Ludwig stumbled through the doorway of his apartment and almost crashed into Feliciano. The young Italian's eyes lit up at the sight of his friend. Ludwig responded with a tired smile of his own, leaning slightly against the doorway to keep himself upright. His pause was all Feliciano needed. He ran forwards to pull Ludwig into a hug. "Ludwig! What's going on? Are things okay? Will Gilbert be all right?"

Ludwig stood there rooted his place, not knowing what else to do. Feliciano's copper hair tickled his face and the tightness of his grip restricted Ludwig's space far more than Ludwig felt comfortable with. As gently as he could, Ludwig pried himself away from Feliciano. I wonder if Feli's freeness with physical contact is a cultural thing, or if it's just specific to him. The request that Feliciano stop doing such things lingered on the tip of his tongue, but somehow he couldn't force it out. He didn't know if it would upset Feliciano. The last thing he wanted to do was seem like he was trying to push one of his only friends away from him.

Interacting with Gilbert was always so much simpler. Between the two of them, he always knew how things stood; how much he could say and do and what was going too far. Under most circumstances, if Gilbert tried to hug him, Ludwig would tackle him to make him get off. Gilbert would probably find any other reaction bewildering.

"...Ludwig?" Feliciano peered up at him, worry sketched clearly across his features, and Ludwig suddenly regretted not returning his friend's hug. He was always like this, fumbling around, unable to respond properly to the warmth and openness Feliciano offered him. How have I earned a friend like this?

"It's fine." Ludwig forced his face into a smile. He wasn't sure he succeeded - it felt stiff and unnatural - but he hoped the message got across to Feliciano. "Gilbert will be fine. He's coming home tomorrow." Ludwig clicked the door shut and shrugged off his coat.

"That's great news!" If Feliciano saw the falseness of Ludwig's smile, he was doing his best to compensate by beaming as brightly as he could. After a few seconds, a thoughtful expression flitted across his face. "You know... we've been flatmates for at least two years now and I still don't know much about your family."

Trust me, you don't want to.

"It's not fair, ve! You know all about my family."

Ludwig couldn't argue with that. He'd been reluctant to meet Feliciano's family at first, but it hadn't been so bad in the end. Feliciano's twin was grumpy and rude yet strangely endearing and their grandfather was... well. For once, he had to admit Gilbert would have put it best: Feliciano's grandfather was awesome.

"You know I prefer not to discuss my family."

Feliciano looked down. "Ah... okay then."

Ludwig couldn't miss the look of disappointment on his friend's face, but it didn't last for to long. "Oh! I almost forgot! I made dinner earlier. Would you like some?"

Dinner. Belatedly, Ludwig realised he hadn't had a chance to eat anything all day long. His stomach rumbled. Yes, I should probably eat something.

"Yes, please," he said.

Ludwig hadn't fully realised how hungry was until he tucked into a bowl of warm pasta. Say what you would about Feliciano, but he was a good cook. Unlike Gilbert. When he'd lived with Gilbert, most of their food was bought whenever they could at some convenience store. Sometimes he preferred to go hungry than to eat the greasy, burnt stuff his brother would bring in. "This isn't bad."

"This?" Feli smirked. "You've never tasted real Italian cooking, Ludwig. My mother would be ashamed to know what kind of things I'm feeding my friends."

Ludwig shoved another forkful into his mouth and said nothing. He wondered if Feliciano expected him to notice the constant references to family that peppered their conversation. He wondered how Feliciano would react if he told him the truth about his family. My mother was pinned to the ceiling and burnt to death by a demon when I was a kid. My older brother got me out of the house in time, but my younger brother and father died in the fire. After that, my brother researched demons and the supernatural, tracked down the demon that killed our family to America in a crazy quest for revenge, and we've been on the road together ever since, until my brother decided I should get a chance to go to university. He was beginning to suspect that Gilbert's sudden concern for Ludwig's education had just been a ploy to get him out of harm's way while Gilbert pursued the yellow-eyed demon alone.

Feliciano would be terrified. After all, this was the same person who got scared any time Ludwig raised his voice at him even the slightest bit. He'd probably never want to see Ludwig again.

"I'm going on a road-trip with my brother tomorrow."

"That's a great idea," Feli said eagerly. "Family is important."

Tell me about it.

Ludwig swallowed down the last bite of pasta and stared at his empty bowl. Feliciano had started to chatter away about some incident involving him, his twin and a squirrel they'd tried to catch. Ludwig was listening with half an ear. He would have paid more attention to his friend, but his thoughts were scattered. He shifted his jacket, trying to move it into a position where the silver knife, vial of holy water and jar of salt that he had stashed in his inner pocket would stop digging into his skin. This was nice. The warm dinner, the easy conversation, the semi-permanent (at least for a few years) home he could come back to every night. But the thought of his brother curled up in his room, covered in blood, had lodged itself stubbornly in his brain.

He swallowed down bile.

"...And so Lovi had to call in the fire-fighters to help me get off the roof, and naturally they weren't too happy about it, and Grandpa tried to be stern but then he broke down laughing and said he had to be impressed that I'd even managed to get myself into a situation like that," Feliciano finished, a small, nostalgic smile lingering on his lips.

"I'll do the dishes," Ludwig said abruptly, getting to his feet. Feliciano pushed his own chair back.

"No, let me. You've had enough to deal with already today. Go get some sleep."

Ludwig frowned. "You've already made dinner. I can't let you do all the work."

"But... that wasn't work. I enjoy cooking!"

But if you try to do the dishes you'll probably break something. But it's my turn. But I'll feel guilty if I leave all the work to you. He could have used any of those arguments, but they all died in his throat. He'd already rejected Feliciano's first gesture of friendship by pushing away the hug. Besides, his eyes were heavy and nothing sounded more appealing than falling into the warm covers of his bed and drifting off to sleep. "...All right. Thank you, Feli."

Gilbert was sitting in the hospital waiting room when Ludwig came to pick him, tapping his foot impatiently. He was so ready to be out of that place. There were few things in life Gilbert Beilschmidt hated more than sitting around uselessly when there were things he needed to get done. On top of that, the smell of disinfectant was disgusting, seeing the other patients was just plain depressing and a can of sardines would have been more spacious than that waiting room. Also more comfortable. Gilbert rubbed at his stitches. Hurry up, little brother.

As if on cue, the door swung open and the other people in the room stepped aside to make space for Ludwig. Even in the cramped space of a hospital waiting room, Ludwig towered over everyone there. Gilbert was sure his brother hadn't been quite so tall when he'd left for Stanford.

The brother's eyes met through the crowd and suddenly the people standing around Gilbert had to step aside to avoid being trampled by the albino as he launched himself forwards. The distance between them closed and then Gilbert had Ludwig pressed tightly against him, head resting on his brother's strong shoulder. Ludwig stumbled a half-step backwards in surprise at suddenly having all of Gilbert's weight bearing down on him.

"Mmphf," was all he managed to get out at first, patting Gilbert's back awkwardly, presumably in hope that the albino's vice-like grip would be released soon. Gilbert had other plans and just squeezed tighter.

"Get off me!" Ludwig said at last. Gilbert relaxed his grip and stepped backwards, taking in his brother properly for the first time since they had parted when he wasn't half-delirious from blood loss. It was immediately clear that college had suited Ludwig. He had grown into the seriousness that had once seemed almost comically awkward on him and now pulled it off with dignity. That was not to mention that he had grown in every other way. And though his default expression was still a frown, it no longer looked like it had been etched in place with permanent marker. The idea of relaxing into a smile did not seem like it would be a foreign concept for his face any more. Gilbert put that down to his friend's influence. He'd seen how protectively Ludwig had stood in front of the redhead, the way he'd constantly turned to glance at him glance at him while he was in the room. Knowing how much difficulty Ludwig had befriending people, he was grateful to Feliciano.

"Mind telling me what that was about?" Ludwig demanded. His voice, though scratchy and harsh, sounded so much better in reality than it had over the phone.

"Hey, you've been away in college for the last two years. So maybe I missed you, okay?" Not that he needed his younger brother around or anything, but 'needing' and 'wanting' were different things entirely. And it felt pretty damn good to have Ludwig at his side again.

Ludwig shook his head and smiled in wry amusement. Gilbert almost let out a whoop of victory at seeing it. So he'd been right; Ludwig had learned to smile during these years. "What?" he asked.

"First of all, I never thought you of all people would admit to missing anyone. And secondly, what is it with everyone wanting to hug me today?"

Gilbert reached out to ruffle Ludwig's hair (that boy kept it far too slick and neat; it wasn't fair), but this time Ludwig was more prepared and swatted his hand away. "Maybe today is Hug Ludwig Day," he said. "It should be Hug Ludwig Day. I propose that from now on, the thirteenth of December be internationally recognised as Hug Ludwig Day."

"Don't be ridiculous," Ludwig said as he handed Gilbert his car keys, but the smile was still there.

The roadhouse Gilbert pulled up as struck Ludwig immediately as the typical place to find Gilbert in. Red paint that must once have been loud and bright now faded and peeling away at the edges, windows slightly grimy, and the whole thing tucked away on the side of a dusty road that almost certainly hadn't been repaired this century. Ludwig wished that once in a while Gilbert would find himself a better place to stay. After all, if Ludwig could afford to go to Stanford, surely Gilbert could afford some decent accommodation now and then.

All in all, Ludwig wasn't really sure about this whole thing. Gilbert had told him they were meeting the two hunters he'd been working with - Francis and Antonio - here. If Ludwig knew one thing about hunting with a partner, it was that you had to be ready to place your life in their hands on a regular basis. Maybe Ludwig had no real information to make a judgement on yet, but his gut instinct rebelled at the thought of trusting this mysterious pair with Gilbert's life.

As Gilbert pushed the door open, Ludwig decided that the interior of the roadhouse looked no less shady than the outside. It wouldn't have been so difficult to ensure proper lighting, but no-one had gone to the trouble of doing so. There weren't many people there - a barmaid working at the counter, a small group of rowdy teenagers and two young men sitting together at a table, huddled over a stack of papers. They seemed the only viable candidates to be Francis and Antonio. The taller was sandy-blonde with wavy hair that reached down to his shoulders and a sophisticated blue coat that was entirely at odds with his surroundings. His posture seemed almost regal, straight-backed with an air of aloofness. A bottle of red wine rested by his elbow, untouched.

The shorter figure looked like the taller one's opposite. Dark-haired and tanned, he faced towards Ludwig and Ludwig could see the glint in his eyes from across the room. His jacket was beige, worn-out and tight-fitting.

Gilbert made a beeline for them. He dragged a seat from the neighbouring table over next to the taller of the two, then flung his arm casually around the man's shoulder. Ludwig stood awkwardly to Gilbert's other side, unsure whether to pull up a chair of his own. "Hey, guys. Guess who's back?"

The man turned away from his dark-haired companion to face Gilbert. "Ah, mon ami." Even had the man spoken English, Ludwig would have recognised the accent as unmistakably French. He supposed this man was Francis. "You aren't looking so good. Where have you been? Antonio and I were beginning to worry."

Gilbert shrugged his left shoulder, then winced as he realised it was still injured. "It's no big deal. I was following the lead you and Antonio found, but another demon found me before I could get to Yellow-Eyes. It was just small fry, no match for the Awesome Me of course, but it was still tough."

"A demon is no 'small fry', Gilbert." The man's voice was chiding, but amused. Ludwig's personal opinion was that this new friend of his brother's was far too nonchalant about the fact that Gilbert had almost died - thanks to information he had apparently procured, no less.

"This one was compared to the demon I'm after," Gilbert replied.

"Still trailing Azazel?" Francis sighed deeply. It seemed to Ludwig that most of Francis' actions were rather too theatrical. Something about it put him off, along with the melodic lilt in his voice that just grated on Ludwig's nerves somehow. "Well, on your own head be it, then."

The dark-haired man - presumably Antonio - leaned in. "So this is the brother you're always talking about, then, I take it?"

All eyes shifted towards Ludwig, who scowled fiercely at the surface of the wooden table. He had yet to form an opinion on Antonio, but he was fairly certain he disliked Francis. There was no rational basis for the feeling; it was just one of those instinctive first impressions people sometimes got, and he couldn't shake it. Judging by the disdainful glance Francis cast him, Ludwig presumed the feeling was mutual.

Gilbert blinked. "Oh, yeah! I forgot about introductions. Francis, Antonio, this is Ludwig. Ludwig, these are the hunters I mentioned I was working with."

Francis turned to face Ludwig fully, eyebrows raised in silent appraisal. "So, you are the one studying in Stanford?"

"Yes, I am," Ludwig said curtly. He wondered how Francis managed to make the fact that he was a Stanford student sound like it was somehow a bad thing.

"Well," Antonio interjected. "It's great to meet you, Ludwig! I'm glad to have another hunter around. We can use all the help we can get."

Gilbert snuck a glance at Ludwig, trying to gauge his reaction to being called a hunter, but if he had one then it wasn't visible.

"I've got a lot of cases lined up and I'd really appreciate it if the two of you could lend me a hand," he added.

"I don't think -" Ludwig began, but Gilbert interrupted him.

"We'll be right onto it."

Ludwig sat propped up against the bed in the room they'd booked. Not a bad place, as these things went. The standard of hygiene was decent, the toilet was functional, there were no holes in the bedsheets and the whole place didn't smell as if something had crawled under the mattress and died there. It was no Stanford accommodation, but all in all he couldn't complain.

He tapped a pen idly against his leg as he waited for his laptop to turn on. This, at least, was a steady staple of his life. Whether it he was researching ghosts or the outcome of some obscure court case in Michigan, it just felt right to find himself a quiet place each day where he could take out a notebook and a pen and gather up as much useful information as he could find.

Ludwig tapped the pen again. Let's see, what do I know about this case?

First thing first, was it even necessarily a case? People died for perfectly mundane reasons all the time. A few facts stuck out as suspicious, though. Firstly, there was the timing. Until a few years ago, Jericho had been known as a safe enough city. There had been a few incidents, sure, but nothing to this scale. Then, just two years back, the monthly accidents had started cropping up. Ludwig made a note of that. Check out the newspaper reports from two years ago. Especially the obituaries. If this was anything down their lane, it was most likely a ghost. Then there was the survivor's testimonies. The police dismissed it as drunk teenagers with over-active imaginations, but -

The door swung open and Gilbert ambled in. Seeing Ludwig at the laptop, he gave a little wave. "Hey West. What're you doing cooped up in here?"

Ludwig narrowed his eyes, looking up. "That should be obvious. I'm researching."

Gilbert rolled his eyes. "C'mon, now. You just got out of a term of studying, and you're just going to put your head right back into the books? You're no fun. Come downstairs and have a drink with us."

"Gilbert..."

"You know you want to..."

"Gilbert!" Ludwig snapped. Gilbert pouted.

"Yeah, that's me. What's up, little brother?"

"That's not the question." Ludwig pushed the laptop away to look directly at Gilbert. "What I want to know is what's wrong with you? Yesterday morning you didn't want to wait one night to recover before going after yellow-eyes. Now you want to take some random case your friend gave us, and you're not even interested in researching it?"

Gilbert shrugged, jumping onto the bed next to Ludwig. "Maybe I reconsidered about Yellow-Eyes. I may be awesome, but I have my limits. Right now I'm injured and y... well, I'm just thinking now isn't the best time to pursue it, that's all."

Ludwig frowned. "That's surprisingly reasonable of you."

Gilbert chucked a pillow at him. "Hey! Don't think just because you're in Stanford, you get to be a smart-mouth at me."

Ludwig picked up the pillow and lay it down next to him. "I don't understand this change in attitude, that's all," he said. "I thought the whole point of this trip was to go after Yellow-Eyes."

"Yeah, well." Gilbert rolled back a shoulder. "We're out of practice at working together, West. I just thought we should start small."

Ludwig looked down at the carpet, eyes burning, and studied how the green and blue threads entwined together in a simple zig-zag pattern. Gilbert wasn't saying the accusation, but it was still there. Maybe it was true that he'd gotten accustomed to college life, so accustomed that he hadn't seen, called, heard from his brother for months before he'd shown up in Ludwig's flat, barely concious and covered in blood. He hadn't meant to avoid Gilbert. Things had just... happened. There was so much work to be done in college, and then there had been Feli and Kiku and...

That's no excuse for neglecting your only family like this, and you know it.

Gilbert studied Ludwig's face, frowning. "Hey, it's not such a big deal. We can go after Azazel soon. Besides, it'll be fun to go on a hunt together, huh?"

Gilbert looked so hopeful that Ludwig had to nod.

"I knew you'd come around." Gilbert reached out to muss his hair. Ludwig's instinctive reaction was to push him away, but he resisted the temptation. He didn't like people messing with his hair - or his appearance in general - but it wasn't so bad when his brother did it. There was a nostalgic familiarity about the gesture. "Now, are you coming downstairs for a drink or what?"

"The research still needs to be done, Gilbert."

Gilbert cast a quick glance around Ludwig's makeshift workplace, then slid off his bed and walked over to it. "Alright then, tell you what. I'll stay here and help you research, and then we go have some fun."

"All right," Ludwig said, lips twitching into a faint smile.