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Feuilly expected the reaction he got when he offhandedly mentioned to his friends that he was planning on moving. After explaining that his rent had gone up when he went to renew his lease and the he couldn’t afford his one bedroom apartment anymore and was going going to downsize to a studio, his friends had immediately started offering up their homes and their couches to him. He appreciated the offers—more than he knew how to say because he remembered all too well the times in his life when such offers wouldn’t have been made—but he was also a little proud and a little stubborn and he didn’t want to be a burden on anyone. He reassured them all—truthfully—that he had already found a studio apartment that suited him and that he planned to sign the lease in the next week.
What he hadn’t counted on was Bahorel’s stubbornness.
“Jehan and I have that spare bedroom,” he’d said. “You’re more than welcome to move in with us. Splitting rent three ways will be way cheaper than whatever you have lined up.”
“But you and Jehan just moved in together.”
“So?” Bahorel had asked. “Enjolras lives with Courfeyrac and Combeferre even though they’ve been dating for ages.”
But Feuilly thought it’d be different with Bahorel and Jehan, who had only recently taken their relationship from “dating” to “living together.” He didn’t understand all the nuances of romantic relationships—he understood them in theory, though seeing them lived out in practice among his friends was a different matter entirely—but he understood that romantic relationships could go awry once you were living together just as friendships could. And the last thing he wanted was to inadvertently screw things up between Bahorel and Jehan because they were so good for each other.
So he told Bahorel he’d think about it and hoped that would be the end of the matter.
It wasn’t.
In the end—after much pestering—he agreed to move in with Bahorel and Jehan because Bahorel was his best friend and because Jehan assured him he was fine with it. Besides it really would be cheaper splitting rent three ways and, though Feuilly didn’t admit this out loud, living on his own got lonely at times. He worried, of course, that his presence would be awkward in the apartment when his friends were feeling amorous and he worried that someway or somehow he’d be intruding on their relationship or that he’d inadvertently make things difficult for them, but after a few months, Feuilly began to suspect that those worries were baseless.
He was surprised at how easily he slotted into Bahorel’s and Jehan’s lives and them into his. Bahorel was always available to give him a ride to work in the winter when Feuilly’s car had trouble starting—especially if it gave him an excuse to miss a class or two, and Feuilly repaid kindness with kindness by listening to Bahorel complain about law school because Jehan didn’t have any patience listening to him complain about something that he had full control over and could quit whenever he chose to. (As far as Jehan was concerned, it was only a matter of time before Bahorel dropped out of law school and he couldn’t wait for it to happen so Bahorel would stop complaining about it.) It was a bit harder to adjust to Jehan, because Feuilly didn’t know him too well before he moved in. He’d been worried that things would be awkward around the apartment when Bahorel was out and it was just the two of them. Jehan was a bit enigmatic and it was hard to piece him together sometimes, but eventually Feuilly learned to cook large dinners when Jehan was stressed and overwhelmed by his grad program so that he’d have plenty of leftovers to heat up when he eventually remembered to eat. And Jehan always made time to talk to Feuilly about his jobs and what he was reading these days and more than once they stayed up till two or three in morning having deep conversations about philosophy and art. (Jehan referred to these late night conversations as “rectangle time” because apparently it was the “cross-section of sleep deprivation and the stillness of midnight when all deep thought occurred.” Feuilly didn’t really get it, but the look Bahorel had when Jehan explained it to him suggested that he didn’t understand it either, which made Feuilly feel a bit better about all of it.)
When Bahorel and Jehan went out on dates, Bahorel usually came home with an extra dessert for Feuilly and Jehan had gotten in the habit of buying books he thought Feuilly would like and leaving them in his bedroom. When Feuilly complained that Jehan was spending too much money on him, Jehan had said, “Nonsense. I could never spend too much money on books.” It didn’t seem to matter who the recipient of those books was. So Feuilly repaid the favor by writing thank you notes, because he knew Jehan appreciated having kind words written down because it took more thought to write than it did to speak and he could go back and cherish the notes later. And when there were sales at the craft store where he worked, Feuilly was always to sure to buy the cashmere yarn with his employee discount for Bahorel, who spent more time knitting and crocheting than he did working on his law school homework.
And all three of them fell into a rhythm with each other. Feuilly got used to riding the currents of emotions that ran strong through the apartment—Bahorel’s exuberant joy at the simplest of victories and his stifling rage when confronted with injustices, and Jehan’s quiet happiness that often felt like a constant till he got caught in a spiral of melancholy that could cling to him for days. And he got used to the way Jehan could be so intense when he checked to see if Feuilly was doing all right—especially if Jehan felt that Feuilly wasn’t all right. (He was, admittedly, freakishly good at telling if something was bothering Feuilly, and he didn’t relent until he knew what was going on so he could fix it.) And he got used to Bahorel, who wasn’t nearly so eloquent as Jehan when it came to expressing himself but who had no problem saying exactly what he felt to whoever he felt needed to know.
Although, that particular trait of Bahorel’s…that was what got them into trouble.
Because when Bahorel told Feuilly that he had feelings for him—( “Feelings,” he’d said at the time. “Like romantic ones. And I know you don’t feel the same way—and I don’t expect you to, man—but I thought you should know.”)—all Feuilly had been able to do was stare at him and suggest that maybe this was something he should talk to his boyfriend about.
Feuilly didn’t think that he’d be invited to be a part of that conversation. Hell, he didn’t want to be a part of that conversation because he didn’t do romance. He didn’t understand romance. And that was okay. His friends were so good about reassuring him that that was okay and it’d been a few years since he really felt like he was broken or that there was a problem because he had no desire to share that sort of relationship with anyone, but he felt that a conversation about Bahorel having romance-feelings for him was really something that would be better dealt with by Jehan, who understood romance-feelings and who had them for Bahorel, and that this was something that needed to be worked out between them.
Bahorel, apparently, hadn’t felt the same, which was why he dropped the bombshell of his romance-feelings for Feuilly on Jehan early one evening when all three of them were relaxing in the living room together.
Silence lingered in the air for a moment as Jehan stared at Bahorel and then at Feuilly and then at Bahorel again, confusion and something that might have been hurt but might have also just been a different layer of confusion on his face. Then Jehan stood up, said that he should get started on dinner, and then excused himself to the kitchen.
“Ah, shit,” Bahorel said, slumping back against the couch.
Personally, Feuilly thought this situation warranted something stronger than ‘Ah, shit.’ “Why did you just say that?” he demanded.
“You’re the one who told me to tell him,” Bahorel said.
“Yeah, but not with me here,” he said.
“Why not? It concerns you.”
“But…it doesn’t concern me,” Feuilly said. “I don’t—I can’t—” His throat felt tight the words felt stuck somewhere between his brain and his mouth and Bahorel reached over and put a hand on his knee.
“Hey,” he said gently, “I don’t expect anything to change between us. Hell, I don’t think this will change anything between me and Jehan either. I know you don’t feel the same way about me and I don’t need you to. You love me in your own way, man, and I know that. That’s more than enough. I’m just trying to be honest about me and the way I feel right now. That’s all I’m trying to do.”
Feuilly rubbed his hand over his face. Well, that was one small comfort. He wasn’t sure if it was going to be enough, though, because he didn’t know how Jehan was going to handle all of this. Because it wasn’t normal to have your boyfriend unexpectedly announce that he had feelings for his best friend, was it? And the only other time he’d seen Jehan walk out of a room like that was back in their sophomore year of college and Jehan had been nursing a quiet but intense crush on Combeferre when Combeferre and Courfeyrac had started dating.
Feuilly gestured to the kitchen. “Don’t you think you should talk to him or something?”
Bahorel pulled a face and shook his head. “I forget sometimes,” he said, “but Jehan doesn’t like having big things dropped on him like that. Gotta give him some space, but he’ll be fine.”
“How do you know that?”
Bahorel shrugged. “Don’t know. But I’m thinking some flowers wouldn’t go amiss right about now.” He got to his feet and patted his pockets to check for his wallet and phone. “Want to come?”
“Uh…no,” Feuilly said, trying to figure out why Bahorel wasn’t more concerned.
“Cool,” he said. “I should be back by the time dinner’s ready.”
He left without saying a word to Jehan and Feuilly sat in the living room, attempting to make sense of everything. This wasn’t the sort of thing Feuilly had worried about when he moved in because it never occurred to him that anyone would develop romance-feelings for him. But he worried that Bahorel’s confession had damaged something between him and Jehan and that…that wasn’t right. Because Bahorel was right about one thing—Feuilly did love him. In his own sort of way. He thought perhaps he loved Bahorel the way people loved their family, but he couldn’t be sure because he didn’t remember any of his family well enough to say whether or not he loved them at all. But he knew the friendship he had with Bahorel was different than the friendship he had with his other friends. It was deeper somehow. He’d never been able to figure out the words for it and eventually he’d stopped trying and just accepted that it was what it was.
But part of what it was was wanting what was best for Bahorel, wanting him to feel happy and fulfilled in all areas of his his life, including his romantic life.
And if Bahorel was letting his own feelings—and his twice-damned habit of practically shouting whatever he felt at whoever he felt needed to hear it—ruin the best relationship he’d ever been in, well, Feuilly felt that the least he could do was check on Jehan and try to mend some damage himself.
In the kitchen, Jehan was chopping tomatoes while chicken cooked in a skillet on the stove. He looked up when Feuilly joined him.
“I thought I heard the front door,” he said.
“Bahorel wanted to get you flowers,” Feuilly explained, feeling that perhaps his best friend should be explaining this himself. “He feels bad for dropping that on you.”
Jehan hummed, then said, “I hope he remembers that the tulips are in bloom.” He looked up from the tomatoes. “Did you know?”
“About the tulips?”
He shook his head. “About Bahorel’s feelings.”
Guilt stirred in his stomach. “He told me a few days ago,” he said. “Jehan, you have to know, I am so sorry. I never—”
“Sorry?” Jehan asked. “What on earth do you have to be sorry for?”
“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” he said. “I didn’t want Bahorel to feel this way about me, and I certainly didn’t want it to ruin things between the two of you.”
“Oh, Feuilly,” Jehan said. He put down the knife in his hands and moved the cutting board aside, focusing all his attention on Feuilly the way he did whenever he wanted to have serious conversations with people. “You have nothing to feel sorry for. I know you haven’t done anything—and certainly nothing’s been ruined.”
“You’re not…you’re not upset?”
Jehan opened his mouth, then closed it, then looked off to the side as he spoke. “I’m not…I’m not sure what I’m feeling,” he said. “On the one hand, this doesn’t really change anything between me and Bahorel because he said his feelings for me haven’t changed and I know you don’t reciprocate his feelings. But on the other hand…I don’t know. I just don’t know. I do know that if he’d said this about anyone but you, it’d be completely different because while I respect the hell out of Joly and Bossuet and Musichetta and I admire their relationship and what they have together, I don’t think I want that for myself. I don’t think—I’m possessive, Feuilly. Possessive and jealous—what’s mine is mine and I really don’t like sharing—and these are things that I don’t really like about myself so I try to hide them from the people I care about, but I don’t think I could share Bahorel like that, which makes me feel like a selfish dick because if Joly and Bossuet and Musichetta can make things work then surely our friends would expect me to at least take a stab at something polyamorous, which is ridiculous because that’s an individual choice and of course our friends wouldn’t judge me for not wanting that for myself and—” Jehan cut himself off, looking sheepish. “Sorry. See, this is why Bahorel left to give me some space. He can’t stand listening to me talk like this without interrupting me every two seconds to reassure me I’ve got it all wrong when I really just need some time to myself to sort it all out.”
Feuilly stared at him, trying to process everything Jehan had just said and wondering if he wouldn’t have been better off going with Bahorel. “I can…I can leave if you want,” he said.
“No, no,” Jehan said. “You’ve always been a wonderful listener, Feuilly. I’ve always loved that about you. I just…I don’t know exactly how I feel about all of this and I don’t really have the words I need to explain all this and that frustrates me.” He sighed and pulled the cutting board back toward him and resumed cutting the tomatoes. “Could you check on the chicken?”
Feuilly flipped the chicken breasts over in the skillet and when his back was still to Jehan, Jehan asked, “So what are your thoughts on all of this?”
“What do my thoughts have to do with anything?” he asked.
“Well, this concerns you too, doesn’t it?” Jehan said simply.
“Bahorel said the same thing.”
“He’s a smart man, you know,” Jehan said.
“If he were smarter, he just wouldn’t have said anything,” Feuilly said. “He’s made everything too complicated.”
“I think you know Bahorel well enough to know that this wasn’t something he could keep a secret,” he said. He handed Feuilly the cutting board with the chopped tomatoes. “When the chicken is done, could you take it out and add the tomatoes to the skillet? I need to get started on the rice.”
“I just never wanted to make things awkward for you two,” Feuilly said, taking the cutting board. It was easier to talk to Jehan when his hands were busy and he didn’t have to look at him. “I know how much he cares about you and you’re so good for each other. I just want him to be happy.”
“Because you love him,” Jehan added.
“I—I don’t—I’m not—”
“Sorry,” Jehan said. “I mean love in the purest, platonic sense. I know you don’t love him the way I love him…because I don’t love you the way I love him, but I do love you.”
Feuilly was so startled by that admission that he nearly knocked the skillet off the stove, but Jehan was there to steady the pan.
Jehan looked him in the eye. “Shit, I’ve made a mess of this, haven’t I? I didn’t mean to startle you and…and like I said, the feelings I have—it’s not the way I feel about Bahorel. I know that. I know it’s different, but it’s…it’s also different than how I feel about Courfeyrac or Joly or any of our other friends. I…I don’t know if I have the words to explain it—and you have to know how much that bothers me—and maybe it’s because I know Bahorel so well and I know how close the two of you are and sometimes I see you the way I think Bahorel sees you but…but there’s something here, Feuilly, something like the smell of my mom’s apple raspberry pie at Thanksgiving and the way I feel safe when I hear rain against a window pane and it’s different, but I feel like you belong here, like I have some sort of claim to you somehow even though I don’t.”
There it was. A love of friends that was somehow more than a love of friends. It was comforting to know that even Jehan the Word Smith didn’t have the vocabulary to define what that was.
But Jehan’s face flushed as soon as he was finished speaking, like he was worried he said to much.
“I don’t mean to make you feel awkward,” Jehan said. “And I don’t want to scare you off or to force you into anything you don’t want, because how you feel in all of this is just as important as the way Bahorel and I feel, and nothing has to change at all if you don’t want it to, but I just…”
“You wanted to be honest with how you’re feeling,” Feuilly finished.
“Did Bahorel say that too?”
Feuilly nodded.
“I told you he’s a smart man,” Jehan said. He reached around Feuilly to add a jar of alfredo sauce to the tomatoes cooking on the stovetop. “But this leads me back to my question. How do you feel about all of this? Because I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t understand all the ins and outs of aromanticism, but all I can think is if I have all these strange not-romantic feelings about you, then maybe you do—or maybe you don’t—but I’d love to know what you think…what you feel.”
“That’s a loaded question,” Feuilly said. And it was because he’d long accepted the fact that Bahorel was more-than-friend-maybe-family-or-something-more but he was also beginning to suspect that perhaps Jehan also had one foot in that category as well—or at the very least he certainly had the potential to be—and he didn’t know what any of that meant.
“You don’t have to answer right now,” Jehan said. “You can take your time—I’m always willing to listen if and when you want to talk.”
Feuilly was saved from having to come up with a response to that by Bahorel’s arrival. He came bearing a huge vase of multi-colored tulips, tied off with a ribbon. Feuilly suspected that he bought out half the floral shop to get his hands on them and Feuilly didn’t really get the importance behind grand gestures like this but Jehan’s face split into a smile at the sight of it all the same.
He took over the cooking as Jehan relieved Bahorel of the flowers and kissed him and embraced him, and afterward Bahorel clapped Feuilly on the shoulder, much the same way he always had, and Jehan had an eager-yet-uncertain smile for both of them. And Feuilly had to wonder if there was an arrangement that was more than friends but different than lovers that he hadn’t considered before. The thought terrified him, but he also thought that maybe, for the two men in the kitchen with him it’d be worth figuring it out.