benschnetzers replied to your post: benschnetzers replied to your post: ar...
i don’t think so, at least, not at this point? she’s only (around) 13, but i think it is sad for her bc we basically had to make her identity from the ground up
i watched a really good documentary a few weeks ago about girls from asia who are all adopted and about 3 of them have no idea when their real birthday is i just wish it didn't have to be this way
everyone should have some clue as to where they come from even its as simple as a birthdate
benschnetzers replied to your post: arthurmiller replied to your post: my ...
hoooly shit!! we don’t actually know how old my littlest sister, who is from vietnam, is, we just have to go off of the date she was left on the steps of a hospital. russia is crazy though i don’t even get it??
is it hard for your sister not knowing her actual birthdate? we celebrated greatma's (i named my great grandma greatma bc i couldn't pronounce the former) on december 18 every year bc my family just picked a date bc trying to pinpoint the exact one was too difficult fuckin birth certificates
If he was going to predict the way he’d meet the love of his life, he wouldn’t have thought of this.
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A very belated but still earnestly heartfelt Bahorel x Cosette birthday fic for the wonderful Olivia—thank you so much for existing, darling. I hope you like this! *hugs*
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One, Two, Three—I Hope You Fall for Me
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Step One:
If he was going to predict the way he’d meet the love of his life, he wouldn’t have thought of this.
He’s at the make-up counter at Macy’s, letting Jehan put…something on him. He’s not entirely sure what, but he has gunk on his eyelashes that make them cling slightly when he blinks, and some sort of clear gloss on his lips, and now his best friend is trying to match something to his skin tone or other. Bahorel feels a little like a doll as Jehan mutters underneath his breath and squints at his face and slaps more stuff onto his cheeks, but he doesn’t really mind. It’s what friends do.
“It’s not blending right,” Jehan says, frustrated. “Ugh, how am I ever going to pick the right palette for Musichetta if I can’t even get the concealer to match?”
“The what?” Bahorel says, nonplussed.
Jehan only mutters some more, and Bahorel decides it’s time to intervene. One of the things he loves best about Jehan is how generous he is, but his desire to give exactly the right gift can get him carried away sometimes—hence this whole shopping trip, with Bahorel being the stand-in for their friend, seeing as he apparently has the same sort of warm brown skin tone as Musichetta.
“Hey, man, I don’t even know what’s going on, but I am certain Musichetta will appreciate whatever you get her for her birthday, especially a jumbo-sized make-up kit that you obviously put a lot of thought into. I’ll even tell this story at the party,” he offers, cracking a grin, wide and sunny and just a little crooked. He waves his hand grandly. “‘And so I bravely dared enter the cosmetics center and sacrificed my face for two hours straight while our dear Jehan worked valiantly to, uh, to conceal me properly—’”
“You idiot,” Jehan says fondly. “I’m not concealing you, I’m picking concealer—” He continues on a mostly unintelligible vein, but he’s smiling and not as stressed, so Bahorel considers the job done and leans back into the tiny plastic chair he’s sitting on. A flash of bright blue catches his eye, however, and he turns his head to see what it is.
And then his jaw drops open.
“Um, excuse me?” the girl asks, stopping just across from them with a polite smile. She’s petite, feminine, everything about her tiny and delicate-looking except for the wide halo of kinky hair that frames her head like a sunburst, and she’s got on a blue dress that falls to her knees, which are slightly knobby and completely adorable. She’s got a band-aid on one of them, and plastic bangles on her wrists, and freckles across the bridge of her nose, and she is literally the most beautiful sight he’s ever seen. Ever.
“Hi!” he says immediately. That’s always a good approach, he’s found.
“Hello,” she says, her smile crinkling her nose, and the flash of her perfect, even white teeth against the earthen tones of her skin is all but blinding.
He blinks. Wow. “Hi!” he says again, because he is not capable of thought beyond that.
The girl giggles, and wow, that’s a really pretty sound. Bahorel leans forward, grinning like an idiot but not caring because she’s laughing, and he’s quite positively certain he’d love to hear her do that for the rest of his life. “Hello,” she says again. “I’m sorry, am I interrupting?”
“Nope,” Bahorel replies, leaning forward.
Jehan giggles, too, covering it up with a cough. “Uh, no, miss, we’re sorry. I can help you if you want,” he says, stepping away from Bahorel and gesturing towards the counter.
“No, really, if you’re busy I can wait a bit more,” the girl answers, sneaking him a look.
“Eh, I’ll be here all afternoon, so it doesn’t really matter. ‘Sides, Jehan’s break is ending soon anyways,” Bahorel says cheerfully, and he grins at her again. She grins back, too, so he decides to wink at her, and she sticks one of her fine-boned hands into her mane of glorious hair and ducks her head, but she’s still smiling so he counts it a victory.
She apparently wants some eyeliner and a tube of lipstick—she’s got the color picked out and everything, so Jehan totals up her purchase and she pays him in cash, the whole encounter over in a couple of minutes. She gives him a little wave when she leaves, and another sweet smile, and he’s still grinning after her like the idiot he is, watching her walk out the door before realizing that he didn’t even ask for her name, much less her number.
“Shit!” he exclaims, and Jehan laughs as he bangs his head against the counter.
“Smooth,” his best friend says.
Bahorel wonders if running after her would be considered creepy, and decides it probably would be.
He doesn’t think he’ll see her again.
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Step Two:
It’s two weeks later when he meets her again.
He’s at La Musain for Musichetta’s birthday party, and he’s had a couple of beers and is trying to coax Combeferre to join him and Courfeyrac in singing karaoke onstage when he spots a guy getting handsy with a girl near the bar.
He ambles up to them—he’s big and burly and frankly scary-looking, and he moves like he’s ready for a fight and can handle himself just fine, which, considering his boxing experience, is pretty much a given. “Hey,” he says, and starts reaching for the guy’s shoulder when the girl bares her teeth and knees him in the balls.
The asshole goes down like a ton of bricks, and Bahorel finds himself grinning and offering a fist for the girl to bump. “Nice,” he says admiringly, and signals the bartender for two drinks.
The girl—tall, lean, and obviously mean in the best sort of way—gives him a steely-eyed glare. “You sure you want to buy me a drink after seeing what I just did to the last idiot?” she says dryly.
“’Course I do,” Bahorel says easily. “Anyone deserves a drink after taking care of perverts. ‘Sides, my heart belongs to another.” He places his hand dramatically over his heart as he says so, and winks at her.
The girl gives him a reluctant smile, which threatens to slide off her face when the asshole form earlier finally makes his way to his feet and lurches toward her again.
“Hey,” Bahorel says to him, still grinning, and cracks his knuckles for good measure. “I hold him, you punch?” he asks the girl.
She blinks and grins, and the asshole decides to cut his losses and slink out of the bar. Bahorel holds out his hand. “I’m Bahorel,” he says.
The girl takes it. “Jondrette.” They shake, grips firm and friendly, and the second he lets go a voice calls out and she turns her head to follow it.
“Éponine! Hey, sorry, the line was really long and—oh,” the blue dress girl says, stopping in the middle of hugging Jondrette to stare at him in surprise. “It’s you!”
Jondrette frowns. “You know this guy, Cosette?”
Cosette—so that was her name, he thinks to himself—shakes her head. “Not really,” she says, laughing. “I just saw him at Macy’s last week.” She holds out her hand for him to shake. “Hello,” she says again, her nose crinkling happily, “I’m Cosette. Sorry for not introducing myself last week—”
“No problem,” he says. “I was just a random make-up model guy anyway. I didn’t expect—you didn’t need to—I was just—bleh,” he eventually says, shaking his head and chuckling at himself.
Cosette giggles with him, and he pulls himself together enough to say, “Okay, uh, can we just pretend the last thirty seconds didn’t happen, and instead I totally told you that my name was Bahorel, and that I said that you’re the prettiest girl in the room in a really debonair kind of way, you know, like straight out of a Humphrey Bogart movie?”
“Sure,” she tells him, smiling up at him, and he realizes he’s still holding her hand, her small fingers completely engulfed by his. He thinks that maybe he should let go, but she doesn’t seem to mind, so he waits for her to move away. They stand there for a bit, just holding hands and smiling, before Jondrette clears her throat.
“So, we heading out?” she asks pointedly.
“Huh? What? I mean—wait, yeah, sorry, of course!” Cosette says, and she finally pulls away.
“Good,” Jondrette says, standing and jerking her head towards the exit. “Let’s get going then. Nice to meet you, Bahorel,” she says, nodding at him before striding purposefully away
Cosette echoes her words and follows after her, and once again he is left with the memory of her smile and her voice, but also with the realization that he forgot to ask for her number yet again.
“Shit!” he says, and the bartender passes him a drink in consolation.
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Step Three:
The third time’s the charm for them.
He’s at a local elementary school when they cross paths again, demonstrating fire safety for the kids—he loves kids, absolutely adores them, and the rest of the guys at the station know it, so he’s often the automatic choice for these things. He’s cracking a joke in front of the third and fourth graders when he hears that familiar, musical giggle, and he looks up to find Cosette smiling at him.
“Hey!” he says automatically, waving at her.
“You know Ms. Fauchelevent?” one of the students asks.
“Yeah, do you? Do you?” the rest chorus.
“Hey, let him finish talking,” she says, and they subside, letting him wrap up the demonstration, ending it on the high note of Jessie, their Dalmatian mascot, doing tricks and demanding belly rubs.
“What a good girl,” Cosette says, placing her hands on her knees and petting Jessie’s head. The kids range around her, chattering excitedly, and she places an easy hand on their shoulders or arms, guiding and reassuring them. Bahorel watches her and thinks that he really should have guessed she was a schoolteacher—she’s perfect for the job with that sunny, patient smile and those gentle hands.
“What’s her name?” she asks, grinning so widely that her eyes near disappear.
“Jessie,” he answers.
“What a smart name for a smart lady,” she coos, scratching her underneath her chin. Jessie wags her tail contentedly as Bahorel shoves his hands in his pockets and rocks back on his heels, wondering if it’d be inappropriate for him to ask for her number now. He decides it probably is, but then he’s never been much for being appropriate, has he?
He waits until they’re packing up to head back to the station, waves the rest of the guys away and jogs over to where she’s standing. “Hey, Ms. Fauchelevent,” he says, winking. “Will you do me the honor of accompanying me to lunch next week? I make great tuna sandwiches.”
He can hear the guys hooting and whistling behind him, but he ignores them in favor of her laugh. “Sure,” she says, and man, oh man, is he a goner.
He grins all the way back to the station—all though the week, actually, until the next time he sees her standing at the park, her hands clasped behind her, wearing that bright blue dress he first saw her in.
“Hi!” he says, because what else can he say when she’s right in front of him, looking just like everything he’s ever wanted?
“Hello,” she says back, and that’s it, man, oh man, is he a goner, tripped and fallen all the way into love because of that smile of hers.
“Shall we get going?” he asks, sweeping her a grand and comically ostentatious bow and then offering her his arm. He can feel her laughter in his bones when she takes it and holds it to her side, and that’s the moment he promises himself that he’s going to do whatever it takes to hear that sound every day for the rest of his life.
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Later, much later, when he’s categorized and memorized all twenty-four of her different laughs, when she’s got his ring on her finger and let him pin his heart to her sleeve, she’ll tell him that’s the reason she fell for him—because he made her laugh so much.
In the here and now, he shoots her his signature grin and wink, and they walk off into the noontime day accompanied by the light of her smile and the music of her joy; it’s the start of something new and precious and wonderful—it’s the start of them, three steps into the dance and finally hitting their stride and laughing at the thrill of it. He never forgets it, and neither does she, and this isn’t the way he’d have thought it’d go, but he wouldn’t change it for the world: her and him and that supernova smile.
In which I talked excitedly about why I like Draco Malfoy, and post-war reforms. For the sake of length, I couldn't get to reforming the prison system, or the death eater trials. :((
