Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

~

Enjolras’s leaving seems to make Bahorel and Feuilly newly and powerfully aware of their own restlessness. If Bahorel had any appetite left for hunting, Grantaire thinks they might have absconded in the night. But Bahorel has no appetite for much of anything, and he and Feuilly have nowhere better or more useful to be than Jehan’s house, and so it is decided that they will stay—or, more accurately, that Bahorel will stay and Feuilly, bound to him like any other ghost would be to the house they haunt, has no choice but to stick around too. Grantaire doesn't think it's the worst fate in the world, especially for Bahorel, whom he thinks could most benefit from the therapeutic benefits of being around Jehan. He doesn't think Bahorel really thinks it's so terrible, either, deep down.

It makes sense, of course, for Bahorel to continue to stay in the spare room, what with his human need for sleep and all that, but Grantaire has been surprised this last while by how much he misses having his own space, though he brushes off Jehan’s remorseful thoughts about it, especially when he catches Jehan pondering the logistics of putting a bed in the room full of formerly-haunted dolls. Grantaire says that he knows everyone is very cross with Bahorel for going and selling his soul, but putting him in the doll room seems a bit harsh.

The doll room gains a new inhabitant, too; Jehan’s latest troubled ghost has been behaving herself very well since his return from Lyon, and then a few days after Enjolras leaves, on an otherwise entirely unremarkable afternoon, the doll goes limp in Jehan’s hands, and for just a moment, the spirit inhabiting it manifests in the middle of the living room. Bahorel, steadfast patron of the salt-and-burn method, has the decency to look a bit discomfited when he sees the little girl, who gives Jehan a faint smile and a wave before vanishing in a burst of light. Jehan smiles too, a little sadly, and adds the empty vessel to his collection.

A few days after that, Combeferre messages Grantaire about a hunt. Grantaire doesn’t say anything about it, but Feuilly must have learned to read something in his expression when he looks at his phone, in his body language when he stands to go and find Jehan to tell him he’s heading out.

“For the love of God, angel, take us with you,” Feuilly says. Grantaire blinks at him. So does Bahorel, who looks like he hadn’t been consulted about this request.

“What?” Grantaire manages.

“You’re going hunting, right?” Feuilly waits for him to nod before continuing, “So have some of that heavenly mercy and take us along. I’m sure you don’t need the back-up but let’s just pretend for a little while that you do. Let us feel useful. Besides—” He shrugs, and no gesture has ever looked so falsely casual. “Apart from your disappearing trick and fixing up Bahorel’s bust nose, I haven’t had much of a chance to see you in action. A guy gets curious.”

“Feuilly, I don’t know about—” Bahorel starts to say.

“Are you so out of practice that you can’t even come along to watch?” Feuilly gives him an unimpressed look. “I can’t go without you. Can’t go anywhere without you like this. And if I don’t see outside of this pastoral fantasy we've got going on here pretty soon, I’m going to go vengeful faster than any other spirit in history.”

“Don’t joke about that,” Bahorel snaps.

“I could drop you guys off literally anywhere if you just need a change of scenery,” Grantaire says, feeling a little guilty that it had never occurred to him before.

“I don’t want to go sight-seeing,” Feuilly says. “I’m a hunter. I want to be on a hunt.”

Grantaire wonders, not for the first time, if this is where Enjolras gets half his personality from or if people drawn to hunting are just like this.

“Alright,” he says. It's not strictly safe for Bahorel outside the wards, but they've made so little progress on breaking his deal that Grantaire doesn't think any crossroads demon could even have an inkling of what they're up to. Bahorel should be alright to be out and about, at least until his contract term runs out. “By all means, come along for the horror show.”

Combeferre is understandably surprised when Grantaire touches down with Bahorel in tow, Feuilly following in a buzz of static a moment later.

“You know how it is, everyone has to take a turn at seeing what weird stuff I can do,” Grantaire says by way of explanation.

“Ah.” Combeferre offers him an apologetic look. “We’re a curious species. I hope you don’t mind.”

“I’ll take curiosity over hostility,” Grantaire says. “What've you got?”

“Well.” Combeferre suddenly looks sort of uncomfortable—his eyes flick briefly to Feuilly. “It looks like a poltergeist.”

Feuilly snorts. “You hear that?” he says. He makes a move as if to nudge Grantaire with his elbow, but his arm just passes through him. “Avenge me, angel.”

“It's already injured one human hunter pretty badly,” Combeferre says. “I'm reluctant to send another.”

“Wow,” Feuilly says, deadpan. “What kind of amateur lets himself get injured by a poltergeist?”

Shockingly, nobody laughs. Bahorel's soul gets swallowed up by an eye-stinging combination of emotions that Grantaire is just going to call ‘trauma’, and Combeferre's isn't much better. Feuilly just shrugs.

“They thought I was funny when I was alive,” he tells Grantaire.

“Sure,” Grantaire says.

Combeferre tells them where the case is (a family home in the north of Portugal, though the family in question has vacated the place after the poltergeist tried to drag their youngest child out of his bedroom window) and then, already looking quite defeated, asks if Bahorel and Feuilly might prefer to wait for a hunt that's a little less close to the bone for them. Bahorel looks like he really, really would prefer that, but he just looks to Feuilly, who just raises an eyebrow and says, "Why? It's not like I can die again."

"Guess that settles it," Grantaire says, and flies them to their destination before Combeferre can suffer further emotional damage.

"You'd think hunters never died on the job, the way everyone's acting," Feuilly says, a note of impatience in his voice. "Pretty much all hunters do is die. Combeferre must be used to it by now."

Grantaire ponders. "He's used to it," he says. "But he's not numb to it. It still gets to him, every time."

Feuilly turns away. "I don't know how he's still standing, then."

"He knows even more people would die if he stopped," Grantaire says absently as he surveys the house they've come to exorcise. It looks entirely normal from the outside, of course—but a poltergeist means that there must be a spot in there somewhere where the veil between worlds has been worn thin. He flies them inside.

"Jesus,” Bahorel swears. “Stop doing that without warning, will you?"

"Keep up," Grantaire tells him, snapping his fingers a few times and earning himself a scowl.

"Do you have some special, angelic way of getting rid of a poltergeist?" Feuilly asks him after a moment.

“If I can find the portal it’s using to access the living world, I can close it.” Grantaire shrugs. "Ghosts are spirits that got stuck here. Poltergeists are spirits that went beyond the veil and then punched their way back through. Seal off the door, and they're done."

"That simple, huh?" Bahorel says, rolling his eyes—then he swears again and ducks when three dinner plates come shooting through a nearby doorway in quick succession. Missing his head, they hit the wall and smash one after the other.

"Hey, still got those hunter reflexes," Grantaire congratulates him. "Or, I guess Jehan gave you some practice at ducking flying objects lately." He sticks his head through the doorway and looks around. "Hello."

It's the kitchen, of course, and the poltergeist is right in the middle of it, primed to start throwing knives and glasses and all sorts of other fun objects. Grantaire is just wondering what's got it riled up so quickly when he hears a strange, hollow sound from just behind him—the sound of a sharp intake of breath from someone who no longer needs to breathe.

"Ah." He glances at Feuilly, who is staring with controlled surprise and much wariness at the shadowy, featureless form of the poltergeist. "You can see it?"

"Yes," Feuilly says flatly.

"See what?" asks Bahorel—a non-psychic, living human to whom poltergeists are completely invisible.

"It can see you, too," Grantaire says to Feuilly with a faint smile. "I think it considers another spirit muscling in on its haunting ground to be kind of rude."

As expected, the poltergeist empties a fancy-looking knife block on the counter and hurls its contents at them—even the bread knife. Bahorel employs his impressive ducking skills once again, whilst Feuilly just surveys the poltergeist as the knives pass harmlessly through him. It takes Grantaire a moment to realise that he'd been so busy watching them that he'd let one of the knives embed its blade in his shoulder. He pulls it out with a noise of faint disgust; Bahorel heaves a sigh like he just really wishes that they'd never left Jehan's house.

"Okay." Grantaire goes into the kitchen properly. "I need to find the place that it's getting through from—" Another dinner plate thunks directly into his chest and ricochets off; he turns towards the poltergeist. "Look, throwing stuff at me isn't going to get you anywhere; you might as well stop."

He feels a vague sort of tug as the poltergeist apparently tries to throw him, but of course, it finds this futile, too. Grantaire remembers just a moment too late that there is someone here that it can throw, though; he hears Bahorel's startled yell and turns just in time to see his legs pulled out from under him. He hits the floor with a resounding thud, then grabs onto the edge of the doorframe to prevent himself from being dragged across the floor. Grantaire can see the strain in the muscles of his arms.

One of the knives goes whizzing past Grantaire's head again, in the opposite direction this time; he follows its trajectory and sees it go directly through the poltergeist's equivalent of a head. This doesn't harm it, naturally, but seems to startle it enough that it lets Bahorel go.

"Fucking quit it," Feuilly says to it, narrow-eyed, one arm extended.

Grantaire grins. "Ghost fight. Nice." He gestures towards Bahorel. "Should I zap him outside?"

"What are you talking about?" Feuilly says. "This is his job." He gives Grantaire an expectant look. "Go do yours."

Grantaire laughs helplessly—he feels like he can almost see back through time, see exactly how Enjolras popped out from under Feuilly's tutelage as the type of hunter he is; the type who would consider death itself just a minor obstacle to getting the job done.

"Don't let Bahorel die," he says, knowing full well that he himself would never let that happen. "I really don't know what that would do to you."

Feuilly waves him off impatiently, and he goes in search of the poltergeist's portal. It's defending the kitchen so violently that at first he assumes it must be within the room somewhere—hiding inside the fridge, maybe?—but a quick scan of the room reveals nothing. Then he finds the door to the cellar—it leads him down a flight of worn steps and into a dark, chilly space directly beneath the kitchen. Honestly, if he'd known there was a creepy cellar, he'd have come directly here. Of course a spirit would choose the objectively spookiest room in the house to force its way into from the great beyond.

He can hear a great deal of thumping and shouting from upstairs and hurries to isolate the portal. There's what looks like a large, dark stain on the concrete floor, and his lips quirk up at the corners—nice try. He kneels and places both hands flat on the stained area—closing his eyes and applying a small amount of Grace allows him to feel the slight give to it, like it's a pool he could lean forward and tumble into. He fits his fingers to its edges and floods it with Grace while pushing inward, and the portal immediately begins to contract and shrink. There's an abrupt ceasing of noise from above—a moment later, the poltergeist's shadowy non-form appears in the cellar and is dragged into the dwindling portal. It puts up a fight, which Grantaire mostly just ignores, and in short order the weak spot is sealed and the poltergeist sent back from whence it came. Grantaire gets to his feet, dusts off his hands with a satisfied air, and turns and just about hits the ceiling when he comes face to face with Feuilly.

"Hello," he manages after first making a rather more strangled sound. He feels newly apologetic for all the times he's dropped in on people and startled them. "Did you leave Bahorel to fend for himself?"

"Why didn't it take me, too?" Feuilly asks. His eyes are on the spot where the portal had been. "When you sealed it off."

Grantaire frowns. "Well, you're not a poltergeist. You're not leashed to any portal."

"Where did you send it?"

"Back where it came from."

Feuilly's ever-piercing eyes flick to him. "Is that where I was? Before Bahorel dragged me back here."

Grantaire sighs and heads for the stairs. "I'm pretty sure you can see why it'd be a bad idea for me to divulge anything about the afterlife."

"I don’t remember anything," Feuilly says from behind him. "I was alive and then I was this. Nothing in between. I've been trying to figure out if that means there just is nothing."

Grantaire reluctantly turns to face him again, taking the last few stairs backwards. "You don't need to be afraid," he says, because he can say that much. "Of going back."

Feuilly treats him to a supremely unimpressed and condescending side-eye.

"Sorry," Grantaire says with a grin before turning away again. "I'm sure this is just pure intellectual curiosity, and not even a little bit of worry."

They find Bahorel in the kitchen, sitting on the one remaining dining chair that hasn't been smashed or upended.

"All clear," Grantaire tells him.

Bahorel snorts. "Yeah, I figured." He looks at Feuilly. "You satisfied?"

"After that?" Feuilly raises an eyebrow. "Hardly."

Bahorel gives a hoarse laugh and drags a hand over his face. "Yeah," he says again. "I figured."

~

Grantaire can just about cope with the idea that Feuilly (and, by necessity if not by his own free will, Bahorel) will be accompanying him on some of his hunts going forward, but knowing this means he is more than a little alarmed when he lands in Combeferre's apartment one day and comes face to face with Courfeyrac. In fairness, Courfeyrac looks quite alarmed by this, too.

“God.” He clutches a fistful of his shirt over his heart. “I don't know if I'm ever going to get used to you just appearing. There should be a five second warning. The pealing of heavenly bells, or something.”

“How are you here?” Grantaire asks stupidly. He supposes he shouldn't really be surprised—Courfeyrac hadn't seemed like he planned to give up his hunting-adjacent ambitions any time soon—but he hadn't considered that the responsibility for keeping Courfeyrac and Feuilly out of each other's way, until Enjolras seems less worried about letting them meet, might end up falling to him. He ponders an alternate timeline where Courfeyrac had been here when he'd just dropped in with Bahorel and Feuilly in tow and feels a cold shiver pass through him.

“If you mean, how am I in Paris, then I must remind you that humans have other ways of travelling besides Angel Airways,” Courfeyrac says. “If you mean, how am I in Combeferre's apartment when he's so resistant to my charms—well, that was just pure persistence.”

“He was disturbing my neighbours,” Combeferre says irritably, coming into the room from wherever he's been presumably hiding from Courfeyrac.

Courfeyrac smiles unrepentantly. “It was nothing, really.” He jerks a thumb in Grantaire's direction. “Did you bring him here to get rid of me? Poor sportsmanship if so; the only reason I rode the train the whole way here was that I didn't want to make Grantaire pick a side.”

“I brought him here because I need him to deliver something,” Combeferre says. He gestures for Grantaire to follow him and leads him into the kitchen, where a wooden box is sitting inside a thick ring of salt on the table. "This is for Jehan. Please give him my apologies for sending him another so soon after the last."

Grantaire can guess what's in the box. "I don't think he'll mind. Is it going to kick off as soon as I take it out of the salt circle?"

"Most likely."

"Right." Grantaire braces himself.

"Say hi to Jehan for me!" Courfeyrac calls cheerfully just before Grantaire snatches up the box and flies directly back to Jehan's heavily warded nightmare room. As soon as he lands, something starts thumping against the inside of the box.

"Jehan!" he calls, leaning his weight down on the box's lid. "Got a delivery for you."

He hears footsteps running up the stairs and then Jehan appears at his shoulder.

"Oh, another one?" As Grantaire had predicted, he looks quite pleased by the prospect. "More fun for me. You'd better let them out."

"You sure?" Grantaire asks with a raised eyebrow. The movements from inside the box feel really quite violent.

"Got to see what I'm working with."

Grantaire shrugs and steps back from the box. The lid goes shooting off and out flies another doll. Just to really accentuate the room's already nightmarish theme, this one isn't a baby doll but is instead a clown, with a floppy body dressed in faded, silk clothes and a white, porcelain face painted with make up that seems specifically designed to prevent any child who might see it from ever sleeping soundly again. It also has a large hat with a small bell at the tip, so Grantaire supposes that they'll at least always hear it coming.

"Hello!" Jehan calls cheerily to it as it levitates ominously above their heads.

The only response he gets is one of the room's many items—an old radio—suddenly coming to life and starting to play distorted-sounding calliope organ music through its crackly speakers.

"Okay, you have fun, Jehan," Grantaire says, shaking his head and turning to leave, only to find Bahorel in the doorway, leaning on the frame and watching the proceedings.

"Another ghost?" he asks. Grantaire looks between him and the floating doll as if to say duh, but Jehan, of course, is more polite.

"Yes, a new arrival," he says. He's following the doll closely with his eyes—Grantaire supposes he's probably already doing some psychic stuff.

Bahorel pushes off the doorframe and comes into the room. Grantaire watches him warily, trying to ascertain if he's stealthily carrying salt and a lighter, but he just goes and stands next to Jehan without trying to set anything aflame.

"So." Bahorel clears his throat uncomfortably and gestures towards the still-hovering doll. "How does this work, then?"

Grantaire sees Jehan's face break into a wide smile and stifles a smile himself as he leaves Jehan to walk Bahorel through his ghost-rehabilitation process.

~

Grantaire is surprised when Enjolras actually calls him for help one night—then, given the nature of the prayer, he isn't surprised at all.

Grantaire I need you to come here I need you to help them please Grantaire you have to help them

He flies to the frantic prayer's source and finds Enjolras in—someone's living room, it looks like. This throws him for a second, but then he feels the chill presence of a vengeful spirit, and notices that Enjolras isn't just standing against the floral wallpaper but is pinned there by some invisible force, strain in every line of his body as he fights against it to no avail. Grantaire takes a step towards him but Enjolras wrenches one arm free and points urgently and Grantaire turns to see a woman cowering against the opposite wall as a ghostly figure advances on her.

“Get her out of here,” Enjolras gasps out.

Grantaire crosses the room, sparing the spirit a brief glance as he passes it—it looks like a skeletal man with bulging, icy eyes and thin, black lips drawn back from his teeth.

“Yikes,” Grantaire says. He spies a dropped tub of salt, presumably Enjolras's, lying on the carpet; he scoops up a handful and throws it into the ghost's face. It screeches and dissipates, though he knows it'll be back.

The woman looks between Grantaire and where the ghost had been with wild eyes and he tries to look like the less threatening option as he approaches her. “Let's get you out of here, huh?”

He touches a hand to the woman's shoulder and flies outside with her, landing neatly on the pavement. Understandably, she stares at him like he's a drug-induced hallucination.

“Wait here, okay?” he says. “My friend and I will just deal with…” He waves a hand vaguely towards the house. “That. For you.”

“Wait!” the woman cries before he can go back inside. “Wait, what's happening, my kids are still in there!”

Grantaire's heart sinks and he swears colourfully. He flies back into the living room, but the ghost has not reappeared there, and Enjolras is gone. He hears frightened wailing from upstairs and follows the sound—it leads him to a bedroom, and two small boys, and Enjolras planted in front of them. He's salvaged his tub of salt, though it only looks about a third full now, and is also wielding what appears to be an iron poker. The ghost manifests and the children howl; Enjolras sweeps the poker straight through its head and it disappears again.

"Are there bones somewhere that I could burn to finish this?" Grantaire asks, trying to shoot the children a reassuring smile as he comes to Enjolras's side. They do not look reassured.

"Under the patio, out the back," Enjolras says, poker still raised, his eyes flicking back and forth as he waits for the ghost to show itself again.

Grantaire stares at him. "How were you going to—?"

"I didn't know they added a patio, okay?" Enjolras says through gritted teeth just as the ghost flashes back into existence and seizes him by the shoulder—Enjolras is quick to bring the poker down on its arm, but not before the ghost rakes bloody stripes down his. The room is getting colder, and there are fresh screams from the boys when the lights flicker and go out.

"Okay, that's enough childhood trauma for one night," Grantaire says. He sends the children outside to their mother, then takes Enjolras and himself out to the house's back garden. It's neat and well-kept—for now.

The patio looks fresh and new. "Under here?" Grantaire says and, with a nod of confirmation from Enjolras, he drives a fist into the pale-coloured sandstone slabs and shatters the whole lot.

Enjolras makes a choked-off sound, like this show of force somehow still surprises him, after everything—or maybe it's more to do with the ghost, sensing its mortal remains in peril, appearing and catching him by the throat. Enjolras runs it through with the poker again, but Grantaire knows it's only going to get more violent and desperate the closer he gets to its bones.

“Get inside a salt circle,” he calls to Enjolras.

Enjolras gives him a flat look and very deliberately upends the tub of salt—what pours out is enough to make a protective circle for, perhaps, a guinea pig.

“Okay, point taken.” Grantaire spots a shovel lying nearby; he guesses Enjolras had brought it and then discarded it in disgust when he’d encountered the patio. He snatches it up. “C’mere, I can send you out to the street. Ghost can’t cross the property line.”

Enjolras doesn’t budge. “Shut up and start digging,” he says, poker raised. “This is my hunt. I’m not leaving until it’s done.”

“You don’t trust me to get it done?” Grantaire says even as he obligingly starts to dig through the broken slabs and dirt.

“That’s not—” Enjolras starts, and then looks at him, eyes narrowed. “Are you trying to guilt me into leaving?”

“You’re already bleeding,” Grantaire points out, not faltering in his pace. “There’s no reason for you to end up bleeding any more.”

“I know you don’t need me here,” Enjolras says. He sounds more than a little annoyed by the fact. “I’m well aware that you’re stronger and faster and completely impervious to anything a ghost might try, but it would still feel wrong to just leave you to it, so—”

He cuts himself off as the spirit returns, looking agitated, as Grantaire had expected. It’s careful to keep itself out of Enjolras’s reach this time; it stands on the other side of the debris pile that Grantaire has created, and it hisses, and several chunks of broken slab rise slowly into the air.

“Oh, come on,” Grantaire groans as half a slab flies at him and breaks against his side, and then another chunk slams into his arm hard enough that it would have snapped if he were human. “Enjolras, you’ve got to go, if one of these hits you—”

“He’s not aiming for me,” he hears Enjolras say from further away than he’d have expected—he realises with alarm that he’s making his way towards the ghost. “He knows who the real threat is now.”

Sure enough, the ghost doesn’t bother with Enjolras until he’s nearly upon it, and then it’s too late—one swipe of the poker and it’s gone again.

“No bones yet?” Enjolras asks.

“I’ve got to be close,” Grantaire says, digging more frantically, clods of dirt flying everywhere as he desperately tries to finish this before his favourite human gets himself killed out of sheer, stubborn principle. He hears the fizzle of the ghost reappearing but doesn’t look up from his task, trying to trust in Enjolras’s competence and the ghost’s fixation on himself. He hears Enjolras shout something, then a thud, and then the ghost appears in the hole he’s dug, right in front of his face, and that’s really a sight to behold but then, through the ghost’s face he sees something pale protruding from the dirt. He lunges and seizes it and feels bone under his fingers and, praying that the rest of the skeleton is in the immediate vicinity, sends out a wave of destructive Grace.

The ghost lets out an ungodly screech, and then seems to blacken and burn before Grantaire’s eyes, before finally dissolving into nothingness.

Grantaire breathes a sigh of relief and climbs out of the hole. He finds Enjolras on his knees, just in front of the back wall of the house.

“Stupid thing threw me against the wall again,” Enjolras grumbles before Grantaire can ask. He pushes himself to his feet. “I’m fine.”

He’s still bleeding, of course, but he’s unlikely to let Grantaire deal with that until they’re wrapped up here.

“Do we need to…call this in? To the cops?” Grantaire asks, gesturing to the unmarked grave he’d just dug up. “You know. Dead guy buried in a back garden?”

Enjolras hums vaguely.

“No?” Grantaire hazards.

“Well, it’s up to you.” Enjolras shrugs. “I spoke to his widow while researching this case. And some other previous residents of the house.” He shoots Grantaire a significant look. “Seems that in both life and death, his favourite targets were women and children.”

“Oh.” Grantaire shovels all the debris he's created roughly back into the hole, then stoops and touches his fingers to it—the patio obediently reassembles itself under his touch. He catches Enjolras looking at him, eyebrows raised. “What? It looked expensive.”

They go back through the house to where the woman is waiting, looking shell-shocked, on the street outside, one arm around each of her sons. She takes an instinctive step back as they approach.

“It's alright.” Enjolras puts up a placating hand. “Everything's fine now. It's over.”

“What's over?” she asks unsteadily, pulling her children even closer. “What was that? Who are you?” Her eyes flick nervously to Grantaire. “What are you?”

“Your house had a vengeful spirit in it. I told you,” Enjolras says, not unkindly. “I understand why you couldn't believe me before. But you saw for yourself.”

“I don't know what I saw.” Her voice wobbles, like tears are imminent, and it immediately sets both children to whimpering again.

“I promise that it's over now,” Enjolras says. “Your home is safe. That's all you need to worry about.”

She just stares at him, dazed and wordless.

“He needs a bandage,” the younger boy says suddenly, his face still half-buried in his mother's sleeve but his eyes fixed on the bright blood running down Enjolras's arm.

“He does. We're going to go deal with that,” Grantaire says. He gives them a wave. “Take care.”

They do the family the courtesy of walking away and around a corner—they've seen enough weird shit for one night.

“Where are you staying?” Grantaire asks once they're out of sight, and when Enjolras tells him, he takes him by his unshredded elbow and flies them there. He manages to land them outside Enjolras's room, and Enjolras manages to get the door open before anyone happens along to see his bloodied appearance.

“Okay, let's see the damage,” Grantaire says once they're inside.

“These are probably very manageable with regular, human first aid, you know,” Enjolras says, examining the scratches on his arm.

“Uh huh,” Grantaire says, unimpressed. “Anywhere else hurt, now that that post-hunt adrenaline is wearing off?”

Enjolras looks ready to deny it, but then he frowns, and his hand goes to his side.

“Oh.” He sounds surprised. “Here.”

“Yeah, that'll be the cracked rib,” Grantaire says. He squints. “Ribs. Two.”

Enjolras shoots him a flat look. “My soul, my bones—is there anything you're not looking at?” he asks dryly.

“I can heal you with my eyes closed, if it makes you feel better,” Grantaire offers. He shuts his eyes demonstratively and holds out one hand. “Just say the word.”

He hears Enjolras snort. “Don't pretend like you need permission.”

Grantaire cracks one eye open. “We're not doing this again, are we?”

Frustration spikes in Enjolras's soul. “I can't win, is the problem,” he says. He makes a move like he's about to start pacing but stops short and grimaces, the broken ribs obviously making themselves known with every move now. “It feels pathetic to let you just fix up every little injury I get. But it feels stupid and petty not to let you, because—because I can't hunt with broken ribs, I can't…” He cuts himself off and pinches his eyes shut briefly. “God, this is so stupid, it hurts to breathe.”

“Enjolras,” Grantaire chides.

“Okay, fine, fix it.” Enjolras sounds so furious about it, even as he adds, “Please.”

Grantaire reaches out and fits his hand to Enjolras’s ribs before he can change his mind. He heals the broken bones and the gashes on his arm, and he sees the relief in Enjolras's soul, but he also sees so much more shame than is remotely merited, and he wishes there was anything he could do to fix that. He wishes this could be something that Enjolras welcomes, instead of stubbornly resisting.

“Thank you,” Enjolras says, sounding defeated. He goes to turn away, but Grantaire keeps his hand on the side of his ribcage and applies a little pressure, silently requesting he stay in place.

“Why is this so hard for you?” Grantaire asks. “I thought…” He realises how lame what he's about to say sounds, and forces himself to press on anyway. “I thought it would be better now. I thought you didn't want my help before, because you didn't want anything from me.”

Enjolras won't quite look at him. There's something odd in his soul—something rose-tinged and flustered—and Grantaire removes his hand in case the touch is proving an impertinent distraction.

“It's not your fault,” Enjolras says finally. “You just make me very aware of my limitations. I used to think I was pretty capable.”

“You are,” Grantaire protests.

A humourless smile tilts Enjolras's mouth. “For a human, right?”

Grantaire shrugs helplessly. “What am I supposed to do?”

“Exactly what you’re doing. I’d bite your head off if you held back for my sake. You already know I hate that you spent a year letting me waste my time on hunts you could have wrapped up in a few hours.” Enjolras shakes his head. “Like I said, it’s not your fault. What you’re doing is—great. It just really throws into perspective how little I can really do. That woman would have died tonight, if calling for you hadn’t been an option. Me too, probably. And the kids. Or, who knows? Maybe the ghost would have left them alive, so they could grow up angry and vengeful. Maybe even become hunters themselves.” He finally looks at Grantaire, smile vanished. “I used to get so annoyed when you talked about hunting being a pointless endeavour. About hunters all having the same story—murdered parents, murdered siblings, murdered spouses. Blood demanding blood, in a hopeless cycle.” He hesitates a moment, then: “But you really have seen it play out, over and over and over, haven't you? Decades—Centuries of human failure. Everything you used to say makes more sense now.”

“You don’t need to worry about that,” Grantaire says uncomfortably. “No one died today. I was here. I’ll always be here.”

“You’re an entirely new factor in all this,” Enjolras says. “Before you came along, there were people I wasn’t able to save. And that’s still true for every other hunter in the world, who doesn’t have someone like you to call on. Someone who can just…make it all okay.”

“I—”

“I’m not saying you should be at the beck and call of every hunter in the world,” Enjolras says before Grantaire can offer to do more—do better. He looks at Grantaire almost beseechingly. “How long has it been exactly like this?”

Grantaire, who has committed to being honest with Enjolras, hesitates. Enjolras sees it and must intuit that this means he won't like the answer to that question—his soul darkens, uncharacteristically despondent, and then a moment later, sparks with new anger.

“I can't believe it didn't occur to me to ask you about this before now,” he says, raking a vicious hand through his own hair. “You've seen it all. And all this time, I was too caught up in—my own petty bullshit.”

“Enjolras,” Grantaire says patiently. “You've had quite a lot going on lately.”

“Can you tell me?” Enjolras asks again. “I can see the answer in your face, but tell me anyway.”

Grantaire sighs heavily. “For as long as there have been monsters preying on humans, there have been humans that fought back,” he says. “But never enough to really make a difference. The monsters always keep coming. Humans, hunters and civilians alike, keep falling prey to them. It's always been that way. Sometimes a little better, sometimes a little worse. But it never really changes.”

Enjolras nods through a stare that's gone quite blank. He moves away a few steps and slowly sinks to sit down on the edge of the bed. “That's why you hate it,” he says. “Hunting. You know that we never really make a difference.” He shakes his head. “I must have always sounded so stupid to you. Naive. Thinking I could change anything this way.”

“I hunt, too,” Grantaire says. The reminder seems to surprise Enjolras out of his thousand-yard stare and his eyes focus on Grantaire again. After a moment of hesitation, Grantaire comes to sit next to him before continuing. “Like you said, I've seen it all. I've looked into the face of the futility of this for millennia. I know better than anyone that we’re never going to win. I gave up for a long time because of that.” He nudges Enjolras with his foot. “You changed that. It isn't pointless, what we do. If I can know every failure that's gone before and not give up, then you're definitely not allowed to. It doesn't suit you at all.”

“I'm not giving up,” Enjolras says. “I'm just…” He shakes his head. “This isn't working.”

“You can’t save the world,” Grantaire says quietly. “It'll carry on as it always has. There are more people than monsters, but more monsters than hunters, and you won't win every time, and you won't put a stop to them for good. But I don't think that makes it all pointless. Not anymore. I see now—every life saved matters. It will always be worth fighting to save people, even though you can't save everyone. The people that we do save—that matters.”

“But it's not enough,” Enjolras says quietly—thoughtfully.

Grantaire dares to reach over and touch his fingers to the back of Enjolras’s hand. “We won today. Nobody died. That's enough for now, right?”

Enjolras offers him a small smile, and another unexpected glow of warmth in his soul—and something else there, too. Something purple and bruised that looks like it hurts. “For now,” he echoes. He turns his hand palm-up beneath Grantaire's and gives a brief squeeze. “Thank you. For saving them. And me.”

“Any time,” Grantaire says with a grin. The urge to get closer is suddenly shockingly strong—sometimes he's still taken aback by how the love he holds inside can create demands in his human body. He wants to thread his fingers together with Enjolras's and hold on tight, he wants to touch his other hand to his hair, his cheek, he wants to draw him into an embrace and hold him tight enough to feel his heartbeat. To tamp down on these strange, human desires, he retracts his hand, though he's disappointed when this causes that new bloom of warmth and bruise-point of pain in Enjolras's soul to be extinguished before he can properly examine either.

Enjolras bundles his own hands into his lap and sits up straighter, as if shaking off his strange pensiveness. “So,” he says with an unsteady attempt at another smile, “what have I been missing back at Jehan's house?”

Grantaire thinks. “Feuilly and Bahorel came on a hunt with me,” he says finally.

Enjolras blinks hard, like he's trying to suppress some greater, more boggled expression. “Really?”

“Feuilly's idea. Bahorel didn't have much choice.”

Enjolras nods, like this makes more sense. “Feuilly wanted to…see?”

“Of course. He's worse than Combeferre when it comes to data collection.”

Enjolras's smile looks more genuine now. “Yeah, he is. Did it go okay?"

Grantaire waggles a hand from side to side. "I think Bahorel and Combeferre were slightly horrified that Feuilly wanted to go on a poltergeist hunt. And sending the poltergeist back from whence it came might have caused Feuilly something of an existential crisis. But seeing me in action didn't incite any torch-and-pitchfork type stuff, if that's what you mean."

He doesn't miss the ripple of relief that goes across Enjolras's soul. "That's good."

"I'm still not out from under Feuilly's microscope, though."

"No, that won't happen for a while."

"What about you?" Grantaire asks. "Still no luck with Valjean?"

Enjolras shakes his head. "No," he says sourly. "I've been back a few times, between hunts, but he's giving me nothing." He scowls. "The worst part is that he clearly feels sorry for me. You remember how he was the first time we met him, right? All that shouting about how he didn't want hunters in his house or near his daughter? Now he doesn't even have the decency to be annoyed when I show up to pester him. He just lets me in. Offers me a drink. Looks at me all…sad. And instead of giving me any useful information, he wastes my time trying to convince me to let it go. It's awful. I wish he'd start a fight with me instead."

Grantaire can kind of understand what he means. An old hunter like Valjean being nice to you can only mean one thing: he thinks you're completely screwed.

"He doesn't get to decide that it's hopeless," Enjolras says, his scowl turning fiercer. "No one gets to decide that."

"Maybe you should take me along, after all," Grantaire says. "Might shake things up, at least."

"If I could get him angry, he might at least let something slip," Enjolras says. "As things stand, he's determined to take Cosette's mother's deal to his grave, and he's going to be fucking…patient and saintly about it, too. He called me 'son' once and I nearly took a swing at him."

"I bet Marius wishes Valjean would call him that," Grantaire says, and is gratified when this is enough to smooth out Enjolras's scowl and earn him a small laugh. Even when things had been at their best between them, in the before, getting him to laugh had always felt like winning a prize. Grantaire can't believe how lucky he is, that he's able to do it again, even now.

"Maybe I should take Marius with me, if I really want to make him mad," Enjolras muses.

“You could try taking Bahorel,” Grantaire says. “His soul is damned and he's got a ghost attached to him; I want to see if he can even get through the wards on the front door.”

Enjolras looks amused. “You don’t like him, do you?” he says. Then, before Grantaire can even try to formulate a delicate answer, “I mean, obviously. He’s given you no reason to, even if he has called a truce now. It’s just interesting to see you…” He shrugs. “I don’t know, reacting normally to someone being shitty to you. Good to know you can do it sometimes, I suppose.”

Grantaire doesn’t tell him that he’s largely indifferent to how Bahorel treats him and has been more affronted by his treatment of Enjolras and Jehan. He senses that admitting this would lose him points.

"He seems like he doesn't have the energy to stay at full vigilance around me all the time anymore, at least, so that's nice," he says instead. "He seems a bit less full of rage in general, I think. Mostly with Jehan, though."

Enjolras nods. "Makes sense. Jehan was always his favourite." Then, at Grantaire's bemused look, "Okay, no, obviously Feuilly was his…" He purses his lips as he tries to think through what he's trying to say. "Jehan was the only one who'd ever really let Bahorel be nice to him," he says finally. "And I think he liked that."

Grantaire takes a moment to let this idea sink in. "What?" he says at length.

Enjolras laughs, just a bit ruefully. "Yeah, I suppose that's kind of hard to imagine now. You've only known him like…" He waves a hand tiredly. "This."

“So what was he like?” Grantaire asks with equal parts caution and curiosity. “Before.”

Enjolras hums to himself. “I'm not the best at explaining things like that. If you asked Feuilly, he'd be able to say one single, really incisive sentence that'd sum it up perfectly, and you'd understand.”

“I don't know if Feuilly would give a very flattering description, though,” Grantaire says.

Enjolras's forehead creases as he thinks back, his eyes gone distant. “Bahorel was…” he starts slowly. He shakes his head and gives a rueful laugh. “God, I don't know. He was a hunter, obviously, with all that tends to entail. I thought he was such a dick at first. He teased me so much. And—babied me, on hunts. It made me so angry. I thought I just had to prove myself to him—show that I was worth taking seriously—and he'd lay off. But no matter what I did…” He shakes his head. “Turns out, none of it was a calculated insult. He was just trying to take care of me. I wish I could say I figured that out myself, but I didn't. Feuilly told me. He knew all about it; Bahorel had always tried to take care of him, too. He wanted to look after everyone. Keep everyone safe.”

“And the teasing?” Grantaire asks.

Enjolras looks askance at him. “You need me to explain that?” he says. “You were exactly the same, when we met.”

Grantaire shoves down on his human vessel's instinct to flush as he's forced to remember his put-on, drawling insouciance from early in their acquaintance.

“No one teaches you to be kind when you're raised a hunter,” Enjolras goes on, mercifully. “And other hunters don't accept kindness well, either. Kindness smacks of weakness.” He casts another sidelong glance at Grantaire. “You might have noticed I'd learned that lesson by the time you came along. So—Bahorel was the type of person who wanted to take care of people. But he didn't know how to be sweet about it.” He laughs a little just at the idea. “Even if he did, who would've let him be nice to them? Not Feuilly. Not me.” He looks a touch shamefaced.

“But Jehan is sweet to everyone,” Grantaire says.

“And if you're nice to Jehan—nothing bad is ever going to come of that, is it?” Enjolras shrugs. “He's a very safe person to let your guard down around.”

Your guard is down, now. The thought strikes Grantaire without warning, but it’s true. Enjolras is leaning back on his hands, his soul settled and at ease as they talk. He's not afraid, or angry, or even plagued by his recently habitual guilt. The last time Grantaire had come to his assistance on a hunt had been the incident with the werewolf. The gulf between them then had seemed insurmountable.

I love talking to you, Grantaire wants to tell him. He hopes his gaze isn't as obviously gooey as it feels. I’m so happy we can talk again.

“I’ll take some time to get to grips with the idea that Bahorel wants to be nice, deep down,” he says instead.

~

The next time Grantaire is called to Combeferre's apartment, he lands to find Courfeyrac there once again, and the two of them once again mid-argument.

“I've lived my entire life in this mess,” Combeferre is saying. “Do you really think you can just wander out of university and tell me how to do this?”

"Oh," Grantaire says. "Should I come back, or…?"

“No,” Courfeyrac says with great patience. “I think you can tell me how to do this, and then after you've told me about a billion times and I've proven to you that even fancy university boys can be competent, maybe there can be some days where I do this instead of you. And you can, I don't know, go take the world's most overdue spa day.”

Combeferre frowns. “I don't want a spa day.”

Courfeyrac throws up his hands.

“You won't be around forever,” he says after a moment of visible, silent exasperation. “In fact, if you keep this up, you probably won't even be around for much longer. If you want your system to outlive you, you're going to have to start entrusting bits of it to other people. And as far as I can tell, I'm the only one who's stepped up so far. I'm sorry I'm not what you expected but I'm what you've got so…" He spreads his arms wide. "Make the most of it."

Combeferre gives him a hard look for a long moment before turning to Grantaire and thrusting a case file at him. "Rawhead in Denmark." He casts another look back at Courfeyrac. "Do you know what a rawhead is?"

"If you tell me, then I'll know, won't I?" Courfeyrac says.

"Have fun, you two," Grantaire says before hastily flying away and leaving them to it.

~

“Do you suppose Enjolras is ever going to let us meet these friends of his?” Feuilly asks one day.

“The friends you think he shouldn't have?” Jehan asks, barely looking up from his knitting.

A faintly sardonic smile crosses Feuilly's face. “You think he needs my seal of approval before he'll make introductions?”

“It would definitely mean a lot to him,” Jehan says with perfect seriousness, and Feuilly sobers again.

“It's not that easy,” he says after a moment, hooking his ghost-thumbs into his ghost-pockets as he does in all moments of emotional awkwardness. “It's—not how we do things. He knows that.”

“It was different for you,” Jehan says mildly. “And Bahorel.”

“Hey, I didn't say anything,” Bahorel grunts.

“Neither of you ever had to leave anyone behind,” Jehan goes on.

“The hunting life sort of chose us,” Feuilly says with a shrug. “Whereas Enjolras chose it for himself.”

“I don't think that means the same rules have to apply,” Jehan says.

“No?”

“No,” Grantaire finds himself saying before Jehan can reply. “It's not fair for him to be out there saving the world, but also cut off from the parts of it he cares about.”

“No one ever said it was fair,” Feuilly says. He eyes Grantaire. “When did you meet his friends?”

Grantaire snorts. “Much earlier than Enjolras would have liked,” he replies.

“When he still thought you were human?”

“Yeah. And even then, he didn't want me near them. Didn't want to let himself near them. Like he thought he was contagious, or something.” Grantaire can't resist a slight glower in Feuilly's direction.

Feuilly extracts one hand from a pocket to point a finger at Grantaire, expression thoughtful. “You're mad that I told him to cut them off.”

“I met them because Enjolras had gotten wind of a monster in Lyon,” Grantaire says. “No one believed that there was really anything to hunt there. Not even Combeferre took him seriously. But he wouldn't leave, because he wouldn't accept the slightest chance of his friends being in danger, and in the end, it turned out to be a wraith. And we killed it. Any other hunter would have missed it. How much he cares makes him more effective, not less.”

"But you're not mad because you think I limited his efficiency," Feuilly says, infuriatingly astute as always, impossible to throw off a scent once he's caught it. Well, fine, then.

"He's hard enough on himself on his own," Grantaire says. "All work, no play. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one, but only when the one is him." He shrugs roughly. "Do you think it helped any, to be told that having any contact with the people he cares about was—weakness? And selfish? That letting himself have anything was…" Grantaire trails off under the stares he's receiving—Feuilly's careful and considering as always, Bahorel's more alarmed. He shakes his head. "Forget it. He'd banish me a hundred times over for saying anything. What you say goes, to him."

"Not anymore," Feuilly remarks. "You're proof of that, even more than his civilian friends."

Grantaire wants to dunk him in a barrel of salt. You don't know how hard every step of this has been for him, he wants to say, how much he's fought himself over every little bit of happiness, every step outside of the creed you laid down, because he thought he was letting you down, and he'd rather die himself than let you down.

"He's had to find his own path without you," Jehan says calmly before Grantaire can start a proper fight. "But what you think still means the world to him. He'll keep you and his civilian friends separate as long as he feels like you disapprove of the mere idea of them. And putting his foot down about Grantaire wasn't easy for him, either, you know."

Feuilly looks a little thrown by all of this. "You make it sound like I forced him into this. I just told him the rules. How we do things." He looks to Grantaire. "If it's any consolation, I tried to send him packing when he first turned up. I didn't want him to give up the life he had, either. But when he was determined to stay…" He shrugs. "I never figured myself for much of a mentor, or whatever. I told him how things would have to be, if he was going to hunt with me. He agreed. And he's not exactly weak-willed, is he? If he thought I was wrong, I would've expected him to fight me on it."

"Well." The word is slow and uncertain and comes, unexpectedly, from Bahorel. Feuilly's eyes snap to him, surprised but challenging.

"Well?" he repeats.

Bahorel shrugs, looking uncomfortable. "Just, y'know. Enjolras did always kind of think you hung the stars in the sky."

Feuilly blinks and then scoffs. "What're you talking about?"

Bahorel's discomfort with having to mildly disagree with the man whose favour he's desperately trying to re-earn shrinks in the face of his obvious and utter disbelief. "Feuilly." He seems at a loss for words for a moment before rallying. "You're not telling me you didn't know that? You—" He gestures frantically but meaninglessly with his hands. "You're, like, the smartest man in the world but you didn't…?"

Feuilly's expression remains sceptical. "He looked up to both of us, sure. We were older, experienced—"

Bahorel is shaking his head. "He looked up to me, maybe. Some of the time," he says. "He hero-worshipped you. He was never going to fight you on anything; not back then. I mean—!" He flaps one hand in Jehan's direction. "What, you don't remember the one time he didn't do exactly as you said?"

"Oh, don't bring that up," Jehan groans, his shoulders hunching as an embarrassment that hasn't been dulled by time floods his mind and soul. Grantaire, confused, catches snippets of memory from him—a snowy landscape, a glittering, frozen lake, a younger-looking Enjolras with an expression as cold as his surroundings who turns his back and walks away. A plunge into cold, cold water. A conversation Grantaire had had with Jehan the first time they'd met:

“What happened in Slovakia?”

“I might have passed out and fallen into a frozen lake."

"The time he almost let Prouvaire drown, you mean?" Feuilly says tersely. "What's that got to do with—?"

"That wasn't even him fighting you or defying you or whatever, that was just him being a stupid kid making a stupid mistake and…" Bahorel shakes his head. "I went looking for him, after you told him to get out—"

"As I remember it, I told him to apologise or get out, and he couldn't swallow his damn pride long enough to—"

Neither of them notices Jehan setting down his knitting and moving to sit next to Grantaire, burying his face in his shoulder. "I can't believe we're still talking about the most embarrassing day of my life," he mumbles. Grantaire pats him on the shoulder consolingly.

"I went looking for him because I figured he might be off trying to drown himself," Bahorel says. "I knew you being mad at him would eat him alive, I knew he'd be ripping himself to fucking shreds, thinking he'd let you down—"

"You think I shouldn't have been mad at him for that?" Feuilly asks, raising an eyebrow.

"I think you don't know what you mean to people!" Bahorel's voice is suddenly despairing. "I think—You don't understand that."

Feuilly's expression shutters. "I never asked to mean anything to anyone," he says. "I never asked for Enjolras, or you, or—" He makes a disgusted noise—and then he disappears. Grantaire doesn't think it's his usual type of disappearance, either, the type where he's too depleted to maintain his form any longer. This feels more like an intentional checking-out.

"Ugh." Bahorel scrubs a weary hand over his face. He casts a glance at Jehan. "Sorry, Prouvaire. I don't mean that it was okay that Enjolras left you alone that day. That was crappy of him."

"For the hundredth time," Jehan says, emerging from Grantaire's shoulder with a baleful look, "he wouldn't have left if he'd had any idea I could get myself into trouble. He didn't like me, but he didn't want me to get hurt, either."

Bahorel shrugs. "He should've been keeping an eye on you," he says. "But also, Feuilly probably should have known better than to tell him to do that, when he was so weird around you back then."

Jehan casts huge, long-suffering eyes up towards Grantaire. "Feuilly jumped into the water after me and got me out," he says. "Then, Bahorel carried me all the way back to where we were staying."

"Hey, that was no big deal," Bahorel says with an attempt at a smile. "You're not quite as puny now as you were then, but I bet I could still manage it."

“Let's not try it,” Jehan says.

“As long as you don't go falling in any more freezing lakes,” Bahorel says with a shrug.

Shortly afterwards, Grantaire is summoned by Combeferre to hunt down and dispatch a demon wreaking havoc in Rome—it ends up taking him the rest of the day, and when he returns to Jehan's house by cover of night, it's to the sound of quiet voices coming from the living room.

"I never could have believed that," Feuilly is saying. A peek around the kitchen doorway reveals him to be standing over Bahorel, who is sitting slumped on the edge of the sofa. "I'm nobody. I was always nobody."

"Shut up," Bahorel replies, his voice thick. "Only you ever thought that. You think you were ever nobody to me? You kept me at arm's length for ten years and you were still everything, you were still—"

"Stop it," Feuilly says, but he does reach out with one pale hand, and when it brushes against Bahorel's shoulder, it doesn't pass through him. Bahorel makes a faint, wounded sound and seizes the hand in his own, presses the back of it to his mouth in a desperate kiss. His voice breaks when he says, "You're so cold," and Grantaire leaves as fast as he can, feeling awful for having witnessed any of it.

~

A few days later, Combeferre calls Grantaire for another hunt whilst he's in Jehan's kitchen, in full view of Feuilly. The result of this is inevitable.

Grantaire goes to get the details about the case on his own—giving the valid but fake excuse that Combeferre is at the Musain and bringing a ghost into the Musain would be inadvisable—and is grateful that he did when he lands in Combeferre's apartment to find Courfeyrac once again present. They aren't arguing this time. Courfeyrac is quietly watching Combeferre work over his shoulder. Grantaire decides not to comment on it lest he shatter this fragile peace.

“For you,” Combeferre says, handing Grantaire a folder.

He flips it open, and twelve grainy black-and-white faces look back at him. The photos are split into two categories: victims, and perpetrators. He frowns. “This looks like a case of humans killing other humans, but I assume there’s more to it.”

“Keep reading,” Combeferre says.

Grantaire obeys. The case is in Petrich, in Bulgaria. Six of the pictured people have been murdered in spectacularly gory fashion in just the last two months which, for a town of this size, is admittedly unusual. And the murders had undeniably been carried out by the other people detailed in the file—in each case, the killer had been found still clutching the murder weapon, or had been caught in the act by security cameras, or had just straight-up confessed. There’s no doubt that these people had done it. But what the file emphasises, over and over, is that they’d had no reason to—that none of them had a history of violence, that all but one had no criminal record at all, that every last one of them had, by all appearances, had a good and loving relationship with their victim.

“Some kind of shapeshifter?” Grantaire asks. It doesn’t seem to fit, not exactly, but he doesn’t think it’s a bad first guess. Maybe there’s some new subspecies or cross-breed that can affect the minds of the people it shifts into, making them think they’re guilty of the crimes it committed while wearing their face.

“Looks that way, but it’s up to you to find out for sure,” Combeferre replies. “Good luck.”

Grantaire makes a quick return trip to Jehan's house. “Alright, gang.” He claps a hand on Bahorel’s shoulder and is met with a glower, which he returns with a wide grin. “Let’s get to work.”

~

It is, regrettably, not a shape-shifter.

Grantaire has the realisation after talking to three of the killers—had begun to suspect after speaking to just one of them. It hadn’t been difficult for him to find out where they were each being held, awaiting court dates that would be little more than formalities, what with the overwhelming amount of evidence and confessions of guilt. And it had been just as easy for him to slip, unseen, into their prison cells. He’d made each of them sleep, knowing they would only scream and panic if he materialised in front of them in the waking world. They’d been calmer in their dreams, because there he was just a dream, and there he had asked them why they’d done it. They’d all wept. They’d all said they didn’t know. They’d all said someone had told them to do it—someone they’d loved so much that it had been unthinkable to refuse. When he’d asked who, they’d all given him a different name—Andrei, Violeta, Nikolina—but it had all been the same story. They had each met this person no more than a week before they’d committed murder at their suggestion. But they’d been in love, they insisted, so in love that they couldn’t think…

Great, Grantaire thinks grimly as he leaves the third weeping human to their dreams. That’s just fucking great.

“You guys ever run into a siren back in the good old days?” he asks when he returns to the bar where he’d deposited Bahorel before going to make his enquiries. Feuilly isn’t currently visible but Grantaire suspects he is present.

“What’s that, the singing mermaid thing?” Bahorel shakes his head, takes a sip from the pint glass he has procured. “Sounds almost as made-up as you.”

“Actually, they’re half-bird in the myths, not half-fish,” Grantaire says. “Unfortunately it doesn’t matter because the myths are wrong. They’re not half-anything, just a hundred percent the worst.”

Bahorel raises an eyebrow at him. “Do they at least sing?”

“You wish,” Grantaire says. "They're venomous. They poison people into falling so wildly in love with them that they’ll do anything.”

“Even kill someone?”

“Especially that.”

“Well.” Bahorel drains his glass mightily and slams it down on the bar. “Let’s go kill it, then.”

When Grantaire had asked the incarcerated humans where they had met this person who had inspired such violent passion, they’d all told him about the same nightclub. He makes that his next stop. It’s far too early for it to be open, but Grantaire flies inside to investigate its darkened interior. He grimaces almost as soon as he lands; the creature isn’t here right now, but it must have been recently—perhaps in the small hours of this very morning, before the place closed. To his senses, the air feels cloying, thick with the sickly-sweet perfume of its poison. He goes back outside. If he focuses hard enough, he can follow that distinctive stink right to its source, like a bloodhound.

“This way,” he says, leading the way down the street.

“I have to say,” says Feuilly’s disembodied voice in his ear as he walks, “I’m extremely jealous of how much easier the breaking-and-entering part of the job is for you.”

“Yeah,” Bahorel agrees reluctantly. “Even at our best, this job would have taken us days, at least. We’d never have got in to talk to those people in prison. Probably would’ve had to get arrested ourselves to even be in with a chance.”

“Tell us more about sirens,” Feuilly says. “I don’t like that I don’t know about them.”

“They’re uncommon, and rarely seen outside of Greece,” Grantaire says. “I doubt many hunters have had the pleasure.”

“So what’s their deal? Do they feed on humans in some way?”

“No,” Grantaire says. “Sirens could live without ever harming a human. Maybe some of them do. But the ones that kill…Well, they don’t kill. They make another human do it for them. And they do it because they enjoy it.”

He stops in front of an apartment building, nose scrunched in distaste.

“In here?” Bahorel says.

“Yeah.” Grantaire casts a sideways glance at him. “You should maybe wait out here.”

“Oh, come on.” Bahorel rolls his eyes. “I’ve not been out of the job so long that I'm going to get in your way.”

“You can’t help. The only way for a human to kill a siren involves a bronze dagger, and neither of us has one of those handy,” Grantaire says. “But more to the point, if the siren sees you, it’s going to target you next. Read your mind, turn into your heart’s desire, slip you some venom, tell you to kill me.” He smiles faintly. “Though it probably doesn’t actually need to go to all that trouble to convince you to give that a try.”

“These things read minds?” Feuilly flickers into view, looking both appalled and fascinated. “And…what, shapeshift?”

“Yeah. They look into your head to see what—or who—it is you want. Then that’s what they become. They’re all about being adored and worshipped. Until they get bored, that is.” Grantaire looks at the two of them. “Just wait here, okay? You can watch me kill a less fucked up monster some other time.”

He finds the siren in a basement apartment. It’s in bed with its latest paramour, who is very naked. The siren has taken on the form of a petite, dark-haired woman, and it looks over its shoulder at Grantaire with enormous doe-eyes and an expression of innocent surprise. The charade doesn’t last; he can see past its disguise, and it can read his mind and see as much. It can also see what he is, and what he’s here for. The human man the creature is currently straddling hardly seems to have noticed Grantaire’s arrival; he’s staring up at it with vacant, adoring eyes. The siren jumps off of him and makes a show of cowering against the wall.

“He’s here to kill me,” it says in a quavering voice. “Darling, that man is here to kill me, you have to stop him.”

Abruptly the human’s attention is focused entirely on Grantaire—with a look of black fury, he launches himself from the bed with a battle cry, snatching up the bedside lamp to use as a bludgeon, and charges. When he gets close enough, Grantaire reaches out and touches two fingers to his forehead, and he falls down unconscious at his feet.

“Did you really think that would work?” he asks the siren, unimpressed. It glowers at him, and the fear in its eyes is no longer an act.

“I want you to know that, of all the monsters out there, I find you one of the most repulsive,” Grantaire informs it. He takes a step closer, then two. “Other monsters make sense, in their own way. Vampires kill because they’re hungry. Werewolves bite because their instincts tell them to build a strong pack. But you. You don’t need humans for anything. Not to eat, not to turn. You just like to mess with them.”

“I just want them to love me,” the siren says, looking at him imploringly, as if he can’t see its shrivelled true face behind the pretty one it picked out to use on this latest human.

“You take love and you twist it,” Grantaire snaps. “You poison them, you give them some insane delusion of love and then you make them kill the people they really love for your entertainment. You ruin lives and destroy real love with your fucked-up games.”

“Goodness. Aren’t you very invested in human love for someone who isn’t human at all?” The creature looks almost amused. “Why’s that, I wonder?”

The feeling of it probing around in his head is nothing like when Jehan does the same thing. It feels like the squirming of something foul, like maggots, against the inside of his skull. He pushes it out, but it’s already laughing.

“Oh,” it says between peals of cackling laughter. “Oh dear, that’s so sad. You really do just want them to love you. Well, not them. Him. And he doesn't want you at all.”

It stands up, slowly, unhurriedly. Grantaire readies himself to vaporise it.

“What a shame. But you must know it’s hopeless. You probably make him sick,” it says with a sweet smile. “Maybe he's getting better at hiding it. But it must make his skin crawl when you're near him.” It’s leafing through his recent memories, and when it pulls up a snapshot of that strange point of pain in Enjolras’s soul both times Grantaire had touched him at their last meeting, Grantaire shoves it out of his mind. “When you touch him, especially. You and your stolen, dead hands.”

“At least I'm not poisoning him into feeling otherwise,” Grantaire says evenly.

The siren laughs. "Maybe you would, if you could." It affects a surprised expression, like something has just occurred to it. "Oh, or maybe I could do that for you. Would you like that?"

Grantaire realises what’s about to happen a few seconds before it does, but it’s still an unpleasant shock to see the siren shift, in the blink of an eye, into Enjolras—an exact duplicate of how he’d looked when Grantaire had last seen him, right down to his clothes. Except this Enjolras is smiling warmly at him and has a look in his eyes that Grantaire had only seen a few times in the before and had only finally understood in Majorca, when Enjolras had quietly, cautiously asked if he could kiss him. Grantaire isn’t proud that it cuts him right to his core to see it, even though he knows it isn’t real, in any way.

"It would just take one little touch," the siren says, and it has even plucked Enjolras's voice from Grantaire's mind. It holds up one hand and crooks a finger demonstratively. "One little touch and he's all yours, just like this, and then I go on my merry way. Everybody wins."

It visibly attempts to seal the deal by arranging Enjolras's face into a more overtly amorous, flirtatious expression—clearly something from its own repertoire rather than Grantaire's memories—but this only serves to create a thoroughly uncanny effect that has Grantaire recoiling.

"I'm going to kill you, now," he says bluntly.

"Hey, think about this." The siren frowns and backs up a step. "I'm your only chance. You can never have him, otherwise. He'll never let you love him."

"I know," Grantaire says, stepping towards it.

"Or, or I could stay like this for you," it says. It tries to smile at him again, tries to recapture that initial expression that had wrenched at Grantaire's heart, but is too rattled to get it quite right. "Even better, right? He's just a human. What fun could you possibly have with that? Forget him. I'll let you love me. I'll let you—"

Grantaire has it pinned against the wall by the throat before it even sees him move. It claws at him furiously, but to no avail. It feels desperately wrong to attack something with Enjolras’s face, but he can see the thing’s hideous true face behind it—and, in any case, Enjolras’s physical form means nothing without the soul that goes along with it. Something this creature would never understand, Grantaire supposes.

“Alright, so kill me,” the thing snarls at him. “I’m sure you’re desperate to find out what he looks like, dying. What his screams sound like. I’ll give you a real show.”

“Twisted to the last,” Grantaire says, lip curled in disgust. He thinks the thing had really expected him to hesitate, because when he raises his free hand it visibly quails (and that’s worse, seeing Enjolras’s face look at him in terror) and in a voice that suddenly doesn’t sound like Enjolras’s anymore it chokes out, “No, wait—” But Grantaire doesn’t let it get it any further—though he does turn his face away when he kills it, and makes sure it’s dust before he looks back. He heaves a deep sigh, brushes the traces of it from his hands, and turns to leave—and comes face to face with Feuilly. He stares. Feuilly stares at the pile of ash that had been the siren.

“I said to wait outside,” Grantaire says stupidly.

“Explain,” Feuilly says. Grantaire follows his gaze to the ashes and the scorch mark on the wall and is hit all at once by the reality of what Feuilly had just seen.

“I’d rather not,” he says weakly.

Feuilly's eyes don't leave the remnants of the siren. “That's fine,” he says at length. “I don't really need you to.”

Grantaire swallows around a suddenly dry throat. “What?”

“You already did most of the explaining on the way here,” Feuilly says. “Sirens read your mind to find…what was it? Your heart's desire? Kind of a fairytale turn of phrase, that, but…” He shrugs and hooks his thumbs in his pockets. “Certainly paints a picture.”

Grantaire can’t say for certain that, were Feuilly alive, he wouldn’t fully abandon all sense of ethics and just erase his memory of this incident right here and now. As things stand, he doesn’t think he can do that to a ghost, and may have to settle for setting himself alight instead.

Feuilly is nodding to himself. “I suppose the pieces were all there,” he says. “You're just such an unknown quantity to me that I couldn't figure out how to fit them together.”

Grantaire has absolutely no wish to know what ‘pieces’ Feuilly is referring to. He can’t believe he’s expected to wrangle this situation now when he hasn’t even had time to come to terms with the world-ending horror that is Feuilly witnessing a siren turning into Enjolras—an exact replica!—in a transparent attempt to seduce him into not killing it.

He feels an unpleasant jolt when Feuilly, of all things, laughs. It's not an especially nice laugh.

"So this is what it's all been about?" Feuilly says. His bright hazel eyes are glittering with something just a shade darker than amusement. "This is why you're here, at his beck and call? Aeons old and unfathomably powerful and you're just—pining after a human?" He fixes Grantaire with a sharp-edged smile. "I mean, fuck. All that power, all that time. You really don't have anything better to do?"

Grantaire is used to feeling ashamed of his weird, human, romantic love for Enjolras—he’s not especially used to that shame being poked. It hurts more than he would’ve expected.

"How does it even work?" Feuilly asks.

"How does what work?" Grantaire croaks.

"What does wanting a human even mean, to something like you? You don't have a body of your own. Does borrowing one make mortal flesh seem less alien to you? Enough to make it attractive?" Another laugh. "Isn't this sort of like me possessing one of Prouvaire's old dolls and then developing a crush on the next one on the shelf?"

Grantaire thinks he'd rather fight a hundred more sirens than engage with any of those questions. “We really don't need to talk about it,” he says, striding past Feuilly—almost tempted to stride through him.

“Does Enjolras know?” Feuilly asks, following at his heels.

“Yes.”

“And?”

“And nothing! You taught him well. About the line between humans and monsters.” And maybe that’s not entirely fair, but Enjolras had wanted him back when he’d thought Grantaire was human, hadn’t he?

“That line has been looking awfully blurred lately,” Feuilly says.

"He was horrified when he found out what I am," Grantaire snaps. "It's taken me this long to earn back his friendship and trust. I'm never going to ask for anything more. I know the way I feel is—unacceptable. Okay? I know. So I'll never…" He shakes his head. "I know my fucking place, okay?"

Feuilly clicks his tongue. “The thing is, I don’t know that I trust unrequited love as a good motivator of long-term loyalty.”

His casual use of the L-word feels roughly equivalent to him hitting Grantaire on the back of the head with a baseball bat.

“What do you think I'm going to do?” Grantaire asks.

“I don't know,” Feuilly says. “What do you think? Do you think you can fight for him, protect him, trail around after him his whole life, getting nothing in return?"

"His friendship isn't nothing."

"But it's not what you want," Feuilly says. "Not really."

"That isn't true," Grantaire says fiercely. You don't understand, he wants to shout at top volume and see what that does to a ghost. I want his friendship more than anything, and even if I want more, I will never ask for it—I don't even feel like I deserve what I have, how could I ever ask for more?

Feuilly swats that aside and continues. "You don’t think you might start to feel bitter somewhere along the way, and start thinking he deserves something other than protection? How long is something as powerful as you going to let yourself be strung along by a human before you—?”

“Before I what?”

Feuilly shrugs. "Before you just take what you want." He's watching Grantaire out of the corner of one tawny eye. "We both know you're more than strong enough to force the issue."

Grantaire can only stare at him in mute horror.

“If you hurt him…” Feuilly starts just as they reach Bahorel hovering outside the front door of the apartment.

“Then what? What’ll you do?” Grantaire demands, turning sharply to face him. “You can’t shovel-talk me, Feuilly.”

“Uh,” Bahorel says.

“You shouldn't—” Feuilly starts.

“I know I shouldn't!” Of course he knows—he shouldn't even be capable of feeling this way, he is the number one authority on the fact that this is not how things are meant to be. “And Enjolras—like I said, he agrees with you. Or did you not hear the monster taunting me about it? He'd never let anything happen. And I'd never—How can you even think—"

“I want to talk to him,” Feuilly says. “Go get him.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because this isn't his fault!” Grantaire says in frustration. “He doesn't deserve to be interrogated about it!”

“What are we interrogating Enjolras about?” Bahorel asks.

"He doesn't want to talk about it," Grantaire says, desperate. "We don't talk about it, not since—" He cuts himself off, but not soon enough.

“You pretended to be human for a year,” Feuilly says with sudden realisation. The temperature around him has started to drop by several degrees.

Something guilty must show on Grantaire's face. Feuilly's expression becomes as wrathful as that of any vengeful spirit Grantaire's ever gone up against.

“What did you do?” Feuilly demands.

Grantaire decides all at once that he simply can't do this. He touches Bahorel on the arm and sends him back to Jehan's house, and Feuilly is dragged along with him.

Fucking siren, Grantaire thinks dully. He half considers going back into the apartment and trying to incinerate the pile of ash even further. He doesn't, of course. But he isn't sure what he actually should do, now. He can't go back to Jehan's house—he doesn't know whether he can face going back there ever again after this. Not while Feuilly is there. And Feuilly will tell Bahorel, of course, and Bahorel, who had just seemed to be coming around to him a bit, will probably resume full-tilt hostilities.

And just because Grantaire had refused to go and immediately fetch Enjolras for Feuilly to interrogate doesn't mean the interrogation won't happen. Phones exist. Feuilly can use Bahorel as a mouthpiece even if he can't speak into the phone by his ghostly self.

Maybe the correct thing to do is to go and warn Enjolras that this is coming, but Grantaire doesn't feel like he can face that, either. He and Enjolras don't talk about this, they don't acknowledge it, because that's the only way that things can be anything resembling okay between them. Grantaire imagines Feuilly telling Enjolras about the siren transforming into him, and Enjolras having to confront the fact that Grantaire is still nursing these absurd, tender, awful feelings, and he wishes he could just plunge himself into the deepest ocean on this stupid planet and never come up again.

Oh my God.

He's startled by a prayer from Jehan. He sounds maybe a little alarmed, but mostly eye-rollingly exasperated.

Don't panic, Grantaire, the prayer continues. I'm handling it.

Yeah, good luck with that, Grantaire thinks glumly.

For the first time in quite a while, he suddenly wants a drink.

In the absence of any better options, he goes to find one.

~

Grantaire?

This new prayer finds him a few hours and several bars later. It brings him up short and makes him pause with his glass raised halfway to his mouth. There have been a few more prayers from Jehan in the interim, trying to call him home, but Grantaire has soundly ignored them. This one isn’t from Jehan, though. It sounds uncertain, tentative—and it's Enjolras.

Grantaire, can you… The prayer trails off. It sounds so unsure. Can you come here? I mean, please.

Dread floods him. He no longer wants the cheap whisky in his glass, but he downs it anyway, figuring that every last drop might help in dulling whatever awaits him now. Enjolras doesn't sound angry, or even particularly upset, but that doesn't comfort him. This summons doesn't sound nearly urgent enough to be related to a hunt, which means that it has to have something to do with what had happened earlier, which means that this is probably going to be a nightmare. It occurs to Grantaire that Enjolras might sound uncertain because Bahorel and Feuilly haven't actually told him exactly what happened—that they've just told him to get in touch with Grantaire and let him explain.

Grantaire?

Grantaire lets out a deep and miserable sigh and closes his eyes for a moment, honing in on his sword's location with his slightly addled senses. He's sure his wings must droop when he spreads them to take flight.

He lands in Enjolras's latest hotel room. He's pretty sure it's in Croatia, but it hardly seems to matter. Another hunt, another sad room. He's landed with his back against a wall, and he doesn't step forward when Enjolras, in the middle of the room, turns and sees him.

"There you are." Enjolras attempts a smile, but this too looks unsure. "Sorry, were you busy?"

Grantaire shakes his head. "Do you need something?" he asks, trying not to sound too hopeful that this is just a normal call.

Something in his voice must give something away, though; he sees Enjolras's forehead crease into a frown as he takes a few slow steps towards him. "No, I…Jehan called me," he says. "He said that you were upset? He thought I should—check in."

Grantaire stares dumbly at him for a moment. "Jehan did?" he says finally.

"Yeah." Enjolras looks at him curiously, cautiously. "Did something happen?"

Grantaire stares at him some more, and he can feel himself swaying very slightly on the spot. Why would Jehan do this? Grantaire can't imagine that Jehan wants him to tell Enjolras what had happened today. Jehan wouldn't want to rub salt in the wound like that. Unless he'd figured that this was the lesser of two evils, letting Grantaire tell the story himself instead of Feuilly or Bahorel doing it? Honestly, Jehan probably has some great, psychic reason behind this idea but he really should have let Grantaire in on it via prayer, because he's at a bit of a loss, and there's way too much alcohol in his system for him to think clearly enough to try and figure this out. He wants to ask Jehan, but of course he can't because if he goes to Jehan's house, he's going to get judged and interrogated for daring to even look at Enjolras the wrong way, for thinking about him the wrong way, and then Feuilly will probably get Bahorel to banish him over and over until he confesses about the single, exquisite, unforgivable kiss he and Enjolras had shared, back when he'd still had Enjolras fooled into thinking he was something worth kissing, and then probably neither of them will rest until they find a way to kill him.

"Oh, you've been drinking." Enjolras sounds surprised. "I didn't know you still did that."

Grantaire remembers anew that Enjolras had never liked the drinking, had always disapproved of it. That all seems so long ago now.

"I should go," he mumbles.

Enjolras comes even closer; Grantaire looks away while he scrutinises his face. "Something did happen, didn't it?" he says. "The drinking was another thing that confused me, when I found out you aren't human. It seemed a weird thing to fake. But then in one of your recordings with Combeferre—" He hesitates. "It wasn't fake, was it? It's what you do when things are…bad."

"Been trying not to." Grantaire slides down the wall until he's sitting on the floor, since apparently he's not permitted to leave just yet.

"That's good." Enjolras crouches down in front of him to keep them more or less at eye level. "What was so bad about today?"

"I can't tell you," Grantaire says immediately.

"Why not?"

Grantaire just shakes his head. Too many reasons to count. He shouldn't even be here. After today's conversation with Feuilly, just being near Enjolras feels like a crime.

Out of the corner of his eye, he's aware of Enjolras watching him pensively, his soul cloudy with worry and confusion. At length, he stands up and Grantaire hears him moving around the room, rummaging in a bag, maybe, and then—

Enjolras comes and sits next to him and pushes something into his lap—it takes Grantaire a moment to realise it's his sketchbook, the one Enjolras had tried to return to him and that he'd slipped back into his luggage. Most of its pages are full, but Enjolras has flipped to a page that only has one small drawing of some flowers in one corner.

"Draw me something," Enjolras says. All of Grantaire's pencils and pastels and paintbrushes that he's collected are at Jehan's house, of course. Enjolras is holding out a ballpoint pen to him.

Grantaire shakes his head. "I can't."

"Sure you can." Enjolras presses the pen into his limp hand. "I've seen you draw way drunker than this."

The shame feels like it's multiplying and physically weighing down on him. "Sorry," Grantaire says. "I know you don't like me drunk."

"I never know what to do with you, drunk," Enjolras corrects. "As you can see."

Grantaire stares very intently at the mostly-blank page. He tries to think of one beautiful thing he's seen today. All his mind will conjure are the siren's victims crying, and the siren itself, wearing Enjolras's face but moving it in all the wrong ways, and Feuilly looking at him with an expression he can't quite fathom. Amusement? Pity? Disgust?

"Feuilly thinks I'm going to hurt you," he says dully.

Enjolras gives a little start, mirrored by a flash of surprise in his soul. "Why would he think that?"

Something painful and nasty in Grantaire wants to tell him exactly why, in the most vulgar way possible. He seems to think that I'm only here because I think you might eventually put out, and that I'm going to be wrathfully pissed when I finally realise that's never going to happen. He wrestles down the vile impulse. "He thinks I don't have good motivations," he says. "Or something."

"What do you mean?" Enjolras sounds bewildered. "What did he say?"

Grantaire shakes his head. He shouldn't be talking about this. "It doesn't matter."

Enjolras is quiet for a long moment, pondering this. "Was he…" he starts, then trails off, his mouth twisting to one side. "I'm not sure how to ask this without it sounding stupid." He sighs, apparently resigning himself to stupidity. "When he said this stuff, was he being mean to you?"

Grantaire turns his head just enough to give him a bleary, incredulous look. It makes Enjolras snort.

"I know," he says. "But you know what he's like normally. What he's like with you. How he talks to you."

Grantaire nods in tentative agreement.

"So was this…a sudden, sharp increase in cruelty?"

"I suppose?" Grantaire says slowly.

Enjolras makes what sounds like a noise of annoyance and pinches the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger, as if warding off a headache. "Okay. He…" He sighs. "He probably didn't mean anything he said."

"It seemed like he really did," says Grantaire, who is not following and isn't sure if the alcohol alone is to blame.

"No, see, Feuilly, he…" Enjolras pauses, clearly searching for the best words to explain. "He's sort of lethal at figuring out which buttons to press to really rile someone up. And if he wants to know something, he'll hit those buttons, because a person who's angry or upset is more likely to let the truth slip. To give themselves away. I used to see him do it all the time, on hunts. When we needed information, and someone was lying to us, or didn't want to talk." He shakes his head. "I mean, he did it to me, when he wanted to be absolutely sure of my reasons for getting into hunting. It's…effective. He says the things that he knows will cut you the deepest, and suddenly you're yelling things that you hadn't meant to tell him at all. But—like I said, that doesn't mean that he means it. He just…" He extends one arm directly ahead of him, pointing grimly to an imaginary spot in the distance. "He sees the quickest path to the result he wants, and he takes it. It's harsh. But he's not someone who ever learned to do things gently."

This all sounds spectacularly dysfunctional, but not especially relevant. "I'm not sure that's what this was," Grantaire says.

"Did he get you shouting?" Enjolras asks.

Grantaire thinks back. "A bit," he admits.

"Did you shout stuff you hadn't planned on telling him?"

"I…Maybe."

Enjolras sighs again and tips his head back until it lightly thunks against the wall behind him. "Don't rule it out, then. Sorry, I thought we were kind of past the stage where he'd feel like he had to do that to you."

Grantaire says nothing. He imagines that Enjolras probably thinks that Feuilly was grilling him about his past, his defection from Heaven and his prior sins, and Grantaire can't bear to tell him the truth, but he won't lie, either, so he just stays quiet. He doesn't know Feuilly well enough to know if any part of today's clash had been a strategic attack for information. But he feels quite confident that one part had definitely been real: the part when Feuilly had connected too many dots and realised that Grantaire had allowed something to happen between him and Enjolras before the truth had come out.

“I don’t think you’re going to hurt me,” Enjolras offers. “If that helps.”

“I wouldn’t,” Grantaire says, shaking his head fiercely. “I’d never.”

“I know.” Enjolras sounds mystified, because Enjolras doesn’t know what Feuilly had implied, and Grantaire hopes he never knows.

“I should go,” he says again.

“Stay,” Enjolras says. “Until you feel better.”

Enjolras puts a hand on his shoulder, perhaps so that Grantaire can’t fly off without bringing him along, and then the hand sort of hesitantly slides a little way across his back, like he has another destination in mind for it. "Is this okay?" he asks quietly.

Grantaire, who is having to resist the urge to press into his touch like a cat, has to try not to scoff at the question. "That's up to you," he says.

"Grantaire," Enjolras says, exasperated, and his hand halts—it almost threatens to retract, which would be unbearable.

"Yes," Grantaire says, leaning into him in spite of his better instincts. "Yes."

Enjolras's hand continues its journey, then, until his arm is a warm weight across Grantaire's shoulders. Grantaire closes his eyes and tries to revel in the feeling instead of spiralling into guilt over the fact that Enjolras wouldn't want to do this if he knew the whole truth of what had happened today, if he knew how truly, pathetically desperate Grantaire is for his attention, his touch.

It must make his skin crawl when you're near him. When you touch him, especially. You and your stolen, dead hands.

Grantaire opens his eyes again. Everything the siren had said had been poison just as much as its actual poison, he knows this, but he still finds himself turning his head to scan Enjolras's soul for any sign of revulsion, any sign that he's pushing through disgust to offer this comfort. He doesn't see anything at first glance—just its usual golden glow, maybe a touch warmer than usual—sweeter, somehow. Rosier. But there once again, right at the centre, is that bruise-purple spot that looks like it aches—

"I can see you looking," Enjolras says suddenly. It startles Grantaire into looking up into his face instead—he finds his expression slightly pained. "Stop. Please."

Chastised, Grantaire lets his eyes fall shut again, the only way to be sure of not seeing. "Sorry."

"If you want to know something, just ask me," Enjolras says.

Grantaire shifts slightly against his side. "Does being near me bother you?" he asks.

He thinks he hears Enjolras give a faint snort. "You think I put myself through all that agony in Greece because I don't want to be around you?"

That makes sense, of course. Grantaire knows this. He knows they've both put a lot of effort into coming back together. It feels stupid, to be so rattled by the words of a monster, and even more by Feuilly, who doesn't know how complicated everything really is, who doesn't understand.

"It's just…" He searches for the right words to explain the constant, low-grade worry that is so easily stoked up. "I'm riding in a dead man."

"You don't feel very dead," Enjolras says, giving his shoulders an indicative squeeze.

Grantaire gives a short, harsh laugh. "I did. In that graveyard."

Enjolras shrugs. "I think my body would be pretty dead, too, if I wasn't in it. Like you said, we're just lucky you can slot back in."

“I wish I hadn’t just pretended to be human. I wish I could’ve made it true,” Grantaire says. “If I was just…Everything would be better.” Things would be straightforward between them, and maybe between himself and other people, too. No one would need to constantly question his intentions; the ulterior motives of a creature too far removed from humanity to be implicitly trusted.

“I’d be dead, if you were really human,” Enjolras points out. “A human wouldn’t have been able to find me, after the djinn took me.”

This brings Grantaire up short somewhat.

“I’m sure there were plenty of times before that, too, where you quietly saved my skin,” Enjolras goes on. “Marius and Cosette would probably be dead, too, and any of my other friends who happened to get in the wraith’s way when it tried to get to them. That doesn’t really sound better to me.”

“Sorry,” Grantaire mumbles.

Enjolras taps the sketchbook with his free hand. “Focus.”

Grantaire reluctantly opens his eyes again and casts a sideways look at him. “Your shoulder is getting sore.”

“Mind your own business,” Enjolras tells him, not retracting his arm as he shifts into a better position to expectantly watch the blank page.

Grantaire touches the pen hesitantly to the paper. “Jehan has a new haunted doll he’s working with,” he says, starting to sketch out its floppy, silk-clothed body and porcelain head with its pointy hat.

“A clown?” Enjolras laughs softly as it starts to take shape. “That’s definitely one only Jehan could love.”

Drawing helps, as it always has. It steadies him. Soon the new doll is fully rendered on the page, and then is followed by his best attempt at the spirit that had inhabited the last doll. Really, what he wants to draw is Enjolras, as he is right now—Grantaire could turn his head a fraction and see him in profile, could put it on paper. But just having him this close feels like something illicitly stolen—immortalising the moment seems like a transgression too far.

“I shouldn’t be here,” he says forlornly. “Feuilly would be so furious if he knew I was here with you right now.”

“You don’t even know if that’s true,” Enjolras replies. “And even if it was—him being angry doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t mean he’s right. He’s smart, but he can be wrong about things.”

Grantaire hesitates, then, “Bahorel said you used to listen to everything Feuilly said.”

“Wow. I’ll have to thank him for that,” Enjolras says dryly. “I guess I did. Feuilly knew the hunting world and I didn’t. I relied on him. I thought he knew everything.” Grantaire feels him shrug. “But I know some things myself, now.”

“I’m making things complicated again,” Grantaire mumbles.

“Well, I don’t even know what happened, so I can’t say who’s making things complicated, but it kind of sounds like it’s not you,” Enjolras says. Then, “Are you ready to stop being drunk yet?”

Grantaire looks up at him, startled. “What?”

Enjolras raises an eyebrow. “You expect me to believe you can’t control that when you want to?”

Removing the fuzzy layer that inebriation puts between him and the world doesn’t feel massively appealing, but Grantaire supposes it’s probably time. He scrunches his eyes shut for a moment and, in a quick flash of Grace, makes his body metabolise all the alcohol in his bloodstream in one fell swoop.

“Ow,” he says morosely as this, obviously, immediately triggers a headache.

Enjolras rolls his eyes, looking amused. “Fix your hangover, too, then.”

“No, I deserve it,” Grantaire says unhappily.

This earns him a bigger eye-roll. “What a martyr. Didn’t you give me a big speech about suffering needlessly not being noble, or something?”

“You just watched me do this to myself,” Grantaire says—whines—as he puts a hand to his throbbing head.

“So hurry up and fix it yourself.” Enjolras gets to his feet and stretches the arm he wouldn’t admit was going stiff. “Or I swear, the next time I get hurt, I won’t even tell you, no matter how bad it is.”

Grantaire grumbles. “Fine.” Another pop of Grace, and his sad pub crawl around Europe might never have happened.

A ripple of both amusement and mild despair passes across Enjolras’s soul. “Kind of depressing that that worked,” he remarks.

Grantaire, suddenly fully sober and, despite himself, in perfect health, is now feeling extremely stupid about everything that had just transpired. He stands, awkwardly. “I should—”

“Go?” Enjolras suggests. “Go where?”

“I don’t know.” Grantaire shifts from foot to foot. “Anywhere.”

“Anywhere,” Enjolras repeats. He raises his eyebrows in a disarming expression. “You seem so worried that I don’t really want you around. But you’re the one who can’t seem to wait to get away from me.”

Grantaire stares at him, feeling extremely tortured. “I don’t know what the right thing to do is,” he says finally.

“Feuilly really got into your head,” Enjolras says with a faint smile that isn’t entirely without sympathy.

“I don’t want to…I wasn’t…”

“Stay, then,” Enjolras says simply. Grantaire wishes it could feel simple. “Stay here.”

“I want to,” Grantaire says helplessly, because it's true; he never wants to leave Enjolras's side. “It's just—” If you'd been there today, you wouldn't want me here, is what he means to say, but Enjolras silences him with a raised hand and an expression that is not to be fucked with.

There's a moment then where Enjolras looks like he's deliberating about something, and then seems to come to a decision. “I think I have something that'll distract you from whatever psychological torment Feuilly inflicted on you,” he says. He suddenly seems full of anticipation, his soul fluttering a bit nervous and a bit excited, his body seeming hardly able to keep still. “I wasn't sure if I should tell anyone yet. It's going to cause lots of fights.” He smiles, like the prospect kind of appeals to him. “But I'll tell you, so that maybe you'll argue with me instead of letting whatever Feuilly said eat at you.”

Grantaire is so taken aback that he can't help but laugh a little. “Okay?” he says, bemused. “What is it that we’re going to argue about?”

“Kind of the usual, for us,” Enjolras says. His eyes and soul are bright. “You're going to argue that we can't save the world. That monsters will always have the upper hand in this fight, and we can save some individuals but we’ll never really make a difference.”

“I thought we were on the same page about that, now,” Grantaire says.

Enjolras nods. “I agree that no individual hunter was ever going to turn the tide. Like I said last time, what we’re doing isn't working.” His smile widens. “So I figured out what I want to do instead.”

“Should I be worried?” Grantaire asks, and he's only half-joking.

“I went back to that house where we fought the ghost, you know,” Enjolras says. “The next day. I talked to the woman—her name is Alice—and I explained what had happened. Told her about salt circles and iron and…” He laughs and shakes his head. “I kept thinking about what Courfeyrac said, when he was arguing with Combeferre. How if hunters really cared about civilians, we'd tell more people the truth, so they could protect themselves.”

Grantaire feels like something very interesting is about to happen. “What's your idea, Enjolras?” he asks.

Enjolras spreads his hands wide. “We tell everyone, of course.”

~