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For as long as Feuilly can remember, he’s never really had anyone to love, or anyone to love him in return. The earliest memory he has is of being no older than four, and his mother singing quiet lullabies to him and rocking him to sleep. He hadn’t known then that it was to be the last time he’d ever see her –she and his father would die in a car accident on their way to church the following morning, while Feuilly slept soundly and his babysitter watched the younger sister whose name he can’t even remember now.
He’d been buffeted around orphanages and foster homes from then until he turned fourteen, when he dropped out of school and ran away with only the bag on his back and the dull warmth of the necklace on the chain around his neck. He’d ended up in Austria, and taught himself German so he could get by, and found work in shops and local businesses that needed an extra pair of hands for the summer and didn’t particularly care where they found it.
When he was fifteen, he was in Slovenia, working in a carpenter’s just outside the capital. He didn’t remember much of his youth, and so when his colleagues would ask about growing up in Hungary he would shrug them off with a loose smile. He made a few friends, here and there –boys in his situation who came from the east to look for their fortunes and their futures, and one memorable Croatian girl who worked in the textile mill across the street who he thinks he could’ve even fallen for, were it not for the fact that her necklace was already a firm and happy red.
By the time he turns seventeen, he’s been working in restoration in central Italy for almost a year. He’s poring over a fifteenth century fresco when he almost lurches off the stool he’s perched on, and the stone on his necklace throbs. He sets down his paintbrush on his palette and tousles his already messy hair, exhaling slowly and carefully.
He’d known his soul mate was getting closer, had felt the subtle changes in the heat of the stone but had passed it off as his imagination, thinking no one could seriously want him like that.
Eventually, it gets so hot that Feuilly assumes that they’re only a few provinces away, at best, and runs. He’s in Switzerland before he knows it, asking for directions to a hotel in hurried Italian and praying he has enough Euros on him to pay for a night.
He throws himself back on the bed when he finally finds somewhere with an affordable room, exhaling shakily and running fingers hurriedly through his hair. The bedsprings creak under his weight and the sheets are worn thin and scratchy, and it reminds him of his old home in Italy, and he sighs wistfully.
He trails a hand up his chest to curl around the stone on his neck, and he squeezes it thoughtfully. He idly wonders what his soul mate is like –where they’re from, what gender they are, if they work, what they look like, if they’re taller than him and if they share the same sense of humour. He wonders if he’s what they’re expecting to find –he doubts it. He pulls himself into a sitting position and looks into the full-length mirror opposite the bed. He frowns at his reflection, studying his unruly curls and lanky frame, his sharp shoulders and jutting collarbones, the way his shirt slides down and hangs from his form, and he laughs quietly.
He’s probably nowhere close to what they want, he knows that well enough, and even if he was the boy of their dreams, he’s not entirely sure he remembers how to love someone like that. He rubs a hand over his face and tries to relax back onto the bed, eventually falling into a fitful sleep.
He hitchhikes his way to the Austrian border in the morning, with bleary eyes and an uneasy stomach. A businessman gives him a ride out and then gives him thirty euro to make sure he makes the train to Innsbruck and as thanks for the interesting early morning conversation. Feuilly forces himself to smile, and thanks the man before quickly turning and following the directions to the train station he had written on the back of his hand.
He idly fingers at his necklace when he’s sitting on a train that’s trundling through the countryside with only his backpack for company. Part of him hopes they give up, at least for a while, if not for forever, so he can carry on like he used to. He doesn’t stop to consider that perhaps he wants them to find him, that after all these years maybe all he needs is someone to love him unconditionally.
He stays in Innsbruck for a few days until he can catch a bus towards Munich, and he spends his time taking in the sights and drawing the architecture in the tiny sketchbook his colleagues had given him when he told them he was leaving.
He’s just over the German border when he notices that the heat has remained almost constant ever since he started running. They must be following close, whoever they are, and Feuilly bites back a smile because they’re clearly as stubborn and driven as he is, or so he hopes. He rubs his hands over his eyes and shakes his head, because they’re probably not, and they’re probably coming to look for him in the vain hope that he’s some stunning and talented individual with a degree and a well-paid job, who wants kids and has parents who’ll support them and isn’t some scrawny orphan kid who barely even started secondary school who’s spent the last four years working pay check to pay check and moving through eastern Europe.
He digs the heels of his palms into his eyes, and when he looks up again, a kindly older woman is holding out a tissue to him across the aisle.
“Are you okay?” She asks gently in stilted German, and Feuilly recognizes her accent. He takes the tissue from her and smiles graciously.
“Yes, thank you.” He replies politely, wiping at his eyes. “I can’t help noticing your accent –where are you from?”
“Oh, nowhere interesting.” She smiles fondly, combing her greying hair back behind her ears. “I grew up in Hungary.”
“So did I.” Feuilly’s smile brightens a little. “Where, if you don’t mind me asking?”
They talk for the remainder of the journey, and when, the bus stutters into Munich bus depot two hours later, she smiles at him and thanks him for the company and conversation and tells him to stay safe. Feuilly smiles as she goes.
He grabs his backpack from the floor and rummages around for the map he’d bought from the tourist information centre across the street, and rotates it until he works out where he needs to be headed.
He’s tired, he realizes the next day, after he’s snuck onto a train heading towards Brno, and he closes his eyes for a moment.
While he feels that he could fall asleep on his feet at any moment, he knows that that isn’t why he feels so exhausted. He’s tired of running, of pretending that he wants this now, of lying to himself and being hopeful that everything will be okay, that they’ll still want him when they find him. He wraps his fingers around the stone and pulls quickly. The chain snaps under the stress and he pulls it back to survey the pearlescent stone in his hand. It fits comfortably in his palm, and the soft heat resonates through his veins. He sighs quietly, tucks the necklace in his pocket and resolves to try and forget about it.
It doesn’t work.
When he makes it to Slovakia, it’s burning a hole in a thigh.
Three days later, he’s standing on the bank of the Kysuca River, stone held high above the steady stream of water and his chest heaving.
He can’t do this anymore.
It would be so simple, so easy just to drop it into the water and never have to worry about it again. He’ll never be good enough for anyone, so maybe he should just save them the disappointment. He loosens his grip slightly, about to slide it away and drop it, when the heat suddenly fluctuates. It burns for two seconds, then cools, then immediately burns again. He falters and tightens his grip again, pulling it back towards him and opening his palm to frown at it. It carries on, arrogantly pounding evenly in his hand, like a heartbeat. His gaze softens and he bites his lip gently. He looks back at the river, then at the stone in his hand. Exhaling heavily, he tucks it back in his pocket, grabs his backpack from the floor and turns away.
It drives him close to madness while he travels through Poland, and he regrets not throwing it into the water while he had the chance. He can’t deal with this, can’t cope with having someone rely on his existence to the point that he can feel their soft heartbeat through the stone he’s been attached to his whole life.
He sneaks into a busy shipyard at Gdansk and stares out into the choppy, churning waves of the Baltic Sea. He slides the stone from his pocket into his hand, where it burns white-hot and throbs erratically, repetitively. He can’t do this, and he steps closer to the edge of the platform, raises his hand back and is about to lurch forward and throw, when a hand grabs his wrist and spins him around.
“Wait! I love you!”
Feuilly grabs the map of Bratislava he’d left in his back pocket and slaps the man around the face with it. He loosens his grip on Feuilly’s arm and recoils with a soft curse. He makes to approach him again, and Feuilly snaps into action and lands two sharp punches to his jaw.
Feuilly stops and stares at the newcomer –it’s a man, at least six feet tall and built, with broad shoulders and ruffled black hair. He speaks what Feuilly thinks is Spanish, with a thick but admittedly attractive accent. Tattoos trail up his arms and across his collarbones, revealed by a low-cut v-neck. Feuilly’s heart stutters then, and the necklace finally stops pulsating and settles into practically searing a hole through his hand.
“What?” Feuilly barks, loudly and in Hungarian because he doesn’t really know what else to say. The newcomer frowns.
“What?” He replies, in another language Feuilly just about recognizes as French. “Do you speak French?”
Feuilly looks at him blankly.
“Do you speak German?” Feuilly replies, and the other man says nothing. “Italian?”
The other man remains silent, but his expression is slightly bemused and he’s looking at Feuilly with something like admiration in his eyes.
“Slovene, do you speak Slovene? Polish? What about Hungarian, do you understand Hungarian? English?” Feuilly siphons through languages quickly and easily, and the other man brightens at his final word.
“Yes, I speak English. I’m not that good, but-”
“Who are you and what do you want?” Feuilly retorts, cutting through his sentence with biting intent.
“Uh, I’m Bahorel.” He says, running his fingers through his hair and brushes his unruly bangs away from his face. He points at the necklace hanging over his heart. “I came looking for you. I wanted to meet you.”
“Well, you’ve met me now, so goodbye.” Feuilly moves past him quickly, but Bahorel grabs him and spins him around again.
“Don’t I get a kiss?” He asks, a small smirk pulling up the corners of his mouth. Feuilly glares, and he backpedals quickly. “Just one, just to see that it’s definitely you, then if –if you don’t want this or whatever, I’ll leave you alone and you can go back to sprinting across all of fucking Europe if that’s what you want.”
Feuilly just stares at him.
“You move really fucking fast, by the way.”
“Fine,” Feuilly relents after a moment, folding his arms over his chest, because dammit, he’s curious, “but just one.”
Bahorel grins, pulls him in with big hands resting on his hips and kisses him.
Feuilly’s heart about beats out of his chest. The kiss is chaste, nothing more than a soft press of lips, but when Bahorel moves to pull away, Feuilly chases his lips with his own and kisses him again, harder. Bahorel laughs low in his chest and kisses back, sliding his tongue along the seam of Feuilly’s lips. Eventually, Feuilly makes himself pull away and laughs breathlessly.
“I thought I was only allowed one kiss.” Bahorel smirks, almost catlike, and his eyes shine in the sunlight.
“Fuck off.” Feuilly smacks his arm, but it’s affectionate. “I can go, if you want.”
He glares playfully.
“You,” Bahorel punctuates his word with another kiss, “are not going anywhere. I want you to know everything about you.”
“It’s a fucking boring story.” Feuilly rolls his eyes, extricating himself from Bahorel’s grip and carefully tucking his necklace into his pocket before turning to leave.
“I don’t care. I want to hear it.” Bahorel jogs to catch up with him and slides their hands together. Feuilly just smiles.
Nearly four years (and one marriage proposal) later, when he arrives back to their flat in London after a long day at the gallery, he finds chaos unfolding in their sitting room.
There are seven teenagers, a barmaid and a paralegal sprawled across his furniture and generally making a mess of things.
“Someone change the channel.” Bossuet whines from the floor, where he has taken to lying with Joly leaning back against his side. “Emmerdale’s on next and I can’t stand that show.”
“Where’s the remote?” Combeferre asks. He’s on the floor too, sitting with his back against the sofa between Courfeyrac’s legs and a medical journal in his hands. Enjolras is pillowing his head on his best friend’s thigh, and Grantaire sits beside Combeferre with his fingers playing with his boyfriend’s curls.
“Jehan had it.” Musichetta replies. She’s sitting sideways on the sofa with Éponine in front of her, and she’s braiding her hair carefully.
Feuilly stares at them all in disbelief as Jehan digs down the side of the sofa before pulling the remote out from underneath the cushion and raising it above his head victoriously.
“Bahorel,” he yells back into the kitchen where he can already tell Bahorel is hiding, “when did we adopt this lot, and why did no one tell me?”
Bahorel laughs as he reappears, and presses a coffee cup into Feuilly’s hands, kissing him quickly on the forehead.
“Move up, you little shits, or I’ll be forced to sit on you.” Bahorel throws himself onto the sofa between Jehan and Courfeyrac.
Feuilly rolls his eyes and settles himself on Combeferre’s other side.
Bahorel and Bossuet argue loudly about what to watch for twenty minutes before Jehan gets fed up, jumps to his feet and grabs their copy of Coraline off the shelf and puts it in the DVD player.
Feuilly drinks his coffee quietly, and Combeferre beside him reads his medical journal, but when they both look up they exchange a small smile.
When they actually come to getting married about six months later, the service is small –it’s just them, their friends and Bahorel’s parents and sisters, who had flown in from Spain as a surprise. Grantaire had been Bahorel’s best man, and Combeferre Feuilly’s, because in the year or so they’ve known each other, they’ve developed a steady friendship built on mutual respect and admiration and a passion for knowledge like none of their friends know.
Combeferre and Grantaire have just given a joint speech that they’d clearly spent far too much time orchestrating and rehearsing to perfection, but it was moving and funny and gently sentimental and Feuilly might have started crying a little when Combeferre said that he was an inspiration to him, and when Grantaire had followed him up with a quiet ‘me too.’
Bahorel notices his wet eyes and slides and arm around his waist, squeezing softly.
“Are you crying?”
“I’m not. Piss off.” Feuilly huffs, wiping furiously at his eyes. Bahorel chuckles softly and pokes him in the ribs.
“Let’s dance.” Bahorel smiles softly, sliding his hand to take hold of Feuilly’s and lead him towards the dance floor. Combeferre stops them on the way, and Feuilly lets go of Bahorel’s hand to hug him tightly. Combeferre kisses the top of his head warmly, because he is more than tall enough to do so, and when Feuilly releases him his mouth is pulled into a gentle smile.
“That was…” Feuilly starts, but Combeferre shakes his head.
“You don’t need to say anything.” Combeferre hugs him again, straightens his glasses and squeezes his shoulder. “I know.”
Bahorel swoops in then and pulls him away to dance.
As Bahorel spins him, Feuilly takes a moment to watch each of their friends.
Courfeyrac has his head buried in Combeferre’s shoulder, and the taller man is muttering affectionate nothings into his curls. Courfeyrac is blushing then, and sliding his hands around Combeferre’s back to pull him impossibly closer. Combeferre laughs, soft and fond, and Courfeyrac leans up to kiss him.
Enjolras and Grantaire waltz clumsily by, laughing at each other with their fingers entwined. Grantaire’s smile is radiant and beautifully happy, and Enjolras looks at him with such unhidden adoration that Feuilly has to duck his head to hide his grin.
Musichetta is dancing playfully with Joly, and Éponine is standing on top of Bossuet’s feet and holding his hands in hers as he clumsily manoeuvres them both around the room.
Bahorel kisses his cheek to get his attention, and Feuilly turns to look at him. He’s grinning, his normally wild hair pulled back from his face and a fitted grey suit hugging his frame perfectly.
“What?”
“I love you.” Bahorel replies tenderly, his smile softening as he leans in to kiss his husband. Feuilly makes a gentle, delighted noise and kisses him back happily. He can feel Bahorel’s smile against his lips and it only serves to make him smile back wider.
He forces himself to pull away after a moment, and pecks his lips quickly before stopping to look at him.
“I love you too.”
And he means it. He has never come close to loving anyone like Bahorel –never come close to loving anyone, really. He was never sure if he could, if he even knew how.
But here, in the back room of the Musain, with his husband and his best friends, he knows.