs the creature at the fleshy juncture of its neck and shoulder and holds on tight.

“Jehan, I've got it, okay?” he calls. “It's not going to get away. We'll kill it. You can let it go now.”

He glances up at Enjolras.

“Please be quick,” he mutters. Enjolras nods.

Jehan makes a small noise like a sob, and in an instant the monster is struggling and thrashing against Grantaire's hold.

“Enjolras,” he says, trying to pull it in even closer to the bank to give him a better shot.

Quick and clean as ever, Enjolras raises the blade and brings it down right between the thing's eyes.

It doesn't even have time to scream. It goes limp and still.

Enjolras extracts the blade again, pulling a face when he sees that it's covered in viscous black something. Grantaire releases his grip on the creature's shoulder, and its body sinks like a stone. His hand feels slimy but he doesn't really feel like cleaning it off in the water. Enjolras appears to have no such qualms, swirling the blade in the canal a few times before stowing it back in his coat.

Jehan is on his knees, using the metal barrier to hold himself up. They both hurry to his side.

“Are you alright?” Enjolras asks him anxiously. Jehan blinks sleepily at him.

“M'tired,” he murmurs. “Did you get it?”

“Yeah, we got it, it's dead,” Enjolras tells him.

“Mmm.” Jehan manages a smile. “She can go now, then.”

“She?”

They look back at the water to see the ghost watching them. She smiles, and then in a burst of white light, she's gone.

“...Do you think anyone saw that?” Grantaire says after a moment.

“Probably.” Enjolras helps Jehan to his feet. “We should get back. Can you walk?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jehan says, waving him off. “I'm going straight to bed when we get there, though.” He gives a small shudder. “Being in a monster's head is not fun.”

But you have so much practice at it, Grantaire says silently to him, edging the thoughts with humour. The inside of Jehan's mind hurts and he tries his best to soothe it – he catches his hand as they walk along and sends another tiny pulse of Grace through to him.

You're not a monster, Jehan replies as his mind sings gratefully. You're an angel.

Angels are-

Fine, whatever, I don't mean the species. You're a human's idea of an angel. Deal with it.

Grantaire doesn't argue any further. He thinks Jehan is due a break.

Enjolras walks a little way ahead of them the whole way back to the hotel.

~

“How're the battle wounds?” Grantaire asks when Enjolras emerges from the bathroom the next morning. His hands had got pretty scraped up when the ghost threw him, and he's bruised all down one side.

“I'm fine,” Enjolras says with a shrug. He's in a t-shirt, and Grantaire frowns when he sees a ring of finger-shaped bruises around his upper arm. His heart sinks.

“Did I hurt you?” he asks tentatively, pointing to them and feeling guilt burn at his insides. Enjolras glances down at his arm and snorts.

“You probably saved my life, getting me away from that thing,” he says. “I think I can forgive you a few bruises.”

“Still,” Grantaire says, rolling across his bed to get a closer look. He hadn't meant to grip tight enough to bruise. If he hadn't been completely in control, then it's lucky that he didn't break Enjolras's arm.

“...Thanks, by the way,” Enjolras says quietly. “For getting me out of there.”

"You say that as if not saving you was an option," Grantaire laughs. He reaches out, wanting to brush his fingertips across the bruises, maybe with a futile desire to heal them without Enjolras noticing, maybe because he just wants to touch him. He remembers at the last moment that that probably isn't allowed and draws his hand back. He remembers gripping Enjolras's hand last night and wishes that the situation hadn't been too stressful for him to enjoy the moment.

“Do we have new orders from Combeferre yet?” he asks.

“Oh. Uh.” Enjolras looks away. “I actually haven't called him yet.”

Grantaire tries to catch his eye and settles for making a questioning noise when that fails.

“Well. You talked a lot about about wanting to see Amsterdam, right? Jehan, too,” Enjolras says, busying himself with making his bed as he talks. “So. I guess hanging around for an extra day won't hurt. I'll call Combeferre later.”

“You're serious?” Grantaire says, a slow smile spreading across his face.

“Yeah,” Enjolras says, and it sounds like a sigh.

“Jehan is a good influence on you,” Grantaire remarks, though he can't understand why Enjolras sounds so dejected about it, if it was his decision. “Is there anywhere you- ow.”

He cuts himself off and raises a hand to his temple as, out of nowhere, a brightly-coloured banner unfurls behind his eyes, with the word BREAKFAST! written on it in large letters. He blinks, bewildered.

“Did you just get psychic-summoned?” Enjolras asks, raising an eyebrow.

“I assume so.” Grantaire stands up, shaking his head to clear it. “I did not know he could do that. I think he wants to go get breakfast food. Any requests?”

“I'm not really hungry,” Enjolras says with another shrug.

“Strawberries?” Grantaire suggests with a grin.

“Not hungry,” Enjolras repeats shortly.

“You're getting strawberries,” Grantaire says, hurrying out the door before Enjolras can argue.

He meets Jehan outside the hotel's main door.

“Good morning,” Jehan says brightly, linking arms with him as they start down the street.

“You're perky,” Grantaire says, amused. “Feeling better?”

“Much!” Jehan steers them towards the nearest supermarket. “What are we getting to eat?”

“I promised Enjolras strawberries,” Grantaire says.

“I bet you did,” Jehan says, rolling his eyes. Once they're inside, he grabs a basket but keeps his arm linked firmly with Grantaire's. Grantaire gets the strangest suspicion that it's to keep him from escaping, though he can't imagine why.

“Okay,” Jehan says as he starts to drag him around the aisles. “Listen up. On this, our last day in Amsterdam, with our work all done, I am going to tell you a few things.”

“A few things?” Grantaire repeats, bemused.

“Yes.” Jehan nods decisively. “I thought maybe I shouldn’t, because I hate to meddle. Really, I do. But I’m not going to tell you what to do or what I think you should do or anything, so maybe it’s not really meddling. Just, there are some things that you don’t know that I think you should know. So I will tell you. And they will inform your future decisions.”

“This all sounds very serious.”

“Thing number one,” Jehan starts without further ado: “From what I can gather, Enjolras specifically asked for the case here.”

Grantaire blinks. He isn’t sure exactly what he was expecting Jehan to tell him, but it certainly wasn’t that.

“He did what?” he asks, because that doesn’t make sense. This entire time, he’d been under the impression that Combeferre had foisted this job on them just to get them out of Paris and out from under his feet, and much to Enjolras’s annoyance, at that. The case here didn’t suit Enjolras.

“Yes, Combeferre was surprised, too,” Jehan goes on. “We pondered it quite a long while when he called me. Ah, and that’s thing number two. Enjolras also asked Combeferre to bring me in.”

“You’re his friend, of course he’d ask for you.”

“No, listen. He asked for a psychic. That was his idea. You know what that means, right?”

“I don’t think I do,” Grantaire says, but he does and Jehan can see as much so he doesn’t push the matter and instead gives him a few moments to think it through, releasing his arm just long enough to throw a few things into the basket.

It means that Enjolras came here to help a ghost instead of to destroy it. He wasn’t forced into it, Combeferre wasn’t gently coercing him by making him take the only psychic who is also his friend along for the ride – it had been Enjolras’s intention from the very start.

Jehan, of course, knows when he’s reached the correct conclusion.

“Now why would Enjolras do a thing like that, I wonder?” he says, an amused smile playing on his lips, small sunbeams dancing in his soul.

“He wouldn’t,” Grantaire says. The revelation disturbs him, because that’s not Enjolras, he knows Enjolras; he-of-the-blazing-soul, the indefatigable boy-soldier, the man who is going to rid the world of the supernatural with bullets and knives and his own sweat and blood. Not with diplomacy and certainly not with kindness.

“You don’t really think so harshly of him, in your heart,” Jehan, who has apparently been peeking, says. “You know there’s more to him than that.”

“Not when it comes to hunting.”

“Seems that’s not true.” Jehan sounds rather smug. “But if you really can’t figure out what’s changed, maybe you should ask him.”

Grantaire snorts.

“Right, yeah,” he says. “I can imagine how well that would go.”

“See, that’s thing number three,” Jehan says. He turns to look him dead in the eyes, which Grantaire takes to mean that thing number three is important. “You have this idea that he wants to be left alone, or that he’d do anything to keep you out. But he will talk to you, if you approach him right. He wants to talk to you.”

“No, he doesn’t,” Grantaire says immediately, almost laughing.

“Grantaire, I’m a psychic, trust me on this one,” Jehan says, deadpan.

“I’m not his idea of good company,” Grantaire says, starting to feel slightly hysterical because this conversation is going down such a surreal route. “I drive him crazy, he can hardly bear-”

“Thing number four,” Jehan interrupts: “After Feuilly died, Enjolras said he’d never travel with anyone again. He said it required a level of trust that almost automatically results in a closer bond than just one between colleagues. He said he’d never travel with anyone again because the person you travel with becomes the person closest to you, and he was not prepared to go through losing that person again.”

Grantaire closes his hands into fists, shakes his head.

“No, I...he didn’t think he had a choice. He didn’t want this, I forced him, I knew he’d do anything to keep my sword.”

“Six months,” Jehan says, laying a hand gently on his cheek, as if to ground him here. “Half a year. I’ve been in your head, and in his. I know he never tried to bargain, or convince you to leave. Didn’t you think that was strange, if you’re so sure he dislikes you? I know him. If things weren’t exactly as he wants them to be, he’d have found a way to change them.”

Grantaire just stares. Part of him is oddly angry. He feels it is somewhat cruel of Jehan to offer him hope where his heart tells him there is none. But Jehan wouldn’t lie to him, he knows that, and although Jehan isn’t with Enjolras every day, he most certainly has a much better understanding of Enjolras’s mysterious inner workings.

Grantaire is sort of terrified, and all because a human may or may not despise him quite as much as he’d thought.

“He’ll talk to you,” Jehan reiterates.

“He doesn’t normally.”

“That’s because you’re always making fun of him,” Jehan says chidingly. For the first time, with the help of a slight psychic nudge, Grantaire sees how his playful jibes might not seem so different from the harsh mocking of the Musain hunters, and he feels a stab of guilt. “He’s as nervous of you as you are of him, you know.”

“Enjolras, nervous?” Grantaire really does laugh this time.

“Yes,” Jehan says with a warning frown. Grantaire realises dimly that they're at the check-out already. Jehan is an efficient shopper. “He's only human, you know.”

“Why are you telling me all this?” Grantaire asks uneasily once they've got all their purchases into bags and are heading for the exit.

“Because you love him, and knowing a bit more about him might help that run somewhat more smoothly,” Jehan replies without missing a beat. Grantaire jumps like an electric shock went through him; Jehan looks at him incredulously. “Did you think I didn't know that? I'm a psychic that's been living in your head for the past few days, and any stranger who happened to pass you two on the street could probably tell-”

“Alright, alright,” Grantaire mutters as they step out into the morning sunshine.

“What? Do you think it's a bad thing?” Jehan asks with a curious blink. “You being in love with him?”

“Stop saying that,” Grantaire groans. “Of course it's a bad thing, it's a disastrous thing-”

“Shut up.” Jehan stops him and presses a kiss to his cheek. “It's a wonderful thing. Now, you take these.”

Grantaire blinks as Jehan hands him the bags, and-

“Wait, where did the tulips come from?” he asks, frowning as Jehan stuffs the bouquet into the crook of his arm.

“I just bought them, weren't you paying attention?” Jehan is digging through one of the shopping bags.

“Why?”

“Why not? Flowers are lovely.” There's something distinctly mischievous in Jehan's smile as he straightens up, a croissant and a bottle of orange juice in his hands. “Well, this is my breakfast. I'm going to see the sights.”

“You're going alone?” Grantaire asks, perplexed.

“Yup. How else would I ever get you two to spend time together?” Jehan says, already walking away.

“You don't like meddling, huh?” Grantaire calls after him dryly.

Jehan shoots him a grin over his shoulder, suggesting that he is completely unashamed.

Grantaire sighs and trudges back to the hotel.

“...Why do you have tulips?” is the first thing Enjolras asks when he sees him. Understandably.

“Because flowers are lovely, apparently?” Grantaire replies. When Enjolras just arches an eyebrow at him, he shrugs helplessly. “Yeah, I don't know.”

There's an ancient-looking, foggy plastic jug with artificial flowers in it on the windowsill. Grantaire empties it out, fills it with water and puts Jehan's inexplicable tulips in it. He sets it on the table along with the breakfast food.

“Where's Jehan?” Enjolras asks.

“He took off. I guess he was in a hurry to start sight-seeing.”

“Oh.” Enjolras has his nose buried in a book of Nordic runes, and he doesn't look up from it. “Are you going to catch up to him later?”

“Dunno.” Grantaire starts unpacking the food Jehan bought while he wasn't paying attention. He remembered the strawberries. “What're you planning to do with your extremely rare day off?”

“Thought I'd catch up with some reading,” Enjolras says.

Grantaire supposes he really shouldn't be surprised. He must have pulled a disapproving face, though, because Enjolras glances up and frowns.

“What?” he demands.

“Nothing,” Grantaire mutters, slumping into a chair. “Reading. Yeah. Great.”

Enjolras shoots him a baleful look and goes back to his book in moody silence. Grantaire really doesn't know what he did to earn the cold shoulder today, but then, he rarely does. He tends to just assume that Enjolras wants nothing to do with him. And he's so sure that Jehan's alternative theory is wrong but he can't help but think about it, because wouldn't it be nice? If it really was all just a misunderstanding – a matter of not approaching Enjolras the right way?

He tries not to snort out loud. He's painfully aware that he has absolutely no idea what the correct way to approach Enjolras is.

He decides to take a stab at it. In Jehan's honour, or something.

“Why don't you come out?” he asks conversationally.

“Because I don't want to,” Enjolras says from behind his book.

“I don't get it.” Grantaire sighs. He feels like he's doing badly already. “You don't want to enjoy yourself? Just for a day?”

“I wouldn't enjoy myself,” Enjolras says.

“Ah.” Grantaire makes a mental note to tell Jehan that he was so, so wrong.

“Ah?” Enjolras repeats.

“Nothing, just...” Grantaire waves a hand in the air and gives a short laugh. “I'm really that bad to be around, huh?”

To his surprise, Enjolras lowers the book pretty quickly at that. There's suddenly something anxious about him – on his face and in his soul.

“I didn't mean that,” he says. “You're not...you're fine. That's not what I meant.”

“Then what's the problem, if it's not me?” Grantaire asks. “You care way too much about this world to not be interested in it. Sitting in here reading up on runes cannot be your first choice of things to do today.”

Enjolras frowns and doesn't meet his eyes. His mouth twists from side to side.

“It's just,” he starts. “Well. I'd spoil it.”

Grantaire blinks once, twice. And again.

“What?” he manages finally.

“I'm just not a very fun person,” Enjolras says with a helpless shrug. “I'm not like Jehan. I just thought you and he would have a better time if I-”

“Wait.” Grantaire holds up a hand. “Do you actually think I wouldn't want to spend the day with you?”

Enjolras's face floods faintly pink. He opens his mouth, shuts it again, and settles for shrugging again.

Grantaire is suddenly glad that Jehan isn't here. He'd probably be gloating.

He has no idea what to say, he realises. How can Enjolras possibly not know that he wants to be with him always-?

Probably because you never told him so, says a voice in his head that sounds sort of like an exasperated Jehan.

“Huh,” he manages finally.

“It's fine,” Enjolras says, ducking down behind his book again.

Grantaire takes a deep breath. He's floundering somewhat with the realisation that there is, in fact, some stupid, bizarre and completely avoidable gulf between the two of them, because apparently they've both been blundering along with the idea that they each can't stand being around the other.

He thinks that maybe has to change. And, since he seems to be the only one who's been struck with this epiphany, it appears to be up to him to change it.

He gets to his feet. Enjolras glances up at the noise; Grantaire comes around to his side of the table and plucks the book from his hands.

“Want to go be tourists for the day?” he asks. He smiles and hopes it doesn't look teasing – hopes Enjolras will understand.

“Look, you don't have to-” Enjolras starts uncomfortably.

“Because I'd really like that,” Grantaire says. “I would.”

Enjolras blinks up at him. Grantaire thinks this might be the first time he's left him at a loss for words.

“Come on, get up,” he says. Maintaining distance between them seems to have been half the problem, so without letting himself think about it first, he takes Enjolras's hands and pulls him to his feet. Enjolras looks faintly astonished – but he doesn't pull back or shove Grantaire away, and Grantaire knows he should really let go of his hands now that he's standing but he can't quite bring himself to.

“And anyway,” he goes on. “If you don't go out and enjoy the world once in a while, you're going to forget what you're fighting for.”

Making it about the job seems to take some of the pressure off, and Enjolras seems to relax slightly. He even manages a wry smile.

“...I suppose,” he says. “I mean, if you really think it's so important.”

Grantaire can feel himself grinning like a fucking idiot and he is totally unable to do anything about it. He reminds himself that he is an angel. He is an ageless celestial being of incredible power. And he can't stop smiling.

“Come on, then,” he says, grabbing his bag and hooking it over his shoulder.

“What about breakfast?” Enjolras asks, looking amused.

“You said you weren't hungry,” Grantaire reminds him, starting to shove all the food back into the plastic bag. “We'll eat later. We have to leave right now or I'm scared you'll change your mind.”

“I won't-” Enjolras starts to protest, but Grantaire is already pushing him out the door.

~

They have no plan in mind, and neither of them seems to want to take charge and suggest a destination, so they just wander for a while. Grantaire chatters about everything and anything the whole time for fear of things descending into awkward silence if he stops, because spending time together for reasons unrelated to a case is new for them and it's abundantly clear that they don't really know what to do with it. He feels a bit stupid, but after some time he realises that Enjolras is doing the exact same thing. He glances at his soul and sees it flickering at the edges in a myriad of confused colours; he's nervous.

Grantaire wonders if he should make a solemn pledge right now to never doubt Jehan ever again.

“Hey,” Enjolras says suddenly, stopping in his tracks. “You wanted to go here, right?”

Grantaire looks up and sees they are approaching the Rijksmuseum. Did he mention wanting to visit it? If he did, he doesn't remember. But Enjolras does.

“You don't like art,” he points out.

“I like some art,” Enjolras protests.

They debate it back and forth for a few minutes, but it turns out to be a moot point, as the museum turns out to be closed for renovations. They end up at the Van Gogh Museum instead, which Grantaire thinks is almost as good. He can't help but flit about with barely-contained enthusiasm, pointing out his favourites and talking far too much about the colours and the light and isn't it all amazing? Enjolras looks more confused than anything else. He doesn't look bored, though, so Grantaire decides to count that as a plus.

“You've been here before,” Enjolras says as Grantaire leads him around with practiced ease.

I was here when this place was built, Grantaire does not say. Hell, I've been following some of these paintings around practically since they were created.

“I love all of this,” he says instead. “I hope you're suitably impressed.”

“You know I don't understand it the way you do.”

“You don't have to understand it, you just have to look at it.”

“I'm looking,” Enjolras says, stopping in front of a landscape painting and frowning at it. “I guess I'm just confused by anything that...doesn't look like what it's meant to be.”

“You're a fan of realism, huh?” Grantaire says, amused. “If everyone drew and painted that way, art would be pretty boring.”

“You draw like that. Your drawings look exactly like what they're meant to be.”

“Well, I'm not a great artist,” Grantaire laughs. Enjolras hums thoughtfully.

“I like your drawings,” he says.

“Better than Van Gogh's paintings?” Grantaire says, trying not to sound too scandalised.

“Those are okay too, I guess,” Enjolras says, with a tilt to his mouth that suggests he might be teasing. Enjolras. Teasing. If Grantaire was capable of sleep, he'd think he was dreaming.

By the time they leave the museum, it's early afternoon, and Grantaire knows Enjolras must be hungry by now. He brought their food with him in its carrier bag, and they find a bench to sit down and eat it. Grantaire eats a few token pieces of bread and cheese before fishing his sketchbook out of his bag.

“Feeling inspired after that?” Enjolras asks him.

“Yeah,” Grantaire says, flipping to a clean page. “I want to draw you.”

“What?” Enjolras looks startled.

“I want to draw you,” Grantaire repeats with a grin. “If that's okay.”

“I...don't mind?” Enjolras says slowly. “But. Why?”

“I don't have any drawings of you. If my sketchbooks are my documentation of our travels, they're pretty incomplete if there are no drawings of you, right?” Grantaire says as he sharpens a pencil. “And anyway, this is nice and you look happy. I want to keep it.”

Enjolras snorts quietly and looks away. He doesn't say I am happy, but Grantaire can see the calmly swirling yellow-gold-green contentment in his soul. And, more to the point, the small smile on his face, softening his sometimes severe expression. He's never really wanted to draw Enjolras before, because his soul was always the most important thing to him, and there's no way to capture that with pencil. But today Enjolras is sitting relaxed in the afternoon sunshine, with a smile on his face and his fingers stained faintly red from eating strawberries, and this moment seems so important and perfect and Grantaire wants to hold onto it forever.

“I'm not the best at holding still,” Enjolras warns him.

“Trust me, I know,” Grantaire says. “You can move a little. And keep eating. Feel free to pose, though it's really not necessary.”

“I'm not posing,” Enjolras says, and he laughs quietly and a breeze stirs up his hair and sends his curls fluttering around his face, and something about it makes Grantaire ache with longing. He starts drawing.

They're quiet for a while, but strangely, it's comfortable. Grantaire is just wondering how long he can go without saying something stupid to disrupt the peace when it is, in fact, Enjolras who speaks up.

“Listen,” he starts. “About Jehan...”

“Yeah?” Grantaire says, still sketching. Enjolras hesitates.

“Just. If, when we're leaving here, if you wanted to go with him instead of, y'know, travelling on...” He trails off and shrugs. And turns his head away just as Grantaire is trying to draw his profile. “That'd be fine. I mean, I'd understand.”

Grantaire blinks at him over the top of his sketchbook.

“Why would I do that?” he asks. Enjolras shrugs again.

“You've seemed happier since he's been here,” he says. “You two really seemed to hit it off, so I just thought...”

“That I'd want to ditch you?” Grantaire can feel his face doing some strange thing that involves both frowning and smiling, because he's not sure which is the most appropriate response. “That's...no. I mean, yeah, Jehan's great, but. No. You're not getting rid of me that easily.”

“I don't want to get rid of you,” Enjolras says quickly, and then immediately goes bright red and turns away again. His soul is practically boiling over with embarrassment, and Grantaire tries not to laugh out loud because he knows that'll only make it worse.

“Hey,” he says, leaning over and brushing Enjolras's shoulder lightly, because today he is being brave and breaking down these stupid boundaries between them. “I'm not going anywhere, okay? You're officially stuck with me.”

“You're sure?” Enjolras asks quietly.

“Yes,” Grantaire says with some exasperation. The idea that his devotion is being questioned seems absurd to him. “You're my favourite and you just have to live with that.”

Enjolras snorts and says something that might have been “okay” but Grantaire hardly notices – he's distracted by the way that Enjolras's soul is suddenly shedding that strange, filmy golden skin that it's been wrapped up in for the last few days. It just up and dissipates – but not before Grantaire gets a glimpse of the lurid emerald green that had been lurking underneath. It vanishes too, but Grantaire saw it and he knows what it means.

“You were jealous?” he wants to shriek. “You? You?”

He manages to refrain.

“There's something I want to ask, though,” he says instead.

“Hm?”

“You asked for the case here.” Grantaire watches Enjolras carefully to gauge his reaction. “Even though you knew it wasn't a straightforward hunt. Why?”

Enjolras's only outward response to the question is a slight raising of his eyebrows. His soul, however, erupts in a strange sort of panic.

“I, uh, assume I wasn't meant to know that,” Grantaire says with a nervous laugh. “Jehan might have mentioned it. Don't kill him.”

“I'm not going to kill him,” Enjolras says. “It's just kind of complicated. And stupid, maybe.”

Grantaire looks at him expectantly until he sighs.

“All the time I've been hunting, I've been working on the basis that there's no grey area in this job. That anything that's not human should just be taken out.” He shifts uncomfortably. “No one ever told me any different, not until...”

“Until?” Grantaire prompts. Enjolras shoots him a wry smile.

“You don't even remember, do you?” he says.

“Remember what?”

“Telling me different.” Enjolras rolls his eyes and doesn't elaborate further. “I just wanted to see, that's all. If maybe there are some monsters that deserve better than just being killed.”

“And what do you think, after...here?” Grantaire asks. He feels distantly awed that this had something to do with him, that he said something and it made Enjolras think differently, but he banishes the thought to the edge of his mind to be dealt with later. It's a bit too much for right now.

“...That girl, the ghost, she tried to save me when she thought that thing had me,” Enjolras says. “And it really does seem like she was trying to protect people all along. I'm pretty glad we didn't just salt and burn her. I suppose there are...exceptions.”

“Oh, wow,” Grantaire says, wiping away an imaginary tear. He wants to yell about how proud he is but figures that would probably go down badly. “Look how you've grown.”

“Shut up,” Enjolras says. “Are you done drawing?”

“I don't know. Does it look like what it's supposed to look like?” Grantaire asks, turning the sketchbook towards him.

“Close enough, I guess,” Enjolras says, smiling again. “Better than that guy in the museum, anyway.”

“That's Van Gogh and you are going to make me cry,” Grantaire informs him as he packs his things away. “Where do you want to go now?”

“I don't know.”

“You have to pick somewhere or we're going to the sex museum.”

“What? That's not a thing.”

“I'll prove it to you if you don't pick somewhere,” Grantaire says with a grin.

By the time they get back to the hotel, it's dark. Grantaire is amazed. They actually managed to spend an entire day together, as people rather than hunters, without killing each other.

Jehan beat them back – he pokes his head out of his room as they pass and smiles sleepily at them.

“Did you guys have fun?” he asks. He is, of course, already siphoning select scenes from the day directly from Grantaire's mind and doing the psychic equivalent of giggling in smug delight.

“Yeah,” Enjolras replies without even hesitating, and Grantaire feels the dumbest swell of warmth, and Jehan feels it too and smiles wider.

They say their goodbyes at the train station the next morning; Jehan is going back to France, whilst Enjolras and Grantaire have already been given a new case and are heading on to the Czech Republic. Jehan is wearing a luminous orange souvenir t-shirt but it is nonetheless a sombre farewell.

“Keep in touch,” he says as he hugs Enjolras. “You're so terrible at keeping in touch.”

“I'll do better,” Enjolras promises, which earns him an approving noise.

“And you take care of him,” Jehan says to Grantaire as he wraps him in a tight hug too.

“We'll look after each other,” Grantaire says, patting him on the back.

“In the field of battle, yeah. I mean make sure he eats.”

“Pizza and strawberries every day,” Grantaire assures him.

Jehan holds onto him a moment longer, clearly savouring the last few seconds of close psychic contact, which they won't be able to maintain across long distances. He projects a very clear image into Grantaire's mind; an image of a house with a sprawling but beautiful garden, and its exact location burned into his brain.

I'm always there, Jehan tells him. If you need me.

Then he releases him and steps back. He gathers up his bags and shoots them a bright smile.

“Good luck, you two,” he says, and then they go their separate ways.

“I'll miss him,” Grantaire remarks.

“Yeah,” Enjolras agrees.

“So, Czech Republic next, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Prague is a beautiful city,” Grantaire says innocently. “Just saying.”

“Work first,” Enjolras says. Which, Grantaire is pleased to note, is not a 'no'.

 

Chapter Text

 

 

~

Things are different after Amsterdam.

Not in a huge way; not overnight. Maybe the average outside observer wouldn’t even have noticed. But Jehan, despite his insistence that he doesn’t like meddling, must have more influence than he knows, because no, things are definitely different. Grantaire has a hard time explaining, even to himself, exactly how they’re different. It’s little things, mostly. Like the way that Enjolras will now unfailingly say ‘thank you’ every morning Grantaire brings coffee, whilst before he often barely seemed to notice where the coffee even came from. It’s not a perfunctory, curt ‘thank you’, either—it usually comes with a small smile, and sometimes it’s a sleepy smile and it sort of makes Grantaire want to tear his own hair out because he’s always known Enjolras is scary and beautiful but he didn’t know he could be cute. It used to be routine that Grantaire would just set down any and all breakfast supplies a safe distance from Enjolras and wait for him to be quite ready to bow to his human need for sustenance, but now Enjolras will always look up from whatever he’s doing and smile and say thank you and take the coffee from Grantaire’s hand and sometimes their fingers will brush and it’s always a strangely intimate moment between just the two of them and it’s maddening.

Not bad, though. Definitely not bad. Just. Maddening.

When they go to the Czech Republic immediately after Amsterdam, they don’t get to admire Prague—as soon as they’ve dealt with the case there, they are assigned a new job in Slovenia, and as soon as they are off the phone with Combeferre they are packing up their belongings and preparing to leave. This doesn’t surprise Grantaire in the slightest, and nor does it bother him—he knows that hunting comes first, and hunting will always come first, and he’d really be content to write off that one day in Amsterdam as a miraculous, one-off occurrence. But then, two months and several hunts later, they find themselves back in Cologne, and after their work there is done, Grantaire catches Enjolras gazing out of their hotel window at the towering spires of the cathedral, squinting slightly against the brightness of the sky.

“It’s big, isn’t it?” Enjolras says suddenly.

“What is?” Grantaire asks innocently. Enjolras looks at him, unimpressed, and he grins back. “Oh, the cathedral. Yes, it’s certainly…big. Are you just noticing?”

“No,” Enjolras huffs, turning back to the window. Grantaire comes over to join him. “People are always talking about this cathedral. I never really understood what the big deal was. I guess I never thought about how people—a lot of people, but still just people—actually had to build it and make it that big. I’m thinking about it now. It’s amazing.” He points up at one of the tallest spires. “I can’t even imagine being up that high.”

Grantaire wants to ask him if he’d like to try it, wants to take his hand and fly him as high as he wants to go, but he manages to just smile.

“I’m very glad you’re acknowledging its existence, at least,” he says. “Last time we were here, I was a little worried that you couldn’t see it at all.”

Enjolras nudges him with his elbow. This, too, is new and different. The invisible barrier that had always existed between them seems to have been lowered—to a certain extent, at least. They aren’t going all-out with physical contact these days, but it’s certainly no longer a taboo. Enjolras has gradually become more free and casual in his touches, and Grantaire is helpless to do anything besides follow his example. He sometimes thinks this might be dangerous—on some level, he knows they’re becoming closer, and he knows that’s bad, that’s not how this was meant to go, but—he likes it. He likes it and he’s weak so he keeps letting it happen, and he knows it can only end badly, but—

“I bet you know all about it,” Enjolras says, dragging him from his thoughts. “How they built it, and such.”

“What makes you think that?” Grantaire asks as casually as possible while having sort of nervous flashbacks to the time he spent perched invisible on the developing stonework, watching the building progress with interest. Enjolras waves a hand.

“It seems like something you’d know about,” he says. He has a certain glint in his eye. “You know, I’m starting to suspect you studied history of art.”

“I don’t study,” Grantaire replies promptly. He won’t lie, he won’t lie. “I’m interested in it. And it’s necessary to maintain my sanity. It’s about balance. Hunting is horror and death, art is beauty and creation. It’s healthy that my two main hobbies are opposites of each other, don’t you think?”

“Hobbies,” Enjolras repeats, rolling his eyes.

“We don’t get paid for hunting,” Grantaire reminds him. “Really, it’s just a hobby we take very, very seriously.”

“You don’t take anything seriously,” Enjolras says.

“Hey, I take Gothic architecture very seriously,” Grantaire says, gesturing back towards the cathedral. “And I take it more seriously the closer I am to it. I should probably go over there and, like, be serious. Hey, you could come too.”

Enjolras is rolling his eyes again, but he says “okay”, and Grantaire’s stupid heart leaps. And then they’re tourists again, indistinguishable from the multitude of other tourists gawping up at the cathedral and snapping photos. Enjolras reads the information plaques and asks questions that Grantaire is only too happy to answer; he ends up going off on a lengthy and opinionated tangent about Gothic architecture and Enjolras, much like in Amsterdam, lets him—even seems to enjoy his impassioned ranting even if he clearly doesn't entirely understand why anyone would care quite so much about flying buttresses and pointed arches.

(They talk more now, too. They still argue as much as ever—Grantaire would be just plain disturbed if that ever changed—but in between the squabbling and the teasing, there’s actual talking.)

It’s a relief, really, to be able to tell someone some of the things he knows, instead of just knowing them. He keeps checking to make sure Enjolras isn’t becoming bored, but he never seems to. He just listens attentively and nods and admires the cathedral’s stained glass windows and the elaborate stone carvings above its doors in a manner that looks perfectly genuine. Grantaire realises that this might actually become a thing. That every so often, when they’re not rushing off to another country as soon as their work is done, they might have a day or two just like this—where they see the sights, and eat for more than utilitarian purposes, and Enjolras smiles and lets Grantaire prattle on about art or architecture or history or whatever seems most appropriate for the place they’re in. For fun. It would’ve been so far out of the question when the two of them first met that Grantaire can’t quite comprehend how they’ve ended up at this point.

A group of French girls hear them speaking French and, looking relieved at being able to speak in their mother tongue, ask them to take a photo for them. Grantaire takes their camera and snaps a few pictures of them posing in front of the cathedral and they thank him and scuttle off, giggling.

“Ever think we should invest in a camera?” Grantaire says. “Think of the possibilities. We could have albums half full of the finest sights of Europe, and half full of quality selfies with severed vampire heads or flaming piles of bones or staked zombies…”

“That would be in very poor taste. And it’d also be incriminating evidence,” Enjolras says. He’s visibly fighting down a smile. “Anyway, we don’t exactly need photographs, what with you drawing everywhere we go.”

“You flatter me.” Grantaire pulls his latest sketchbook from his bag, since they’re on the subject. Enjolras looks at him incredulously.

“You can’t draw that,” he says, pointing to the cathedral.

“Why not?” Grantaire asks with a blink.

“It’s…” Enjolras waves a hand helplessly. “It’s too complicated.”

“Just watch me,” Grantaire tells him, because he is just awful and can never resist an opportunity to impress Enjolras. He spends much of the afternoon sketching the cathedral, both in its entirety and smaller parts in detail, and Enjolras watches in wonder, and Grantaire knows that he is so, so fucked.

Their next job is in Denmark: a werewolf. Their investigation culminates with them hunting the monster through a dark strip of woodland. They split up, which Grantaire concedes is necessary to cover more ground, but he still doesn’t like it, no matter how well-armed Enjolras is. He makes sure he finds the thing first. His plan is to let it jump him, in the interests of appearing human and vulnerable at all times, just in case, and then stab it in the heart with his silver knife. Unfortunately, this works a little too well; the werewolf leaps upon him and sends him crashing into the undergrowth, and he’s lying there flat on his back with the monster crouched over him, teeth bared, when Enjolras comes running. From beneath the werewolf’s hulking form, Grantaire can just see his soul flood ice-blue-black with terror.

“No!” Enjolras yells, and the monster’s attention swivels to him, which is the exact opposite of what Grantaire wants. Enjolras raises his gun and shoots the werewolf full of silver bullets, but he’s firing blindly and although he has it shrieking in pain, he hasn’t pierced its heart. Grantaire does that for him with his knife, and the creature slumps over, dead, and he can sit up. Enjolras is at his side, on his knees in the mud, in an instant.

“Hey, check it out, there’s a full moon tonight.” That’s what Grantaire plans to say—he knows Enjolras still doesn’t relish killing and he always strives to make him laugh or grumble as soon as possible after a successful hunt – but he doesn’t really get a chance to say anything, because Enjolras is suddenly throwing his arms around his neck and holding on for dear life. Grantaire blinks. He’s pretty sure angels can’t suffer things like concussion, which would suggest that this is really happening, but. But.

“Enjolras?” he says. He’s too stunned to think to do something logical, like hug him back, which he will regret deeply later. Enjolras lets go and retreats hastily.

“Sorry. Sorry, that was…” He trails off, laughing shakily. His eyes are shining just a little too brightly. “Yeah, sorry.”

“It’s fine?” Grantaire says uncertainly, reaching out and putting a hand on his shoulder. He can feel him trembling minutely beneath his palm.

“I just. I thought you were dead, or bitten, or…” Enjolras’s mouth twists and he drags a hand over his face, shaking his head. “I thought I…”

He trails off again. Grantaire squeezes his shoulder.

“Hey, I’m fine. We’re both fine,” he tells him. “Everything’s okay.”

Enjolras’s bright eyes find the corpse of the werewolf. In death, it has returned to the form of an ordinary man.

“There must have been people who cared about him, before he got turned,” he says. “He must have a family. Friends.”

“Don’t do that to yourself,” Grantaire says warningly.

“But they won’t understand, they’ll just find out he’s dead and they won’t know why,” Enjolras goes on. “He didn’t ask to become this, he didn’t—”

“You don’t know the circumstances. You don’t know what happened,” Grantaire says. “All we knew was that he was killing people and he had to be stopped. You know that’s the job. You know it sucks.”

“I just…” Enjolras takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “I don’t know what I’d do, if someone close to me got turned.”

“You’d do what you had to do,” Grantaire says, trying to ignore the fact that he apparently qualifies as someone close to Enjolras and that means he’s wormed far too deeply into Enjolras’s life, and it wasn’t meant to be like this—

“I don’t know if I could,” Enjolras says quietly. He turns his face away, like this is an admission of terrible weakness. Grantaire wishes he’d hugged him earlier. He wants to hug him now.

“Come on,” he says instead, getting to his feet and tugging Enjolras up with him. “Let’s get back to the hotel.”

“But the body…” Enjolras protests weakly, craning his neck to look at it as he’s led away.

“We’ll deal with it later,” Grantaire says. “Not now.”

Enjolras lets himself be steered to the hotel, which is sort of bad sign, given that he normally insists that they don’t rest until a job is completely finished. He’s quiet and subdued when they’re back in their room, looking restless but also incredibly tired. Grantaire knows that offering him sympathy or gentleness would only end in a fight, because Enjolras can’t bear to have his moments of vulnerability acknowledged, and so he settles down with his sketchbook and attempts to be a quiet and comforting presence.

“What are you drawing?” Enjolras asks after some time.

“Bits and pieces of everything,” Grantaire says with a shrug. It’s true—the last few pages are a mish-mash of remembered faces and places and things he might have just made up. “Come and see, if you like.”

Enjolras hesitates, but then slips down off his own bed and onto Grantaire’s, sitting next to him against the headboard. Grantaire realizes that maybe this is what Enjolras needs right now—a certain closeness without it being overtly for his benefit—and shuffles over a little to give him more room. They start off with a small but respectable distance between them, and end with Enjolras a warm weight against Grantaire’s side, watching every stroke of his pencil with heavy-lidded eyes. It’s nice, Grantaire thinks. Nicer than he himself deserves.

When Enjolras falls asleep, Grantaire steals back to that strip of forest and disposes of the body. He doesn’t want Enjolras to have to look at it again, doesn’t want him to be sad anymore. Enjolras admonishes him for it in the morning, but he’s quietly grateful too, and seems a little more like himself when they move on.

They get sent to Belgium next, to hunt a vengeful spirit. It goes much more smoothly. However, they’re still there when they receive the phone-call.

“I need you back in Paris,” Combeferre tells them. “As soon as you can get here.”

“Why?” Enjolras asks, clearly perturbed by Combeferre’s clipped tone. “What’s wrong?”

“Just get here,” Combeferre says. “It’s important.”

“Are you alright?” Enjolras asks.

“Enjolras.”

“Alright, alright, we’ll be on the next train,” Enjolras says hastily, already reaching for his bag. “We’ll keep in touch as we go and let you know when we’ve arrived-”

“Don’t go to the Musain when you get here,” Combeferre interjects. “Come straight to my apartment.”

And with that, he hangs up.

Enjolras is a wreck the whole way back to Paris. Grantaire hardly blames him—Combeferre has never been so cryptic before, and it’s nothing if not concerning. Still, they’re on a crowded train full of ordinary people, and he feels like it’s his duty to at least try and keep Enjolras calm.

“We’ll be there in a few hours,” he says. “Whatever’s wrong, I’m sure Combeferre can keep on top of it until then.”

“We don’t know that,” Enjolras says. His face is pale and his hands are white-knuckled fists in his lap. “He wouldn’t even tell us what was wrong. Maybe he couldn’t. Maybe he’s in trouble, and—”

“Combeferre can look after himself,” Grantaire reminds him. “And I’m sure he’s not alone—Paris is always full of hunters. And we’ll be there soon. We just need to keep it together until we get there.”

Enjolras nods mutely.

When they arrive in Paris, they try to call Combeferre, but receive no answer. They practically sprint to Combeferre’s apartment—luckily it’s late evening, and the streets are quiet, and their flight doesn’t attract much attention. Everything looks normal as they approach the building, but they know that doesn’t necessarily mean that everything is fine.

“This could be some kind of trap, you know,” Grantaire says. He scans the building and sees that Combeferre is inside, but there are several other figures in there with him, too. He manages to ascertain that they all appear to be human, which would suggest hunter allies rather than impending danger, but they can’t be sure of that. Before he can deduce anything further about what they’re going into, Enjolras is dragging him into the building and they’re taking the stairs two at a time. They only stop when they are one landing below Combeferre’s—there, they leave their heavy bags on the stairs and proceed with only their weapons. Enjolras has a handgun with a silencer in his hand and Grantaire’s sword tucked inside his coat; Grantaire has the gun Enjolras gave him on their first case together.

When they reach Combeferre’s apartment, everything is still quiet, but the door is very slightly ajar. They glance at each other and, after a wordless nod from Grantaire, Enjolras pushes the door open. The hallway inside is dark and silent. They both know their way around this apartment, though, and they carefully proceed through the darkness until they reach the living room door. This door, too, is ajar; Enjolras opens it and slips inside. More darkness, more silence.

“Combeferre?” Enjolras dares to call out.

There’s a rustle of movement, and before Enjolras can even try to find its source, someone grabs his arm and gets him pinned against the nearest wall.

“Grantaire—” Enjolras says, panicked, and Grantaire knows he should be helping him but his head is sort of spinning because he’s just got a read on who the other people in the apartment are and that can’t be right, that isn’t possible—

The lights in the living room suddenly snap on, leaving Enjolras and Grantaire wincing and squinting in the sudden glare.

“Surpriii—ooohholy shit.”

The chorus of voices makes them both freeze. When their eyes adjust, Grantaire sees that, incredibly, his original reading was actually correct. Standing in the middle of Combeferre’s living room, wearing brightly coloured party hats and expressions of utmost alarm, are Courfeyrac, Joly, Bossuet and Marius, as well as a girl he doesn’t recognise. Combeferre is there, too—he’s the one pinning Enjolras to the wall.

“Sorry about that,” he’s saying, plucking the gun from Enjolras’s fingers and releasing him slowly, as if making sure that Enjolras now knows there’s no danger. “I did tell them that jumping out and yelling ‘surprise’ at a hunter was a terrible idea, but they insisted.” He adjusts his glasses, which were knocked askew in the brief scuffle. “Also, if you could stop pointing that at me, Grantaire, I’d really appreciate it.”

Grantaire blinks as he realises that, without any conscious input from himself, his arm had automatically come up to point his weapon at whoever was attacking Enjolras. The barrel of his gun is still trained squarely on Combeferre’s head. He lowers it hastily.

“What’s going on?” Enjolras asks dazedly while absently rubbing life back into his arm. He’s staring between Combeferre and his civilian friends with utter bewilderment.

“…Well.” Courfeyrac shuffles forward, looking sheepish, and gestures towards one of the many banners strung up around the room. “It’s, y’know, your birthday, and we thought…”

“What.” Enjolras still looks confused as all hell, but his eyes narrow dangerously.

“Yes, I’m afraid I lured you here under false pretences, Enjolras,” Combeferre says. “Again, sorry about that.”

“Are you serious?” Enjolras explodes. “I thought something was wrong, I was worried, I—” His eyes briefly land upon his gun, still in Combeferre’s grip. “I could’ve killed you, Combeferre!”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Combeferre says with a faint smile.

“I—”

“I knew you wouldn’t fire into a dark room, especially if you didn’t know where I was,” Combeferre says, placating. “And I knew Grantaire would never attack when it might put you in danger. And look, I was right, and we’re all fine.”

“I don’t believe this,” Enjolras says, dragging a hand through his hair and looking somewhat wild-eyed. “I mean, I can believe that you,” he points at Courfeyrac and the others, “would come up with an idea like this but I can’t believe that you,” his accusing finger shifts to Combeferre, “went along with it.”

“You say that like it was of my own free will,” Combeferre says, and Grantaire notices for the first time how weary and harassed he looks. Which might actually be a first, for Combeferre. “You never told me your old friends could be so…persistent.”

Courfeyrac grins proudly but quails slightly when Enjolras’s furious gaze finds him again.

“It was a bit of a ridiculous idea, and very ill advised,” says a new voice. It turns out to be Cosette, who must have been hiding around a corner in case she needed to step in and help Combeferre in the scuffle. She comes now to stand in front of Enjolras, looking exasperated but smiling. “But it was well meant. Your friends are idiots, but they love you.”

Enjolras takes a deep, steadying breath.

“We really do!” Joly puts in.

“Lots and lots!” adds Bossuet.

Enjolras takes another deep breath.

“I think you took about three years off my life,” he says finally. “So. I guess we’re even now.”

There’s a stunned silence, and then a collective sigh of relief when they see that, despite being scared half to death and getting his arm nearly twisted off, he’s wearing a reluctant sort of smile. Cosette beams and hugs him.

“Happy birthday,” she laughs.

“Happy birthday!” the others chorus, their exuberance restored, as they rush forward to bombard him. Combeferre and Grantaire watch from a safe distance as Enjolras is engulfed in an endless parade of hugs. Courfeyrac attempts to wrestle him into a party hat and half-succeeds.

“But seriously, how did you even pull this off?” Enjolras manages to gasp out in between being smothered by Joly and Bossuet.

“There’s nothing we can’t do when we put our minds to it,” Joly says with a grin that is far too innocent. “Like your friend Combeferre said, we’re persistent.”

“Really, it was just a matter of wrestling Combeferre’s contact details out of Cosette and Éponine, then calling Combeferre to tell him our plan, then travelling to Paris to convince him in person when he said it might not be the best plan…” Courfeyrac says. Enjolras holds up a hand to stop him.

“Actually, never mind, I probably don’t want to know,” he says.

“It was the best plan we could come up with!” Courfeyrac argues. “We knew that if we called you and told you to come visit for your birthday, you’d just say you were working and that it wasn’t important enough to disrupt your regularly scheduled monster slaying for.”

“That’s true, at least,” Combeferre says dryly. “Trying to get you to take any kind of break is always a trial.”

Grantaire doesn’t get a chance to say that getting Enjolras to take a day off isn’t quite so difficult anymore, because that’s when Joly’s eyes find him. His whole face lights up.

“And this must be Grantaire!” he says. He sounds very excited. He tears himself away from Enjolras and comes over to shake Grantaire’s hand vigorously. “Hi, hi, I’m Joly, it’s so, so nice to finally meet you!”

“Likewise,” Grantaire says with a bemused smile.

“Sorry about all this, we wanted to let you in on the whole thing too, but we didn’t know how to get in touch with you without Enjolras noticing.” Joly’s smile widens and becomes slightly less innocent. “You know, since you two spend so much time together.”

“Joly,” Enjolras says warningly, tugging the pointed party hat off his head only to have Courfeyrac immediately replace it with another one.

“What? It’s true,” Joly says, still grinning from ear to ear. “Wasn’t it mean of Enjolras not to introduce us properly in Lyon? We hardly even got a glimpse of you at the train station.”

“I’m a disgrace to the hunting community,” Grantaire informs him solemnly. “I have to be hidden away to protect their reputation.”

“That’s—” Enjolras starts to protest, but he’s drowned out by Joly’s laughter.

“That’s Bossuet,” he tells Grantaire, pointing. Then he nods towards the unfamiliar girl. “And that’s Musichetta! There you go, Enjolras, you can finally meet her in the flesh. See, she does exist.”

“I never said she didn’t,” Enjolras says, rolling his eyes as Musichetta comes over, laughing, to shake his hand. She’s all big dark eyes and round cheeks and dozens of braids cascading artfully down her back, and she’s small—but her short dress proudly shows off the defined dancer’s muscles in her legs, and Grantaire is willing to bet she’s about as delicate as Cosette.

“It’s nice to finally meet you for real,” Musichetta is saying. “You’re something of an urban legend in Lyon. And if it helps your first impression of me at all, I also thought this idea was a bit…much.”

“Oh shush, it was the best idea,” Courfeyrac interjects. “Enjolras is secretly overcome with emotion. The good kind. And he’s going to be even more overcome when he sees what we brought—”

On that last word, he grabs Enjolras by the sleeve and drags him around Combeferre’s sofa to look at the low table behind it. Grantaire follows for a look and has to stuff a fist in his mouth to keep from laughing too much.

“…Wow,” Enjolras says with a blink after a moment. “You brought…a liquor store.”

“We sure did,” Courfeyrac says with a proud smile, casting a fond eye over the sea of bottles taking up a considerable amount of table and floor space.

“And…is that a piñata?”

“Yes it is.” Courfeyrac’s smile broadens. “Look, look, you even get a cake.”

“A Power Rangers cake,” Bossuet puts in. “Courfeyrac assures us it was your favourite.”

“It’s totally still his favourite,” Courfeyrac says, tugging on the collar of Enjolras’s red coat. “Look at him, he’s the red ranger, out to protect us all from evil.”

Around this point, Combeferre slips out the apartment’s front door to retrieve all the incriminating luggage that Enjolras and Grantaire had left on the landing, and Grantaire follows to help. By the time they get back, Enjolras’s friends have wrestled him onto the sofa and are plying him with drinks in paper cups laughably embellished with jaunty, colourful cocktail umbrellas. Enjolras still looks a little shell-shocked, but he’s slowly starting to shake off his incredulity and relax a little, laughing at something Courfeyrac is saying. Grantaire catches Combeferre watching the scene with fond exasperation.

“Why do I get the feeling you wouldn’t have put up with this for anyone but Enjolras?” Grantaire says.

“He’s certainly lucky I like him so much,” Combeferre replies dryly.

“So what now?” Grantaire asks him.

“Well, after the time I’ve had contending with that lot, I intend to take full advantage of the absurd amount of alcohol they’ve brought into my home,” Combeferre replies. He shoots Grantaire an amused look. “I thought that would be your plan too?”

It does sound like an excellent plan, but—but. Seeing Enjolras there, surrounded by his old friends who went to such extreme lengths to see him on this day, it suddenly feels too much like intruding, just like it did in Lyon. He feels like too much of a reminder of the hunting world—most of the time he and Enjolras spent together is spent hunting and killing, after all—and he thinks Enjolras should be allowed this one night to feel ordinary again, to talk and laugh with his friends without having to worry about protecting his reputation as a hunter. Going over there and sitting down and joining in feels very much like the wrong thing to do.

At the far end of the room, there is a set of glass doors leading out onto a small balcony. When he is reasonably sure that everyone is quite absorbed in conversation, Grantaire slips out there, into the dark and quiet.

It’s nice, really. A little cold, maybe, but it’s not like that bothers him. He leans against the metal railing and watches Paris below and the sky above. A few stars are visible despite the bright lights of the city. He can hear a muffled rendition of the chatter inside, and he’s content enough.

He’s not sure how long he’s out there. Close to an hour, maybe? He’s never been very good at measuring short periods of time like that. After some time, though, he hears the glass door behind him slide open, and he doesn’t have to turn around to know that it’s Enjolras. He smiles in greeting as Enjolras joins him at the railing.

“Hello,” he says.

“Hi. What are you doing out here?” Enjolras asks him, folding his arms on top of the railing and tilting his head inquisitively. The cool night breeze stirs up his hair, and the artificial lights of the city below throw the planes of his face into sharp relief. He looks radiant. But, then, he always does.

“Needed some air,” Grantaire answers. Enjolras makes a small noise, something like a snort, that makes it quite clear that he doesn’t believe that.

“What about you, then?” Grantaire asks. “It’s your party, even if you didn’t ask for it. Why’re you out here?”

Enjolras shrugs.

“Needed some air,” he says with a faint smile.

Grantaire rolls his eyes.

“The two of us better get to breathing, then,” he says.

“It’s pretty warm in there. It’s kind of a relief to step out,” Enjolras says, looking up towards the dark sky and taking a deep breath. His cheeks are flushed, probably from a combination of the stifling heat inside the crowded apartment and the alcohol that Courfeyrac has undoubtedly kept steadily pouring. “You should come inside, though. When I go back in.”

“If I do, it’ll get even warmer in there,” Grantaire points out, shooting him a smile. Enjolras doesn’t return it; he peers at him, seeming caught between bemusement and concern.

“Are you scared of my friends?” he asks finally.

“What? No.” Grantaire laughs and shakes his head. “No, I just…” He waves a hand vaguely in the direction of the glass doors. “It feels like intruding, somehow.”

“Well, that’s dumb,” Enjolras says with all his usual delicacy. “Believe me when I say that they’re all dying to talk to you. Normally I’d do my best to shield you from their interrogation, but I’m getting sort of bombarded in there, so on this occasion I’m afraid I’m willing to throw you under the bus.”

Grantaire laughs again.

“You’re sure?” he asks. “In Lyon, I got the distinct impression that you didn’t want me and your civilian friends to be within a hundred feet of each other.”

“Well, that was back then.” Enjolras shifts slightly and dips his head. His eyes become obscured in shadow. “It was…a stupid thing. It wasn’t exactly them that I didn’t want you to see. It was me, I guess. I was different around them than I was with you.” He looks up again and shrugs. “Not so much anymore.”

Grantaire looks back at him and says nothing because he knows that if he opens his mouth, all that will spill out is I love you I love you I love you.

“Anyway, I think we’ll need to vacate this balcony soon,” Enjolras goes on. “I suspect it’s only a matter of time before Marius and Cosette will want to come out here for some romantic kissing under the Parisian night sky. They look like they’re struggling to keep their hands off each other in there.”

The spell breaks; Grantaire snorts with laughter.

“I’d certainly hate to deny them that,” he says.

“Good,” Enjolras says, looking satisfied.

They’re quiet for a little while. They can hear the din of the party from behind them but it’s still muffled by the doors, and Grantaire can’t help but think that it’s so nice that the two of them can be content in silence together. He thinks back to the beginning of their partnership and wonders how they ever got here.

“Happy birthday, by the way,” he says suddenly.

“Thanks,” Enjolras says, and now it’s his turn to roll his eyes. “I still can’t believe they did this.”

“How come you didn’t tell me it was your birthday?” Grantaire asks. Enjolras shrugs again.

“It’s not really important, is it?” he says.

“Are you kidding?” Grantaire elbows him lightly. “Surviving another year is a big deal, especially for a hunter. What better reason to celebrate?”

“Alright, then, when’s your birthday?” Enjolras asks with a challenging look. “We've worked together, what, nine months now? I'm willing to bet it’s passed already and you never mentioned it.”

Grantaire blinks, taken aback. It would be easy to lie and just pick a date, any date, wouldn’t it? But the thought of lying about even this little thing threatens to sour this moment, this whole evening for him, because it reminds him that really, all of this is a lie—that things are so good right now, but only because he’s a liar—

“Grantaire?” Enjolras says uncertainly, dragging him back to reality.

“Sorry,” he says, shaking his head. “Just. I don’t really know when it is. My family never did the whole birthday thing.”

“…Oh.” Enjolras looks like he isn’t sure what to say to that.

“You should’ve told me yours was coming up though,” Grantaire scolds him, eager to lighten the mood again. “I would’ve got you a present.”

“Oh, really?” Enjolras smiles wryly and turns to face him, leaning sideways against the railing. “What would you have got me?”

Grantaire hums thoughtfully.

“Something pretty and useless,” he says finally with a grin. “Because I know that if I’d asked you what you wanted, you’d have said something like ‘I’m running low on bullets’ or ‘I need a bone from a minor saint for this new hex bag I’m making’ or—”

“Shut up,” Enjolras says, smacking him on the arm—but he’s laughing.

“So yeah, I’d get you something eminently non-practical,” Grantaire goes on. “Like a big book about art. Or stupidly expensive aftershave. Or a voucher for free ice cream for a year.”

“Wow,” Enjolras says. “Now I really regret not telling you.”

“Your loss,” Grantaire says, putting his hands up apologetically.

“I suppose there’s always next year,” Enjolras says, and it makes the heart that Grantaire doesn’t even need leap to think that there might be a next year; that Enjolras might want him to stay that long.

“As it is, you gave me no warning, so there’s really only one thing that I can give you at such short notice,” he says. Enjolras blinks.

“What’s that?” he asks.

“Well, technically you already have it,” Grantaire says. “So maybe this is cheating a little, but…”

“What is it?” Enjolras laughs, and he shifts closer—so close that Grantaire can feel the heat of his skin radiating against his own, and now his heart is pounding. He swears that the nearer Enjolras is to him, the more human he feels.

“My sword,” he manages to say as he fights not to be distracted by the fact that Enjolras’s face is so close to his own that he could practically count the tiny creases on his lips.

Enjolras blinks again.

“Your sword?” he repeats, like he’d completely forgotten it existed.

“We made a bargain, right?” Grantaire says. “You could borrow it, so long as I could come with you.”

“I remember,” Enjolras says with a nod.

“So now I’m giving it to you,” Grantaire says. “No bargains, no conditions. It’s a gift. It’s yours.”

He’s surprised when Enjolras suddenly looks uneasy.

“You don’t have to…” he starts to say.

“I want to,” Grantaire tells him. “It does more good in your hands.”

“But you said it was yours by birth, that it came from your family…”

“Trust me, I don’t need a blade to help me remember my family,” Grantaire says with a dry smile. “I want you to have it. Always. To keep you safe. And the rest of the world too, I guess. But mostly you.”

He’s sure he must be imagining Enjolras’s face flushing even darker, but there’s no mistaking the sudden giddy pink glow in his soul, and not for the first time he wishes he knew what Enjolras was thinking as well as what he was feeling.

“Okay,” Enjolras says softly. “I…thank you.”

“I wish I could formally present it to you, but I think it’s in your coat pocket, hanging up in Combeferre’s hallway,” Grantaire laughs.

Enjolras just nods, looking a little dazed. Grantaire notices that his bare arms are covered in goose bumps.

“You’re going to catch a chill out here,” he says, reaching out to rub his arms with his hands. Enjolras lets out a small sound of surprise.

“How are you so warm?” he asks, latching onto his arms with his own very cold fingers.

“I always run hot,” Grantaire says, trying to ignore the fact that they are now even closer. Enjolras doesn’t let go. He looks Grantaire in the face and his tongue peeks out to wet his lips nervously and Grantaire honestly thinks he might just pass out.

“Grantaire, listen, you really didn’t—” Enjolras starts, but he cuts himself off when he is interrupted by the sound of enthusiastic applause. They both look around in surprise, and then jump apart guiltily when they see Joly and Bossuet on the other side of the glass, clapping loudly. As they watch, Courfeyrac smacks them both over the head.

“What did you do that for?” he’s howling. “They were having a goddamn moment, it was so beautiful, why’d you have to kill it?”

“I couldn’t help it, it was too beautiful,” Joly wails in reply as Courfeyrac starts beating him with a cushion. “I had to let them know.”

Enjolras sighs.

“Should we go inside?” Grantaire asks him, trying not to laugh.

“I suppose,” Enjolras says, opening the door. “Someone needs to supervise these children.”

~

Once they’re inside, Courfeyrac tells everyone to sit down—there’s a lot of shuffling around and pushing, and Grantaire ends up in the middle of the overcrowded sofa, with Enjolras pressed up against his left side and Joly to his right. He gets the distinct impression that none of this was accidental.

“So, Grantaire,” Courfeyrac says finally. He’s wearing a grin, and something about it is making Enjolras squirm. “We’ve been thinking, and we’ve decided that the current situation is very unfair to us all.”

“What situation is that?” Grantaire asks, bemused.

“Well. I’ve known Enjolras since primary school, Joly and Bossuet have known him since high school, and Marius has known him since university. You only know him as a cool, badass monster-hunter. Which means, obviously, that we have an excess of dumb embarrassing stories that you’re missing out on, and you have a bunch of cool badass stories that we’re missing out on.”

“I don’t like where this is going,” Enjolras says.

“Then what do you propose?” Grantaire asks mock-seriously, leaning back and taking a drink from the cup someone had pushed into his hands.

“I think we should have a little question and answer session,” Courfeyrac says. His grin is positively wicked. Enjolras makes a squawking noise of protest.

“We’re really going to torment the birthday boy like that?” Grantaire says.

“We could make a game of it,” Joly pipes up brightly.

“What sort of game?” Enjolras asks suspiciously.

“A drinking game, naturally,” Joly says, holding up the bottle of vodka he’s currently pouring from. “If someone asks a question and you let it be answered, the person who asked it has to take a drink. If you won’t let it be answered, you have to take a drink, Enjolras.”

“…This is going to end horribly,” Enjolras says with sullen resignation, sinking deeper into the cushions.

“You can start, Grantaire,” Courfeyrac says generously. “You have so much to get caught up on.”

Grantaire casts a look at Enjolras, who looks back at him with an expression that is sort of challenging and full of feigned indifference. Go ahead, ask what you like, it’s not like I care, but there is a line and if you cross it I’ll probably kill you…

Really, this is everything Grantaire has ever wanted—a perfect opportunity to find out more about Enjolras before he was a hunter. And he doesn’t think they exactly have Enjolras’s blessing, but he doesn’t seem like he’s going to actively put up a fight.

“…Did he cry on his first day at school?” he asks finally, looking at Courfeyrac, who laughs.

“Wow, that’s going way back,” Courfeyrac says. “Can I tell him, Enjolras?”

“Not much to tell,” Enjolras says with affected boredom.

“No, he didn’t cry,” Courfeyrac says. “In fact, he had nothing but disdain for the kids who did cry. Which included me, funnily enough. He looked like such a little cherub, but he was kind of a heartless little demon.”

Enjolras groans. Grantaire hides his smile by taking a drink, as per the rules.

“How did you two meet?” Joly all but demands, clearly deciding it is now his turn. He looks very excited. “Enjolras never told us properly, he’s terrible at that sort of thing.”

“Um.” Grantaire glances at Enjolras, who gives him a long-suffering nod. “It’s not very interesting, really. We were just in the same place at the same time?”

“Details, please,” Bossuet says.

“Er. I was hanging out in, y’know, hunter HQ, and Enjolras was there talking to Combeferre, and I know most of the people I see in there but I didn’t recognise Enjolras so. I thought I’d say hello?” Grantaire pauses to shoot Enjolras a smile. “You didn’t like that.”

“You didn’t just come to ‘say hello’,” Enjolras argues without heat. “You were being an asshole, admit it.”

“I was just pulling your pigtails,” Grantaire says, waving a hand. “Have pity, Enjolras, it’s not often we see a face as pretty as yours in the Musain, how was I meant to know how to act—?”

He’s cut off when Enjolras elbows him sharply in the ribs.

“We met through Grantaire being an asshole, is the point,” Enjolras says. He’s gone bright red, and he downs a drink despite it not technically being his turn to do so. Next to Grantaire, Joly has his hands clasped underneath his chin and looks just about ready to explode with glee.

“How did you start working together, then?” Bossuet asks. “If you got off to such a bad start.”

“Hey, isn’t it my turn to ask a question?” Grantaire says, grinning.

A lot of questions are fired back and forth over the next few hours—Enjolras’s friends end up getting almost the complete account of their travels together thus far, and Grantaire learns all sorts of interesting things, including but not limited to: Enjolras’s favourite Halloween costume as a kid (the red Power Ranger), his best and worst school subjects (he was good at everything except art), that he had been a model student in terms of attendance and academic achievement, but not quite so much in terms of following the rules, and had never hesitated to throw himself head-first into a violent altercation with anyone foolish enough to attempt any adolescent bullying of himself or his friends. He and Courfeyrac had queued at the midnight releases of the last three Harry Potter books. He'd been on the debate team in high school and, on one occasion, had reduced an opponent to tears. His first pet had been a spaniel named, to Grantaire's utter delight, Floppyears, because Enjolras's parents had thought it would be a great idea to allow their then-three-year-old to name him.

Enjolras takes most of this with dignity and doesn’t veto many questions, at least not until everyone starts getting drunker and the questions start getting more probing and ridiculous. He even refuses one of Courfeyrac’s questions before he even asks it.

“You’re going to ask something awful, I can tell by the look on your face!” he says, pointing. “No, don’t, you’re not allowed!”

“Fine, then drink, you coward!” Courfeyrac yells back, pouring a hideous concoction of spirits into a cup and shoving it at him. Enjolras grabs it and gulps it down, and the taste makes him wince painfully, but he still seems to think it was a small enough price to pay for stopping Courfeyrac.

When it comes round to Grantaire’s turn again, he deliberately tries to think of a question that won’t be too distressing, but accidentally manages to do the complete opposite.

“First crush?” he asks.

There’s a definite squeak from his left. On his right, Joly opens his mouth to say something, but is stopped by Enjolras literally throwing himself over Grantaire to clamp a hand over his mouth.

“Don’t you dare,” he yelps.

“…That’s a no, then?” Bossuet says in amusement. Grantaire doesn’t trust himself to say anything while he has a lap full of Enjolras.

“No, no, no,” Enjolras confirms, finally releasing Joly and sitting back again, allowing Grantaire’s higher brain function to return.

“Well, now I’m very curious,” he says.

“Too bad,” Enjolras huffs. He’s bright red again. And, Grantaire realises belatedly, he’s more than a little drunk, too.

“I’m sure one of your friends will tell me when your back is turned,” Grantaire says with a teasing smile.

“They wouldn’t dare,” Enjolras declares. “And if you even ask them, I’ll…” He pauses to think for a moment. “I’ll set your sketchbooks on fire.”

While Grantaire clutches his chest in mock-horror, there is general clamour from the others, with demands to see these sketchbooks. And so, shortly, their luggage is ransacked and Grantaire’s sketchbooks are spread out on the floor and Courfeyrac, Joly and Bossuet are ogling over them. Marius had fallen asleep a little while ago and is curled up in an armchair, whilst Cosette and Musichetta had become quite bored with the question-asking game and set themselves up in a corner to have a conversation of their own. Grantaire and Enjolras are therefore left alone on the sofa—though, despite there now being plenty of room, neither of them moves to put any space between them. Enjolras is actually lounging slightly against Grantaire’s side, looking sleepy and content.

“My friends are idiots,” he says at length.

“Maybe a little,” Grantaire agrees with a small smile as Joly starts cooing over one drawing in particular. He suspects it might be the sketch he did of Enjolras in Amsterdam.

“I still like them, though,” Enjolras says. He sighs. “I wish Jehan was here. Then all my friends would be here.” He pauses. “Well, there’s Bahorel too. But he wouldn’t come. I think he hates me.”

“You could call Jehan,” Grantaire suggests, steering them away from that morbid line of conversation. Enjolras thinks about this but eventually shudders.

“No,” he says. “He’d yell at me for not telling him it was my birthday.”

“Maybe you should just start telling people these things,” Grantaire says. Enjolras hums vaguely in agreement.

“Woah, hey!” Courfeyrac exclaims suddenly, looking over at them. “No falling asleep! You haven’t even blown out your candles yet!”

They actually make him do it, too: they turn out the lights and light the candles and they sing, and Enjolras just sits there and manages to look both pleased and totally mortified. And Grantaire sits and watches and smiles and just wonders at the fact that this is okay now; that he’s allowed to see dumb moments like these.

Not long afterwards, nearly everyone is starting to look tired, and they decide to call it a night. The Lyon contingent are staying at a nearby hostel, and Combeferre gives Enjolras and Grantaire the keys to one of his many empty apartments across the city to save them having to book into a hotel at this time of night. Grantaire offers to stay and help clean up (because, after all, it’s not like he’s tired) but Combeferre waves him off and tells him to just to make sure that Enjolras gets to bed safely.

“Carry him if you have to,” he says, earning a splutter of protest from Enjolras.

Luckily for Enjolras’s pride, Grantaire doesn’t end up having to carry him anywhere. They allow themselves the luxury of taking a cab to the apartment, and Enjolras dozes a little during the journey but wakes up upon arrival.

“I’m still having a hard time believing tonight actually happened,” he murmurs as they let themselves in.

“Me too,” Grantaire agrees, though he suspects they’re each feeling disbelieving about very different aspects of the evening.

Enjolras looks ready to fall asleep on his feet, but he still manages to shrug out of his coat and retrieve Grantaire’s sword from inside it—Grantaire knows he likes to sleep with it to hand—and then—he stops. He looks down at the blade in his hands with a pensive, troubled expression.

“Don’t even bother asking if I’m sure about giving it to you,” Grantaire tells him. “I’m sure. It’s yours.”

Enjolras’s troubled stare shifts to him instead. Here, in this darkened hallway, with his usually stern posture loosened by alcohol and tiredness, he looks oddly vulnerable. His eyes search Grantaire’s face.

“What is it?” Grantaire asks. Enjolras’s mouth twists.

“You’re still going to come with me, right?” he says finally. “Just because we don’t have that stupid deal anymore, you’re not going to…?”

Grantaire blinks at him, once, twice. Then he laughs, because laughing is easier than actually thinking about the fact that Enjolras is asking him to stay—

“I’m pretty sure I’ve said it before,” he says. “You’re stuck with me for as long as you’ll put up with me.”

Enjolras peers at him a little longer, as if trying to read his honesty from his face, and at length appears satisfied.

“Okay,” he says, and he smiles, and Grantaire’s heart feels like it’s bouncing about in his chest. He’s starting to wonder if his vessel is actually malfunctioning.

Even after Enjolras is asleep, Grantaire doesn’t let himself think about the wider implications of this night—that Enjolras is no longer concerned with looking ridiculous in front of him, that Enjolras let him ask his friends questions about him, that Enjolras asked him to stay—

No. Instead, he thinks about what would be the best kind of hangover-curing food to get in the morning.

Again, this is easier.

Chapter Text

  

~

The airport is very busy. Airports generally are, in Grantaire’s experience. He’s only been on an airplane once before, out of sheer curiosity (it was slow and noisy and weird), but he’s spent some considerable time in airports. They’re a good place to people-watch. Because, y’know, they’re always so busy.

“I hate these places,” Enjolras mutters. “You have to queue for everything.”

Grantaire laughs quietly. They are currently in the queue for check-in, and have been for quite some time. They are armed only with carry-on luggage and the very convincing fake passports Combeferre had whipped up for them. No weapons, of course. They have a case to investigate and they can’t do that if they’re in a jail cell for trying to smuggle guns and knives out of the country. Their weapons, including Grantaire’s blade (he wonders if he should start thinking of it as Enjolras’s, since he did give it to him), are locked up in a safe in Combeferre’s apartment until they get back. For Grantaire, it feels a little weird being so far from his sword, but he’s alright with it. By contrast, he can tell that Enjolras feels entirely too vulnerable temporarily living the life of a regular unarmed citizen. He’s been twitchy ever since they left Combeferre, and keeps glancing around like he expects all the monsters in France to somehow know that this is a prime time to attack them and come running. His soul makes Grantaire think of an unhappy little rainstorm, and he knows the airport crowds aren’t helping. Enjolras might love humanity, but he definitely does not love the claustrophobic crush of people in large numbers.

The line moves forward incrementally. Enjolras makes a quiet noise that’s something between a groan and a whine. Grantaire laughs again.

“Do you want to go sit down somewhere?” he asks. “I can hold our place here until it’s our turn.”

“No, it’s fine.”

“I don’t mind.”

“It’s fine,” Enjolras repeats, rolling his eyes. “I’m just glad we don’t travel by air very often.”

“Yeah, this is an exciting first,” Grantaire says cheerfully. “We’re getting sent overseas.”

“We’re not going all that far.”

“Maybe not, but we get to go on a plane and we get to stay in a fancy resort hotel and we’re going to be spending most of our time in bars and clubs.” Grantaire grins. “It’s like a regular vacation.”

“It’s not a vacation,” Enjolras reminds him in a low hiss, casting a look around to see if anyone is listening to them. They aren’t. Everyone else is far too excited, because they really are going on vacation.

“It is according to our cover,” Grantaire sing-songs at him. Their story is that they are a couple of students going on a post-graduation party holiday, which is probably the truth for almost everyone else in the line. There is a group of guys in front of them wearing matching neon-coloured tank tops, with what Grantaire can only assume are their nicknames printed on the back. Behind them, there is a group of women who look slightly too old to be students – a hen party, perhaps – and they are wearing matching feather boas and pink cowboy hats.

“We should’ve got matching accessories,” Grantaire says under his breath. “It would’ve given extra credence to our story.”

He feels a small surge of triumph when Enjolras’s mouth twitches almost involuntarily into a smile.

“Did you want a feather boa?” he asks.

“I was thinking more like, leather jackets and wraparound shades,” Grantaire says. “Lots of spikes and studs on the jackets, to show we’re tough. And maybe our team name on the back.”

“We have a team name?”

“Well, we should. It’d be good for morale, and stuff. You can pick if you want.”

“No,” Enjolras says, but Grantaire can see he’s trying not to laugh.

“Or we could get matching tattoos. I could design them. It could be like, some hideous shambling combination of every type of monster we’ve ever hunted, with a big ‘X’ through it…”

“Shut up,” Enjolras says, but he’s lost this round – his shoulders are shaking with laughter and his smile is so wide that it’s crinkling his eyes and, ugh, he’s adorable. The hen party ladies are looking at him like they’re thinking exactly that, and Grantaire kind of wants to grab Enjolras by the shoulders and shove him towards them and yell ‘you see this cute little sunbeam? I’ve seen him straight-up slice more than one man’s head off. Clean off. You don’t believe me? Yeah, I wouldn’t believe me either.’

“Anyway, there’s only two of us,” Enjolras goes on. “If we got matching anything, we’d probably just look like a weird- couple.”

He goes red as soon as he says it, for reasons Grantaire can’t quite guess.

“Well, we can’t have that,” Grantaire says. “Can’t have anything tarnishing your ‘brooding loner’ persona.”

Enjolras just elbows him in the ribs.

They finally reach the front of the queue not long after and, having obtained their boarding passes, they can go and sit down at last. Unsurprisingly, they end up in the airport’s obligatory Starbucks.

“I feel like we should start some kind of coffee-rating blog,” Grantaire says while he sketches and Enjolras does something on his laptop. “I mean, we must have drank coffee in more European cities than the average person.”

“A lot more, I’d say,” Enjolras says, smiling faintly. “Coffee reviewers. You should suggest that to Combeferre as a cover story.”

Enjolras’s phone rings before they can ponder the idea further. It turns out to be Courfeyrac; Enjolras puts the phone on speaker and sets it down on the table. He’s been doing this ever since the surprise birthday party incident. It’s clear that, for whatever reason, Courfeyrac and the others are eager to welcome Grantaire into the fold, and Enjolras seems to have decided that they can’t embarrass him any more than they already have so he might as well just go with it.

“Hello, my monster-killing friends," Courfeyrac greets them cheerfully.

“We’re in public, Courfeyrac,” Enjolras tells him.

“Hello, my completely ordinary student friends.”

“Hello,” they chorus back at him, making him laugh.

“How is normal civilian life today?” he asks.

“We’re just waiting on our flight,” Enjolras says.

“Ooh, yes, the exciting Majorca trip. I’m so jealous, it’s been a while since I partied in Magaluf in my wild youth.”

“We’re not going to party.”

“Grantaire, please drag him out for at least one night of partying once your work is done,” Courfeyrac pleads. “I pass this important responsibility onto you in my absence.”

“Hey, I don’t drag Enjolras anywhere,” Grantaire replies, smiling widely while Enjolras pulls a face. “If we party, it will have to be by mutual agreement.”

“Well, I’m sure you’ll be able to get him to agree. Use all your rugged charm.”

“I’ll do my very best.”

“And Enjolras, I hope you remembered to pack the factor 50 sun cream.”

“This isn’t the first time we’ve gone somewhere warm, you know,” Enjolras says.

“Maybe not, but if you want to be incognito in Majorca, you’re going to have to blend in. That means chilling on the beach in shorts, sandals and a snap-back, and nothing else.”

“Yeah, that’s probably not happening.”

“Don’t forget to put sun cream on your back. Get Grantaire to help you if you can’t reach…”

“Oh, shut up.” Enjolras is going red again.

“Protection is very important, Enjolras! Sun protection, I mean. Of course, the other type of protection is important as well, always use a-”

“Oh, wow, they’re calling our flight, bye Courfeyrac,” Enjolras says, ending the call and stuffing the phone back in his pocket.

“You liar,” Grantaire says once he’s quite finished sniggering into his coffee.

“He deserved it.” Enjolras shakes his head. “Sorry if anything he says makes you uncomfortable. He really is only joking around. You’ll get used to him.”

“He’ll have to try harder than that to make me uncomfortable.”

“Oh God, don’t tell him so, he’ll take it as a challenge.”

“Poor Enjolras,” Grantaire laughs. “So sensible, and surrounded by such childishness.”

“I think you’re the first person to ever call me sensible.”

“That’s a point,” Grantaire concedes. He pauses, and then adds, “So, do you want to?”

“Want to what?”

“Party.” Grantaire grins and wiggles his hips and does the best impression of terrible club dancing he can while sitting down. “When the work is done, of course.”

“Not if those are your best dance moves,” Enjolras snorts, earning a distraught gasp. “Actually, I’m not really much of a party person.”

“You shock me,” Grantaire says, and Enjolras kicks him under the table.

“I mean I’ve never really liked clubbing,” he says. “It’s even more crowded than this place, and it’s so loud that you can’t even talk to anyone- And yes, I know people don’t go to clubs to talk, before you say anything, I’m just saying it’s not really for me.”

“That’s fair enough,” Grantaire says. He himself has always liked the noise and crush and flashing lights of nightclubs, but that’s because he’s always used them to try and drown out everything else in the world.

“We should do something, though,” Enjolras says. He’s staring very fixedly at his laptop screen but his fingers aren’t moving, so he’s either looking at one very fascinating picture or nothing at all. “When the case is done with.”

“Yeah?” Grantaire says, feigning nonchalance to keep from spooking him. “Is there something you want to see over there?”

“Nothing in particular, just…” Enjolras fidgets. Even from this angle, it’s clear to Grantaire that his laptop has gone to sleep and he really is just avoiding eye contact out of sheer awkwardness. “Y’know, it’s going to be…it’s been a year, since we started working together. In a few days, that is.”

Grantaire blinks at him.

“Really?” he says. He hadn’t been paying such close attention, and he’s frankly astounded that Enjolras has been.

“Yeah, it’s…yeah.” Enjolras manages to look up at him. “You didn’t know?”

“I, uh. I knew it was something close to that long, but I don’t know it right down to the exact day. I’m not so good with dates.” Grantaire shrugs then grins. “But wow, congratulations, you’ve put up with me for a whole year! Minus a few days.”

“I wonder how many years it’ll take for you to stop saying stuff like that,” Enjolras says, rolling his eyes.

“So what do you want to do?” Grantaire asks. “To commemorate this occasion.”

“I don’t know,” Enjolras says. “I just thought…”

He trails off. Grantaire doesn’t push him to finish the thought; he knows that Enjolras is absolutely terrible at asking for something that he wants instead of something that will benefit all of mankind. He thinks, instead, about what Enjolras might like to do at a tourist resort. Him not liking crowds is a bit of a problem, since everywhere is likely to be crowded. Somewhere open, maybe. Somewhere with lots of space.

“We could go to the beach,” Grantaire says. “If you wanted. It’ll be busy but I’m sure we could stake claim to a patch of sand. And we could send Courfeyrac photos of you in shorts and sandals, he’d freak out.”

Enjolras tilts his head to one side thoughtfully. A faint smile spreads over his face.

“I haven’t been to the beach in a long time,” he says.

“I’ll even buy you an ice cream,” Grantaire says. Enjolras snorts.

“Wow, how could I say no,” he says.

Their flight really is called shortly after that; they get through security with time to spare, and spend a while wandering around duty-free. Grantaire debates buying Enjolras something ridiculous and expensive and presenting it to him with a yell of ‘happy anniversary!” but decides that this would most likely end in a concussion for him.

The flight itself goes smoothly, and is mostly quiet apart from the neon-tank-top gang, who had apparently indulged themselves at the airport bar and spend a lot of the time singing. They land at Palma and there is a coach waiting to take them to their hotel. Sadly, the neon tank tops are on the same coach, and they keep singing. Enjolras looks like he’d sort of like to punch at least one of them. Grantaire doodles caricatures of them in his sketchbook to distract him. It seems to work, mostly.

“Wow,” Grantaire says when they reach the hotel. He laughs. “This is more like it, huh?”

“I don’t know about you,” Enjolras says as he advances cautiously across the marble-floored lobby, “but I feel somewhat out of place.”

“That’s because the kind of hotels we’re used to come with a complimentary stick in the corner of the room, so you can beat the rats off by yourself.”

Their room is a lot more spacious than they’re used to, too – it is, in fact, more of a suite, with a separate living area adjoining the bedroom. Grantaire zips around excitedly, cataloguing all the luxuries.

“Working AC…a sofa…a balcony…satellite TV…holy shit, two bathrooms.”

“Just don’t get used to it,” Enjolras says, looking amused. “We’ll be back to the cheapest accommodation Europe has to offer soon enough, I expect.”

“Then we need to savour this,” Grantaire declares, going out onto the balcony. “Aw man, Enjolras, get out here and check out this view.”

From the balcony they can see an enormous stretch of beach – though at this time, in the middle of the afternoon, the sand is hardly visible for all the sunbathing holidaymakers. Grantaire squints for a moment, then points.

“We’re calling dibs on that spot right there,” he says.

“Where?” Enjolras asks, pressing up against his side to try and follow his line of sight.

“There! That small patch of sand sort of dangerously close to where those guys are playing volleyball.”

“I don’t see it.”

“It’s definitely there. And almost definitely big enough for two. It’s in a risky locale but I think we’re tough enough to deal with the threat of a volleyball to the face. Your reflexes are pretty good, right?”

“It’s so crowded,” Enjolras says, shaking his head in disbelief.

“We could always head down first thing in the morning. Race the German tourists for the best sunbeds,” Grantaire says, grinning. “Or we could go at night-time. Everyone else would be too busy getting drunk, we’d probably have the place to ourselves.”

“That could be nice,” Enjolras says with a small smile, before abruptly giving himself a shake. “But now’s not the time to be thinking about that. Work first.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Grantaire says. “Let’s get to work, then.”

They leave the hotel, though not before quickly changing clothes for the sweltering heat outside. Enjolras clearly isn’t quite ready to go as casual as shorts, but he puts on a pair of lightweight trousers and an extremely thin white t-shirt, which is just plain unfair of him if he expects Grantaire to be in any way focused on the case. He also dons a pair of sunglasses, and Grantaire knows they’re meant to be trying to blend in as tourists, but he’s pretty sure that Enjolras is going to attract even more attention than usual, strutting around looking like a damn runway model and wearing a shirt that anyone could easily count his abs through.

Grantaire himself has no serious reputation to uphold and so opts for shorts and a shirt he bought especially – a pale blue tank top with the words ‘SUN’S OUT, GUNS OUT’ emblazoned in screaming letters across the front.

“Let’s go get wasted, bro,” he says. Enjolras rolls his eyes. “What? Just getting into character.”

They’ve been given directions to a certain café where they’ll be met by Combeferre’s contacts on the island – because of course he has those. They were told that the people they should talk to would be sitting at an outside table, but when they reach the place the only people sitting outside are a pair of adorable old ladies sitting drinking tall glasses of cloudy lemonade and laughing heartily together. They really look far too sweet to have anything to do with the hunting world, but Grantaire supposes that’s true for Enjolras too. They approach a trifle uncertainly. The women must be better informed, though, because the moment they catch sight of them they get to their feet and greet them like beloved grandsons, which is probably the impression they’re trying to give to passers-by. There’s a lot of cooing and hugging and cheek-kissing – Grantaire takes it with flirty good humour which earns him an affectionate smack on the arm, while Enjolras struggles through the charade with a strained-looking smile. Grantaire watches him and feels an almost unbearable fondness – he loves that Enjolras just can’t fake affection, he loves knowing that every easy smile he coaxes from him can be nothing but genuine.

The women introduce themselves as Carmen and Francesca, and then it’s time to get down to business.

“So,” Carmen says once they’re all seated at the table, “you’re our big tough hunters.”

“Combeferre said you were young, but my,” Francesca says, reaching over and pinching Enjolras’s cheek. “Be careful you don’t get that pretty face smashed up, dear, it’d be such a shame. Why, if I were forty years younger…”

She cackles, and Grantaire can see Enjolras trying to remain composed even as his face flares red.

“Do you have the things we need?” he asks.

“Of course,” Francesca says. Under the table, she uses her foot to push a blue rucksack towards Enjolras. “We’d be hunting the thing ourselves if, again, forty years younger.”

“Combeferre said he thinks it’s a djinn,” Enjolras says. “Would you agree?”

“Yes,” Carmen says immediately. Her mouth puckers in distaste. “For a few months now, people have been showing up disorientated and hallucinating and weak from blood loss. The police are saying it’s some kind of new drug, but no.”

“It is a new drug,” Francesca says dryly. “It’s djinn venom.”

“And now someone’s turned up dead,” Enjolras says.

“That’s right. And they won’t be the last, if you two don’t kill the damn thing.”

“The whole thing doesn’t seem to be deterring the tourists much,” Grantaire remarks. Francesca snorts.

“You think they know?” she says. “It’s the height of the season. This is when this place makes its money. Everything’s being kept very quiet.”

“What?” Enjolras looks outraged. “They can’t do that!”

“Seems they can,” Carmen says, eyeing him balefully. “You could try to stop them, but it’d probably be more helpful if you went to the root of the problem instead.”

“Yes, go kill the bastard,” Francesca says cheerfully. “My, I miss those days. Come see us when you’re done and we’ll celebrate. And drink something stronger than this swill.”

She gestures to the lemonade. Carmen pats her on the back of the hand.

“Now, dear, you’re supposed to be cutting back,” she says mildly.

Enjolras and Grantaire take the backpack and leave before they can get caught up in any bickering.

“Just think, that could be us in like fifty years,” Grantaire says, sniggering. “‘Grantaire, you’re supposed to be cutting back!’”

Again, Enjolras unexpectedly blushes for no reason Grantaire can fathom.

“You’re always telling me I’m going to die young,” Enjolras says. “Now we’re going to last another fifty years and retire to an island somewhere?”

“A guy can dream,” Grantaire says with a quick grin.

He wonders if maybe it’s just the sun that’s making Enjolras go so red.

~

Back at the hotel, they inspect the contents of the rucksack. There’s a handgun for each of them and a frankly alarming number of bullets, but they know those won’t be of much use as anything but a distraction – the real weapons are the silver knives, and the grisly jars filled with lamb’s blood.

“I wish there was a less messy way to kill a djinn,” Enjolras says, opening one of the jars and wrinkling his nose.

“Have you ever hunted one before?” Grantaire asks.

“No. Have you?”

“No.” He’s never had need to go toe-to-toe with a djinn before, but he doesn’t doubt that he’d emerge unscathed from a confrontation with one.

“We’d both better be careful, then,” Enjolras says with a nod.

“We always are,” Grantaire replies. Enjolras gives him a deadpan look. “Okay, you always are.”

“Combeferre hasn’t been able to pinpoint exactly where the victims were attacked, but from what he can gather, they were all picked up by emergency services in this area.” Enjolras points to the map he has spread out on the room’s generously sized actual-solid-oak coffee table. Grantaire is having a hard time taking it seriously, since it’s a brightly coloured ‘party map’ they found in the hotel lobby, and it shows nothing but the locations of bars and clubs along with badly drawn caricatures of people drinking beer. He sobers, however, when Enjolras’s expression darkens. “And the person who died was found here, on this street.”

“So we start there?”

“Yes.”

“Seems strange that only one person has died, doesn’t it?” Grantaire muses. “Do you think the djinn is trying to feed without killing?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Enjolras says flatly. “It hasn’t succeeded.”

They have a satchel each for this job; Enjolras starts packing the lamb’s blood and knives into each of them. Grantaire knows the bags have a concealed compartment for these things, but he still can’t help but hope that neither of them gets searched too thoroughly by bouncers.

“It seems likely that the djinn is targeting people who are out at night, presumably because drunk people are easy targets,” Enjolras goes on. “It’s impossible to tell if it’s working out of a specific bar, though, or which one if it is. So we have the best chance of finding it quickly if we split up.” Grantaire makes a very unhappy noise. “Oh, don’t do that.”

“First you say we’re going to be careful, then you say we’re splitting up and working alone,” Grantaire complains.

“We can do both,” Enjolras says. “Come on, you know it’ll go a lot faster.”

“I’d rather have us both alive than finish work early.”

“We only have to find the thing individually. We’ll have our phones, if we find it we can call for back-up.”

Grantaire glowers at him.

“Promise you will,” he says finally.

“What?”

“If you find it, promise you’ll call for help and not be an idiot and try to take it on yourself.”

“Alright, fine,” Enjolras says, rolling his eyes. “Happy?”

“I’d be happier if we were sticking together,” Grantaire says, folding his arms sulkily.

“It’ll be fine,” Enjolras says, exasperated. “We’ll each start at one end of this street and work our way along the bars and clubs.”

“And meet in the middle for cocktails at the end of the night?” Grantaire asks with a grin.

“Only if we manage to kill the thing before the bars close,” Enjolras says, smiling faintly.

~

It’s a little cooler outside when they head out that night. When they reach the long, sloping street that they’ll be investigating – which, unsurprisingly, seems to consist of little else than clubs and bars – Enjolras offers to start at the far end. Grantaire watches him walk away and privately hopes that he can find the djinn himself before Enjolras does. Enjolras might have promised, but Grantaire doesn’t trust him to take the time to call for help if he thinks a civilian might be in immediate danger. He sighs and goes into the first bar.

He has an advantage over Enjolras, since he’ll be able to recognise a djinn just by looking at them, no matter how well disguised or cloaked they are. He makes full use of this advantage; he scans crowds of dancers and the queues at the bars and the couples making out in dark corners, searching for anything that looks even remotely not human, and he moves on quickly every time he finds nothing untoward.

He’s in the fourth bar and getting antsy when he sees it.

In all honesty, the scene is creepy enough that he would have been tempted to intervene even if both parties involved had only been human. There’s a young girl, in her late teens or early twenties, and she’s clearly had a little too much to drink – but by her glazed-over eyes and vacant, lost smile, it’s clear that something other than alcohol is in her system, too. And there’s a man sitting next to her; an older man, with a shaved head and dark tattoos running from his neck all the way down his arms, and he keeps touching her – her face, her shoulder, any bit of bare skin he can reach. Which, again, creepy as all hell – but even worse when you could see, as Grantaire can see, that those tattoos aren’t really tattoos at all, that the man is about as human as the couch he’s sitting on, that there is a current of electric blue magic coursing just beneath his marked skin. And he isn’t just touching her; he’s poisoning her. Skin on skin contact is all a djinn needs to transfer its poison to an unsuspecting person.

Grantaire narrows his eyes, and all the lights in the bar pop.

People scream in the sudden pitch darkness, but it doesn’t hinder Grantaire; in a flash, he’s crossed the room and dragged the djinn off the girl, and then he flies himself and the djinn to the most remote place he can think of off the top of his head.

The stretch of the Sahara Desert he brings them to is frighteningly dark and quiet, lit only by the moon and stars overhead. The djinn is struggling in his hold, looking around wildly in utter confusion. It brings its hands up to the one Grantaire has around its neck, and he can tell it’s trying to poison him, trying to do anything to get free and figure out what the hell just happened, but it’s all to no avail. It stares at Grantaire, its eyes glowing blue but still filled with terror. Grantaire says nothing; just drops the djinn to the ground and keeps it there with a foot on its chest while he roots in his bag for the knife and lamb’s blood. He’s sure a reasonable burst of Grace would reduce the thing to ashes, but best to save that for emergencies.

“What are you?” the djinn wheezes up at him.

“A monster, same as you,” Grantaire informs it before sliding the bloody knife between its ribs and into its heart.

He leaves the body there in the desert. He doesn’t think it likely that anyone will find it, and it’d make for a good mystery if they did.

He flies back, invisible, to the bar to find it still in chaotic darkness. The music has been turned off and the staff are trying to evacuate the customers with flashlights until they can find out just what caused all of their lights to suddenly fail.

“Sorry about that,” Grantaire murmurs, coming back fully. The girl that the djinn had been targeting is still slumped on the same couch, looking dazed and confused. Grantaire goes over and takes her gently by the arm.

“Come on, we need to go outside now,” he tells her. He’s not sure if she really hears or understands him, but she nods and lets him lead her out into the pleasant night air.

“Are you here on your own?” Grantaire asks her. “Do you have friends somewhere?”

“Um,” she says, staring around her with wide, glassy eyes. Probably hallucinating up a storm. He hates monsters that mess with people’s minds. Looking at her, he doesn’t think she received anything close to a lethal dose of the djinn’s poison, but he can’t leave her alone while she’s still like this.

“Is there someone I can call for you?” he tries. “Do you have a phone?”

As it turns out, she does have a phone in her purse, and after some time she manages to unlock it, and Grantaire manages to get in touch with her friends. They come running, shrieking, down the street in record time, grabbing the girl in tearful hugs and scolding her for wandering off on her own. Grantaire watches to make sure they all get safely into a taxi back to their hotel before he moves on.

He decides that he’s going to go to the bar that he and Enjolras had planned to regroup in at the end of the night if they didn’t find anything on their respective sides of the street. He could call Enjolras right now, could go and find him and tell him that the job is done, but he thinks this is an even better idea. He can sit and have a drink (or three) and he can come up with a cover story about how he took down the djinn and what he did with the body. And Enjolras will come trudging in, maybe in about an hour, and he’ll look despondent because he didn’t find the monster and he’ll assume Grantaire didn’t either, but then Grantaire can smile smugly at him and tell him that it’s over, it’s done, and Enjolras will be so surprised, and he might complain that Grantaire didn’t call for help but he might smile too, in that way that makes Grantaire feel warm right down to his toes. And then they can relax. Maybe Enjolras will get a drink too, and they’ll talk and laugh for a while. Maybe they can make plans to go to the beach tomorrow. Or they could go right now, and walk along the sand in the quiet dark. Grantaire has to admit that he’s not particularly picky. He likes doing just about anything with Enjolras.

This all seems like a grand plan, until over an hour passes and Enjolras still hasn’t appeared. Grantaire catches himself watching the clock on the wall, and takes that to mean that he is sufficiently bored. He gives up and takes out his phone and calls Enjolras to tell him to hurry up.

It rings. And rings. And rings.

After almost a full minute of ringing, Grantaire hangs up, shaking his head. He supposes Enjolras might not be able to hear it if he’s in a club with loud music playing. And it’s not like it’s out of character for Enjolras to take longer than necessary when searching for something; he prides himself on being thorough.

And there’s no danger, he reminds the small part of his mind that is already beginning to fret. The monster is dead. The worst thing that could happen to Enjolras at this point would be getting beer spilled all over him, or something.

Still, he supposes he should go find him. If Enjolras is still vainly searching at this point, he’s probably getting himself stressed out.

He gets to his feet and goes back outside. He starts to amble along Enjolras’s end of the street, weaving in and out of the rambunctious crowds and idly scanning for that bright, bright star-soul he knows so well.

He feels the first stab of real, cold panic when he realises that he can’t find it – can’t find Enjolras.

His soul is usually a beacon, radiating golden light and righteousness, its warmth and brilliance leading Grantaire to its source as effortlessly as a string connecting him and Enjolras across miles. He knows that soul, he loves that soul, its very essence calls to him and makes it as easy for him to find as his own foot.

But right now, he can’t find it anywhere. He can’t see or feel or sense it, no matter how many times he frantically sweeps the area, and that can’t be, because that would mean that Enjolras is gone, or-

Someone bumps into him, and he realises that he’s standing stock-still in the middle of the street.

He gives himself a sharp shake. There’s no sense in panicking. The problem is more likely to lie with him than with Enjolras – maybe his Grace is fading, maybe he’s finally been cut off from the power of the Host. Because, he reminds himself again, Enjolras is definitely fine because there is nothing out there to hurt him. He killed the djinn himself, he knows it’s dead, and any human who tried to start something with Enjolras was more than likely to end up in the emergency room.

So, yes, clearly something is wrong with him. His perception is off, his Grace is being inhibited, he’s been reduced to basic human senses, something. Funny how the idea doesn’t scare him. Not compared to the alternative.

Manual searching it is, then. Grantaire doesn’t like how time-consuming that promises to be, especially with how rattled he already feels. He hopes Enjolras isn’t far.

He’s not in the first bar he checks. Or the second. But just as he’s about to leave the second bar, he sees something out of the corner of his eye – a flash of electric blue.

He feels shuddering black horror lodge itself in the pit of his stomach.

A djinn stands at the bar, laughing along indulgently with a very drunk British man who is loudly slurring some story or other. This djinn appears female, and as Grantaire stares, transfixed, it rests one hand on the drunk man’s bare forearm to start poisoning him.

Grantaire snaps out of his dread-filled daze and crosses the room far too quickly for a human, but he doesn’t care who sees. He grabs the djinn by the wrist and hauls it around.

“Where is he?” he demands in a low hiss. The air around him crackles faintly. The djinn stares up at him first with annoyance and then, like the previous one, with terrified disbelief.

“Where is he?” Grantaire repeats. “What did you do with him?”

“He-hey there, mate,” the British man, who clearly doesn’t know how lucky he is, slurs out, clapping a meaty hand down on Grantaire’s shoulder. “Let’s not- let’s not get carried away.”

Grantaire growls in frustration, and this time, the lights don’t just pop – they explode. There are sparks and smoke and more screaming and the ear splitting wailing of a fire alarm, but Grantaire just does not care. He’s flying again.

He doesn’t even know where he’s brought them this time – they’re on top of a mountain somewhere. He holds the djinn up by its throat, its feet barely touching the ground.

“Where is he?” he asks one more time.

“Who? What are you talking about?” the djinn gasps out, its hands scrabbling at him, at the air, at anything.

“Human. Young, blond. A hunter,” Grantaire says, pressing a little harder on its windpipe. “He was looking for you. I assume he found you. I found your friend.”

“My…?” the djinn starts to ask before clearly deciding it doesn’t matter. “I-I haven’t seen any hunter. There aren’t any hunters around here-”

“Don’t lie to me!” Grantaire thunders – and, indeed, thunder rolls overhead. “You did something to him while I was busy killing your friend, we didn’t know there were two of you-”

He cuts himself off. All of them – himself, Enjolras, Combeferre – had assumed there was only one monster here – but they’d been wrong. Now the real question was, exactly how wrong had they been?

“Are there more of you?” he asks. “On the island, in the area?”

The djinn makes a small choking noise but says nothing. Grantaire scowls and uses his free hand to send a pulse of Grace into its abdomen – not to heal, but to harm, to constrict and crush organs and rupture veins and fracture ribs. The djinn gives a gurgling scream.

“Yes!” it wails. “Yes, there are more of us, yes!”

“How many?” Grantaire demands. “Tell me or I kill you.”

“You’ll kill me anyway,” the thing moans. “Whatever you are.”

“It can be quick and painless or it can take all night.”

“You don’t want to take your time killing me,” the djinn wheezes, something like a cold smile crossing its face. “Not when you could be…hunting for your hunter.”

“How many?” Grantaire asks again.

“I hope one of the others has him. I hope you never find him.”

“How many?”

“Lots,” the djinn says with a blood-stained smile.

This one never sees the knife or lamb’s blood. Grantaire vaporises it with an angry burst of Grace before flying back to continue his search with renewed urgency.

He soon realises, with mounting despair, that the sky is starting to lighten on the horizon, and the bars and clubs are starting to close. He searches as many as he can, asks as many people as will listen if they’ve seen a blond boy, early twenties, kind of scary, very beautiful? He vainly searches for a sparking glimpse of Enjolras’s soul, sending out questing waves in ever-increasing diameter, but there’s nothing, nothing.

He wants to stay, wants to tear this whole resort apart brick by brick until he finds Enjolras, but he has to calm down, has to be careful, has to be smart. There are more djinn here, and he doesn’t know how many. He doesn’t know if they snatched Enjolras just as a victim, or if they realised he’s a hunter. But if they’re keeping him somewhere, if he’s alive (he is he is he has to be), they’re more likely to keep him that way for longer if they don’t think anyone is looking for him. If Grantaire starts ripping buildings from their foundations, if the monsters realise they’re being threatened, they’re going to try and clear out – and they won’t want to leave loose ends.

He forces himself to return to the hotel.

He stands outside their room’s closed door for a long, stupid moment – it’s almost possible to believe that he’ll open the door and Enjolras will be there, on his laptop or on his phone or curled up safe in bed, as he should be.

He goes inside. The room is dark and empty.

He doesn’t bother with lights. He knows what he needs to do now, and he doesn’t relish the thought. He takes out his phone.

“Hello, you two,” Combeferre says, sounding sleepy, when he picks up. Something twists painfully in Grantaire’s gut – of course Combeferre would assume that he and Enjolras are calling in to report their job completed. Of course he would assume that everything is fine.

“Hello? Can you hear me?” Combeferre says after a moment of silence.

“Enjolras is missing,” Grantaire forces himself to say.

“What?” Combeferre says. Suddenly, he doesn’t sound sleepy anymore.

“He’s gone. I can’t find him. We split up, I didn’t want to but…There’s more than one djinn, Combeferre, I killed one and I thought we were safe but he’s gone-”

It’s with conscious effort that he stops talking long enough to let Combeferre absorb that much.

“I don’t understand,” Combeferre says finally. He sounds confused, more than anything. “How could you lose him…?”

“I’m sorry,” Grantaire says. “I’m sorry, I should’ve…”

“No, no, I didn’t mean…” Combeferre sighs. “I just didn’t know it was actually possible for you to lose him.”

Grantaire blinks.

“What?” he says.

“Tell me everything,” Combeferre says instead of answering him. “Everything you know. Then we can decide on the best plan to find him.”

If he’s still alive. The words go unspoken, but hang ominously in the air nonetheless.

Chapter Text

 

~

Grantaire stands on the deserted beach in the dim dawn light, staring numbly down at the sand under his feet.

After listening to his frantic recounting of the night’s events, Combeferre’s immediate suggestion had been to track Enjolras’s cell phone. Grantaire had felt a powerful surge of relief because of course. Of course human technology would be the solution; of course it would be the one thing he didn’t think of.

Combeferre had tracked the phone on his laptop before emailing Grantaire the resulting map. Grantaire had to exercise a great deal of willpower to stop himself from just flying straight to the destination, because God knows he’s used enough Grace already tonight, and Combeferre, who was awaiting updates, would be naturally suspicious if he got there instantaneously. So he walked – almost ran, really, every part of him thrumming with hope and a nameless feeling that just felt like an endless chanting of please, please please-

But Enjolras wasn’t waiting at the destination on the map. It led Grantaire all the way down to the promenade, and then it got a little vague – he realised quickly that the signal was coming from the beach itself. And the beach was empty – he knew it was empty – but he searched anyway, and he found Enjolras’s phone half-buried in the sand, a spider-web of deep cracks covering most of the screen.

Grantaire picks the phone up and just looks at it, as if it might impart some kind of clue to him. It’s clearly been stood on – deliberately, he assumes. The djinn must have taken it from Enjolras, made a cursory attempt at breaking it, and then threw it here. Grantaire hates them; hates that they knew better than he did that they could use Enjolras’s phone to track him, hates that maybe if he’d just thought of it sooner then maybe they wouldn’t have had time to dispose of it yet-

The phone is clearly beyond repair – it’s a miracle that the GPS signal still worked at all. Still, Grantaire pockets it. It feels like a talisman, somehow. Proof that Enjolras is here somewhere. And Grantaire will find him – and Enjolras will not be broken beyond repair when he does.

He has to call Combeferre again.

“He’s not here,” he says. His voice sounds flat and empty and he can’t find it in him to do much about it. “Just the phone. They must have known someone would try and track it.”

Combeferre doesn’t comment on this, but Grantaire knows that they’re both thinking the same thing: that this is a sure sign that the djinn know Enjolras is a hunter, that they know people will be looking for him with urgency, that they know he might be too dangerous to keep alive.

“Then we’ll just have to try something else,” Combeferre says. He sounds calm, but he cares for Enjolras like a brother, and Grantaire knows that he must be the furthest possible thing from calm. “If you can’t track Enjolras, then you’ll have to track the djinn themselves.”

“Interrogating them hasn’t proved terribly fruitful so far,” Grantaire says. He doesn’t imagine he’ll have better luck with any other djinn he finds – they’ll all be able to tell that he’ll kill them no matter what information they give him, and that isn’t exactly incentive to talk.

“You don’t need to interrogate them. You just need to find one and follow it,” Combeferre says. There are sounds in the background like he’s leafing through a book. Trust Combeferre to have a relevant book within reach of his bed. “Djinn aren’t fast feeders like vampires; they keep their victims in a coma-like state, induced by their venom, and drain them of blood over the course of a few days. Of course, it seems like these djinn are trying to lay low by not completely draining the people they take – my guess is that they feed off them for a night and then release them in the morning, and they wake up thinking they partied too hard to remember.”

“So the one that died was, what? An accident?” Grantaire asks.

“It’s possible. They’re known to be greedy creatures,” Combeferre says. “But the fact of the matter is, they must have…somewhere that they take their victims. They can’t be hooking them up to blood bags in the middle of a club dance floor. There has to be somewhere that they take the people, and keep them, and feed.”

“And if I can follow a djinn back to that somewhere, I’ll find Enjolras,” Grantaire says in realisation.

“Presumably. Hopefully.” Combeferre pauses – a horrible pause. “Grantaire, we have to…I mean, realistically…” It’s not like Combeferre to struggle with words – it’s clear he doesn’t want to say it, not at all. “If they knew he was a hunter, they might have killed him outright, Grantaire.”

“No,” Grantaire says fiercely. He’d know if Enjolras was dead, he’d have felt it, it would have been like the sun going out. “No, he’s not dead, he can’t be. I’d know if he was.”

He realises immediately that he’s said too much – he waits for Combeferre to ask just exactly how he’d know, but he doesn’t.

“Alright,” he says instead. “That’s…good, alright.”

“I’ll find him,” Grantaire promises.

“I don’t doubt you will,” Combeferre replies. His voice becomes oddly steely. “And furthermore, I don’t particularly care how you do it. Normally I’d advice discretion and caution and whatever else, but not this time. Do whatever it takes, no matter how ugly.”

~

The waiting is the worst part.

Under any other circumstances, twelve hours could pass with Grantaire hardly even noticing – it’s less than the blink of an eye, to something as ancient as him. But today, the time passes in an endless, agonising grind. He swears he can feel every minute going by as another drop of Enjolras’s blood and life being drained away, and before long he starts to feel like he might simply go mad before nightfall.

He decides to track the djinn to their daytime sleeping place, so that he can at least be ready to track them come evening – and, perhaps more importantly, to try and determine their exact numbers. It’s almost pathetically easy. He finds himself wishing that he’d convinced Enjolras to stay in the hotel that first night – he could have claimed tiredness from the travelling and Enjolras probably would have bought it, then he could have snuck away to investigate their enemy during the night or the next day, and they would have known what they were up against and they never would have split up and none of this would have happened-

He angrily banishes the thought from his mind. Bemoaning his own failures won’t help Enjolras now.

The djinn are holed up in an apartment very close to the resort. Even before going inside, Grantaire can tell that there must be a lot of them – to his eyes, the entire building and its surrounding area is pulsing with the trace of their strange magic. He enters the apartment, as invisible and quiet as a soft breeze, and finds it full of sleeping djinn. He counts fifteen of them, asleep on ratty couches and makeshift beds, wall to wall in every room. He drifts above them and shakes his head, unable to believe how wrong even Combeferre had been about this case. It would have taken a platoon of ordinary hunters to deal with this infestation.

Of course, he could turn them all to dust in a second. Especially now, when they’re sleeping and defenceless. It would be so easy.

But he can’t, and it makes his Grace burn with impatience inside him. He can’t do anything; the djinn have to lead him to Enjolras, and for that he needs them alive and unsuspecting. He’s already killed two of their number; he can only hope they won’t consider that reason enough to disrupt their usual feeding routine tonight.

He stays in the apartment for a long time, feeling torn. He could wake one of them up, could try and force them to reveal where they hide their victims and maybe find Enjolras that much sooner, but he might fail, what if he failed-?

He’s snapped out of his dilemma when his phone rings; he makes a hasty exit from the building before it can wake any of the djinn.

“I managed to get in touch with Carmen and Francesca,” Combeferre says when he answers. “They said you should meet them at the same café as yesterday.”

“What?” Grantaire frowns. “Why do I need to meet them?”

“If there are more djinn, you’re going to need more lamb’s blood, aren’t you?” Combeferre says.

Oh, right. A normal, human hunter wouldn’t be able to take on fifteen djinn with their bare hands. Come to that, a normal, human hunter wouldn’t even know that there were, in fact, fifteen djinn. Grantaire resolves to keep that information to himself.

“Unless you know of a better way to kill djinn, of course,” Combeferre says.

“No, sorry, I just wasn’t thinking,” Grantaire says tiredly. The pretence is so exhausting.

There’s a pause.

“I suppose that blade of yours would be able to kill them,” Combeferre says finally, slowly. “It could be very useful to you, in a situation like this.”

“Yes,” Grantaire agrees. He’d dearly love to have his sword in his hand when tonight comes; less messy than lamb’s blood, less effort than using his Grace directly. Not to mention that every large burst of Grace he uses runs the risk of attracting Heaven’s unwanted attention. “Too bad it’s in Paris with you.”

“Too bad,” Combeferre echoes. He sounds distracted, like he’s mulling something over very carefully. “Do you need it? Would it help?”

“It would make things easier, for sure,” Grantaire admits. “But I’ll manage without it.”

There’s another pause, lengthier this time.

“If it would help, if it would improve your chances of success…” Combeferre says at last. “Why don’t you come and get it?”

Grantaire blinks.

“I’m in Majorca, Combeferre, not around the corner from you,” he says.

“I’m aware of that,” Combeferre says patiently. “But if you know of any way, outwith conventional means, of getting to my apartment and back before nightfall, I suggest you do it.”

Grantaire feels a strange coldness take a steely grip of his vessel’s insides.

“What are you saying?” he asks, fighting to keep his voice under control, to sound confused instead of suspicious.

“I’m only saying that, if you were to appear in my apartment today, I wouldn’t be overly concerned with how you got there,” Combeferre says.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Grantaire says, and it’s the truth, because Combeferre can’t possibly mean what it sounds like he means.

Combeferre sighs.

“It’s hard to be more specific. I don’t know, exactly, the things that you are capable of,” he says, calm and patient. “But if you can do it, then do it. I won’t have Enjolras put at added risk over something as stupid as you and I being needlessly coy with each other.”

Grantaire finds himself in the rare position of being lost for words. He stands there, gaping and silent, for some considerable time, and then he shoves his phone into his pocket, spreads his wings and flies to Paris.

He lands without ceremony in the middle of Combeferre’s living room. Combeferre, who is sitting on the sofa, starts slightly, though not enough to spill the mug of tea cradled in his hands.

“You know,” Grantaire says accusingly, looking down on this human who has apparently been playing along with his own game without him even noticing.

“Well, I didn’t know you were quite that fast,” Combeferre says. He’s looking Grantaire up and down with new interest. “I just knew that you have an impressive knack for being in the right place at the right time.”

“But you know I’m-” Grantaire cuts himself off, snaps his jaw shut.

“Not human?” Combeferre finishes for him. He’s wearing a small smile. “The possibility had occurred to me, I confess.”

“Which, for you, means you’ve known for a while.”

“Well.” Combeferre huffs out a small laugh. “I’d hoped that a hunting companion might help reduce Enjolras’s injuries and hospital visits. But to keep him as safe as you do? In the last year, he hasn’t had a single serious injury. And knowing him as I do, I knew that no ordinary hunter could keep him that much out of trouble.”

Grantaire, almost without realising it, starts to slowly circle him in a wide arc, trying to understand this shift in their situation, and trying to gauge whether Combeferre is going to try anything stupid.

“You don’t seem very concerned about the fact,” Grantaire remarks. He keeps his voice flat and toneless, which probably betrays his suspicion more than it conceals it.

“Do I have reason to be?” Combeferre asks. He hasn’t been tracking Grantaire’s prowling movements – a display of trust that is as baffling as the things he’s saying – but he looks at him now.

“I would have thought so,” Grantaire says. “You know I’ve lied to you and Enjolras about being human. You know I passed all those little tests you performed on me a year ago, and so you presumably do not know what I am – but you know that I am something you don’t know how to hunt. You know that I have powers beyond human capability but you don’t have the slightest idea what they are. I would’ve thought all those things would be cause for concern.” He stops his pacing and frowns in open puzzlement at Combeferre, whom he has gathered is actually not even going to try and attack him. “And yet you’ve kept quiet. You’ve let me travel alone with your best friend. Was this an experiment, Combeferre? Are you much more cold-hearted than you’ve ever let on?”

“I hope not,” Combeferre says, that impossibly calm smile still playing on his lips. “I can see that you’re much sharper than you’ve ever let on, but I knew that even before I realised you couldn’t be human.” He pauses a moment to set his mug down on the coffee table. “It’s quite simple, really. I am unconcerned because I do not consider you a threat. And I do not consider you a threat because there is no doubting your loyalty to Enjolras. You may not be human, but it’s clear that you’re on our side. Or, at least, on his side.”

Grantaire looks away, smarting with humiliation that he’s been so transparent this whole time. To Combeferre and the rest of the world, he is supposed to be Enjolras’s oafish, largely useless tagalong, not his horribly obvious loyal soldier. He wonders if he’s underestimated humans and their perception all this time, or if Jehan and Combeferre are simply unfairly exceptional. At least Jehan has the excuse of being psychic.

He feels his face go slightly hot. He only hopes that Combeferre doesn’t know quite as much as Jehan. Loyalty he can deal with, but he is not prepared to discuss any of his other feelings for Enjolras at this time, and with their astute and trusted guide, no less.

“I don’t understand how you can trust me,” he says finally.

“A year ago, you promised me that you wouldn’t let any harm come to Enjolras, and up until now, you’ve kept your word,” Combeferre says, as if it is somehow that simple. “My father hated any creature that wasn’t completely human, whether they were hostile or not-”

“I know,” Grantaire cuts in gruffly. He’d been on-edge already, with Enjolras missing and off his radar, and now this has him feeling mixed up and angry and foolish. “I saw your father live and die, I saw you born, and countless other hunter-children before you.”

Combeferre blinks a few times, then clearly files that titbit of information away to be dealt with later and continues.

“But I’ve had the good fortune to know people like Jean Prouvaire, who have helped show me that one’s species is not always an indicator of one’s tendency towards evil,” he says.

Grantaire takes a moment to just shut his eyes and breathe deep. This is not how the revelation of his true nature was supposed to go.

“Speaking of Prouvaire, I assume he also knows?” Combeferre asks.

“Naturally,” Grantaire replies. “Can’t hide anything from his eyes.” A thought occurs to him suddenly. “Does Enjolras know? Have you-?”

“I’ve never discussed the matter with him,” Combeferre says. “I’d be surprised if he didn’t know, though. You two are always together. He must know by now.”

“No,” Grantaire says sharply. “If he knew, he’d have done something. You think he’d travel – eat, sleep, hunt – with a monster? Enjolras?”

Combeferre just regards him silently with raised eyebrows.

Grantaire shakes his head and crosses the room to where he knows Combeferre’s safe is hidden behind a false radiator. He lifts the radiator off the wall, reaches into the exposed opening for the safe’s handle, and promptly tears it and the entire safe door off with as much effort as a human tearing off a piece of cotton candy. He drops the mangled door to the ground and takes his blade from the safe, all while Combeferre watches, with his eyebrows raised noticeably higher now.

“What exactly are you?” Combeferre asks him. “Can you tell me that?”

“I’m sure you’ll figure it out by yourself,” Grantaire snipes quite unnecessarily before flying back to Majorca.

~

He receives a text from Combeferre shortly after landing back on the island, but all it says is that he should go ahead with his scheduled meeting with Carmen and Francesca, even though he is unlikely to actually need the lamb’s blood they’ll be supplying. Grantaire understands. Combeferre might be inexplicably accepting of having a monster in his ranks, but it wouldn’t do to let the hunting community at large become suspicious. A normal human hunter would require a lot of lamb’s blood to take out a legion of djinn, and so he will go and take the lamb’s blood.

The two ladies are a lot less jovial than they had been the day before. They nod sombrely to him as he joins them at their table, and Carmen pushes a glass towards him. It does not contain lemonade, and for that he is grateful, and he nods in thanks and downs it. They pass him another backpack, too.

“I hope you find your boy,” Carmen says, patting him on the arm.

“If you need any help, just give Combeferre the word to call us in,” Francesca says, and it should seem like a joke, coming from a white-haired grandmotherly figure like her, but there is real steel in her voice and in her eyes. “We’re not completely useless just yet. And God knows I’d rather go out taking down a djinn instead of just waiting to get so old that I just keel over one day.”

“Dear, please,” Carmen says anxiously, taking her hand and squeezing.

“Thank you, both of you,” Grantaire says before taking his leave. He doesn’t want to be around them, or any human, for too long right now, and not just because he can think of nothing besides the one human he cares about more than anything. He also isn’t sure exactly how well he can pass for human himself right now. This horrible situation has him feeling more distinctly angel-like than he has in a long, long time – angry and vengeful and more than ready to rain divine punishment down on every djinn in existence. He wouldn’t be surprised if tonight was the night he finally uses enough Grace to get himself noticed (and probably immolated) by Heaven. He is surprised by how little the thought bothers him. If he finds Enjolras alive first, he’d probably consider it a fair price to pay.

He spends the whole day agitated and impatient, but when nightfall finally comes, his agitation has faded away and been replaced by a glossy black, dangerous calm. He leaves the hotel again and returns to the bustle of the streets and moves between the happy partygoers like a shark through shoals of fish too small for him to bother with. He scans with all his senses for any hint of blue-glowing djinn-magic, and he finds the first djinn much faster than he had the night before. This one appears male, handsome and tattooed, and it is in the process of poisoning not one but two young human men. Grantaire quirks an eyebrow. Greedy.

He does not swoop in and attack as he did the previous night – instead, he takes a seat at a nearby table and observes the proceedings. The djinn is clearly somewhat on edge, probably having noticed two of its brethren missing, and keeps sending sharp glances over its shoulder in between charming its victims, but Grantaire’s Grace is tucked away behind a human face and a wall of fake indifference, and it does not see him. Grantaire watches it with the same sort of disdain a tiger might feel watching a domestic cat toy with a mouse. So you think you’re the scariest predator on this island tonight? Hah. You’ll see.

He knows that there are two different types of djinn; the kind that like fear, and the kind that like joy. Apparently human blood tastes different depending on the hormones being released into it for each emotion, and djinn are sort of like gruesome connoisseurs of human blood. Judging by the glazed-eyed, vacant smiles of the two young men currently under the djinn's thrall, Grantaire suspects that the djinn here are of the subspecies that prefers the sweeter taste of human happiness. He wonders if that's any better for their victims; if it's any better for Enjolras. If they've poisoned him, he'll be trapped in an illusion that is, at least, happy. But then, maybe that's even crueler than the alternative.

He doesn't have much time to ponder it; soon the djinn is on the move, its two victims following along like sleepy, obedient children. Grantaire trails them at a careful distance, trying to contain his impatience.

He's not sure where he expects the djinn to lead them. Some abandoned warehouse, maybe. That's the sort of place you imagine monsters taking their victims, right? In any case, he's a little puzzled when the djinn takes the two humans into what appears to be just another bar further along the street. Perhaps this is just another stop along the way, maybe this djinn is positively famished and just two full-grown humans isn't enough for him, but Grantaire opts not to take any chances. He cloaks himself entirely before following them inside.

The bar, at first glance, looks just like any other bar. It's not one that Grantaire visited last night; it's on what would have been Enjolras's side of the street. He looks around him, at the laughing patrons and mismatched tables and extremely retro jukebox, and he assumes that this is another hunting spot.

He follows the djinn, who has gone straight up to the bar with the two humans in tow, as if to order a drink. There's only one person behind the bar and, upon turning his attention to them, Grantaire notices something strange about them, though he can't immediately identify it. He frowns, pondering a moment, before he realises: they have the same slightly dreamy look to them as the djinn's victims and, when he looks more closely, he can see that yes, the same faint, blue-glowing taint of magic is upon them. They've been poisoned, but to a much lesser degree – not enough to hinder their functionality or to be terribly obvious, but it's there. He wonders why, and when it happened. Perhaps the djinn go around periodically infecting as many bar staff as they can, to prevent them from noticing their patrons being spirited away-?

The reason suddenly becomes glaringly apparent when the djinn, still leading its two victims, strolls casually behind the bar and goes through a door without earning even a glance from the smiling employee. Grantaire narrows his eyes. It seems they'd been poisoned just enough to stop them from noticing something like that.

He follows quickly, still cloaked and unseen. The djinn leads its humans, who are giggling and stumbling as they go, along a short passageway and then through another door, which reveals a set of stairs, leading down into darkness. Grantaire is sure any human in their right mind would think it was just about the creepiest thing they'd ever seen and turn tail right there and then, but these humans are far from being in their right mind, and they go down the stairs willingly when the djinn gestures for them to do so.

The djinn's eyes glow bright blue in the darkness, but Grantaire doesn't need their light to see what's down here. In the space left between shelves and bottles and kegs – because this is a storage basement, of course it is – there are other humans already here; he counts seven of them, slumped in chairs or laid out on tables, each with a needle jammed in their arm, sluggishly draining blood into a bag. They are all deeply poisoned and, as a result, deeply unconscious.

Grantaire knows he should be doing something – namely, killing the djinn, releasing these people and checking if Enjolras is among them – but for a moment he can only stand and stare, disoriented. Because his eyes tell him, without a doubt, that there are seven unconscious humans in this room, the closest only a few feet away from him – and yet, he can't feel them there at all, can't sense them, can't see the barest flicker of a human soul among them. If his eyes were closed, he'd think with certainty that he was alone here with only the djinn and the two humans it brought. He doesn't understand.

The djinn opens a box on a nearby table and takes out two new blood bags with tubes and needles attached, and that snaps Grantaire into action. He doesn't bother with any pomp and circumstance; just slides deftly out of hiding and grabs the djinn by the throat and pins it to the nearest wall. It lets out a frightened shriek that is swiftly cut off by the pressure on its windpipe.

“So this is your game?” Grantaire ponders aloud. “You poison the staff so that they don't notice a thing, then you bring people down here, drain them halfway dry and then, what? Turn them loose with a head full of hallucinations and what they'll think is just the worst hangover of all time?”

“Who are you?” the djinn splutters in his grip. “What are you?”

“I'm just a guy you probably shouldn't have pissed off,” Grantaire says. “See, one of you took my friend.”

“Your friend? We've never taken anyone like you,” the thing wheezes. “Just humans, only humans.”

“He is human,” Grantaire says. “Not exactly your average human, to be sure, but human nonetheless.”

The djinn's blue-glowing eyes suddenly widen in realisation.

“The hunter,” it says then, seeming to realise its mistake, snaps its mouth shut.

“Where is he?” Grantaire asks, drawing his sword. “If you tell me, I might consider not killing you.”

“Y-yeah, yeah, we can make a deal?” the djinn says, nodding furiously. “I take you to him, I give him to you, and you let me go?”

“Like I said,” Grantaire says. “I'll consider it.”

The djinn whines pitifully. Grantaire lets go of its throat and it crumples to the ground.

“It was you, wasn't it?” it croaks. “Two of us didn't come back last night. You killed them.”

“They were uncooperative. I'm hoping you won't make the same mistake.” Grantaire stands over one of the unconscious humans and frowns down at her. “Why can't I sense these humans? Why can't I feel them here?”

“Because they're not here,” the djinn says with a weak chuckle. “They're...elsewhere.”

“Where?”

“Wherever they want to be.” The djinn shrugs. “Wherever their minds take them.”

Grantaire scowls at it as he understands what it means. A djinn's poison isn't just some chemical, it's magic, and so its victims aren't just put to sleep – they are trapped somewhere between dream and illusion and alternate reality, and they really are nowhere in this world while their body lies in enchanted slumber. Enjolras is farther from him right now than it should be possible for him to be.

“Get up,” Grantaire snaps at the djinn. “We're going, now. And you're going to take me to my friend or I'll burn you from the inside out.”

The djinn gives a panicked whimper and scrambles unsteadily to its feet. It casts a brief glance towards its two newest victims, who are standing nearby looking hazily contented.

“No, you can't have a snack first, either,” Grantaire says, giving it a shove out the door. “I'd say your days of harvesting blood on this island are done.”

“Why? These other humans aren't your friends, right?” the djinn says miserably. “Why not just take your hunter and leave us alone?”

“You killed a person, you blood-sucking parasite,” Grantaire says.

“Only one,” it whines. “You're not even one of them, why do you care?”

Grantaire just gives it another shove when they get to the top of the stairs, propelling it back out into the bar. Before they leave, he pauses and taps the person working behind the bar on the arm, sending a pulse of Grace into them to evaporate the poison in their body. They give a startled blink, as if the world just rearranged itself slightly before their eyes.

“There are some people in your basement,” Grantaire tells them. “They need help. You should do something about that.”

“What? Who are you?” they start to ask but Grantaire is already halfway out the door with the djinn in tow.

The djinn leads him along the street, watching him fearfully from the corner of its eye all the while. Grantaire couldn't care less about its fear of him, unless it causes its heart to give out from terror before it can take him to Enjolras.

At last they reach yet another bar, the very last one on the street, and Grantaire struggles not to explode with fury and frustration right there and then. Because clearly he should have been scarier before, because the djinn is frightened but clearly not frightened enough to do as it was told – because he can already tell that it is leading him into an ambush. He can sense a group of djinn inside the building, five or six of them, and in a bitter sort of way he's looking forward to showing them that even in great numbers they are no match for a thing like him.

“Your human, he's in here,” the djinn says, gesturing for him to enter. Grantaire keeps his face neutral and goes inside. They go through the same routine of bypassing the poisoned bar workers and descending some stairs. Once again, they go through the door to the storage cellar.

There are indeed more humans here, but a quick glance confirms to Grantaire that Enjolras is not among them. The six djinn are in the grisly process of feeding, some from the filled blood bags, others directly from the source. They freeze and stare when he enters.

“Kill him!” the one that led him here howls from behind him. “He killed the others, it was him, get him, kill him!”

The djinn react instantaneously, abandoning their meals and hurling themselves at Grantaire in a blue-glowing frenzy of ugly magic and rage. Grantaire throws out one hand and vaporises one on the spot with a rush of Grace; his blade drops neatly into his other hand from his sleeve and he just as quickly stabs a second djinn clean through the chest. It gurgles and drools blood for a moment before dying, its face registering only dumb surprise. Its weight hanging from his blade is nothing to Grantaire, and he leaves it dangling there on the end on his outstretched arm and looks pointedly at its remaining kin. They immediately fall back, their glowing eyes wide with terror.

The one that led him here tries to run back out the door. Grantaire seizes it with his free hand. He finally lets the corpse drop to the floor and proceeds to wipe off his blade on the captured djinn's shirt.

“You couldn't just have taken me to him, could you?” he says, inspecting the blade for any remaining blood and ignoring the hysterical shaking of the djinn in his grasp. “This all could have been so easy. So painless. I really might have let you live, you know. Might have just relocated you and your cohorts to some remote mountain to feed on goat blood, out of everyone else's way. But now I guess it's going to have to be Plan B. Just so you know, I hate Plan B. And I suspect you're not going to like it much, either.”

He shoves the djinn towards its fellows where they are cowering against the far wall.

“So,” he says grimly, “who's first?”

~

A few hours later, Grantaire is really starting to run out of patience. Two more djinn lie dead, and they took the secret of Enjolras's location with them to their deaths. The latest subject of his interrogation is proving equally tight-lipped – in terms of giving him information, that is. Its screams are so loud and piercing that Grantaire is frankly amazed it hasn't managed to rouse any of the unconscious humans, or bring someone running from upstairs.

“You're all really making this much harder than it has to be,” Grantaire remarks. “Just tell me where he is, and this'll be over.”

“And you'll kill us anyway, you mean,” the djinn on the floor in front of him snarls. Grantaire sighs.

“Sometimes it's not about whether you live or die,” he says, idly tracing the tip of his blade around the djinn's left eye. “Sometimes it's just about whether you die quickly, or over the course of many hours, in unimaginable pain.” He takes one of the djinn's hands. “Sometimes it's about how many fingers you have to lose before you're allowed to die.”

The djinn makes a wretched noise in the back of its throat, but says nothing.

Grantaire sighs again and brings his blade down. The screaming starts anew.

He never took to torture the way some of his siblings did; he never came to enjoy it, or see it as some kind of exquisite art in need of perfecting. To him, it's just an ugly, messy and horrible means to an end. That doesn't mean, however, that he isn't good at it.

“Fuck you, and fuck your human,” the djinn hisses out between bloody teeth. “None of us will give him to you, he'll die alone before you'll ever find him-”

“And you'll all die,” Grantaire says plainly. “Is assuring the death of one human really worth so much to you?”

“Like I said,” the djinn says, “you'll kill us anyway. You were never going to spare us. We can all see that. You're more of a monster than any of us could ever be.”

Patience officially spent, Grantaire raises his blade, ready to stab this thing in the throat to shut it up and move onto the next one-

There's a flash of gold.

Not in this room, not anywhere in front of his human eyes but...somewhere. His wider-ranging, more powerful senses seize upon it like a lifeline. For a long, long moment there is nothing, and he starts to think he imagined it, that he's so desperate that he's just plain going out of his mind, but then it flickers again. A weak spark of the most unmistakeable gold.

Enjolras.

Transfixed, Grantaire utilises every last bit of his power and concentration to focus in on that burgeoning spark, to prove to himself that it's real, that he can feel Enjolras's soul again, that he's really out there and he can go to him.

He flies to it – in the instant before he goes, he waves his hand, almost as an afterthought, to destroy the remaining djinn.

He finds himself outside a building that looks like it was once a store of some kind but is now boarded up and derelict. However, he can see faint rays of light peeking out from between the boards on the windows, and when he tries the door it opens easily.

Another djinn is sitting on a folding chair inside, looking bored and doing something on a cell phone. Grantaire barely spares it a glance, disposing of it with another flick of his arm when he passes it in pursuit of that flickering gold light, his guiding star.

It leads him to a door, which he practically demolishes in his haste to open it. The open doorway reveals another set of stairs going downwards; another basement, but darker and danker than any other he's seen so far tonight. He flies to the bottom of the stairs because walking is just too slow when he's this close-

There's a metal trolley that looks like it might have been stolen from a hospital in the middle of the dark room, and lying motionless on it-

“Enjolras!”

The name springs from his throat without even a thought, both a victory cry and a scream of fear, because he's here, Enjolras is here, but is he okay, is Grantaire too late? He dashes to his side, stares down at him, grabs his shoulders just to prove to himself that he's solid and real.

“Enjolras,” he says again, softer this time, awed and reverent. Enjolras is breathing, and at least partly awake – you're awake, you woke yourself up, you pulled yourself out of whatever fucked up illusion they trapped you in and I have no idea how you did it but you did, you clever human, you precious, amazing human. Grantaire cradles his face in both hands, smooths his thumbs gently over his ashen cheeks. Enjolras's eyes are half-open and looking at him, but they're unfocused and disoriented.

“Hey, hey, can you hear me?” Grantaire asks him. He feels utterly overwhelmed just to see him, wants to fall to his knees and weep with relief, but that really wouldn't be helpful right now. He needs to keep it together.

Enjolras blinks slowly, with great effort, once and then twice. His eyes manage to focus slightly.

“Are you real?” he asks. It makes Grantaire's heart ache, and not only because Enjolras must be confused and scared right now, but because his voice is a sandpapery croak, and Enjolras should never sound like that, and Grantaire might never forgive himself for letting this happen.

“Yeah, yes, of course I’m real, I’m here, you’re safe.” Grantaire assures him. He runs his hands soothingly over Enjolras's hair. “I’m here, I found you.” I found you, because you made yourself findable, you wonderful thing, you unbelievably fantastic boy.

He isn't sure how he expected Enjolras to react to the knowledge that he is found and saved, but it startles and wounds him when Enjolras's eyes brim with tears. A quiet sob escapes his lips, and oh, my darling, how could I let this happen to you, I'm so sorry.

“Sshh, it's okay, it's okay, I've got you,” Grantaire murmurs. Enjolras's wrists are handcuffed to the trolley, and Grantaire doesn't hesitate to snap the cuffs with his bare hands, because he doesn't think Enjolras is lucid enough to notice. There is a needle in his arm, too, slowly draining his blood into a bag, and it makes Grantaire want to burn this whole town to the ground, but he makes sure that he is gentle when he removes it.

He notices restraints around Enjolras's legs, too, and he supposes Enjolras must have put up one hell of a fight for the djinn to think they needed to tie him down even when they had him pumped full of poison. He gets rid of those restraints too, then grips Enjolras by the shoulders again.

“Can you sit up?” he asks, but Enjolras doesn't seem to hear him. His movements are sluggish and clumsy, not like him at all, but he raises his freed arms and reaches for Grantaire pleadingly. Grantaire bends lower over him, trying to help, and Enjolras's arms settle around his neck.

“You found me,” Enjolras says in that hoarse voice that is so unlike him. His eyes are still wet and now full of wonder. “You came for me.”

“Of course I came for you, you idiot.” Grantaire is by turns offended and horrified that him coming for Enjolras had ever been in any doubt; unthinkingly, he drags Enjolras up into a tight embrace, wishing so much that he could just pour his thoughts and feelings straight from his body into Enjolras's, let him know exactly how much he means to him. He impulsively presses a kiss to Enjolras's forehead, unable to help himself, wanting to do everything in his power to prove to Enjolras that he is safe and adored.

“I'm always going to come for you, always,” Grantaire promises him, holding him close, rocking them both slightly.

Enjolras doesn't reply, but he buries his face in the crook of Grantaire's neck and holds on tight.

“I think...” Enjolras says slowly at length, every word sounding like a real struggle for his tongue to contend with. “I think I need to sleep.”

“Sleep, then,” Grantaire tells him. He shifts them slightly, gets one arm under Enjolras's knees and one wrapped around his shoulders and lifts him up, holds him close to his chest. “This'll all be over when you wake up, I promise.”

Enjolras makes a tired noise of assent, and within moments he is asleep in Grantaire's arms – real sleep this time, not cursed, poisonous djinn-sleep. Grantaire gazes at him a moment, still unable to fully believe that the nightmare is over for both of them, before flying them back to their hotel room.

He lays Enjolras on his bed as gently as he can and pulls the sheets over him. He sends a very brief text to Combeferre – 'I've got him' – and his phone almost immediately starts buzzing with phone calls and text messages, no doubt demanding clarification and more details, but he puts it on silent and ignores it for now. All that really matters is that Enjolras is alive and safe; Combeferre can wait until tomorrow to hear the rest. The whole world can wait until tomorrow, in fact – there are still djinn on this island, and people lying unconscious in basements in need of rescuing, but the apocalypse itself couldn't drag Grantaire from Enjolras's side right now.

There's dried blood on Enjolras's forehead and his knuckles, further testament to the trouble he must have given the djinn when they took him. Grantaire heals the injuries without a thought; Enjolras has been through enough, and he'll probably be aching all over for the next few days, which should hopefully be enough to distract him from the absence of a few injuries. He fetches a cloth from the bathroom and spends some time carefully cleaning away the blood left behind on Enjolras's skin; wipes and dabs gently, reverently, until all traces of it are gone. He spends what even he admits is an absurdly long time on his left hand, holding it and smoothing the cloth over it long after it is clean. He supposes he should probably admit to himself that he just wants to hold onto Enjolras's hand, wants to hold onto some part of him as a continuing reminder that he is here and alive. He hopes Enjolras wouldn't mind.

He starts to fret a little as he sits there in the dark with only the sound of Enjolras's breathing to break the silence, because he knows that when Enjolras wakes up he's going to need to eat and drink after almost a full twenty-four hours of being slowly drained dry, and he should really go and get him something but he doesn't want to leave him, not even for a second, because what if he wakes up and finds himself alone? He'd be confused and maybe scared and he's still got djinn venom coursing through his veins so he's unlikely to even be entirely in his right mind-

Grantaire looks unhappily at the blue glow of the poison lazily circulating Enjolras's body. He wants nothing more than to just get rid of it, it would be so easy, but Enjolras must know what happened to him, and he knows how djinn operate, and he almost definitely knows that if one has held you hostage and kept you in a state of out-of-body delirium, the poison isn't going to just vanish from your system the moment you regain consciousness. Sometimes Grantaire wishes Enjolras was just a little less thorough in his research. Then he might be able to get away with meddling slightly more.

He's just debating whether he can at least lower the concentration of poison in Enjolras's blood, when out of nowhere Enjolras springs awake – just all in one go, he shoots into a sitting position with a gasping breath like a drowning man. His eyes are wild and frightened and Grantaire quickly catches him by the shoulders.

“Hey, woah, you're okay,” he says. “Were you dreaming? It's alright, you're safe. We're back at the hotel.”

Enjolras stares at him, still breathing hard like he just ran a mile.

“Are you real?” he asks again. It hurts Grantaire to his core.

“Yeah, I'm real, Enjolras,” he says, giving his shoulders a reassuring squeeze. “Whatever illusion the djinn had you trapped in, it's over now.”

Enjolras looks around him doubtfully, his fingers clenching the bedsheets anxiously.

“I promise this is real,” Grantaire tells him.

“But I've seen this all before,” Enjolras says, shaking his head. “I already know all this, so it could be fake. I want- I need you to be real, but-”

“How can I prove it to you?” Grantaire asks. He doesn't understand what Enjolras is saying, exactly, but he can tell that he's distressed and that's what he needs to fix.

“Show me something new,” Enjolras says. “Something I don't know already.”

Grantaire thinks about this.

“Alright,” he says finally. “Will you be okay if I go out for a minute? You lost a lot of blood, so you need to eat and drink. I'll get food and I'll bring back something you haven't seen before, okay?”

Enjolras regards him for a long moment before nodding cautiously. Grantaire shoots him a reassuring smile, and switches on a lamp before leaving.

He moves as quickly as he can to a nearby twenty-four hour store, keeping close tabs on Enjolras's soul the entire time. He'd rather not have him out of his sight at all, but this is the next best thing. When he returns to the hotel room with a large bottle of water, a bunch of bananas and a Spanish newspaper, Enjolras is sitting with his knees tucked to his chest and his hands over his eyes, shivering. Grantaire hurries to his side.

“Are you seeing things?” he asks. “You still have djinn venom in your system, it'll make you hallucinate a while.”

“I just want them to go away,” Enjolras says. There are tears trickling out from behind his hands, and Grantaire is at a loss; he's never seen Enjolras helpless and afraid, he doesn't know how to help.

“Look,” he says, easing one of Enjolras's hands away from his face and putting the newspaper into it. “It's today's paper. It's new. Does this help?”

Enjolras unfolds the paper with trembling fingers and stares at it for a long time, clearly trying to translate the words from Spanish to French in his exhausted and overloaded mind, trying to see if it's enough to prove the realness of his surroundings. Eventually a low sob of frustration escapes him and he throws it to one side.

“Enjolras...” Grantaire says softly, reaching for him uncertainly – and then Enjolras is throwing himself at him, hugging him tightly around the neck and hiding his face in his shoulder.

“Please, please, just be real,” he's saying desperately. “I need you to be real, please.”

“I promise I am,” Grantaire says. He puts his arms around him, but it's tentative, because they don't hug, they never have, and it feels like it might be wrong to start when Enjolras is so obviously not himself. Grantaire has the excuse of overwhelming emotions for earlier's embrace, but he feels like he should be a little more in control now. But when Enjolras is so needfully seeking comfort from him, he's helpless to do anything but provide.

“You should try to sleep,” Grantaire tells him. “You'll feel better in the morning.”

“If I sleep I'll dream. It'll be like I'm back there.” Enjolras shakes his head frantically.

“At least lie down,” Grantaire urges. “You need to rest.”

“Stay with me, stay with me,” Enjolras pleads.

That's how they end up lying side by side on Enjolras's bed, Enjolras still clinging to Grantaire with a grip that will not be denied. And if that's what Enjolras needs to do right now, Grantaire will let him; he can apologise if Enjolras is embarrassed or indignant about it in the morning.

“I'm sorry, Grantaire, I'm so sorry,” Enjolras is saying over and over, sounding completely wretched.

“It wasn't your fault,” Grantaire says placatingly. “I should never have let you go off on your own, I should have insisted we stick together-”

“No, not that,” Enjolras says. His fingers dig painfully into Grantaire's skin for a moment.

“Then what?”

“In the dream, the fake world, I...” Enjolras trails off as a fresh torrent of tears floods down his face. He shakes his head again, looking ashamed and miserable.

“None of that was real. You don't need to worry about it,” Grantaire says.

“But I made it, it came from me, and I...you...”

He falls silent again. Grantaire brings a hand up to Enjolras's head and starts smoothing it repetitively over his hair – each time his hand makes contact, he uses his Grace to get rid of a tiny amount of the venom in his blood. Just enough to slightly speed up the natural process.

“Was I there?” he asks cautiously, more to distract Enjolras from his ministrations than anything else. Enjolras nods.

“I'm sorry,” he says again. “I shouldn't have wished for it. It was wrong of me. Or maybe I couldn't help wishing for it, but I shouldn't have liked it. You can't just wish for that, it isn't fair, and I'm so sorry. You don't have to forgive me.”

“I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about,” Grantaire admits. “How about we talk about it in the morning, when you're feeling better?”

“I'm just so sorry,” Enjolras mumbles. He sounds exhausted.

“Go to sleep,” Grantaire says softly. “Don't be scared of dreaming. You'll be fine.”

Enjolras sniffles but manages something that's almost a smile.

“I'll be fine as long as you stay,” he says.

“Okay,” Grantaire agrees.

Enjolras eventually drifts off into a deep sleep, still holding onto Grantaire like his life depends on it. Grantaire keeps petting his hair until the poison is all gone, and then he lies quietly and watches over him as the sun slowly rises outside the windows.

~

Enjolras wakes up at almost noon the next day. By this time, Grantaire has been sure to disentangle himself from his sleeping embrace and is sitting on his own bed, watching him carefully.

Enjolras sits up, rubbing at his eyes and blinking blearily. His gaze finds Grantaire, who tries to brace himself for more fear, more distrust of reality, but he just smiles, albeit tiredly.

“Grantaire,” he says, sounding pleased and relieved. He goes to stand up but his legs wobble dangerously and Grantaire darts forward to steady him with a hand on his shoulder.

“Thanks,” Enjolras says with a weak laugh.

“How are you feeling?” Grantaire asks him. Enjolras takes a few moments to answer, apparently taking stock of his body as it returns to full wakefulness.

“Mm, like I have the world's worst hangover,” he says finally, pressing his fingers to his temple with a wince. “But better than I was last night, at least.”

“Good.” Grantaire nods. “You should eat something. And you should definitely drink some water. No coffee for you until you're rehydrated, I'm afraid.”

“Water sounds amazing,” Enjolras admits, still massaging his temple. He manages to walk more or less steadily to the chest of drawers where the bottle of water and bananas from last night are. “Ugh, and a shower.”

“You should maybe call Combeferre first,” Grantaire says. “He knows I found you, but he'll want to hear from you himself.”

“Oh no, you had to call Combeferre.” Enjolras looks aghast. “How long was I...?”

“About twenty-four hours.” Grantaire tries to state it factually, like it wasn't possibly the worst twenty-four hours of his millennia-spanning existence. “Oh, and the djinn broke your phone. Here, use mine.”

“The djinn,” Enjolras repeats slowly as he takes the phone. His eyes widen suddenly. “Ah, I remember, Grantaire, there's more than one-”

“Trust me, I realised,” Grantaire says grimly, holding up a hand. “Don't worry, it's taken care of.”

Not strictly true – he still has a few loose ends to tie up, but he'll do that now.

“I'll go get you something for the headache,” he says, and he leaves, in large part to give Enjolras some time to himself, which he probably sorely needs after everything that's happened.

When he returns to their room a while later with a box of paracetamol, the island is officially purged of djinn and, hopefully, all their victims have been found. While he was gone, Enjolras appears to have showered and changed into clean clothes. He's pale and a little bruised in places, but his soul is strong and vibrant and untainted by poison. He's standing out on the balcony, finishing off a banana; he turns and comes back inside when he hears Grantaire return.

“Combeferre sounded exhausted,” Enjolras says, shaking his head ruefully. “I'm so sorry. The two of you must have been so worried.”

“Don't apologise,” Grantaire says. “It wasn't your fault; sometimes the monster just gets the better of you. I'm- We're just glad you're alright.”

“At least let me apologise for the way I was acting last night,” Enjolras says. He lowers his eyes and his soul pulses a warm, embarrassed rose colour. Grantaire sighs.

“I thought maybe you wouldn't remember much about it,” he says.

“I'm a little hazy on which parts really happened and which parts were fever dreams,” Enjolras says. “I remember you finding me. I don't remember how I got back here.”

“I had to carry you to a cab,” Grantaire lies. Enjolras snorts faintly.

“How dignified,” he remarks. “I suppose the driver thought I'd drank myself into a stupor?”

“I'm sure every taxi driver on this island has seen worse,” Grantaire consoles him. Enjolras laughs softly before sobering again.

“I remember being back here, though,” he says. “Crying like an idiot, clinging onto you like a child-”

“Enjolras,” Grantaire interrupts. “You were scared. You're allowed to be scared, you know. Especially when some monster has messed with your head. I can only imagine how scary it all seemed.”

“I'm just sorry if I made you uncomfortable, that's all.” Enjolras's words are coming out faster and faster, a sure testament to his embarrassment and nervousness. “I know that I don't usually do emotional outbursts or- or hugging, so...”

“Well, maybe you should,” Grantaire says with a shrug. “You're human, remember. Those things are good for you, I hear.”

Enjolras peeks up at him from behind his eyelashes and tousled hair.

“It didn't bother you?” he asks.

Grantaire heaves an almighty sigh, crosses the room and gathers Enjolras firmly into his arms.

“No, it didn't bother me,” he says.

He is about to let go, considering his point made, but Enjolras returns the embrace after a moment, shyly, and holds on.

“Thank you. For coming to get me. For saving me,” Enjolras says quietly against his neck.

Thank you for helping me find you, thank you for coming back to me, Grantaire wants to say, but he can't, so he just squeezes him a little tighter.

“I remember trying to apologise to you last night, too,” Enjolras goes on. “I don't think I made myself terribly clear.”

“There's nothing you need to apologise for,” Grantaire tells him.

“No, listen, please.” Enjolras steps out of their embrace, though only barely – there is hardly room for breath between them as he looks into Grantaire's eyes with an expression that is both determined and extremely repentant. “I think I at least need to tell you what I wished for. The djinn trapped me in that world, but I built it myself.”

“Alright, then,” Grantaire says. “Tell me.”

Even with permission, Enjolras hesitates. He nibbles his lower lip anxiously.

“We weren't hunters,” he says finally. “In that world.”

“At least your subconscious has some sense,” Grantaire says with a small smile that Enjolras tries and fails to return.

“We were civilians,” he goes on haltingly. “We had normal lives. We were safe, and we were happy, I think.”

“I don't see what part of this you need to apologise for,” Grantaire comments, amused. He sees Enjolras's cheeks burn but he soldiers on.

“We lived together in a nice flat in Paris,” he says. “With a balcony and a view and- and a big bedroom. Just one. And a bed that we shared together.”

Grantaire freezes, stares at him. Wonders if maybe djinn venom does affect angels after all.

“You understand what I'm saying, right?” Enjolras says. “The djinn looked into my mind and that was what I wanted most of all. Just me, and you, and...and-”

“You mean that you...I mean, we...?” Grantaire feels like his thoughts are running through thick mud and that he's about five miles behind Enjolras and the point he's trying to make.

“So I'm sorry, because I know you can't just wish for another person like that, it's not right, it's not fair,” Enjolras is saying wretchedly. “And I knew I must have wished for it, I could still remember the way things really are, but even then I just, for a while...” He trails off, shakes his head helplessly. “I wanted it, so I didn't try to fix it at first. And I'm sorry. I thought you should know. I thought you should know everything because- because that's fair, right? You should know what I did, so you can decide what you want to do about it. And you should know how I feel, so...so that you can decide what you want to do about that too, I suppose.”

He shuts his mouth and it looks like a visible effort to stop the flow of apologetic babble. He squeezes his eyes shut too, as if anticipating a blow. His soul, normally so strong and steady, is flickering and fluttering like a fretful bird. Grantaire doesn’t think he’s ever seen him nervous like this before. He never expected to see it on his account.

“I...” Grantaire starts before realising he has no idea what the rest of the sentence should be. He shakes his head and tries again. “Enjolras. I don't...I don't deserve that, you can't- I mean, maybe it was just the djinn messing with you?”

“I know I'm not the most adept at understanding my own feelings in this area, but it's a little hard to be unsure of them after seeing them play out in a dream-world,” Enjolras says with a slightly hysterical laugh. “I'm not asking you to return them, I just...like I said, I thought you should know.”

“It's not that I don't return them-” Grantaire blurts out quite without thinking, and then freezes again because no, you idiot, you can't tell him that, he can't know that you'd raze whole worlds to the ground with only a word from him, that he is the most precious thing in all of creation to you, because you shouldn't feel that way, you monster-

Enjolras looks at him curiously, thoughtfully. Grantaire’s mouth feels horribly dry. He swallows hard.

“I think- I think I remember that when you found me, last night...” Enjolras says slowly in cautious, almost hushed tones. “You...kissed me. Just here.” He touches his own forehead on the spot where Grantaire had unthinkingly pressed his lips in that moment of terror and relief. “Did you?”

“...Yeah,” Grantaire manages to reply, his voice barely more than a whisper of breath. Enjolras nods, considering.

“Would it- would it be okay if I kissed you, now?” he asks finally.

Grantaire doesn’t give him an answer, not out loud, but his gaze is drawn from Enjolras’s eyes down to his mouth as if dragged by a magnet. And that seems to be answer enough because Enjolras’s soul takes on a determined shine, and he leans in and-

It’s the lightest press of lips, soft and warm and slow. It’s nervous and hopeful and it lingers like a question waiting for an answer.

Oh, no.

Grantaire knows that it is wrong for him to have this, that it is the worst sort of betrayal. But he is greedy and love-starved and he has wanted for so long, and instead of pulling away he brings his hands up to cradle Enjolras’s face, to urge him closer, and kisses him back with what feels like terrible finality.

Enjolras’s golden soul seems to grow. It blazes a sudden, brilliant white – love and joy so pure that it simply becomes light – and Grantaire closes his eyes because he is so full of sin that he’s sure it will burn him. He tilts his head and suddenly they’re even closer; their lips slot together and it’s clumsy but they fit so perfectly and that seems cruel and utterly unfair. It makes it seem like they could have this; like it’s right and meant to be and could be allowed.

Grantaire’s heart breaks when he feels Enjolras smile against his mouth.

He forces himself to break away, though he can’t bring himself to go very far. Enjolras’s hands are tangled in his hair, and their faces are so close that Grantaire almost can’t see the giddy, radiant smile lighting up Enjolras’s face, making his eyes gleam. But he can see it, and God, he loves him so completely that it’s like a perfect ache in his whole being; a thrum at the very core of his Grace, which was never meant to feel.

He watches as Enjolras’s smile fades and grey clouds of doubt begin to bloom in his glorious soul, because Enjolras can see his stricken expression and he doesn’t understand – can’t understand, because Grantaire is a liar and has deceived him completely and has allowed love to be built on that lie, and it’s so unforgivable that he wants to be sick.

“Grantaire?” Enjolras says finally. He licks his lips nervously, and Grantaire wants so badly to kiss him again, just one more time, and he is already irredeemable so he does. Softly, so softly. When he pulls away again, his eyes are wet, and Enjolras’s soul erupts with icy-blue dread.

“What’s wrong?” he asks. Grantaire tries to smile at him. Enjolras’s hands slide out of his hair and grip his shoulders instead, as if to steady him.

“Enjolras.” His voice is a watery croak.

“Grantaire?”

“There are a lot of things I should tell you.”

Enjolras tilts his head slightly, frowns. Confused, concerned. Grantaire can’t bear it.

“But I think the only thing I really want you to know is that I love you?”

Enjolras blinks and then he smiles again. That white light burns anew and he opens his mouth to reply but Grantaire can’t let him say that, he can’t. He presses a finger to Enjolras’s lips to stop him.

“I love you,” he says again. “And that’s the truth. And...” He searches desperately for something meaningful to say, something better than any hollow apology he could offer. “And I’ll watch over you.”

Enjolras’s confusion is swiftly turning to fear now, but before he can say anything, Grantaire presses another kiss to his forehead and two fingers to his left temple. Enjolras collapses against him and he catches him in his arms. He allows himself to hold him there for just a moment before he lays his sleeping form gently on the sofa.

And then he spreads his wings and takes flight.

 

Chapter Text

~

Grantaire isn't sure how long he's gone for.

He flies endlessly, trying to lose himself in the searing rush, trying to think and feel absolutely nothing like he's supposed to, and most of all trying to forget what he's done. He can't fly fast enough to escape it, however; his traitorous mind, though numbed with cold and dizzy with his speed, still insistently loops back again and again to the same stinging string of thoughts: I kissed him, I tricked him, I betrayed him, I've lost him forever.

He screams and the wind steals the sound from his lips before he can even hear it.

When he finally comes to a stop – because, of course, he inevitably has to stop, much as he wishes he could simply spend his entire existence mindlessly fleeing everything behind him – he gives no thought to where he lands, and naturally, this proves to be his downfall. He lands without care or grace and crashes down on his hands and knees, bringing with him a brief, cold gust of wind and the smell of ozone. He's in no hurry to familiarise himself with his surroundings, but when he hears a gasp – a distinctly human sound – his head jerks up. A wave of fresh fury and despair sweeps through him when he sees where he has thoughtlessly brought himself.

He's in a warm, sun-dappled living room. Jehan is sitting in a nearby armchair, staring at him in understandable bewilderment. A book is lying open, forgotten, in his lap, and he appears to have dropped his mug of tea in his surprise. The tea is spreading in a dark, sluggish stain on the carpet.

Grantaire curses himself; he was supposed to disappear, not run straight to one of Enjolras's closest friends and further complicate the tangle of betrayal and lies he's woven. He pushes himself up, readying himself to take flight again, but he's too slow – Jehan, even in his surprise, has already slid easily into his mind and sees his intention, and he leaps from his chair and drops to his knees in front of Grantaire on the floor. He puts his hands gently but urgently on each side of Grantaire's face.

“Don't run away,” Jehan says. He touches Grantaire's hair with one hand, making sure not to lose physical contact with him completely at any time, probably knowing that Grantaire will flee if he lets go. “Please, Grantaire, don't run. Everyone's been so worried.”

Grantaire stares at him mutely. He can hear Jehan's heartbeat, still hammering at double-time from the shock of his arrival. Jehan's hand leaves his hair and comes away wet; Grantaire realises there are ice crystals in his hair, a sheen of frost on his skin. He feels cold all the way to his core, and so tired. He wonders how far he flew, for him to feel like this. By contrast, there is a scorch mark on Jehan's carpet where he landed, like a comet. He hears a strange sound and turns his head to see a cat hunched in a corner, back arched and ears flat, hissing at him.

“Grantaire,” Jehan says. He's worried; Grantaire can hear it in his voice and feel it radiating from his thoughts, so much concern and kindness and care. And Grantaire is exhausted and feels as though he's being systematically torn to shreds inside, and all at once it's too much. He's weak and he's despicable, he supposes. He lets his head drop onto Jehan's shoulder and just leans there, feels his human warmth and the comforting press of his arms wrapping around him.

“What happened?” Jehan asks, and Grantaire shows him exactly what happened. He holds nothing back. He lets Jehan see all of it, starting with the djinn and ending with that perfect, unforgivable kiss. He feels Jehan's arms tighten around him, hears him give a soft, surprised little 'oh'.

Jehan is quiet for several minutes afterward, taking it all in and thinking it through. Grantaire absently repairs the damage to the carpet with a brush of his fingers.

“It's not how I expected it to happen,” Jehan says finally. When Grantaire pulls back from his embrace to give him a puzzled look, Jehan levels him an exasperated frown. “What, why are you surprised? I knew it would happen. You love him so much, and he-”

“No,” Grantaire says. His vessel's lips feel numb, his tongue leaden, but he chokes the word out.

“No?” Jehan repeats in disbelief.

Grantaire just shakes his head. When Jehan sighs and gathers him back into his arms, Grantaire lets him.

“He loves you,” Jehan says softly in his ear, like it's a secret, like he knows that to say it loudly would be more than Grantaire could bear. “Why did you run away from him?”

Grantaire can't find the words to explain, but of course, he doesn't need to. He just sits and lets Jehan sift gently through the mess of his thoughts.

Because I'm a liar and a lie. I'm not real. Whatever Enjolras feels, he feels it for someone who doesn't exist. I let that happen. I lied and lied and pretended and I fooled him. He cares about a human called Grantaire. There is no Grantaire! Grantaire is a joke, he's a character in this horrible story I made, he's not me! But I pretended, even to myself, I pretended that Enjolras was looking at me, that he was smiling at me. If I could destroy myself and make Grantaire real, I would. I'm not him. I'm something old and ugly and terrible that he has no idea about, I'm. I'm! I'm-

“Rachmiel,” Jehan says aloud in a tone of surprise and wonder. “Oh. That's a beautiful name. A real angel name.”

It makes Grantaire, R, Rachmiel shudder just to hear that ancient name plucked from his mind and spoken out loud.

“But you told me yourself in Amsterdam,” Jehan goes on, “it's not your name anymore.”

“I didn't want it to be.” Words come easily to him now, strangely. “I was given that name when my Father made me. I was named for mercy. I was named for compassion. But the name lost those meanings, and the thing with that name did awful things. I ran, I ran away. I ran from Rachmiel the monster, as any creature would be wise to do. For a long time I tried to be no one. I wanted to cast off that name like a shroud. I didn't want to be the thing they made me anymore. I made Grantaire. I played at being human. I wore the mask and I walked among humans and I pitied them and I pitied me. But then, Enjolras...” He feels his face screw up in frustration. “He was meant to kill me! He was beautiful and interesting and special, I only wanted to be near him a while. I thought I could protect him and arm him with my sword, and then he'd realise what I was and he'd kill me, and be one step closer to his stupid goal of ridding the world of monsters. That's how it was meant to happen.”

“Oh, Grantaire,” Jehan sighs.

“There's no Grantaire,” he reminds him.

“No, there is. It's your name. You chose it for yourself and it's yours.” Jehan leans back and cups Grantaire's jaw to get him to look at him. He's wearing a kind, sad smile. “Maybe it was just a disguise at first, but you've grown into it. It's who you are.”

“I’m not human,” Grantaire says.

“And so?” Jehan says. “Being human isn’t what matters. There are plenty of humans who are monsters. What matters is that you’re good. And you are.”

“How can you know that?” Grantaire is thinking of orders he obeyed long ago: of entire cities consumed in fire and brimstone and people drowned in their millions in the Great Flood, of a river of blood and fire raining from the sky. He thinks of Enjolras waking up in an empty hotel room and wondering what he did wrong.

“If you were a monster, don't you think Enjolras would have sniffed you out by now?” Jehan says with a soft laugh. “He would have fulfilled your wish and killed you without hesitation long ago. Except a monster would never have given him the chance, much less give him the weapon he needed to do it. A monster wouldn't have stayed with him all this time and protected him and loved him so fiercely. A monster wouldn't be sitting on my floor right now, panicking because the human he loves actually loves him back.”

Grantaire is silent. He wishes he could believe Jehan. He wishes it could be that easy.

“You’re good,” Jehan repeats. “You’re good, and you love Enjolras, and Enjolras loves you. It’s that simple. It’s okay.”

“No. It’s- no. If he knew the truth, if he knew what I am-”

“You don't know what he would do,” Jehan cuts in. “You don't. The only way you'll ever know is if you tell him. Let him make the choice, instead of just assuming you know what he'd choose. You need to give him a chance.”

“Would you be able to look him in the face and tell him everything was a lie? That I’m not what he thinks I am?” Grantaire asks bitterly. “What do you think that would do to him?”

“What do you think this will do to him?” Jehan says. “You left him alone, Grantaire, without a word of explanation. That isn't fair. It really hurt him.”

Grantaire had let his gaze sink to the carpet, but that makes his head snap up again.

“How is he?” he asks, because apparently he loves torturing himself. “You've talked to him?”

“He woke up and you were gone, and you never came back. Of course he called me. He called everyone in the end, I think. But I'm often the first person people call when they need help finding something. I couldn't help him, though. Where were you?”

“How is he?” Grantaire asks again. He knows that if Jehan really wants to know where he's been he can just look in his mind. By contrast, Jehan is being unusually reticent with his own thoughts now, holding himself at a distance.

“He's been worried sick, of course. And confused and scared. And now he's all those things and sad too.”

“Now?” Shit. “What day is it? How long was I gone?”

Jehan looks at him sharply. Judging by the conflicting expressions doing battle for control of his face, he isn't sure whether to be shocked or just plain angry that Grantaire doesn't even know this.

“It's been eight days,” he answers at length. “Combeferre called me to give me an update this morning. He said he finally managed to convince Enjolras to get on a plane out of Majorca. He wouldn't leave, Grantaire. He searched for you. He waited. He was adamant that you'd come back, if you could. He wouldn't believe that you would just leave.”

Grantaire shuts his eyes tightly, as if this will somehow banish from his mind the image of Enjolras endlessly waiting in that big hotel room, day after day, the hope slowly draining from his eyes. Jehan puts a hand on his shoulder and it is simultaneously a comfort and a condemnation.

“Tell me this was an accident, Grantaire,” he says softly. “Please. Tell me you didn't mean to leave him worrying this long.”

Grantaire says nothing. Jehan lets out a long, sad sigh.

“You didn't even mean to come here, did you?” Jehan sounds disappointed and that hurts far more than Grantaire ever expected. “You were really just going to disappear forever. Why? Did you think that would fix anything?”

“I don't want to lie to him anymore,” Grantaire mumbles.

“You don't have to! You can tell him the truth!” Jehan says, frustrated and earnest and pleading. “Tell him who you were, so he can finally fully know who you are.”

“It'll hurt him,” Grantaire says. “It'll break his heart.”

Jehan hums and nods.

“That's usually how things end up when lies are involved,” he says. “I have my own lies to pay for, too. I'm not looking forward to it. But I'll do it. It's the only way to move forward.”

“I thought it would hurt him less if I was just gone,” Grantaire says.

“You know that's what Enjolras thought about his civilian friends when he became a hunter, right?” Jehan says dryly. “Honestly. You two really deserve each other.”

“I don't deserve anything,” Grantaire says.

“You should go and see him,” Jehan says. “But even if you don't, I'll give you fair warning: I'll tell him you were here. I have to. You asked me to lie for you once and look where that's brought us. I'll tell him the truth this time, but he should hear it from you, not me.”

Grantaire says nothing.

“Maybe don't go see him right now, though,” Jehan continues after a moment. “You look dreadful. Like you need to sleep for a week.”

“I don't sleep,” Grantaire says, bemused.

“I think you might need to make an exception,” Jehan says, looking him up and down critically. “At the very least you need a hot cup of tea. And don't bother saying you don't need to eat or drink. I know you like to. Come on.”

He takes Grantaire's hand and helps him up off the floor, and Grantaire is surprised to find that he really does need the help. His vessel's limbs are stiff with cold and aching with a profound exhaustion that he isn't familiar with. He supposes flying madly for eight days straight will do that to you, especially when you haven't exactly been stretching your celestial powers for the past few millennia.

“Here, sit on the couch. Get comfy.” Jehan pushes him down amongst the array of colourful cushions. There's a throw draped over the back of the sofa; Jehan tugs it free and drapes it over Grantaire like a blanket. “Honestly, if you were a human I would have called an ambulance as soon as you appeared. Are you sure you're alright?”

“Pretty sure,” Grantaire says with a shrug. The couch is very comfortable. He sighs and sinks further into the cushions.

“What were you doing to end up like this?”

“I was flying.” His mind feels sort of fuzzy, almost like it does when he's consumed enough alcohol to overpower his immortal faculties. “Flew pretty far, I guess.”

“I wish you'd come straight here,” Jehan says, shaking his head. His expression softens after a moment, though, and he stoops to wrap Grantaire in another hug that he really doesn't feel like he deserves. “I'm glad you're here now, though. And that you're okay. I really was worried.”

“Sorry,” Grantaire mumbles against his shoulder.

“You can start making it up to me when you look a little less dead,” Jehan says, stepping back. “I'll go and make you that tea.”

By the time Jehan comes back with the tea, Grantaire feels like he has more or less become one with the plethora of squashy cushions around and beneath him. At some point he has closed his eyes, and he's decided he'd be quite content to stay in this spot for a decade or two. Jehan, whom Grantaire had only just reminded that angels do not sleep, says his name in alarmed concern.

“Resting,” Grantaire thinks drowsily at him. It takes him a long moment and an interminable amount of effort just to grasp and form the word and push it in Jehan's direction, and it feels hideous, but it reassures Jehan that he is not dying, so that's good. Jehan retrieves his book, gets comfortable in a nearby armchair and leaves him to his recovery.

Grantaire can hardly remember the last time he had to stop and rest like this. He thinks it was the time about three thousand years back, when a surprise ambush by Lucifer's loyal horde had seen him forced to take on one of Hell's more formidable generals in single combat. It had been an earth-shattering, sky-rending, punishing fight. And now here he is, in a similar condition just from flying too long. He thinks wryly, beneath the fog of exhaustion, that he must be out of shape.

When he next opens his eyes, the light in the room has changed. He judges it must be late afternoon. The tea Jehan prepared sits cold on an end-table.

“Your thoughts just switched back on like a lightbulb,” Jehan laughs. “Do angels not do grogginess?”

“No, because like I told you, we don't sleep. We just re-charge occasionally,” Grantaire says, sitting up. Jehan looks him over appraisingly.

“You look better,” he says.

“Yeah,” Grantaire sighs. His vessel feels normal and functional again, which means that his reprieve is over.

“You'd better get going, then,” Jehan says. “You have a mess to fix.”

Grantaire spreads his wings again, reluctantly.

“And no matter what happens, don't you dare disappear again,” Jehan adds warningly. “Maybe you're not used to having friends, but we come with a certain amount of responsibility, you know. I'll be waiting here for you.”

Grantaire flies.

He follows the lure of Enjolras's golden soul – has it really been eight days since he last saw it? It feels like a grey eternity. And yet, he might have kissed him only a moment ago. His lips burn and tingle to think of it.

He finds Enjolras on a train. He doesn't show himself immediately – appearing spontaneously on public transport would be a terrible idea for so many reasons, and in any case, he needs to decide what he's going to say. He is ancient and full of knowledge but nothing has prepared him for telling the human boy he loves that he is a liar and an aberration, and that despite it all he'd do it again because the past year feels like the only worthwhile one he's lived out of thousands.

So he sits, invisible, in the empty seat next to Enjolras and just looks at him, drinking in every detail of him, body and soul, like it's the last time he'll ever see him. It might well be. Enjolras could banish him from his presence forever for his betrayal, and Grantaire would obey.

Enjolras is pale, and there are dark purple shadows beneath his red-rimmed eyes. His soul burns dimmer than usual, and a cloak of grey covers it like a storm-cloud. He looks like he hasn't slept since they were last together. Grantaire thinks he even looks thinner. He's staring down at his phone – Grantaire's phone, really – with a despondent, listless gaze that doesn't suit him at all. He looks like he's waiting for a message or a call that he's realised is never coming. He looks like someone who is fast running out of hope.

I did that, Grantaire thinks miserably.

The train begins to slow as it approaches the next station, and Enjolras gets to his feet to gather his luggage. There's rather a lot of it, and Grantaire realises with a fresh stab of guilt that Enjolras is carrying both of their belongings with him. The clothes Grantaire doesn't much care about, the sketchbooks he didn't even think of as he fled; Enjolras left none of it behind.

As Enjolras disembarks, Grantaire is surprised to notice that this is not Paris the train has brought him to, as he expected, but rather another familiar station: Lyon.

Courfeyrac is waiting alone on the platform. Enjolras looks around and sees him, but halts, looking lost and conflicted. Courfeyrac comes to him instead and, without a word, opens his arms. Enjolras stands stiff and still for only the shortest of moments, then he drops his bags and falls into the waiting embrace.

“Hey,” Courfeyrac says quietly, holding him tightly. His normally cheerful face is unusually solemn. “It's okay. I've got you.”

“I don't understand what's happening,” Enjolras says, his voice muffled against Courfeyrac's shoulder. He sounds wretched. “None of it makes sense. He's just gone. I thought he must be in trouble but Combeferre seems sure he isn't. He thinks he just left. Why would he leave? Did something happen? Did I do something wrong?”

Grantaire doesn't think he's ever hated himself so much as in this moment.

“I'm sure it wasn't you,” Courfeyrac says soothingly.

“But I...we...” Enjolras trails off. He pulls back slightly from Courfeyrac's hold, and Grantaire can see it on his face that he's thinking about the kiss they shared and trying to fathom why Grantaire vanished without trace immediately after.

“Come on, let's go back to my place,” Courfeyrac says. “There's got to be an explanation, and I'll take care of you until we find it.”

He releases Enjolras to help him with his bags, but as soon as they break contact, Grantaire steps forward, places a hand on Enjolras's shoulder, and flies them away from here. He needs to do this alone, just the two of them. But he's glad that he can deliver Enjolras back into Courfeyrac's care when it's over.

He lets Enjolras go when they land, and Enjolras stumbles forward, gasping. Flight can be overwhelming for a human, especially if they aren't expecting it, and Enjolras's soul is about a fifty-fifty split between terror and nausea. Grantaire has a bare few seconds to feel bad about that before Enjolras, with his hunter's instincts, recovers and whirls to confront whatever spirited him away, Grantaire's sword drawn in his hand.

When he sees Grantaire standing there, his mind seems to stall – his face and soul cycle through a whole spectrum of emotions, shock and confusion and disbelief, but eventually settle on ecstatic relief, much to Grantaire's dismay.

“Grantaire. Oh my God, you're alright,” Enjolras says, breathless. He sheathes the sword and closes the distance between them, touching a hand to Grantaire's arm and squeezing lightly, as if testing the solidity and realness of him. “I was so worried, I...” The sound of crashing waves causes him to glance around. “Where are we?”

Grantaire looks around too and sees that he has brought them to a deserted night-time beach somewhere. It's small and secluded and surrounded by high cliffs. His throat tightens oddly. They were supposed to have gone to the beach together, before it all fell apart.

“Grantaire,” Enjolras says again, recapturing his attention. “Are you okay? What brought us here? Are we trapped?”

Grantaire looks at him hopelessly and braces himself for what's to come.

“No, it's alright. We're not trapped,” he says. “I brought us here.”

Enjolras stares at him searchingly, as if trying to find the joke in his face and coming up empty.

“What? How?” he asks finally.

“Same way I went and got that blade in your pocket from Paris when we were in Majorca,” Grantaire says. Enjolras's gaze flicks briefly to the pocket where he keeps the blade, a frown pinching his forehead.

“I'd been wondering...” he says before shaking his head. “I don't understand. There's so much I don't understand.”

“You will,” Grantaire says.

Words seem too flimsy and insubstantial to have any use here, so Grantaire says nothing more. He lets his Grace expand within him and flow outward, lets it start to seeps through his human shell. The white light of it, gently suffusing his skin and blazing from his eyes, is shockingly bright in the surrounding darkness, and it casts stark shadows across Enjolras's frightened, lost face as he lets go of Grantaire's arm and falls back a few steps.

Grantaire lets himself burn brighter and brighter, until the beach is nearly as light as day, and then he unfurls his wings. He stretches them out to their full, enormous span and lets the shadow of them loom large on the rocky cliff behind him.

He watches as Enjolras stares at him with an open mouth and wide, terrified eyes. Then, once again, the hunter in him comes to the fore. Enjolras's expression becomes one of the purest rage, and he draws his sword again.

“Get out of him,” he snarls, putting the blade to Grantaire's throat. “Whatever you are, get out of him now.”

“It's me, Enjolras,” Grantaire says as gently as he can. “It's just me.”

“You're a liar!” Enjolras shouts. “You took him and now you're trying to trick me-!”

“I am a liar,” Grantaire concedes. “Enjolras, I'm sorry. It was never meant to end up like this. I'm not tricking you. Not this time.”

“No,” Enjolras says, but it's weaker this time, and the angry tears brimming in his eyes are the proof that he's starting to believe. “No, you're lying, Grantaire is-”

“Not human,” Grantaire says. “Look at me. You know it's me. I'm sorry. I'm not human. I never wished I was until I met you. It's why I ran, Enjolras. I couldn't do that to you. I couldn't keep lying, not when we...”

What? Found each other? Fell in fucking love of all things, against all odds, because the universe is just a bitch like that?

Enjolras drops the sword; it lands in the damp sand with a soft thump. He staggers backward, shaking his head.

“What the fuck,” he manages finally. “Grantaire, you...? This whole time, you...?”

Grantaire nods, lets the shame and guilt claw at him.

“What the fuck,” Enjolras says again, louder this time, wild-eyed. “Who are you? What are you?”

“I'm...” Grantaire lets the light of his Grace dim a little. He doesn't know what to say. The word 'angel', to humans, suggests something good and holy and pure. “Does it matter?”

“It matters to me,” Enjolras says through gritted teeth. Grantaire supposes that's fair. Of course Enjolras would want to know what he's been travelling with, sharing rooms with, taking meals with – of course he would want to try and quantify exactly how reviled he should be by the memory of the touch of Grantaire's lips to his.

“I'm a monster like any other,” Grantaire says finally. “My kind, they call us angels. But humans have long since forgotten what that word really means. Don't misunderstand. There's nothing righteous about us.”

Enjolras swallows hard, looking up at the fading silhouette of Grantaire's wings.

“An angel,” he says. He shakes his head. “But angels aren't-”

“They're very real,” Grantaire interjects apologetically. “They've been meddling with the lives of your kind since the dawn of man.”

Something flashes in Enjolras's eyes at that.

“Meddling,” he repeats. “Is that what this was?”

Grantaire says nothing. Enjolras's soul roars to life and blazes like a bonfire, full of betrayal and fury.

“You lied to me! All this time!” He storms over to Grantaire and seizes him by the collar of his shirt, and Grantaire aches with love for his utter fearlessness even after the light show he gave him. “Why? Why did you do any of this?”

“I'm. Selfish,” Grantaire replies. “I wanted to be close to you. You're special, Enjolras, you don't know it but you're so-”

“Don't,” Enjolras grinds out. “Don't talk like it meant something to you.”

“It meant everything, Enjolras,” Grantaire says seriously. “You mean everything.”

“You lied,” Enjolras repeats. “You're a mountain of lies, and you ran away the moment you realised your lies had worked too well, that the latest stupid human you'd decided to meddle with had actually-!”

He cuts himself off and gives a shout of frustration. He pulls one arm back, his hand clenched into a fist.

“It won't hurt me if you hit me,” Grantaire tells him. “I'm sorry. I wish it would.”

Enjolras looks at him silently for a long, ominous moment while he absorbs this information, thinks it through.

“Were you ever in any danger?” he asks lowly. “When we were hunting?”

“No,” Grantaire replies.

“Are you strong? Could you have found and killed those monsters much faster than we did?”

“Yes.”

Enjolras shoves himself away from him.

“People got hurt,” he says. “You could've stopped it. You could've saved so many more people but all you cared about was whatever game you've been playing this whole time-!”

“I gave up on humans as a species long ago,” Grantaire says. “I only wanted to protect you.”

“I don't want that kind of protection!” Enjolras shouts at him. “You made the last year of my life a joke! I was fighting and struggling but it was all fake, you could've stopped it at any time! And you, you were fake too. God, every time we talked, every moment we were together, it was all...” He fixes Grantaire with a fierce stare. “Is this even what you really look like?” A horrible possibility seems to suddenly occur to him; dread crosses his face. “Is that even your own body?”

“No,” Grantaire says. “It isn't.”

Enjolras says nothing. He looks like he wants to be sick.

“Let me take you back to Courfeyrac,” Grantaire says. He stoops and picks up his sword and holds it out to Enjolras. Enjolras looks at it like it might turn into a snake and bite him.

“I don't want it,” he says.

“Yes you do,” Grantaire says, pressing it into his hand. “It's what got you into this in the first place.”

Enjolras laughs bitterly.

“Is that what this was about?” he asks. “My hubris? Was I getting too ambitious for a lowly human?”

“No,” Grantaire says. “None of this was your fault.”

Enjolras turns the blade over in his hands as if seeing it for the first time.

“So it's an angel's weapon,” he says.

“Yes,” Grantaire confirms. “It's also one of the few things that can kill an angel.”

Enjolras glances up at him suspiciously.

“I'm just letting you know,” Grantaire says. “I won't stop you if you want to do it.”

Enjolras stares at him in open horror.

“You're awful,” he says at length. “Take me back to Lyon, now. And then leave.”

Of course, Grantaire obeys.

~

“Well,” Jehan says, once Grantaire has slunk dejectedly back to his house and opened his mind to allow Jehan to browse through the whole sorry affair. “He was always going to be angry. No one likes to be lied to.”

“He was afraid of me,” Grantaire says glumly.

Jehan, who is cuddling his cat to help her recover from the shock of Grantaire's second undignified landing of the day, scoffs.

“He looked afraid for about ten seconds, and then he was ready to brawl with you,” he says. “I don't think you need to worry about him being scared of you.” He pauses and then adds more gently, “I'm sure he knows you would never hurt him.”

Grantaire groans from his spot on the floor. This is where he landed and this is where he intends to stay until Jehan's carpet takes pity on him and just absorbs him into its fibres.

“I think he knew already,” Jehan goes on. “He's so smart. Maybe he didn't want to admit he knew, even to himself, but on some level he must have.”

“Didn't seem that way,” Grantaire says, recalling with painful clarity the exact look of disbelieving terror on Enjolras's face when he'd untethered his Grace.

“Please don't look so down,” Jehan says. “It's not over, you know.”

“Isn't it?”

“No, dummy. He's angry and upset, but that doesn't mean he's going to cast you off forever. You didn't exactly break it to him gently; he's going to need some time to process it all. When his head is feeling clearer, I'm sure he'll let you know what he wants to do.”

“Somehow I'm not optimistic,” Grantaire says. He thinks of the way Enjolras flinched when he reached out to touch him to fly him back to Lyon. He thinks of how Enjolras wouldn't even look at him once they'd landed, and had just grabbed a gaping Courfeyrac by the arm and left without a word or backward glance.

“Maybe you didn't notice, but he was more angry about the lying part than, you know, what you'd been lying about,” Jehan says.

“He's disgusted by me,” Grantaire says flatly. “Not only am I a liar, I'm a waste of powers that could be used for good, and I'm a parasite hijacking a human body. I'm as bad as a demon to him.”

“If that were true, he'd have run you through with your sword,” Jehan sighs. “Please, Grantaire, don't just give up. Let him have some time and space. It'll work out.”

“I need a drink,” Grantaire says into the carpet.

“That's a terrible idea,” Jehan says. “Let's do it. Go get something, and get enough for me too.”

Grantaire gets wine for Jehan and an extensive and terrifying array of spirits for himself. It's going to take a lot to drown out this mess.

“Enjolras hates it when I drink too much,” he says sadly as he polishes off his fifth bottle of vodka. He reaches for bottle number six; clearly he hasn't had enough yet if he's still talking about Enjolras. Jehan, who has joined him on the floor by now and is holding his unoccupied hand in a show of solidarity, sighs.

“He finds you extra-confusing when you're drunk. I know that for sure. And it's risky when you're working a case, you know? Monsters catch you easier when you're drunk. Well. Not you. But regular hunters,” Jehan says. “Also he was probably worried you were dissolving your liver. He might not mind so much if he knew that you're, like, everything-proof.” He pauses, staring down into his own half-empty glass. “Actually, no, he'd still hate it. You drink when you're feeling bad. He'd hate that most of all.”

“Healthy coping mechanisms are hard to come by when you're a millennia-old celestial being,” Grantaire says. “I can't exactly go talk to a therapist.”

Jehan hums.

“You could never talk to anyone,” he says after a moment. Grantaire feels him poking around in his head again. “After you left your home. That's so sad, Grantaire. You must have been so lonely.”

Grantaire doesn't reply.

“I'm glad you found Enjolras,” Jehan says. “I'm glad I could meet you, and that we can be friends. I'm glad you have someone to talk to now.”

Grantaire laughs quietly, a warm bloom of affection spreading in his chest. It's such a good, human feeling. He never felt friendship like this among his brothers and sisters.

“I'm happy I met you too, Jean Prouvaire,” he says. “One good thing out of this whole disaster.”

“You should meet more humans, I think,” Jehan says. He sounds like the wine is going to his head a little. “Properly, I mean. You told Enjolras that you'd given up on us as a species. I think it's easy to do that if you only look at us from a distance. As just a big angry mass, always making mistakes and hurting each other. But if you get up close, talk to individual people...so many of them will surprise you. I think you'd be amazed, how many of them you could care about.”

“Are you trying to tell me there are plenty more fish in the sea?” Grantaire asks with a faint smile.

“Nope. Enjolras is your fish,” Jehan says with a decisive nod. “That's a done deal. But you can have lots of friends, too.”

“I think you've had too much to drink. I told you not to try to keep up with me.”

“I'm kind of proud of him,” Jehan says, ignoring his comment. “Enjolras, I mean.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. The last time he was sad and hurting, after Feuilly, he almost killed himself. He went back to hunting too soon, he was careless because he just didn't care what happened to him, and in the end I had to track him down and help piece him back together.” Jehan sighs, but then smiles. “This time, he went to his friends. Isn't that great?”

“Yeah,” Grantaire says in mild surprise after thinking about it for a moment. “Yeah, you're right. He's letting them look after him.”

Jehan's smile widens and he gives Grantaire's hand a squeeze.

“You did that, you know,” he says.

“What? No I didn't. I mean, I'm the reason he's there, but I'm not the reason.”

“You are! You helped him reconnect with them. You helped him feel like that was okay; that he didn't have to always be alone.” Jehan laughs softly as he sifts through Grantaire's memories and pulls forward some of his interactions with Enjolras that he holds most dear. “No matter what you are, Grantaire, you've helped him get better at being a human.”

Grantaire feels an unexpected lump in his throat.

“That would be nice,” he manages finally. “If I managed to do one good thing for him.”

“You're nothing but good for each other,” Jehan says, nestling his head against Grantaire's shoulder, apparently ready for a snooze. “And hopefully you'll both see that soon.”

 

Chapter Text

~

Grantaire ends up carrying Jehan to his bed after his wine-tipsy snooze turns into full-fledged sleep right there on the living room carpet. The house feels very quiet without even the murmur of Jehan’s conscious mind, and Grantaire feels strange and aimless. He’s grown accustomed to his night-time routine of the last year, he realises: wrangling Enjolras away from research or planning, or patching him up after a hunt, and then herding him to bed, and pretending to sleep himself in an attempt to lead by example. He drifts back into Jehan’s living room, and is surprised by the sense of utter despondency that he feels at its emptiness. Ridiculous, that he misses having to fake sleep. Pathetic, that he misses the soft glow of Enjolras’s soul at rest, like a human child missing a night-light.

He wonders if Enjolras misses him, too; if Enjolras finds his absence just as strange and jarring. Or if Enjolras, now that he knows the truth, is just relieved to have him gone.

He decides that pondering Enjolras's thoughts and feelings towards him now will only end badly, so he opts instead to drink some more. He snatches up a bottle of extremely vile cheap vodka and takes a few generous swigs. From the other side of the room, Jehan's cat watches him cautiously. Minerva, he reminds himself. He should have it by heart by now. Jehan's whole mind sings with her name, wrapped up in a frankly astonishing amount of love, every time he so much as looks at her.

“Sorry I upset you earlier,” Grantaire tells her. “I'm awfully good at that.”

By the time Jehan emerges from his room the next morning, the two of them have managed to make peace. Grantaire is lying flat on his back on the sofa, and Minerva is curled up on his chest. He pets her tiny, soft head, as he has been doing on and off for the last few hours, and she purrs, and he feels Jehan’s amusement over the awe-struck look on his face. The bottle of nasty vodka is sitting on the floor, still half-full and utterly forgotten.

“This is the best,” Grantaire says. “Why did I never think of this?”

Jehan laughs as he scrubs the sleep from his eyes.

“So there is a healthy coping mechanism for celestial beings after all,” he says.

“When humans first started domesticating other species, I thought it was pretty funny,” Grantaire says. “But I think I'm starting to understand the appeal.”

“Animals can be a lot easier to interact with than humans,” Jehan agrees, perching on the arm of the sofa above Grantaire's head and leaning over to scratch behind Minerva’s ears. “No risk of judgement. No need to think of interesting things to say. Much less pressure. Much simpler.” He gives a quiet, rueful huff of a laugh. “I used to think animals would be the only friends I'd ever have.”

Grantaire looks up at him curiously.

“Why? You're amazing,” he says. Jehan blushes faintly and turns his face away.

“That's nice of you, but it's difficult to get close to people when you're- like me,” he says. “I hear what people are thinking. Even when I'm trying not to, sometimes. I don't think it's fair for me to be around someone and not tell them that. But if I tell them, they either don't believe me and think I'm crazy, or they do believe me and it scares them.” He rolls his eyes, like it's a minor exasperation he has to put up with, but Grantaire can feel the deep-seated, aching sadness hidden away in the depths of his mind. He brushes against it gently, and Jehan recoils from the touch.

“It's alright,” Jehan says. He sounds like he wants to mean it. “It just means that it's sometimes easier to be alone. Away from other humans and all their complications and noisy thinking.”

“Do you not hear animals' thoughts?” Grantaire asks teasingly, and is rewarded with a smile.

“They're different; they don't think in words,” Jehan says. “Sometimes I find myself thinking that I really want tuna, then it turns out I'm just tuned into her.” He gives Minerva's nose a little tap. He pauses and looks contemplative before continuing. “Mostly she's just like nice background noise. An animal's thoughts are like- like a song coming from so far away that I can't understand the words, but I can still enjoy the sound of the music. Human thoughts can be like...” He mimes both his ears exploding. Grantaire pushes sympathy between their minds.

“You're good at keeping your thoughts at a nice volume for me, though. I appreciate that,” Jehan says, smiling again. Grantaire can feel him trying to pull both their minds away from the subject of his abilities. “Come on, I'll make breakfast.”

“You shouldn't waste food on me,” Grantaire tells him. “I don't need it.”

“It's not a waste if you enjoy it,” Jehan says. “And I make pretty excellent scrambled eggs, you should know.”

He stands up and turns to go to the kitchen, but Grantaire catches him by the wrist.

“There's nothing wrong with you, you know,” he says. “You're exceptional. And not just because of what your mind can do. One day you'll find people who'll appreciate all of you. Enjolras and Combeferre and I already do.”

Jehan's cheeks burn dark red and he turns away without replying, but his gratitude for the sentiment rings through their linked minds loud and clear.

The scrambled eggs really are very good, as is the coffee that Jehan makes in an antique-looking French press. They sit at the kitchen table and Minerva winds between their legs and looks at them beseechingly for scraps. Morning sunlight streams in through the window and warms the room and makes Jehan's hair gleam like polished copper. It's almost nice enough to make Grantaire forget why he's here and not in some cheap and ugly hotel room with Enjolras, but not quite. Grantaire misses him like he'd miss his wings if they were torn from his back.

“I know,” Jehan murmurs. “I'm sure he misses you, too.”

Grantaire doesn't reply. He's sure Jehan can feel his doubt without the use of words.

“I need you to take me to see him today,” Jehan says. “If you wouldn't mind.”

Grantaire looks at him, his surprise and curiosity undisguised in his expression and mind.

“I lied to him too, remember,” Jehan says. He looks very nervous – almost sick – but determined. “He'll have realised that by now. I have to go apologise. I want to do it in person.”

“I can take you to Lyon,” Grantaire says. “But it's probably best if I don't go with you to see him.”

“That's up to you,” Jehan says, standing to put their dishes in the sink.

One quick shower later and Jehan is standing in the middle of his living room, pale-faced and looking like a soldier preparing to go into battle. He's even eschewed his usual bright colours in favour of an uncharacteristically somber and uninteresting outfit. This is clearly going to be a Very Serious Conversation, and Grantaire couldn't be more sorry to have been the cause of it.

“I'd hoped my first flying experience would be for something a little more light-hearted,” Jehan says with a weak laugh as Grantaire steps close to him. “Thought maybe we could take a spontaneous trip to Disneyland, or something.”

“Another day, maybe,” Grantaire says. He reaches for Jehan's hand. “You should brace yourself.”

He tries to project to Jehan what this is going to feel like, tries to warn and prepare him, but he knows that no psychic simulation can compare to the real thing. He takes Jehan's hand, spreads his wings, and less than a breath later they're in Lyon, on the landing outside Marius and Courfeyrac's apartment door. Jehan's eyes are wide, but he seems to have handled his maiden flight well. He doesn't seem disoriented or nauseous. Grantaire realises that maybe flight isn't so distressing for humans when the human in question knows what's about to happen and trusts the one doing the flying. It seems a very obvious thing, now that he thinks about it.

“Wow,” Jehan says, looking a little dazed. “It's over so fast, but it's like being everywhere at once.”

“Don't think about it too hard,” Grantaire tells him. “Really, don't. I don't know what it might do to you.”

In the same moment, they turn to look at the apartment door. Grantaire reaches and can feel the human souls inside; Courfeyrac, his cheerful nature currently tempered by sympathy and concern, and Enjolras. Enjolras is a mix of so many emotions that they've become one big dark feeling with no name. His soul's golden shine is tarnished and weak under the smog of it.

“Look what I did,” Grantaire says quietly. Jehan lays a hand on his arm for a moment before stepping towards the door.

“I'll call you to come and get me when I'm done,” he says. His hands and his soul are trembling but he stands firm, facing grimly forward.

“You can pray to me,” Grantaire says as casually as he can. “Then I'll hear you no matter where I am.”

Predictably, his nonchalant tone does nothing to prevent Jehan performing a violent double-take.

“Praying works?” he gapes.

“It works in this specific case because you know my name and can invoke me directly,” Grantaire clarifies. “Do not try it with any other angels. Most of the better-known ones are dead anyway, and the ones who are still alive aren't friendly. And don't even waste your breath with our dad.”

Jehan shakes his head.

“We'll unpack all of that later,” he says. He raises his hand to knock at the apartment door. “For now, you'd better disappear if you don't want to be seen today.”

Grantaire nods and flies off, sending Jehan a mental good luck as he goes.

He doesn't know where to go. He's more than a little irked by it; back when he didn't care about anything, he could go anywhere, and everywhere felt about the same. Now that he's rather stupidly stumbled his way into caring about a few humans, going anywhere that isn't where at least one of them is feels sort of empty. He could go on a whistle-stop tour of all the most beautiful places on Earth just now and all he’d be able to think about would be how much he'd rather spend one more day playing at being human with Enjolras.

He rolls his eyes at himself and flies to Paris.

“Good read?” he asks Combeferre as he drops into the chair opposite him at his table in the Musain. He feels a smidge of satisfaction when Combeferre starts and looks up almost guiltily from the copy of the Bible he's leafing through.

“Hello, Grantaire,” Combeferre says after collecting himself. “Though recent events force me to assume that is probably an alias.”

“Enjolras filled you in, did he?”

“Yes.”

“That's a pity. I really did wonder if you would figure it out on your own.”

“Don't be flippant,” Combeferre says with narrowed eyes. “You've no idea what you've done. You-”

He pauses and looks around him. The Musain is quiet this morning, but the very quietness works against them; there are a few hunters present, but not enough for there to be any buzz of chatter to cover their own conversation, and it already seems like the sort of conversation that neither of them will want others to hear. Combeferre gets to his feet.

“Outside,” he says shortly, and Grantaire obediently follows him down the stairs and out into the narrow alley between the Musain and its neighbouring building.

“I feel like this is the part where I punch you,” Combeferre says once he's ascertained that they are alone.

“You'd only break your hand,” Grantaire tells him. “Sorry.”

“That's unfortunate,” Combeferre says, eyeing him as if searching for some physical evidence of his invulnerability that he's simply failed to notice before.

“You seem awfully pissed off for someone who already knew I wasn't what I claimed to be,” Grantaire remarks.

“I suppose that's because not even I suspected the true extent to which you were lying to us,” Combeferre says. Though he remains as composed as ever, he really is furious; Grantaire can see it in the hard, disapproving line of his mouth, in his short, tight breaths, in the storminess of his soul. “Now suddenly I'm scrambling through religious texts for fragments of information about creatures I never knew really existed.” He shakes his head. “I didn't think your- your species mattered. I thought I understood your motivations. Your loyalties. I think I was wrong.”

“You think my loyalties aren't with you?” Grantaire asks. “With Enjolras?”

“Enjolras,” Combeferre repeats. Grantaire understands all at once that the greater part of Combeferre's anger does not stem from the shock of discovering a whole new species of monster that he doesn't know how to hunt.

“You don't know what you've done,” Combeferre says. “You disappeared. Then you came back just long enough to break the truth to him in the worst possible way. And you have no idea what that's going to do to him.”

“He had to know.”

“He should have known from the start.”

“I know. I know! But...” I couldn't have told him at the start. He'd never have trusted me, never have let me go with him. I was too selfish to deny myself the chance to be near him. Grantaire's excuses sound pathetic even to his own mind.

“I came here to ask for a job. A case,” he says, because it's better than throwing himself on the ground and begging for forgiveness that will not be granted.

“A job?” Combeferre repeats, his voice ringing with disbelief.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I thought I should make myself useful,” Grantaire says. “Especially since it's my fault one of your best hunters is temporarily out of commission.”

Combeferre just looks at him, clearly skeptical. Grantaire sighs.

“I know what you want to do. I know that if I was human, you would beat the daylights out of me for hurting your best friend,” he says. “But I'm not human. You can't hurt me. So you might as well use me. Just give me the worst job you have. It's one less hunter you have to risk, and less time you have to suffer me without being able to punch me.”

“You never had any interest in taking jobs from me before you met Enjolras,” Combeferre says.

“I didn't have any interest in most things back then,” Grantaire agrees. “But things are different now. I've been working cases with him for the last year and you haven't objected.”

“I assumed that was more to do with him than with the hunting. Is this meant to be for him, too? Do you think you can earn his trust back with blood?”

“I don't know.” Grantaire can't think about that right now. He doesn't want to think or talk about anything. He's in a restless, volatile sort of mood and he needs to work it off, and he'd rather do so by cutting loose on a monster than arguing with Combeferre. And he could have found a monster without help but he came here because here means something now and he doesn't know how to explain that, doesn't know how to get Combeferre to give him what he wants. He rakes a hand through his hair.

“I can't go back to doing nothing,” he says finally under Combeferre's unrelenting stare. “Maybe he'll never forgive me. But I can still help him. I can kill monsters and save people, and I'll do it forever even if he hates me, because it's important to him. I can do that, at least.”

He thinks something flickers behind Combeferre's stony expression, something softer and relenting, but he can't be sure, especially when Combeferre turns from him wordlessly and goes back inside the Musain. Grantaire follows him, uncertain, and is rewarded when Combeferre tosses a thin file across his table to him.

“Demon in Croatia.” Combeferre doesn't look at him as he says it; makes a show of taking off his glasses and cleaning them. “It's already killed at least two civilians and a hunter.”

Grantaire glances through the scant information and hands the file back with a nod.

“Let's see what it can do to an angel,” he says before he leaves.

The answer to that turns out to be: not much. Grantaire spends a fair amount of time finding the damn thing, but once that's done the ensuing fight is over very quickly. The demon's human host is already dead, so Grantaire doesn't have to worry about being careful. He grabs the demon by the head and incinerates it from the inside out. He lets the body drop. He doesn't feel any better.

Fortunately, it's not too long after this that he's startled by the first incoming prayer he's heard in more years than he cares to count. Although he told Jehan to call him this way, it's still jarring. He'd almost forgotten how it felt.

A wry, reluctant smile tugs at his mouth. Grantaire, Jehan is calling out to him. Grantaire. That's definitely a first. His angelic name is there, the suggestion of it necessary to open this particular channel, but it's largely drowned out by the human name he chose for himself. It feels strange to be called upon like that, but it's typically sweet of Jehan.

He follows the call to its source and flits back to Lyon; he finds Jehan on the roof of the apartment building, rather than in the hallway where he left him.

“Did you think you'd get better reception up here?” Grantaire asks, amused. “You can pray from anywhere, you know.”

Jehan doesn't reply; just puts his head on Grantaire's shoulder and sags against him. His mind, automatically synching and aligning with Grantaire's as always, does not show him what transpired, but his thoughts radiate unhappiness and the sort of weariness that only strikes after the adrenaline of a stressful situation has worn off.

“That bad, huh?” Grantaire says sympathetically.

“It was horrible,” Jehan mumbles.

Grantaire wraps him up in his arms and takes him home. Minerva is clearly growing accustomed to his comings and goings because when they land she does little more than level Grantaire with an offended look. Grantaire puts Jehan on the sofa, puts Minerva on Jehan, and goes to make some tea. By the time a steaming mug of some herbal concoction is in his hands, Jehan seems a little better.

“How was he?” Grantaire dares to ask.

“He's so angry,” Jehan says sadly.

“With you?”

“With me, with you. With all of it.” Jehan sighs, shakes his head. “He's miserable too, but he doesn't want to look at that. He's going to do something stupid, I can tell.”

“I won't let him get hurt if he does,” Grantaire says. “Don't worry, you won't have to go track him down to a Swiss hospital again.”

“You could just go and talk to him. Maybe then he wouldn't do the stupid thing.”

Grantaire snorts.

“Did he seem like he wanted me to talk to him?” he asks. “Or be within a mile of him?”

“He's angry, Grantaire,” Jehan repeats. He sips his tea but finds it too hot and sets it down on the end-table. “That isn't going to go away if you just hide from him forever.”

“So you want me to, what? Put myself in front of him so he can yell at me?”

“I did.”

“And how did that go?” Grantaire snaps, more unkindly than he'd intended. He regrets it immediately, sends a wave of apology between their minds but Jehan, pale-faced, sweeps it aside.

“I told you, it was horrible,” he says, eyes narrowed. “But I did it, and I'll do it again and again and as many times as it takes until he feels like he can forgive me. Because I didn't mean to but I hurt him. And I- I care about him and I want to make it right.” His voice rises, and to Grantaire's amazement small objects around the room – the mug of tea, the ornamental clogs Jehan bought in Amsterdam, the knick-knacks on the mantelpiece – start trembling in place. Minerva jumps down off Jehan's lap and hides under the sofa. “And I don't like it and it scares me, but I'm the one who made the mistake, so maybe my own feelings aren't the most important thing-!”

A tiny ornamental cat flies off the mantelpiece – Grantaire catches it before it can hit him squarely on the side of the head. It wouldn't have hurt him even if he was human, but Jehan goes wide-eyed, and the room goes still.

“I- sorry,” he says. Then he's on the floor on his hands and knees, trying to coax Minerva, who is yowling piteously, out from her hiding place. “Oh, baby, I'm so sorry. Come on, come here.”

At length he has the cat bundled in his arms and is back on the sofa, shame-faced and avoiding Grantaire's eyes. Grantaire sits down next to him, cautiously.

“You're full of surprises,” he says.

“Sorry,” Jehan says again, cuddling Minerva tighter. “It's not something I've ever learned to control. It only happens when I'm...emotional.”

“It's alright,” Grantaire tells him. “It's been. An emotional couple of days.”

He lays an arm across Jehan's shoulders, and lets it rest there when the gesture is welcomed and not repulsed.

“You're right,” he says. “Part of me is just afraid to face him, and that isn't fair. I'm the one who really hurt him. If he wants to hurt me back, I shouldn't flinch from it.”

“That isn't what I meant and you know it,” Jehan sighs.

Grantaire takes a moment to examine Jehan's thoughts on the matter a little more closely.

“You want me to go and talk to him, because even if he just yells at me, that's at least...something,” he hazards finally.

“If you don't see each other, you can't make any progress,” Jehan says. He looks at Grantaire imploringly. “You care about him. I know you do. But maybe he's not so sure anymore. Maybe you need to prove it.”

“Do you really think it'll make any difference?” Grantaire asks, the familiar sense of despondency coming over him. “I know things can't go back to how they were. They'll always be different now. But do you really think it could be good again?”

“I think you have to believe that,” Jehan says. “You have to think about what you want, and you have to think it's possible, and you have to try. You'll have plenty of time to mope if you fail. But- you two need each other. Please, Grantaire, try. Give you and Enjolras a chance at being happy, together.”

Grantaire turns away from him, overwhelmed by his earnestness and the sweetly tempting but seemingly impossible idea he's suggesting. He tries to imagine himself flying and landing in a hotel room and Enjolras, used to it, looking up and greeting him with a smile. He tries to imagine Enjolras, knowing everything, coming to him willingly, gladly, and leaning in to kiss him like he did before, in that other life they shared together. He aches with want.

“I don't know how,” he says, ashamed by how small his voice is. “I haven't the first idea how to...”

“You'll figure it out,” Jehan says. “You will. Just. Decide to try. No more running, or hiding. Decide you're going to do everything you can to fix this.” He laughs, quietly. “You're always telling him to let himself want things. Take your own advice, maybe.”

“But,” Grantaire says desperately, “I don't deserve-”

Jehan takes his face in both hands, makes him look at him.

“You do,” Jehan says, his voice soft but fierce, his mind insistent and unshakeable in the sentiment. “You do.”

It takes a long time, a veritable war being silently fought between their opposed thoughts, but finally, finally, Grantaire nods. He doesn't say a word, but he doesn't need to. Jehan knows what it means, and he shows it by giving a delighted laugh and throwing his arms around Grantaire's neck. Minerva gets squashed between them and quickly wriggles her way to freedom and leaps to the nearby armchair instead, where she sits cleaning herself and watching them with a withering stare.

“I'm so scared,” Grantaire admits with a breathy laugh of his own.

“You'll be fine. You will,” Jehan assures him, holding on tight to him.

“I'll need to tell him- everything. What being an angel means. What I've done.”

“Yes.”

“But what if-”

“Don't.” Jehan cuts him off. “Don't do that. Just try.”

“Okay,” Grantaire whispers.

“And,” Jehan says, pulling back and looking thoughtful, “I think I was right last night, when I said you should give him a little time. He's very- raw, right now. It'll be best for both of you to wait. But not too long.”

“How long?”

“Mmm.” Jehan ponders. “Give him a few days. He won't deal with everything he's feeling, but he'll start to bury it fast. Let's- let's say two more days.”

“Two days,” Grantaire repeats.

“Two days with his friends. It should give him enough time to think things over.” Jehan nods. “Then you go.”

“Then I go get what's coming to me.”

“It won't be pretty,” Jehan says. “But it'll be worth it, I think.”

Two days. It doesn't seem a very long time, to think of everything he's going to say, to brace himself for what is sure to be a very ugly conversation. Two days.

On the other hand, it also seems like an eternity. Grantaire is staggered to realise that, despite all the drama of the day so far, it is only noon. He wonders exactly how he's going to occupy himself, besides by pestering Combeferre to assign him monsters to hunt.

“Well, after lunch you can help me in the garden,” Jehan says, listening in on his thoughts as usual. “I'm behind on the weeding.”

They pass a good portion of the afternoon in the garden, which is lovely and blooming and just a little bit wild. Jehan warns him not to take any Grace-powered shortcuts, because that would be cheating.

“Of course I won't,” Grantaire says, sinking his hand deep into the soil to remove a weed and its roots.

They work in silence for a while, aware of the buzz of each other's thoughts but not listening too closely. They both have a lot to think about, on their own.

“You know, it wasn't all terrible this morning,” Jehan says suddenly. “I met Courfeyrac.”

“Oh, yeah?” Grantaire says. “How's he holding up?”

“He seemed a little fuzzy on the exact details of what is going on, but he's there for Enjolras all the same,” Jehan says, and based on what Grantaire knows of Courfeyrac that sounds about right. “Then Enjolras- went off on his own, and Courfeyrac talked to me for a while. He's. So nice.”

Grantaire looks up to see Jehan pulling a comically puzzled expression and laughs.

“Why do you sound so confused by that?” he asks.

“I don't know,” Jehan says, folding his arms and inadvertently smearing the dirt caking his hands all over them. “He was, you know, a little disturbed to learn that I can hear his innermost thoughts, but he didn’t get angry, or tell me to go away. He said he wants me to visit again. Most people run for the hills when they find out what I can do. I'm not used to anyone being that nice.”

“You're that nice,” Grantaire says, still laughing. “You're just not used to having it directed back at you. I'll take you to visit him again if you like.”

“You're supposed to agree with me that it's kind of weird,” Jehan grumbles.

“Well, I'm not going to.”

Jehan throws a clod of dirt at him.

It's much later that night, after Jehan has gone to sleep, when Grantaire realises he never checked back in with Combeferre, which seems like poor form. He takes flight and drops in on his apartment, landing neatly in an armchair and once again startling Combeferre quite severely.

“I forgot to come back and tell you that I got the job done earlier,” Grantaire explains once Combeferre collects himself and fixes him with a baleful, expectant stare.

“It didn't occur to me to doubt it,” Combeferre mutters, going back to whatever he had been studying on his laptop before this interruption. Grantaire thinks he can guess what he might be doing.

“If you're searching the internet for information about my kind, you're not going to have much luck,” Grantaire informs him. “Are you getting lots of results about angelic healing? Surprise: that isn't real.”

Combeferre shuts the laptop.

“How is there no solid information anywhere?” he mutters, pinching the bridge of his nose. “How does no one even know you exist?”

“Because angels are cunning, horribly efficient soldiers who wear human suits and don't leave a mess,” Grantaire says. “And also, most of the time, there aren't any angels on Earth. They hate it down here. Well, except for me. I've grown quite fond of the place. But then, I'm a hedonist. A real family disappointment.”

Combeferre stares at him. He looks like he's itching to write this all down. Grantaire snorts.

“I suppose my question is why you're searching in books and on New Age blogs for information when you have a primary source right here,” he says.

“You?” Combeferre raises his eyebrows. “Why would you suddenly want to share what you know now?”

“I suppose because I have nothing left to lose,” Grantaire says with a shrug. “I'll tell you everything. Enjolras, too. If you want.”

“...Alright, then.” Combeferre flips his laptop open again; he turns it towards Grantaire to show that he is setting it to record. “Tell me.”

And Grantaire does – or, at least, he makes a start. There's really more than he could possibly cover in one conversation - and, certainly, more than poor Combeferre is equipped to deal with in one sitting.

~

Transcript: angels_01.mp3

Grantaire: So what do you want to know?

Combeferre: What are you willing to tell?

G: Oh, everything. Anything. Like I said, I have nothing left to lose. Ask away.

C: Alright. Then…

[Pause.]

G: Are you having trouble deciding where to start? 

C: Somewhat.

G: How about 'in the beginning'?

C: What does that mean?

G: Come on, you were reading the Bible earlier. You know how it starts.

C: Genesis? The creation story? [Pause.] Are you saying it's true?

G: Well, not entirely. The Bible is a human interpretation of a lot of events not intended to be understood by humans, so it isn't the most accurate. But the bare bones are there. God created Heaven and Earth, so on and so forth. Took Him a bit longer than seven days. Then He made us. My kind. Your lot came along much later.

C: Angels pre-date the human race?

G: Oh yes, significantly. [Pause.] And I don't just mean as a species. I pre-date the human race. I was there at the dawn of creation, with my brothers and sisters. We've all been here, since the beginning.

[Long pause.]

G: I feel I may have started on too intense a note.

C: You're…

G: Very old, yes.

C: That's not old, that's...that's…

G: You look scared, Combeferre. And we've only just got started.

C: I'm not scared. I just…

G: What?

C: I can't. Fathom anyone living that long. How are you…?

G: [Laughter.] What?

C: You seem so- normal. You pass easily as a human. How can you do that, after…?

G: Time is different, for something like me. It just slips right by me, if I'm not paying attention. The last year has felt longer than the last millennia, because I had something to focus on.

C: Enjolras?

[Pause.]

G: Enjolras, yes. Though don’t sell yourself short; you’ve been a part of it, too. And Jehan.

C: Part of what, exactly?

G: What do you mean?

C: This last year, what was it all for? Some kind of game?

G: No.

C: Then what-?

G: That isn’t what we’re here to talk about.

[Long pause.]

C: Alright. You mentioned God.

G: Dear old dad, yeah.

C: God is real? And your- father?

G: I thought you wanted to know about angels.

C: I want to understand everything.

G: [Laughter.] Don't we all.

C: So-

G: Maybe we can leave God out of it for now.

[Pause.]

C: Okay. So angels are- immortal?

G: We can be killed. Just not by the passing of time, or by conventional weapons.

C: I see.

G: Go on, ask. You're a hunter. When you want to learn about a creature there's only one thing you really want to know.

C: Are you really offering to tell me the secret to killing your kind? To killing you?

G: Sure! I already told Enjolras. I thought he might have wanted to try it out for himself but he declined, for whatever reason.

C: If you really thought that, then you're incredibly stupid for someone with such extensive life experience.

G: Well, I've never denied that.

C: Or maybe you just have a poor understanding of humans.

G: You are an endlessly puzzling species, it's true.

C: You want me to ask how to kill an angel. That means you think I need that information. Why?

G: Can't you guess why?

C: Are angels dangerous?

G: [Laughter.]

C: What?

G: [Laughter.]

C: Grantaire.

G: Sorry. Just- [Laughter.] Yes. Yes, angels are- dangerous.

C: They want to harm us? Humans?

G: They'd smite you all off the face of the planet, if they could.

C: Why?

G: Because angels are monsters, Combeferre. Whatever fluffy ideas you might have of- of goodness and purity and righteousness, lose them. Angels are Heaven's soldiers. They are without mercy. They look down on Earth like you might look down on an anthill in your yard. And they hate you.

C: Why do they hate us?

G: They see you as inferior. Weak, mortal, fallible, flawed. And yet, our Father loved humankind the most. He made you and He preferred you, and He left us. They can't bear it.

C: You keep saying 'they'.

G: What?

C: You're one of them. But you're setting yourself apart.

G: That's what caught your attention? Not that there are pissed off celestial beings who would love to wipe your species off the map? Or that God has flown the coop?

C: You said you didn't want to talk about God.

G: Well, thank you for being so respectful of my boundaries.

C: Why are you setting yourself apart from the other angels?

G: Can you blame me? They're terrible.

C: Are you different from them?

[Pause.]

C: Grantaire?

G: No. No, I'm not different. Not really.

C: You-

G: I don't hate humans. I don't always love them, but I don't hate them. I don't want to hurt them. You don't need to worry about that, at the very least. But that aside, I'm no better than my brothers and sisters. I shouldn't set myself apart.

C: You're a soldier, too?

G: I was. Or maybe I still am. Maybe that's all I can ever be, since it's what I was made to be.

C: You take orders from- Heaven? Other angels?

G: I did, long ago. Would you like to know what I did, under orders? You might have read about some of it, in your research.

C: In the Bible? You said a lot of it isn't true.

G: Enough of it is. A lot of the things we did, the orders we enacted, are described in the book as being God's will. But it was never His will. I know that now. Maybe it was just my superiors, maybe it went as high as the archangels, but it was never Him. Always just us.

C: What did you do, Grantaire?

G: All the terrible things the Bible describes, and more. Sodom and Gomorrah. Babel. The Great Flood. Not myself alone, you understand. Such grand acts of spite required many of us. The Flood, especially. But I always wonder, does it make any one of us less guilty, that so many of us were involved? Like you humans’ idea of a firing squad. If you don’t know who fired the killing bullet, no one has to feel bad. I don’t know how many humans died because of my direct contribution. Should we divide up the number of dead evenly between us, and have that many on our conscience?

C: I really couldn’t say.

G: Looking back, I really think whoever ordered the Flood intended to end it all for humankind right there. I don't know why they relented in the end. Fear of our Father, maybe. That he'd come back and destroy us all for wiping out his favourites. I don't know. It was just luck that they didn't go through with it.

C: Would you have- gone through with it? If the order had come?

G: I don't know. 

C: You don't know.

G: I don’t know.

C: I think I want to ask that question, now.

G: Go ahead.

C: How would a human kill an angel?

G: With an angel’s blade.

C: An…? Your sword, it’s an angel’s weapon?

G: Each of us has one. It’s- part of us. Forged from the same stuff.

C: And it’s the only weapon that could kill you.

G: Yes. There are other ways of fighting us, though. An exorcism that catapults us out of our vessel, a sigil that banishes us-

C: Your sword is the only weapon that could kill you, and you gave it to Enjolras.

G: Yes.

C: You- you don’t make sense. You don’t make any sense.

G: That’s probably true.

[Long pause.]

G: That’s enough to be going on with, I expect. You look like you could. Use a break.

C: [Inaudible.]

G: Sorry. It’s a lot, I know. But if you want information - if you want the truth - you should have all of it.

C: Enough, Grantaire.

[End.]

~

Grantaire catches Jehan eyeing him shrewdly over breakfast the next morning.

“What?” he asks finally.

“That was a mean thing you did last night,” Jehan says. “To Combeferre and to yourself.”

“All I did was tell him the truth,” Grantaire says. He’s grown so used to Jehan’s presence in his mind that he hadn’t noticed him poking around at the previous night’s conversation, but he feels him there now, perusing at his leisure, listening to parts over and over and thinking very hard about it all.

“No, you didn’t, you told him the worst version of the truth,” Jehan says, frowning. “Why?”

“What do you mean, why? I shouldn’t make excuses for myself.”

“Are you trying to make Combeferre hate you?” Jehan’s frown deepens as he delves further into Grantaire’s thoughts. “I don’t think you even know why you did it.”

“He wanted to know about angels, and I obliged him.”

“But you didn’t tell him the full story.”

“I thought his head might explode if I went on much longer.”

“You know what I mean. You didn’t fully explain the parts you told him. You made it all sound as terrible as you could make it.”

“It is terrible,” Grantaire says, fixing him with a hard look. “There’s nothing I could say to change that. And even if there was, I shouldn’t. Like I said, I’m not going to make excuses.”

“Grantaire,” Jehan says softly. “It wasn’t your fault. Not nearly so much as you think, anyway.”

“Don’t, Jehan.”

“But-”

“Don’t.”

Jehan falls silent, though his thoughts continue to echo his sentiments. Grantaire sighs.

“Sometimes I forget that you know the things I did,” he says. “Do you just not think about it? I don’t know how you can bear to be around me.”

“Because, unlike poor Combeferre, I know the full version of events,” Jehan says. “I can see it in your mind. And I can see the truth of it, even if you can’t.”

“It’s unforgivable,” Grantaire says.

“I forgive you,” Jehan replies simply.

Grantaire flies away.

He doesn't want to admit to himself that he spends the rest of the day sulking, but that is more or less what he does. He thinks it's too soon to go and bother Combeferre for another monster hunt; he's pretty sure Combeferre would appreciate if he took a brief leave of absence, after what Grantaire had told him. And it's too soon to go and see Enjolras, according to Jehan, and Jehan is usually right. Except for that morning, when he definitely hadn't been right.

He flies to Amsterdam. He sits on the same bench he and Enjolras had sat on to eat that day only a few months ago, that lovely day. He tries to map exactly where he went wrong and he thinks that maybe it had started right here. He’d thought that he’d crossed the line in Majorca, but now he thinks that maybe it had happened long before that, because Majorca would never have happened if Amsterdam hadn’t happened first, if he hadn’t pulled Enjolras into a friendship he had resisted for many months prior - a friendship he had known could only end badly. Attaching himself to Enjolras at all had been selfish and wrong and a mistake, but dragging him around the Van Gogh museum, sketching him here on this bench while he ate strawberries in the sunshine, coaxing him to smile and relax and trust him - those had been his real, big mistakes. He supposes that means he should regret them. He can’t quite find it in him to do so.

He spends the rest of the day doing as close to nothing as possible. He flies to another city and finds a skyscraper and lies on his back on the roof and watches the clouds drift overhead, lets the hours slip by him. It’s late evening when he comes back to himself, jolted by a nudge against his mind.

Grantaire. Jehan’s chiming prayer comes through to him loud and clear. Grantaire, you need to come back now.

He sounds urgent, and worried, and it's enough for Grantaire to forget about his earlier ire and fly back to the house immediately. When he lands, Jehan doesn't reprimand him for running away like a petty child that morning; he gets right to the point.

"Combeferre called me," he says. "He was looking for you."

"Oh?” Grantaire hadn't expected that, but doesn’t feel it really warrants the summons he just received. “Does he want Shit Angels Do: Volume 2 already?"

"No, I don't think that's it." Jehan’s expression and thoughts are uneasy. "He said Enjolras is with him, and they want you to go to them, at Combeferre's place. He said they want to talk to you."

"Enjolras left Lyon already?" Grantaire says in surprise. He’s surprised about a lot of what Jehan says, and he thinks he’d better take it one point at a time. 

"Seems that way." Jehan shakes his head. "I don't like it. I was sure he'd stay with his friends a little longer. If he wants to talk now…"

“Isn’t that good?” Grantaire asks. “You wanted us to talk, right? And if he’s reaching out, that’s- I mean. It’s more than I’d hoped for.”

Jehan presses his lips into a thin line and shrugs.

“I have a bad feeling about it,” he says.

“I think that’s pretty fair,” Grantaire says with a snort. “There was never any chance of it being a fun conversation.”

Jehan makes an unhappy noise. He has his arms wrapped tightly around himself, as if seeking some kind of comfort to combat the bad omen he is evidently perceiving.

“I have to go face him, Jehan,” Grantaire says.

"I know," Jehan says, resigned. "Do you want me to come too?"

"I do. It would be much less scary with you there," Grantaire says with a dry smile. "But I don't think you should. It would look like you were there for me, taking my side. And you've got in enough trouble because of me already."

"I don't care about that," Jehan protests, and that's not true exactly, but Grantaire can feel his absolute willingness to make things worse for himself just so that Grantaire won't be so daunted by this sudden meeting, and he wonders, not for the first time, exactly why Jehan has decided he's worthy of that kind of loyalty.

"I'll be okay," Grantaire assures him, and he tries to project confidence in the idea, tries not to let his mind betray his anxiety. He offers Jehan his best attempt at a smile and receives Jehan's own best attempt in return, and then he flies to Combeferre's apartment.

Combeferre is sitting on the couch. Enjolras is standing off to the side, arms folded. Even though they are expecting him, Enjolras gives a start when Grantaire touches down. For a brief second their eyes meet. Enjolras's look and his soul are indiscernible. Grantaire wishes he would say something. Enjolras looks away first, and he says nothing.

“You wanted to see me?” Grantaire says when it starts to seem like no one else is going to speak. Combeferre clears his throat.

“Yes,” he says. “We felt there are some things we need to discuss.”

“Things?” Grantaire repeats, looking between the two of them for some clarification. Enjolras remains silent, and does not look at him again.

“We need to decide what happens now,” Combeferre says. “Where we- go from here.”

Grantaire feels his heart sink. He’d known, of course, that things couldn’t possibly go back to the way they’d been - that he and Enjolras would never travel and work together again the way they had. But he’d never let himself actually consider what the alternative would be, and how they would move forward. He’d thought he had more time, had expected it to take longer for the dust to settle. But that had been the height of foolishness, he realises now. Enjolras cares about his work, his cause, above all else. Of course he would rather deal with that than their personal fallout from this disaster of a situation.

"Okay," he makes himself say. He sounds dismal even to his own ears. "What did you have in mind?" 

He's met with silence. Combeferre opens his mouth, as if he's about to speak, but then he looks to Enjolras instead, and Enjolras still isn't talking, still isn't looking.

"Well?" Grantaire can hear something like desperation in his voice now, as he looks first at Enjolras, who won't look back at him, then at Combeferre, who looks like he'd really rather not be here. "What do you want me to do?"

That gets a response from Combeferre, at least - he frowns, as if mulling it over.

"Why don't you tell us what you want to do?" He says at length. "That seems like a good starting point, since I doubt it would be within our power to force you to do anything you don't want to."

"I didn't think you were in the habit of forcing anyone to do anything they don't want to," Grantaire says.

"Not generally, no," Combeferre admits.

 "Then what is this? Why do you think this kind of negotiation is necessary?" Grantaire says. "Do you think I'm going to stand here and make demands?"

"After our conversation last night, I don't know what to think," Combeferre says bluntly, and that brings Grantaire up short. He wonders how much of that conversation Combeferre relayed to Enjolras. He wonders if that's why Enjolras still won't look at him-

"So tell us where we stand, Grantaire," Combeferre goes on. "We all know the truth now. We know what you are, and a little of what that means. Now tell us what you want."

"I want…" Grantaire fumbles for the words; the idea of it is so clear to him, so all-encompassing, that it's hard to believe they don't already know, even harder to find a way to convey it to them that they will understand and believe. "I want the same thing I've wanted since this all started. I want to help. Enjolras, please." At the sound of his name Enjolras deigns to glance his way, though his lips thin, as though it causes him physical pain to do so. Grantaire looks at him imploringly. "I want to help you."

"You want to hunt," Combeferre says when Enjolras does not reply.

"I'll do whatever you ask of me," Grantaire says. He's still looking at Enjolras. "If killing monsters is what you want me to do, I'll do it."

"And what if what we want contradicts your- other orders?" Combeferre asks. 

"Other orders?" Grantaire repeats blankly.

"From the other angels. From Heaven," Combeferre clarifies. "What if they don't like you helping us? Or what if they decide to decimate humanity again, with another flood or something worse? What then?"

Grantaire stares a moment, lost and dumbfounded.

"I- no," he says finally. "No. I don't- I'm not with them. I don't take orders from them; I haven't for a long time. And I never will again. I'm with you. Only you. Did you really think I'd-?"

But he stops himself, because that's not fair. Based on what he'd told Combeferre the previous night, it's only natural they would think the worst of him. A tiny voice in his mind is telling him that Jehan was right; that he told the worst possible version of the story and now he's going to pay for it.

"And the other angels, they're fine with that? With you doing as you please, working with humans?" Combeferre asks with undisguised skepticism.

"They definitely wouldn't be fine with it, if they knew," Grantaire replies. Combeferre gives him a questioning look and he continues. "They don't know I'm here. They don't even know I'm alive."

"You're…" Combeferre thinks it through and quickly comes to the right conclusion. "You're hiding from them? From your own kind?"

"It's the only thing that will put a limiter on my usefulness to you," Grantaire says. "I can't use too much power, or too often. They'd notice. They'd find me."

Combeferre looks set to question him further, but he is cut off.

"So how much power can you use?" Enjolras asks, speaking up for the first time. He still barely looks at Grantaire; an occasional quick shift of his eyes is all he's favoured with. "What's the limit?"

His voice is cold and flat, his soul almost colourless. The message is clear: I don't care why you're hiding from them or what they'll do to you if they find you. Tell me exactly how useful you're going to make yourself. Grantaire tries to rise to meet his frosty pragmatism, much as it stings.

"It's hard to say, exactly," he says. "Of all the creatures you could send me up against, demons are the most taxing to destroy. If I were to fight too many in a short period, it wouldn't go unnoticed. Other things are weaker and require less power. Vampires, werewolves, things like that."

"Ghosts?"

"I'm not much more effective against ghosts than a human hunter would be. My skills lie in killing things. Can't kill what's already dead."

"What about travelling long distances?" Combeferre puts in. "Travelling the way you do, I mean."

"Flying doesn't take much out of me," Grantaire replies. "Healing takes a little more, but not too much. Though it depends on the severity of the injury."

"Healing?" Combeferre's eyebrows shoot up. "What do you mean, healing? You never mentioned that."

"Oh." Grantaire can almost feel Jehan's exasperated stare boring into him across the miles. "Yes. I can- heal people. I can be useful that way too."

"And you're willing to work with us? To report in at the Musain or here and be sent out to hunt monsters or fix up a wounded hunter?" Combeferre asks.

"I told you, I'll do whatever you ask," Grantaire says. He steals yet another look towards Enjolras and finds his gaze fixed strongly upon the carpet. "Whatever you want."

"Good," Enjolras says abruptly. "Then we're done here."

He reaches behind the sofa and retrieves his duffel bag, clearly packed and ready to go.

"Enjolras, hold on," Combeferre says, getting to his feet. He looks deeply uneasy. "I'll step out for a few minutes. Give you two a little privacy."

"What for?" Enjolras asks. He's shouldering his bag, grabbing his coat.

"Don't you think you should talk, maybe?" 

"We've reached an agreement, haven't we?" Enjolras says, already heading for the door. "I don't think there's anything else to talk about."

And then he's gone; he just goes and the door slams shut behind him and Grantaire feels like something inside him breaks as it does.

"No," he says out loud, to himself, to no one at all. His legs are carrying him across the room without any conscious input from his mind. He remembers Jehan telling him to try, and he thinks that if there was ever a moment for him to make good on his promise to do so, this might be it.

He follows Enjolras on foot; the idea of flying after him seems unfair, somehow. He finds him near the bottom of the stairwell and catches him by the arm.

"Enjolras, wait, please," he says. Enjolras stops, but he also wrenches his arm out of his grip.

"Don't touch me," he says with quiet ferocity, and it hurts, it hurts, it seems unthinkable that Grantaire ever held him in his arms and kissed him.

"I'm sorry," Grantaire says. "I'm so sorry, Enjolras. I know you must be so angry-"

He hears Enjolras give a faint snort, as if 'angry' isn't quite strong enough a word for his liking.

"But please, don't- don't go. Don't leave things this way," Grantaire implores.

"I didn't make things this way," Enjolras says shortly, and Grantaire winces.

"I know," he says. "Believe me, I know, but please-"

"Stop it." Enjolras turns his face away. "I don't know what it is you want from me, but I want no part in it. I don't know why you're still acting like a human. You're the furthest possible thing from human."

"Enjolras." His words are like knives in Grantaire's chest. "I'm- this is just me."

"I don't know you," Enjolras says. "You're a stranger."

"That's not true."

"I think it is."

"Then do you want to know me?" Grantaire asks, desperate.

"I want you to get to work," Enjolras says. "You agreed, didn't you? I'm sure Combeferre will have a few cases lined up for you. With your help, we'll be a far more formidable force than before. If you're as good at killing things as you claim."

Grantaire's throat feels tight.

"Is that all you want?" He asks. "For me to kill things for you?"

"If I think of anything else, I'll be sure to let you know," Enjolras says. He resumes walking, and when he exits the building and leaves another slammed door in his wake, this time Grantaire does not follow.

Chapter Text

~

Though Combeferre had made it clear that, in the midst of this debacle, his loyalties lie firmly with Enjolras, even he has a pitying sort of look to him when Grantaire climbs back up the stairs to his apartment.

"So," Grantaire says, when Combeferre doesn't say anything. "If I'm the new weapon in your arsenal, I suppose I should get to work. What do you want me to kill first?"

"I'm- not quite organised yet," Combeferre says, turning away from him and awkwardly shuffling some papers. "Come back tomorrow. I'll assign you a case then."

Combeferre probably thinks he's being kind, giving Grantaire some time to recover from the unpleasantness that had just occurred, but in reality the distraction of a hunt would have been the greatest kindness he could have granted. As things are, Grantaire has nothing to do besides drag himself back to Jehan's house with his tail firmly between his legs. Jehan is waiting for him, and when he arrives, neither of them speak. Jehan comes to him and takes his face in his hands and looks into his eyes solemnly, and siphons everything that transpired directly from Grantaire's mind to his own. Grantaire tries not to watch along; he doesn't want to dwell on Enjolras's averted gaze, his hollowed-out soul, his complete disinterest in repairing things between them. He remembers what Jehan had said the day before, that even Enjolras shouting and ranting at him would be a form of communication, a form of progress. Grantaire understands a little better now. It would have been much easier to meet Enjolras's anger, or even his hurt, than his dismissal.

Through the cloud of his own lamenting thoughts, Grantaire suddenly becomes aware of a new tension growing in the room - something like the crackling build of a thunderstorm. It takes him a few confused moments to realise that the source is actually Jehan . His hands are still gentle as they cradle Grantaire's jaw, but his face is drawn tight in an expression Grantaire has never seen on him before, and his thoughts feel different from usual - spikier, steelier. Grantaire, taken-aback, nearly asks him what's wrong before he abruptly understands that what he's seeing and feeling for the first time is Jehan really and truly angry.

"They can't do that!" Jehan blurts it out, like the words were burning his throat. He pulls his hands away from Grantaire, as if trying to distance himself from what he'd seen. "They can't do that to you, Grantaire, that isn't fair! That's awful, how could they? How could Enjolras?"

"He's angry," Grantaire says, and then receives such a wave of fury from Jehan's mind that he wishes he hadn't spoken at all.

"I know he's angry." Jehan shakes his head, wrings his hands. "Being angry doesn't mean he gets to- to make you into a tool, to just use you ."

Grantaire says nothing, but his thoughts leap straight to but I volunteered, I offered, I said I’d do what he needed, and Jehan hears.

"What they're asking is not what you offered," Jehan says, and his thoughts are so steadfast and fierce in their conviction that it’s very hard not to believe him. "You offered to help them, not- not to be deployed like some kind of killing machine at their whim and then be ignored when they don't need you. That's horrible, that's the worst possible thing they could ask of you, that's exactly what you ran away from-!"

Grantaire gives a jolt, and his mind must do the same, because Jehan stops short and looks at him.

"I know what you ran from, Grantaire. You think about it, sometimes," Jehan says, less harshly because he's not angry at Grantaire, and isn't that a bizarre turn for this to have taken. "And now Enjolras is doing the exact same thing -!"

"He doesn't know that," Grantaire says.

"So tell him!" Jehan says fiercely. "I'll tell him. Take me to him. I need to talk to him now. "

"I don't think that's a good idea," Grantaire says.

"He should know that what he's asking is awful and wrong even if he doesn't know how things were for you back then," Jehan says. "He's being cruel. I won't let him. I know you can find him, Grantaire, take me to him."

"I'm not going to do that," Grantaire says.

"Why not? " Jehan looks ready to explode with frustration. "I don't care if it makes him angrier with me. Someone has to tell him to stop. Someone has to fight your corner."

" Why ?" Grantaire says, sharply and too loud. The lights flicker. "What's the point? If this is how he wants things to be now, if this is what he thinks I deserve, then...what's the point ?"

He looks around Jehan's living room, around this small human space full of small human things, and he wonders what he's doing here. He wonders why he, a creature who saw the mountains rise and who will one day see the seas boil, is standing here, feeling like his world is ending because one human doesn't want him. Why should it matter? Within a hundred tiny years Enjolras will be dust. This is nothing. This is beneath him.

He feels a sensation akin to a sharp stick being jabbed into his thoughts at the same time that Jehan smacks him none too lightly on the arm.

"You don't really think that," Jehan says.

He doesn’t. The bubble bursts; Jehan and his surroundings seem to grow before his eyes, taking on colour and significance once again.

"I want to," Grantaire says. "It wouldn't hurt, if I could remember how to think that way. It wouldn't matter."

"Unfortunately, being human can involve a lot of getting hurt, and having to feel it," Jehan says, not without sympathy.

"I'm not human," Grantaire says.

"You're a little bit human."

Grantaire snorts. He’s sure any other angel would have evaporated Jehan on the spot for the insult.

"What are you going to do?" Jehan asks him.

"Whatever Enjolras asks me to do," Grantaire answers.

"You don't have to."

"But I will." Grantaire shrugs, hopeless. "I want to help him. I want to give him what he wants. If he wants a weapon, I'll be a weapon."

Jehan is quiet for a moment, thinking it over.

"You're not a weapon, no matter what they say," he says finally. "But maybe it’s not a bad idea for you to give Enjolras what he asks for. It might be the only way to make him realise that it's not what he really wants."

"What?" Grantaire frowns. Even being in Jehan's mind doesn't make his meaning any clearer.

"It doesn't matter," Jehan says with a tight smile. He sighs. "I'm sorry it didn't go better."

"I'm sorry too," Grantaire says. Jehan walks past him, tapping him on the shoulder as he goes.

"Follow me," he says. Grantaire obeys, too despondent to even be particularly curious. Jehan leads him through the house and up the stairs and to a door he's never been through before. Jehan opens it to reveal a small spare bedroom.

"This is your room now," Jehan declares. "Sorry, it's a bit past due. I really thought there was a chance you and Enjolras would patch things up quick, and you'd be back adventuring with him by now. But it seems like we're settling in for a long battle. And you can't do that from my couch."

"I don't need a bedroom, Jehan," Grantaire says, mystified by the notion. "I don't sleep."

"It's not about sleep." A furrow appears between Jehan's eyebrows. "It's about having your own space. It's about remembering you're a person, even if not everyone is treating you that way."

"Oh." Grantaire is a little thrown. He doesn't think he's ever had anything like that. He's never thought that he needed it.

"Look." Jehan tugs him by the sleeve into the room. He sits demonstratively on the edge of the bed. "Maybe sometimes you'll just want to lie down. That can be nice, right? You don't need to sleep to get comfortable. Or maybe you'll want to be alone. You can come in and shut the door and know that no one will bother you."

"I could go anywhere if I wanted to be alone," Grantaire says, puzzled.

"It's a different kind of alone," Jehan insists. "Safe and warm and known and yours. Alone but not lonely."

"Are you trying to explain 'home' to me?" Grantaire asks. The mental images Jehan is projecting at him are suffused with that particular warmth that he's never experienced or understood, but which he understands intellectually to be associated with the human idea of a home.

"Is it working?" Jehan says with a soft puff of a laugh. He pulls Grantaire down to sit beside him. "You're going to go out and fight monster after monster, alone. But at the end of the day, when you're done fighting, you're going to come back here. You're going to come home. Understand?"

"I'm not sure," Grantaire says warily.

"You will," Jehan assures him.

Grantaire sighs. He lets himself fall back to lie on the bed with his legs dangling over the edge. He doesn't know if he's even capable of appreciating the comfort of home, given that it's a distinctly human concept. They like a bright, warm space to call their own because they are and always have been vulnerable to cold and attack and all the dangers that lurk in darkness. Grantaire has nothing to fear from any of those things; no evolutionary drive to build a sturdy dwelling around himself. Still, he thinks Jehan might have something with the lying down idea. This feels like a good time to lie down, and maybe just stay lying down forever.

"I've made a real mess of things," he says after a lengthy period of silently contemplating the ceiling. Jehan hums thoughtfully before flopping down next to him.

"You didn't make it all on your own," he replies. “You had a lot of help.”

"I should never have talked to him," Grantaire says, thinking of that first night he'd seen Enjolras's starburst soul and, in his stupid awe, had set off the chain of events that had led them here. "I should never have gone near him."

Jehan reaches out and clasps his hand tightly.

"I'm glad you did," he says. "And one day Enjolras will remember to be glad about it, too."

"Do you ever think about how much simpler it would all be if it had been me and you?" Grantaire asks.

"Hm?" Jehan says, before he gleans Grantaire's full meaning from his thoughts and laughs. "Oh, if it had been me and you that had fallen hopelessly in love? Yes, I suppose that would have run a lot smoother. Would have been very easy and sensible and logical."

"And yet," Grantaire mutters.

"And yet," Jehan agrees. "It's even more proof that you've become quite human, you know. There's really no more human trait than choosing something irrational, illogical and difficult, and yet knowing in your heart that it's still the right choice."

Grantaire snorts faintly.

"None of this happened because I made a right choice at any point," he says.

Jehan just sighs. Grantaire can feel how much he wants to argue, to keep pushing until Grantaire sees things his way, but he blessedly refrains.

"I know you're having a bad day," he says instead, "but do you feel up to a short trip?"

"Where?" Grantaire asks dully.

"Lyon."

Grantaire frowns. Jehan sits up and looks down at him, holding his gaze steadily and not elaborating in voice or thought. Grantaire decides he doesn't care. He forces himself to stand, though his human vessel feels weighed down by the leaden despondency of his inhuman core. Jehan follows suit, and Grantaire takes his hand and flies them to Lyon, back to the same landing he'd left Jehan in last time.

"Call when you're done," he says, going to extricate himself, already thinking about just lying flat on his back and not moving for the next twelve hours at least. Jehan holds on to his hand.

"Stay," he says.

Grantaire thinks that's a bad idea, and there's really nothing Jehan can do to force him, and yet he obeys. He supposes he might as well get used to obeying unpleasant orders again.

Jehan knocks the door, then visibly blanches at whatever he perceives from the other side. Grantaire properly inspects the apartment for the first time and sees six familiar human souls inside. Familiar to him, anyway. Jehan has only met Courfeyrac. And Jehan doesn't much like strangers.

Regrettably, it's Marius and not Courfeyrac who answers the door. Grantaire isn't sure who he would have preferred, personally, but he feels Jehan do the mental equivalent of, more or less, a whimper. Marius, for his part, gives Jehan a politely puzzled look before he notices and recognises Grantaire and gives a befuddled little jump that would have been very funny if it weren't for the fact that they can both see he is instantly terrified.

"Ah. Um," he says succinctly, mouth opening and closing a few times. Grantaire supposes it would be unfair to blame Marius for this, given that his only up-close encounter with the supernatural had been the somewhat traumatic incident with the wraith, but that doesn't make it any less agonising to stand on the doorstep under his goggling, fearful stare.

"Oh, no, please don't worry. It's okay," Jehan says, because of course Jehan would instantly forget his own anxieties in the face of someone else's fear. He puts his hands up, like he's trying to calm a spooked horse. "Sorry about this. It's Marius, right? We've not met but I'm a friend of Enjolras's. I was looking for-"

"Courfeyrac!" Marius hollers before he can even finish, not taking his eyes off them for a second.

"Oh God, what?" The shrillness and panic in Marius's voice brings Courfeyrac and everybody else running - they spill and tumble into the hallway and then freeze in place. Grantaire wants to disappear. And he could, if only Jehan would let go of him.

"Oh." Joly is the one to break the deadlock, in a small voice. "That's not our pizza."

"Sorry to intrude," Jehan says weakly. As he speaks, everyone who had been preoccupied with staring at Grantaire seems to notice him for the first time, and they take a turn staring at him instead, and Jehan's thoughts dissolve into gibberish under their scrutiny. "I, um. I mean, we-"

Grantaire wishes he could help him, but he doesn't actually know why they're here. He briefly searches Jehan's mind for an answer but trying to hear Jehan's coherent thoughts right now is like trying to hear someone whispering over the sound of a fire alarm. In the horrible silence, he considers just flying the two of them away - at this point he doesn't think Jehan would even mind, and they could always come back at a better time. But just before he can action this admittedly not amazing plan, Courfeyrac has mercy on them, or at least on Jehan.

"Prouvaire, hey," he says, and his smile is puzzled but genuine. He steps forward, taking up position between the two groups. Marius is quick to scurry behind him, and Cosette comes to stand at his shoulder, her eyes fixed warily on Grantaire. It stings, just a bit. Grantaire likes Cosette. And Marius, come to that. In fact, the humans currently in this apartment constitute about ninety percent of all the people he has ever truly liked, and they’re all looking at him like he’s an unattended backpack that has just begun to tick.

“Guys, this is Jean Prouvaire. He’s Enjolras’s friend,” Courfeyrac says, turning back to the others and jerking his thumb towards Jehan. “You remember? Enjolras told us about him.”

"Wait. The friend who can read minds?" Bossuet pulls a comical expression as he, apparently, wars between politeness and alarm. "Wait, you're real? I really thought he was messing with us, with that one."

"And, of course, we all know Grantaire," Courfeyrac says. "Or, y'know, we thought we did."

Grantaire thinks Courfeyrac might still be taking mercy on Jehan, diverting attention away from him at Grantaire's expense, and he thinks, whatever. If they want to play stare at the freak, he'd rather they did it to him than Jehan.

"Hey, Courfeyrac," he says, evenly.

"I have a lot of questions for you, starting with what the fuck ," Courfeyrac informs him.

" Courfeyrac ," Marius squeaks in horror.

"Why are you here?" Courfeyrac asks. "Enjolras isn't here."

"Believe me, I know," Grantaire mutters.

"I'm sorry," Jehan blurts out. Everyone's attention swivels to him again but he does his best to soldier on. "It's my fault we're here. I didn't know that...I can come back. I just. Wanted to ask you something, Courfeyrac."

The others look, for the most part, equal parts confused and fascinated by this unexpected added drama to their pizza party, but Courfeyrac looks- well. He's definitely angry, which isn't unexpected, and undoubtedly perturbed, but he also looks a little concerned. Maybe he can see the way Jehan is trembling in place. Grantaire can feel it through their still-joined hands.

“Sure,” Courfeyrac says. He takes another few steps towards them but casts a look over his shoulder as he goes. “Maybe everyone could stop gawking and then we could all come inside and sit down and you could tell me what you need to know.”

The others avert their gazes sheepishly.

“Well?” Courfeyrac pulls the door open a little further and makes an expectant gesture. “Do you need to be formally invited in, Grantaire? Or is that vampires?”

“It’s not anything,” Grantaire tells him.

“No, we should go,” Jehan says quietly. “We can’t- Enjolras wouldn’t like it. We shouldn’t be here.”

“But you’re already here,” Courfeyrac laughs. Jehan’s eyes flick briefly to the huddle further down the hallway, all of whom are doing their best to look at if they are not watching and listening. Courfeyrac notices and leans towards him with a conspiratorial whisper. “They don’t bite, you know.”

“They’re scared,” Jehan replies.

"Pretty sure that's on me, Jehan," Grantaire says.

"It's not just you." Jehan sounds tired. "And to Enjolras, it's only going to seem like another betrayal if you treat us like friends right now, with things as they are."

"That doesn't seem very fair," Courfeyrac says with a frown. "We're his friends, you're his friend. Grantaire is I don't know what, we'll figure that out later, but…" He glances over his shoulder again. "Will you guys either get over here or go back in the living room? This current set-up is incredibly weird."

"It is weird," Bossuet agrees. He comes towards them, and Joly trails him only a little less certainly. Grantaire feels Jehan's grip on his hand tighten again. His palm is sweating. "But this whole situation is weird. Enjolras's entire life is weird. What's new?"

The others retreat quietly back through the door they'd tumbled out of, Marius quickest of all. Cosette lingers a moment, but finally gives Grantaire a small nod before following Marius and Musichetta and closing the door behind her.

"Hello," Joly is saying, squeezing between Courfeyrac and Bossuet to wave at Jehan, who looks like a rabbit ready to run. "I'm Joly. But you must know that already, if Enjolras was being serious about the mind-reading thing. Was he being serious? He doesn't joke very much but it seems very improbable. But then, monsters existing also seems improbable. And yet here we are. Hi, Grantaire. You seem improbable, too. Is this all some big joke Enjolras is playing? Did he save up a lifetime of jokes for this? You really just look like a person, Grantaire." He lets out a somewhat high-pitched laugh. "Sorry, I'm babbling. I'm really not that scared, you know. Or, maybe I am, but it's not really about you two, I'm just like that."

"Grantaire is a person," Jehan says, and Grantaire can't help but feel exasperated that defending him is the thing that finally allows Jehan to speak with conviction and look the others in the eye. "Not a human, but still a person."

"It's fine, Jehan," Grantaire says lowly.

"You'll have to excuse us," Bossuet says. He slides one arm around Joly's waist and pulls him in close to his side, and the contact alone seems to smooth a little of Joly's nervous energy. "The concept of not-human people is sort of new to us. Bossuet, by the way."

"I know," Jehan mumbles.

"I guess I was just expecting...I don't know." Joly looks Grantaire up and down and shrugs. "Wings, halo, robes, harp? Where's all that stuff?"

"The wings exist on a dimension you can't perceive," Grantaire says.

"That's convenient," Courfeyrac snorts.

"And the robes and harp?" Bossuet asks.

Grantaire frowns at each of them in turn, examining their expressions and souls and finding himself perplexed by all of them.

“You seem...less upset than I would have expected,” he says slowly.

“I suppose we have sort of a unique perspective,” Courfeyrac says. “You lied to Enjolras for a year; Enjolras let us all think he was dead for three years. We're not used to psychic powers and the not-human thing, but we're pretty well-acquainted with people doing dumb shit. And, y’know, Enjolras called you a lot of things while he was here, but dangerous wasn’t one of them. So excuse me if I don’t cower away from your divine presence, or whatever.”

Jehan laughs.

It jumps out of him, quick and quiet, and he claps a hand to his mouth immediately, but they all see it. Courfeyrac grins at him, delighted.

"Can't you go talk to Enjolras and sort this out?" Courfeyrac turns back to Grantaire, expression sobering. "This is ridiculous. Hell, do your disappearing trick and go get him; bring him back here and we can all just-"

Grantaire is already shaking his head.

"I saw him earlier tonight," he says. "He was not in a talking mood."

“That’s what I wanted to ask you about,” Jehan says softly. “You were probably the last one to see him before he…”

“Before he what?” Courfeyrac looks between the two of them. “What’s he doing?”

“When I saw him here, he wasn’t okay, but he knew he wasn’t okay,” Jehan says. “He seemed like he was going to stay put for a while, and let you help him. But now he’s suddenly...well, like you said, he’s not here. I wondered if something had happened.”

“Yeah, something definitely happened,” Courfeyrac says with a grim nod. “But he didn’t deign to tell me what. He took off without much warning.”

“Oh.” Jehan looks disappointed. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“I hate it. We talked some stuff out, he seemed like he was doing better, and then…” Courfeyrac shakes his head. He looks at Jehan, thoughtfully. “Is- is it easier if I…?”

“If you what?” Jehan asks. His puzzled look is matched exactly by Joly and Bossuet’s.

“Y’know, if I show you.” Courfeyrac laughs like he can’t believe this is real and taps his temple with one finger. “I can only tell you so much, but if you could see it all, maybe you could put some of the pieces together.”

“Oh my God,” Joly breathes when he understands. Then he looks guiltily at Grantaire. “Can I say that? Is it blasphemy?”

“I don’t care,” Grantaire says.

“Are you...sure?” Jehan asks. Even if Grantaire wasn’t privy to his thoughts, he’d be able to tell that Jehan is not used to receiving an invitation to use his abilities, and that he is scrambling to figure out what to do with one.

“Yeah. If it’ll help.” Courfeyrac actually shrugs, like letting a near-stranger into his literal thoughts just isn’t that big a deal, really. “Do I need to do anything? Like, actively think about it? Or…?”

He holds out a hand towards Jehan - Grantaire feels Jehan’s thoughts give a jolt of surprise, sees a flash of memory of a moment of accidental contact between them the last time he’d been here.

Jehan reaches out, hesitantly, like he’s sure this must be a trick, like Courfeyrac’s waiting hand might really be a trap set to snap shut around his wrist. It hurts Grantaire to see it. He’s so used to the way Jehan is around him - effusive and at ease, never in doubt as to where the boundaries lie - that this reminder of how difficult and painful it is for him to be around most other people is almost shocking.

Jehan doesn’t take Courfeyrac’s hand; he just lets his fingertips rest lightly against his open palm. His eyes take on a far-away look as he looks into the thoughts being offered up to him. Courfeyrac gives a sudden, startled laugh.

“I can feel it,” he says. “Oh my God, that is the weirdest thing I have ever felt.”

“Sorry,” Jehan murmurs distractedly, still focused.

“I didn’t say it was bad .”

Grantaire can tell the moment Jehan finds what he's looking for. His thoughts flood with a kind of grim understanding. He pulls his hand away, fingers curling tightly.

"Shit," he says quietly.

"What is it?" Courfeyrac asks before Grantaire can. Jehan looks up at Grantaire, something reproving in his expression.

"'Some new information came to light'," he says. "That's what Enjolras said. That's why he left so quickly. What new information do you suppose he meant?"

Grantaire tries to weather his stare without flinching. It isn't easy.

"Care to fill in the blanks for us non-psychic humans?" Courfeyrac asks.

"Combeferre wanted to know about angels," Grantaire says. "So I told him."

"You told him a horror story." Jehan looks so upset, so disappointed and frustrated. "And clearly he passed it on to Enjolras. Of course he would. You made it sound like they really have something to be afraid of."

"They do ," Grantaire says.

"Not you ," Jehan retorts, fiercely enough that the others, who thus far have not heard him get far above a whisper, jump in alarm. He winces and shrinks again, his shoulders curling inward, and says again, softly: “Not you.”

“Is this good? Does it help?” Courfeyrac still looks lost. Joly and Bossuet look beyond lost, and like they’ve maybe given up on even trying to get back on track.

“It’s not good, but it does explain a few things.” Jehan sighs. “Thank you. And sorry, again, for all of this. For disturbing you. We should get going.”

“You sure you won’t come in?” Courfeyrac doesn’t look very hopeful but he tries one last time.

“We need to go,” Jehan says, looking down at his feet.

“Alright.” Courfeyrac nods. Grantaire takes hope in his obvious disappointment - not for his own sake, but for Jehan’s. Courfeyrac digs his phone out of his pocket and holds it up demonstratively. “Hey, do psychics use phones?”

“I...yes?” Jehan blinks.

“Then let’s keep in touch.” Courfeyrac smiles and holds out his phone to him, a new contact profile on the screen already awaiting his number. He casts a pointed glance at Grantaire while Jehan uncertainly takes it. “You seem even more caught up in the middle of all this than we are. You shouldn’t have to do it alone. I’ll let you know if I hear from Enjolras.”

“You can’t report on him to me,” Jehan says, looking faintly aghast as he hands the phone back. “He would hate that.”

“I figure that’s just too bad.” Courfeyrac’s smile is unrepentant. “But listen, you really don’t need to worry. Things won’t stay like this. Grantaire’s going to make sure of that, right?”

Another pointed look. Grantaire says nothing. He doesn’t know what he could possibly say.

“Whatever happens, I know things will be okay between you and Enjolras again soon. I just know it,” Courfeyrac tells Jehan. “And then maybe we can all hang out together without you feeling like you’re doing something wrong.”

Jehan just looks at him mutely. Courfeyrac turns to Grantaire.

"As for you, I have no idea what comes next," he says. "Prouvaire said you at least weren't lying about caring about Enjolras. If that's true, you better work on proving it to him. He's hurting like I've never seen. He's not going to make this easy for you."

Grantaire still doesn't answer. 

"Bye," Jehan says with a small wave, and Grantaire takes that as his cue to take them home. He takes them back to where they'd left from, standing in his newly designated room. They're silent for a few long moments.

"That was weird," Grantaire says finally.

"That was a terrible idea," Jehan says. He laughs weakly but his soul is being swallowed by a terrible, crushing sadness that Grantaire doesn't quite understand. "I'm sorry. I really didn’t think…” He sighs. “At least we know what spurred Enjolras into action. I had my suspicions but- I wanted them confirmed.”

"Are you angry?" Grantaire asks. He searches Jehan's mind and can't find a definitive answer. "That it's all my fault?"

"I'm trying not to be angry. You said those things because you think they're true." Jehan sighs again. "And it's not all your fault. It still doesn't justify what Enjolras is asking of you. But he must be so afraid, Grantaire. He must think…" Jehan shakes his head. "You need to work on this. You need to find a way to be honest with him that doesn't involve casting yourself as a monster."

Grantaire nods but says nothing, carefully noncommittal. He thinks any promise he could make on the subject would be dishonest.

"What about you?" He asks in a transparent attempt at changing the subject.

"Me?" Jehan says.

"Seems like you maybe have some stuff to work on, too." Grantaire pushes the fresh memory of the feeling of his trembling, cold-sweating hand at him. Jehan flushes.

"I was expecting one person, not six," he says a trifle sulkily.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine ." Jehan folds his arms, frowning. Grantaire can feel the embarrassment coming off him in hot waves. "I just...People are hard. New people. Normal people, especially."

"I wish Enjolras had introduced you to them properly, before all this," Grantaire says.

"Well, he didn't. He didn't want me to know them before and he definitely wouldn't want me near them right now." Jehan pauses. "Maybe he's embarrassed of me."

"Don't even say that. You mean the world to Enjolras. He likes you just as you are."

"Not right now he doesn't."

"That won't last. No one could stay angry at you for long."

Jehan snorts, but his mind gives a little trill of gratitude for the sentiment.

"They really were scared of me," Jehan says. "I mean, I understand. Everyone takes for granted that their thoughts are safe and private, and then I'm just…"

"Jehan." Grantaire laughs; he can't help it. "They couldn't possibly have been more scared of you than you were of them."

"...That's different." Jehan's cheeks flush an even darker shade of red.

"How is it different?" Grantaire shakes his head. "So maybe they're scared. It's only because they don't know you. If you all spent some time together, you'd all stop being scared pretty quick."

"Maybe," Jehan says doubtfully.

"Courfeyrac didn't seem scared at all," Grantaire comments. Jehan drags his hands through his own hair with a frustrated noise.

"Did you see what I meant before?" He complains. "How is he like that? He just...Do you have any idea how long it usually takes for anyone to be okay with me touching them, when they know what it means? Most people never get around to being okay with it! Enjolras would hardly come near me at first!"

"Oh, Jehan." Grantaire sees suddenly that this is the source of that strange sadness - there are hundreds of snapshots of memories flitting through Jehan’s mind, far too quick and fragmented for him to make any sense of the events within them, but he can feel the unbearable loneliness in them. It’s like an old wound being made fresh again by what had just happened in Lyon. Jehan sees him seeing it, and he comes willingly into the hug when Grantaire offers it, burying his face in Grantaire's shoulder. Grantaire gathers him into his arms securely and has to carefully refrain from squeezing him too tightly in his desire to give him all the affection he's ever needed and never received. He sits them both down on the edge of the bed, tucking Jehan's head under his chin.

"It's fine, it's fine," Jehan is saying.

"No, it isn't."

"Enjolras is good about it now. You've seen." Jehan pulls up a few of their shared memories of Amsterdam, of him dozing on Enjolras's shoulder on the train, of Enjolras pressing their hands together over breakfast - and a new memory, never shared before, a glimpse of when Enjolras and Jehan had been alone at the hotel, Jehan taking a pair of scissors to Enjolras's hair, brushing the shorn curls from his neck with his fingers, and Enjolras easy under his hands. And that's nice, that's lovely, but-

"Who else?" Grantaire asks him. Jehan pauses to think, and the mere fact that he has to do that horrifies Grantaire.

"I don't see Combeferre in person all that much but he doesn't mind it," he says.

"And?"

"You."

"And?"

"Minerva."

" Jehan. "

"What? What do you want me to say?" Grantaire feels Jehan shrug. "Most people don't like having their mind invaded. I can't exactly begrudge them that."

"It isn't fair. You deserve so many friends." Grantaire feels a sense of rising panic that threatens to overwhelm his outrage and sympathy. Humans need certain things to live, he knows this, and maybe he'd once thought it was as simple as food to eat and air to breathe, but- it's more than that. Humans aren't meant to be alone. Especially not a human like Jehan, who has so much love to offer, if anyone would just be brave enough to accept it-

Jehan laughs against his chest. Grantaire frowns, unsure just exactly what about this is funny. Jehan's mind pulses warmly with a fondness so sweet that it almost makes Grantaire want to pull back from him, feeling unworthy of it.

"Don't you dare," Jehan mumbles, hooking an arm around his torso. Grantaire had known that Jehan likes physical contact; it's only now that he notices the relief that permeates the general pleasure he feels at being held, like every point of contact is a rare sunbeam shining down on a pale little plant too used to being in full shadow.

"You need more than just me," Grantaire says, panic rising anew. "I'm not even-" He's thrown off by Jehan giggling again. "Why are you laughing?"

"You're funny." Jehan is plucking at memories of earlier that same evening, when Grantaire's own misery had seemed like the most important thing in the world. "You were trying not to care. Trying to step back from us little humans and remember how tiny and insignificant we are, in the grand scheme, in the eyes of a proper angel." He's still laughing, amused and endeared. "Look at you now. Look how much you care about this one tiny human. You're so funny, Grantaire. You don't even realise how far you've come."

"Stop thinking about me ," Grantaire says. "Why are you so bad at thinking about yourself? You bury all this so deep. I didn't even know, and I'm in your head."

Jehan laughs again. It's a sad sound, this time.

"You know better than anyone that when something hurts too much, you have to not think about it," he says. "You can't keep looking at it, or it'll crush you under it."

Grantaire pulls back from him but doesn't let him go. He never wants to let go of Jehan again.

"I won't leave you alone," he says. He holds eye contact, pushes sincerity at Jehan hard. "No matter what happens. Even if Enjolras hates me forever. You and me, we'll take care of each other. Okay?"

Jehan smiles at him.

"Those guys were getting pizza," he says. "Now I want pizza."

Grantaire stares at him, thrown, then snorts.

"You should've stayed in Lyon, then," he says.

"They don't only have pizza in Lyon." Jehan's smile widens into a grin, and he takes Grantaire’s hand to pull him behind him back down the stairs. He’s still hurting. Grantaire can see all of it; his mortification at everything that had just occurred, his aching loneliness, his confused anger-sadness-worry over Enjolras. And yet, his smile is genuine. He orders pizza and then scoops Minerva up in his arms and hums a song to her while they wait for it to arrive, the picture of easy contentment. Grantaire thinks Jehan has somehow mastered the art of finding ways to be happy even when he's miserable. He hopes he'll be able to learn to do the same.

~

Grantaire flies back to Combeferre's apartment early the next morning, bidding a quick goodbye to Jehan, who does his very best not to look worried as he wishes him good luck.

Combeferre, not to be outdone, is ready for him. He's standing in his living room, his laptop and a case file tucked under one arm, looking suspiciously like he might have been pacing. Grantaire wonders if Combeferre had been nervous about seeing him. He'd certainly seemed a little ill at ease the previous night, though Grantaire had put that down to playing an unwilling third wheel to him and Enjolras and the dreadful tension crackling between them.

There is a selection of items laid out neatly on the coffee table. Grantaire silently catalogues each one - a mobile phone, an EMF meter, a container of salt, a small handgun, a silver knife, and a flask, probably for holy water. A hunter's basic inventory, he realises.

"I never usually send anyone out without at least these things," Combeferre says. "Do you need any of them?"

Grantaire shakes his head.

"Not even the phone?" Combeferre says dryly.

Grantaire reaches out and pockets the phone. He'll tell Combeferre about the power of prayer another time.

Combeferre watches his movements with intent eyes and a tightly-drawn expression. He looks like he wants to ask a hundred different questions, like every aspect of Grantaire is a deeply troubling puzzle to him, but in the end he just sits down on the sofa and sets his laptop down on the table next to the rejected equipment. He flips it open and holds the paper file out in Grantaire's direction without looking at him. Grantaire takes it and looks inside. He winces. The copies of the crime scene photos - and how Combeferre gains access to such things, he'll never know - are gory.

"I was alerted to this during the night," Combeferre says, and Grantaire notes the dark circles under his eyes. "I'd prefer more time to gather intel but…"

"But time is of the essence, if the thing that did this is still at large." Grantaire nods, flicking through the scant pages. An entire family and a few of their friends, holidaying in Italy, all dead. Dead and, by the looks of things, eaten. It would seem that all that is left of these people is the blood coating the walls and floors of their holiday apartment, and a pile of bones, many of which appear to have been gnawed, or cracked open to get at the marrow inside. Not a scrap of flesh remains. This had been the act of something truly ravenous. Grantaire reads all the information available with a sinking feeling.

"The bones," he says. "Are they...I mean, is everyone accounted for?"

"I don't know yet." Combeferre looks up at him for the first time and his expression is stoic, but Grantaire can see the sick horror twisting in his soul. Even to a seasoned hunter, something like this is still stomach-turning. Grantaire can't help but think grimly that it's an ideal first case for something like him - a good opportunity for Combeferre to gauge his abilities, and a perfect alternative to having to send a human hunter after something that is clearly so dangerous.

“I suspect they might be one skeleton short,” Grantaire says, setting the file down.

Combeferre considers him a moment with his tired eyes. Combeferre must be so sick of all this awful shit, Grantaire thinks. He starts to wonder if Combeferre ever takes a break, then dismisses the thought before he even finishes it.

“You think it’s a rugaru,” Combeferre says finally.

“So do you, I’m guessing,” Grantaire replies.

“Yes,” Combeferre agrees. “But I hope I’m wrong.”

Grantaire doesn’t think hoping is going to do them much good. There aren’t many other creatures that will gorge themselves on that amount of human flesh.

"I'll go and find out," he says, and flies.

His first stop is the morgue nearest to the holiday resort where the horrible feast had occurred. The place is busy, the incident on everyone's lips, but Grantaire makes himself unnoticeable and winds between the grim-faced humans and finds his way into the room where the remains are being stored. He counts the skulls, stripped of nearly everything except their hair. According to Combeferre’s intel, there had been six people staying in the apartment. There are only five skulls. Grantaire sighs.

Many of the humans in the building are, unsurprisingly, police officers, asking a lot of questions that the forensics team just have no answers for. There is, after all, no rational explanation for this. Grantaire wonders which rational explanation they will ultimately invent and twist until it fits the narrative, so that everyone can move on from this. That isn’t his particular concern at the moment, though. When a few of the officers leave the morgue, he follows them back to the police station. They head straight for the coffee machine upon arrival, but it doesn’t take Grantaire long to find someone sitting at a desk, looking through what information the authorities have managed to gather thus far, her eyes flicking between some papers spread out in front of her and a computer screen. Grantaire looks over her shoulder. They have confirmed the identities of the people who had been staying in the apartment - the holiday rental company had had some details, and various forms of ID had been found at the scene. Grantaire watches impatiently as the officer flips through photocopies of driver's licenses and passports, until she reaches one that makes him swear softly.

The man in the grainy passport photo looks so utterly normal. He'd undoubtedly believed, implicitly, without question, that he was normal. Grantaire feels a swell of pity - no one, not even this man himself, could have possibly foreseen this. Except, of course, the man's father, who had passed the curse down to him, but if he is still alive, he would be nowhere near human enough anymore to have warned his son what was coming.

The man's birthday had been two days ago. His thirtieth. Grantaire is willing to bet that this holiday had been to celebrate the milestone. How dreadful, that he'd had no idea that it was also a milestone of an entirely different kind. Grantaire tries not to think about this man cutting into a birthday cake, under the eyes of his mother and siblings and friends, and feeling the first pangs of that terrible hunger. He makes himself look at the man's name, though. Tobias Riegler. There's nothing Grantaire can do for him now besides kill him, and he doubts very much that Tobias would want to be saved now even if it were possible. But Grantaire can remember, at least. He doesn't know what kind of man Tobias had been, good or bad or, like most humans, somewhere in between, but he can remember that there had once been a man called Tobias Riegler. And that, no matter what story the authorities ultimately settle on, it hadn't been his fault what had happened.

Grantaire goes hunting. The holiday resort backs onto a large area of woodland, which the police have undoubtedly been scouring, but Grantaire knows they would have been no match for the speed of a newly-turned, freshly-fed rugaru. He also knows that it will already be getting hungry again. He suspects that it will make its way back towards its last feeding spot; it must have been able to smell more prey nearby, in the neighbouring apartments, and even a glutted rugaru will remember where it has scented food.

It does not take him long to find it, still in the woods but dangerously close to the edge of the resort. It is already wild-eyed and mindless with hunger, and when it sees Grantaire it freezes and stares. It bears little resemblance to the man from the photograph; it barely looks human at all anymore.

"Sorry about this," Grantaire says. "It really is a bullshit hand you got dealt. You and your family and friends."

Grantaire isn't human, but his vessel is, and so to the rugaru he must still smell at least part-way like food. The thing that had once been Tobias Riegler makes an ill-advised lunge for him, jaws wide, and Grantaire extends a hand and catches it in mid-air and incinerates it. It dies quickly, with only one short, startled howl. Grantaire doesn’t stop until its body is ash. He thinks that maybe he should be glad, in a way, that Enjolras isn’t here. Enjolras would have hated every part of this so much.

He flies back to Paris. He lands in the alleyway between the Musain and its adjacent building, and he goes in through the door. It’s a busier day, today. Lots of hunters drinking and making plans and priming weapons. There’s a small crowd gathered around Combeferre’s table, clamouring for his attention. Grantaire leans against the bar to wait. He notices he’s getting some strange looks, and he can’t figure out exactly why until a familiar older man comes up and orders two beers. He looks Grantaire up and down while the barman pours his drinks, and cranes his neck to look past him.

“Where’s the other one?” the man asks. Grantaire finally places him - he’s the one who had provoked Enjolras and got punched in the face for his efforts. It feels like forever ago now. “Didn’t think either of you were allowed out on your own.”

Grantaire doesn’t answer, but gives the man a look full of enough deadly warning that he takes his drinks and backs right off without so much as another sarcastic jab.

Combeferre still looks to be in high demand, but when he notices Grantaire, he manages to wrap up whatever matter so desperately requires his attention quite quickly. When the other hunters disperse, looking satisfied, Grantaire pushes off the bar and joins him at his table.

“What are you doing here?” Combeferre asks him quietly with a frown. Grantaire frowns right back.

“Am I not supposed to come here anymore?” He asks. “What, are you worried about keeping me a secret? I don’t think anyone here suspects anything.”

“What? No, I mean, what about Italy?” Combeferre says, keeping his voice low. “The case?”

“The case is closed,” Grantaire says slowly. He’d assumed this would be obvious. “Regrettably, we were correct. A rugaru. But it’s taken care of.”

“It’s…” Combeferre blinks at him, like Grantaire is speaking another language that he is having some trouble translating. “What do you mean, it’s taken care of? How can it be…?”

Combeferre checks his phone, looking baffled. Grantaire does the same and realises the issue: he’d been gone a sum total of about four hours. It’s barely lunchtime.

“How long did you think it would take me?” Grantaire says. “I travel from place to place instantly. I can get in anywhere I need to. I can find what I’m hunting faster than any human, and once I find it, it’s over. I don’t miss .”

Combeferre is silent for a few long, long moments. His soul, normally like the cool, undisturbed surface of a lake, is frothing with disbelief and confusion and a strange type of fear that Grantaire really feels quite indignant about. He’d only done what he’d been told to do - it’s hardly fair of Combeferre to be afraid just because he hadn’t realised exactly how efficient a killing machine he has at his command.

“Am I still surprising you, Combeferre?” Grantaire asks. “Even after everything I told you?”

“You really found it and killed it that quickly?” Combeferre says.

“Why would I lie?”

“Why indeed.”

Grantaire’s hands clench into tight fists quite without his conscious permission. I’m doing what you want, he thinks, wretchedly. I’m doing what you want! 

“Are you going to give me something else to kill or are you dismissing me for the day?” he asks.

Combeferre rummages through his pile of unassigned cases, rejecting a few before finally tossing one in Grantaire’s direction.

“A watcher in Stockholm reported a string of unusual deaths,” he says. “No real theories as to what it is yet, but I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

“Would you like me to take my time?” Grantaire asks him, and is rewarded with a narrow-eyed look.

“Just make sure you get the job done,” Combeferre says, and Grantaire thinks, fine. Fine.

This one does take him a little longer. Another trip to another morgue tells him that it’s a wraith he’s hunting, and he hates that because now he’s thinking about the wraith they’d hunted together in Lyon, and how it had been in Lyon that he’d had the startling realisation that he had the capacity for the human type of love, and he’d known it was a bad thing even then, he’d known it was only going to cause problems and pain all around-

Don’t think about it, he tells himself. Just hunt.

This wraith is unlike the Lyon wraith in that it is more typical of its species - killing randomly and only to feed. This means, of course, that there is no particular place for Grantaire to track it to, and he is reduced to sweeping vast swathes of the city, which takes a while, even for him. He finds it eventually, though - he corners it in a deserted alleyway just as the sun is setting, and he kills it. It’s so easy.

Grantaire checks his phone again. He has no doubt that Combeferre is still working, but he wonders if it might be late enough that he will have moved from the Musain back to his own apartment. He snatches up the wraith’s body with one hand and goes to find out.

Combeferre does not cry out when Grantaire lands in his living room and throws the dead wraith down in front of him, but Grantaire thinks it had been a close thing. His expression and the explosion of shock and revulsion in his soul speak loud enough, anyway.

“Job done,” Grantaire says. “And there’s your proof.”

He does take the body away again and dispose of it, after. He considers his point made.

He thinks Jehan might scold him, for getting angry and petty on his first day on the job , but he doesn't. If anything, when Grantaire returns to him and Jehan takes a quick look at the events of his day, Grantaire is sure that he feels, behind the more dominant sympathy, a small pulse of quiet satisfaction from him, before he starts bemoaning the fact that Courfeyrac has been messaging him incessantly all day and he doesn’t know what to do about it.

“Message him back, obviously,” Grantaire says, dropping down onto the sofa. “Don’t you know how phones work?”

Jehan, curled up at the other end of the sofa, unleashes a series of painless but frenzied kicks with his socked feet upon Grantaire’s thigh. Grantaire catches one foot and grins when Jehan yelps and wrenches it out of his grip just at the mere threat of tickling.

“What’s wrong? Do you not like him?” Grantaire does a scan of the surface of Jehan’s thoughts. He doesn’t perceive any dislike there.

“I don’t know what to think of him!” Jehan wails, kicking his legs some more. “And I don’t know what he thinks of me .”

“What do you mean you don’t know what he thinks of you?” Grantaire chokes on laughter. “You know what everyone thinks about everything!”

“It’s complicated. And not even I can hear people’s thoughts over the phone.”

“That’s probably not a bad thing,” Grantaire says. “You can get to know each other the old-fashioned way.”

He’s startled when Jehan lets out an unholy shriek.

“That’s exactly what he said!” Jehan flips himself over and buries his face in a cushion and continues in a more muffled voice. “This is ridiculous. I can’t do this. Burn my phone.”

Grantaire reaches over and pats him on the back.

“Why is it such a big deal that someone wants to get to know you?” he asks.

“I don’t know how to get to know people,” Jehan mumbles into the cushion. He peeks over his shoulder. “Not in any sort of normal way.”

“Well, now you get to learn, tiny human,” Grantaire says, and Jehan whines.

They don’t talk about the rugaru or the wraith or all the poor humans who had lost their lives just by unlucky happenstance. They don’t talk about how Combeferre still won’t quite look at Grantaire, or how when he does it’s with a question in his eyes, and the question is not whether he should be afraid, but exactly how afraid he should be. They don’t talk about Enjolras, though Grantaire thinks of him, and he knows Jehan sees. He can’t help it. He wonders where he is, what he’s hunting, and if he’s becoming more or less angry, left on his own.

Grantaire goes back to Combeferre the next morning, and kills another two monsters in the course of the day. He goes back the morning after that too, and the one after. A routine of sorts emerges - not nearly as pleasant as his old routine of pretending to wake up in a shoddy hotel room with Enjolras, foraging for breakfast and coffee, and then proceeding with the day’s hunting at a more sedate human pace, but a routine nonetheless. He will go to Combeferre’s apartment or the Musain, he will be given whatever case is judged to pose the most danger, or to be the most mystifying, or just to have the highest body count, and he will go forth and hunt, unrestrained by pretence, at his own dreadful, unrelenting pace. He kills and kills. He takes Combeferre’s silver knife, despite not really needing it, because sometimes it’s just so easy that it seems a waste to use his Grace. Then, once the killing is done for the day, he goes back to Jehan’s house and they do not talk about it and for that he is grateful.

Two weeks pass. In that time Grantaire has killed one rugaru, two wraiths, four werewolves, one shifter, three vampires, one lamia - he’d even ended up taking on a particularly troublesome poltergeist; not his speciality, but he’d managed. And only one demon so far. It had been a young one - so young it had still stank of the Pit it had crawled out of. It had possessed the body of a priest, because demons always think that’s funny. It hadn’t been laughing when it had seen Grantaire, though; it had stared at him with its oily-black eyes, clearly too new and stupid to even be able to comprehend what he was. And Grantaire had destroyed it. A hollow victory, really. The vessel had already been dead.

He does not see or hear from Enjolras. Combeferre offers him no updates on his whereabouts or emotional state, and Grantaire doesn’t think he’d tell him if he asked. Many times he is tempted to find him himself, to shut his eyes and fly and wait until he feels the familiar fire of Enjolras’s soul to guide him, but- But. He doesn’t just want to see Enjolras; he wants Enjolras to want to see him, too. Being cut off and apart from him is hard, but he thinks it might be a thousand times worse to go to him when he is not wanted, and be turned away. He tells himself to wait. Kill and kill and wait and go home at the end of the day, over and over.

One thing upsets the new routine at the end of those first two weeks: one evening, when Grantaire reports another successful hunt to Combeferre, he is not summarily dismissed afterwards.

“Don’t disappear yet,” Combeferre says, right as Grantaire is preparing to do just that. Grantaire looks at him expectantly and he fiddles with his glasses. “I wanted to ask you something.”

It’s the first time they’ve spoken beyond the cursory this entire time. Grantaire tries not to look too eager.

“What is it?” he asks.

“Would you be willing to give me more information?" Combeferre says. "About yourself and your kind?”

Grantaire is hit with the strangest combination of utter dread and nervous hope. Talking about himself and his family is perhaps his least favourite past-time, and it seems to bring out the worst in him, as the last attempt had shown. But this is a chance to try again and do better, to tell the truth but not the worst version of the truth, as Jehan had said.

“Of course,” he says. “I already said I would tell you anything you want to know.”

Combeferre nods stiffly.

“So, now?” Grantaire asks.

“If that’s acceptable.”

Grantaire sits down.

~

Transcript: angels_2.mp3

Grantaire: Okay. What did you want me to tell you about?

Combeferre: Just a second. 

[Papers shuffling.]

G: [Laughter.] Is that- Did you make and print out a transcript of our last conversation?

C: I did.

G: Why?

C: This is all...new data. I have to study it closely.

G: Are you planning on writing a book on the subject?

C: I'm planning to compile everything I learn and share it with the hunting community, so that the next time an angel decides to infiltrate our ranks, maybe it won't take us a year to find out. 

G: Oh.

C: Do you have an objection?

G: More of a suggestion.

C: And what is that?

G: Maybe consider not sharing any information I give you too far.

C: Why?

G: [Sigh.] Read your transcript. Have you forgotten how dangerous my kind are?

C: Is that a threat?

G: No. It's...Look. Maybe a lot of the reasons I lied about what I am were selfish. But one good reason was that it was safer for you and Enjolras not to know. The more I tell you and the more you share that information, the more danger you'll be in. You think the other angels want you to know about them? How to recognise them, how to kill them ? If they found out…

C: What?

G: I might not be able to protect you.

[Pause.]

C: Would you? If other angels wanted to destroy us, would you…?

G: Would I fight them? Yes. I mean, I'd die, most likely, and then so would you, but hey. I'd give it the old college try.

C: I...see.

G: You seem surprised that I wouldn't just let them kill you.

C: That was one of the things I wanted to ask you about. [Papers shuffling.] Last time, when I asked if you took orders from other angels, you said you did. Past tense. And then, when Enjolras and I called you, you said something about not being with them anymore. I wondered if you could elaborate.

G: Still trying to figure out my loyalties, huh?

C: I'm trying to understand exactly what our situation is.

G: It's like I said. I don't take orders from Heaven. I haven't fought or killed for them in a very long time, and I never will again. I have no lingering ties to them.

C: So you were allowed to leave?

G: No. No one gets to leave. 

C: Then what happened? How are you here?

G: I- ran. I ran away.

C: From Heaven? From your own kind?

G: Yes.

C: Why? 

G: Why? After everything I've told you, you can't think of a reason why I'd want to leave?

C: I'm wary of making assumptions when it comes to your motivations.

[Pause.]

G: The bottom line is that you don't have to worry about me having divided loyalties or anything like that. I'm a deserter. I haven't had contact with one of my own kind in over three thousand years. They think I'm dead. And I want to keep it that way.

C: But why did you-

G: Combeferre, please.

C: What is it?

G: Please, just- ask me about anything else. I can't...If I try to talk about why I left, it won't go well.

[Long pause.]

C: I...alright. So you've severed contact with the other angels.

G: Yes.

C: Then- who have you spent these last three thousand years with?

G: What?

C: In the absence of your own kind, did you connect with humans? Or other creatures? Are Enjolras and Jehan and I the latest in a string of mortal attachments?

G: Mortal-? No. I've...never spent as much time with any humans as I have with you three. Before you I was alone.

C: Do angels not require companionship the way humans do?

G: I- what are these questions? I thought you wanted data. Information that could be useful to you.

C: Sorry. I just-

G: What?

[Pause.]

C: Nothing. You're right, we've got off-track.

G: What else did you want to ask?

C: Well, it's good to know you're no longer affiliated with the others of your kind who would like to destroy humanity, but they're still out there, aren't they? The other angels. 

G: There are...fewer than before. But yes, they are out there.

C: Should we be concerned? You've told me they're dangerous but are they a direct threat? Are they doing harm, right now?

G: Mm. They're something of a- looming but not currently active threat. Like, sure, if you got in their way, or caught their attention for the wrong reasons, they'd destroy you. But for the most part they're detached from humanity, from the Earth. They stay upstairs in Heaven unless they want something down here.

C: Ah, yes, I seem to remember you saying something about them not liking it here.

G: Yeah, most of them hate it, and will only come down to fulfil whatever orders they've been given before running straight back to Heaven. They're really not into being corporeal. [Pause.] I have to admit, it did take a bit of getting used to. Things like smell, and taste? Did not know what to make of those at first. I'm pretty into the five-sensory experience now, but it was definitely something I had to get used to.

C: You- Hang on, wait. You only take on a physical form when you're on Earth?

[Long pause.]

G: Oh. I didn't tell you yet.

C: Tell me what?

G: I...We don't have physical forms of our own. 

C: You seem fairly physical right now.

G: We take vessels. We take- human vessels.

[Long pause.]

C: You-

[Pause.]

C: You're in a vessel, right now.

G: Yes.

C: You're- possessing a person. A human. Wearing them like a suit.

G: Yes, but-

C: Does Enjolras know about this?

G: Yes.

[Long pause.]

G: Now you’re surprised he didn’t kill me on the spot, aren’t you?

C: No. Enjolras of all people would never want to run the risk of harming an innocent person, just because something else is riding around in their body.

G: You don’t need to worry about that. He's not trapped in here with me.

C: What?

G: My vessel. The human. He’s not in here.

C: Then where is he?

G: His soul went to Heaven long ago.

C: He's dead?

G: By definition, yes.

C: You…?

G: No, I didn’t kill him.

C: Is possession by an angel fatal to a human?

G: No. But it isn't pleasant, either. Especially when the body is badly damaged in battle. [Pause.] I offered him a choice. He chose to go.

C: It was a kindness, to let him die?

G: It released him from suffering.

C: You could have released him from suffering by leaving his body.

G: Yes, you're right.

[Long pause.]

G: You look horrified. I’m sorry.

C: I don’t think you can just apologise for- I thought only demons possessed people, stole their bodies and their lives. But angels, too? You?

G: It’s awful, I know. But it’s- not exactly the same as when demons do it.

C: Why’s that? Because angels have some heavenly mission to accomplish and that makes it okay?

G: Some of them would say so. I don’t think the reasons make any difference. The only thing, I think, that sets us apart from the demons is that we need consent.

C: You- What?

G: An angel can’t possess a human without that human’s express consent. We need to ask, and we need to be given permission. No angel, no matter how powerful, can force their way into a vessel.

[Pause.]

C: That’s…

G: It’s an unexpected restriction, isn’t it? Trust me when I say almost all angels despise it.

C: It’s- I mean, it’s good , but- why would anyone ever say yes?

G: Not always for good reasons. Some people are probably so frightened just by being asked that they agree without much thought. Some are weirdly into the idea of ‘a higher purpose’, whatever that means. Others- well. Angels need consent, but there isn’t exactly a limit on what they can do to procure that consent. They can make refusing very...unpleasant.

C: Why did your vessel say yes?

[Pause.]

G: I...told him what I thought was the truth, at the time.

C: And what was that?

G: What you said. That there was some heavenly mission we needed to accomplish. [Sigh.] By the time I realised what bullshit that was, it was too late. He was gone.

[Long pause.]

G: He was a good person. He deserved better.

C: Was Grantaire his name?

G: What? No.

C: I thought, maybe…

G: That I stole his name, too?

C: Not that you stole it. Honoured it, maybe.

G: By using it for myself? [Laugh.] Hardly an honour.

C: It sounds like you- cared about him.

G: I suppose I did. As much as I was capable of caring about any human, at least. I was...less, back then. More angel, and less everything else.

C: I’m not sure I understand.

G: It’s kind of complicated, I guess.

C: So- if this is you in a vessel, then- what do you really look like?

G: An angel's true form is completely incomprehensible to a human. Too many dimensions. Too much power.

C: Oh.

G: And any human who even glimpsed an angel's true form would find their eyes burned from their head.

C: Oh.

G: So you see I can’t really explain.

C: Yes, I understand. Another case of you being too powerful and us being too primitive.

G: It’s not a reflection on you.

C: Enjolras said- He said you showed him something, when you told him the truth. Something about light, and wings.

G: Are you asking for a demonstration?

C: I suppose I am.

G: For research. For science.

C: Show me, Grantaire.

G: Alright.

[Prolonged loud static.]

G: [Faint.] Combeferre?

[Continued static.]

[Static fades.]

[Long pause.]

G: You're staring.

[Pause.]

G: You look like you've maybe had enough for today.

C: You...God, for years you sat in the back of the Musain and faded into the background.

G: Yeah, and everyone was happier and better-off for it. Can I tell you one more thing before we call time on this data-collection session?

C: If you want.

G: It's a little weird.

C: Compared to everything else you've told me?

G: If you ever need me, you can… [Pause.] [Sigh.] You can pray to me, and I know how that sounds, but-

C: What?

G: Hey, Jehan made that exact same face when I told him.

C: I…

G: Don't think of it as praying, if you don't want to. It's just a way to contact me, no matter where I am. I thought you should know. Just in case.

C: And how...how do I…?

G: You need to use my- other name, for it to work. My more angelic name.

C: Your-? So "Grantaire" really is an alias.

G: It's a name I chose for myself.

C: Another lie.

[Pause.]

C: What is your real name, then?

G: The name you need to use in a prayer is Rachmiel.

C: Rachmiel.

G: That's what I said.

C: Is that what I should call you now, since we're dispensing with the lies?

G: No. Don't call me that.

C: But it's-

G: It's the name I was given when I was created. I don't think that makes it my real name. That's up to me, I think.

[Pause.]

C: Alright.

G: You only need it to open the channel of communication. That's all.

C: And you'll hear? Even if you're halfway around the world?

G: I'll hear.

[Pause.]

G: Will you tell Enjolras? That he can call me that way, if he needs to?

C: Why not tell him yourself?

G: I'm pretty sure you know why not.

C: If you would just- explain exactly what it is you want from him, what your interest in him is-

G: You're straying from scientific data again.

[Long pause.]

C: I'll let Enjolras know about the- praying.

G: Okay. Good. Thank you.

[End.]

~

Grantaire flies home to Jehan, flops down next to him on the sofa and takes his hand without preamble to more clearly show him the whole conversation with Combeferre while it's still fresh in his mind. Jehan blinks in surprise, then obliges him, closing his eyes and watching along with deep concentration.

"Well?" Grantaire asks him. Jehan smiles at him and squeezes his hand.

"That was a lot better," he says. "I was worried you were going to drop that bomb about vessels and leave it at that, but you didn't. That was good."

Grantaire gives a sigh of relief that he hadn’t completely fucked up this time.

“I think you should stop treating it so much like a science experiment, though,” Jehan remarks.

“That’s what it is . Scientific data collection.”

“It’s an opportunity for you to tell your side of the story,” Jehan says. “It’s a way for you to remind Combeferre - and Enjolras, who is undoubtedly hearing those recordings too - that you were their friend before all of this, and that that still holds true now.”

Grantaire makes a non-committal noise. Jehan squeezes his hand.

“Remind them who you are,” he says. “Combeferre is clearly curious about more than just the useful data - he keeps nearly lapsing into more personal questions. Don’t shy away from that. That’s what’ll make the difference, Grantaire.”

“If anything will really make a difference.”

“It’s good that Enjolras will find out about praying, too,” Jehan says. He hesitates, then: “I hope he calls for you.”

~

Enjolras does not call for him.

~

Chapter Text

Transcript: angels_03.mp3

Grantaire: Oh, is it that time again?

Combeferre: If you’re amenable.

G: Sure. Just before you start data-collecting, though, there's something I wanted to run by you.

C: What’s that?

G: Remember when I mentioned that my dear brethren wouldn't much like a human such as yourself knowing so much about us?

C: And that they'd kill us all over it, yes, I remember.

G: It got me thinking that it would be wise to take precautions.

C: And what did you have in mind?

G: Well. You have an anti-possession tattoo, right? You all do. To keep demons out.

C: Yes.

G: So, there's something...sort of similar I can offer, to protect you from my kind.

C: I thought angels couldn't possess humans without consent?

G: It's not to stop them possessing you, it's to stop them finding you. It would make you undetectable. So if shit went sideways and they came for me, and if they saw you or Enjolras or Jehan...If I could get you away, you'd at least have a chance in hell of hiding from them.

C: Wait.

G: Wait?

C: Go back. You're talking about making us undetectable.

G: Yes?

C: But not invisible?

G: No, they could still see you if they were standing next to you, they just wouldn't be able to track you or locate you.

C: See, that's where I want you to pause a moment. Explain to me just exactly how they would go about tracking or locating us ordinarily.

G: Oh, I see. Sorry, I—

C: Do you always know where we are?

G: I can always find you, yes.

C: We couldn't hide from you even if we wanted to?

G: Well, you can with this thing I'm trying to tell you about.

C: But up until now…?

G: Look, I can't help it. I can't help it any more than you can help seeing me when I'm right in front of you. It's just how I work.

C: [Sigh.] Alright. Tell me what you’re offering.

G: It’s a spell, of sorts. It needs to be on your body in some form to be effective. Like a tattoo. Unfortunately, it’s kind of lengthy. It’d take up a bit more space than the anti-possession ward. But then, it doesn’t necessarily have to be external. I could probably carve it into your bones, or something. No? Your face says you don’t like that idea. It wouldn’t hurt, if that’s what you’re thinking.

C: Still a no.

G: Can I have a piece of paper? I want to write it down so you can see how big a tattoo it’s going to be.

[Papers shuffling.]

[Pen scratching.]

C: What...language is that?

G: Our language, of course.

C: Your...There’s a language? An angelic language?

G: Yeah, it’s—

C: And you didn’t mention it before now?

G: Oh wow, you look so excited that it’s kind of scary.

C: That’s—fascinating. Your whole own language. The possibility never even occurred to me.

G: We were around long before humans, remember. Had to have some way to communicate before you guys came along and learned to talk.

C: Of course, yes, that makes sense. And it has its own alphabet, its own writing system?

G: Yes, but the written form is more for spells and sigils than, I don’t know, letter-writing or literature. Enochian is sort of functionally different from any human language because we’re, y’know, not human.

C: Enochian? That’s what it’s called?

G: Oh, yeah.

C: That...sounds oddly familiar.

G: It shouldn’t. Angels have not historically shared information about themselves with mankind. I’m pretty exceptional that way.

[Typing sounds.]

C: It’s on the internet.

[Pause.]

G: It’s what?

C: It says here that it’s a language recorded by two Englishmen in the 16th century. They...claimed it was revealed to them by…

G: By what? By angels?

C: Yes.

G: What the—Show me. [Pause.] Oh shit. Yeah, they definitely should not have known that.

C: Then how did they?

G: I don’t know! Their alphabet isn’t exactly correct or complete but it’s too close to be coincidence, but who would have...Oh, fuck.

C: What?

G: Just. I was black-out drunk for so much of the 16th century. Do you think I…?

C: I don’t know! Did you?

[Long pause.]

G: Probably best not to think about it. [Pen scratching.] Let’s focus on this.

C: Hmm. You’re right, that is lengthy.

G: Yeah.

C: But it would make it impossible for angels to locate us?

G: Yes. Including me. If you prayed to me, I could find you, but barring that, I’d be just as blind as the others.

C: You look like that part doesn’t much appeal to you.

G: It’s...fine. It’s fair, right?

C: But...?

G: Nothing. It’s just a weird thought, I guess. Not being able to find you all. 

C: Do you like knowing where we are at all times?

G: Don’t make it sound so creepy.

C: You don’t think it is?

G: It’s...It’s just a peace of mind thing. Knowing where everyone is and that they’re okay.

[Pause.]

C: So with this, you’d have to trust us to call for you, if we needed help.

G: I...yeah. And that’s fair, like I said. That’s your call to make. But…

C: But?

G: But I’ll worry, okay? No offence but you guys are kind of fragile.

[Pause.]

G: Not that it’ll make a terrible amount of difference with you. I don’t need my angelic senses to know that you’ll always be either here or at the Musain.

C: I’ll keep that in mind. So you’re happy for me to pass this on to Enjolras?

G: Yes. I can tell Jehan myself.

C: You two are still in frequent contact?

G: Hm? Oh. I’m—staying with him. At his house. Sorry, I didn’t realise I’d never mentioned it.

C: I see.

G: Are you angry with him? For not telling you or Enjolras about me?

[Long pause.]

G: What? Am I not allowed to ask questions when we do this?

C: I’m not...angry. I would certainly like an explanation from him, but...hm. That he was willing to lie for you is—curious. Because it means that, despite how dangerous you have gone to great pains to tell me your kind are, he looked at you and decided you were not dangerous.

G: Well, you know Jehan. Very optimistic.

C: Was he wrong?

G: You know I’m dangerous. But I’m not a danger to you.

C: So you say.

G: Do you think I want to hurt you, Combeferre?

C: I don’t know what you want.

[Pause.]

G: [Sigh.] Did you have more questions for me today or would you like me to show you some Enochian sigils? They’re powerful, and useful.

C: My questions can wait. Show me.

[End.]

~

Grantaire has not seen Enjolras in three weeks. Every day of it has dragged, dismally.

He kills more monsters. He stops keeping count of them. The things he kills are monsters in the truest sense of the word—he makes sure of that before striking the fatal blow—but the mounting body count still doesn't exactly please him.

Combeferre proves a quick study in Enochian, which doesn’t surprise Grantaire much. Grantaire teaches him sigils of warding and protection, as well as a spoken exorcism spell, which takes a little more work, given that Enochian was not particularly made for human vocal cords. The hours they spend in Combeferre’s apartment poring over Grantaire’s ancient mother tongue are nice, in a way. No killing involved, no interrogation that Grantaire still finds himself ill-equipped for, and Combeferre, scholar that he is at heart, seems so genuinely fascinated that he temporarily forgets to be mistrusting and frosty and cross with him.

Jehan seems unsure when Grantaire presents him with the Enochian spell that will hide him from angels—probably because he can sense Grantaire’s own conflicting feelings about it. Grantaire has to assure him that it really is for the best; that it’s his only chance of being safe should the worst happen. In the end, Jehan agrees.

“I’ll pray to you every day, though,” he declares. “So you won’t have to worry.”

Jehan doesn’t have Combeferre’s reservations about allowing Grantaire to apply the spell internally—he sits at ease when Grantaire puts his hand on him and winds the sigils around and down the length of his right femur.

“If you ever have to get an x-ray, that’s going to be hard to explain,” Grantaire tells him with a weak laugh. Jehan just shrugs.

The effect of the spell is disconcerting. Grantaire can still see Jehan’s soul when he looks at him, but if Jehan so much as leaves the room, his awareness of it is gone. He can still feel the presence of Jehan’s thoughts for as long as they’re both in the house, but if the physical distance between them is too great, there’s nothing.

“Is this what being human is like?” Grantaire says with horrified amazement, after they’ve experimented with this new state of affairs a little. “You lose sight of someone and suddenly they could be anywhere? You just don’t know?”

“You’ll get used to it,” Jehan says, laughing at him.

Grantaire feels it when first Combeferre and then Enjolras take on the spell. It’s funny; he hadn’t even known that he’d had any ambient awareness of their souls over such great distance. But in each instance, when the last stroke of the spell is inked upon their skin, it feels like something in his peripheral vision snuffs out and is lost. It leaves him feeling oddly bereft.

He kills some more monsters to try and take his mind off it. Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t help much.

~

Transcript: angels_04.mp3

C: Maybe this seems a strange thing to ask about, but…

G: Go ahead.

C: That thing you said last time, about being ‘black-out drunk’ for a large part of the 16th century. Were you being literal?

G: Yes? I don’t know how to get metaphorically drunk.

C: So alcohol affects you as it would a human?

G: It takes a lot more of it to affect me but yes, my vessel is human, it can become inebriated. Thankfully. That was the only thing that got me through certain periods of history.

C: So then, do you eat as well?

G: I don’t need to. But I like to. The five-sensory experience, and all that.

C: But—why? If you don’t feel hunger then…?

G: [Laughter.] Humans eat all the time without feeling hungry!

C: [Pause.] Okay, yes, I suppose you’re right. So it’s just enjoyable?

G: Sure.

C: And the drinking? That’s enjoyable too?

G: Well. More enjoyable than the alternative.

C: Which is what? Sobriety?

G: I don’t know what you think I’ve been doing these last three thousand years, but—I’ve not been having fun. The less aware I had to be of the world around me, the better.

C: What were you doing all that time, then?

G: Nothing. I was doing nothing.

C: Why?

G: It didn’t feel like there was any point in doing anything.

C: What do you mean by that?

G: I had no purpose, and all I'd known up until I fled down here was purpose. Without it, I was lost. I couldn’t go back where I’d come from. I had no place here. And I saw things. I’ve seen what humans are capable of. The truly good and the truly terrible. One doesn’t balance out the other. After enough time, trying to drink the worst of it away just seemed like the sensible option.

[Long pause.]

G: Don’t look at me like that.

C: Like what?

G: I don’t know. Just stop it.

C: It sounds like you’ve been very unhappy for a very long time.

G: That’s karma, I guess.

C: Did you—Do you miss your family? Do you wish you could go back?

G: Fuck, no. I’d never go back. But—I don’t know. It’s complicated. We were made to love each other; it’s built into us. It’s hard to shake. And they… [Sigh.] They weren’t always awful.

C: No?

G: Is this really what you want to hear today? Some sad family history?

[Long pause.]

G: Fine. Don’t say I didn’t offer to let you ask more scientific questions.

C: Go ahead, Grantaire.

[Pause.]

G: So in the beginning, things were good. The Earth was new and so were we. We watched over it. Loved it, even. We loved it and each other and our Father and all was well.

C: And then?

G: You won’t like it.

C: Tell me anyway.

G: See, the problems started with you guys. Our Father made you. And He told us that He wanted us to love you, even more than we loved Him. And, got to be honest, back then...not one of us could see what made you so special. You have to understand, you weren't terribly impressive yet. You'd literally just come down from the trees. Humanity's crowning achievement at this point was figuring out how to crack nuts open with a rock. We couldn't understand. Dad didn't explain. Explanations were never His way. And we weren't supposed to need them. We were supposed to have faith. And we...tried. But Lucifer—couldn't.

C: [Choking sound.]

G: Ah. Had you not realised that Lucifer is one of us?

C: Lucifer. The devil. Is real? And an angel?

G: You really need to get back into that Bible you were reading. Brush up a bit.

C: The devil is your brother?

G: My big brother. He’s an archangel, you know. Or...he was, I suppose. The brightest and most beautiful of us all. And our Father’s favourite. Until the humans came along.

C: And...and then?

G: Lucifer couldn't stand your existence. Maybe the part he could stand the least was that dad had a new favourite. He said he wouldn’t obey. He said he couldn’t obey. He watched and waited with the rest of us, for a while. Until you were a bit more like you are today. And he set out to prove that you were inherently flawed and corrupt and—inferior. He tempted humans to evil. He gave rise to Hell. He twisted Lilith until she became his first demon. And he spread his arms wide and he said look, look at them, don’t you see? And while he was still gloating over it, our Father commanded Michael to strike Lucifer down and seal him away in a cage made just for him, in some world deeper and darker than the furthest reaches of the Pit. And Michael obeyed. And we watched.

[Long pause.]

G: It was never the same after that.

C: That was when your Father left?

G: I’m still amazed how casual you are about that. I thought any human would be more disturbed to know that God Himself is MIA.

C: It doesn’t make much difference to me. I was never sure I believed in a God anyway.

G: You might as well not bother. Yeah, He left. No explanation, as usual. And everything started to fall apart. I suppose blaming the humans just felt like the easiest thing to do. You know most of the rest of it. They—we—all became so bitter. We did terrible things.

C: And then you left.

G: And then I left. But that’s a story for another day.

C: And Lucifer...How is it that humans have always told stories of the devil, if he was locked away so long ago?

G: Demons have always acted in his name. He’s their God, you know. [Pause.] And he did get out. Once. You remember 2009, right? You remember it was a truly fucked up year?

C: I...yes. It was…

G: Apocalyptic, would you say? Because it was. The world nearly ended that year, in the famed, prophesied final punch-up between angels and demons. Except the demons were also led by an angel, an angel who made them, and all Lucifer cared about was getting a shot at Michael, so really it was just my family bringing their shit down here and not caring who got caught in the crossfire. You know humans would have been wiped out no matter which side won? The Earth would have been razed to ashes. That’s how it ends, if they get their way. In fire.

[Pause.]

C: But the world didn’t end that year.

G: Yeah, don’t ask me how. Everything was in place. I was braced to burn. I don’t know who or what stopped it. [Laughter.] I know it sure wasn’t me. I didn’t even try. I was so tired. I think part of me just wanted it all to be over. I’m sorry, I know that’s awful. I should’ve…[Sigh.] I couldn’t have stopped it. My power is nothing compared to an archangel; Michael or Lucifer would have incinerated me in a second if I’d interfered. But I should’ve tried, at least.

C: I don’t know if you need to feel so guilty over something that ultimately didn’t happen.

G: I just want you to know everything. How much damage my kind has done. So many people died that year. And I didn’t...I should’ve…

C: I think maybe we should stop.

[End.]

~

“It’s alright, you know,” Jehan soothes him later. “There was nothing you could have done. You know you couldn’t have stopped it.”

“Stop being so nice about it,” Grantaire says from the opposite end of the sofa. He shrinks away when Jehan reaches out to touch him. “It came so close to ending. You would have died. You and Enjolras and Combeferre and everyone else. I never would have met you and I wouldn’t even have tried to stop it.”

“There’s only one of you. There are so many other angels, and all the demons,” Jehan says. “If you’d done anything to interfere, you would have been killed. You know this.”

“Better me than you,” Grantaire mumbles.

“No,” Jehan says, sliding over and bullying him into a hug.

“Yes.”

“No.” Jehan holds onto him tightly, stubbornly. “Just be glad that it didn’t happen, and you did get to meet us all, and you have an abundance of chances ahead of you to make choices you won’t want to beat yourself up over for all time.”

Grantaire grumbles quietly.

~

It’s been four weeks—an entire month—since Grantaire had last seen Enjolras when Combeferre prays to him for the first time. Grantaire has just finished dispatching a shapeshifter when the message comes through. It's a summons, nothing more, but he knows it must be something urgent, because it’s been pretty hard not to notice that Combeferre isn't especially comfortable with this newly revealed method of communication. He flies back to the Musain and hurries inside, only to immediately be steered into a back room by Combeferre.

"What's wrong? Is it Enjolras?" Grantaire can't hold the question in, the dread welling up inside of him too much to contain.

"No." Combeferre shuts the door behind them. "Not Enjolras. Another hunter. She and her partner were working a case in Albania. They...Things went wrong. She just called me. Her partner is—hurt. He—" He stops for a moment, taking a deep breath and squeezing his eyes shut. "He's dying, I think. They're in the middle of nowhere; they aren't going to get help fast enough by any ordinary means. Normally there would be nothing I could do besides stay on the phone with her so she doesn't have to watch him die alone, but I hung up because…" He turns to look Grantaire in the eye. "You said you can heal people. You...can you…?"

"I can save him," Grantaire says, "if you tell me where they are."

“These are their coordinates.” Combeferre shows him. Grantaire nods.

“Don’t worry,” he says, and flies.

He finds them. The woman is bruised and crying but otherwise okay; the man cradled in her lap really is dying. He’s so close to the brink, in fact, that a reaper is already here, standing over the two of them unseen, watching quietly. It notices Grantaire and looks at him with mild curiosity.

You’re not needed here, Grantaire wants to tell it. Not today.

He kneels down next to the sobbing woman and the man who is gurgling through his own blood. The woman screams when she sees him.

“Who are you?” She looks around wildly, clearly trying to find any landmark nearby that he might have come from. There are none. Combeferre hadn’t been kidding; they really are in the middle of nowhere.

“It’s okay.” Grantaire offers her a reassuring smile. “I’m here to help.”

“Help?” she repeats. She looks down at her partner, who is missing rather too much of his throat to seem particularly helpable. “How are you—”

Grantaire doesn’t think he has time to explain, and raising the man from the dead would use rather more power than would be safe for him to expend, so he places one hand flat against the man’s chest and floods him with Grace before it’s too late. The light is blinding but brief, and when it fades the reaper is gone, and so are the bone-deep gouges that had been raked across the man’s neck and torso. He sits up, blinking and unharmed, and the woman screams again. Then they both stare at him.

“What were you hunting?” Grantaire asks them pleasantly.

“A rawhead,” the man says in a whisper.

“Did it get away? After…” Grantaire gestures generally to the man’s whole body.

“Yeah, it…” The man raises a shaky finger to point vaguely in the direction the monster must have run off in.

“Okay. You two should head back towards town, now,” Grantaire says.

“But who—?” the woman starts to ask just as Grantaire touches a finger to each of their foreheads and erases their memories of this incident.

“Bye, now,” he says cheerily while they’re still dazed, and then he takes off after their escaped rawhead.

He’s sort of amazed by how buoying it feels to have helped someone. Hunting is all well and good, but it generally involves showing up after something horrible has already happened. It’s more about theoretically saving the next person the monster would have killed. But he doesn’t get to see that part. He just gets blood on his hands.

He looks down at the hand he’d laid on the man’s chest and sees that it is, actually, covered in blood. He just laughs. Not even taking down the wounded rawhead can spoil his mood. He returns to Combeferre, triumphant in a way he’s never been with hunting.

“He’s okay. I was just in time,” he announces. Combeferre stares at him, then sinks into a chair, sagging with relief.

“Thank God,” he mutters.

“God didn’t have anything to do with it,” Grantaire snorts. Combeferre looks up at him, and it’s the first time in a while that Grantaire has felt like he’s really looking at him and not fighting the urge to avert his gaze.

“You’re right,” Combeferre says. “Thank you, Grantaire.”

“I wasn’t fishing for a thank you.” Grantaire rolls his eyes, even as he feels a stupid swell of warmth. “I’m not a huge fan of people bleeding out needlessly, either. I’m glad I could help him.”

If Combeferre is surprised by that, he does an excellent job of not showing it. Grantaire can, however, see him filing it away in his mind with the rest of his collected data.

“Why didn’t you bring them back with you, though?” Combeferre asks. Grantaire raises his eyebrows.

“I thought that might be a little difficult to explain,” he says.

“And showing up to miraculously heal him wasn’t difficult to explain?” Combeferre says. He sighs. “The plan had been for no one else to find out about this arrangement, because as I’m sure you know, most hunters tend not to be terribly accepting of anything that isn’t human, but this was an emergency. And you saved his life, so I’m sure they can be convinced to keep their—”

“Combeferre,” Grantaire interrupts. “I wiped their memories. We don’t need to explain anything to them.”

Combeferre goes almost comically still, mouth still open mid-word.

“That’s another ability you’ve failed to mention up until this point,” he says finally, and Grantaire’s heart sinks to see an edge of suspicion return to his eyes and his soul.

“It’s not one I use very often.” Grantaire shrugs.

“Have you used it over the last year?” Combeferre asks. “On me? On Enjolras? We wouldn’t know, would we? We’d have no way of ever knowing.”

“If I was ever going to erase your or Enjolras’s memories, don’t you think around now would have been the time for me to do it?” Grantaire says, trying not to let the sting of the accusation seep into his tone. “Things haven’t exactly been going great for me since my big reveal. Doesn’t the fact that I haven’t wiped your memories of the whole fucking thing kind of acquit me of messing with your minds at any other time?” Combeferre looks as if he’s about to answer, but Grantaire barrels ahead. “And—and you know, it’s not fair for you to happily make use of some of my abilities while holding up others as proof of how awful I am. I can’t help what I’m capable of! I wish you would trust me enough to believe I wouldn’t misuse my power to hurt you.”

“Trust is earned,” Combeferre says. “I did trust you. Enjolras trusted you. And you lied to our faces for a year. Several years, in my case.”

“Does nothing else I did count for anything?” Grantaire says, desperately. “I promised you I would keep him safe and I did. You didn’t care what I was or what I could do when Enjolras was missing, all that mattered to you then was that I was powerful enough to save him, and now—? I know I fucked up and I lied and I’m sorry but—”

“Maybe I could understand a little better if you would tell me why you did it,” Combeferre says. “Why won’t you just tell me why you did any of it?”

“Because that’s not for you,” Grantaire says, entirely without thinking. “It’s not for you, it’s for him, and he won’t talk to me—!”

The room’s single light-bulb pops. A chorus of startled murmurs from the other side of the door tells him that the lights have gone in the main body of the Musain too.

Grantaire swears quietly and leaves Combeferre alone in the darkness.

He keeps his thoughts guarded when he returns to Jehan’s house, but Jehan isn’t stupid so even without access to his precise thoughts, he can tell that something unpleasant had happened. He prescribes ice cream.

“I got to heal someone today, instead of just killing things,” Grantaire says, dully, after letting Jehan practically spoon-feed him a heaped bowl of rocky road.

“That’s good,” Jehan says encouragingly.

Grantaire lets himself tip over sideways until he’s lying down on the sofa. Jehan pets his hair gently.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks.

“No. I just.” Grantaire sighs. “I hate this. I miss him.”

“I know you do,” Jehan says with real sympathy. “I wish he wouldn’t keep making you wait.”

“But what if it’s—what if that’s not what he’s doing?”

Jehan makes an inquisitive noise. Grantaire sighs again, heavily.

“I think what worries me most of all,” he says quietly, “is the idea that maybe he doesn’t even think about me at all. That I’m here, waiting and waiting and hoping, but he’s never going to…” He trails off and swallows hard. “I’m worried he doesn’t care at all anymore.”

“I doubt that,” Jehan says. “It’s not in Enjolras’s nature not to care.”

“It’s just been so long.” Grantaire hadn’t known that a period of four weeks could feel so impossibly long.

“I know. Something’s badly wrong.” Jehan shakes his head. “But we won’t have any way of knowing what it is, or trying to fix it, until he comes back. Unless you want to try your luck approaching him. Or take me to him. I’ll try.”

“No,” Grantaire says. “No, I...I want him to decide on his own.”

“Okay.” Jehan doesn’t argue.

Grantaire reports to Combeferre the next morning, as usual. Combeferre is waiting for him, but with no case files in sight.

“What’s this?” Grantaire asks. “Did you run out of monsters? Or printer paper?”

“Grantaire.” Combeferre looks very serious and worryingly intent. “About yesterday.”

“Yeah, sorry about that.” Grantaire looks away from him, feigning interest in the opposite wall. “You were right. I shouldn’t complain. I shouldn’t have…”

He trails off. Lost my temper, he’d been going to say, but that isn’t quite right. If he’d lost his temper yesterday, properly, more than a few light bulbs would have been broken.

“No, I think I was wrong. I think I was unfair to you,” Combeferre says. Grantaire is reminded anew of Combeferre’s astounding lack of ego, his incredible ability to look at any situation rationally, and to calmly admit any perceived wrongdoing. It never fails to startle him, and never more so than now. “You did a really good thing yesterday. I’m not sure you even know how much it meant. To the man you saved, certainly, but also to me. I’m so tired of losing hunters in the field. And as I told you, normally there is nothing I can do for them when things go badly. You saved one of my people, and I’m very grateful.”

“Okay.” Grantaire stares uncomfortably at his own shoes now. “Good.”

“And erasing their memories was the right move. It saved a lot of complications.” Here Combeferre hesitates a moment. “It just...constantly surprises me, everything that you can do. You hid it so well.”

“Not that well,” Grantaire says wryly. “You figured me out, remember?”

“I thought I’d figured you out. I thought I had it all under control. I was very wrong.” Another pause. “It’s difficult not to be suspicious, every time you reveal a power that could so easily be abused.”

“Yeah. I get it. I really do,” Grantaire says. “It’s like you said: trust has to be earned. I broke it once, so that’s not in my favour. And I’m dangerous. There’s no denying that. Asking you to trust me when you know the truth of what I am and what I can do is like asking you to put your hand in a predator’s mouth and trust that it won’t bite down. I know this. I just…” He breathes out a rueful laugh. “I look forward to the day when I can convince you that I won’t bite.”

“I feel like I could get closer to that point if you would just help me understand some things better,” Combeferre says. “Namely your intentions. Or your motivations? Based on what you’ve told me, I really can’t fathom why you’ve chosen to live among humans, and to work with hunters.”

“I live among humans because they are a steep improvement over my own kind,” Grantaire snorts. “And as for hunters…”

Combeferre looks at him with poorly concealed eagerness for his answer. Grantaire sighs.

“Are we doing this?” he asks, gesturing to Combeferre’s laptop. “Is this more data you want gathered up and put on record?”

“It can be off the record, if you prefer,” Combeferre says. He sets his laptop down and closes it. “I only want to understand.”

Grantaire decides he’d better sit down for this. Combeferre is still looking at him attentively, and somehow Grantaire just knows that he’ll listen, properly and as close to objectively as it’s possible for him to be.

“I never cared much for hunters,” he admits. “Too vengeful for my tastes. Reminded me too much of home. I mostly hung around them to do nothing more than feed my own misery. I could look at them and feel justified in giving up on the world.” He leans back, a faint smile tugging at his mouth. “You were a rather annoying surprise, in that regard. The Musain was just about the most miserable hunter dive bar out there until you started working to keep everyone from dying quite so much. You really ruined my top brooding spot.”

Combeferre looks like he isn’t sure whether to be offended or not. Grantaire wonders if it’s too soon for humour.

“I’m kidding. It wasn’t annoying. But it certainly was a surprise.” Grantaire surveys Combeferre as he is now and casts his mind back to the brief and intermittent occasions that he’d seen him at the Musain during his childhood. “Especially since it wasn’t the path that had been set out for you.”

“You said you knew my father,” Combeferre says, and his soul betrays that he is far more perturbed about this fact than his face would suggest. “That you saw me…”

“When you were born, yes.” Grantaire nods. “I saw the life your father had planned stretching out before you, and I shook my head and drowned my sorrows because oh dear, another child soldier to join the ranks and grow up fucking miserable and then die. But then you went and did something different. You decided you were going to make things better. You changed the horrible story I’d seen play out so many times before.” He grins. “You surprised me so much that you made me decide to come back to the Musain properly to see what you would do. So, really, in a way, this whole thing is your fault.”

Combeferre definitely looks offended this time. Grantaire tries and fails to bite back a laugh.

“Sorry, Combeferre; I’m afraid my terrible sense of humour wasn’t an act,” he says.

“More’s the pity,” Combeferre says, and Grantaire thinks he might be joking too. At least, he’d like to think so. “But even if I was the reason you decided to show yourself in the Musain again, all I did was inspire you to come back and observe. You didn’t take any sort of action until...”

“Yeah.” Grantaire drops his gaze to the carpet.

“It really does all come back to him, doesn’t it?” Combeferre says. “Everything you’ve done. It all comes back to Enjolras.”

“You already knew that.” Grantaire makes himself look up. “Or did you start to doubt?”

It’s Combeferre’s turn to look away, awkwardly.

“It’s okay. I told you, I get it.” Grantaire shrugs. “If I were you, I’d probably doubt me, too.”

“Does it bother you?” Combeferre asks. His eyes seek Grantaire’s again as he speaks—Grantaire can’t help but think that this is a pretty funny game of chase and avoidance that they’re playing. “It does, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t want you to feel sorry for me.”

“I don’t know that I do.” Grantaire could have sworn he sees the ghost of a smile curve Combeferre’s lips. “I’m just interested. I didn’t think it would matter to you, what any little human might think of you.”

“You’re not little.” Grantaire rolls his eyes. “I mean, physically, yes, extremely tiny. But not like that. I don’t think of you that way.” He pauses, then continues, committing himself to honesty. “I did, I suppose. Before. But I’ve learned better.”

“Good.” Combeferre nods. He looks almost wryly amused—frustrated, but in a resigned sort of way. “You’re not going to tell me what exactly it was that spurred you into action, are you?”

“That’s something I’d rather talk to Enjolras about,” Grantaire says apologetically. “If he ever wants to hear it.”

“I wasn’t wrong to trust in your loyalty to him before, was I? It seemed so obvious, like such a certainty. But then…” Combeferre sighs. He takes his glasses off and rubs at his eyes. “You left him. You saved him and then you disappeared, without a word to anyone. And he was fresh out from under a djinn’s spell, Grantaire! If you were going to leave, couldn’t you have done it at a time when he at least had a concrete grasp on reality? Didn’t you think that you disappearing into thin air, and the seeming impossibility of your sword being there, might make him start to doubt whether he’d really been rescued at all? I came close to flying out to Majorca myself to prove to him that he wasn’t trapped in some nightmare.”

Grantaire flinches. That possibility hadn’t even occurred to him, in the midst of everything else.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I just didn’t think I could stay any longer. Not after that line had been crossed.”

“What line is that?” Combeferre asks with raised eyebrows.

Grantaire goes very still.

“What did Enjolras tell you?” he asks slowly.

“That he was asleep and he woke up and you were gone,” Combeferre says. “All your things were still in the hotel room, so at first he assumed you’d just gone out. But you never came back.”

“That’s it? That’s all he told you?” Grantaire presses.

“Is there more?” Combeferre counters.

“No,” Grantaire says, unconvincingly even to his own ears.

“Grantaire, if there is more to this story, please enlighten me, because as things stand it seems utterly inscrutable.” Combeferre replaces his glasses, all the better to frown very sternly at Grantaire. “Based on the facts I have, it seems that you saved his life, then ran away for no reason, and then, bafflingly, came back to suddenly reveal the truth about yourself and offer your services. If you can’t tell me why you did any of those things, I don’t know how you expect to restore any measure of my trust in you.”

“I came back because staying away proved impossible,” Grantaire admits. He thinks Combeferre deserves at least a shred of the truth, and this is perhaps the one shred that he can offer him.

“And why did you leave? What happened over there?”

Grantaire shakes his head definitively.

“I—no. It’s nothing.” His mind helpfully provides him with the very vivid memory of Enjolras, warm and pliant in his arms, his lips soft and sweet against his own. He tries to imagine describing it to Combeferre and immediately decides he’d rather die.

“How did you manage to fool us all for so long when you are such an appalling liar?” Combeferre arches an unimpressed eyebrow.

Grantaire decides his only possible course of action is a strategic retreat.

“Jehan is calling for me,” he says.

“No, he isn’t,” Combeferre says.

“I have to go.”

He has just enough time to see Combeferre roll his eyes skyward in an expression of supreme exasperation before he flies away.

He returns to Jehan’s house for lack of anything better to do, but finds the living room and kitchen empty. Glancing out the kitchen window, he sees Jehan in the garden, lovingly transferring a fledgling lilac plant from a pot into the earth. He looks up in surprise even before Grantaire opens the back door, having clearly sensed his thoughts.

“Oh, hello,” he says with a smile of welcome as Grantaire comes to join him on the grass. “What are you doing back so early? Have you purged Europe of all its monsters already?”

“Um,” Grantaire replies. He sits down next to where Jehan is kneeling. Minerva, who had been patrolling the outer limits of her outdoor territory, comes over to rub herself, purring, against him and flick her tail under his nose. Grantaire pets her absently until she is quite satisfied and resumes stalking the perimeter.

“What is it?” Jehan asks. Grantaire can feel him politely refraining from exploring his mind for an answer until he’s ready to give one.

“Combeferre doesn’t know what happened,” Grantaire says finally.

“Hm?”

“Between me and Enjolras. At the end.”

“Say it, Grantaire,” Jehan says, and Grantaire can see the little smile on his face, can hear from his thoughts that Jehan knows perfectly well what he’s talking about. He mentally informs him of this, somewhat sulkily.

“He must be very confused by the current state of affairs, then,” Jehan remarks instead of pestering him further to say it out loud. “That’s a rather important component in the whole sequence of events.”

“Are you saying you think I should tell him? Because I cannot,” Grantaire groans, resting his forehead on his knees. “Especially since Enjolras obviously doesn’t want him to know.”

“That doesn’t mean you can’t talk about it,” Jehan says with a frown. He pats the dirt around the base of the freshly instated lilac and then brushes his hands off, to little effect. “It’s not just his, you know. It sort of involved both of you.”

“Yes, but…” Grantaire trails off as a disturbing possibility occurs to him. “Wait. Wait. Does Enjolras…? Combeferre said he was still feeling the after-effects of the djinn venom after I left, that he was confused. Do you think he doesn’t…?”

“No, he knows it happened,” Jehan says without hesitation. “Trust me, he knows.”

“Oh.” Grantaire isn’t sure whether to feel relieved or not.

“...Courfeyrac knows too,” Jehan says. “He was thinking about it when he saw you in Lyon. Enjolras told him everything.”

“He...Everything?” Grantaire repeats. He should not be surprised by this. In a way, it feels like he’d sort of already known. But having it confirmed, having to consciously acknowledge the fact that Courfeyrac knows exactly what had happened, makes him want to squirm.

“Everything,” Jehan confirms. “I don’t think the others know, though.” He ponders a moment. “Courfeyrac seems to know more than the others about a lot of things. I suppose Enjolras is closest to him.”

“Has he still been messaging you?” Grantaire asks. He knows he has. He’s seen the little bursts of panic in Jehan’s soul every time his phone buzzes.

“I thought we were talking about your thing,” Jehan says, shuffling away from him a little and starting to pull a few rogue weeds out of a flowerbed with excessive vehemence.

“You’re not just ignoring him, are you?” Grantaire says. He prods at Jehan’s mind but finds it very guarded.

“Of course not!” Jehan looks up at him, aghast. “I’m not rude.”

“I know you’re not.” Grantaire puts his hands up apologetically. “Just—you never talk about him. Which, okay, you don’t have to, it’s your business, but…” He shrugs. “He seemed like he wanted to make friends. And I know that spooked you a bit, but—it would be a shame, not to give him a chance.”

Jehan is quiet for a few long moments. Minerva returns to demand more attention from Grantaire, which he grants her.

“It’s actually...It’s much easier than I expected,” Jehan says at length. He sounds dumbfounded by the fact. “He’s...very easy to talk to. I didn’t know it could be like that. Maybe because it’s on the phone? I suppose even I seem almost normal over the phone.”

“He met you in person first,” Grantaire points out.

“We’ve been talking a lot,” Jehan admits. “He’s always messaging. And he’s actually called a couple of times, when you’ve been away. That was a little scary. I almost wasn’t brave enough to answer the call, the first time.” He laughs softly. “But I did. And it was…”

“Easy?” Grantaire suggests with a smile.

“The thing is, we don’t talk about anything important. Well, I suppose we do sometimes. But so much of it is just…” Jehan trails off and shakes his head. “It’s strange to me, that’s all. I’m not used to...You know, Combeferre will call or message me about a case, and Enjolras has always been terrible at keeping in touch on a purely social level. It feels strange to just...talk. I suppose that’s why I don’t talk about it. There’s not really anything to report.”

“That’s good.” Grantaire gives a nod of satisfaction and lies back on the sun-warmed grass. “You really deserve something like that. Something that’s just nice. That doesn’t demand anything of you.”

Jehan laughs again. His soul is soft and warm and glowing, like a gathering of pink-streaked evening clouds. His thoughts are more complicated—puzzled and terribly unsure, but they are just as warm.

“You like him,” Grantaire says with a grin. “You’re doing it, you’re making a friend.”

“Oh, stop it,” Jehan chides. He chews thoughtfully on his lower lip. “I...worry, though, a bit.”

“About what?”

“I worry about the next time I have to see him in person. I worry about what I’ll hear, in his thoughts.”

“What do you mean?”

“I still don’t understand why he...well. I don’t understand why he’s doing any of this, really.” Jehan shrugs. His soul starts to look greyer. “What if I look into his mind and I see that it’s out of pity? Or some morbid curiosity because I’m so…?” He sighs. “I just worry.”

“Do you really think he’s that kind of person?” Grantaire asks.

“No. I mean, I don’t know. I just can’t think of an explanation for why he’d want to…”

“Because you’re delightful, for one,” Grantaire informs him. “But you know, if you’re having fun playing at being normal over the phone, you could just do what a normal person would have to do and ask him.”

“Maybe,” Jehan says doubtfully.

“Or I could take you over to Lyon right now and you could psychically interrogate him, just to be sure,” Grantaire suggests. He hears Jehan start to protest, but is distracted by his own phone vibrating in his pocket. He checks the screen and snorts. “Hey, looks like you weren’t actually wrong. Seems Combeferre is a bit short on cases right now. Or, I don’t know, maybe some of his human hunters are getting suspicious of the suddenly lightened workload. Either way, he says I don’t need to report in until further notice. Says he’ll call if he has something for me.”

“I suppose that’s better than him chasing you down to make you talk,” Jehan laughs. He lies down next to Grantaire—Minerva immediately plops herself on his chest. “Oh well, it’ll be nice having you around during the day. The raspberries are about ready to be picked. You can help me make jam.”

Grantaire laughs.

“I’ve never made jam before,” he says.

“Three thousand years you’ve been down here and you’ve never made jam. That’s terrible.” Jehan turns his head to look at him with mock-reproach.

“I know. Seems I’ve managed to miss all the important stuff all this time,” Grantaire replies gravely.

"It's okay." Jehan closes his eyes and turns his face towards the sky. "Never too late to learn."

~

The next few days are peaceful, for the most part. There’s a part of Grantaire that never stops fretting, wondering, worrying, but he’s kept busy enough that he can’t linger on it too long. They really do make jam. Grantaire is surprised by the sense of accomplishment that comes with having made something. Jehan points out that he’s been making things for a long time, that every drawing he’s ever done had been something he’d brought into existence. Grantaire has to concede the point, but it doesn’t feel quite the same. Before Enjolras had started showing an interest in them, he’d always thrown away his drawings and paintings as soon as he’d finished them—he’d had no interest in them as finished objects, only in the process of making them that had served as a distraction. He wonders if he’d been sort of missing the point.

“I always end up with way too much,” Jehan sighs once they are done, surveying the rows of filled jars. “Of course, I can store it for a long time, and I give some to my neighbour, but…”

“You have someone else you could give some to, now,” Grantaire reminds him with a grin.

“That seems like it would be a little weird,” Jehan says.

“So what?” Grantaire persists. “Come on, write a note and I’ll take it over right now. I’ll just leave it on the doorstep, I promise.”

Jehan mumbles in protest but at length he gives in, and Grantaire makes a quick trip to Lyon, leaving three jars of raspberry jam on the doorstep to Courfeyrac and Marius’s apartment with a note from Jehan perched on top. He flies straight back to Jehan, and they clean up the kitchen without discussing it any further, but Grantaire sees when Jehan receives a message on his phone not much later, sees as he bashfully types out a reply, and he smiles.

Combeferre calls him in the next morning. Grantaire supposes the break had been nice while it had lasted. He obediently takes flight, and he lands in Combeferre’s apartment, and—

They are not alone. Combeferre is seated in his habitual spot on the couch, laptop on his knees and surrounded by papers, and behind him stands Enjolras, hands jammed deep in his pockets, eyes fixed attentively on whatever Combeferre has pulled up on-screen. He says nothing when Grantaire touches down, but does flatter him with a quick look and a stiff nod. Grantaire stares at him, speechless. His presence after so long an absence feels almost unreal—a beautiful impossibility that he’d almost given up on even hoping for. Grantaire wants to go closer, would give anything to touch him, to pour out everything he’s been aching to say to him for these last endless weeks, but he just looks, silently. Enjolras’s soul is a twisted-up, conflicted puzzle, but just being in the proximity of its warm glow again feels like a blessing. Physically, he looks better than Grantaire had worried he might. His eyes sweep him for major injuries and find none. His knuckles are bruised and there’s a small scrape on his cheek that Grantaire would dearly love to sweep his thumb over and heal, but that aside he seems—fine. A little pale, maybe. A little tired-looking. But alright. And here.

“How many vampires can you fight at once, Grantaire?” Combeferre asks suddenly, and Grantaire blinks.

“Enough, I expect,” he replies. He’d almost forgotten his nominal purpose for being here, though he can't believe that Combeferre wants to talk about vampires at a moment like this.

“Without bringing your brothers and sisters down on your head?”

“I don’t need to use much Grace with vampires. I can just cut their heads off.”

“Any hunter could cut their heads off,” Enjolras says. Hearing his voice startles Grantaire even more than seeing him had. His speaking seems to startle Combeferre too, if his surprised backwards glance is anything to go by.

“I can cut their heads off faster,” Grantaire says, when he finds his voice. “Is this all hypothetical, or…?”

“We’ve got word of a vampire nest in Belarus,” Combeferre says. “A big one, and growing. They’re turning people. We need to stop them. Can you do it?”

Grantaire begins to realise that they actually aren’t going to talk about it. No one is going to address the fact that Enjolras is here, presumably willingly, after an absence so long that it had started to feel like a miserable new normal. They’re not going to acknowledge that this is the first time he and Enjolras have seen each other in over a month, and that maybe they should try saying something to each other about that before they get down to business. He could raise the subject himself, he supposes, but given that Enjolras and Combeferre both seem dead set on acting like nothing is amiss, he suspects it might not do him much good. They’re both looking at him expectantly while he tries to make his peace with this.

"Yes," he says finally. He doesn't relish the prospect—it'll be messy, and freshly-turned vampires can sometimes still be holding onto their last scraps of humanity, and he's never sure if it's kinder to kill them quickly, or wait until they go completely mindless with their new blood-hunger and at least won't feel afraid anymore.

“You’ll need a weapon.” Combeferre gestures to the other side of the room, where there is an impressive selection of blades laid out on a tarp on the floor for Grantaire's perusal. He crosses the floor, the strongest feeling of unreality weighing on his every step, and inspects them, eventually settling on two well-sharpened and weighty machetes.

He knows Enjolras is approaching—he can hear his footsteps, can sense his tangled-up soul getting closer—but he still freezes when Enjolras reaches past him and picks up a long serrated knife.

"I'm coming too," Enjolras says.

Grantaire turns to blink dumbly at him. He feels trapped in the silence Enjolras's statement leaves in its wake, certain that anything he could say in response would be the wrong thing. He looks over at Combeferre, hoping to find clarification, but Combeferre just puts his hands up and shakes his head, like he'd washed his hands of this situation long before Grantaire had even arrived.

"Why?" Grantaire asks finally, cautiously.

"Combeferre thinks there could be thirty or more vampires in this nest," Enjolras says, examining his knife critically and finally rejecting it in favour of another one.

"I can handle that many," Grantaire says. 

"I assumed so," says Enjolras. "That's why I'm coming along. I want to observe."

A chill goes down Grantaire's spine.

"Why?" he asks again. No, he wants to say. He remembers the look on Enjolras's face, in his eyes, when he'd flared his Grace and his wings on the beach—when he'd shown Enjolras the barest glimpse of what he really is. He can't imagine how Enjolras would look at him if he sees him being an angel—fulfilling his true monstrous function.

"I've never seen you fight when you weren't playing your little game and holding yourself back," Enjolras says. "I suppose I'm curious to see what you're really capable of."

"Making sure your new weapon is up to standard?" Grantaire finds himself saying before he can think to stop himself. It comes out bitter and cold and it seems to take both Enjolras and Combeferre by surprise. It surprises Grantaire a little, too.

"Something like that, I suppose," Enjolras replies finally, fixing him with a baleful stare. Grantaire feels himself wilt under that look.

"Are you ready to leave now?" Grantaire asks, since it seems there's nothing else to say.

"Yes." Enjolras pauses and eyes him uncertainly. "Are we travelling—your way?"

"Unless you'd rather take the train." Grantaire means it sincerely but even as he says it he can hear that it sounds a little mocking. Luckily, Enjolras seems to take it as a challenge, and it makes him rally rather than retreat. He narrows his eyes and steps closer.

"How does it work?" he asks. "You didn't exactly explain it to me last time."

"There isn't much to explain," Grantaire says. "I fly, and if I'm touching you, then you come along for the ride."

"Would either of you care for more precise coordinates or are you just going to fly around all of Belarus until you find the right place?" Combeferre asks dryly. He looks at Grantaire. "You probably could, actually, but it seems rather a waste of time and energy."

"Where are we going, then?" Grantaire asks. We. It feels strange to say that again. He wishes it felt anything like it had in the before, in the time before everything had become so complicated and painful and messy.

"Here." Combeferre turns his laptop towards them to display a map with a small rural town marked on it. "It's the most precise location I have, but you'll still need to do some ground work tracking down the vampires' exact hiding place."

"Alright," Grantaire says. He feels dazed and utterly lost. He feels a spark of hope when Combeferre looks at the two of them with a deep frown, like maybe he does see that this is deeply weird.

“Is this definitely a good idea?” he asks, but he already looks defeated.

“Do you have an objection?” Enjolras asks, and Grantaire realises that he’s looking at him, he’s talking to him.

Yes, part of him thinks, vehemently.

No, another part of him thinks, afraid and hopeful and hopeless. No more hiding. Let him see, let him choose.

He just shakes his head.

“Let’s go,” he says. He reaches out carefully and lays a hand on Enjolras’s shoulder—he feels Enjolras tense beneath his touch, like it’s taking all of his willpower not to flinch away. It causes an almost physical pain to bloom in Grantaire’s chest. “Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

Grantaire takes them to their destination. Now prepared and somewhat practiced, Enjolras does not stumble when they land; he merely shuts his eyes briefly, as if warding off a momentary disorientation. He steps out from under Grantaire’s hand before Grantaire can convince himself to lift it.

“Where do you want to start?” Enjolras asks. He isn’t even looking at him. “This is your hunt. As I said, I just want to observe.”

“Enjolras,” Grantaire says pleadingly.

“What is it?”

“Enjolras, what are we doing?” Grantaire tries and fails to catch his eye and hold his gaze, make him look. “This isn’t...Come on, please.” He shakes his head. “I can’t do this.”

“What do you want to do, then?” Enjolras asks. He’s doing a very convincing job of appearing completely disinterested and unmoved. His soul tells a different story, but one that Grantaire is quite unable to interpret. It’s a mess—or, he thinks it is. There is a steely, dispassionate layer on the surface, and whatever is going on beneath, he catches only in brief, confusing flashes.

“To talk,” Grantaire says. He barely has to think about it. “I really want to talk to you.”

Enjolras turns and, for a moment, gives him the full weight of his stare, considering.

“I need to see this, first,” he says at length, turning away again. “Then I—might have something to say.”

“Yeah?” Grantaire feels a stab of hope. If all he has to do to get Enjolras to at least acknowledge the current situation is kill some vampires, that’s very doable. That’s something even he is unlikely to screw up.

“Find the vampire nest,” Enjolras says. “I assume you have methods beyond human capability.”

They are on the outskirts of the town which, despite being very small, would still take a long time to search in any sort of human manner.

“Do you mind waiting here while I get a better look around?” Grantaire asks quietly.

“Go ahead,” Enjolras says. “Don’t slow yourself down on my account.”

Grantaire takes flight and does a very quick, preliminary sweep of the area. He doesn’t really think he’ll find anything that easily, fully expects to have to start again and look more carefully. That’s usually how it goes. On this occasion, his expectations are incorrect.

He notices the reapers first. It’s hard not to; from a distance they look like a cluster of black flies, stark against the landscape. Getting closer, he sees that they are all gathered around a single building, watching it with their trademark immovable patience. Their presence is certainly not a good sign, but it’s not the worst, either. If they are here, it means death is near, yes, but it also means that it hasn’t arrived just yet. Grantaire looks at the building they are standing sentinel in front of. It is also slightly outside the boundaries of the town itself, though on the opposite side from where he had brought himself and Enjolras. It appears to be a long-abandoned church. And inside—oh, so many souls, far too many for a clearly unused building. Some human, and many not. Grantaire grimaces and flies back to Enjolras.

“Found them,” he says, taking his arm and bringing them both to the old church. Enjolras makes a small, involuntary sound of discomfort, having clearly not been prepared for the jump. Grantaire opens his mouth to apologise but is brushed off.

“In there?” Enjolras frowns at the church, his human eyes searching for any sign of habitation.

“Yes.”

“How can you tell?”

“This place is crawling with reapers, for one thing.” Grantaire readies his first blade.

“Reapers?” Enjolras repeats, looking around him with alarm. Grantaire shakes his head.

“You can’t see them,” he says. “They’re not monsters. They shepherd human souls into death. That they’re here means there’s about to be a lot of death. The vampires have humans in there.”

“Then get to work,” Enjolras says, drawing his own knife.

The main door into the church almost disintegrates when Grantaire gives it a kick. He thinks he sees Enjolras raise his eyebrows minutely.

Grantaire immediately feels like they’ve disturbed a colony of feral cats. In the damp-smelling semi-darkness of the old church, a sea of inhuman, shining eyes snap up to stare at them, first in surprise, and then with the smug gleam of a pack of hungry predators. Grantaire steps inside, slowly. He would have preferred if Enjolras had waited at the door, but he hears him following close behind him, and just files it away as something to take into account when the killing starts.

If there had once been pews in this church, they are long gone, and the room, with its vaulted ceiling and boarded-over windows, seems all the larger for being almost completely empty. The vampires are clustered together towards the far end of the room, up a few steps, near to a half-collapsed pulpit. At the bottom of these steps lie the humans Grantaire had sensed—they are alive, but unconscious, lined up in a neat row. Six of them.

Grantaire can tell which of the vampires is the oldest and most powerful, and it’s this one that steps forward to address them. He’s tall and has long dark hair and appears to be wearing a black robe. Grantaire glances around and sees that, regrettably, the other vampires are similarly attired which, even more regrettably, would suggest that this is a cult thing.

“Welcome,” the lead vampire says in Russian with a wide smile. His fangs are still retracted but Grantaire can practically feel them quivering to burst forth. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

“Let the humans go,” Grantaire says, continuing to walk forward at a leisurely pace.

“Certainly not.” The vampire’s smile turns mock-affronted. He gestures with one arm to the others of his kind. “They’re an offering for our newly-converted brother and sisters.” Grantaire sees that three of the vampires, near the middle of the pack and almost obscured by the others, are dressed in grubby white robes. He’s reminded again that, yes, this is a cult thing.

“How kind of you two to offer yourselves up!” The leader laughs. “Now we’ll have a real feast.”

“You’re really not smart,” Grantaire says flatly just before he flies to stand right in front of him, and slices his head off in one clean stroke. There’s a beat of stunned silence as the head falls and gives a small, sickening bounce on the stone floor. The body falls a moment later.

Grantaire does not look behind him to see Enjolras’s reaction. He takes another step forward, at the same unhurried, human pace that he had fooled the leader with. He doubts very much the others will be fooled by it now. That single step has them all hissing at him, their mouths erupting into fang-filled monstrosities, and in the next moment they’re launching themselves at him in a furious, frenzied swarm. Grantaire doesn’t even need to think. He’s taken three of their heads off before he’s even fully registered that the fight has begun. A few of the vampires, finally noticing that his blood smells a little different, a little more powerful than a regular human’s, try to get to Enjolras, or perhaps just to the door, but they do not make it past him. When a particularly savage swipe snaps his first machete clean in two, he annihilates the next vampire to get too close with a blast of Grace, and then switches to the second one. Everything is a blur of noise and blood and snapping teeth and desperate, preternaturally fast strikes of attack that are nonetheless no match for an angel’s terrible speed and strength. It’s chaotic, and it’s over so quickly. The silence is sudden and jarring. Grantaire stands very still in the centre of the carnage, the floor around his feet littered with robed bodies and heads still baring too many rows of teeth. He is drenched in blood, can feel it trickling down his face and dripping from his hair and sticking his shirt to him. He turns very slowly to face Enjolras. He isn’t sure what reaction he is hoping for, or even what he expects. Horror seems like it would be an understandable response, if an unfortunate one, but he isn’t sure if he would be any happier about Enjolras being delighted by his capabilities.

It turns out that he doesn’t have to worry about either option. Enjolras’s expression, and his soul, are utterly unreadable.

“The people?” Enjolras says.

“They’re alive,” Grantaire says. “I think they’re drugged.”

“We need to call the emergency services to come help them,” Enjolras says, calm and detached, and Grantaire wants to shake him, wants to demand to know what he’s thinking. “You’d better do it, since you speak Russian.”

Grantaire tries to wipe his blood-spattered hands on his jeans before taking his phone from his pocket and making the call. When he hangs up on the very alarmed-sounding operator a few minutes later, Enjolras has come closer and is inspecting a few of the bodies.

“Suppose I should get rid of this mess before the ambulances arrive,” Grantaire says.

“You didn’t seem to need to exert yourself very much, even against so many of them,” Enjolras remarks. His voice remains unnaturally calm, but there is something hard and cold in it now—enough to be alarming, even given the current state of things between them.

“Vampires aren’t the most powerful of monsters,” Grantaire says cautiously. “They’re humans that have been twisted into something monstrous, but human all the same.”

“And humans,” Enjolras says, “are so very weak.”

“I don’t mean any insult by it,” Grantaire says. “I don’t consider my power a point of pride, you know. I know how awful it is.”

“What about djinn, then?” Enjolras asks, unexpectedly. “They don’t start as humans. Are they powerful enough to pose a challenge to you? How many of those could you fight?”

“Djinn?” Grantaire repeats. “Why djinn?”

“Answer me.”

“They’re—no real threat to me, either.”

“How many were there, in Majorca?”

“I—Fifteen? Sixteen? Why—?”

“And you killed them as easily as you killed these vampires?”

“More or less.”

“And you told Combeferre…” Enjolras’s soul is suddenly icily furious, and Grantaire gets a feeling like he’s about to find out why. “You told Combeferre that you could always find us. Any of us, whenever you wanted. Before you told him about that spell.”

“I—yes?” Grantaire is thrown by the rapid changing of topics. He feels like he’s getting left behind and missing something vital.

“I see.” Enjolras gives a single, sharp nod, as if that has quite decided something, though what, Grantaire can’t even guess. His soul, though still trying to hide in a shroud of indifference, is visibly straining with a towering, grievous mix of black fury and terrible pain.

“What are you thinking?” Grantaire asks him.

“You need to get rid of these bodies,” Enjolras says absently.

“Enjolras.” Grantaire doesn’t want to shout, or beg, but he can feel himself teetering on the brink of both. “What are you thinking? ”

Something snaps.

“I’m thinking that you wiped out those djinn easily, and that you were never really in any doubt as to where I was.” Enjolras’s voice is tight, like he too is exercising all of his control to keep from shouting. “But I still spent twenty-four hours handcuffed to a trolley, attached to a blood bag, trapped in some fucked up hallucination.” His composure breaks; his voice rises and he looks at Grantaire with anger to rival even the day Grantaire had first told him the truth. “How long were you willing to leave me there for the sake of plausibility? To protect your lie? Did you think it didn’t matter as long as you didn’t let me die? God, I was so grateful when you turned up to fucking save me. I feel sick when I think about it.”

“No. No, that’s not…” Grantaire feels strange; cracked down the middle. Half of him swelling with horror and fury of his own, the other half retreating and detached, watching as if from a distance.

“Isn’t it?” Enjolras snarls at him. “Is that not what happened? Or did you just think that I would never put those pieces together, that I was too stupid—”

“Stop it!” Grantaire knows it isn’t fair of him to shout, not when his shouting makes lightning crack overhead and the stones at their feet shift uneasily, but the cracked-open wounded part of him seems to be more in control, while the rest of him looks on numbly. “Is that why you came here today? To watch the monster at work so you could decide for yourself exactly what kind of monster I am? You could’ve just asked, why didn’t you just ask?”

“Because you’re a liar!” Enjolras shouts back at him, fierce and utterly undaunted by the rolling thunder, the electricity building in the air.

“I couldn’t find you.” If it wasn’t likely to tear Enjolras’s mind to shreds, Grantaire would grab him and push his memories of Majorca into his head, make him feel exactly what he’d gone through for those twenty-four hours. “I didn’t leave you there, I would never, I couldn’t find you!”

“You said that you could always find us.”

“Do you think you were just asleep in that room?” Grantaire demands. “Djinn venom has magic. Your body was handcuffed to the table but you weren’t there, you were gone, somewhere even I couldn’t follow. I only found you after you woke yourself up, and I still don’t know how you did that but if you hadn’t I might never had found you. I couldn’t. Find. You, and I’d never been so fucking scared—!”

Thunder crashes in a crescendo overhead. Something shifts, minutely, in Enjolras’s expression and in his soul—a shadow of doubt amongst all the fiery, furious certainty—and he opens his mouth as if to speak but, when the thunder settles and silence falls, it’s a different voice that sounds. A voice that belongs to neither of them.

“Help me,” it says, in Russian. “Please, help.”

Grantaire blinks. The new voice pulls him out of the terrible moment, and he attempts to gather himself. He turns his head, expecting to see one of the humans stirring, but they all remain solidly unconscious. He notices a slight movement amongst the pile of fallen vampires, and is struck by an almost offended confusion. He knows he didn’t miss one.

There’s a weak sob. Grantaire follows the sound, tossing bodies out of the way, and finds one of the white-robed figures from earlier. A girl, maybe in her late teens. She looks very weak, but when Grantaire unearths her she looks up at him and bursts into tears and makes a very valiant attempt at crawling away from him.

“Please don’t kill me,” she begs. “Please, I didn’t want it. The others did but I didn’t. They made me drink it, they were too strong. Please, please don’t kill me, please help me. I want to go home.”

Grantaire stares. She’s a vampire, so freshly-turned that her mouth is still smeared with the vampiric blood she claims she had been forced to drink. Grantaire is inclined to believe her—although she must have been carried forward by the momentum of the other vampires when they swarmed, she clearly had not attacked him, as evidenced by the fact that her head is still attached.

“What’s she saying?” he hears Enjolras ask, but he doesn’t answer, too busy thinking. He’s thinking that he has no idea if this is going to work.

“Hey, listen, it’s going to be okay,” Grantaire tells her in her mother-tongue, with no clue whether he’s lying or not. “You need to lie down for me. Can you do that?”

She’s still crying, clearly expecting him to lop her head off at any moment, but she doesn’t resist as he guides her to lie on her back on the blood-slicked floor. He lays one hand flat on her breastbone and braces the other on her shoulder to hold her in place.

“I’m really sorry,” he tells her. “This is going to suck.”

She screams when the first pulse of Grace enters her body. Grantaire isn’t surprised. For all he knows, it could be killing her. It’s a precarious and entirely unprecedented balance he has to try to strike—burning up and destroying the vampiric blood in her veins and the corruption it has spread throughout her body, while at the same time trying to heal the damage this inflicts. He knows how to destroy and he knows how to heal, but trying to enact both simultaneously is an entirely new challenge. But he has to try. She’s young and she’s scared and she just wants to go home, so he has to try.

He thinks Enjolras might be shouting something but his senses are at capacity between his concentration on the task at hand, and the screaming, and the searing light. The girl’s body bows and arches and her legs kick furiously, trying to escape, but he holds her fast and keeps going. He knows this is getting risky for both of them, that he’s perhaps pushing the limits to how much power he can safely use, but if he can keep going just a little longer—

He sees the fangs emerge in her screaming mouth and he feels a surge of despair, but then—as he watches, they start to retract, and not in the usual way. They pull back and shrink and finally disappear entirely. She continues to struggle blindly against his hold, but he begins to notice that her struggles feel weaker—not as if she is tiring, but as if her strength itself is lessening. He realises that her inconsequential movements are of human, and not vampiric, strength. He gives one last wave of healing Grace, almost as an apology for the rest of the process, and then stops. The light fades and the girl’s cries cease—she slumps flat against the floor with a gasping breath. Grantaire takes his hands off her and watches her carefully as she raises a hand to her mouth, prodding at her gums with shaky fingers and finding no hidden fangs. She stares up at him with wide eyes.

“It’s gone?” she asks him.

Grantaire nods at her, a smile pulling irresistibly at his mouth. Her soul is pure and clear and human, the blood in her veins utterly mortal.

“You fixed me?” Her eyes are pooling with tears again, but not from fear this time.

“I told you that you’d be okay,” he says, as if it had never been in any doubt.

She doesn’t seem to care that he himself clearly isn’t human, or that she’d seen him decapitate over thirty vampires, or that what he’d just done to her must have hurt like hell, and she makes this clear by sitting up and throwing her arms around his neck. Grantaire is taken aback for a moment, and then he laughs quietly and pats her on the back.

He hears the approaching sirens, then—still distant, but very much a warning to wrap things up here.

“Listen,” he says to the girl. “You can forget all about this, if you want. It’ll be like it never happened.”

She pulls back to look at him curiously. 

“How?” she asks.

“Do you want to?”

“Yes, but—”

“Don’t worry about how,” he tells her. “Just close your eyes, okay? This one won’t hurt, I promise.”

She obeys, and he touches two fingers to her forehead and takes her memories and her consciousness. He catches her and lays her down gently next to the other humans.

The sirens are louder now. Grantaire turns and sees Enjolras watching him, with a look he can’t quite put a name to. Perturbed? Wary? He decides he doesn’t have time to figure it out.

“We need to go,” he says quietly. He walks to where Enjolras is, since he seems disinclined to move, and flicks a hand in the direction of the dead vampires as he goes, immolating their bodies and reducing them to ash. He touches Enjolras’s arm and takes them back to where they started, on the other side of town. He doesn’t want to go back to Combeferre’s just yet. Enjolras doesn’t remark on it. He seems to have other things on his mind.

“You saved her,” he says instead. He’s looking at Grantaire with a furrowed brow and uncertain eyes. “That girl.”

Grantaire just shrugs.

“How? She was already turned, I saw the fangs, she…”

“She hadn’t fed yet,” Grantaire says. “They’re still a little bit human until they drink human blood for the first time. I didn’t know if it would be enough but…” He shrugs again. “I didn’t want to kill her unless I had no other choice.”

There’s a lengthy silence between them. It occurs to Grantaire that he doesn’t know where Enjolras had the Enochian spell he’d shared tattooed. He certainly can’t see it anywhere obvious. He knows that Enjolras’s anti-possession tattoo is on his chest, above his heart, and wonders if it’s there. Wonders if Enjolras had felt relieved, having it etched permanently into his skin.

“About Majorca…” Enjolras starts suddenly.

“It doesn’t matter,” Grantaire says. When Enjolras looks at him incredulously he continues: “Well, it doesn’t, does it? You only have my word for what happened, and as you and Combeferre keep kindly reminding me, that isn’t worth anything these days. If you want to believe I left you there to bleed out, I can’t stop you.”

Enjolras drops his gaze and says nothing. His soul is inscrutable; an uncomfortable swirl of too many things.

“There’s something you should know, though,” Grantaire says.

“What?” Enjolras says quietly.

“The spell I gave to Combeferre. It keeps me, and any other angel, from finding you, but—” Grantaire sighs. “But, my sword. I always know where it is. I can’t not know; it’s part of me. I can always find the sword, so if you have it, then I can find you. I thought I should tell you.”

Enjolras’s hand goes almost automatically for the pocket in his coat where he keeps the blade concealed.

“Please keep it.” Grantaire doesn’t look at him as he says it; can’t bear to. He looks at the ground and ponders whether going to his knees would do his entreaty any good. “Please. You need it. I won’t use it. I won’t come to you unless you call. I promise.”

Another long, pinched silence.

“Alright,” Enjolras says at last.

Grantaire nods.

“You should report back to Combeferre,” he says. He dares to look up, meets Enjolras’s eyes just briefly. “I hope you got what you came for.”

With a quick touch of two fingers to Enjolras’s forehead, Grantaire sends him directly back to Combeferre’s apartment, alone. He thinks dully, as he stands alone on the edge of the indifferent little town, that neither Enjolras or Combeferre knew he could do that, and it’s likely to be another thing he’ll be forced to explain.

He goes back to Jehan’s house, unable to bear the thought of facing Combeferre and the debrief and Enjolras’s sharp-edged mistrust, and for the first time, he lands in his room instead of the living room, and he shuts the door. He thinks about what Jehan had said, about wanting to be alone but in a place that was safe and his, and he finally understands. He lies down on the bed, curled on his side, and stares at nothing. He doesn’t think he’s ever felt so small. It does no good to remind himself that he is immense and powerful, that he is ancient and has been through worse—surely so many things that have gone before had been worse than this? And yet, nothing that had gone before had ever felt like this, had ever been truly his. He’s seen horrors and atrocities, has contributed to both, but there had always been a certain detachment; a certain amount of angelic lack of feeling. This is a tiny, personal tragedy, his very first, and he hurts. He’s learned a lot of new feelings since meeting Enjolras, has learned new depths of feeling he hadn’t been aware he’d been capable of. This is just one more, he supposes. It makes sense, in a cruel, cosmic way, that he can’t learn love without learning heartbreak.

It’s a grim realisation, that Enjolras really might never forgive him, might never think of him as anything but a deceitful, heartless creature that justifies its existence by being a useful and efficient killer. He wrestles with it, tries to master the gaping, raw misery the concept awakens in him.

He can faintly hear Jehan’s thoughts nearby, and can tell by their worried fluctuations that Jehan can hear his, too. He feels Jehan getting nearer, and then the door to his room opens, and he’s ready to protest but Jehan does not come inside—only his arms make a brief appearance through the gap, holding Minerva. He drops her gently on the floor and then retreats. Minerva looks puzzled and a little disgruntled by her sudden relocation, but upon noticing Grantaire, she clearly decides to make the best of it and trots over and hops up next to him on the bed. Grantaire can’t suppress a small smile as she butts him with her head. His whole being gives a warm thrum of appreciation for Jehan, and he hopes he can feel it.

He lies there for a long time—so long, in fact, that Minerva eventually becomes thoroughly bored and yowls at the door to be released, and he obliges her, and then lies back down and thinks some more. He thinks about Jehan, smiling and dancing around his living room with Minerva in his arms, even as his soul ached.

He makes a decision.

He digs in his pockets. One of the few things he'd had on his person when he'd fled Majorca had been one of the dubious credit cards Combeferre had issued to him and Enjolras. He finds it now and turns it over in his hands, wondering if it still works. He goes to find out.

When he lands outside the nearest shop, he's mildly surprised to find it dark outside, and the place closed up. It seems he'd been brooding even longer than he'd thought. He jumps a few time zones over and tries again. This time he is successful, and it doesn't take him long to find what he's looking for. Long enough, however, that his absence is noticed—he's just stepping back outside when a worried-sounding prayer from Jehan reaches him. He hurries back to the house to find Jehan pacing the living room in his pyjamas. His soul floods with relief when Grantaire touches down.

"Oh, there you are," he says, coming over and pulling him into a tight hug. "I thought you'd gone off running again."

"I'm sorry, I thought you were sleeping." Grantaire returns the hug with one arm, the other holding a carrier bag containing his recent purchases.

"What happened? And where did you go? Are you alright?" Jehan pulls back to look him up and down, and Grantaire can feel him fretfully pressing at his mind for answers. Grantaire allows him free access; offers up all the events of the day with nothing held back.

“Oh,” Jehan says in soft surprise, his eyes distant and unfocused as he combs through the offered memories. “You saw him.”

“Yeah.” Grantaire lets out something that could maybe be loosely described as a laugh.

He watches as Jehan takes it all in, as his brow creases in puzzlement, as he winces and skips over the worst of the gory vampire killing, and finally as he closes his eyes as if watching the ensuing fight causes him real physical pain.

“That was wonderful that you managed to heal that girl,” he says finally. He opens his eyes, focused on the outside world once again, and offers Grantaire a sympathetic smile. “You gave her back her whole life. That’s really wonderful.”

Grantaire nods wordlessly. Jehan sighs.

“I wish I could see Enjolras,” he says. “I wish I could get just a glimpse of what he’s thinking.”

“He told me what he was thinking,” Grantaire says with a humourless smile.

“Yes,” Jehan agrees. “But there’s more to it than that.” He pauses a moment, then clasps Grantaire’s free hand. “I know it must feel like it went horribly—”

“Are you going to tell me it didn’t? ” Grantaire asks in disbelief.

“Well. No,” Jehan concedes. “But—you asked the right question. You got him to talk about what was making him so angry. That’s something.”

Grantaire drops his forehead onto Jehan’s shoulder. It’s strange, having someone—a human, no less—that he can go to for such simple physical comfort as this. It’s even stranger that he finds it comforting.

“He thought I just left him there,” he mumbles. “Does he think I don’t care about him at all?”

“I think that he doesn’t know what to think, or what to believe,” Jehan says. “It’s really hard for me to imagine how this all seems to him, or to Combeferre, or to any normal person who couldn’t see the real you from the moment they saw you. It’s so easy for me to be sure that I can trust you, and that you’re on our side and care about us. It must be so much harder for them. Especially Enjolras.”

“I know,” Grantaire says. “I wish I could prove it to him, somehow.”

“I think you did a better job today than you think you did,” Jehan tells him. “He isn’t going to come around overnight, but—I think you’re getting better at this.”

“Mm,” Grantaire says, unconvinced.

“So where did you run off to just now?” Jehan asks, prodding at his mind again. Grantaire provides him with a more simple answer by reaching into his carrier bag and pulling out the new sketchbook he’d just bought. Jehan blinks at it, then smiles.

“I decided I like making things,” Grantaire says by way of explanation. “And that—I should maybe start doing more of what I like.”

Jehan’s smile widens.

“I agree,” he says with a pleased nod.

“Maybe you could show me how to make other things, too,” Grantaire says with a shrug.

“Of course,” Jehan says. “Every type of jam you can imagine.”

“It seems like things are going to be bad for...a while, maybe,” Grantaire says slowly, running his fingers over the sketchbook’s smooth red cover. “We can’t go back, Enjolras and I. And going forward doesn’t necessarily mean things will get better between us. But…” He pauses and frowns, trying to find a way to put into words his reasoning behind dashing off to buy art supplies. “But for once, I’d like to try to be okay. To find a way to come through it, instead of running away or drinking myself stupid or…”

Jehan touches his hand, and Grantaire is reminded that he doesn’t need to put it into words; that Jehan understands.

“Good,” Jehan says, and then they say no more about it, because they don’t need to.

Chapter Text

~

Grantaire isn't sure what to expect when he reports to Combeferre the morning after the vampire hunt, and within about ten seconds of touching down, he becomes aware that Combeferre is in a similar state of apprehension. He's on his feet when Grantaire arrives and appears to have been walking the room restlessly, frowning at his phone. He pauses mid-step and looks up at Grantaire's typically abrupt appearance, and they regard each other for a moment of strange, heavy silence. They'd established a certain routine of their own over the last month or so, something resembling a norm, and yesterday had been...Well. They both know it had been weird, and judging by Combeferre's faint grimace, they both know it hadn't gone particularly well.

Enjolras is not present. Grantaire isn't sure if he's disappointed or relieved.

"Enjolras reported back to you, I suppose?" Grantaire says finally. "With his, uh. Observations."

"Ah, yes."

"Good, then I won't bore you by repeating it all." Grantaire really doesn't want to hear what Enjolras had said, either—doesn't want to know what he'd thought of the bloodbath, or Grantaire's thunderous loss of composure. "I just wanted to tell you—I need a few days. Of not hunting, I mean. I need to…” He presses his lips together, all too aware of the feeling of his depleted Grace flickering inside him. "I need to lie low. I over-stretched myself."

Combeferre's eyes flick briefly upwards, as if he expects a garrison of angels to descend upon them right here in his living room, or as if he's concerned someone up there might be listening. 

"Were you noticed?" he asks, and Grantaire snorts.

"No. If I had been, I'd be a pile of ash and Enjolras would have had to get the train back to Paris," he says. "I'm pretty sure I got away with it but—it was close. It was almost too much. Doesn't hurt to keep my head down for a little while, and take my time recharging."

"Well, I've no objection. You've certainly done more than your fair share for the week," Combeferre says. He shakes his head. "Thirty vampires, huh? I'm having to constantly re-evaluate my understanding of your capabilities."

"I told you vampires aren't that powerful."

"It wasn't killing the vampires that used too much power, though, was it?" Combeferre asks.

"No, your knives handled them," Grantaire says with a shrug. "Though I'm afraid I broke one."

"Enjolras told me about the girl."

"I assumed he would."

“You never mentioned that you could...that you have the ability to…”

“I didn’t know, really.” Grantaire shrugs again. “It’s not something I’ve ever had cause to try before. Honestly, I wasn’t sure it would work. I thought it might just kill her. But—we probably would have ended up having to kill her anyway. It seemed worth at least trying.”

“And it worked,” Combeferre says. “You saved her.”

Grantaire, for lack of any idea of what else to do, shrugs for a third time.

“And it cost you,” Combeferre persists, as if he wants Grantaire to say something about it. Grantaire doesn’t know what he wants to hear.

"It could have cost me," he says slowly. "But it didn't. It's fine."

"Just because you didn't get caught doesn't mean it didn't…" Combeferre seems to give up mid-sentence. "I'm just...It was very selfless of you. To risk your own safety to try and save her, when you weren't even sure if it would work."

"You would've done the same, if you could," Grantaire says. "Enjolras would have done the same."

"But, of course, neither of us would have had the luxury of the choice," Combeferre says. "And—well, you had the choice, but…"

"But it isn't the one you would have expected me to make?" Grantaire suggests. Combeferre throws an exasperated look his way.

"You know, I think you tell me a lot of things about your kind that don't actually apply to you ," he says. "But you make them sound like universal traits."

"I told you at the start that I don't hate humans, or want to hurt them, if that's the kind of thing you mean."

"Not wanting to hurt us isn't the same as being willing to lose everything to save just one of us."

Grantaire shifts uncomfortably. "I didn't really think about it like that. I just did it."

“Yes, that’s sort of the point.”

Grantaire thinks he really needs to leave. He’d expected to be excused as soon as he explained he wasn’t going to be of use for the next few days, not for Combeferre to take it upon himself to interrogate his morals and motives without even starting a new recording on his laptop to warn Grantaire that such a thing was forthcoming.

“I’ll see you in a few days,” he says.

“Alright.” Combeferre graciously accepts this unsubtle hint that Grantaire would like the conversation to be over. “Thank you for everything you did yesterday.”

It pulls Grantaire up short, being thanked by Combeferre for a second time. He definitely doesn’t know what to say in response to it, so he really should just go and spare them both. He should, and he fully intends to—but he lingers, standing there in the silence of his own making until Combeferre gives him a questioning sort of look.

"Did you know why he really wanted to come with me?" Grantaire asks him, almost before he’s even realised that it’s what he wants to ask.

"Enjolras? Yes." Combeferre doesn't look apologetic, exactly, but nor does he look proud of his part in the set-up. "To gather evidence for his theory about the djinn. I—did tell him that it was a bad idea, and that he should talk to you if he wanted answers. But he wanted to see for himself."

Grantaire nods. "Because I lie."

"That was his argument, yes." Combeferre pauses. "Though it would seem that, even though what he saw seemed to support his own theory about what happened, his conclusions were still wrong."

"Ah, but we only have my word for that," Grantaire says with a humourless smile. "Maybe I did leave him there to bleed in order to save face. How will anyone ever know for sure?"

"I know you didn't," Combeferre says, simply and without hesitation. Grantaire blinks at him.

"Oh, you do?" he says.

"Yes."

"I'm sure you have a terribly unsentimental line of reasoning behind this," Grantaire says, "but thank you anyway."

“There are a lot of things about you that I can’t figure out,” Combeferre says. “But there are a few things I’m sure about, and one of them is that you don’t want Enjolras to get hurt. You gave him a literal part of yourself to ensure he’s as well-defended as he can be. I can’t believe that you would have allowed him to be in such prolonged danger if you’d really been able to stop it.”

“...I don’t want you to get hurt, either, you know,” Grantaire says, doing his utmost to speak normally around the absurd lump in his throat. It’s not trust that Combeferre is offering, not exactly; it’s a conclusion pulled from logic, from having weighed the evidence—it is, as Grantaire himself had said, unsentimental—but something about the surety of it is such a desperate relief. Grantaire had wondered if anyone besides Jehan would ever be sure of anything about him again, besides his propensity for deceit.

“Let’s not pretend Enjolras isn’t somewhat favoured, in that regard,” Combeferre says, but he looks closer to amused than offended about it.

“He’s…” Grantaire doesn’t know why he bothers opening his mouth; he has no idea what he wants to say, how to even begin to explain the scalding, all-encompassing protectiveness he feels for Enjolras—the fathomless terror that consumes him at the thought of him hurt or lost or dead. “He’s just…”

He shakes his head sharply and presses his lips tightly together before he says something that would have Combeferre’s jaw on the floor, like I love him in a way that I didn’t even know I was capable of loving before I met him. I’m only supposed to love in worship and obedience and duty. I was never meant to know tenderness, or longing. I didn’t know what it was to see the whole universe in one person.

“There’s something that I explained to Enjolras that I think you might benefit from hearing, too,” Combeferre says. “I realised that, actually, it was much easier for me to begin to suspect you weren’t human during the year you two travelled together, because I had the benefit of distance. I didn’t spend a lot of time with you as a person; all I could consider was the information that the two of you passed along to me, and what I could glean through my own deduction. And looking at the facts alone—well, it didn’t matter how good you were at acting human. Some things just didn’t add up. Most notably, as I mentioned when I first had to show my hand, the absurdly low number of injuries the two of you were getting.”

“I knew I should have let us take more of a beating.” Grantaire gives an exaggerated sigh.

“But,” Combeferre goes on. “But, at the same time, that distance—It makes it easier for me to begin trusting you again, now. Learning the truth was a shock, don’t get me wrong, but…” He sighs. “Enjolras, he...He didn’t just trust you as a fellow hunter. He considered you a friend. He felt close to you.”

“Did he tell you that?” Grantaire asks, startled, and Combeferre snorts.

“Enjolras doesn’t tell people things like that. But I know him too well by now not to notice,” he says. “What I’m saying is that it will be much more difficult for you to rebuild his trust in you, because there was a great deal more trust to be damaged in the first place.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Honestly, I don’t know.” Combeferre shakes his head with a wry smile. “Just yesterday I told Enjolras I wouldn’t get involved with whatever is going on between the two of you. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that both of you seem pretty miserable, and maybe you’d be less so if you managed to repair things between you somewhat. And to do that, you at least need to know what you’re up against.”

Grantaire studies him. Combeferre’s soul is always much more straightforward and even-tempered than Enjolras’s, and it holds steady as ever now, calm and without any indication of deception or ulterior motive.

“Telling me that makes it seem like you think we could—repair things,” Grantaire says slowly. “Or even that you think we should. That I should.”

“It benefits no one, the two of you being on bad terms,” Combeferre points out.

“I know that, but…” Grantaire trails off. But do you think I deserve it? he wants to ask. Do you think I deserve the chance to fix it, to be his friend again?

He finds he can’t ask it. He supposes he’s afraid that the answer will be a resounding no; that Combeferre merely wants them to be civil coworkers, or to at least stop bringing their hostilities into his apartment.

“Just something to think about,” Combeferre says, as if Grantaire hasn’t already considered at great and agonising length the exact magnitude of the task of redeeming himself in Enjolras’s eyes. Grantaire gives a jerky nod and finally takes his leave.

Jehan is delighted to have him at a loose end for a few days. Their foray into jam-making had laid rather bare the fact that, in all his time on Earth, Grantaire has never attempted anything of an even vaguely culinary nature. Why would he? He doesn’t need to eat, and indulging his wants has only recently seemed to have taken on any sort of importance, and he’s never had human friends before who might appreciate him having some semblance of cooking skills. Jehan has declared this both unacceptable and a very exciting opportunity for learning, and he starts roping Grantaire in to help him prepare meals. Grantaire proves himself to be staggeringly lacking in natural aptitude; he is almost impressively disastrous in everything he does at first. Jehan is very kind and patient and does not laugh; he looks quite taken aback when Grantaire does laugh, and with real mirth rather than any kind of self-deprecation. He just thinks there’s something amazing about it—about being clueless and clumsy and bad at something. He doesn’t think he’s ever been bad at anything before, except perhaps navigating human relationships, but that’s less concrete than setting Jehan’s smoke detector off after frying some onions to cinders. He’s never had to learn a skill, because he’d been brought into creation with all the skills he’d ever been expected to need already built-in and instinctive, but as he makes a third attempt at flipping a pancake and finds the cooked side not completely blackened, he thinks, look, I’m capable of learning , and maybe that means that the things he was pre-programmed to do with unforgiving precision aren’t all that he’s good for.

There’s also something about the indignity of being an immortal, horribly powerful celestial being struggling with a skill that most humans have at least a basic grasp of by adolescence. It’s a reminder that not all of him is powerful and perfect in the worst possible way. It’s humbling, and new, and very, very funny. He wishes Enjolras could see him picking pieces of eggshell out of his sad attempt at an omelette. He thinks something like that, more than any amount of words, might help Enjolras understand.

“Most people get frustrated when they’re bad at something they’re new to,” Jehan remarks when they sit down to eat some lunch, which Grantaire had ruined and Jehan had salvaged. “You have a good attitude about it.”

“You sound surprised,” Grantaire says.

“Well, you’re so quick to beat yourself up, usually,” Jehan points out with a smile.

Grantaire draws a lot, too. He doesn’t remember ever being bad at drawing, which he supposes means that it really was something the human his vessel originally belonged to had done; something practiced so much that the body remembers. He isn’t sure how to feel about that. But when Jehan comes upon him finishing up a sketch of Minerva and practically squeals and begs to be allowed to frame it and put it on the wall, it’s impossible to feel like it’s entirely a bad thing.

With Jehan's encouragement, he pins a few sketches up on the wall of his room; one of Minerva, one of the view of the garden from the kitchen window, one of the aftermath of one of his cooking lessons (which he had cleaned up after committing it to paper). Jehan starts bringing things to his room, too—a scented candle, a potted plant, a string of lights—and asking Grantaire if he likes them, and if so, where he wants to put them. This confuses Grantaire up until the moment he has the conscious realisation that Jehan's house feels like Jehan, and that isn't just an accident. Jehan had made the space his own, and now he's encouraging Grantaire to do the same.

He feels Jehan poking around absently in his head one day when they’re both sitting on the sofa, Grantaire drawing and Jehan knitting a brightly-coloured scarf. Grantaire wonders if he should ask Jehan to teach him that next; wonders what kinds of horrible, misshapen things he could produce.

“What’re you looking for?” he asks finally, amused.

“Do you…” Jehan sighs and frowns faintly. “You like stories, right? You’re always wanting to hear people’s stories.”

“Sure.”

“But what about other kinds of stories? Like, ones that aren’t true, exactly, but humans came up with them so there’s still, you know, a part of them in there?”

“What are you asking, Jehan?”

“Do you watch movies? Or read books? I can’t see. Is that kind of thing interesting to you?”

“Oh, the new kinds of stories.” Grantaire nods. He’s perused many books over the years, and snuck into a few movie theatres, first out of curiosity and later just for something to do, and he pulls a few of the memories to the forefront of his mind for Jehan’s benefit. “I’ve dabbled.”

There’s an odd silence; Grantaire eventually looks up to find Jehan looking at him incredulously.

“What?” he says.

“Did you just call movies and books new?” Jehan asks. Grantaire frowns, and blinks, and then sees where their wires are getting crossed and laughs.

“I watched you guys develop writing systems in real time,” he reminds Jehan. “The invention of the printing press was like, last week, in the grand scheme of things.”

“Oh my God,” Jehan says.

“Movies literally just happened.”

“Oh my God .” Jehan lets his head fall back and rest against the back of the sofa as he laughs helplessly. “Are mass-published paperbacks scary and new-fangled to you? Do you long for the good old days of inscribed stone tablets?”

“Illuminated manuscripts were where it was at,” Grantaire says, enjoying his amusement.

“You’re going to lose your mind when I tell you about e-readers.”

“I know what an e-reader is.”

“I’m picturing you trying to work a phone or a tablet like someone’s poor grandpa.”

“I’m pretty sure you’ve seen me use a phone just fine.” Grantaire nudges him with his elbow. “I learn how to blend in by watching humans, remember? Kind of hard not to learn how to use a phone; you guys never put those things down.”

Jehan laughs harder, tipping over and leaning against Grantaire’s side and wheezing for breath.

“Humans these days and their phones,” he manages to gasp out. “Back in my day, humans tilled the land and were content.”

“Shut up, tiny human,” Grantaire tells him, though he is powerless to stop himself from grinning right along with him. “Why do you ask, anyway?”

“Oh.” Jehan’s laughter quietens down to occasional giggles. “It’s just that I’m realising that I’m maybe a little—out of touch. With movies, and things.”

“Is Courfeyrac making references that are flying over your head?” Grantaire asks.

“That’s kind of exactly it,” Jehan snorts. “It’s not really surprising; I’ve always been kind of isolated from other people my age. My parents made me go to school for a few years, but I had even less control over my abilities back then and it just wasn’t bearable, and eventually even my parents had to accept that. So then I was homeschooled. And then when I was sixteen I moved here, and my only company was the ghost of an old lady. It’s no wonder I’m not exactly up to date.”

“Why didn’t your parents come here with you?” Grantaire asks. He’s no expert, but he’s pretty sure sixteen is terribly young, in this country and day and age, for a person to leave home and live alone.

“They...didn’t want to,” Jehan says slowly. His eyes drop pointedly to his knitting. “What they wanted, always, was for me to be normal. They tried everything. But by the time I was sixteen, it was clear that normal just wasn’t on the cards, and when I begged to be allowed to come live in this house, they...let me.”

Grantaire slips an arm around his narrow shoulders and squeezes. “Do you want me to go smite them for you?” he asks. “I’d happily do so.”

Jehan laughs again, though it is considerably less cheerful than before. “No, that’s okay.”

They’re quiet for a little while, dipping in and out of each other’s thoughts, because Grantaire can see that Jehan wants him to know more but doesn’t feel quite up to telling it. And so Grantaire watches, and he sees wretched memories of being in a classroom that had seemed quiet to everyone else but had been agonisingly loud to Jehan; so loud and disorienting and awful that he’d finally fled the room, ignoring the shouts of his teacher, but hadn’t quite made it to the toilets before doubling over and being sick. He sees an endless parade of counsellors and doctors and the claustrophobic inside of an MRI machine. He sees other children by turns jeering and averting their gazes nervously and just being cruel and loud and terrible, and then a large, grey-walled dining room, empty except for Jehan and his new tutor, and the quiet is such a relief—but it’s also so lonely.

“Ah, Jehan.” Grantaire pulls him in more firmly against his side and leans his cheek on the top of his head. “I’ll smite them all for you, just say the word.”

“No smiting,” Jehan scolds.

Then Grantaire sees him coming to this house for the first time, gleans from his memories that it had actually been left to him by—

“Wait, the ghost in this house was related to you?” he says with a blink.

“Hm? Oh, yeah, she was my great-aunt. Did I never mention?” Jehan waves a hand vaguely. “I guess I thought you’d just pick that up, y’know, ambiently. It’s not like I don’t think about her.”

“Must’ve missed it,” Grantaire says, feeling like an idiot.

“Yeah, seems the gift runs in my family, but no one else in the family wants to acknowledge it, so she ended up isolated here, and now it’s my turn,” Jehan says. “I never knew her when she was alive. But she said her powers gave her some sort of premonition about me before she died. That I’d need her, and this house.”

Grantaire sees a lot of happy memories with her here, first during visits and then after Jehan had moved in properly, and then dread pools in his stomach because he knows how this story ends, knows that Enjolras and Feuilly had come here and, being hunters, had seen no alternative but to get rid of her—

“Anyway!” Jehan says, a little too loudly. “The point of all of this is that I have never once known what is cool or current or whatever. But now, if I’m making normal friends who want to talk about normal things—”

“Are you suggesting we bolster our pop culture knowledge together?” Grantaire asks, grinning.

“Only if you want to,” Jehan says. “That’s why I was asking if you’re interested in things like that.”

“I’m already in so deep that I might as well just go for the full human experience now,” Grantaire says with a very serious nod. “Did Courfeyrac have any recommendations on where to begin our education?”

Courfeyrac, as it turns out, has provided a comprehensive spreadsheet of recommendations, with suggestions from the rest of the Lyon contingent as well as his own stalwart opinions on necessary viewing.

“Oh good, it’s a group project,” Grantaire says in amusement, looking at it over Jehan’s shoulder on his laptop screen.

“This thing has multiple tabs,” Jehan says, sounding both impressed and faintly intimidated. The spreadsheet is split into genres, though rather than the more conventional ones, the categories are things like Movies With Lots of Cool Explosions, Movies That Won Lots of Awards And Are Culturally Significant But Look Boring And We’ve Not Actually Seen Them, Movies That Courfeyrac Quotes On The Daily, Joly’s Weird Anime Shit, and Animated Movies That WILL Make You Cry.

“Should we take that last one as a challenge?” Grantaire says with a raised eyebrow.

“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” Jehan says, scrolling down the list. “I actually have seen some of these and they really did make me cry my heart out.”

Grantaire does not scoff outwardly, because that would be rude, but he privately does not think he’s going to be emotionally compromised by films where the characters aren’t even real humans. Jehan, naturally, hears his internal scoffing and just smiles enigmatically.

Grantaire feels fully and safely restored after a few days, but Combeferre doesn’t have any particularly pressing cases that need his attention, and so he and Jehan pass just over a week in strange, domestic peace. One corner of Grantaire’s mind is always fretting, always thinking about Enjolras and Combeferre and circling a terrible, dark thing buried deep, a thing he’s starting to think might need to be faced—but the rest of him is busy with very human things, like learning new skills and developing hobbies and enjoying the uncomplicated pleasure of Jehan’s friendship. He draws so much, especially at night when Jehan is asleep and he craves distraction, that he quickly fills the sketchbook he’d bought—drawing feels urgent, almost like it had when he’d travelled with Enjolras, like he needs to preserve as much of this confusing mixed-up time on paper as he can. A couple of days later, Jehan presents him with a new sketchbook, with many more pages made of much thicker, creamier paper, along with a palette of watercolour paints. The first painting Grantaire does is of Jehan, sitting unawares curled up in his armchair, his hair in a tousled braid draped over his shoulder as he reads a book with deepest concentration. Jehan is simultaneously delighted and horrified with the end result. Grantaire has observed this reaction in many humans when presented with a photograph or artist’s rendition of themselves—as if seeing the objective reality of their own physical selves is a shock to them. He wonders if it’s because humans can’t normally see their own faces. It makes him suddenly aware of how little attention he pays to his vessel’s appearance. He mentions this train of thought to Jehan who, in the interests of science, or something, takes a photo of him on his phone.

“Ooh.” Grantaire wrinkles his nose, looking at the human face on the screen and trying to reconcile himself with it. “It really is weird.”

Jehan laughs and pats him on the shoulder. “If it’s any consolation, I think you have a nice face,” he says.

“Well,” Grantaire says, thinking of his luminescent and, by human standards, indescribable true form. “It’s not exactly my face.”

“You’ve had it for over three thousand years,” Jehan snorts. “I think we can call it yours.”

They make valiant strides into the spreadsheet of recommended movies, too—it becomes something of a routine for them to spend evenings on the couch, catching up on what Courfeyrac and the others consider vital moments in cinema. They both quickly get bored with horror films—the ones featuring ghosts or monsters, anyway, as they aren’t terribly accurate, and it’s hard for a CGI creation to be more scary than the real thing. Jehan does get deeply absorbed in some mopey vampire movie, where the lead character is a tortured soul mourning his lost humanity, though Grantaire, barely a week out from his vampire hunt, is less impressed. Jehan then tumbles briefly down a rabbithole of sympathetic vampire movies, which ends after they watch one called Twilight, which even Jehan agrees was perhaps a step too far. When Courfeyrac finds out that Grantaire is partaking of this pop culture crash-course too, he insists they watch City of Angels, which they get about half an hour into before Grantaire demands they turn it off and burn every copy in existence. They watch a lot of animated films, too—they’re nice to look at, Grantaire concedes, and there’s something warm and comforting about them, though he doesn’t understand why there’s quite so much singing. Jehan sobs through The Lion King, Bambi, and Dumbo, and Grantaire puts an arm around him and lets him wail into his shoulder each time. He definitely does not need Jehan to return the favour at the end of The Iron Giant, because that would be ridiculous.

Enjolras does not call for him, naturally. Grantaire isn’t surprised. He doesn’t hear any updates about him from Combeferre or Lyon, either. And so it’s completely out of the blue when—well.

It’s been a normal night, in all other respects. He and Jehan had watched Jurassic Park, agreed that it was enjoyable even if the dinosaurs didn’t look quite as Grantaire remembers them, and then Jehan had gone to bed. And then it’s dark and quiet, and one second Grantaire is sitting on the sofa, absently petting Minerva, and the next his entire being is assaulted by a terrible cry, uncontrolled and desperate beyond measure—

GRANTAIRE—!

It's a prayer, and a powerful one, fuelled as it is by a flash of intense fear and a snap of sickening pain that he feels a ghostly echo of. Before he can even think straight he's reacting on instinct and flying, following that plea for help to its source.

When he lands, it's in a dark and unfamiliar room, its overturned furniture and stink of blood a testament to recent violence. Grantaire takes in the scene before him. Enjolras is alive. The werewolf he'd been hunting is not—as Grantaire watches, its body slumps to the ground, the handle of his blade jutting from its throat like the stalk of an enormous thorn. It seems it was a close thing, though; Enjolras is on the floor, breathing hard, and he tries to get up but can't get any further than onto his knees. His soul is thrumming with agony, and he's cradling his right arm. Bone shines hideously white in the moonlight streaming through the window. Grantaire goes to him and crouches to see. Enjolras shrinks away from him.

“Why are you here?” he asks. His voice is thin with pain, but steady. “I didn't call you. You're only supposed to come if I call.”

“You did call me,” Grantaire informs him. Enjolras's cry of his name—terrified and unthinking—still echoes through his mind. “Maybe you didn't mean to, but you did.”

Enjolras makes an irritated noise in his throat. It turns into something closer to a whimper when he accidentally jostles his arm.

“That looks bad,” Grantaire says softly.

“It's fine,” Enjolras says through gritted teeth. “I'm fine.”

“You're not fine. Your arm is broken,” Grantaire says patiently. He steals a closer look. “In two places.”

“So call me a cab so I can go to the hospital,” Enjolras says. “It isn't far.”

“Let me heal it,” Grantaire says.

“No,” Enjolras says. His forehead glistens with sweat and his face is waxy-pale, but he fixes Grantaire with a narrowed-eyed look.

“Enjolras—”

“I don't need you,” Enjolras snaps. “I don't need you to fix me.”

“This isn't about me, this is about your snapped bone sticking out through your skin,” Grantaire says, filled with angry disbelief that Enjolras would refuse aid for no reason other than to spite him. “You're in a lot of pain. Stop whatever this is and let me help, please.”

“Everyone has to be in pain sometimes,” Enjolras mutters. “I hardly got hurt the whole year you were with me. If I let you just fix it every time I get hurt now, what does that make me?”

Grantaire barks out a humourless laugh and gets to his feet. Enjolras glares weakly up at him but clearly still lacks the strength to stand.

“Allow me to give you the benefit of my many, many years of observation,” Grantaire says. “Suffering is not noble. It does not build character. It does not make you a better person. Most of the time, pain is just pain, and it does not serve you, and if you have the means of having it taken away and you refuse, then you're just being a stubborn idiot.”

Enjolras opens his mouth to argue, but cuts himself short when Grantaire reaches out and touches two fingers to his forehead. Despite himself, a small sound of relief escapes him when the pulse of Grace heals his arm instantly.

“There,” Grantaire says. “I assume this was some kind of test of obedience. There, I failed. I don't know what you expected. I've already proven I can't follow orders.”

Enjolras bends his elbow a few times, flexes his fingers, appearing almost suspicious of the sudden complete absence of pain. When he seems sure that it's real, he gets slowly to his feet. Grantaire meets his eyes in the dark.

“I'll do whatever you ask,” he says quietly. “But I won't let you suffer.”

“People everywhere are suffering right now,” Enjolras replies.

“I can't help everyone,” Grantaire says. “No one can. Not even me. But I can help you.”

Enjolras gives a sigh before he turns and goes to the werewolf, returned to its human form in death. He plants his foot on its chest and pulls Grantaire's blade from its throat with a horrible wet sound. The blood looks black in the darkness. Enjolras stares down at it for a long moment.

“Let me take you back to your hotel,” Grantaire says.

“I can walk,” Enjolras says. He waves his arm pointedly. “After all, it's not as if I'm injured.”

“Then let me walk with you.”

“Why?” Enjolras's look is somewhere between challenging and pleading. Grantaire doesn't know what he wants him to say, what he's really asking.

“Will you let me?” he asks instead. Enjolras snorts bitterly and turns for the door.

“It's not like I can stop you,” he says. Grantaire supposes it's the closest to permission he's likely to get.

The streets are quiet, Enjolras's pace unforgiving. Grantaire lets him walk slightly ahead, lets him have his space. It had been like this between them in the beginning, he remembers. Then somehow, little by little, they'd closed that gap; they'd learned to walk side by side, close enough to touch but never quite daring to reach out. He wonders what it would take for them to get back to something resembling that now.

Enjolras's hotel is shabby, like so many of the ones they'd shared. Grantaire never thought he'd feel such a swell of nostalgia and longing, looking up at an ugly building with tiny windows and a half-illuminated, flickering neon sign. Enjolras turns to look at him, as if unsure how they are going to proceed now that they've reached their destination. Grantaire can't think of anything to say to him besides entreaties that would be sure to be rejected. In the end Enjolras turns away again and, with a stiff nod, starts up the steps leading to the hotel's entrance.

“Enjolras,” Grantaire calls after him without knowing precisely what he's going to follow up with. He just wants a few more moments of being near him, of being tolerated if not welcomed. Every step away from him that Enjolras takes feels like a dimming of all the lights in the world.

Enjolras looks over his shoulder at him, questioning. His soul quivers with anticipation, but of what, Grantaire can't guess.

“I'm glad you called for me,” Grantaire says finally. He sees Enjolras swallow hard, press his lips into a thin line.

“It was an accident,” he says.

“Yes,” Grantaire agrees. “It was the first thing your mind thought to do. It was instinctive.” He fully realises this only as he says it, and it gives him hope, gives him the courage to press on. “There was a split-second when you were in pain and desperately afraid, and with everything but that stripped away, it—it was me you called for.”

Enjolras looks away, letting Grantaire see nothing but his back and his golden hair. He stands with hunched shoulders, his hands clenched so tightly into fists that his arms are trembling.

“Will you think about that for me, Enjolras?” Grantaire asks him. “Will you think about whether that means something? Anything?”

“Go away, Grantaire,” Enjolras says in a low, choked voice.

“Goodbye,” Grantaire says before he flies.

He returns to Jehan's house. Come morning, he is careful not to let Jehan see what had transpired. He doesn't want to get anyone's hopes up, especially not his own.

~

Combeferre calls him back to work a few days later. Grantaire goes to hunt a demon in northern Italy. Tracking it down proves tricky; its game appears to be possessing someone just long enough to commit a murder or two, and then smoking out to find a new victim, leaving their last vessel to face the consequences, and to scream at the bloody knife in their hand and the disemboweled body in front of them. He's further delayed by this train of victims, because he doesn't think he can just leave them to be arrested and convicted for murders they aren't to blame for. He ends up flying three very distressed and very confused humans back to Paris to be given a quick and rude introduction to the world of the supernatural by Combeferre, who will hopefully be able to help them disappear. They look devastated when they realise they're going to have to leave their entire lives and families behind, and Grantaire sympathises but also thinks it's still a better option than a lifetime of unearned incarceration.

When he finally catches up to the demon, it takes one look at him, realises it stands no chance, and promptly stabs its vessel in the throat in one final act of spite. It could maybe have fled, maybe have escaped, but instead it decides to rob Grantaire of any chance of saving its human host. Grantaire destroys it without satisfaction.

When he returns to Jehan's house late in the evening, Jehan smiles and chatters about what they should have for dinner and what movie they should watch that night, but his soul and his manner are jittery, and his thoughts are unusually guarded. Grantaire does his best to respect his privacy, but even without hearing the specifics of Jehan's thoughts, they have a certain distinctive feel to them that Grantaire recognises—something warm and fond, fairly new but fast becoming familiar.

"Did you talk to Courfeyrac today?" Grantaire asks him, because he can't imagine why that would be a secret. Jehan immediately looks guilty—a flash of memory leaps, unbidden, from behind the shield he has put up, and Grantaire blinks. "Did you go to Lyon?"

"...Yeah." Jehan avoids his eyes and his cheeks go faintly red.

"Why didn't you ask me to take you there?" Grantaire asks, a little put-out at being denied a chance to be helpful.

"I like to travel at my own pace sometimes," Jehan says with a shrug, still not looking at him. "Take in the scenery, you know?"

"Are you alright?" Grantaire asks, puzzled by his suddenly furtive manner. "Did something happen?"

Jehan has to think about it for a minute or so, which Grantaire personally thinks isn’t very encouraging.

“I’m fine, I promise,” he says finally. “Everything’s okay. And I’ll probably tell you all about it at some point. But right now, I just have a feeling like it’s better if I don’t?”

“Well, your feelings are more reliable than most so you’re probably right.” Grantaire is still perplexed, but opts not to push. “As long as you’re okay.”

“I’m sorry,” Jehan says anxiously. “I know it must seem—”

“You’re allowed to not tell me things,” Grantaire says. He thinks guiltily of how effortlessly he’d concealed his meeting with Enjolras from Jehan—he hadn’t had to explain himself or apologise. “I know it’s kind of difficult for us to have secrets from each other but we should probably try to have a few, before we accidentally merge our brains, or something.”

Jehan nods and smiles gratefully, and they don’t talk about it anymore. Grantaire can guess what might have drawn Jehan to Lyon today, and what it is that he doesn’t want to share, and he understands. He knows Jehan is finding the current state of affairs very stressful, because as much as Jehan has strong feelings about things that have been done and said in the midst of all this, he doesn’t want to take sides —doesn’t want to be on bad terms with anyone from the very select group of people he can call friends. Grantaire doesn’t want him to feel like he has to isolate himself out of some show of loyalty; doesn’t want him to feel like there’s anyone he can’t talk to on Grantaire’s account.

Combeferre calls him in again the next morning—in a stroke of unbelievable bad luck, they’ve got word of another demon, this one in Albania. Grantaire looks at the grisly report Combeferre has received from the nearest Watcher and feels his mouth twist. He tells Combeferre to stay in the apartment and to get a devil’s trap ready, and leaves before Combeferre can ask why. When he finds the demon—within a few hours, this time—he hauls it back to Combeferre’s apartment and throws it into the devil’s trap he has dutifully chalked on the wooden floor. Combeferre stares between Grantaire and the hissing, captured demon.

“You should try that Enochian exorcism I taught you,” Grantaire says. “You’ll never know if you’ve got it right unless you try it out.”

Combeferre stares at him some more.

“The vessel is already dead,” Grantaire tells him, not without bitterness. “You don’t need to worry about hurting anyone who doesn’t deserve it.”

Combeferre leaves the room; when he comes back, he’s carrying the notes he’d made during Grantaire’s lessons. He begins the exorcism. He’d taken evident pleasure in learning it, but clearly takes no pleasure in using it, or in the demon’s writhing agony. But neither does the unpleasantness of it faze him—Combeferre has spent his whole life doing ugly jobs that need to be done, and he does not falter. Grantaire corrects his pronunciation a few times and he starts anew each time, until the syllables fall easily and perfectly-formed from his lips, and the demon erupts from its host in a billow of black smoke and is banished back to the Pit. The body looks smaller, once it’s gone.

“I’ll take him somewhere that he’ll be found,” Grantaire says quietly. “So his family can at least...you know.”

Combeferre claps a hand briefly to his shoulder and squeezes in an easy, unthinking moment of camaraderie. Something sizzles outward through Grantaire from the point of contact and lodges uncomfortably behind his ribcage, and he knows, suddenly, what he needs to do.

He takes the body and leaves it close to a hospital near to where he’d encountered the demon, only hoping that it hadn’t taken its vessel too far from home, and then returns to Combeferre’s living room.

“There’s something I want to talk to you about,” he says without preamble, before he can lose his nerve. ‘Want’ isn’t the right word, not at all—he desperately doesn’t want to, in fact, but it feels necessary, like some hideous rite of passage that can be avoided no longer. He’s tired of ducking and hiding and wondering, from his place in the shadows, what anyone would think of this final, ugliest story . So he will tell Combeferre, and Combeferre will pass it on to Enjolras, and then they will both have the full measure of him. He will stand in front of them in full light and know they have seen the absolute worst of him, and they can decide if there is a way forward from there.

“Oh?” Combeferre is not privy to his internal agony, of course, and merely looks mildly interested. Grantaire gestures to his laptop.

“On the record, I mean,” he says.

“Oh, of course.” Combeferre gets that gleam in his eye that anticipates the acquisition of new knowledge. “Just give me a minute to finish up this—”

“Not right now,” Grantaire blurts, and Combeferre falls silent and blinks at the sudden urgency in his voice. “Not—right now. Maybe tomorrow? I want…” His eyes slide away from Combeferre, unable to hold his puzzled gaze. He drums his fingers against the sides of his thighs, then jams them in his pockets to stop them. “I want to bring Jehan.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the little pop of confused surprise in Combeferre’s soul.

“Alright,” Combeferre says slowly after a moment. “But why?”

Grantaire bites the inside of his cheek. He wonders if Combeferre would believe him if he said, because I’m scared; I’m scared half to death and I don’t die easily. He’s not proud of it. It still feels shameful for him to lean on anyone for comfort, especially a human, when he’s so much older and stronger—he should be the one that they can lean upon, these fleeting, mortal creatures, and yet time and again he finds himself grasping for a hand, most often Jehan’s, to hold him up. He was never a child, but he imagines that this must be what a child feels like; weak and helpless and so very afraid.

“He’ll keep me honest,” he answers finally. “It’s—bad, this thing. It might be the worst thing I’ve ever told you, and as you know, that bar is set pretty high. You should hear it told honestly. Not made less awful than it was, but not made more awful, either. I don’t trust myself to—” He laughs weakly. “I don’t want to do what I did the first time we talked, when I gave you the truth but as ugly as I could make it. I want to get it right, so you can get it right when you…”

“When I what?” Combeferre prompts. His expression remains calm but there is a thread of unease weaving its way through his soul.

“When you decide what you think of it,” Grantaire finishes.

“I see.” Combeferre gives a small, wry smile. “Do you like keeping me on tenterhooks?”

“I wanted to forewarn you. To explain,” Grantaire says. “I’ve been putting this off. But you’ve been talking about fixing things and repairing trust and—I don’t think that can happen, not really, until you know everything.”

“Alright.” Combeferre’s smile fades and he regards Grantaire with solemnity. “Alright. Speak to Prouvaire, and let me know when.”

Grantaire nods and takes his leave.

He doesn’t speak to Jehan about it, exactly. When it comes to things like this, things so painful and scary and tangled-up, it’s easier if they don’t speak—if they instead just sit, silent and clasping hands, and let their shared thoughts swirl and intertwine until they understand each other perfectly.

“Are you sure?” Jehan asks quietly, after listening this way for a long time.

“No,” Grantaire says with a faint, dry smile as his thoughts chorus yes, yes, I have to.

“You don’t owe it to them,” Jehan says. “You don’t owe it to anyone.”

“I think I need them to know,” Grantaire says. “If I don’t tell them, then—whatever I manage to build with either of them, it would feel fake, like it would still topple if they found out—”

“Alright,” Jehan says softly, curling close to him and wrapping him in a hug that he gratefully returns. “Alright, we’ll go tomorrow.”

“Do you think—?” Grantaire starts to ask, then cuts himself off, ashamed.

“Yes,” Jehan answers anyway. “I think Combeferre will understand.”

~

The next morning, Jehan is relentlessly cheerful, and his thoughts seem to have been flipped to a new setting, one with the solitary purpose of projecting encouragement and reassurance. Every time Grantaire focuses in on his mind, it’s like getting hit in the face with a warm, fluffy blanket. It doesn’t help overly much, though. He sits on the sofa, tense and silent, while Jehan bustles about his usual morning routine, and he refuses the offer of breakfast. He has never had the delightful mortal experience of vomiting, but he thinks if it was ever going to happen, it would be today.

Jehan gets ready quickly, which is both a mercy and a truly dreadful thing, because while the waiting feels unendurable, even that is somehow better than the pulse of absolute dread that goes through him when Jehan comes to stand in front of him, ready to go, and there is no further reason for delay.

“Come on.” Jehan gives him a kind smile and holds out his hand. “Let’s go.”

I can’t, Grantaire wants to say, I can’t do it, I can’t. But he’s already said that he will do it, so he gets to his feet and takes Jehan’s hand and flies them to Combeferre’s living room. He’s waiting for them, of course.

“Good morning,” he greets them. There’s a humming nervousness to his soul, most likely put there by Grantaire’s cryptic forewarning yesterday, but he offers them both a smile. “Am I the only one you haven’t taken as a passenger on one of your flights yet, Grantaire? You’ll have to correct that sometime.”

“Nice to see you, Combeferre,” Jehan says, because he can tell that Grantaire does not have the capacity for niceties right now.

“You too, Prouvaire,” Combeferre replies. 

Jehan shoots Grantaire a long-suffering look. “He won’t call me Jehan. It’s so exhausting.”

Combeferre blinks, then laughs a little. “Sorry,” he says. “I always forget.”

“You’re far too professional,” Jehan accuses him.

“Well,” Combeferre says, gesturing to his laptop, set up and ready to record, “this is work, of a sort.”

“Mm, I don’t think so. Not really.” Jehan moves towards the couch as he says it, tugging Grantaire along with him and down onto the cushions.

“No?” Combeferre raises his eyebrows, his gaze sliding from Jehan to Grantaire, who feels like he’ll shrivel under it.

“...I don’t think anything I have to tell you today is useful data, exactly,” Grantaire says at length. “So I suppose in that way, this isn’t really…”

“It’s just a conversation, between friends,” Jehan says. Combeferre looks faintly alarmed by this statement. Something in Jehan’s sweet, freckled face dares him to refute it and he, apparently, does not dare.

“What is it you want to talk about, Grantaire?” Combeferre asks.

Jehan reaches over and squeezes Grantaire’s hand, and it loosens the painfully tight feeling in his throat just enough to let him answer.

“I want to tell you why I left Heaven,” he says.

Combeferre sits down in the armchair opposite them, on the other side of the coffee table, and hits record.

~

Grantaire: It’s hard to know where to start.

Combeferre: How do you mean?

G: It didn’t just happen, I didn’t...When I decided to run, it felt like I decided all at once, but I think that decision had been building for a long time.

Prouvaire: Take your time. Start at the start.

[Pause.]

G: Last time, I told you about how it all started. How it all went bad, I mean.

C: Lucifer.

G: Yes.

C: And then your Father leaving.

G: Yes. For a long time, the archangels claimed He still spoke to them; that He was giving the orders and instructions. I know now that wasn’t true. If it had been, Michael wouldn’t have got so...desperate.

C: Desperate?

G: He thought that if we did everything exactly right, maybe dad would come back and everything would be good again. And that meant watching over the Earth, and striking down Lucifer’s demons, and— [Pause.] You know, I don’t think ‘punishing sinners’ was ever actually in dad’s instructions from before, but it sure got added in there with gusto. There was so much anger, and fear. They must have felt so lost. Not that it justifies it.

C: Justifies what?

G: It was too easy for them to twist up what it meant for us to do everything right, to be perfect. They blamed the humans for everything that had gone wrong. Lucifer made his choice by himself but they still blamed the humans. And they…

[Pause.]

P: Grantaire?

G: You have to understand why I obeyed for so long. It’s what I was made to do, for one thing, and they told us the orders came from our Father, they told us, and they were the archangels, none of us ever thought we’d have reason to doubt them. I never thought they’d lie. It didn’t even occur to me. They weren’t meant to.

C: But they did.

G: It was the way they packaged it. They would pit two groups of humans against each other—two tribes, two cities, two countries, whatever —and then they’d tell us...They’d point to one group of humans and say, these are good and faithful and worthy, and they’d point to the others and say, and these are sinners and heretics. So it was alright for us to rain plague or fire or whatever brand of suffering upon them. It was about protecting the right humans; we were doing it because we loved them, just like our Father told us to.

[Pause.]

G: It was all bullshit. They didn’t care about any of them. It was always just an excuse.

P: You couldn’t have known. [Pause.] You all looked to them. They were supposed to guide you. You trusted them and they betrayed you. That isn’t your fault.

G: You’re right, the people screaming as they burned alive wasn’t enough of a hint that what we were doing was wrong.

P: Grantaire.

[Pause.]

G: Sorry.

P: Do you want to keep going?

G: It started in the usual way. Defending the good and worshipful humans from the evil ones. It was in Egypt. It was… [Pause.] You’ll know this story, Combeferre. Most everyone knows it. The Exodus.

[Long pause.]

C: Go on.

G: It was never really about saving or freeing anyone. They said it was but it wasn’t. The Egyptians had made their own pantheon of gods, and my family was bored and pissed off and decided to make them pay for it. I think maybe they just wanted to show off. To remind everyone of what we could do, of how much we could hurt them if we felt like it. I think they just wanted to cause as much suffering as they could, and to make sure the survivors knew to be afraid of us.

[Pause.]

G: It was the same as all the other times, at first. Turning the water to blood was a little more ghoulish than our usual style of divine punishment, but it seemed...apt. These bad humans had inflicted so much pain on our good humans, had spilled so much blood, so this was just, right? It was righteous. But then…

[Pause.]

G: But then it just kept going.

C: Nine more after that, I believe.

G: Number six was when I started to get—when I started to wonder—

C: Remind me what the sixth Plague was?

G: Boils. Everyone wailing and writhing in pain and— [Pause.] The thing is, the humans had given up long before that. They’d begged mercy and sworn to do whatever we asked. But it didn’t stop. It didn’t stop and I realised it wasn’t about freeing our good humans, because if it was then it would have been over, but the orders kept coming and it kept going and then—And then.

C: And then.

G: I…

C: What did you do?

P: Combeferre.

C: What?

P: Be quiet, please.

G: They told us what was coming. What the final Plague would be, and when, and what we all had to do.

[Pause.]

[Faint static.]

G: Children. I thought they couldn’t possibly mean it. I was just that stupid. I thought...But they did mean it. Those were the orders. The Plagues were an experiment, I think. To see how far we could go.

[Long pause.]

C: And you…?

G: No.

C: No?

G: No.

[Pause.]

G: I deserted. I disobeyed. I...

[Static.]

C: Grantaire?

G: [Unintelligible.]

C: What?

G: I disobeyed. You don't understand, we're not supposed to do that, we're not supposed to be able to do that, it's unthinkable, it’s—

[Prolonged loud static.]

G: [Faint.] Sorry. Sorry, I… [Static fades.] There. Sorry.

P: It’s okay. It’s okay.

[Long pause.]

C: You didn’t do it. The final Plague.

G: I ran.

C: Why?

G: Why?

C: Children must have been killed in the other Plagues, and in other instances of heavenly judgement.

G: Not like that. Not like…[Pause.] Everything had started feeling wrong long before. But I tried—I stayed faithful. I tried to believe it was all part of the plan. But Egypt…[Pause.] They wanted to see how far we could go. And I found how far I could go. It felt like—like something broke in me. Obeying was impossible. Disobeying was...It was…[Pause.] I knew it meant losing everything. Losing what it even meant to be who and what I was.

P: But you did it.

G: Battles between angels and demons were more common back then. Lucifer’s first and most powerful demons were still roaming the Earth, and we—A group of us clashed with them, a few days before we were to enact the tenth Plague. Two of my brothers were killed. I remember wishing that I’d be killed, too, because then I wouldn’t have to...But I wasn’t brave enough to just let them kill me. I wasn’t there yet. But I thought— [Pause.] It was the most terrifying moment of my life up until that point, when I had the thought to run. To go against what I’d been told and…[Pause.] I wondered if that was how Lucifer had felt. I wondered if I was like him.

P: You’re not. Grantaire, you’re not.

G: As the fight was ending, I left my vessel and let it fall. My brothers didn’t even notice that—When we die, our wings burn up, and leave an imprint where we fall. But they didn’t notice, or check, or...The idea of one of us deserting was so unimaginable that it never even occurred to them. I waited until they were gone. And then I returned to my vessel and I…

C: And you ran.

G: And I ran.

C: You...When you said you wanted to talk about this, you said it was bad, you made it sound like you had done something terrible but—you didn’t do it. You realised it was terrible and you didn’t do it. So why are you…?

G: Because I ran. I didn’t stop it. I didn’t stop it. I hid and I tried not to hear but I heard. I told you the Bible is inaccurate in a lot of ways, but it got this part right. And there shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as never was before or ever will be again. I heard it. I felt those little lives snuffed out and I ran and hid and I didn’t stop it.

P: You couldn’t have stopped it, Grantaire. Just like you couldn’t have stopped their attempted apocalypse. You were alone.

G: What if I could have saved just one? What if I’d gone back and—

P: Grantaire.

[Long pause.]

G: And then I was lost. I was made as a protector and then made into a soldier and I knew nothing else. All I knew was orders, a finger pointing at a target and a voice saying destroy . And suddenly the thought of ever hearing an order like that again made me want to scream. I thought I’d drive my blade through my own core if anyone ever tried to make me do that again. But without that, I was nothing. I was nothing for such a long time—

~

Combeferre shuts his laptop.

Something about the sudden movement and the soft sound of it snaps Grantaire out of the horrible past and back to the present. He becomes once again fully aware of his surroundings, and realises all at once what a total mess he is. He’s crying, in open, ugly fashion—a physical reaction that must have been triggered in his vessel while he was too absorbed in his story to prevent it. Jehan’s arms are tight around him. He stops talking, because Combeferre has stopped recording, which must mean Combeferre has heard enough.

Combeferre stands up and comes around the coffee table separating them and sits down, gingerly, next to them on the sofa, on Grantaire’s other side. There’s a long, strange, silent moment where Combeferre just looks at him, a faint furrow between his brows, a swirl of mixed feelings in his soul that Grantaire neglects to try and make sense of in favour of trying to get his vessel back under some kind of control. Jehan’s thoughts start to slowly filter back into his mind, a stream of offered comfort—Grantaire hadn’t even realised he’d been blocking them out.

“Grantaire,” Combeferre says at last, and it’s almost enough to make Grantaire flinch. “You—You keep telling me things like you’re expecting me to punish you for them afterwards. Like you’re confessing to some awful crime. But it’s...You can’t shoulder the responsibility for everything that your family has done. You were never the one giving the orders. And you didn’t even do this thing you’re talking about. Why are you trying to carry it?”

Grantaire stares at him, aghast, sure that he must have told the story wrong, somehow. “I should have realised sooner how wrong it all was. I should have done something more than just running away and refusing to be a part of it. That didn’t stop them. That didn’t save anyone.”

“Why is that your responsibility alone?” Combeferre asks. “The ones in charge are the ones to blame. They thought up this atrocity and they gave the order and others carried it out. Those were their choices. You aren’t responsible for that just because you’re of the same species.”

“I didn’t do enough,” Grantaire persists, because why doesn’t Combeferre understand? “Instead of doing the wrong thing I just did nothing, and that isn’t the same as doing good, that doesn’t make up for anything or—”

“If every angel had decided to do nothing instead of obeying their orders, it would have been more than enough,” Combeferre says.

“But they didn’t—”

“And that’s not on you.” Combeferre’s voice is calm and firm and Grantaire feels like he’s losing his mind. “It’s the same with Lucifer. You hang your head because an angel brought demons into existence, because he hated humans and tried to destroy us, as if it has anything to do with you. You’ve seen all of human history, Grantaire. How many unthinkably terrible things have you seen humans do to each other? How much pain have you seen members of my kind inflict? Does the blame for every one of those acts of cruelty fall on me, or Jehan, or Enjolras?”

He waits, too—he actually makes Grantaire answer. “No,” he says, grudgingly, because it isn’t the same, it could never be the same—

“You were lied to and misled by the family you trusted,” Combeferre says. “And despite the only precedence for disobedience being the literal devil, you still found a line that you could not cross, and said no, and turned your back on everything you’d ever known. And now you sit here and talk to me like you want me to hate you for it? I don’t think I can.”

“And what about all the orders I did obey?” Grantaire asks, something vaguely resembling a laugh clawing its way from his throat. “Is that all somehow okay too?”

“No, it’s not okay. There’s no denying that there was great suffering, and that you played a part in it.” Combeferre holds out his open hands, palm-up, in something between a shrug and a peace offering. “I can’t absolve you. But I won’t hold it against you, either. I think you’ll do that well enough on your own. I can say that I, at least, forgive you. And I do.”

Grantaire finds himself helplessly weeping again, in a way that he never has in the entire span of time that he has inhabited a human vessel. Pressed up against his shoulder, still holding him, Jehan smiles.

“I’m going to make some tea,” says Combeferre, who is apparently much better at saying emotionally devastating things than dealing with the emotional fallout those things cause.

Some time later, when tea has been brewed and sipped and Grantaire has been provided with a packet of tissues with which to restore himself to some level of normality, face-wise, Combeferre apparently judges it safe to return to the topic again without running the risk of causing another outburst.

“Why do you think it was that in particular that caused you to finally break ranks?” he asks. “Was that order more heinous than any other by angelic standards? Or was it just too much, after the already prolonged suffering of the other Plagues? Or was—”

Jehan laughs and answers before Grantaire can even think about it. “Do you know, Combeferre, that you’re so clever that sometimes it cycles back around to you not being able to see things that are obvious? You think yourself in loops and don’t see the simplest explanation.”

“And what’s the simplest explanation here?” Combeferre asks with a bemused blink.

Jehan’s smile becomes a touch impish. He reaches into Grantaire’s mind and tugs on a memory—new, by Grantaire’s standards but very long ago by Combeferre’s. Grantaire, again, had not been aware that Jehan had seen this, and narrows his eyes at him.

“Can I show him, Grantaire?” Jehan asks imploringly. “It’s so sweet.”

Grantaire groans and tries to sink down fully into the sofa. “Must you?” he says.

“I think I definitely must.”

“Then I suppose I can’t stop you.”

“Show me what?” Combeferre asks, looking between the two of them with exasperated amusement.

“Come here,” Jehan says, grinning and leaning over Grantaire towards him. Combeferre obeys and, without explanation or ceremony, Jehan touches two fingers to his forehead, dips deep into his pool of memories, and dredges up a very particular memory from about twenty years ago—one that Combeferre almost certainly hasn’t been able to remember with any clarity as an adult before this. Jehan, apparently, restores full clarity to it, because Grantaire sees Combeferre’s eyebrows shoot up and his jaw drop. Grantaire squirms in place when he turns to stare at him with utter incredulity.

“You talked to me,” Combeferre says. He puts one hand to his own head. “In the Musain, when I was little.”

“Only once,” Grantaire says, and he isn’t sure if he’s apologising for doing it at all or for not doing it more.

Combeferre gives a breathy, disbelieving laugh. “You read me a story.”

Of course I did, Grantaire wants to say. You were so small and scared and all alone. The least I could do was read to you from that stupid old book you were trying so hard to read all by yourself.

“I think I read you multiple stories,” he says instead.

Combeferre laughs again, harder this time. “You did the voices.”

Grantaire folds his arms indignantly. “You were four, you appreciated it at the time.”

Combeferre’s laughter fades but his smile doesn’t. “Yes, I did.”

“Have you got the simplest explanation yet?” Jehan asks him, looking very pleased with himself.

“You like children,” Combeferre says to Grantaire. “You couldn’t bear to hurt them.”

“There’s something else you’ve been thinking yourself in circles about, too, Combeferre,” Jehan says casually, before Grantaire can stop him. “Something that also has quite an obvious and simple explanation.”

Combeferre frowns at him for a moment and then, to Grantaire’s considerable horror, his eyes go wide.

“Oh my God,” he says, his head snapping around to stare at Grantaire fast enough to give him whiplash. “You and Enjolras…?”

“Bye!” Jehan just has time to say cheerily before Grantaire grabs him by the arm and flies them out of there.

~

The prayer comes the following night. Although this one is calm and quiet, it startles Grantaire even more than the last—perhaps precisely because it's calm and quiet. It's not an accident. It's a summons, and it's intentional.

He lands in a room in a different dingy hotel from the one he left Enjolras in front of. A single lamp is illuminated on a table, but its heavy and very dusty shade reduces its light to a pitiful glow and leaves the room swathed in shadow. Enjolras is sitting on the edge of the bed, which does not look like it has been slept in. His hands are clasped in front of him, and he's staring down at his lap.

“Hello, Enjolras,” Grantaire says. Then: “It's very late.”

Enjolras glances up. The darkness cloaks his expression, but his soul quivers with uncertainty.

“Sorry,” he says. “Were you sleeping?”

“I don't sleep,” Grantaire says. Ridiculous, he thinks, that he's only telling Enjolras now. Ridiculous that they haven't talked about it.

“Of course you don't,” Enjolras says with a faint snort, dropping his gaze again.

“What do you need?” Grantaire asks him. There's a short silence, during which the apprehension in Enjolras's soul goes from a simmer to a thrashing boil. He's struggling hard with something within him, painfully unsure of himself, and Grantaire would give anything to be able to offer him comfort and assurances but has no idea how he could, with the way things are between them now. They're like two wary animals, circling each other, neither willing to make the first move either of attack or submission.

“I thought I should thank you,” Enjolras says at last. “For fixing my arm. You were right. It was bad, and I was being stupid.”

“I know my abilities make you—uncomfortable,” Grantaire says. “But they can be useful. I hope you'll let me use them to help you.”

“I think we've seen that you'll use them whether I let you or not.”

“I don't like going against what you want,” Grantaire says. “But I told you. I can't watch you suffer.”

“I'm—” Enjolras starts, unthinkingly, but his mind catches up with him and he clamps his mouth shut.

“Besides, I can't imagine that you really wanted to spend a few months in a cast. That’s a lot of wasted time,” Grantaire goes on. “Think of it as just another way of using me as a way to further your cause, if it makes it easier for you.”

“I don't want to use you,” Enjolras says. It catches Grantaire by surprise.

“What do you want?” Grantaire asks him. He takes a cautious step closer. “Is that why you—?”

“Will you sit down?” Enjolras interrupts him. He folds his arms. “I hate when you do that. Standing there like you don't know if you're even allowed to be here.”

“Well,” Grantaire says as he eases himself down onto the edge of the bed, keeping a safe distance between them. “I don't know that.”

“I called you here.”

“You still haven't told me why.”

It takes Enjolras a long time to find the words. It's clear that every part of this, from bringing Grantaire here onwards, is demanding rather a lot of him.

"First off, I wanted to be clear about something," he starts, finally.

"What's that?"

“When I called out, last time. When I thought that I really might die and I called without thinking,” he says slowly. Grantaire nods. When Enjolras continues, he looks down at his lap again, like saying the words while looking Grantaire in the eyes would be entirely too much. “It wasn't you I was calling for. It was—the you from before. The you I thought I knew. That was who I wanted to come and save me. That was who I wanted to see.”

Grantaire stares at him for a moment.

"Wait, you—do you miss me?" he blurts out inelegantly. Enjolras's face immediately flushes scarlet, and he knows he was too direct and he scrambles. "Sorry, sorry, I just—I mean...do you? "

"No," Enjolras snaps. "If I miss anyone, it’s someone who never really existed. Someone you made up."

"Enjolras, no, that's—I’m right here,” Grantaire tells him, and he should be devastated that Enjolras thinks otherwise but he's still giddily caught up in he misses me, he misses me. “I’m still that person.”

Enjolras stares at him, tense and maybe a little afraid. Grantaire pushes his advantage.

"You must know that, right?" he persists. "You know the truth about me now, what reason would I have to keep up some pretence? You know I'm still—him. Me. The same me."

"I don't know anything," Enjolras says, shaking his head. "I really don't."

"But—"

"But there's something more important that we need to talk about."

More important than you not understanding that I'm here? Grantaire wants to demand, but does not. He just looks at Enjolras questioningly, and Enjolras's eyes slide away from him and, following their trajectory, Grantaire sees his laptop on the bedside table. Enjolras reaches over and taps it and the screen lights up, blindingly bright compared to the weak, yellow light of the lamp. Enjolras looks very pale in the glare. There's an audio file open on the screen. Although Grantaire can guess what it might be, it's still a jolt when Enjolras hits play and he hears himself, and Jehan.

“—didn’t stop it. I hid and I tried not to hear but I heard. I told you the Bible is inaccurate in a lot of ways, but it got this part right. And there shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as never was before or ever will be again. I heard it. I felt those little lives snuffed out and I ran and hid and I didn’t stop it.”

“You couldn’t have stopped it, Grantaire. Just like you couldn’t have stopped their attempted apocalypse. You were alone.”

“What if I could have saved just one? What if I’d gone back and—”

“Grantaire.”

“And then I was lost. I was made as a protector and then made into a soldier and I knew nothing else. All I knew was orders, a finger pointing at a target and a voice saying destroy. And suddenly the thought of ever hearing an order like that again made me want to scream. I thought I’d drive my blade through my own core if anyone ever tried to make me do that again—”

Enjolras hits pause, and they're left in loaded silence.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Enjolras asks finally.

"You didn't seem like you wanted to know," Grantaire says, and Enjolras flinches, but rallies.

"You could have told me everything from the start," he points out.

"Yeah," Grantaire agrees. "You're right."

His easy surrender seems to take Enjolras by surprise—his raised hackles smooth back down, and he's left looking a little lost and forlorn.

"But then, I...I suppose I could've…" Enjolras trails off, but Grantaire hears the remorse in his voice, sees it seeping from his soul. It puzzles him, because while Combeferre’s reaction to the story of the circumstances of Grantaire’s defection had been so unexpected as to make Grantaire briefly question reality, he had been beyond certain that Enjolras would have the more reasonable response of condemning him for it. But Enjolras isn’t mentioning it. Enjolras looks—worried.

"So what exactly was it you wanted to talk about?" Grantaire asks. It earns him a disbelieving look.

"You don't think there's anything worth discussing in that?" Enjolras says, gesturing to the laptop with one hand.

Grantaire tries not to wince. He shrugs instead. Enjolras’s look becomes even more incredulous.

"Not even the fact that you outright say that the last thing you ever wanted was to be in a position where you have to kill on command again?" he presses, which—is not what Grantaire had expected. Grantaire looks at him curiously.

"Do you care? About what I want?" he asks him. "What about the greater good? Your cause?"

"It's not your fight and I won't force you to fight for us," Enjolras says stiffly. "Come to that, I couldn't force you. No one could. Why did you agree to it if it's the exact thing you don't want?"

"I told you why," Grantaire says. "When I agreed."

"Remind me."

"Is your memory that bad? Or did you just try not to hear it back then?"

"Why? "

"Because it's what you want." Grantaire laughs, because it's so obvious , so simple. He's never bothered making a secret of it. "Because a monster that doesn't make itself useful has no place by your side. I like being useful to you, Enjolras. I like giving you what you want."

His words have a strange effect. He can't understand why they make Enjolras's soul flood with dread and fear so terrible that, if he wasn't so proud and so used to facing down terrifying things, he would probably be off the bed and backing away from Grantaire into the furthest corner. As it is, the only outward sign he gives of any discomfiture is a slight, tense straightening of his spine.

"Does that bother you?" Grantaire asks. "I thought humans liked getting what they want."

"We like to know the price that we're expected to pay," Enjolras says evenly.

"What do you think I'm going to ask in return?"

"I don't know."

"Why do you think I want anything in return?"

The look Enjolras levels at him is scathing. He rewinds the audio recording a little and plays it back again.

“—suddenly the thought of ever hearing an order like that again made me want to scream. I thought I’d drive my blade through my own core if anyone ever tried to make me do that again—”

Grantaire wishes he’d stop playing it. He can hear himself crying through his words, can hear Jehan shushing him gently. It’s very undignified.

"Unless you were just putting on a very dramatic performance for Combeferre and Jehan, then what you're doing for us is the worst thing anyone could possibly ask of you," Enjolras says after hitting pause once more. "No one does that for nothing."

"It's hardly for nothing," Grantaire says. "Fine, the killing can be...hard. At first I wasn't sure I'd be able to bear it. But—I do like helping. And not just you. I used to think there was no point in doing anything at all, because I could never save everyone. I could never really change things. But after a year with you, and hunting by myself this last while—" He shrugs. "I know your whole thing is saving the world, purging every last speck of evil, all that. I still don't think that can be done, not even with something like me on your side. But that doesn't make it pointless to do what we can. So what if I can't save everyone? Saving just one person is worthwhile. It doesn't change the world but it makes all the difference. I get that now."

Enjolras surveys him with narrow-eyed suspicion.

"What?" Grantaire asks, unsure exactly what part of what he'd just said had been so objectionable. Enjolras snorts and turns his face away.

"I suppose that, after your last year-long joke, I'm just a little concerned about what the punchline of this one is going to be," he says. Grantaire sighs.

"I don't know what to do," he confesses. "How many monsters do I have to kill for you before you'll trust anything I say?"

"I don't think that's how trust works."

"Then how does it work?" Grantaire asks. "For humans. For you."

"Do you want me to trust you?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because—" Because I just want you to, because I love you, because it kills me a little inside every time you look at me and see a monster and a stranger. "Because you can."

"You're going to have to go a long way to prove that."

"So tell me how." Grantaire angles himself towards him, ready to plead. "Anything you ask. I'll do it."

There's another explosion in Enjolras's soul; fear again, but also anger this time.

"I don't understand you," he snaps, getting abruptly to his feet. He takes a few steps forward so that Grantaire cannot see his face. "I don't—Why do you act like this matters to you? I can't understand why it would, you're not like us, you don't…!"

He stops himself and sucks in a furious, shuddering breath.

"Do you want to understand?" Grantaire asks. Enjolras's head snaps around to pin him with his stare.

"What?" he says.

"If you want to understand, if you want to know more, I'll tell you," Grantaire says. "We—I never see you. Combeferre and Jehan, they see me, and so they..."

"What?" Enjolras says. "They believe whatever you say?"

"They listen, and so they know more than you do," Grantaire says carefully. "So they're in a better position to make their own judgements."

Enjolras goes quiet.

"Maybe we could talk," Grantaire says. Enjolras shoots him another look over his shoulder and he hastens on: "I don't mean right now. You look...Yeah, not right now. But we could, sometime. If you wanted."

Enjolras looks back at him silently, appearing frozen by terrible indecision.

"There are some things I'd like to teach you. Enochian sigils, exorcisms, spells." Grantaire holds his gaze steadily, even though he feels nervous enough that his vessel wants to be sick. "Maybe we could—meet, sometimes, when the hunting is done for the day. And I could show you things and—and maybe we could talk, a bit, after."

His gamble seems to pay off; Enjolras cannot accept any offer from him right now that has its basis in anything as insubstantial as personal feelings, but if it's about the job, if it's about gaining valuable new knowledge—

“...Alright.” Enjolras nods slowly. “We could do that.”

“Okay. Great.” Grantaire tries his very best not to do anything that might make him change his mind, like grin like a maniac or punch the air in triumph.

“I say when,” Enjolras says, eyeing him cautiously, as if afraid of giving too much ground.

“Alright. Let me know, then.” Grantaire gets to his feet—more to signal that he’s getting ready to leave than anything else. He hardly needs to be standing to fly. Enjolras clearly reads this signal, because a moment later he’s crossed the space between them and put a hand on Grantaire’s arm to stop him.

“Wait,” he says.

Grantaire makes a questioning noise, suddenly having Enjolras so close having caused him to forget how to make actual words.

“...Are you sure you want to keep hunting with us?” Enjolras asks. He searches Grantaire’s face and their eyes meet, briefly, before he looks away again. “I told you, we won’t force you if you don’t want to, and—and after what they made you do, you shouldn’t have to—”

“I’m sure,” Grantaire tells him, trying to instil his voice with enough conviction to smooth away the knots of worry in Enjolras’s soul. “Really. It’s okay. It’s different this time.” He tries to smile reassuringly. “We’re actually doing something good.”

Enjolras nods jerkily and draws his hand back. “Okay,” he says. He looks like he maybe wants to say more, but in the end just nods again and steps back.

“I’ll see you,” Grantaire says. Get some sleep, he wants to say but doesn’t. I’m glad you called me again and on purpose this time, also crosses his mind but gets sent directly to the trash. Maybe one day he’ll be allowed to try and tell Enjolras what to do and say stupid things to make him groan or smile again, but he doesn’t think that day is today. He flies away.

This time, upon his return to Jehan’s house, he goes straight to Jehan with the express intention of letting him see exactly what had just transpired. Unfortunately, as it is the middle of the night and Jehan is considerably better at taking care of himself than Enjolras, Jehan is asleep. Grantaire is too full of questions and a buzzing, nervous excitement to be very considerate. He nudges at Jehan's mind with his own; in sleep it is open and vulnerable, and it doesn't take much to drag him back towards consciousness.

“Jehan,” Grantaire whispers.

Jehan gives a very long, pitiful and unhappy whine. Grantaire, with a flutter of guilt, briefly considers resigning himself to waiting until morning despite his impatience, but Jehan must catch a glimpse of something from his rattled mind and comes awake of his own accord, though very reluctantly.

“Grantaire,” he groans without any real spite, blinking blearily at him.

“Sorry,” Grantaire says, brushing a few strands of sleep-tangled hair away from his face.

“No you're not,” Jehan grumbles. He shuffles over to make room and mentally commands Grantaire to get in the bed because he is definitely not getting up. “Something happened. Tell me.”

Grantaire kicks his shoes off and slips under the covers. He tries not to disturb Jehan too much, but he's having a lot of trouble keeping his limbs still.

“He called for me,” he says. He feels embarrassingly giddy just saying it, just remembering that it happened. “Twice. But only once on purpose.”

“What?” Jehan pulls a face of drowsy confusion. When Grantaire opens his mouth to explain, he takes hold of one of Grantaire's hands and plants it inelegantly on his own face to strengthen their mental connection before making himself comfortable again. “Just show me.”

Grantaire can't help but laugh softly. He adjusts so that his fingers rest on Jehan's temple and forehead, rather than his palm smushing his nose, and shows him everything.

Jehan takes his time absorbing it all. He takes so long, in fact, that Grantaire starts to wonder if he's gone back to sleep. But then all at once a slow smile spreads over his face.

“Hah,” he says.

“Hah? Hah what?” Grantaire demands, trying to get a read on what Jehan is thinking but he is wavering on the cusp between consciousness and sleep and his thoughts are almost unintelligible. “Jehan, what?”

Jehan laughs and reaches up to pat Grantaire's cheek clumsily. “That looks like progress,” he says.

“Do you think?” Grantaire presses. “He didn’t actually say what he thinks about the—”

“He’s all worked up and guilt-ridden and he agreed to hang out with you,” Jehan mumbles.

“But—”

“Why are you not just happy about this?”

“Jehan,” Grantaire says pleadingly.

But Jehan is gone again.

~

 

Chapter Text

~

Grantaire's mistake, he will realise in hindsight, was assuming that they would have time. Maybe it’s the immortal in him. He isn't sure what he'd anticipated he might achieve with Enjolras in the private meetings he'd managed to wrangle, but whatever progress he'd hoped they might make, he'd optimistically—foolishly—envisioned a long stretch of uninterrupted time for them to make it in.

They get two meetings. Barely.

Grantaire is honestly amazed that the first one even happens. After he'd woken poor Jehan to tell him the news, he'd then spent the rest of that night thinking about the development and, naturally, starting to doubt everything about it. He'd started to desperately regret putting the arrangement of these meetings solely in Enjolras's hands, because Enjolras, hurt and proud and angry, might never actually reach out—perhaps his prayer that night had been a fleeting moment of weakness after Combeferre's latest recording had shaken him, maybe he'd rally his spiky defences and never—

"He'll call," Jehan says quite serenely the next morning, once he has returned to full consciousness again. "He will."

"I don't know," Grantaire says glumly. He has, by this time, reduced himself to lying face-down on the couch in despair, his only solace being Minerva, who has decided that the middle of his back looks like the best possible nap spot in the house right now. Additional solace comes in the form of a plate of jam-smothered toast that Jehan brings into the living room and balances carefully on the sofa near his face.

"He doesn't like the way things are right now either, you know," Jehan says, sitting down in the nearby armchair with his own plate.

"Even if he doesn't, that doesn't mean he wants things to change in a way that involves being around me again." Grantaire can hear the whine in his own voice but currently lacks the willpower to fight it. He reaches sadly for a slice of toast and tries awkwardly to eat it without disturbing Minerva or getting jam on the cushions.

“If he really didn’t want to be around you, he wouldn’t have agreed to meet,” Jehan says. “Though I’m aware I can’t logic you out of this spiral into despair, so I expect pointing that out doesn’t help much.”

“Combeferre shouldn’t have sent him that recording,” Grantaire gripes.

“I thought that was the whole idea,” Jehan says, reasonably.

“It just made him feel bad.”

“He could stand to feel a little bit bad, Grantaire. He’s not exactly been treating you decently.”

“I don’t want him to finally agree to see me out of pity,” Grantaire mutters.

“That is not what is happening!” Jehan is laughing now, which Grantaire feels quite offended by. “Honestly, you make the biggest leap in progress we’ve seen so far and all you can do is lie there telling yourself it’s somehow actually a bad thing. Come on, sit up and cheer up.”

“Can’t,” Grantaire says. “Due to cat.”

Jehan rolls his eyes and sets his plate aside to come over and scoop up Minerva, who makes a bemused sort of mmrrrr sound at being relocated. Grantaire, his best argument having been quashed, reluctantly hefts himself into a sitting position. Jehan remains standing in front of him with Minerva in his arms, petting her distractedly. A keen edge of nervousness cuts through his otherwise good-humoured thoughts—it makes Grantaire blink up at him quizzically.

"I saw him, you know," Jehan says. His eyes are fixed firmly on Minerva. "Enjolras."

Grantaire blinks again. "Oh. When you were in Lyon?" It's not really a question but he gives it the cadence of one anyway, mostly to be polite. Jehan looks down at him then, with a wry smile.

"You already guessed," he says, and Grantaire shrugs.

"I couldn't think of much else you'd feel you had to keep secret about a trip to Lyon," he says. "And, you know—I know I said you're allowed to have secrets, and you are, but don't feel like you have to see him in secret. Not on my account."

"It wasn't that, exactly." Jehan chews on his lower lip. "Well, it was a little bit that. But I didn't want to tell you mostly because—I sort of guessed he might reach out to you soon. And I didn't want you to think it was my doing.” He laughs softly. “I really shouldn’t be telling you this. You’re already making excuses for why he called to you. But I promise you that it had nothing to do with me. I went to talk to him about things between me and him. But…” He sighs. His petting of Minerva slows as he thinks, and she nudges his hand impatiently. “Even if Combeferre hadn’t sent him that recording, I think he might have reached out. Maybe a little later than this—the recording will have given him a push, a reason. But he was already nearing breaking point. He’s so miserable, Grantaire. As soon as I stepped in the apartment it hit me like a wave.”

“I don’t want that,” Grantaire groans, putting his face in his hands. “I don’t want him to be unhappy because of me.”

“What I’m trying to tell you is that he didn’t reach out to you in some...unthinking moment of panic,” Jehan says. “He needs to talk to you, and he’s finally halfway ready to accept that. I don’t know how things will turn out. But I think he knows now that there’s no way forward until you and he reach some kind of resolution. That’s why he called for you, and that’s why he’ll call again, to arrange a meeting.”

“We’ll see, I guess,” Grantaire mumbles around a mouthful of toast.

“We will,” Jehan agrees, returning to his seat and his breakfast. “Maybe not for a while, though. This is Enjolras we’re talking about, after all.”

“Are the two of you okay now?” Grantaire asks, trying to sound casual and sounding anything but. “Or…?”

Jehan hesitates a moment, but Grantaire catches a flash of memory from his mind—a pair of hands gripping Jehan’s, a tight hug, a warm swell of love and relief. “We’re...yes. We’re okay, I think.” Jehan looks apologetic, fidgeting in place. “I told him, though. That you’re my friend too and I don’t like—”

“You don’t need to do that.” Grantaire shakes his head. “The last thing I want is to come between you two.”

“It’s not up to you how I feel about the way he’s been acting," Jehan says. "Also, you should really stop ignoring Combeferre. You normally respond to him pretty instantaneously; he'll be getting worried."

Grantaire gasps, mock-affronted. "Stop listening in on my calls."

"I can't help it!"

"Can you hear other people praying to me?"

"No, but I can hear you screaming internally about it like a big baby."

"If I'm screaming it's only because someone took it upon themselves to tell Combeferre that…" Grantaire trails off and just flaps his arms and raises his eyebrows indicatively, confident that this makes his meaning quite clear.

"I didn't tell him, I just helped him figure out the painfully obvious." Jehan leans his chin on one hand and smiles sweetly at him. "Now we're finally all on the same page."

Grantaire says nothing, but can't stop his thoughts from going down a path that starts with it is very embarrassing for Combeferre to know this and ends somewhere along the lines of and there's no need for him to know because things will never be like that between Enjolras and me again; even friendship seems like a far-flung dream right now and I have no illusions that he could ever—He didn't tell Combeferre what passed between us because he knows it's over, too.

Jehan's teasing smile fades. Grantaire can feel him piling comforting thoughts on top of his own dismal ones like layers of blankets.

"Send Combeferre a message if you don't feel up to seeing him," Jehan says. "But you can't avoid him forever."

"I'll go see him," Grantaire sighs without enthusiasm.

"Hey." Jehan stretches one leg out to nudge him lightly with his foot. "You did good with Enjolras. This is good. Don't get yourself down."

Grantaire crams his last slice of toast into his mouth and flies to Paris. His face must be a picture of pained apprehension because when he touches down, Combeferre takes one look at him and puts up his hands placatingly.

"I'm not going to ask about it," he says, looking entirely too much like he's trying not to laugh.

"Excellent," Grantaire says, crouching to leaf through the awaiting case file on the coffee table just to avoid the agony of eye contact.

"Except…" Combeferre starts and Grantaire's head drops forward and meets the table with a thunk.

"There's always an 'except'," he grumbles into the polished wood.

"I just wasn't sure whether I should apologise." Combeferre is laughing now, or at least smiling—Grantaire can hear it in his voice. Everyone is laughing at his suffering this morning; he can't believe the cruelty of humans sometimes. "I was...how should I put this? I was fairly sure there was something between you and Enjolras, back when I thought you were human or, at least, something close to human. Then the truth came out and I disregarded the whole idea. The picture you painted of an impossibly ancient, bloodthirsty creature beyond our understanding didn't exactly gel with the notion of you having feelings of a romanti—"

"Or feelings at all, I know," Grantaire interrupts hastily. "I'm aware. I'm not supposed to. Have feelings, I mean. Of the human variety."

"But you do."

"They must be contagious."

"So I feel like I should say sorry for assuming otherwise," Combeferre says. "Jehan was right. I missed the simplest and most obvious explanation for so much that has happened lately because I was labouring under the assumption that you could never, or would never, truly care for a human."

"Hey, you remembered to call him Jehan. I'll be sure to let him know."

"I might not be the only one making that assumption, Grantaire."

"So, Norway, is it?" Grantaire says rather too loudly, holding up a sheet of paper from the file like a stage prop. "Wow, that's a lot of disembowelled livestock, I better get on this."

"Still working on managing those human feelings, I see," Combeferre says with clear amusement.

"Please just let me go kill things for you."

"By all means."

Grantaire goes hunting. Enjolras doesn't call.

The next day, Combeferre calls for Grantaire again, but only to ask him to deliver a package to Jehan, and Grantaire is temporarily a little offended on behalf of his wings, being reduced to a courier service in such a way, but then the package is revealed to contain a porcelain doll with a cracked face and a note from Combeferre politely explaining that the doll is very haunted and that if Jehan could find a way to exorcise it, that would be just fantastic. Jehan, who seems quite excited by the prospect, lifts the doll out of the box and it immediately starts bleeding from its glass eyeballs and Minerva’s food and water dishes fly up from their nearby spot on the floor, smack against the ceiling and then rocket directly towards Jehan’s face. He dodges, just, and Grantaire concedes that bringing the doll here in a moving vehicle would have been ill-advised.

“I’ve seen worse,” Jehan says cheerfully. Grantaire gleans from his thoughts that he does this sort of thing quite regularly, and so doesn't worry too much about leaving him to it. He mostly lies on the couch and sketches while the doll levitates itself around the house and Jehan follows it with gentle scolding. Enjolras doesn't call.

The day after, Jehan makes Grantaire accompany him grocery shopping. Before they leave the house, Jehan takes the doll upstairs and opens a door that Grantaire had sort of assumed led to a cupboard but which is revealed to actually lead into a scene far worse than anything from any of the horror movies Courfeyrac had recommended they watch.

“This is the most terrible room I’ve ever seen, Jehan,” Grantaire says frankly, looking around at the wall to wall shelves stacked with formerly-haunted objects, a distressingly large number of which are, unfortunately, more dolls, their unseeing eyes staring forward ominously.

“You’re exaggerating,” Jehan says as he sets the latest doll down in a vacant spot.

“I’m really not.” Grantaire steps inside and feels the faint zing of magic—he turns and can’t deny that he’s somewhat relieved to see that the door is heavily warded on the inside. “This would send most humans running for the hills.”

“Why? They’ve all been exorcised; they’re harmless now,” Jehan says, pouring a circle of salt around the current and quite not-harmless doll.

“So why keep them?”

Jehan pauses, then steps back, apparently considering his latest project contained for now. “I suppose I didn’t really know what else to do with them.” He waves Grantaire out the room and locks the door behind them. “Besides, after an object’s been possessed, that sort of leaves a mark, right? They’d only attract new spirits if I sent them back out into the world.”

Grantaire laughs. “So you’re doing the world a service, keeping them all locked up in your room of nightmares.”

“You really think they’re scary?”

“Send Courfeyrac a photo, see what he thinks.”

The supermarket is a short drive away. Grantaire has been in automobiles a few times before—taxis and the occasional bus—but never someone's car. Jehan's is small and squat and a faded pale blue colour. It seems old but carefully maintained. It feels very slow to Grantaire, as all vehicles do, but he doesn't mind. He's kind of missed travelling at a human pace. A bubbly pop song plays on the radio and Jehan taps his fingers along in time against the steering wheel. At the supermarket, a smiling employee offers Grantaire a cube of a new brand of cheese on a cocktail stick, and he takes it because it seems easier than trying to explain to her that standing in the dairy aisle holding a tiny piece of cheese, surrounded by humans who have no idea that he’s a divine being in the midst of a crisis, feels too deranged and surreal for words. When he and Jehan get back home, the doll is still contained within the nightmare room but has managed to set a kind of Rube Goldberg machine of chaos in motion to break its salt circle and is repeatedly slamming itself against the window in an attempt to escape. Jehan sighs and retrieves it while Grantaire puts the groceries away. Enjolras doesn't call.

The next day, Jehan and the spirit inside the doll seem to have reached some kind of understanding. Watching Jehan smile as the two of them communicate, Grantaire thinks he might understand, a little, why Jehan keeps all the objects he exorcises.

Grantaire's phone buzzes. He glances at the screen.

Can you meet with me today? says the new message. It takes Grantaire a moment to realise it is not from Combeferre. He sits bolt upright, and looks over at Jehan, who is already looking back at him with a grin. The doll, in Jehan’s lap, slowly rotates its head a hundred and eighty degrees to also look at him but Grantaire is so dizzy with disbelief that he barely notices this disturbing spectacle.

"Well?" Jehan says. "Are you going to answer him?"

Grantaire looks back at his phone. He's spent every moment the last few days awaiting this summons, and now that it's here he feels he hasn't the slightest notion how to proceed. Can you meet with me today? in sharp black letters on the screen. It sounds so cordial. He imagines Enjolras agonised over the wording, trying to keep it short and brusque, determined not to say ‘us’ or ‘we’, undoubtedly unsatisfied with the final result but having to resign himself to the fact that an invitation to meet is always going to sound at least somewhat amicable, by merit of being an invitation. A come here, instead of a go away. It makes something swell in Grantaire’s chest, but it doesn’t give him any ideas as to how to reply.

“We both know how you’re going to reply,” Jehan laughs. “Or are you going to tell him that today doesn’t suit?”

Yes, Grantaire types back, because Jehan is right, of course; his answer was always going to be yes. He pauses, deliberating over a thousand things he wants to add before discarding them all and going with simply, When?

A few moments of agonising silence, broken only by Jehan’s helpless little snorts of laughter.

“Your wings are all flustered and fluttery,” he informs Grantaire, who is already quite aware.

His phone buzzes again. Give me an hour, Enjolras has sent him.

“Ooh,” Jehan says, and it seems to be directed more towards the doll than Grantaire. “The suspense.”

Enjolras does not follow up with any information as to his location, which is definitely deliberate, so an hour later Grantaire reaches out for his sword, feels its burning presence across the miles, and flies to it. He lands, naturally, in a hotel room. It's actually quite nice, by a hunter's usual standards; clean-smelling and bright and with a generic but cheerful painting of a vase of flowers on one wall. A double bed where Grantaire still instinctively expects to see two narrow singles. A tiny but serviceable table—by the indent in the carpet Grantaire can see it's been dragged out from the corner for this meeting's purposes. The room contains everything he would have expected, with the somewhat glaring exception of Enjolras. His absence puzzles Grantaire only for as long as it takes for him to notice his sword lying, gleaming, on the table. A wry smile pulls at his mouth as he walks to it and runs his fingers lightly along the handle.

The door opens a few minutes later, and Enjolras steps inside from the hallway. The room lights up gold around him. Grantaire looks at him, still half-smiling, and Enjolras’s shoulders tighten and there’s a lick of unease in his soul, but he holds his gaze and shuts the door behind him.

“I was just at the vending machine,” Enjolras says, though Grantaire hadn’t asked and—well. It’s not that he doesn’t believe him—Enjolras is indeed clutching a pack of gum in one hand. And Grantaire thinks it must be progress, of a sort, that Enjolras would bother making an excuse, rather than just openly admitting to testing him. He just doesn’t think that any level of pretence is really necessary, or likely to help them now.

“It really is just the sword I can track these days,” Grantaire says. “Not you.”

Something that might be embarrassment flits like an electric current through Enjolras’s soul, but outwardly he just tears open his packet of gum and pointedly places a piece in his mouth. Grantaire, who spent an entire year almost exclusively in Enjolras’s company, doesn’t think he’s ever once seen him chew gum before, but he doesn’t comment further.

"I finished up my hunt here sooner than expected," Enjolras says. It's an even odder greeting than the vending machine excuse, and an unnecessary explanation, but Grantaire agrees that a 'hello' would have felt even more unnatural. "Combeferre doesn't have anything new for me right now, so. So, I thought…" He gestures vaguely, awkwardly, in Grantaire's direction. Grantaire nods.

"What were you hunting?" he asks. He's brought his sketchbook, for drawing Enochian sigils in, because that is why they’re here, after all. He lays it down on the table and starts flipping through it in search of a blank page, all with feigned ease. He pretends to take no notice of Enjolras hesitantly approaching.

"Vengeful spirits. Two of them, haunting the same place. Thought that might pose a problem but it…" Enjolras falls silent; Grantaire looks up and sees his eyes caught on the turning pages of the sketchbook, on the drawings of Jehan and Minerva and the house and some of the places Grantaire has been lately.

"Something wrong?" he asks, and Enjolras startles, and then shakes his head.

"But it turned out to be a straightforward salt and burn," he finishes.

“Nice when that happens,” Grantaire remarks. “Can’t say I’ve had any straightforward salt and burn situations lately.”

“You said spirits weren’t your speciality,” Enjolras says. Discomfort is radiating off of him—he seems to only now be realising that the table is far too small for him to maintain any sort of distance between the two of them while they work. “Combeferre has definitely been sending me after more ghosts lately. Presumably because he’s sending you after everything else.”

Grantaire frowns. “I can’t kill ghosts, but I can still deal with them. And if one is particularly powerful and violent, better that it throws me around than any human hunter.”

“The human hunters are managing,” Enjolras says somewhat tersely.

There’s an awkward silence. Grantaire finally dares to break it with, “So—Enochian.”

“Yes,” Enjolras says. “The secret angel language.”

“Pretty much.” Grantaire smooths the blank page in front of him, strangely self-conscious. “Not the sort of language there’s much point in learning conversationally. But it has its uses.”

“Like what?” Enjolras asks. “Besides hiding us.”

“Lots of things.” Grantaire hesitates a moment, then, “I thought you might want to start with some wards.”

“Wards against what?”

“Demons. Certain types of evil spirits.” Grantaire hesitates again. “Angels.”

Enjolras has been studying the empty page as if Grantaire had already started writing anything of significance there, but that makes his head snap up.

“I know you don’t much like that I can still find you as long as you have my sword,” Grantaire continues. “But I can show you warding sigils that would mean that, even if I knew where you were, I wouldn’t be able to enter.”

Enjolras looks at him with narrowed eyes for a moment before returning his gaze to the still very blank page with a rough shrug.

“If you actually wanted to burst in on me against my will,” he says, “you wouldn’t offer to teach me something like that.”

It takes Grantaire a few seconds to realise that roughly translates to Enjolras saying he doesn’t think he needs warding sigils to keep Grantaire out—that he, on some level, trusts Grantaire to respect his boundaries—and he has to valiantly fight down a smile that would be sure to get him into trouble.

“Well, there’s always my brothers and sisters to think about,” he says, starting to draw the first sigil in black marker. “Can’t be too careful.”

They work steadily for a while, with no talk besides Grantaire explaining the meaning and purpose of each symbol as he draws it. Enochian warding spells are complex, and only become more complex the more powerful the creature they’re intended to repel. Grantaire talks them through the individual sigils, and what they invoke in combination with each other—these three for protection from harm, these two for barrier, one of these two to define the direction of the ward, whether you’re trying to keep something out or trap it within. The atmosphere in the room is strange and tense, and Enjolras’s soul beats against the walls like a restless bird, like the heartbeat of an animal that wants desperately to take flight, but he stands next to Grantaire and he listens and nods when he understands and asks questions when he does not. And Grantaire doesn’t expect any more than this; he doesn’t really know how he ever expects to segue from this strictly educational kind of talk to anything more personal, anything about them and what had existed between them and what they might be going forward, but he thinks it would be idiocy to even attempt it today. Today Enjolras had reached out and asked him to come and they are here, together, and it has so far been civil, and that in itself is something. And so it takes him entirely by surprise when Enjolras clears his throat, and speaks.

“So if I’d had your sword with me in Majorca,” he says, “would you have been able to find me?”

Grantaire glances up at him, taken aback, but catches himself and forces his gaze back to the paper in front of him, continuing to sketch out sigils carefully as he answers. “I would have been able to find the sword. I don’t think there’s anything the djinn could have done to make me lose track of it. But they might have taken it from you before I realised anything was wrong. They took your phone, and I assume any weapons they found on you. It might not have made any difference.”

Out of the corner of his eye he sees Enjolras nod, sees colours swirling slowly in his soul as he mulls it over.

“Then—how did the djinn make you lose track of me?” he asks finally, like it's a fact that they did, like he hadn't been arguing the point the last time they'd talked about this.

“Their poison contains their own brand of fucked up magic. I don’t fully understand it, but it seems like…” Grantaire pauses to think, frowning. “The world you found yourself in when the djinn put you under, it wasn’t reality but it was—real, in the sense that it existed, independently of this world. A sort of...pocket dream dimension. So even though your body was less than a mile from our hotel, everything that really makes up you wasn’t there. You were somewhere I had no access to, somewhere I couldn’t…” He shakes his head. “I don’t know how I would have found you, if you hadn’t woken up. The djinn sure weren’t talking.”

“I thought I was just—dreaming,” Enjolras says. He sounds uncomfortable. Grantaire supposes talking about the nature of his dream-world skirts dangerously close to acknowledging what that world had been like—how things had been between the two of them, in a world crafted around Enjolras’s most tempting desires. Grantaire aches to think of it. He wonders what Enjolras would see now, under the influence of djinn venom. A very different world, he expects.

“It was a lot more powerful than just a dream,” Grantaire says. He chances another cautious look at Enjolras and finds him looking back at him with a pensive frown. “How did you wake yourself up? The venom hadn’t worn off, you should’ve still been...I’ve never been able to figure out how you did it.”

Enjolras averts his eyes immediately and gives a shrug. “Time worked differently in the dream. I had a lot of time to figure out that it wasn’t real.”

“I’ve heard that djinn illusions are very...convincing,” Grantaire says.

“It was convincing. Up to a point. But after a while, I couldn’t help but notice the details that didn’t...fit.” Enjolras snorts faintly. “If only I’d been so astute in the real world.”

The words almost make Grantaire wince, and he wants to say something, wants to say it wasn’t your fault or I’m sorry for the hundredth time but—

"A world built only from one person's mind is bound to have holes," Enjolras continues before Grantaire can say anything. "The veneer of it was convincing, but if I started digging even a little…" He picks up a pen and starts copying the anti-angel ward Grantaire has drawn out. "The djinn must know that. They just have to count on people not wanting to dig."

Grantaire nods. "They give people what they want most so that even if there are gaps where it's all stitched together, they won’t notice them, because they don’t want to."

"That seems to be their strategy. It makes sense, I suppose. To set it up so that their prey don’t even want to escape."

"But when you realised it was fake, the dream world collapsed?"

"Not exactly." Enjolras flubs a sigil and scribbles it out with frustration before trying again. "Figuring it out wasn't enough. I think I figured it out lots of times, and the djinn, or its magic, or its poison, or whatever, would just make me forget again."

"Then how did you…?"

"I was the only thing that was real. I was the source of everything in that world. It couldn't survive without me." Enjolras pointedly doesn't look at him and keeps determinedly copying the spell. "So I had to remove myself from it. In a permanent sort of way."

Grantaire thinks he knows what that might mean, but he also hopes he's wrong just enough to prevent him from asking outright. He just looks silently at Enjolras, who refuses to look back but must nonetheless be aware of his questioning, concerned gaze because he eventually sighs exasperatedly.

“I jumped out a high window,” he says. A wounded noise jumps out of Grantaire’s throat before he can stop it, and it’s enough to make Enjolras look up again.

“I...Shit.” Grantaire swallows, shakes his head. “I’m sorry you had to do that. It must’ve been…”

He doesn’t know what it must’ve been like. He couldn’t die that way.

“It’s alright.” Enjolras shrugs again and goes back to drawing. “It wasn’t a real window.”

“It felt real, though,” Grantaire says, “didn’t it?”

Enjolras’s hand wobbles and he messes up another sigil. He swears and scribbles it all out and starts again.

Grantaire thinks it might be difficult to know when to call this meeting to a close; he is saved any awkwardness by Enjolras’s phone ringing after about an hour and a half. It’s Combeferre, probably with a new case. Grantaire quickly tears out the pages they’ve used from his sketchbook and hands them to Enjolras.

“Better let you get back to work,” he says as cheerfully as he can manage. "Let me know when you want to do this again." He makes himself say when, not if, tries to convince both of them that another meeting is a certainty.

He goes back to Jehan's house. Jehan looks up at his arrival—for a moment his mind and face are full of worry, then Grantaire gives him a cautious smile, and Jehan grins back and throws his arms around his neck.

"Glad to see you survived," he says. Grantaire hugs him back tight and lets their thoughts flow into each other, lets Jehan see everything. Jehan snorts over the vending machine incident, but his whole mind sings with delight to see the two of them talking, and to see that it hadn't ended in a fight.

"Let's hope it goes just as well next time," he says.

"Let's hope there is a next time," Grantaire replies.

There is a next time. Just over a week later, late in the evening, Grantaire's phone buzzes with another message.

In a moment of boldness, he makes a stop on his way and picks up coffee. Things can't go back to the way they were, but Grantaire doesn't see why some things can't.

His confidence wavers when he lands in another new hotel room (a thoroughly dingy one this time) with the two coffees in his hands, but it's rather too late to back out by then, so he holds one out to a startled-looking Enjolras, and feels an absurd swell of happy warmth when, after a moment of nonplussed hesitation, he accepts it with a mumbled thanks. No tests or games this time, either—Enjolras is here, the blade securely on his person, and he hadn’t even decided to test out his anti-angel wards, a possibility Grantaire had been quite braced for.

This room is ugly, but it has two rickety chairs, and they sit down to get to work. Grantaire flips to a fresh page in his sketchbook and starts showing Enjolras how to ward against demons.

And then, without warning, his mind is pierced by a cry, so loud and powerful that at first he thinks, absurdly, it must be one of his own kind calling out to him—but it isn't, of course it isn't, it's Jehan, and Grantaire is seized with black dread because he can't even fathom what could cause Jehan's mind to sound like this. There are no words, just barely enough intent to make the call a viable prayer, but even that feels mindless, incidental—this is a scream, broadcasting instinctively on all frequencies in the hopes that someone might hear and might help.

"Grantaire?" Enjolras's voice comes to him as if through thick cotton, barely penetrating the noise in his mind. "What is it? What's wrong?"

Grantaire realises belatedly that he is clutching his head, his eyes screwed tightly shut not in any real pain, but in an echo of pain—a shadow of whatever has pushed Jehan to tear into his psyche in this way.

"It's Jehan," he manages to say. His head is so full that there is barely room for any thoughts of his own. "Something's wrong, something's really wrong, we have to—ah." It becomes too much for a moment, and he has to stop and, as much as he is loath to do so when Jehan is clearly in distress, try to block the connection between their minds. It's more difficult than he anticipated—and he's not used to that. He panics, slips, and groans as he is overwhelmed again.

"Grantaire." Enjolras sounds very far away, but then he grabs one of Grantaire's hands in his own—the touch is electric, and the weight of the physical contact seems to pull him a little out of his ringing mind and back into his body. "Focus. If it’s Jehan, you need to take us to him."

Grantaire sucks in a sharp breath through his teeth when he feels Enjolras take his other hand too and squeeze tightly. The two points of contact feel like the only things anchoring him in the real world.

"You can't expect me to believe that, whatever this is, it's stronger than you," Enjolras is saying. "Pull it together. Come on."

The words send a jolt through Grantaire because they serve as a stark reminder that, oh yeah, he's an angel. He realises, with no shortage of embarrassment, that the feeling of terrified helplessness gripping him isn't actually his own, but just another thing being projected into his mind straight from Jehan—a sensation shared so powerfully that he’s feeling it for himself. Chagrined, he pushes back against the panic and the noise flooding into him. It's a testament to the true power of Jehan's abilities that his psychic cry was able to knock Grantaire off-balance, but he is an angel and he is stronger than this, and he masters himself well enough to unfurl his wings and fly to Jehan's house. He's just unsettled enough by the whole experience to miss, slightly—they land in the garden instead of inside the house. Grantaire opens his eyes to see Enjolras's hands still grasping his and, like an idiot, he looks a little too long, and Enjolras snatches his hands away, his soul flaring an indignant shade of pink.

"It helps Jehan, when he gets like that," he explains, though Grantaire hadn't asked.

"Does that mean you know what's happening?" Grantaire asks as they hurry for the back door. Even now that he is back in control, the noise in his head is terrible.

"I—maybe. Remember in Amsterdam, when Jehan got hit by the emotions the ghost had left behind?"

"Yeah." Grantaire remembers Jehan doubling over, remembers the shock and thumping pain of it pulsing from Jehan's mind to his. "That didn't feel like this."

Enjolras shoots him a look over his shoulder as he wrestles the rickety door open. "How do you know it didn't…?"

But then the door opens, and a spatula comes flying from inside the house and whizzes past their heads, and it's an effective end to the conversation.

"Oh, no," Enjolras mutters. He dashes into the kitchen with Grantaire close behind. It's dark; Grantaire looks up and sees that the ceiling light is largely destroyed, only jagged shards remaining of the bulb and glass shade, as if it had exploded from the inside. And while the room had been in largely perfect order when Grantaire had left it less than half an hour ago, it is now in disarray—every object smaller than the microwave has been flung from its rightful place, and some are strewn on the floor or across the countertops, while others continue to judder in place, threatening to fly again. The entire room almost seems to be vibrating faintly. Grantaire, whose only experience with Jehan’s latent telekinetic abilities is a tiny ornamental cat zooming at him, feels the dread in his heart increase tenfold.

Enjolras takes in the scene of chaos quickly but disregards it in favour of something more important: Jehan himself, curled up on the floor, staring at nothing. Enjolras rushes to his side. When he kneels down next to him, there is a crunching sound and he makes a small noise of pain and surprise; there is a broken teacup on the floor, lying in a puddle of still-warm tea, that neither of them had noticed in the dark. Jehan must have been holding it when this—whatever this is—happened. Enjolras adjusts his position without even bothering to check if his knee is cut and lays a hand on Jehan’s shoulder, shaking gently.

“Jehan. Can you hear me? Jehan?” There’s no response; Jehan’s eyes are blank, all his consciousness focused inwards. Enjolras looks up at Grantaire, fright on his face and in his soul. “You’re right, it’s not like in Amsterdam. I’ve never seen him like this.”

Grantaire crouches next to them. He purses his lips and tries to think over the racket in his mind. The temptation to block Jehan out completely is strong but ultimately overpowered by his fear that doing so will make this even worse—that maybe sharing this influx of something is diluting the impact of it, just a little. And so instead of blocking it out, he tries to listen to it; tries to separate Jehan’s own senseless, frightened thoughts from the thing that is causing them.

“I think,” Grantaire starts slowly. “I think it might be sort of like Amsterdam. Just—more. So much more that it can’t even compare. I don’t know where it’s coming from, but there’s something that’s—I don’t know. Transmitting to him. Pouring into him.”

“What is it?” Enjolras demands. “And how do you know? Is he—talking to you? Praying? How are you…?”

“I can hear him, and I can hear the something, too,” Grantaire says. He doesn’t feel like they have time for a more in-depth explanation right now. “But I don’t know what it is.” He wonders, briefly, if it could have something to do with the doll, but then he sees it lying in the farthest corner of the kitchen, as if it too is cowering from this.

Enjolras is staring at him, and he clearly has a thousand more questions but is also considering their immediate priorities.

“Can you help him?” he asks, and out of the thousand questions he could have asked, that probably is the best one. Grantaire reaches out, body and mind—he touches fingers to Jehan’s temple, closes his eyes and, as carefully as he can, tries to nudge at his mind the way they always do when they’re together. The first brush of his thoughts directly against Jehan’s is rejected fiercely; Jehan’s mind feels like it has been torn open and it wants no more intruders within its raw and aching boundaries. Grantaire perseveres, with infinite gentleness. He navigates through the maelstrom, seeking the bright spot which is Jehan himself, his conscious self, buried beneath it all. He unleashes a small pulse of Grace, in the hopes that it will ease Jehan’s suffering, or at least help him to recognise him. It seems to work on the latter count, at least.

Grantaire, he hears Jehan’s thoughts call out, weakly, miserably. Grantaire, it’s too much.

I know, Grantaire tells him. How can I stop it?

You can’t.

Why not?

Because it’s important. Because it’s for me.

What is it, Jehan?

Please, Jehan says, the plea echoing and reverberating around them, his thoughts clutching at Grantaire like tiny hands. It’ll be over soon. Please, just stay.

Grantaire obeys, remaining in their shared mindscape, soothing him as best he can with pulses of Grace and thoughts of sympathy and encouragement. Sure enough, as Jehan had predicted, the noise soon starts to fade. When Grantaire next opens his eyes, he sees Jehan blinking his, too, slowly coming back to himself. Enjolras is staring between the two of them, back and forth. Grantaire wonders how long it took, out here in the physical world.

“Jehan?” Enjolras is saying, gripping his shoulder again, his voice and soul still pinched with fear. Jehan moves his head very slowly to look up at him.

“Enjolras,” he says, sounding dazed.

“I’m here,” Enjolras tells him. “Jehan, what happened?”

“Something bad,” Jehan answers. “Something…” He tries to sit up, and makes a noise of high discomfort.

“Easy,” Grantaire says. There’s blood on the floor where Jehan’s head had been, and more in his hair. Grantaire reaches out and heals the damage, and that alone seems to help Jehan orient himself somewhat. He gives a wobbly but grateful smile, which fades when he sees the state of his kitchen.

“Oh,” he says in a small, stunned voice. “I made a mess.”

“What happened?” Enjolras asks again. “Are you alright?”

Jehan’s eyes go wide; Grantaire feels him fleetingly berating himself for even caring about the kitchen.

“Something bad’s happened,” he reiterates, now struggling to his feet despite his trembling limbs. “We have to go, we have to—”

“What do you mean?” Enjolras asks him with measured calm, looping one of Jehan’s arms around his shoulders and offering him support instead of trying to get him to sit back down. “What’s happened?”

“I don’t know,” Jehan says. He shakes more violently, hysteria creeping into his voice. “This has happened to me before. Always when something bad happened. But this was the worst yet, this was…” He halts and visibly tries to collect himself. He looks Enjolras in the eye. “Before this, the worst time was when Feuilly died.”

Grantaire sees Enjolras suck in a sharp breath.

“You—felt that?” he asks.

“I don’t know how it works,” Jehan says. “Sometimes, when something happens to someone I care about, someone whose mind I’ve touched, I—I feel it. It gets sent to me. It happened when you got hurt, Enjolras. When I had to come find you.”

“Oh, God.” Enjolras looks horrified. “I didn’t…”

“Of course you didn’t know, of course you didn’t mean it,” Jehan says almost impatiently. “But it was—important. It was what let me find you. That’s how this goes; it pours into me and when it stops, I know where to go.”

“Do you know where to go this time?” Enjolras asks.

“I—yes. I think so.”

“But you don’t know what happened? Or to who?”

“No. It was all so confused,” Jehan says, shaking his head. “I don’t understand. When it was you, I knew it was you. It felt like you. But this…”

“Who did it feel like?” Enjolras prompts when he trails off. “Anyone?”

Jehan shakes his head again. “I thought it—but it couldn’t be. I don’t know who. But it’s something terrible, Enjolras, it was the worst thing I’ve ever felt. We need to go see. Now.”

“Go where?” Grantaire asks him softly. He takes Jehan’s hand and heals everything that’s within his power to heal; Jehan’s mind is still tender and shaken when he’s done, but he’s not in any pain, and he can stand without Enjolras’s help.

“Can’t you feel it?” Jehan says. He closes his eyes and focuses on strengthening the connection between their minds, despite the strain this puts on him. Grantaire mentally chides him and pushes him back and does it for him. He feels it, then: a destination, a pull. Something urging Jehan to come.

“Please, Grantaire, take us there,” Jehan says. Grantaire glances at Enjolras, who hesitates a moment, looking worriedly at Jehan, but then nods. Grantaire holds out his other hand—when Enjolras takes it, he lets the tug at Jehan’s mind guide him, and flies.

They land in what Grantaire can best describe as the middle of nowhere. They are standing on a dirt road cutting through empty fields and wasteland, with no light but the moon above to see by. They are alone.

“Where are we?” Enjolras asks finally.

“Somewhere in Poland, I think,” Grantaire replies once he’s got his bearings.

“Does this feel right, Jehan?” Enjolras asks, looking around uncertainly at the barren landscape. “There’s no one here.”

“It’s here,” Jehan says absently. He’s on his knees, scratching in the dirt. Grantaire notices two things, then: first, that they are not merely on a dirt road, they are on the point where two dirt roads intersect. And second, the night air, which should be fresh and clean out here, far from any city, has a faint, oily, sulphurous taint to it.

“This is a crossroads,” Grantaire says with grim realisation. Enjolras looks at him sharply, then down at Jehan, who has just unearthed a box from the mud, which they can all see, as their eyes adjust, has recently been disturbed.

“Is that…?” Enjolras starts to ask.

“Yes,” Jehan confirms quietly. He stands and removes the box’s lid.

“Combeferre told me about crossroad demons once, but it was so long ago, and I’ve never encountered one,” Enjolras says, peering into the box. “Is everything there?”

Jehan isn’t sure either, so Grantaire, with great apprehension, looks for himself. He’s unsurprised, in the worst way, to see that the box contains everything necessary for a human to summon a crossroads demon and strike a deal. Graveyard dirt, a bone from a black cat—and a photograph of the person doing the summoning, which is currently face-down.

“Someone made a deal. The residual demonic power is still stinking up the place,” Grantaire says. He reaches into the box, since no one else seems eager to do so, and flips the photo over. He feels the immediate uproar of Jehan’s mind, sees Enjolras’s soul swallowed by shock. Grantaire does not recognise the man in the picture, but it's clear that they do. He hears the answer from Enjolras's mouth and Jehan's mind in the same moment.

"It's Bahorel." Enjolras's face is white. The name rings a bell; Grantaire casts his mind back to a conversation he and Enjolras had long ago, and Jehan's shared memories help fill in the blanks.

"He's a hunter, right?" Grantaire says, frowning. "Or he was? You said he quit, after…"

"After Feuilly died." Enjolras takes the photo from Grantaire's hand, like he has to hold it between his own fingers to believe the reality of it. "But—why would he make a deal with a demon?"

"You can't think of a reason?" Jehan says quietly. Enjolras doesn't answer, but his soul erupts with a storm of emotions—horror and dread and a sick kind of hope that is swiftly quashed.

"We could ask him," Grantaire puts in. "Where to now, Jehan? Do you know?"

"I can find him," Jehan says. He closes the box and tucks it under his arm. "But—it's a little different, now. This is like the starting point. From here, it's like following a thread, and I don't know where it ends any more than you do."

"So no flying," Grantaire translates.

"No flying," Jehan confirms, turning and starting to walk along the road. Enjolras and Grantaire follow.

"Did this happen too, when it was—me?" Enjolras asks as Jehan leads them through the darkness.

"Yes," Jehan replies. "Of course, I had to travel by human means all the way, that time. But it was the same. I was pulled towards what must have been the place you got hurt. And from there, to you."

He remembers it as he says it; driving for hours and hours, guided only by the insistent psychic tug, then traipsing through snow, then finally coming to a small rural hospital. He's always kept these memories hidden before, but this time Grantaire catches a glimpse of Enjolras as Jehan had found him then: younger, pale against the white hospital bed sheets, his right leg in a cast, some of his hair shaved away around stitched head wounds, his face almost unrecognisable beneath bruises ranging from deep reddish-purple to sickly yellow-green, his eyes dull with pain and drugs and grief. It makes something ache in Grantaire's chest.

"You had questions earlier, Enjolras," he says suddenly. "About how I knew things. About Jehan."

He sees Jehan's shoulders tighten, but he figures that if honesty is their policy now they should go all-in. He might not like it, Jehan warns him, and Grantaire replies that he is fairly aware of that.

Enjolras looks for a moment like he wants to say that they have bigger problems than that right now, but then he seems to remember that none of them know how long they might be walking.

"Yes," he says instead. "Are angels psychic, too?"

"Not exactly, no," Grantaire replies. "It’s more like we’re compatible with human psychics."

"Compatible," Enjolras repeats.

"Yes. That is, in a...thought-wavelength sort of way, I mean." Grantaire isn't sure why he's getting flustered. Despite the gravity of their current situation, he can feel Jehan levelling a combination of exasperation and amusement in his direction. "I suppose the simplest way to think of it is that I'm in Jehan's head just as much as he's in mine."

That earns him a sharp, searching look.

"And mine?" Enjolras says.

"Yours?" Grantaire says blankly.

"Are you in my head too? Have you been?"

"What? No! I just told you, I'm not the same as a human psychic."

"Is that another thing I just have to take your word for?"

"I could force my way into any human's thoughts," Grantaire says. "But I couldn't do it without that human noticing." When Enjolras looks at him questioningly, he sighs and continues. "It would—hurt. It would probably tear their mind apart. So you would know, if I'd been in your head. If you still had the capacity to know anything."

Enjolras swallows hard as he files this new horrifying tidbit away.

"But it's different with a psychic. With Jehan," he says at length.

"Yes," Grantaire says.

“You two have been sharing thoughts since you first met.”

“Yes.”

“Well,” Enjolras says in a voice that betrays no emotion. “That explains a lot.”

“We should have told you,” Jehan says, head bowed. “I’m sorry.”

Enjolras doesn’t reply, though Grantaire hears him give a sigh.

They walk in silence after that. Jehan, at least, has his psychic thread to focus on, but Enjolras has only his fear and misgivings to occupy him, his carefully schooled expression betrayed by the wild fluctuations in his soul. Grantaire can't say he feels much better. A demon deal is no joke. He wonders what this Bahorel wished for in exchange for his soul. He wonders what the hell they're supposed to do about it, when they find him.

He doesn't have to wonder much longer. Jehan soon leads them off the road and down a narrow, winding path, so shadowed by trees in the darkness that they never would have seen it were it not for his guidance. A little way along this new path they come to a clearing, inside which there stands a squat, crumbling stone building. Grantaire expects it had been part of a farm, once upon a time, but it's now clearly lying derelict—but not empty. There is a large motorbike parked outside, with a trail of fresh tyre tracks leading through the mud right to its back wheel. And, as they watch, a faint light comes on in one of the building's windows—then turns off again. On, off, on, off. It flickers jarringly. And then there's noise; shouting and crashing and something that sounds unpleasantly reminiscent of the terrible transmission Jehan had received to lead them here. Grantaire can sense a human soul inside the building—and something else. Another person? He frowns, unsure. He feels Jehan's mind roiling; he's shielding his thoughts with utter desperation, as if he wants to hide them even from himself, and he's sick with dread.

"Jehan," Grantaire says, turning to him. "What is it? What do you know?"

"I don't want to say it," Jehan whispers. "I don't want to be right."

Enjolras looks alarmed; he takes a step towards the building but Grantaire catches his arm.

"Let me go first," he says. "Something isn't right in there."

Just as he says it, there's a terrible roar from inside, a shockwave of power, and the building's windows—already in heavy disrepair, some covered in wooden boards—explode outwards, sending out a wave of glass and splinters. Grantaire instinctively grabs his two humans and flies them just out of range of the blast. The jump backwards leaves Enjolras disoriented for a moment, but he's quick to collect himself, taking in the scene, glass glinting in the moonlight.

"Will you be alright?" he asks, and Grantaire tries not to get too excited about the concern; this is a job now, and Enjolras is nothing if not pragmatic.

"I have a much higher chance of not immediately getting ripped apart than either of you," he replies with a shrug.

"I'll wait by the door," Enjolras says. He takes out Grantaire's blade and hands it to him. "Jehan, stay here."

The building is in darkness as they approach. Grantaire pushes on the front door—it was also damaged in that blast and opens easily, but he winces at the loud creaking sound its ancient hinges make. He advances into a damp-smelling hallway. To his right there is a set of stairs, the wood of the treads rotted through. To his left there is another door, which he can only assume leads into the room from which the light had been emanating. He glances over his shoulder and sees Enjolras waiting just outside, as agreed, a small knife in his hand. Grantaire almost laughs; trust Enjolras to have a back-up weapon even when caught completely unawares.

He advances quietly into the room, and finds it to be the shell of what was once probably a very homey living room—there's a fireplace with a large empty hearth, the mildewed remains of a rug on the floor, and some surviving furniture, including a stained but serviceable-looking armchair, in which a man is seated, slumped forward, head in his hands.

"Bahorel?" Grantaire tries, cautiously. The man looks up—there's a bleeding cut on his cheek and his eyes are red and wet and bleary, but his glare is fierce when his gaze finds Grantaire.

"Who the fuck are you?" he demands, getting to his feet and drawing a bowie knife from his belt—he may have retired from hunting but his old instincts are clearly still serving him well.

"I'm—a friend of a friend," Grantaire replies. Bahorel towers a full head over his vessel, and if he were human he expects he'd feel very intimidated right now. Bahorel's confusion as to his obvious complete lack of intimidation is possibly the only thing stopping him from trying to stab him right now. "They're concerned you might have done something foolish."

And he certainly, undoubtedly has: Grantaire has to force himself not to recoil from the sight of Bahorel's soul, stained and corrupted and, without question, damned.

Bahorel looks set to reply, or attack, but gets the chance to do neither, because that's when the ghost appears.

"I don't think 'foolish' quite covers it," the ghost says, fixing Bahorel with a look of deadly fury that he flinches away from. "Do you?"

And, oh. This one Grantaire does recognise, from the few memories Jehan has shared, and all the pieces fall sickeningly into place.

"Enjolras," he calls, and both ghost and human turn to look at him, clearly startled by the name. "You better get in here."

Enjolras wastes no time; he bursts in, knife raised—and then promptly drops it. He stares, and Bahorel and the ghost stare back. There is a moment of stunned, charged silence, like the quiet, anticipatory falling of a bomb through empty air.

"Feuilly." Enjolras sounds like he can barely get the name out, like something is squeezing his windpipe. His soul is blank and colourless; there are no feelings for this moment.

"What are you doing here?" Bahorel asks in confusion and disbelief but he is completely ignored. Enjolras steps towards Feuilly slowly, uncertainly, like he’s sure this is a dream—like maybe he’s had dreams like this before, and knows by now not to get his hopes up. When he’s near enough he reaches out with one unsteady hand. Feuilly doesn't move but only looks at him with an inscrutable, pained expression. When Enjolras's hand passes right through him, when Feuilly's image flickers like a glitch on a screen and then vanishes, when the look of stunned horror flashes across Enjolras’s face—that’s the moment when the atmosphere of the room palpably changes, and Grantaire knows that this is bad.

"What did you do?" Enjolras asks. His tone is deadly.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Bahorel demands again, and in the next second Enjolras is rounding on him more fiercely than any hellhound that the man has to worry about. His eyes are blazing, his soul is on fire.

“What did you do?” he repeats, louder, a manic edge creeping into his voice. He seizes Bahorel by his jacket and hauls him down, and it shouldn't work because Bahorel looks approximately twice his size but Enjolras is just scary enough in this moment to pull it off. "What the fuck did you do?"

"I don't answer to you," Bahorel snarls. He tries to detach Enjolras from him, and to Grantaire's absolute shock Enjolras rears back and headbutts him square in the face. Bahorel roars in pain and falls to his knees, clutching his broken nose.

"You dealt with a demon?" Enjolras says. He's breathing hard and looking down at Bahorel with utter fury. "You sold your fucking soul and you still couldn't even bring him back right—?"

He moves as if he's really going to strike Bahorel again, even as the man is doubled over at his feet, but a gentle touch to his arm pulls him up short. In the midst of the scuffle no one, Grantaire included, had even noticed Jehan come into the room.

Some of Enjolras's biting anger seems to drain away under Jehan's imploring gaze; he lets his arms drop to his sides and goes still. Grantaire sees the truth in his soul, sees the fury dissolve into what it really is: utter dismay, and grief so terrible that it seems he could collapse into a thousand pieces under it at any moment. Jehan kneels next to Bahorel.

"Prouvaire," Bahorel says with a humourless, wet laugh through the blood running over his lips. "I should've fucking guessed. Can't keep anything from you."

"Not something like this," Jehan agrees softly. He holds out his hand, a request for connection. "Let me see what happened."

"Isn't it obvious?" Bahorel says with another horrible laugh. He lurches back to his feet and out of Jehan's reach. "Demons lie. They cheat. And now I've got to track down that red-eyed bastard and—"

He cuts himself off with a start when Feuilly flickers back into existence, directly in front of him, a glower on his dead face.

"That red-eyed bastard gave you exactly what you asked for," he says with cold anger, and the few lights—battery-powered, Grantaire notices absently; the building's electricity is long gone—flash threateningly once again. To him, Bahorel has no reply; he can only look shame-facedly at the floor. Feuilly turns away from him.

“Hello, Enjolras. Prouvaire," he says, nodding to each of them. He gets only a wide-eyed stare in response from Enjolras.

"Hello, Feuilly," Jehan replies. He doesn't look surprised to see him. From his mind Grantaire gleans that this is the scenario that Jehan’s preternatural senses had been telling him to expect, and so he is not surprised at all, but only quietly devastated to have been correct.

“So this is some mess,” Feuilly says, deadpan. Grantaire thinks he’s handling being forcibly dragged back to the mortal plane very admirably, especially considering it couldn’t have happened more than an hour ago.

“What happened?” Jehan asks. “Why are you…?”

He gestures helplessly to Feuilly and his very obvious lack of corporeality. His image is still flickering around the edges occasionally, like a worn-out video tape.

"My body was burned to ashes. Hunter's funeral," Feuilly says with deathly calm. He casts a glance back at Bahorel. "He asked a demon to bring me back, but…"

"But didn't specify for a new body to be included in the deal," Jehan finishes for him, face pale, voice hushed.

"I'll fix it," Bahorel says, scowling, desperate. "I told you, I'll get that demon back, I'll make him fix this—"

"Fix what?" Feuilly snaps at him, and the room judders around them. "The only way to fix this is by getting the demon to tear up the whole damn contract. Undo this whole thing."

"I won't do that," Bahorel says fiercely. Feuilly gives a shout of frustration, and the chair Bahorel had been sitting in suddenly rockets towards him and knocks him clean off his feet.

“You think I want this?” Feuilly demands, leaning over him, and Bahorel cringes away from his anger. “You think I want to be this?”

“You won’t have to, I’ll make it right—I’ll shove salt down that demon’s throat until he fixes up your body, or makes a new one,” Bahorel says through gritted teeth.

"What good is a new body to me when it comes at the cost of your fucking soul?" Feuilly snarls at him. "You idiot, you actually gave a demon permission to drag you to Hell—!"

"Not for ten years!" Bahorel looks up at him almost pleadingly. "Ten years, Feuilly."

"In exchange for an eternity in Hell!" The whole building seems to quake in sympathy with Feuilly's rage, right down to its foundations. For someone so new to being a spirit, he's dangerously strong. Grantaire wonders what they're going to do about that. "Ten years then you're damned, then the hellhound comes and rips you apart and they torture you in the Pit until you become a demon yourself! That's the fucking deal you made!"

"I don't care!" Bahorel bellows, and Feuilly goes silent and the room goes still. "I don't care, God, ten years with you here, even like this, then forever on a demon's hook still sounds better than one more fucking day in this shitty world without you."

The raw admission leaves quiet in its wake. So it’s love, Grantaire thinks, and he supposes he shouldn’t be surprised. Grieving lovers are probably the crossroad demons’ most frequent customers.

“What do we do?” The voice is so small and lost that it takes Grantaire a few seconds to even recognise it as Enjolras’s. Grantaire turns to look at him, and he looks small and lost, too. Then Enjolras looks back at him, and Grantaire realises with a jolt that the question had been directed at him.

“I—I don’t know.” It’s not easy to say, especially when Enjolras’s soul floods with disappointment.

“But you know everything about fighting demons,” Enjolras says. He sounds almost pleading, like he needs Grantaire to offer him a solution to this awful problem they’ve walked in on, and Grantaire so badly wishes he could oblige him.

“Fighting them and killing them, yeah,” he says. “But killing this demon won’t help. The contract is binding. His soul belongs to Hell, and Hell will come to collect, no matter if the demon who struck the deal is dead.”

“Who is this guy?” Bahorel demands, seeming to remember about Grantaire’s existence now that he’s been brought into the discussion.

“This is our friend, Grantaire,” Jehan says.

“And what is he, some kind of demon-hunting expert?” Bahorel is looking Grantaire up and down critically, clearly unimpressed.

“He’s an angel,” Enjolras says bluntly.

“An angel.” Bahorel scoffs. “There’s no such—”

Grantaire, who is getting quite tired of giving this little display, lets his eyes give a quick flash of Grace, lets the shadow of his wings sprawl over the faded floral wallpaper behind him, and then Bahorel isn’t laughing anymore.

“I don’t know about angels, but he’s something, alright,” he says, raising his knife again and fixing Grantaire with a dark look.

“Definitely something,” Feuilly says, though he looks more intrigued than disturbed.

“What, you’re working with monsters now?” Bahorel demands, rounding on Enjolras. “Didn’t we teach you better than that?”

“Says the guy who just made a binding contract with a literal demon,” Grantaire says—in the same moment that Enjolras snaps, “He’s not a monster”—and also in the same moment that Feuilly says, “Don’t you dare say a word about Enjolras after what you’ve done”.

Bahorel looks at Feuilly. Grantaire and Enjolras look at each other. Jehan clears his throat, awkwardly.

"...I don't know what the best thing for us to do is," Grantaire says after a very loaded pause. "I'm sorry. I've never tried to undo a crossroads deal before. But there might be a way. We should talk to Combeferre, see what we can come up with."

"We can't just leave them like this," Enjolras protests. He looks horrified by the notion that this isn't going to be solved tonight, that he's going to have to really live in the reality that his old friend and mentor are now damned to Hell and a spirit forcefully raised and trapped here, respectively.

"It's alright, Enjolras," Feuilly says. His voice, his face, everything gentles when he turns away from Bahorel and towards Enjolras. "This is fucked up, I know. But we've got ten years to figure it out."

Enjolras does not look comforted by this, but he gives a shaky nod and doesn't argue.

"We should get out of this place, at least," Jehan says. "Feuilly, can you—move?"

"I seem to be bound to this idiot, not a place," Feuilly says, jabbing a thumb in Bahorel's direction. "Wherever he goes, I'm dragged along for the ride."

"Alright," Jehan says. "Then, Grantaire, can you please take us back to my house? At the very least everyone can get some rest there."

"Okay.” Grantaire agrees that this is a very good idea; the situation is rather hideous, but it might feel a little less dire away from this dark, damp-smelling ruin. “Everyone hold hands, or something."

He places a hand on Enjolras's shoulder, and he tries to tell himself it's just because Enjolras is closest.

"Wait, what the hell are we—?" Bahorel starts to ask as Jehan takes his hand and Enjolras's and links them all together, but before he can finish the question Grantaire has flown them to Jehan's living room, and then Bahorel is staring around himself wildly, too flabbergasted to ask anything.

"Feuilly?" Enjolras calls out uncertainly, and then gives a violent start when Feuilly flickers into existence right next to him.

"Here," Feuilly confirms. "That was a neat trick."

He turns to Enjolras, as if to give him a reassuring smile, but the smile slips from his face before it’s even fully formed. He stares, frowning, at Enjolras for a long moment, like he thinks his eyes might be playing tricks on him. He reaches out and Enjolras startles again when he actually manages to make contact this time and his hand touches his shoulder lightly, as if testing the reality of him.

"God. Look at you. You're…" Feuilly gives a puzzled smile, the slightest huff of a laugh. "Don't hit me, but you look like you've grown up a bit."

Grantaire sees Enjolras's breath catch in his throat. He realises that, in Jehan's well-lit living room, Feuilly is seeing something he hadn't in the chaos and shadows of the derelict farmhouse. He watches as Feuilly turns to Jehan and does the same double-take.

"You too, Prouvaire. How did…" Grantaire sees as Feuilly's perplexed wonder turns into something else entirely. "How—how long have I been…?"

"Nearly three years," Enjolras says.

"Three...Jesus." Feuilly's eyes go wide. He shakes his head. "God. I...It feels like I saw you yesterday, but—I've been dead longer than you even knew me alive."

Grantaire thinks he might be the only person in the room who hears the tiny, wounded noise that escapes Enjolras's throat.

Feuilly rounds on Bahorel, expression fierce once again.

"Why now?" he demands. "Three years? You managed for almost three years and now suddenly you got it into your head to drag me back here?"

Bahorel gives a humourless laugh. "Managing," he says. "Is that what you figure I've been doing all this time?"

"I'm dead," Feuilly snaps at him. "And now we have to figure out a way to get me back to being properly dead, and all you've done is make this whole thing harder for yourself and for them—!"

"I didn't ask them to come and butt in!" Bahorel shouts back at him.

"Grantaire," Enjolras says suddenly. He speaks very quietly but the attention of everyone in the room snaps to him. He doesn't look at any of them. "My things are still in my hotel room. Could you…"

"Yeah, I'll go get them," Grantaire says, and he's about to fly again when he feels Enjolras's hand on his arm.

"I need to pack up some things," he says. "Take me there?"

"Oh. Uh." Grantaire glances at Jehan, silently asking if he'll be alright being left to wrangle Bahorel and Feuilly on his own for a few minutes.

I think you might be more than a few minutes, Jehan's thoughts tell him. Jehan's eyes are on Enjolras. It's fine, go. Take as long as you need.

Grantaire looks back at Enjolras, and sees how close he is to coming apart at the seams.

"Okay. Let's go," he says, grasping Enjolras's hand and returning them to his hotel room. It's quiet. The bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling is still casting harsh light over the scene. Their coffee has gone cold. He hears Enjolras suck in a shuddering breath.

"Let's get your things," Grantaire says, relinquishing his hand with some reluctance and moving towards the table, strewn with papers and books and Enjolras's laptop in addition to his own sketchbook.

"I can get it," Enjolras says, ducking in front of him and starting to gather up the loose sheafs. "You should head back. Make sure things are okay. I'll call when I need picked up again."

Grantaire sweeps the room with a sceptical eye and estimates that all of Enjolras's worldly possessions will probably take less than ten minutes to pack up.

"No sense in wasting a trip," he says, reaching for Enjolras's duffel. "This won't take long, let me help."

"No," Enjolras says much too quickly. He keeps his back to Grantaire, though his hands have stilled. "No, you...go back, please."

"Enjolras?" Grantaire questions, even as full understanding begins to dawn.

"I just—" Enjolras swallows, takes a few breaths. "I need to be alone for a while. I need to think."

Grantaire pauses, then steps in close to him and reaches out very carefully to take the small pile of papers Enjolras is clutching from his hands and place it back on the table. Enjolras doesn't resist, exactly—just looks at him with desperate uncertainty, like a man teetering on a precipice with no notion of what might await him below.

"I don't think that's what you need," Grantaire says. "Not really."

He sees panic rising in Enjolras's eyes and in his soul.

"It's okay," Grantaire tells him.

Enjolras just shakes his head.

"I can take you to Courfeyrac," Grantaire offers. "Or Combeferre. Anyone you want. But don't ask me to leave you alone here right now. I won't."

Enjolras's breath is coming fast now, his soul a riotous pulsating mess.

"Please," Grantaire says, imploring. "Tell me how to help."

"I...I just…" Enjolras gulps around the words, screws his eyes shut tight. Then he's coming apart, he's crumbling—he covers his face with his hands as the first ragged sob tears its way out of him, and Grantaire, without hesitation, takes him in his arms and gathers him close and goes with him as he sinks to his knees on the floor. Enjolras gives a long, hoarse, wordless yell, muffled by his hands that he's still hiding behind.

"It's okay, it'll be okay," Grantaire tells him.

"No it won’t!" Enjolras shouts against his chest. He doesn't sound like he's in a state of mind to hear counter-arguments so Grantaire doesn’t contradict him, and instead just holds him as close and tight as he dares because it really feels like he might shake apart otherwise. He can feel Enjolras fighting against himself, against every tear and every cry and every body-wracking sob that forces its way out of him, but they just keep coming. His soul is on the floor with them, a wrung-out, wounded thing. When Enjolras finally quiets a little, it seems to be more from exhaustion than any true catharsis.

“It really will be okay,” Grantaire says quietly, once this exhaustion has set in and the only sound Enjolras is making is his rattly, uneven breaths. “We’ll figure it out. All of us, together.”

“Don’t lie.” Enjolras says. His voice is dull with pain.

“It’s not a lie.” Grantaire pulls back just far enough that he can slip an arm between them and try to coax Enjolras to drop his hands. It takes some persistence; Enjolras makes a desperate noise of protest, like he’d rather die than be seen, but Grantaire keeps trying until he relents, and his messy tear-stained face comes into view. His eyes are averted, his cheeks red from crying and from shame, and Grantaire wants to tell him that even like this, he’s the most beautiful thing in creation.

“We’ll find a way to fix it, Enjolras,” he says instead.

“But—” Enjolras shuts his eyes again, his face crumpling as he fights back a fresh wave of emotion. “But if we fix it...If we unmake the deal, then he—Then I’ll have to—”

“Oh,” Grantaire breathes. Oh, no.

“Part of me doesn’t even want to fix it.” It sounds like it hurts Enjolras so much to admit it that the words may as well have been ripped bloody from his throat. “He’s here and it’s awful and wrong and it’s the last thing he ever would have wanted but—but he’s here, Grantaire—”

“I know.” Grantaire pulls him in close against him again. “I know, I’m sorry. I don’t want you to have to lose him again.”

“I shouldn’t care about that!” Enjolras moans, and Grantaire can feel his hands curled like claws against his back. “I should be—I should be trying to fix it as quickly as I can so that they don’t suffer but I don’t want to and that’s so awful—”

“Shut up,” Grantaire tells him, and he goes quiet, probably out of surprise. “This whole thing is a fucking horror show. It’s like a nightmare someone engineered to hurt you. You’re not a bad person for reacting accordingly.”

Enjolras gives a soft sigh but doesn’t argue, which Grantaire is happy to take as a win. He’s sure he feels Enjolras lean more heavily against him, and despite the unfortunate situation, it still makes some part of him thrill. It feels so good to hold him again, though it is not lost on Grantaire that this is only the second time he’s been allowed to do so, and both times have been when Enjolras has been at the absolute end of his emotional tether—when circumstances have been so dire that even he has been forced to show some kind of vulnerability. Grantaire consoles himself that he at least seems to be helping—gradually, Enjolras’s breathing is evening out, and at the very core of his soul, there is a bloom of glowing warmth in amongst all the guilt and shame and terrible sadness.

When Enjolras pulls himself back together it is, in true Enjolrasian fashion, all at once, without warning. He slides out of Grantaire's arms and pushes to his feet in one smooth motion.

"We should get back. It's not fair to leave Jehan to deal with that mess," he says. He tugs his shirt straight and stands tall. Aside from his red-rimmed eyes and tear-tracked cheeks, what had just passed might have been a figment of Grantaire's imagination.

"You sure?" Grantaire asks, standing up too. Enjolras has taken a few steps back, putting a respectable distance between them that feels like a thousand miles.

“Yes.” Enjolras won’t meet his eyes. “Give me just a minute, please.”

He goes to the room’s tiny bathroom and a moment later Grantaire can hear water running, and he knows without looking that Enjolras is splashing away the last remnants of evidence that he’d had a moment of weakness. Grantaire gathers up his belongings and packs them as neatly as he can while he waits. Enjolras re-emerges looking almost totally pristine. Jehan will know what had happened, of course, and Enjolras must know that, but Grantaire doubts Feuilly or Bahorel will be able to tell. He hands Enjolras his duffle and Enjolras nods at him. Grantaire holds out his hand and, after only the tiniest hesitation, Enjolras takes it.

They return to Jehan’s living room to find it in heavy silence. Feuilly is absent, and Jehan is sitting on the sofa next to Bahorel, who is holding a wad of tissue to his still-bleeding nose.

“Ah.” Jehan looks surprised to see them back so soon; Grantaire can only assume he had temporarily forgotten the superhuman speeds at which Enjolras can vent and repress his own emotions. “Grantaire, would you mind helping Bahorel? My first aid skills aren’t quite up to the task.”

“M’fine,” Bahorel growls. He eyes Grantaire suspiciously as he approaches. “I said I’m fine.”

“Now I know where Enjolras gets it from,” Grantaire says dryly as he touches two swift fingers to Bahorel’s forehead. In one short burst of light he heals his broken nose and the wound on his cheek, undoubtedly his thank-you gift from Feuilly when he’d realised what he’d done. Bahorel's glare briefly vanishes in favour of a look of pure astonishment. He touches his very unbroken nose gingerly.

"See, that didn't hurt at all," Jehan says, taking the bloody tissue from Bahorel's unresisting fingers. He drops it in a small waste basket containing many such tissues at their feet. "I told you."

"The fuck." Bahorel resumes glaring, directly at Grantaire. "What the fuck are you?"

"We've already been over this," Grantaire reminds him. "You really need to catch up."

"Just because you've managed to fool them with some bullshit story about angels, don't think that means you'll fool me.” Bahorel stands up to his full height, and a mean part of Grantaire wishes he could show Bahorel the exact stature of his true form and make him realise how very tiny he really is. “I’ve spent my life hunting every kind of supernatural freakshow in this world and I know there’s no such thing as angels. I know there’s no such thing as a monster that’s good.”

“I never said I was good,” Grantaire says with a cold smile.

“Sit down, Bahorel,” Enjolras says sharply, suddenly at Grantaire’s side. “You look ridiculous.”

“You don’t get to tell me what to do,” Bahorel spits at him. “I’d say I thought you knew better than this, but that’d be a lie, you never knew how to fucking listen.”

“I really don’t think you get to criticise anyone for their choices right now,” Enjolras says, and Grantaire is already wondering if he’s going to have another broken nose to fix very shortly.

“I made a deal with a demon. I didn’t bring it home with me and decide it was my new best friend,” Bahorel, very foolishly, persists. “How could you be this stupid?”

“Well, I was left unsupervised,” Enjolras says.

Grantaire doesn’t know why, but that takes the wind out of Bahorel’s sails. The stormy anger doesn’t leave his face or his corrupted soul, but there’s something else too, something that makes him shut his mouth and avoid Enjolras’s gaze like it hurts him.

“That’s enough,” Jehan says, stepping between them and pushing them gently apart. "Please. No fighting. We have enough to deal with."

They all know he's right, and not many people can refuse Jehan anything when he's making that sad, beseeching face. Bahorel sits down, and Enjolras backs off.

"Where's Feuilly?" Enjolras asks. He looks like he can't believe he's saying the words.

"Gone, for now," Jehan says quietly. "You know how ghosts are. They come and go."

“Right.” Enjolras nods stiffly. He shrugs out of his coat. “One of us should call Combeferre and let him know about this. If anyone would know how to fix it, it’s him. And if he doesn’t—Jehan, you have a lot of old books on demonology, right? Maybe we can find something in one of them that’ll give us an answer.”

“Maybe,” Jehan agrees. “But not tonight, Enjolras.”

Enjolras gives a quiet, humourless laugh.

“Don’t tell me to sleep,” he says, shaking his head. “I’ll never be able to sleep tonight.”

“You have to try,” Jehan says, putting a careful hand on his shoulder. Grantaire sees tension ripple through Enjolras’s body at the touch, but he doesn’t shrug him off. “It’s late, and tonight has been—well. We all need to rest.”

“Jehan is exhausted,” Grantaire puts in, because he can feel the terrible weariness pulsing through Jehan now that the initial excitement has died down, and he knows that Enjolras is far more likely to be moved by his friend’s suffering than any of his own. True to form, Enjolras looks horribly guilty.

“God, so much has happened that I almost forgot what started it all,” he says. He looks at Jehan closely, as if still unconvinced that he has suitably recovered from his earlier ordeal. “Are you okay?”

“Yes. Just tired.” Jehan gives him a reassuring smile.

“I can start looking through the books. Someone who actually needs to sleep can have my room,” Grantaire says, earning a raised eyebrow from Enjolras and another alarmed look from Bahorel.

“Your room?” Enjolras repeats. Grantaire shrugs.

"Yours for tonight," he says with an attempt at a smile.

"You can take my room, Bahorel, and I'll—" Jehan starts.

"Shut up, Prouvaire," Bahorel mutters, lying down on the couch and folding his arms rather obstinately to demonstrate how futile it would be to try to move him. Jehan fetches him some blankets, which he accepts with a grunt of thanks. Jehan hesitates over him a moment, hands hovering like he wants to smooth the blankets, or offer a comforting touch.

"What?" Bahorel mutters.

"I'm...sorry you felt like you couldn't come to us," Jehan says quietly. "That you felt the one choice left to you was—this."

"Get out of my head," Bahorel says.

"It'll be alright, though," Jehan goes on. "We'll figure it out. We'll fix it. And things will be better."

"I don't want your help." Bahorel sits up again just to snarl it at him. "Feuilly says we stay here, so fine, I'll stay, but I do not want your help, I do not need you to fix anything, and I definitely don't need your fucking pity."

Grantaire, who can't help but feel like a bit of an interloper to this whole situation, sees the cloud-burst of hurt in Jehan's soul and doesn't think he'll be able to hold his tongue, but Enjolras beats him to the punch.

"Don't be a dick to Jehan when he's the only one who has it in him to be nice to you right now," he snaps. He takes Jehan by the arm and steers him away and up the stairs. Bahorel glowers after them, but it’s half-hearted.

“Why are you lashing out at them?” Grantaire asks him.

“Fuck off.” Bahorel throws himself back down and turns towards the back of the sofa and proceeds to ignore Grantaire entirely. Grantaire figures that’s just fine. He goes into the kitchen. He will start looking through Jehan’s collection of dusty tomes, as promised, even though he doubts they’ll be able to tell him anything he doesn’t already know. But first, he’s going to put the kitchen to rights. He isn’t surprised that Enjolras and Jehan seem to have forgotten about it, given that it’s hardly the biggest of their problems right now, but he’s sure Jehan will appreciate being able to make breakfast in the morning without having to deal with this disaster.

He decides to go about things in the slow, human way. He has time to kill, and there’s something undignified about using awe-inspiring heavenly powers to assist with domestic chores. He goes to turn on the light and is reminded that it's broken. He fetches a broom and sweeps up the broken glass of the smashed bulb and light-shade. He wonders exactly how powerful Jehan is, when all bets are off, when the threat is so great that his power strikes out past his gentle nature. He wonders if Jehan even knows. He rummages in cupboards until he finds a replacement bulb, then carefully clears the remaining jagged glass away from the light fitting in order to install it. He goes to turn it on, then changes his mind. There’s something cool and soothing about the darkness, its edges softened by the silvery glow of the full moon coming through the windows. Minerva, who must have been skulking out of sight of the new strangers in her domain, emerges from underneath the table and rubs up against his legs before taking up position on one of the few clear spots of counter space to observe the proceedings.

Grantaire retrieves the escapee spatula from the garden and starts gathering the other assorted detritus, dropping it all onto the table to be sorted. He isn’t sure if Jehan had the cutlery drawer open when the terrible transmission had started or if it had been just another thing his panicking mind had grabbed and thrown around, but in any case all of the knives, forks and spoons are strewn across the tiles, glinting at him. Grantaire has just about finished picking them all up when Minerva lets out an affronted hiss and, puffed up to twice her usual size, leaps off the counter and dives back under the table. Feuilly appears barely a second later, flickering into existence with a sound like a radio lost between stations. Grantaire fleetingly wonders if it’s possible that Jehan’s cat is also psychic.

“Oh.” Feuilly notices him and turns to face him, taking a moment to properly look him up and down for the first time. He puts his hands in his pockets, which strikes Grantaire as kind of funny. Feuilly is just a soul, projecting its remembered human form. And he’d remembered pockets. Grantaire wonders if the fabric feels real to him; if he can feel anything at all. He thinks it might not be a very good opening question.

“Welcome back,” he says instead. “Right now, and in general.”

Feuilly keeps looking right at him, openly and with a curiosity that feels anything but casual. It occurs to Grantaire that he should, perhaps, be nervous, and as soon as he thinks it, he is. It’s a ridiculous thing, to feel like he is being sized up by this man who is so important to Enjolras, and to desperately want to be found worthy. Ridiculous, and impossible. Feuilly will hear the whole ugly tale from Enjolras—the deception, the ungraceful reveal, the ongoing series of fuck-ups that has been the aftermath. Winning his approval really isn’t on the cards.

“You know me?” Feuilly asks finally.

“I know of you,” Grantaire replies. “You haven’t been forgotten.”

Feuilly tilts his head over to one side, as if examining Grantaire from various angles. “So, an angel, huh?” he says. “I can’t wait to hear the story behind this.”

Grantaire only just manages not to wince.

"It's not a very good story," he says, busying himself with sorting the sizeable heap of items on the table into categories. Cutlery. Crockery (broken) and crockery (unbroken). Cooking utensils. Food (salvageable and otherwise).

"Hmm." Feuilly vanishes and reappears in a different spot, and Grantaire really does get the feeling of being scrutinised from all sides. "Gotta say, I thought angels would look a little grander. If I ever thought about them at all, which I didn't."

"I suppose we look grander when we're not hiding under human skin," Grantaire says. He glances up and sees Feuilly's reddish eyebrows rise minutely.

"By which you mean a human vessel," he says.

"Yes."

"Hmm," Feuilly says again, and his gaze is definitely sharper now, laser-focused and analysing. "I definitely want to hear how you came to be here, then. And how it is that Enjolras hasn't put an end to you. I like to think I taught him pretty well, in that regard."

"You'd need to ask him about that," Grantaire says. "Though I think it might have something to do with me being more useful to him alive than dead."

"Useful?"

"I'm good at killing things," Grantaire says, and he's aware that it's quite an assertion to make while he's placidly tidying Jehan's kitchen. "And as I'm sure you're well aware, there are lots of things that Enjolras wants killed."

"He points, you kill?" Feuilly looks almost amused.

"More or less."

"Like an attack dog?"

"No," Grantaire says. "People like their dogs."

"Has he bound you in some way?"

"No."

"Has he offered you something in return for your killing expertise?"

"No."

"I find myself wondering what you get out of this, then," Feuilly remarks. "It's sounding pretty one-sided."

Grantaire hesitates.

"Come on." Feuilly's eyes are so sharp, so clever and searching. "What tempts an alleged angel to come downstairs and walk with hunters?"

"Alleged?" Grantaire's mouth pulls into a thin smile. "You don't believe it either? That's exhausting."

Feuilly ponders for a few moments, while Grantaire decides he can't quite be bothered washing all the cutlery from the floor in the human fashion and, despite being well aware it's a misuse of power, gives it all a hasty purification before starting to sort it back into the drawer.

"It's not that I don't believe it," Feuilly says finally. "I trust Enjolras to know what he's doing and what he's working with. It's just hard to get my head around."

"And you do have a lot to get your head around right now," Grantaire says.

Feuilly goes quiet. He flickers out of existence again, then comes back, further away from Grantaire.

“I suppose trying to figure me out is a good way not to think about the fact that you’ve been dead for three years,” Grantaire goes on. Feuilly surprises him with a quiet breath of a laugh.

“That obvious, huh?” he says, adopting a feigned fascination with the polished wood grain of Jehan’s table.

“When it comes to bad coping mechanisms, you might say I’m something of an expert,” Grantaire says. “Too bad you can’t drink. That used to be my favourite way to forget.”

“Can’t do much of anything like this.” Feuilly’s gaze shifts to his own hand—he holds it up, turns it around, then grimaces when his whole form flickers. “Besides slowly lose my mind and go vengeful, of course.”

Grantaire doesn’t reply. He doesn’t want to say that won’t happen, because it’s more likely to than not.

“Tell me, when that happens, will you be able to get rid of me before I hurt one of them?” Feuilly’s tone is flat and pragmatic. He raises his eyes to the ceiling, to where Jehan and Enjolras are sleeping above their heads. Grantaire assumes he means Bahorel, too, but that Feuilly isn’t in any temper to include him right now.

“I’m not sure,” Grantaire admits. “I told you, I’m good at killing things. You’re already dead.”

“You can’t take out one ghost?” Feuilly’s eyebrows go up again, an unimpressed expression.

“The usual methods are useless in this scenario,” Grantaire says. “Your body was cremated. There’s nothing we can salt and burn to banish you.” He pauses. “Oh, except maybe Bahorel.”

Feuilly’s eyes flick towards the door leading back to the living room, just for a moment.

“You’re bound to him, so if we lit him up, I guess you’d go up in smoke too.” Grantaire grins at him. “Wouldn’t that serve him right?”

He doesn’t mean it; he knows it’s a hideous suggestion. He wants to hear Feuilly tell him so. Feuilly says nothing.

“You’ll go vengeful a lot faster if you stay angry at him,” Grantaire tells him.

“How can I not be angry at him?” Feuilly hisses, and he’s suddenly inches from Grantaire’s face, and objects around the kitchen judder in place.

“Hey,” Grantaire says in annoyance. “I’m almost done tidying in here. Don’t go making a mess.”

Feuilly blinks. He retreats, sheepishly, blinking in and out of sight a few times before settling near the sink.

“Yeah, the hell happened in here?” he asks, casting an eye over the remaining mess.

“The same thing that let Jehan find you also hurt him pretty bad.” Grantaire gestures to the room at large. “This is what a psychic in distress can do.”

Feuilly whistles appraisingly.

“I think he’s gotten stronger,” he says. “Or maybe just less scared.”

“He’s very brave,” Grantaire says, almost defensively.

“Yeah, he was always brave.” Feuilly looks thoughtful. “He and Enjolras seem…” He trails off, frowning.

“Older?” Grantaire suggests dryly.

“Yeah, maybe that’s it.” Feuilly laughs again. It sounds sadder and more real this time. “I’m glad to see they’re still working together. A little surprised, maybe, but glad.”

Grantaire feels his ears perk up. He can’t help it.

“Why surprised?” he asks as casually as he can manage. Apparently he fails, abysmally, because immediately Feuilly’s eyes pin him again.

“How long have you known them?” he asks instead of answering.

“Enjolras, a bit over a year. Jehan a bit less, but we live in each other’s minds so it feels like longer.” Grantaire can’t suppress a small, fond smile, and he can feel Feuilly cataloguing it and filing it away.

“And how are they with each other?” Feuilly asks.

“They’re friends,” Grantaire says, because he supposes that isn’t private information. “They take care of each other, as best they can.”

“Friends,” Feuilly repeats. He wears a small smile, as if this is just nice to hear, but something in his expression gives away that he is more than a little surprised. He shakes his head. “When did that happen?”

“After you died, evidently,” Grantaire mutters. Now he’s less sure of what he can and can’t say. He knows this story, from Jehan, but he doesn’t know if Enjolras knows he knows—if he’s meant to know. He tries to imagine Enjolras’s reaction to finding out that he’d told Feuilly that Enjolras had almost followed him into death, and that his and Jehan’s friendship had been forged in the process of Jehan more or less forcing him to live and heal. None of his imagined outcomes to this scenario are pretty.

“You know more than you’re saying,” Feuilly remarks. Grantaire, in desperation, stoops down to pick up the last of the stray objects littering the floor (a ladle, three cracked ceramic ramekins and an ornate tin of tea leaves) just to partway hide his face from Feuilly’s penetrating gaze.

“Why are you asking me about them?” Grantaire attempts to counter. “Come to that, why are you talking to me at all? If you know Enjolras then you have to know he isn’t sleeping right now. You should be talking to him.”

“That sounds like the worst thing I could do,” Feuilly says with another quiet, sad laugh. “I should stay away from him and Prouvaire as much as possible. Until this is all over. I’m dead, as you’ve kindly pointed out. They’ve had to deal with me being gone once. Seems cruel, to make them go through it again.”

Grantaire sets Jehan’s tin of tea down on the worktop just a little too vehemently. The metallic clang of it makes Feuilly jump.

“Is this where Enjolras gets his horrible self-sacrificing tendencies from or are people with such disregard for themselves just drawn to each other?” Grantaire says with his best narrow-eyed, disapproving look. Feuilly opens his mouth to answer but Grantaire ploughs on. “You’re here. No one knows how long for, but that’s the same for living humans, too. Instead of being a martyr, why not take this extremely rare second chance to be with the people who care about you?” Feuilly looks truly startled for the first time, and Grantaire just can’t stop saying words. “I know that before tonight, Enjolras would have given anything to talk to you one more time. He would hate that you’re down here watching me clean and asking about him instead of making up for lost time with him. That would kill him.”

Feuilly appears frozen in place. Grantaire turns his face away. He knows it’s showing far too much right now.

“Is he okay?” Feuilly asks. “I mean, since I…?”

“He doesn’t talk about it,” Grantaire says. “It took me a long time to realise that the less he talks about something, the more it’s hurting him.” He pauses, knowing he’s treading on thin ice again. “I think it hit him very hard. Jehan too, but Enjolras…” He shakes his head. “Please. Don’t waste this chance to at least be able to say goodbye to him properly. Not many get that.”

“You care about them.” Feuilly doesn’t sound overly surprised by this—more like Grantaire had just provided him with the final piece of evidence that makes it indisputable.

"So do you," Grantaire retorts. "So. Let them know."

“There’s one more thing I want to ask you,” Feuilly says.

“What’s that?”

“If you’ve been working with Enjolras for over a year…” Feuilly pauses, like part of him doesn’t want to ask, like he already knows he won’t like the answer. “How is it that Bahorel doesn’t know you?”

“I think you can guess the answer to that,” Grantaire says.

“He hasn’t been around,” Feuilly says. “For the last year.”

Grantaire doesn’t think it’s his place to tell him that, as far as he is aware, Bahorel has been out of the picture ever since Feuilly’s funeral, so he doesn’t.

“It’s Grantaire, right?” Feuilly says suddenly. “That’s what they call you.”

“Yeah.”

“Not your real name, I assume?”

“Why would you assume a thing like that?”

“I think you will make a good distraction from the fact that I’ve been dead for three years,” Feuilly informs him. “But you might be right. There’s maybe someone else I should be talking to right now.”

He disappears.