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Grantaire had to admit that, in hindsight, accepting Montparnasse’s offer of help might not have been his brightest idea to date. It was how you ended up sitting in a velvet-lined chair, in an office where all furniture was made of polished dark mahogany, sitting in front of a self-important academic who looked at you like you were an interesting lab rat. Grantaire didn’t know exactly what he’d been expecting when he’d drunkenly complained about how short on money he was to a bored Montparnasse on a random Thursday evening, but that he would end up making shady dealings in a disgustingly classy setting only two weeks later, somehow, was not something he’d anticipated.
For which he had no one but himself to blame, really, because shady and disgustingly classy did describe Montparnasse to a T.
Dr Bramstone was in the middle of detailing the clauses of the non-disclosure agreement, but Grantaire kept getting distracted by the way the man’s daemon – some sort of lizard with a brightly coloured throat – kept flicking her tongue out at Coco at regular intervals. He did notice when Dr Bramstone stopped talking, though, and raised his eyes to see the man look at him expectantly.
Grantaire cleared his throat, and clutched Coco a little closer. “This is all above board, right?”
The smile Dr Bramstone regaled him with was so full of barely disguised condescension, Grantaire had to believe it was done on purpose. “We have a very extensive protocol that all researchers are required to follow to the letter. You will be given a copy you’ll need to sign along with the non-disclosure agreement.”
Coco shifted on his lap. “That didn’t answer the question,” she said, before Grantaire could shush her.
Dr Bramstone blinked, startled. He gave Grantaire a disconcerted look and, honestly, Grantaire almost sympathised: it didn’t matter how many times Grantaire had had that talk with Coco, she plainly did not give a fuck that daemons generally did not casually chat with humans other than their own.
“I assure you,” Dr Bramstone resumed, carefully not looking at Coco, “that everything has been thoroughly vetted by the Central University Research Ethics Committee. You are free to contact them directly if you hold any further concerns.”
That was still not the straightforward Of course nothing about this is ten kinds of illegal that Grantaire had been hoping for, but, honestly, he’d ended up in that office via Montparnasse. He was not expecting miracles.
“Okay,” Grantaire said, nodding, and ignored Coco sharply pecking his thumb. “Say I accept, what happens then?”
Dr Bramstone’s shoulders relaxed, and the slimy smile was back on. “We arrange another meeting, in which one of my assistants will talk you through all our protocols and safety instructions. If you then agree to take part in the study, we will proceed with the first data recording.”
Grantaire tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair. “And the study lasts three weeks.”
“Give or take, yes. We have eight recordings planned, to be taken every three days.”
“And you’ll pay me five hundred pounds to be your human subject,” said Grantaire.
A hint of real humour showed on Dr Bramstone’s face. “And we’ll pay you five hundred pounds to be our human subject. At the conclusion of the trials, of course.”
“Of course,” echoed Grantaire.
Dr Bramstone looked at him, then at Coco, then back at him again. “Would Friday morning suit you? Let’s say, 10 am?”
Well, if Grantaire had had any intentions of saying no, he wouldn’t have followed Montparnasse’s advice in the first place. “Friday morning works for me.”
Dr Bramstone smiled, this time a lot more genuinely. “Splendid. It will all be explained to you on Friday, but really, all we are interested in is to collect some baseline readings on the physical responses to separation to one’s daemon, nothing more, nothing less.” He interlocked his fingers together. “As I understand it, you already have quite an extensive separation range?”
Grantaire shrugged. “So I’ve been told.” It was actually Grantaire’s pet theory that it wasn't that the range he and Coco had was particularly exceptional, they were just more willing to exploit what range they did have. “About sixty meters, give or take.”
So Coco liked flying. Sue her.
Dr Bramstone looked suitably impressed, which was a step above the horrified looks Grantaire usually got when that particular piece of information was disclosed.
“Well, then, Grantaire, I’d say that I’m very much looking forward to working with you,” Dr Bramstone said, and smiled.
And smiled.
Grantaire stared at Dr Branston’s daemon, tongue still flickering in and out, and heard a voice in his head - who sounded scarily like Combeferre’s – sigh despairingly.
***
As soon as he stepped outside, the glare of the afternoon sun hitting his face, Grantaire released a long breath. Coco hopped down on the ground at his feet, waiting patiently for him to fish out cigarettes and lighter from the pockets of his coat before pecking one of his boots.
“This is a terrible idea,” she said.
Grantaire blew out his first puff of smoke. “Yeah.”
“We’re going to regret it.”
“Most likely.” He looked down at her. “Musain?”
She puffed up, grey and brown feathers fluttering out for a moment, and cocked her head on one side to better glare at him. “I’ll tell Nertia, and then Bossuet will knock some sense into you.”
“I thought you and Nertia weren’t talking at the moment,” he said, starting to walk towards the Musain. Coco hurried up to his side, head gently bobbing back and forth.
“We’re not. She called me a flying rat.”
Grantaire smiled down at her. “That wasn’t very nice of her. Then again, you are a pigeon.” And before that could get him his ass pecked, he added, “Was that before or after you pulled Persis’ tail?”
A flutter of wings, and then Coco was landing on his shoulder. Hard.
“I just wanted to feel how big it was without all the fluff,” she said, settling down with a petulant flutter.
Persis, Joly’s daemon, was indeed the fluffiest squirrel Grantaire had ever seen, but that was probably because her fur was full in equal parts of merriment and paranoia. The noise she had made when Coco had caught her tail in her beak had been blood-curling, and it didn’t surprise Grantaire in the least that it had triggered Nertia’s badger-mama instincts. Joly and Bossuet had looked at Grantaire with mirror looks of what the fuck, mate? on their faces, as if they had expected to find him pissed off at them; despite all the years they’d known each other, they still couldn’t get used to the idea that Grantaire had very little say or insight in half the things that Coco did.
Coco, who was currently gearing herself up for a massive sulk.
“Look, it’s only three weeks, not like we’d being doing this forever. I have almost no oil paint left and rent’s due next week, five hundred pounds right now sound like a godsend.”
She made a tutting noise. “I’m just saying, it really feels like one of those things that will come back to bite us in the…” and trailed off, halting in the middle of the path.
Grantaire made a questioning noise, then turned around to look at what had caught her attention, and stopped as well. It was Enjolras and Runi, walking out of one of the administrative buildings and making their way to the other side of the quad.
Runi stood out in the afternoon flow of students and daemons leaving and returning to their Colleges: he was one of the biggest daemons Grantaire had ever seen on campus, the top of his antlers almost as tall as Enjolras was. Grantaire still remembered that one time they had been running across campus after sneaking into the Deputy Registrar office, and Runi had gotten hopelessly tangled in the low hanging branches of the trees in Park Road. At the time, Grantaire had been drunk enough to find the whole thing hilarious, even as he and Bahorel had been scrambling towards the Security Officer that had been chasing them, trying to distract him for long enough that Enjolras and Risadel – Courfeyrac’s daemon – could free Runi’s antlers.
That had been the last time Enjolras had participated in any operation that required a minimum amount of sneaking around. Grantaire was stunned it had taken them that long to realise that big ungulates were not particularly suited for covertness.
Grantaire now stared at them from across the square, helpless not to as he’d always been, burying his hands in the pockets of his coat.
Some people were so different from their daemons in countenance and personality that you wondered how they could have possibly shared the same soul, but Runi was a lot like Enjolras: untouchable and so fucking majestic that a candid shot of either of them would have been worthy of any magazine cover. Grantaire watched them cross the quad, Enjolras with his usual determined stride and Runi with a relaxed, confident gait that somehow still let him keep up with his human with no trouble.
For a second, Grantaire contemplated changing his plans and going home, before he realised that Enjolras was walking in the opposite direction from the Musain and relaxed. Grantaire wasn’t exactly trying to avoid Enjolras, but he was… no, yeah, totally trying to avoid Enjolras.
Because things between him and Enjolras had been weird, recently. Even just the fact that there was such a thing as “things between him and Enjolras” was so incredibly weird, Grantaire was tempted to blame it all on an alcohol-induced hallucination. A hallucination that Grantaire was not equipped to deal with and thus, as with all things he didn’t know how to deal with, avoided.
It had started, as far as Grantaire could remember, on a otherwise unremarkable afternoon about a month before. Thinking back on it, he could not be sure that nothing odd had been going on before then, but that day had been the one to stand out in his mind, for obvious reasons. He’d been sitting in his usual spot in the backroom of the Musain, the corner where he usually sat down to draw, undisturbed, during ABC meetings; he could not remember what that particular meeting had been about, probably because he hadn’t been listening at all, busy fleshing out a sketch of Bahorel and Chandrakanta. He’d just finished shading Chandrakanta’s horns and moved to concentrate on her little beard, when he’d felt a presence over his shoulder.
He’d turned around, and come face to face with Runi, snout four inches from Grantaire’s nose, his antlers looking much bigger from that distance than how they usually appeared. Grantaire had yelped and dropped the piece of charcoal he’d been using on the floor, and then stared in shock, a small part of him vaguely wondering how the fuck had something that walked on hooves managed to sneak up on him.
But Runi had simply looked at the drawing, then back at Grantaire. “Pretty,” he’d said, then calmly walked back to where Enjolras and Combeferre had been involved in a lively debate on public vs. private funding, leaving Grantaire with his jaw on the floor and his heart pounding two hundred beats a minute.
After that, Grantaire had spent the following week hyperaware of where Runi was at all times. Which had made him take notice even more than usual of what Enjolras was doing at all times.
And the thing was, what Enjolras was doing was looking at Grantaire an awful lot. Grantaire would be in a corner of the Musain laughing with Joly and Bossuet, or engaged in a mock-wrestling session with Bahorel, or good-naturedly taking the piss out of Marius, Cosette and Courfeyrac for being disgustingly in love in front of everyone, when he would feel the hair at the nape of his neck rise, someone’s stare burning on his back. Every time he’d turn around, he would catch a glimpse of blue, Enjolras’ thoughtful eyes looking at him for an instant before turning away.
Grantaire was so fucking confused, it was driving him to slightly desperate measures. He was also aware that he was having a massive overreaction to what was probably nothing, but even Coco, who he could usually trust to give him well-deserved reality checks, was left unsettled and uncertain.
So, yeah, he’d been trying to avoid Enjolras. Which didn’t, however, mean that he’d actually been succeeding at avoiding Enjolras.
Because he hadn’t. When it came to Enjolras, Grantaire was a weak, weak man. His resolutions to stay away from the Musain when he knew there was a meeting only lasted until he remembered the way Enjolras moved his hands when he was taken by the fervour of one of his speeches, or how the warm light of the backroom made Enjolras’ hair glimmer a thousand different shades of gold. Then he would be back, with a bottle of wine to help him forget why it was a bad idea, trying to concentrate on his sketchpad but stealing glances any time he thought he could afford to without being seen.
One of the things that was making him jittery about the entire ordeal, if he was honest with himself, was that he now felt too nervous to engage in one of his favourite pastimes, which was to stare at Enjolras until his eyes fell out. It was like a fix that he was not getting anymore, and he’d spent too many years cultivating that particular addiction, so in love it made him sick to his stomach, to be able to go without now.
Grantaire sighed. He let what little was left of his cigarette fall to the ground, extinguishing it with his boot, and stayed put as he watched Enjolras and Runi disappeared around a corner. Then, with Coco cooing softly next to his ear, he walked away.
***
The Musain was only half-full that afternoon, since it was not an official ABC meeting day. Combeferre and Feuilly were quietly talking among themselves towards the back, while Bahorel was playing solitaire at one of the tables next to the couch, which was occupied by Cosette, Marius and Courfeyrac.
The backroom of the Musain was filled with chairs and tables, but only had one couch. It always filled on a first come, first served basis, and in that particular moment was home to a veritable love fest: Cosette and Marius were sitting on it with Courfeyrac sprawled over the both of them, his head on Cosette’s lap and long legs thrown over Marius’. Ieremias, Cosette’s daemon, was perched on Marius’s shoulder, singing softly, while Marius played with Risadel on his lap; Marius’ daemon, Glaucia, was sprawled half on top of Courfeyrac’s head and half on Cosette’s legs, cotton-tail twitching happily every time he got a caress from the hand that Cosette was running through Courfeyrac’s curls.
Grantaire was torn between being thoroughly grossed out and helplessly fond.
“Jesus, guys, get a room,” he still told them as soon as he crossed the threshold.
Courfeyrac tilted his head up, and Risadel froze in the act of victoriously chewing on Marius’ thumb, russet body twirled around his forearm. “Oh, hey Grantaire,” waved Courfeyrac. “Still hating joy, I see.”
Grantaire grinned. “Only when it is thrown so blatantly in my face that she’s a courtesan who gets around plenty, but never bothers to knock on my door.”
Courfeyrac opened his mouth, already smirking, only to have Cosette cover it with her hand. She looked up and smiled at Grantaire. “Coco?”
“Up flying,” he replied, and walked to the chair that Bahorel had just helpfully kicked away from the table he was sat at. “She’s having a sulk.”
Bahorel laughed, one hand on Chandrakanta’s flank. “If the Department of Psychology knew just how much you fight with your daemon, you’d have a queue of researchers dogging your heels.”
Well, thought Grantaire, close enough.
“Hey, Grantaire,” Courfeyrac asked, rolling on his side. “Do you still have my sleeping bag? Jehan was asking me if he could borrow it, but I couldn’t find it anywhere.”
“Is it not in The Dump?”
Courfeyrac shrugged. “I haven’t checked.”
The Dump, as it was colloquially known among the Amis, was simply a corner of the backroom where they kept all the material they used for their rallies and protests. It was, as such, a haphazard pile of cardboard signs, spray-painted sheets, megaphones, traffic cones and other odd knick-knacks. It was also where most of the Amis dumped stuff they didn’t want to bring home, and where Grantaire kept his spare drawing and painting supplies for the long afternoons he didn’t feel like going home after one of the ABC meetings.
Grantaire sighed, and went to explore. He nodded a greeting to Feuilly and Combeferre as he walked to The Dump and crouched down to where he usually kept his stuff and started searching, catching bits and pieces of their conversation.
“-ot if we can get at least one witness’ account.” Combeferre was saying, sounding wistful.
“The only two students we know for a fact were involved dropped out citing ‘family reasons’ and are not saying anything. We’ve already tried this route.”
“I wish we could get this on Cherwell or ISIS, but with no definitive proof they’re never going to print it. A couple of mocking articles in the Oxymoron are not going to cut it.”
“Let’s hope Enjolras comes back with some good news.”
Grantaire raised his head. So, Enjolras was coming to the Musain. Great.
There was no sign of Courfeyrac’s sleeping bag, not even behind the two STOP traffic signs and the box labelled “FOAM”. Grantaire stood up, brushing off his pants, and was distracted by a tapping sound at the window, which turned up to be Coco requesting entrance. He opened the window for her, and she awkwardly flew in to land on his shoulder.
“Enjolras is coming,” she said.
“Yeah, I know,” he replied, just before he heard the sound of Runi’s hooves on the wooden floor of the Musain. Then Enjolras walked into the room, eyes roaming around and settling on Grantaire a split-second longer than necessary, before he made a beeline for Combeferre and Feuilly.
Grantaire stared at the back of his blond head for a couple of seconds, trying to recover the beat his heart had missed, then shook himself out of his reverie. He grabbed one of his sketchpads from The Dump and went back to the table.
“I couldn’t find it, it’s probably still at my flat,” he told Courfeyrac, sitting back down on his chair. “What does Jehan need it for, anyway?”
Courfeyrac had straightened up and retaken possession of his own daemon. “Ah, something to do with the Poetry Society. I think they’re planning a star sighting weekend trip, but it might have just been Jehan talking in metaphors.”
“I’ll bring it to the meeting on Friday,” Grantaire told him, and opened his sketch pad. Coco hopped from his shoulder to the table, and curiously stared at the cards Bahorel was laying down.
“I wished I had time for star sighting trips,” sighed Cosette, letting her head fall back on the back of the couch. “I’m going to spend the weekend cooped up in my room writing essays.”
“We could do something Saturday evening,” told her Courfeyrac, poking her in the leg. “Late, so that you don’t have to feel guilty.”
“Yeah, I can cook dinner!” Marius exclaimed, nodding enthusiastically.
“Ugh,” said Bahorel, looking at them with a grimace. “Seriously, you guys are teeth-rotting.” Then he turned to Grantaire. “What about you, R? Any wild plans for this weekend?”
Grantaire looked up from the white paper of his pad, where Cosette’s soft smile was taking form, and pretended not to see Coco stealing the eight of diamonds from the table. He thought about the appointment he had with Dr Bramstone on Friday, and shrugged. “Nah, I’ll probably stay at home.”
***
In hindsight, accepting Montparnasse’s offer of help had been his worst idea to date.
***
Grantaire couldn’t stop shivering. Lying on his side on the bed, curled up in a tight ball, he desperately clutched Coco to his chest, his shirt unbuttoned so that he could feel her warmth against naked skin. If there had been a way of having her closer, of merging them together until they were physically one, he would have done it in a heartbeat.
It had been horrible. It had been worse than horrible. Grantaire remembered the experiments he and Coco had done when they’d been just kids to see how far they could push until the distance between them became too great to bear, and all the incidents that, for better or worse, had ended up with giving them their sixty-metre range. Grantaire was no stranger to that particular flavour of pain, and he’d gone to the appointment prepared for it.
But God, the actual session had been worse than anything he could have expected. He didn’t really understand why; everything had gone exactly as Dr Bramstone and the research assistants had described: Coco had hopped into a nicely padded cage, which would have been carried out of the building to test their range; the assistant handling the cage had been very careful not to touch her, which had reassured Grantaire somewhat. Granted, that had only lasted until he had been literally strapped to a chair, but it had been explained to him that it was really important that he did not move, lest they end up with incorrect readings; he had been hooked up to a million monitors, and Coco had been taken out of the room.
It had been fine, at first. He didn’t know how fast they had been moving Coco, so he couldn’t tell exactly how far she’d been when he started feeling the first licks of discomfort, but it had been sooner than he had expected. There was something about being unable to see her, of having no idea of where she was except for the knowledge that she was being taken away that made everything worse. He remembered, suddenly, being nine years old and following Coco with his binoculars as she got further and further from him, the first time they tested just how far that would be. It figured that he had had more sense at nine than he had at twenty-four.
He barely remembered how he got back to his flat. He had vague recollections of someone putting him into a taxi, which must have been paid in advance, because Grantaire had been in no condition to even find his wallet. His next memory was of cradling Coco on the bed, and they hadn't moved since.
Coco was silent. She had yet to say a word since they’d been back.
He didn’t know how much time had passed – if he opened his eyes, he could see that some light was still seeping through the curtains into the room, but he couldn’t seem to sort out his thoughts long enough to make sense of it, or find the energy to lift his head and look at the clock on his bedside table.
It was possible he had fallen asleep at some point, because he felt himself open his eyes, almost as waking, when he heard the sound of claws scratching at his front door. One second later there was a knock, and Courfeyrac’s muffled voice. “Grantaire? You awake?”
Grantaire groaned. There was no way in hell he was going to get up. He was fairly sure he’d left his door unlocked anyway, and wished his vocal chords were cooperating enough to just let him yell at Courfeyrac to come in.
It ended up being superfluous, because he heard the door open a second later, and Courfeyrac mutter something under his breath.
“Seriously, are you not afraid of being robbed? Anyway, you missed the meeting and Jehan keeps asking me about the sleeping bag. He’s giving me puppy dog eyes, Grantaire, I do not have the – Grantaire?”
Grantaire blinked and saw Courfeyrac on the threshold of his bedroom, looking at him with concern.
“Hey, are you alright?” Courfeyrac said to him, walking into the room, Risadel scuttling quickly to the bed and climbing up, whiskers quivering as she stared at Coco. Grantaire instinctively cradled Coco closer to him, before he realised what he was doing and relaxed back.
He cleared his throat. “Drunk,” he said, because that was the most reliable excuse he had, and tended to not need any explanations.
Courfeyrac looked around. “Go get Cosette,” he told Risadel, who scampered out, presumably to where Cosette was waiting outside the flat. “Where did you leave the bottles?”
And Grantaire internally groaned, because, seriously? “Last night. Pub.”
“Jesus, it must have been some night.”
Grantaire didn’t bother replying, concentrated instead on stroking the soft feathers of Coco’s breast. A couple of moments later, he heard Cosette’s voice coming from the main room, and Courfeyrac left.
He heard some sort of muffled conversation, then the mattress was dipping, and someone’s hand was gently stroking his hair away from his forehead.
“Grantaire? Courfeyrac went to get you a glass of water,” Cosette murmured.
There was a pause and a rustling of cloth, and Grantaire felt a blanket being drawn over him. He turned his head far enough to recognise one of the throws he kept at the end of his bed, and mumbled a thanks to Cosette.
It was only a couple of moments more before Courfeyrac returned. “Alright, I’m leaving you some water on the bedside table, along with your phone. Please do call one of us if you start feeling like your brain is not just metaphorically leaking out of your ears – but not Joly, please, we cannot deal with –”
He was interrupted by the ringing of his phone, which he fished out of his pocket. Courfeyrac took a look at the screen, rolled his eyes, and answered the call. “Hello? Hey.” A pause. “Yeah, he’s at home. Looks like he’s just sleeping off a rough night.” Pause. “No, no, I don’t think that’s – Uhm, I doubt Runi can even pass through the doorway.” Pause. “I’m sure, you don’t need to come. Honestly? It’d probably just freak him out.” Pause. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Okay, I’ll be there in twenty. Bye.”
Grantaire saw Courfeyrac and Cosette share some sort of meaningful glance, but had no energy to try and interpret it. He looked at them and frowned. “Marius?”
Courfeyrac chuckled. “Waiting for us with dinner. We were on our way home.”
Grantaire sighed, burrowing deeper in his pillow. “Go,” he told them, closing his eyes once again.
“Are you sure?” asked Cosette, stroking one hand up and down his shoulder.
He nodded, then when that didn’t seem like it was going to be enough added, “Wanna sleep.”
“Alright,” Cosette said, and Grantaire felt her stand up. A couple of moments later he was alone in his flat.
Minutes passed, and little by little Grantaire felt his thought patterns swirl back to what could be constituted as normalcy. And the one thing that was getting clearer by the minute was that Grantaire had perhaps bitten off more than he could chew, this time; he honestly wasn’t sure he could stand another three weeks of this.
But maybe it was just the shock of the first time. It had been ages since he and Coco had stretched their bond to its limits, and maybe this was just his body’s way of reminding him why it was a terrible idea. As they did it more and more, his body would probably adapt and not leave him basically comatose for a day.
Grantaire had to believe it. It would probably get better after the first few times.
***
It did not get better after the first few times.
It became quite clear, after the third session and a lot of reassurances from the research assistants, that shaking and barely coherent was how he was supposed to come out of the procedure. Shockingly, that did not particularly reassure Grantaire. The only silver lining was that he usually passed out after the first twenty minutes, and didn’t resurface until the hour was over and Coco had been brought back to the room and placed at his side.
It was only every three days, but counting the fact that Grantaire had to spend at least one entire day recovering after every visit to the lab, his absences were starting to get noticed. There were only so many times you could claim to have an upset stomach before Joly diagnosed you with the Plague, and Grantaire was already well past that point. When Bahorel had asked him if he wanted to go to the boxing club on Saturday he’d had to invent an art exhibition in London to get out of it.
That lie had bought him five days, which covered two appointments, but there would be another two or three at least before the whole ordeal would be over, and Grantaire, honestly, was starting to worry.
Coco, most of everything else, was worrying him. After every appointment, she was practically unresponsive, only awake enough to burrow closer to his chest. But even much later, after Grantaire himself had more or less recovered, she would look tired and sluggish, and so uncharacteristically silent. And Grantaire was afraid: she was the best thing in his life, which probably sounded incredibly self-centred since she was, for all intents and purposes, a part of him; but fuck that, she was awesome, and he was terrified that whatever these experiments were doing to her, its effects would not be temporary.
There were only two or three sessions left, but at that point, Grantaire feared they were going to be two or three sessions too many.
He needed to talk to Dr Bramstone.
***
Tuesday afternoon saw Grantaire back at the Musain, probably looking like death warmed over. He'd tried to contact Dr Bramstone the entire weekend, but was told he was not in Oxford and wouldn't be back until Tuesday evening. He hadn’t wanted to make Joly even more suspicious, so he’d turned up despite feeling like he should have been sleeping for an eternity. He had settled at a table next to the window, one hand twirling one of his pencils, the other propping up his head to keep it from banging on the table every time he fell into a doze. It was probably because he was dozing that he didn’t hear anyone approaching.
“How was the exhibition?”
Grantaire jumped, pencil flying from his hand, and turned his head. Then he froze, staring dumbly at Enjolras, who was right in front of him, one hip propped against his table and looking at Grantaire with his usual level stare, blue eyes limpid.
“What?” Grantaire croaked.
“The art exhibition, how was it?” Enjolras repeated. Then, at Grantaire continued staring, added, “Joly told me that’s why you were in London?”
“Oh, right, yes,” he said, straightening up on his chair. “It was – good. Lots of art. Uh…” he fumbled, mind blank. “And how was your weekend?”
Oh God, somebody kill him now.
But Enjolras, amazingly, regaled him with a quick smile. Grantaire was almost too stunned to catch his reply. “It was good. I went with Courfeyrac and Combeferre to London. We had fun.”
There was a pause, which was probably supposed to be awkward, but Grantaire was too busy wondering whether he had actually fallen asleep in the Musain, and was completely dreaming Enjolras looking at him with a calm and – dare he say it? – pleased look on his face to really notice.
Then Enjolras cleared his throat. “Look, I was wondering, if you don’t have something else to do, if you wanted to – ”
But Grantaire had stopped listening, his attention caught by a man he recognised walking by the street, outside the window: it was one of Dr Bramstone’s assistants, crossing the road just outside of the Musain. Grantaire stood up from his chair, gaze locked on the figure as not to lose it in the crowd. “Hey, sorry, I need to –” he started saying, distractedly, then remembered who he was talking to and did a double take. And, wow, Enjolras’ face was much closer than how he was used to seeing it, and even marred by a frown it was enough to take Grantaire’s breath away for a moment. But Grantaire really needed to talk to that guy.
He smiled restlessly at Enjolras, even as he was pushing his chair back. “Sorry, I just saw someone I really need to talk to. Uhm – I’ll see you later, I guess?” he blurted out, and then sprinted out of the door before he could hear Enjolras’ reply, Coco flying after him.
Outside, he searched the street for the man, and let out a sigh of relief when he spotted him, just at the end of the street.
He started to run. “Hey, wait!” Jesus, what was his name? “…Richard? Richard!”
The guy – Richard – finally turned around and stopped, waiting for Grantaire to jog the last few metres. Richard recognised him, but had the typical look on his face of someone who was trying really hard to remember your name.
“Hey, so,” started Grantaire. “You’re Richard, right? One of Dr Bramstone’s assistants? You saw me on Sunday.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Richard said, then pointed at him, a self-deprecating smile on his face. “You’re…?”
“Grantaire,” he replied, with a quick smile. “Listen, I just wanted to tell you, and you might want to tell Dr Bramstone, that I might not make it to tomorrow’s appointment.”
Richard’s face fell. “What? No, we need you to come in. We cannot change the schedule, we need a reading every three days.”
Grantaire scratched the back of his head. “Okay, but… I have a thing. I just need a few days. If we can’t reschedule, surely you have someone else that can come in tomorrow in my place?”
“It doesn’t work like that,” replied Richard, shaking his head. “We need each trial to be conducted on the same subject, or it’s going to introduce too much bias in the data and the analysis is gonna be –” he stopped himself and shook his head again. “No, we can’t reschedule, you really have to come in tomorrow.”
Grantaire ground his teeth. “What if I decided to just quit and stop coming?”
“You agreed to stay for the full length of the trial, you signed!” Richard was getting worked up, colour rising high on his cheeks. “You have to stay until the end. It’s going to be impossible to find another subject on such short notice, and we might lose the funding if we don’t present our preliminary results before March!” Then he seemed to realise how much flailing his hands were doing, and he took a big breath. “Look, there’s only two more sessions left, and you’re not going to see any of the money if you withdraw now. Is it really worth it? Because the results of this study are worth a lot to a lot of people.”
Grantaire didn’t know what to do. On one hand, it’s not like he wanted to screw with this guy’s academic career, and he really did need that money; on the other hand…
In the end his shoulders slumped, and he nodded. He saw Richard literally sag in relief before his eyes. “Thank you,” he said, smiling, and that made Grantaire feel a little bit better. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” he said, and walked off.
Which left Grantaire alone on the path, in the exact same situation he’d been fifteen minutes before but with an even bigger lump lodged in his throat. Suddenly, standing there on the path and staring at the guy’s back as he walked away, Grantaire felt the full weight of the past two weeks settle down on his shoulders, and had to lock his knees to avoid doing something pathetically embarrassing like falling down on the ground. He was exhausted, every joint in his body ached; he felt drained, to his bones. Was it really worth it?
He looked down at where Coco was standing at his feet – beautiful, cantankerous Coco – who was so heartbreakingly listless and silent. He wanted her back, and he was terrified out of his mind that she never would be, even after all this would have been over. That might have been the one thing Grantaire would not be able to forgive himself.
Grantaire turned around, looking back at the Musain where he’d left all his things, including his coat; for a second, he thought he saw Enjolras staring at him through the window, but then the moment passed, and all he could see was his own reflection on the glass.
He crouched down, gathered Coco in one hand, and walked briskly home.
***
That night Grantaire came back to the Musain, using the key to the backdoor that was always left under the second flower pot from the left, past the time he knew anyone would be in either the café or the backroom. He didn’t turn on the lights, leaving everything to be bathed in a mix of shadows and the orange light that the streetlamps projected through the windows.
He was, at the moment, staring at the painting supplies that he usually kept at the Musain, spread over one of the tables; it was only a fraction of what he kept at home. He remembered looking at his rapidly vanishing tubs and jars of oil colours, and worrying about needing to replace them. It had seemed really important, at the time.
“Grantaire?” he heard someone call him, and he knew that voice. Enjolras.
Grantaire turned his head just enough to see the dark silhouettes of Enjolras and Runi standing just inside the room. “Don’t turn on the lights,” he told them.
He heard them coming closer, the sound of both Enjolras’ boots and Runi’s hooves echoing in the empty room.
“What are you doing here?”
Grantaire smiled tiredly, and shrugged. He turned around and leaned against the table. “What are you doing here?”
“I was walking home, and saw you through the window,” Enjolras replied. He walked into a patch of light, and looked around the room. Bathed by the orange streetlight, his hair almost looked red. “Grantaire, are you okay?”
Grantaire laughed, an ugly and tired sound. “When have I ever been okay?” But he waved a hand dismissively before Enjolras could reply. “No, don’t answer that – I’m sorry, it’s the wine talking.”
But there were no wine bottles anywhere in sight, and he could tell that Enjolras had noticed as well. Grantaire sighed, and walked towards the couch, falling listlessly on it after having picked up Coco from the ground.
He didn’t expect Enjolras to sit next to him.
“She’s pretty quiet,” Enjolras said after a pause, nodding at Coco.
“Yeah,” said Grantaire, and swallowed. “Believe it or not, sometimes we both are.”
Enjolras snorted, then paused. “This is strange. I don’t think I’ve ever had to worry about filling up the silence when either of you were around.”
I can’t imagine you ever worrying about anything that had to do with either of us, Grantaire thought but didn’t say. And, actually, listening to inane prattle right at that moment sounded like a pretty good idea. Anything to fill up the blank that his too-fast swirling thoughts were leaving inside his head.
“How’s Uni going?”
Enjolras blinked. “Pardon?”
“Your course, how’s it going?” Grantaire waved one hand. “Tutorials, seminars, assignments. You know, Uni stuff.”
“…You want to listen to me talk about assignments.”
Grantaire chuckled. “I want to listen to you talk about everything.”
And after a pause, amazingly, Enjolras did. He started with the latest assignments he’d had to turn in, then talked about his tutorials, and how much he hated the white-tie formal dinners at his College, and complained about some douchebag in one of his seminars who had so many wrong opinions on the NHS, Enjolras didn’t even know where to start tearing him to pieces. It was like a balm, that voice Grantaire so loved modulating up and down with Enjolras’ emotions, washing over him like a lullaby.
“You know, this would have been my idea of a perfect dream, two weeks ago,” Grantaire said, when Enjolras had paused, probably short of inane things to say. “You, me, an empty room. You, just telling me about your life.” He was aware somewhere in the back of his mind that he probably shouldn’t be saying stuff like that, but he didn’t care anymore.
There was a pause from Enjolras. “It’s not, anymore?”
Grantaire laughed. No, of course it still was. It was never not going to be. If Grantaire had had the energy, he would have been angry that it had to happen when he was in no condition to appreciate it.
“I’m so tired,” he just exhaled, and slumped even lower on the couch.
He felt Enjolras shift, and then something pulled at his shoulder, pulled him down until he was lying on the couch, his head propped onto something warm. “Rest, then,” he heard Enjolras say, and then something – fingers – were moving to stroke some of his curls from his face.
The last thing he remembered, before falling asleep, was seeing Runi sitting on the floor, his antlers creating patterns of shadows on the wooden tiles, and Coco settled between his forelegs, burrowing sleepily against his chest.
***
The following morning, Grantaire woke up on the couch, alone, a white sheet with the word BOYCOTT spray-painted in bright red covering him. He looked at it for a couple of seconds, and his mind completely blanked, when he remembered what he’d been doing the night before. He sat up, hesitantly, and looked at the clock.
He swore, scrambling off the couch and sprinting out of the Musain. In an impressive feat for the condition he was in, bone-tired and still only half-awake, he managed to get to Dr Bramstone’s lab only fifteen minutes late.
He didn’t bother with excuses, just smiled at the pretty assistant who was fastening the pressure cuff to his arm with a scowl and closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the headrest of the chair and trying desperately not to think about what was about to come.
The next thing he knew, someone was viciously hissing next to his ear.
“Stupid. Stupid. So stupid. Jesus Christ.”
Grantaire frowned, his mind trying to fight his way out of unconsciousness. There was some sort of commotion around him, but more importantly there was someone tearing off the electrode pads from his chest, swearing under their breath. Grantaire finally managed to open his eyes, in time to see a blond head crutching down to undo the straps keeping his legs tied to the chair.
“Sir! Sir, you can’t do this!” someone was yelling – one of the assistants, Grantaire thought he could recognise. “This is an ongoing research project, and if you don’t leave immediately I’m afraid you’ll have to be escorted out!”
Enjolras whipped his head around and snarled, “I’d like to see you try.”
Then there was a lot of noise, and someone was yelling at someone else to call Dr Bramstone, but Grantaire was more interested in the warm hand cupping his cheek, and Enjolras worried face hovering above his own.
“Grantaire, are you awake? Can you hear me?”
Grantaire swallowed, trying his hardest to keep Enjolras in focus. The hand stroking his hair was so nice. “Coco…” he croaked.
“She’s here,” Enjolras said, moving to the side to let him see the cage in which Coco was resting, slumped against one of the walls. “Combeferre and Courfeyrac are also coming,” he added, then stared at him for a couple of seconds, his hand still petting his hair, before shaking himself. “C’mon, I’m getting you out of here.”
He went to Coco and carefully lifted the cage by the handle, before walking back towards Grantaire. “Can you stand?” he asked him.
Grantaire really wanted to say yes, but it could have been jelly that made up his legs for all they felt capable of supporting him; he shook his head.
“That’s fine, just – Here.” Enjolras pulled up one of Grantaire’s arms over his head, keeping it firm over his shoulder, and slipped his own arm – the one still holding Coco’s cage – around Grantaire’s waist.
Slowly, they made their way out of the room, wobbling and almost falling on their heads a couple of times, Runi silently following behind.
They were barely three metres into the corridor, though, when Enjolras stopped. “Grantaire, I can’t – I can’t carry both you and Coco by myself. You need to lean on Runi.”
Grantaire’s feet slipped underneath him, almost sending them both tumbling to the ground. “No,” he moaned, horrified.
Enjolras shook him. “Don’t be ridiculous, we need to get you out of here before Dr Bramstone arrives.”
“No,” Grantaire repeated, trying to struggle out of Enjolras’ grip. “I can’t– No. ”
Fortunately, that was the moment that Combeferre and Courfeyrac sprinted around the corner, Risadel and Achaikos following them one step behind.
“Holy shit!” he heard Courfeyrac say, and had the time to be really, really grateful for their timing before he passed out.
***
When he woke up, the first thing he became aware of was Coco resting warm on top of his chest, and that the lumpy surface he was lying on was unmistakably the couch of the Musain. For a second, he entertained the thought that he’d only dreamed of going to Dr Bramstone lab, and that it was still morning and he needed to hurry up if he wanted to be on time.
Then he turned his head and saw Enjolras, sitting on a chair facing the couch, chin propped up on his interlocked fingers and icy eyes staring furiously at him.
“I’ve seen you do plenty of stupid things since I’ve known you, Grantaire,” Enjolras said, the low, growly tone he usually reserved for annoyingly unrepentant bigots sending conflicting shivers down Grantaire’s spine. “But this one probably tops them all.”
Grantaire groaned, one hand going to cover his face. He stared at the ceiling through his fingers, then decided he needed to be upright for this conversation. Gently supporting Coco, he dragged himself in a sitting position, head falling against the back of the couch. “I’m not in any condition to be lectured, Enjolras.”
“Well, tough luck!” said Enjolras, pushing himself of his chair and starting to pace up and down the length of the couch, one hand going to his head to run his fingers through his hair.
Grantaire watched him, silent, noticing for the first time that they were alone in the Musain. God, he hated when Enjolras was angry at him. Not least because Enjolras could be downright vicious when his temper was riled up, and Grantaire had always had zero defences against him.
“Look,” he said. “I know this hasn’t been my brightest idea, but I needed the money.”
“And being a human lab rat was the only thing you could think of?” Enjolras spit back, hardly pausing to look at him while he walked back and forth. “But you know what? That doesn’t actually surprise me, because God knows you make shitty decisions by the dozen. No, what astonishes me is that out of everything, this is the thing you decide to do without saying anything to anyone, when we’ve all been working for so long to shut Bramstone’s project down!”
Grantaire, who had been in the process of working up a generous amount of defensive indignation, reeled back. “Wait, what?”
Enjolras stopped pacing, and stared at him, a disbelieving look on his face. “Are you kidding me? There were four articles in the Oxymoron about Dr Bramstone’s research! Combeferre wrote two of them! We’ve been talking about trying to get evidence against him for weeks!” He barked out a laugh. “Turns out all we had to do was wait for an absolute moron to stroll into his office and offer himself up as a live subject!”
Grantaire looked at him, stunned. “I didn’t – uhm.” A couple of conversations he’d overheard suddenly made sense. “Did I help, then?”
“Did you– ” Enjolras inhaled, harshly, and looked like he was barely restraining himself from committing extreme violence.
“Never mind!” Grantaire hurriedly said, and watched, almost fascinated, as Enjolras stared at him for a second, and then visibly deflated. He put his hands on the back of the chair, leaning on it, and took a deep breath.
“Okay,” Enjolras said, “Just tell me why. Do you have any idea what you looked – Just tell me how in hell did you end up there?”
Grantaire sighed, stroking Coco’s back absentmindedly. “I told you, I just needed the money. At first, at least. Then when I wanted to quit they said they couldn’t stop the trials without fucking up the entire research project, and I just – stayed. They didn’t seem terribly evil.” He grimaced, “I mean, yeah, Montparnasse was a big clue, but-” and stopped himself, realising that, uh, that was probably the wrong thing to say.
He glanced up at Enjolras’ face and, yep, wrong thing to say.
“Montparnasse? You went to Montparnasse?”
“No! I didn’t – I was just complaining one night at the bar, and he was there, and said he knew where I could get some cash – legally, I’d like to point out – and I figured, I don’t know, that it was worth a shot.”
“Jesus, Montparnasse,” Enjolras whispered. He was staring at Grantaire with an expression that came close to amazed. Likely at his stupidity.
At least it wasn’t angry anymore.
But Enjolras was still shaking his head. “If you needed money, why didn’t you ask Bossuet, or Courfeyrac? Why didn’t you come to any of us?” Then he grimaced, something raw reflecting in his eyes. “Why didn’t you come to me?”
Grantaire looked at him, eyes wide. “Enjolras,” he said, spreading his arms in a helpless gesture, “why would I‘ve ever gone to you?”
Enjolras froze. He stared, still as stone, and then something cracked in his expression. Like a puppet whose strings had been cut, he slumped on the chair, one hand going to cover his face.
“Fuck,” he whispered, his voice feeble. It was so unlike anything Grantaire had ever heard coming out of Enjolras’ mouth that he had already gotten up from the couch, ready to eat back his words, ready to do anything to get that defeated slump off of Enjolras’ shoulders.
But then it was his turn to freeze, gasping in shock as something warm and soft pressed against his side. He stared at Enjolras, a panicked expression on his face, and Enjolras was staring right back, almost a mirror look of panic in his eyes, but of a different kind. And among the millions of denials and disbelieving refusals, Grantaire knew what that meant, knew that in the back of his consciousness he had known for a while and that yet, knowing had nothing on the feeling of Runi warm and real and close, and Grantaire still couldn’t, he couldn’t.
“You can. You can touch him,” Enjolras whispered.
Grantaire shook his head, terrified of moving a muscle, denials spilling out his mouth. “No– No, I can’t.”
“Grantaire,” Enjolras said, eyes wide and Adam’s apple going up and down. “You can.”
And Grantaire, trembling, twisted around to look at him, beautiful, magnificent Runi, who was pressing his head to Grantaire’s side, just under his arm, careful to keep his head tilted up so he would not hurt him with his antlers. Slowly, so slowly, Grantaire extended a trembling hand to his brown flank and pressed his fingers in Runi’s fur.
His knees gave up and he went down in a heap, Runi gracefully following him down on the floor, and only vaguely registered the sound of Enjolras gasping. The world could have been falling around them and Grantaire would have not been able to tear his eyes away from that one point of contact. Which meant that he missed when Coco hurled herself like a bullet at Enjolras’ chest, but snapped up his head when Enjolras humphed at the impact. He watched as Enjolras’ hands instinctively went to catch the little squirming body, and the second his fingers touched feathers Grantaire felt it, warmth blooming from his core, his world being tilted on a new axis.
And then Enjolras was shooting up from his chair and crossing the room, Coco clutched protectively in the palm of one arm. He stopped in front of Grantaire and knelt down, knees hitting the floor with a thump; he stared at him, eyes wide with amazement and a little wild around the edges, and then reached out with his free hand, cradled Grantaire’s head and pulled him up in a kiss.
Grantaire stopped breathing. Enjolras was kissing him. And then he parted his lips, because holy Hell Enjolras was kissing him, enthusiastic and warm against him, and Grantaire regretted only having one hand free to grasp Enjolras’ blond curls except that no, he didn’t, because the other one was still touching Runi and nothing, nothing would have been able to tear it off Runi’s sleek fur.
No one would have been able to tear Grantaire off any of it, warmth coursing through his veins, one had buried in Runi’s coat and the other clutching Enjolras’ hair, because Grantaire was never, ever letting go.
***
***
Final exams were officially over for everyone, but looking at some of the faces around the backroom of the Musain, you would have thought the Amis had been coming back from the Western Front.
“I’m never going to leave revision to the last week before an exam again,” moaned Courfeyrac.
Combeferre looked up from his phone. ”You’ve been saying that since GCSE.”
“But I mean it this time, I do. I won’t survive another year like this, and neither will Risadel. She was losing entire balls of fur!”
This time, Combeferre didn’t even look up from his phone. “She’s a pine marten, they moult in late spring.”
Courfeyrac lifted his head. “How are you that refreshed? You had your Pathology exam six hours ago! I remember Joly after that exam, he’d looked like a mangy stray dog.”
“Hey!” Joly yelled, indignant.
“To be fair, Joly, you did claim that Persis had caught mange at the time,” reminded him Combeferre.
Courfeyrac, from his spot at the foot of the sofa, leaned back into the space bracketed by Marius’ legs with a winning grin. “My point is, no one can look this refreshed after exam period.”
“Musichetta can,” interjects Grantaire.
“Yeah, but Musichetta and Oberon don’t count, they always look fresh as daisies. It’s terrifying.”
Grantaire conceded the point. There was a time when he used to think that geckos were the stoners of the reptile world, and then he met Oberon and Musichetta.
“It’s probably all the Echinacea that Joly slips into her water,” mused Jehan out loud.
“What?” cried Bossuet, turning towards Joly. “How come you never slip Echinacea in my water?”
“I don’t slip Echinacea in anyone’s water!”
Their argument was interrupted by a loud, drawn out moan. “Oh God, don’t stop,” Courfeyrac sighed, turning his head on one side to direct the fingers Marius was running through his hair where he wanted them.
“Jesus, get a room,” yelled Grantaire at them, to the agreement of everyone in the room.
“Look who’s talking!” Courfeyrac yelled back good-naturedly.
Grantaire was actually confused for a second, before he realised in what position he was currently in, and had to swallow the 100-kilowatt grin that still sometime was impossible to suppress every time he thought about his boyfriend. He and Enjolras were sitting side by side on the floor, him lazily twirling a pencil – likely the last one intact he had left coming out of exam period – and Enjolras reading through the body of the Prison Reform that was due to be voted on in two weeks, because he didn’t know the meaning of taking a break. None of it would have raised any eyebrows, had they not both been leaning their backs against Runi’s flank.
Grantaire scowled. “Daemons don’t count as PDA.”
Bossuet cleared his throat. “Daemons do so count as PDA, and Enjolras is wearing one of your shirts anyway. I’m sorry, but you might have surpassed Marius, Cosette and Courfeyrac in the category of Couple That Will Give You Cavities.”
Enjolras, probably having heard his name, raised his head. “Uh?”
“Nothing, love,” Grantaire told him, and bent to kiss the side of Enjolras’ head. Enjolras regaled him with a brilliant smile, and crouched back down to pour over his papers.
Grantaire leaned back against Runi, who bowed down to nibble affectionately at his curls. Two seconds passed, and then he realised what he’d just done.
“Oh God,” he said, eyes widening.
Bossuet smirked at him. “Told ya.”
He was spared any further embarrassment by the entrance of Coco, who flew in through the open window. The wind must have been strong outside, because a couple of feathers on her head had been upturned, giving her a ridiculous crest.
“You look like a cockatoo,” he told her once she’d landed in front of him.
“You look like a dick,” she replied, and quickly ducked under Enjolras’ arm, surreptitiously smoothing her feathers back down with a head rub. Enjolras didn’t bat an eye, and absentmindedly scooped her up to deposit her on his shoulder.
Grantaire looked at them both, the fondness in his smile impossible to contain, Runi’s warmth seeping through the shirt at his back, and felt his heart float.