[backdated to 11/16 or so?]

[pylades_drunk]

Grantaire can't catch his breath.

Squinting into a surreally blue sky, this Darrow - the real Darrow, if there is one real Darrow - feels as though it's on the edge of shifting beneath him. Like this place is going to steal something or throw something back at him. But it also feels like he's been granted it back.

He's smudged with ash as though it's charcoal; gunpowder and the thick heavy smell of blood under his skin and a strange warring sense of trauma and of victory. It still doesn't feel real yet that he'd stood up and done something. That he'd been useful, that Julie and Courfeyrac are both all right. It feels like poor penance, and yet ...

He pushes himself to his feet. Just because he's back, doesn't mean everyone else is. It doesn't mean everyone else was even there, to begin with.

His feet take him to Edgar's apartment, and he knocks on the door hard, leans on it almost not expecting an answer. Right now he doesn't want to pick apart the sinking, hollowed-out feeling in his chest he'd had when he'd realized Edgar, too, was gone; the feeling of inevitability and of not having done enough. Right now he just wants solid proof of anything.

Comments

[humanresource]

"Curtis, you stay the fuck away from me!" Edgar shouted. The reaction was instinctive, shouted out before Edgar realized that Curtis didn't knock like that. Walking over, he leaned up and put his eye to the peephole and sighed, emphasizing his emotions with a quiet and pointed, "Fuck."

Edgar yanked the door open and stared at Grantaire who looked just as wrecked and traumatized as Edgar felt.

"Come in then. I've got tea. Somewhere. I don't know."

[pylades_drunk]

Grantaire startles a little at the shout, as much at the noise and tone as anything else, then furrows his brow as the words process themselves, wondering what's happened.

"Not Curtis," he says, as Edgar opens the door, offering an attempt at a wry smile and not sure if it's working. Edgar's face is all anger draining into exhaustion, and the overwhelming wash of relief that accompanies him not being totally gone, or anything else, feels a little traitorous and twists itself into concern.

He wants to reach for him, but he's not sure after that angry shout that it'd be welcome. Instead R steps in, closing the door behind him. "I don't need tea. Just you is enough," he gestures widely to them, the apartment.

[humanresource]

Just him. Just enough. Was that what Curtis had thought when he first saw Edgar as a baby? Edgar let out a hysterical little bark of laughter at that. "Fricassee or spit roasted?" he asked, smiling a little too broadly at the joke that Grantaire couldn't understand.

Edgar shuffled a little, a wound up engine with no track. "Did you know my mum died on that train? They told me she died from starvation."

[pylades_drunk]

R doesn't understand, except that Edgar's laugh is sitting on the edge of manic. He furrows his brow, watching him with a growing sense of alarm that he tries to settle. He knows what he had to face in that other city, where he assumes Edgar had to have been as well these last few days. What he helped Julie through was worse, and he knows just enough about Edgar's history to not expect almost anything to be out of the question.

"I didn't," he says, not moving away. "They?"

[humanresource]

"The older people. The ones that remembered getting on the train. My mum was one of them too. And she died. Of fucking starvation." Edgar spat the word out and started moving then, pacing between Grantaire and his own sofa, hands gesticulating, flailing like he wanted to knock something of the counter.

"But you know the fucked up thing? She didn't starve to death!" Another bark of laughter. "Hah, so there's a riddle for you. How do you die of starvation without starving to death?"

[pylades_drunk]

Fresh from any movement being a potential death threat, Grantaire holds still without thinking about it. He swears in French, softly; reaches a hand out and stills it halfway. Better to let him rage over this hurt. Right now Edgar's a wounded animal and as far as he can tell, there's no reason he shouldn't be.

Grantaire's eyes go a little wider, sharper at that. "I don't know," he says, but of course his mind is already struggling in its anxious state to piece together the wordplay; he's nothing if not a compulsive punsmith. Flashes of the truly starving in Paris' streets come to mind, eyes sunken and desperate, those less canny and able than Gavroche, less useful to someone's future profits than Eponine. Just about ready to do anything.

Anything.

"Edgar," he says, and this time he does reach to turn him. Better, if he's going to strike out at something, that it be Grantaire than an unforgiving counter or something that'll shatter under his hand. "What happened?"

[humanresource]

"Isn't it obvious? Isn't it fucking obvious?" Edgar asked it of Grantaire but he was also asking himself how he couldn't have realized the truth. "There were a thousand of them in a metal can, that's what Curtis said. A thousand hungry people and no food.

And so they'd tuned monstrous and savage and they'd killed and eaten his own fucking mother.

"Except people like my mother. Except defenseless little babies." He swallowed and laughed, no humor in it. "I was a baby."

[pylades_drunk]

Grantaire feels a little like he failed, somehow, even though it's as much an sick unwillingness to speak the truth that makes him hesitate. "So they killed her," he exhales. "They -- tried to kill you." His voice hardens, but he's not understanding how this all fits together. How Edgar is even alive if this is true.

"Is that what that place showed you?" It's possible -- maybe even likely, that the other city was creating nightmares. Just as it had created soldiers specifically routing out Courfeyrac, Nazis to torture Julie. But even as he says it, he's not sure.

[humanresource]

"It's what he told me," Edgar said, which was somehow worse. There was no city based trickery; just a secret that Curtis had held tight for eighteen damn years. "God, no wonder he never wanted me." Another hateful laugh.

Edgar sighed and dropped into a crouch on the floor, knees hugged to his chest. The movement was better suited to someone like Grey. On angular, lean Edgar, it looked as though he was a hedgehog trying to ball itself up, spines out. It's pitiable at best.

"Eighteen years and I looked at him like he might shit out the springtime and I was just leftovers from the back of the fridge that never got tossed."

[pylades_drunk]

His harsh snap at the door slots into place along with what he's saying as Grantaire stares, and it curls coldly into his gut; Curtis. It must have been Curtis that told him this. Done this? Christ. Maybe it's not fair of him to villainize, not in starvation, not against a society that had kept them all desperate, but he can't help hating him a little right now.

R sits down on the ground next to him, near, but not touching, just there.

He can't help but huff a laugh. That's an uncomfortably apt analogy. And it's fucked, the whole situation's laughable really. Him coming here from his own rifles and revolutions with no goal but to find Edgar, and Edgar having returned from being told he's, quite literally, mincemeat to the person he'd wanted. But then R's not the person someone follows like they're personally responsible for sunrise. Leave that to beautiful, cruel leaders like Curtis and Enjolras.

His laugh might be a little too loud. "I'm sorry," he says and shakes his head, his exhaled curse in French a creative endeavor of vulgarity involving shit whores and assfucking. "Leftovers. I don't have the right thing to say. I never do, do I? Just too much. Too much to say and not enough biting the bullet. So to speak."

He turns to Edgar and his expression is fierce. "But it seems to me that that's on him. What he did and didn't see."

[humanresource]

Edgar couldn't help it. He immediately leaned against Grantaire. It didn't matter that Grantaire was covered in ash and soot. He was solid and real and had that perfect soft accent that sounded so elegant and made Edgar sound so crass in comparison.

Even when he was saying something obscene, there was elegance to it.

"So what the fuck do I do now?" he asked. He didn't work. He went out and fought and fucked about with Grantaire and Neil and tried to repair things with Curtis. Now that last item was right off the list.

[pylades_drunk]

R lets out a breath that he didn't realize he'd been holding sitting so near but not touching. He shifts to take Edgar's weight, slide an arm around him. He's warm and tangible and Grantaire feels a little selfish for needing that, but he does. Moreso, maybe, thinking about the hundred ways he could have never made it here, to have an apartment to invite Grantaire into.

He's all the shield of a laugh, cultivated defense, hurt and sharp angles right now, and it stands in stark opposition to Edgar's easier smiles, his bright eyes and spontaneity. It hurts to look at a little, and Grantaire doesn't have a clue what you do to patch something like this, just that he wants to.

"I don't know," he says, honestly, turns his head toward him. "I think you do whatever the hell you want. Whatever feels better to you after all this."

[humanresource]

Edgar supposed that he'd always been selfish in a funny way. He was greedy for affection, for attention, desperate for someone to think him special. Maybe he was to Grantaire what he was to Neil, something pleasant and entertaining. Maybe not valued much more than that, but at least he was wanted in some way.

"What if I just buy a shitload of pizza and sleep for the next year straight? What if I want to do that."

[pylades_drunk]

"Well," Grantaire says, summoning an arch look, "I'd miss you if you slept for a year, but I don't think anyone could fault you."

Still, now that they're both sitting on the floor and Edgar's anger has faded into melancholy, it's easier for the last few days to come creeping back in. R's suddenly incredibly exhausted, too much so to be any good at his usual front of humor. In the last handful of days he's had to face death and dole it out. No grab at regaining dignity or last-minute surge of feeling this time: just a long, nauseating game of hunter and hunted and the terror that even if he died helping Courfeyrac or Julie he might not be able to save them the same fate.

"Or I might just sleep too." He scrubs at his face with his free hand.

He'd gone looking for that place, though, hadn't he?

"I thought you were gone," he admits, squinting at his boots, at the opposite wall, rather than looking at Edgar. "Before that -- hell. I knew that that many people at once must be somewhere, I went looking, but somehow I was convinced you'd --" He shakes his head and hazards a look at him.

[humanresource]

"If I was gone, there'd be nothing left of me. All disappeared into dust by now, I suppose." It'd been a year, nearly, since he arrived. That was surely enough time to subsume his body after they pitched it out.

Or ate it.

Seemed a waste of meat, throwing out a body. The thought made him laugh hysterically again, just to himself.

No. He didn't want to think about it. Sighing, he pressed himself more firmly into Grantaire's side, not quite able to voice how much he didn't want to be alone.

[pylades_drunk]

It takes Grantaire a second to get it, and he winces, realizing he means back where he came from. There's nowhere for him to go, if he ever disappears: just like Grantaire, there's no wandering happily off into the sunset. This is it.

For the first time he wonders what would have happened to his body if he'd gotten killed by the Guard in that other Darrow. Would it have appeared back here, or would it have disappeared with that place?

"I suppose." He represses a shudder, unsettled by how intangible everything feels right now. He doesn't want to think about it. He doesn't want to think.

Edgar presses into him with a sigh. He presses back, craving the reassurance of him warm and solid next to him, and runs his fingers up into Edgar's hair, comfort but to who he's not sure, back down along his neck and over one shoulder like if he can map him he can keep him here. He doesn't know what's wanted, doesn't want to be, as always, too much of himself; can't name what he's feeling.

"I'm glad you're not," he says, turning his head in toward him. It's such a stupid, stupid understatement.

[humanresource]

Edgar sighed, giving in to the simple pleasure of the touch. Gentle touch, being handled as though he was something precious. God, he wanted to be close to Grantaire right now. Would have wanted to be close to anyone but right now, it was Grantaire especially. Fatalistic, elegant Grantaire.

"Fuck," he said instead, and just let his head fall on Grantaire's shoulder.

Then. "Stay?"

There, he'd said it out loud and it left him nervous. Desperate for some warmth, something that reminded him he was alive.

[pylades_drunk]

Edgar sighs and doesn't pull away or stop him; he feels a little spoiled, just running his fingers down over Edgar's skin and taking a breath. He feels too-wired, as though the dynamics have been pushed up on all his senses, but grounded by it, too.

"Yes," he says immediately, and, "Please," and ducks around to kiss him like he's wanted to since he knocked on the door. Like he's been thinking about not being able to do since before that other city.

[humanresource]

God it felt good to be kissed then. Doing something like this, simple and warm, kept him a thousand miles away from the dark, ashen city. This felt so real and Edgar couldn't help sighing, pushing more into the kiss.

"Suppose I should wash up...we're both..." Tired, smudged. Cold.

[pylades_drunk]

Edgar pushes closer and Grantaire sighs into the kiss; it pushes away the harshness of his other thoughts, the dark and terror of the last few days.

"Mm," he agrees between kisses, but doesn't move; R's reluctant to surrender closeness, warmth, affection so easily. He takes a breath and leans his forehead against Edgar's, blinking at him. "Suppose." If washing up would even get off the grit and ashes at this point. He feels a little like he'll never be clean.

[humanresource]

Reluctantly, Edgar moved to a stand, his fingertips trailing down Grantaire's shoulders and arms, down to grasp his hands. The request was obvious, even if he was short of his usual loquacity.

Maybe he should speak. Maybe he should fill up the air and escape the silence that fills his thoughts.

Maybe he should just stay close to Grantaire.

[pylades_drunk]

The touch sends a shiver through him. Edgar's hands are coaxing and a little wondering on his skin, as though Grantaire's something beautiful. More than he deserves, surely, but right now he'll keep it selfishly.

He takes his hands and rolls himself up to his feet, into Edgar's space. Now that Edgar's mentioned washing up, he feels a little over conscious of the ash and gunpowder on his hands, on everything. He wants desperately to strip away everything of that place. "I'm going to get you all dirty," he says, with a small smile.

[humanresource]

"Hot showers here. No demons in the pipes. What more could a man want?" It was a poor joke but it was an attempt. He'd felt so cold since that place, inside and out, like his body meant to crystallize itself.

He canted his head toward the bathroom, touching Grantaire still. They needed to get clean, feel a little closer to human. To alive.

[pylades_drunk]

"Mm," he agrees. "Well, I could think of a few things," Grantaire jokes, but honestly, the thought of a hot shower is incredibly tempting. He thinks he could maybe stand in the heat for a year. Having been abruptly thrown back into the consciousness of his own time -- the bullets fired from 19th century rifles still echoing in his ears -- the idea of a modern convenience like hot running water sounds good.

The idea of sharing it with Edgar is icing on the cake, really.

He follows Edgar toward the bathroom readily, taking his lead. Inside, he takes the moment to lean close, skating his fingers down along Edgar's sides, pushes them up under his shirt, skin on skin.

[humanresource]

Edgar paused for a second and leaned back, eyes closed, letting Grantaire's hands roam. They were there and alive and so very solid. Death had taken them and they'd escaped again and again. Edgar thought he should have died many times over by now, starting with the first month on the train.

But here he was. He he fucking was.

He leaned forward and turned on the hot water before turning back and folding himself in with Grantaire.

[pylades_drunk]

Edgar's just a little shorter than Grantaire; the right height for him to tuck his head in against when he leans back, the weight of him comforting and real. Distraction and comfort and exhaustion are warring a little bit, with Edgar pressed back against him, and maybe that should feel wrong right now, but it doesn't. Need is a lot of things in this moment.

He spreads his fingers against his stomach, feels him breathe for a second and lets him go to get the water on.

He's almost surprised when Edgar tucks himself back in, and he folds his arms back around him. It occurs to him that probably no one has ever taken real care of Edgar, maybe ever, and it seems just -- incredibly unfair.

"Allez," he says, soft and teasing with a nod at the shower, and tugs Edgar's shirt up off him, going to get his own and wincing just a little as fabric tugs on his grazed arm.

[humanresource]

"Allay? Allay what?" Edgar asked, brows raised for a quizzical second before he turned his real attention to Grantaire's clothing. He was gentle with that injured arm and then indifferent as he removed his own clothing, throwing them aside. The clothes missed his laundry pile by several feet but Edgar didn't correct it.

After what he'd dealt with, Edgar thought that he preferred to just burn them until he could almost blot out the memories.

Gesturing, he nodded at Grantaire to go in first. "Go on then."

[pylades_drunk]

"It means 'come on'," he answers, a little distantly as Edgar helps undress him, and after a moment impatiently helps. He loves his boots: they've lasted since he arrived here. But he's going to need new ones -- they're bloody and dusty and he doesn't want to think about what they've run from.

R steps into the water, closing his eyes and tipping his head back for a moment under what still - even more right now - feels like a luxury. He makes room for Edgar, taking him in.

[humanresource]

"Why didn't you say so?" Edgar asked. He found a smile and looked at Grantaire over his shoulder as he undressed. For a second, he forgot all the other shit that was happening and got caught up in staring at Grantaire, shy and smiling for a minute.

Everything was shit, he thought, stepping under the water after Grantaire. Everything was shit but they'd be okay.