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Here’s the thing: Grantaire has superpowers.
He realized it when he turned fourteen, a sharp, exploding pain bursting on his face where his father’s fist had just broken his nose for the second time. Everything just hurt, it hurt so much, he wanted to get out, to leave, to escape – and then he’d been gone. He’d woke up, two hours later, in a park halfway across the city, blood leaking down his face and a migraine that had lasted a nauseating, tortured two more days.
He wasn’t the first to suddenly wake up one day and have abilities, of course. They had started showing up in adolescents about twenty, twenty-five, years before he’d even been born. Biologically, something had fucked up, and suddenly puberty didn’t just mean cracking voices and hair in weird places: it meant, surprise, you can fucking pick up a truck, or surprise, you’re invisible, good luck figuring that shit out.
Still, not everybody wakes up with the ability to blink and wake up in a park across town.
He’s not entirely sure, having never gone to get checked out, but teleportation seemed like a high-level ability. Maybe not, with the consequences he deals with – migraines, nausea, dizziness, blacking out if he goes too far. But it’s enough that he’s pretty sure if someone figured it out, he’d have problems.
Here’s the second thing: Grantaire is not, and has no interest in ever becoming, a superhero.
Superheroes were people with high-level abilities that chose to use them to save the city, usually in a team funded and supported by the city itself. Grantaire doesn’t, in theory, have an issue with that idea. In fact, when he was a kid, he used to collect the comics and stay up at night to read and re-read them, over and over again. He used to think about impossible shit: his dad, a superhero who could fly, who could save banks from robbers and kids from burning buildings. He’d imagine every hero he’d ever read about showing up to save him and his sister from his father when he was angry, dreamt about it so much that waking up almost became a disappointment.
He’d mostly gotten over fantasies like those, obviously, when his sister got married and left the house, when it became just him and his dad, and Grantaire found a better solution to avoid his father’s rages than sleeping with the bedroom door locked. He’d wake up early enough to leave for school before his dad woke up, and he’d stay late after school, joining any number of clubs – art, boxing, fencing, dance, even, this last year, a social fucking justice club despite only knowing one other member.
Well, punching a kid in the nose because he’d called Bahorel a – it doesn’t bare repeating – had earned him an enthusiastic if awkward invite to the after-school club Bahorel had already been on his way towards, and Grantaire, willing to take any excuse not to go home, had shrugged and followed.
He probably wouldn’t have stuck around if it wasn’t for Enjolras. For all that Bahorel claimed it was cool, it clearly wasn’t okay to just show up unexpected at their little social justice club: everybody stared at him, and Bahorel had had to explain (defend, more like) bringing Grantaire with, and the conversations that followed during the whole meeting had been stilted – cut off with quick glances towards Grantaire, as if he wasn’t allowed to hear whatever shit they had to say about immigration policies and discrimination and whatever else their cause of the week was. It was fucking awkward as hell, and he’d been ready to grab his backpack and just leave fifteen minutes into it when Enjolras had stood up and started to talk.
He’s not sure how the entire school hadn’t figured it out already; the way Enjolras talks, the intensity of his words, the passion in his eyes. Grantaire swallowed, fingers itching for a pencil to capture what he was seeing. Of course, then he’d blinked, shaking his head and actually listened to the words coming out of Apollo’s mouth.
Apollo: leader of Paris’ favorite superhero team, with the ability to use light.
(Grantaire dreams about him, except instead of being dressed in that red hoodie he wears to school, or the red costume he wears while he saves the day, he has a red blazer and flower pinned to his vest instead. He usually tries not to dwell when he wakes up after dreams like those, because dreaming about a past life is - and the idea that Enjolras was in Grantaire's past life, that they might actually be connected somehow -
They're probably just dreams.)
Maybe that’s why the room seemed to subtly get brighter as Enjolras’ voice got louder, but it’s definitely why one of the lightbulbs sparks and fizzles out in a sudden crack that makes several people flinch when Grantaire snorts and asks, “Are you fucking serious right now?” mid-speech.
Not that Grantaire had needed extra proof; Enjolras wasn’t bothering to even try and hide.
Apollo was a household figure these days. Grantaire had seen him on the news often enough, blinding criminals with light, slipping through the dark to capture them and save people – using the light to, somehow, soothe burns and sew cuts until they could get them to a hospital. But he’d heard him give speeches too, in television interviews, and though it’s different in-person – the light so much brighter – it’s still the same, the way he sparks passion to life in everyone listening to him.
He doesn’t even remember what they’d argued about, that first meeting, just the way two more bulbs fizzled and sparked before Enjolras gripped his desk so tightly his fingers turned white, the way he’d physically had to calm himself down from letting it happen to a fourth, changing the subject with angry, tense shoulders.
“Fuck,” Bahorel had whispered, a minute later, “I’ve never seen him that riled. You got some kind of superpower, man?”
Grantaire had grinned and said, “If pissing people off counts, then sure.”
(And he dreams about saying that, too, in a dirty, crowded bar, hundreds of years before he was born.)
He’d gotten a snort in return, and when he’d shown up the next week, Enjolras had rolled his eyes and not said a word as Grantaire slipped into a chair at the back, pulled out a notebook, and started to sketch.
So, yes, Grantaire can admire superheroes – especially Apollo, who, as Enjolras, Grantaire can admit to more than admiring if he’s being honest. But he definitely doesn’t want – can’t – be one. Enjolras rarely misses a meeting, but Grantaire is always tense when he does, one hand clenched around his phone with a news feed up, telling him what’s happening as Apollo fights a new supervillain, stops thieves from getting away with a heist, pulls people from a sinkhole that had swallowed forty cars.
Enjolras risks his life every time he goes out there.
Grantaire can hardly breathe, sometimes, waiting for the news feed to update.
He gets teased, occasionally, for his crush on Apollo. Courfeyrac is the worst perpetrator – and Grantaire has considered the idea that Courfeyrac might actually know who Enjolras really is, more than once – but they all laugh and get into it. Grantaire can mostly snort and shrug it off, because it’s not weird to obsess over a superhero, not embarrassing to like them, to admire them.
It’s normal. They have comic books and action figures, interviews, photoshoots, magazines that tell teenage girls everywhere what to do to get a superhero to look their way.
It’s easier than the knowing looks he gets sometimes when he stares at Enjolras a little too long, when his breath hitches in his throat at a passion that rides up his chest and threatens to burst out before he gets it back under control.
If all they tease him about is Apollo, he doesn’t mind at all.
“You don’t even agree with everything he stands for,” Enjolras mutters, once, neck and ears already tinged red in response to a conversation Grantaire had been having with Courfeyrac – “What do you like about him so much anyway?” “You’ve seen him, right?” – despite the fact that Enjolras had been turned away, talking to Combeferre.
Grantaire shrugs and says, “I think he’s too optimistic, sure, but if anyone can pull it off, it’s probably him, right?”
Enjolras had turned away, the tinge of red spreading across his whole face like he was a second away from saying something scathing in response to the too optimistic comment, having to hold back because of the whole secret identity thing. Grantaire grimaced, hiding his face in his sketch book.
There’s one more thing.
Grantaire has a hard time controlling it, sometimes.
It’s almost an addiction, the way his hands will start to shake, the way his stomach will twist painfully and the back of his neck will get damp with sweat. Voices get too loud, gazes too sharp, and Grantaire will feel the rising need to disappear, to be gone, and as much as he tries to keep his feet on the ground, sometimes he just – can’t.
He can go hours, usually, before getting to that point.
The thing is, it’s been hours, and his hands are starting to shake.
(He's not a drunk, in this life. His hands still shake like it, sometimes.)
He doesn’t know why the supervillain of the week – his name being the King, or so the very loud villain-style monologue in extra loud volume had informed them – had decided to attack Grantaire’s school, of all fucking places in Paris to attack, and announced that the force field he’d surrounded them with would be getting smaller and smaller every minute as he waited patiently for Apollo, his destined arch-nemesis, to arrive and fight him.
Seeing as Enjolras had been shoved into the biggest room in the school - the library - right alongside Grantaire, Grantaire’s thinking that that isn’t going to be happening anytime soon. Enjolras looks as pissed off as he can, obviously, but it isn’t as if he’s the only superhero in the city – Les Amis is a group, after all, even if Apollo is their leader, the first to be called in.
But it’s been hours, and they’re still stuck. The force field is small enough now that the building is starting to shake, cement collapsing and wood snapping in the building. The four-hundred-something students that go to their school are huddled together in the room that's too small to reasonably fit all of them together, surrounded by books and avoiding the red, glowing circle that surrounds them, getting smaller every few minutes.
Grantaire tucks his hands into his hoodie’s pockets, trying to hide the way they’re shaking.
(Shaking like they used to, whenever he'd gone too long without a drink. Whenever he thought about his friends, dying for a revolution they wouldn't - couldn't - win.)
He’s sitting in a corner with the rest of his friends – the ones from social justice club, obviously, because somehow they’ve all become his friends now, even Enjolras (because sometimes when they argue Enjolras will grin, like he’s having fun, and Grantaire’s heart will stutter) – when two of the lights overhead crack and break, sending out sparks and making several kids scream in fear. Enjolras tenses even more, biting his lip before obviously forcing himself to calm down.
The two of them aren’t the only tense ones in the group. Combeferre has been working tirelessly on his laptop, doing something that he said, tersely, “might help, if you let me concentrate,” to Courfeyrac, whose been staring at the force field as if trying to make it disappear through pure willpower ever since. Bahorel has been needlessly punching it every few minutes, resulting in nothing but bruised knuckles and an upset Joly. Everyone else is sitting together, talking quietly, and nobody was able to answer Grantaire’s reasonable inquiry of, “Where the fuck are Les Amis when we actually need them?”
Because not a single member of Les Amis has shown up to save the school, and the news outlets are freaking out, and Grantaire’s phone is about to run out of power because he’s had it on for so long, waiting for an update, for any update that someone – not Apollo, obviously, but one of the others – had shown up to help.
His phone dies; the school library seems to dim, the lights above not bright enough anymore now that two of them have broken entirely. He puts the phone away, tucks his hands back in his pocket. He’s not sure how much longer he can keep from disappearing. The problem is, with so many people everywhere, with his friends sitting so close, there’s no way they wouldn’t notice.
“Shit,” he curses, squeezing his eyes shut and trying to breathe. He can feel sweat dripping down his back.
He jerks when someone touches his shoulder, and then relaxes when Enjolras slides down to sit next to him.
“Combeferre almost has a way to get the force field down,” he says. “We’ll be fine.”
Grantaire almost opens his mouth to debate that – to laugh and explain that Combeferre is seventeen years old, a high school student, a kid, and that if Les Amis hasn’t figured out how to get them out, how the fuck does Enjolras expect Combeferre to do it? But Enjolras looks near-desperate, and the force field shrinks another foot, shoving Marius forward with a yelp. A bookshelf topples, books falling to the floor, but nobody cares or bothers to pick any of them up.
The force field stings when you touch it, Bahorel said, like some kind of sparking electrical outlet. Grantaire avoided touching it, and avoids it now by scooting forward another few inches, shoving two of the books out of the way with his foot. Enjolras grimaces and moves with him, their sides brushing.
Enjolras glances at him suddenly, and says, “You’re shaking.”
Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
He laughs, but nothing about this situation is funny.
Suddenly, Combeferre looks up.
“Enjolras, I think I have it. Come here.”
Instantly, Enjolras is up and Grantaire’s left side is left abruptly cold.
And then, light pours in through a hole in the wall near Enjolras, but Bahorel is the one grinning, having managed to literally punch a hole through the force field. Still, Enjolras is the one grimacing as if he’s in pain, hand braced against the force field, and Courfeyrac right next to him, the same look of concentration on his face as has been for hours now.
Grantaire’s whole body is trembling, and when he moves to stand up – to follow the students that are rushing out of the hole, to safety, so quickly they haven’t bothered to stop and ask how – all he can do is trip and fall back down, landing with a painful thump on the hard floor.
Everything blurs around him, and he tries to breathe through his nose.
Someone calls his name. Joly, he thinks, from the way he sounds worried when he says, “Grantaire? Why are you still in here? You’re shaking!” and then Enjolras, even though that makes no sense, but Grantaire could recognize his voice anywhere, knows it’s Enjolras saying, “He’s panicking, get him out, Bahorel, carry him out!”
Someone grabs his arm – Bahorel, he thinks, and Bahorel must be stronger than Grantaire thought, because he picks Grantaire up like nothing, and then everything goes dark. For a minute, Grantaire thinks he’s blacked out; that he’ll wake up hours later, off in a park somewhere, away from the danger, away from his friends.
Then, a clear voice: “Shit!”
Enjolras.
“It’s alright, we’ll open it up again. Concentrate, Enjolras.”
Combeferre.
“Hey, R, hey, breathe, okay. We’re gonna be fine.”
Bahorel.
“It’s not working! Ferre, it’s not working!”
Enjolras.
“Enj, breathe, come on.”
Courfeyrac.
The room shudders. Something bends; breaks. Cement crashes down around them, and the last light on the ceiling falls, bulb cracking as the ceiling snaps in two and reigns down around them. Grantaire clings to Bahorel, who yells, “Everybody brace!” and Grantaire – Grantaire blinks.
He wakes up to Bahorel yelling, what sounds like at least ten feet away, “R! Where the fuck did he go? I can’t see shit, R!”
There's a sound that sounds like another bookshelf toppling, but Grantaire can't see it. The room is dark, completely encased in the pitch of black. He lets out a rasping breath, and hands suddenly reach out to touch his face. Warm hands, fingers brushing against his cheeks.
“Grantaire?”
Enjolras.
Grantaire closes his eyes. He’d teleported, he’d lost control, but he’d only gone the ten feet it took to get to Enjolras. That was—at least, he thinks, he didn’t abandon them here, alone in the dark.
“Yeah,” he croaks, “I’m here.”
“Fuck,” he hears, Bahorel closer now. “There’s debris fucking everywhere, I thought you were dead. How the hell’d you get over here?”
Grantaire doesn’t answer, but his head is a little clearer now, despite the migraine that’s starting to build.
“Did everybody else make it out?”
Enjolras’ hand wraps around Grantaire’s arm, finally, as if done exploring to make sure he’s there, and just keeping a hold now so as to not lose him again. He’s the one who answers, sounding distracted, “Yeah, it’s just you, me, Ferre, Courf, and Bahorel.”
“Should I try punching the wall again?” Bahorel asks in the dark, and Combeferre says, “It’s useless unless Enjolras can find a light to hold it open with. It’s too dark in here now.”
Grantaire’s heart stutters, and he realizes, suddenly, that he’s an idiot.
Of course.
Of course, Combeferre knows Enjolras is Apollo.
“I could try to create one,” Courfeyrac says, voice strained.
“No,” Combeferre says, sounding final. “Keeping the debris off us is taking all your strength as it is.”
They know, because they’re Les Amis.
(Of course they are. They always have been. For hundreds of years.)
All of them – Bahorel, super strength; Courfeyrac, moving objects with his mind; Combeferre, power over technology. His friends are Les Amis, it’s why they broke off sentences in the middle when he came around, it’s why none of them had ever figured out who Enjolras was, despite how obvious it was. They already knew.
Grantaire was such an idiot.
“You’re Les Amis,” he says, suddenly, and the words ring hollow in the dark.
He can almost see Enjolras grimace as he says, “Yes, we are. We’re going to get you out of here, Grantaire.”
Somewhere, a rock hits the ground. Bahorel grunts, and Combeferre says, “Courf, how much longer can you hold it?”
He sounds out of breath, but says, “I don’t know. Maybe a minute.”
Grantaire’s hands are shaking. Maybe they never stopped. (Maybe they really never stopped.)
“Grantaire,” Enjolras says, voice – off. It’s too high, too fast. “Grantaire, you’re shaking again. Stay calm, okay? We’ll get you out, I promise. You said you believed in Apollo, didn’t you? Then believe in me.”
“Can—” Grantaire swallows. “Can you get me to the others?”
A pause, then a desperate, “What?”
“I need to touch them. All of you. Please, Enjolras, just—”
“Grantaire, we’re going to—”
He’s not listening. Grantaire brings his hand up, clutching the material of Enjolras’ t-shirt in his fist and dragging him forward, toward where Courfeyrac’s voice had been. He says, “Bahorel, can you get to us?”
“Yeah,” he hears back, and it’s close enough that it isn’t surprising when he feels the hand come out searching for him.
Grantaire bumps into Courfeyrac, who says, “R, what are you doing—” and reaches for Combeferre, who lets him grip his shoulder as if he doesn’t notice at all, too busy muttering, “If I can get the computer to power up at all, that might be enough light to—”
“What’s the plan, here?” Bahorel asks, and he sounds like he might trust whatever anybody says, like he believes they’re going to get out of this still, somehow.
Grantaire thinks they’re all fucking optimistic idiots, but he’s touching all of them, now, and Courfeyrac breaks off, saying, “I’m losing—”
He closes his eyes, wishes he was somewhere else, wishes they were somewhere else.
He doesn’t remember if it works.
He wakes up in a bright room.
There’s light everywhere, so bright that he groans and turns over, shoving his face into the pillow, and even then, he can still feel it, the brightness of everything around him. Suddenly, gratefully, it’s as if the light goes out. Everything is dark.
“Sorry,” he hears, a soft murmur, something moving across the room. He opens his eyes.
“Enjolras?”
“Yeah, it's - the sun is coming up. I closed the curtain," Enjolras says, sitting down in the chair next to the bed Grantaire has been laid down in. "We weren’t sure what to do when you collapsed.”
Grantaire closes his eyes again, cursing in his head. They knew. He’d fucking shown them.
“Right,” he rasps, a minute later after the silence has grown too thick.
Enjolras, as if he’s been waiting, bursts out, “You have abilities? Teleportation?”
Grantaire really, really doesn’t want to answer. He stays quiet, and then finally mumbles, “Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
He almost laughs, except for how it’s not very funny at all. Instead, he twists and sits up. He’s in a hospital room, small, clean, dark. He thinks about his dad; about his sister, and what they'd say about his so-called abilities. About what he's like, what he's always been like, in this life and the one before. “When was I supposed to tell you, exactly?”
“I don’t mean—I mean, you could have told us. We would have supported you. But I meant why didn’t you get tested when you found out? Abilities can be dangerous, Grantaire! Blacking out like that—you could have died!”
“It’s not like I go around teleporting all over,” Grantaire snaps back. “I avoid it as much as humanly possible, believe me.”
Enjolras stares back at him, his face a picture of utter bewilderment and confusion, like he couldn’t understand someone avoiding the use of their abilities. He really, really doesn’t get it.
Grantaire says, “I’m not like you, okay? I’m not a superhero. All I'm even good at is running away.”
“You are a hero,” Enjolras says, no pause, no break. He sounds certain of himself.
This time, Grantaire does laugh.
“I’m really, really not.”
“You saved us. You teleported us out—the whole school caved in, Grantaire. We wouldn’t have made it without you. You are a hero. Costume or no costume. And you didn't run away, so I don't know where you even got that from.”
Grantaire feels his face heat up, a bit. He’s embarrassed and feels sick in his stomach.
“That was just—obviously, I had to take you guys with me, at that point.”
“You could have left us behind. Hell, Grantaire, you could have teleported out of there from the very beginning.”
“Figured Les Amis would show up. Or you’d figure it out.”
Enjolras gives half a laugh, “So much for that. I couldn’t do a thing.”
Grantaire snaps his head up, curls falling in his face. He pushes his hair back, says, “That’s not your fault. You can’t be expected to just—win all the time. I keep telling you, that’s impossible—”
“Yeah,” Enjolras says, something in his voice. “You do. Guess we can both be heroes some of the time then.”
That was a round-a-bout way of pressing Grantaire’s self-incriminating logic into a corner.
Grantaire glances away and says, “I guess,” as reluctantly as he can manage.
He jumps when he feels a hand touch his, soft like Enjolras isn’t sure what he’s doing.
“By the way,” Enjolras says, and he’s staring at Grantaire’s hand, where they’re holding hands on top of the white hospital blanket, “you, ah, know I’m Apollo now.”
Grantaire grins, unable to help it.
“I’ve known you were Apollo since that first meeting. You’re kind of obvious.”
“Oh,” Enjolras says, and even in the dark, Grantaire can see a smudge of pink on his nose.
Is he blushing?
“Then why did you—everyone was always teasing you, you know, about—how you felt about Apollo.”
Grantaire, fully defeated by this point, just shrugs and says, “It was better than them teasing me about having a crush on you, so…”
Enjolras tightens his grip on Grantaire’s hand.
“You have a crush on me?”
Grantaire hates this entire fucking conversation. If he wasn’t tapped out already, he’d be teleporting himself to China.
“I guess,” he mumbles. “It’s not a big deal. I mean—lots of people have a crush on Apollo.” That was fair, Grantaire thought. It was true. Lots of people had crushes on all the members of Les Amis. It's just that Grantaire has had a crush since before he was even born. Not that Enjolras knows that.
Enjolras says, “Sure, but not on me. I mean, as Enjolras. I’m—I’m too intense for people.”
That was also fair. Enjolras was pretty intense, ability to control light or not. Hell, the light from earlier was absolutely Enjolras dragging actual, literal sunlight in through the window. He’s really as intense as it gets, but he doesn’t need his abilities to show that—just his voice, and the way he can pierce you with his eyes…
Grantaire awkwardly fidgets. He doesn’t pull his hand back though.
Because he’s a masochist, probably.
“I like you too,” Enjolras says, finally, after taking a deep breath. “You as Grantaire. You drive me crazy but—I just, I’m always thinking about you. About how to impress you, and I’m always so pissed when you don’t care. I dream about you, all the time.”
Grantaire blinks, staring at him. Is he dreaming? Is he still blacked out in a park somewhere?
Enjolras rolls his eyes at Grantaire’s stare, and then, to Grantaire’s complete shock (and amazement), he leans in and presses his mouth to Grantaire’s cheek—kissing him. Grantaire turns, because—well, again, masochist, and then they’re kissing, soft and sweet, just a press of lips against lips, but it’s Grantaire’s first time kissing anybody, ever, and it’s Enjolras, holy shit.
There are lights shining in his eyes when they separate, and it takes him a minute to realize that’s because there are literal balls of light popping into existence around them. He looks around, and then he laughs, and Enjolras flushes, saying, “I can’t always control it!” and if this is a dream, if Grantaire is knocked out somewhere, he hopes he doesn’t wake up.
It’s a pretty good dream.