unbetaed untitled quick courf/feuilly drabble for flyawayonfourls who's been lovely enough to share headcanons with me tonight! the spiderman pj's are her wonderful idea!
(tw for implied abuse, foster system and all that - er, just feuilly's childhood in general, yeah.)
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It starts, oddly enough, with a visit to Courfeyrac's family. His youngest sister just graduated from high school, and since they have just passed their sixth-month anniversary, Courfeyrac feels it appropriate to take the opportunity to introduce Feuilly to his family.
Courfeyrac's mother, as Feuilly finds out, is every bit as charming as her son, and takes an immediate liking to Feuilly.
She's also just as talkative, however, and by the time they leave two days later, Feuilly feels like he knows, in detail, every single thing about Courfeyrac's childhood - from the time of food he ate and who his best playground friends were, to how much he loved helping his father cook and what his favourite cartoons were.
...
It's a long ride from Courfeyrac's home city of Nice back to Paris. Nine hours, in fact, and Courfeyrac wanted to fly there, but Feuilly insisted on driving - besides, he likes driving, it gives him time to think. And think he does.
When they get home, Feuilly digs out a box from the back of his closet and finds and old binder with his own names scrawled on it in pink crayon.
It's not nearly as impressive - or expressive - as Courfeyrac's mother's albums, but it's what Feuilly has, and his knuckles are white around its spine when he sits down next to his boyfriend. He breathes, and opens the binder.
"Here," he says pointing at the first photograph. He's about six years old, all big eyes and too long hair and clothes that didn't fit right, and it's the oldest one he has, taken by the first foster family to take him in - as good as a starting point as he'll ever get. He tries to remember as many of the good things as he can to share with Courfeyrac. When he started playing baseball. His first bicycle. Oh, he liked that ice cream place - he stayed there only one summer but he'd like to see if it's still there.
Courfeyrac takes his hand, and smiles brightly, sometimes asking a question on too.
(Perhaps Feuilly will tell the bad things, too, when Courfeyrac does as well, but not right now.)
"This one's my favourite," he says when he gets to one of the last photographs. He's older, 10, maybe, or 11, he isn't sure. He's wearing Spiderman pyjamas and clinging to the wall. He's laughing.
"I loved these pyjamas so much," he continues, and that's the little moments that reminds Feuilly he's alright now, he's good, because even after nearly an hour looking at the photographic evidence of the child he once was, the only emotion in his voice is warm fondness. "Agathe - the mother - bought them for me when I arrived. Boy's pyjamas, too. I used to pretend I was Spiderman, climbing everywhere. I honestly don't know how I never broke a bone."
He shakes his head, still smiling. He didn't keep the pyjamas - some time after the photo was taken Agathe's daughter left her husband and came back to live with them. She had four children of her own and there was just no place for Feuilly in the small house after that. He gave the pyjamas to the youngest of Agathe's grandsons on the day he left.
Courfeyrac wraps his arm around Feuilly shoulder, and they spend the rest of the afternoon like this, cuddling on the couch.
...
Feuilly has a double shift the next day, and Courfeyrac an afternoon class, so by the time Feuilly gets home at 8 in the evening Courfeyrac hasn't come back yet.
But there's a pile of folded clothes on the bed; it takes a few moments for Feuilly to realise what they actually are.
Spiderman pyjamas.
And a note from Courfeyrac,
"Spiderman's my favourite superhero, too. Love you, tiger."
Oh my gosh books EVERYWHERE, just strewn across his tiny apartment on any available surface. And he definitely teaches himself a bunch of different languages and marius has conversations with him in said languages to help him gain fluency
YES!
Oh gosh, and in my modern headcanon for Feuilly is - he doesn’t have a computer at home, much less a laptop (his apartment’s decent enough, but it’s not in the best part of town so he’s half-sure it’d get stolen anyway). He’s almost never home anyway and the others let him use theirs any time he needs, but sometimes when he has free time he goes over to the library to use the computers there. He’s been more than once told to please leave, other people need to use the computers too because he’d been reading wikipedia and forums, clicking from one article to another endlessly, and totally lost track of time.
