Work Text:
Sometimes, Bossuet remembers Japan.
Most of the time, he thinks about the summer he spent in Okinawa with a smile on his face, when he remembers Jehan being excited by a statue of a shisa on a rooftop, or Joly wrapping himself in fifteen individual layers in order to avoid a cold and still coming home sniffling indignantly.
Then there are days like today, when he opens his wallet in search of a ten pound note and his eyes fall on the photograph that’s been tucked beside his driving license for the past four years. Reika smiles eternally up at him, black hair framing her face and dark eyes sparkling. He smiles weakly, lopsidedly, and fumbles with his money. He leaves the cashier a hefty tip and grabs the three takeout coffees from the counter -one for him, one for Marius, one for Bahorel- and makes his way down the street towards the law office.
When he arrives, Marius is sitting in their shared office, leaning forward and glowering at the computer in front of him. Bossuet sets a coffee cup down in front of him, and Marius’s head shoots up to look at him. He smiles gratefully after a moment, taking a long sip before resuming whatever he was reading. Bossuet smiles back and moves to knock on Bahorel’s office door. There’s a grunt from inside, which Bossuet takes as a signal to enter, and opens the door to find Bahorel pacing up and down with a landline handset tucked against his shoulder and its cradle in his hand. Bossuet holds up the coffee with his name on it, and Bahorel immediately sets the phone down and makes grabby hands for the cardboard cup. Bossuet, with his work here done, leaves the office and settles himself at his own desk. There’s an ominous stack of files in his ‘in’ tray, and he flicks his computer on and rearranges his desk before he grabs the first of the thick, stapled booklets.
He stops reading halfway down the first page when he moves to grab his coffee again and spots the photograph of Reika he has propped up in a frame beside the monitor of his computer. He smiles again, but sadly this time, and picks it up to press a quick kiss against the glass.
Bossuet isn’t a bitter man, in spite of everything in his life -despite the failed law degree and the shoebox of an apartment he’s been living in for six years, despite the male pattern baldness and the fact that he loses his keys or his phone at least once a week. He has his friends, who he loves dearly and who love him in return, he works a job he doesn’t hate and his family like him well enough, so he figures he has enough to start each day with a smile.
Sometimes, though, it’s hard. When he’s sitting in the Musain with Joly -who is fretting over still being single even though he’s not even twenty five yet- and watching his friends laughing and kissing and entwining hands, he thinks of Reika and everything they never had the chance to have.
He wonders if she’d have liked London, if she’d have moved here to be with him or if he’d have dropped everything and moved halfway across the world to be with her –he knows he would, even now. He wonders how she’d kiss, even how her voice would sound and how she’d laugh, if her cheeks would dimple when she smiled big, how her hand would feel in his. He’s never going to know, though, and he can live with that, most days.
Today though, when it’s been exactly five years to the day that she died, and Marius is talking to anyone who’ll listen (and even those who won’t) about his upcoming wedding to Cosette and Bahorel is showing everyone a video of Isaac painting all over their kitchen with Feuilly, his breathing is shaky and he squeezes the paper coffee cup a little harder than he means to and spills burning coffee all over his hand and his papers.
He goes to the support group that night with a bandage wrapped around his hand. When he arrives, Floréal gives him a sad smile from across the room and comes to take a seat beside him.
The whole thing had been Jehan’s idea at first –he said it’d be cathartic, to talk about it with people that understood. He hadn’t believed him, but Jehan had gone so far as to rope in Grantaire and find the group for him and Bossuet couldn’t say no to the soft, urging smile on their faces.
So he’d gone.
It had been awkward at first, sitting in a room full of people he didn’t know and baring what little soul he had left to them. But it had worked. He felt better. He had people to talk to who understood, who really understood. And he loves his friends, he does, but they can only say ‘I’m sorry’ so many times before their lack of understanding shows.
“Let’s begin, shall we?” A kindly older gentleman says as he steps into the circle and takes a seat. “Who wants to start?”
Floréal raises her hand minutely, and the man nods to her. She stands and lets out a shaky breath.
“Hello, everyone.” She says quietly, knotting her fingers together. “My name is Floréal, I’m twenty nine and I’m from London, but I grew up in Greece. My soulmate was Irma Boissy. She was from Colorado. She would’ve been thirty three today.”
Her breath hitches. Bossuet reaches up and offers her his hand. She takes it gratefully and squeezes.
“We met when I was twenty. She was on a family holiday; she was beautiful. We fell in love in an instant, and we moved to London so she could take a job at the magazine she’d wanted to work for her whole life. She died two years ago. Cancer. We were engaged.”
She’s crying in earnest now, and Bossuet squeezes her hand tighter.
“We’d planned the whole service –we were going to hurry it along because we didn’t know how long she had, and then one morning, I woke up and she was gone. Just like that. It isn’t any easier now than it was then. I don’t think it will ever get easier.”
She stops speaking with a soft, heartbreaking sob and sits back down. Bossuet slides an arm around her, and she cries into his shoulder.
“Her name was Reika Takahashi.” He starts after a moment, with Floréal still whimpering into his arm. “She was from Okinawa. I went looking for her four years ago. By then, she’d already been dead for a year.”
He sucks in a breath to steady himself, and Floréal snakes an arm around his waist.
“The worst part is knowing everything we’ll never have. I’m never going to hear her voice. She’s never going to kiss me, and I’m never going to kiss her. We’ll never get married or have children. We won’t grow old together.” He swallows dryly and steels himself to continue. “Some days I wake up and I feel so hopeless and so lonely that I don’t know what to do with myself anymore, but then I think of her and everything seems better, brighter somehow. Some days I just think of her and smile. She’s beautiful, and even though I never got to hold her hand or kiss her cheek, I know she makes me better in ways I never could on my own.”
His eyes are wet when he finishes speaking, and he notices then that several other members of the group are dabbing at their eyes and smiling at him.
A few more stories are told –including the older gentleman running the meeting, who shared a story himself about how the woman he loved died in his arms and how he adopted and cared for her child.
As he’s leaving, Floréal sidles up beside him and links their arms.
“Your words were incredible.” She says quietly, bouncing lightly on her feet as she quickens her pace to keep up with him. Bossuet smiles lopsidedly at her, his expression soft. “I can’t imagine what it must be like to have never known them.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Bossuet shrugs. “Sometimes I think I’m luckier for never having had her to lose. I think it might have been worse to know everything about her and then wake up one morning and never be able to see her again. I don’t know if I could cope with that.”
Floréal hums thoughtfully.
“I’m not sure I agree, but I get it. I still miss her. I don’t think I’ll ever stop.” She smiles wistfully and Bossuet careers them both into the Underground station.
He walks her home before he heads down to the Musain, where he catches the last five minutes of one of the meetings that Enjolras has taken to running in the last few months. Bahorel and Marius give him soft, knowing smiles from across the table as he settles in to the empty seat they’d left between Joly and Courfeyrac.
Courfeyrac is currently cradling Isaac to his chest, nose pressed to the baby’s wild hair. He’s singing to him, something Bossuet vaguely recognizes as a song from Wicked, and the child is dozing happily against him. Combeferre is watching them, his eyes soft and like he’s never loved Courfeyrac more, even though he should be listening to Enjolras.
Grantaire is sitting opposite them, sketching the three of them absently in his sketchbook. He has one hand resting on Enjolras’s knee, and when his boyfriend is struck by a sudden fit of passion, he squeezes gently and the blonde is calmed.
Feuilly, Jehan and Bahorel are off to one side chatting to Éponine and Musichetta, who are both stuck behind the bar for another few hours until they can lock up. Cosette appears then, just passing by on her way back to her flat after a late shift at the theatre, and slots herself into the conversation after she’s nodded and acknowledged everyone with small waves.
Bossuet watches his friends with a small smile on his face and claps a hand on Joly’s shoulder. His friend turns to him and grins back, gently lopsided like always.
Bossuet knows he’ll probably never feel love quite like his friends will, and that there’ll still be days when he thinks he’ll never feel okay again, but around his friends, he feels whole.
He feels complete.