do you have bahorel headcanons ?? i always really love your characterizations of les amis and id love to see what you have for him in like one post
Oooh, do I have Bahorel headcanons... Honestly, Bahorel may be the Ami I have more headcanons of apart from Enjolras. You don't know what you're asking for. Strap on for a long post!
Most of these (but not all) I have already talked about, they are augmented versions of a post where someone asked for non-binary!Bahorel headcanons, so if they sound familiar, that's why...
Bahorel comes from a family of farmers from a small town in the Pyrenees. They have a really, really strong Southern accent; now that they've lived in Paris for a few years it's gone a bit softer, but when they first arrived it was really really hard to understand. Even now, whenever they get drunk it comes back out. In those cases, the best option is calling Marius to be the official translator.
When they were young, they didn't really realize they weren't cis; being something else just wasn't an option. The only people they knew who sometimes played with gender were some seasonal workers, but they also took ketamine and made their own alcohol under their beds in their cars, so it wasn't really tempting to be like them.
They are the first person in their family to go study in the big city. Their family was very proud of them when they got accepted in Law in Paris; their mom spent months telling everyone who might listen about how her little Marcel was going to be a lawyer! Wasn't it marvellous?
One of the first people they meet in Paris is Jehan, who is already really comfortable in his gender expression. It's a revelation. What do you mean, you don't have to be a man and be manly?? It's by experimenting with gender and presentation with Jehan that they realize that they might actually just... not be a man, in fact.
They go a bit overboard in the other direction for a while, because non-binary people have to be androgynous, don't they? They shaved their beard, they started using crop tops and skirts, they painted their nails... It didn't feel right, either. So now they have grown back a bushy beard and dress like your usual lumberjack. It's just more comfortable and more practical. They do have an impressive collection of corsets for special occasions, though. Most of them are presents from Jehan, who knows all the best corset-makers, and loves giving gifts to his friends. You should see them at Pride.
Physically, I headcanon them as being very tall, kind of lanky (they have muscle, but they look more wiry than bulky), with a reddish-brown beard, a hot pink floppy mowhawk and big hands that always have dirt beneath very short nails (one of the first things they did after arriving to Paris was finding a communal garden, they need to have their hands in dirt regularly or they'd go crazy in the jungle of concrete that is the capital).
They try to laugh it off, because they understand where people are coming from, but it still hurts a lot when they go to an LGBT+ event with Jehan and people immediately assume that they're cis and that Jehan is non-binary. Cis-straight people assuming gender presentation equals gender identity is one thing, but their own people...it hurts.
They absolutely hate Law. Their motto is "never a lawyer". They actually love working with their hands, and they would love to inherit their parents' farm and spend the rest of their life getting up at five in the morning and working the fields all day. They do feel guilty about spending all their parents' money in sending them to Paris, but there is a catch: stopping would mean going back home, and living in their home town would mean going back to the closet. They are out to their immediate family, and while their little sisters do make an effort, their parents deal with the issue mostly by pretending it doesn't exist. And that's probably what would happen in general. The town works on a "don't ask don't tell" policy, and they don't know if they could do that anymore.
Bahorel is a person of actions, more than theory. They can't quote Marx to you like Enjolras or Combeferre can, but they know what they want the world to be, and they will stop at nothing to get there. If you need someone to protect a queer person at night, or to put posters up at three in the morning, or to charge the police so that the weaker people in a demonstration have time to escape, or to go break the windows of a restaurant that hasn't payed their waiters, Bahorel is your... well, your non-binary person. They also know a lot about how to protect yourself from the police, both in legal terms and in practical attire.
They do have a lot of opinions about non-violent action being considered the best course of action. As they will tell you if you mention the subject, violence is the best and more efficient weapon the opressed have (”those fuckers don’t give a fuck about us, but they do about their precious legs”), and renouncing to it is throwing away most chances of winning for no good reason. After all, self-defense is justified, isn’t it? And what is the state, and the patriarchy, and white supremacy, and capitalism, and all those things, if not systemic violence? Any mention of non-violent movements who won will just prompt them to tell you of all the violent movements working at the same time that The System wants you to forget. And if you complain about property destruction when people’s dignity is on the line...
Antifa and proud. They are in a queer black bloc.
Apart from Jehan, their best friend in the Amis is Feuilly. They ocasionally meet up to play pétanque with some of Feuilly’s coworkers, and Bahorel is the first person Feuilly calls if he needs to vent about something. They also make a lot a lot of stupid bets. They rarely bet money, more often than not going for betting on who will pay for an activity to do together. Feuilly is pretty careful, and only bets when he’s reasonably sure to win, which means that they end up owing him a bunch of stuff, but they don’t mind. If that’s what takes for Feuilly to do stuff he wants to do but have no money to, without feeling bad for letting them pay, they will make as many stupid bets as needed. And every time they do win they lord it over Feuilly’s head for months.
As Feuilly is in the closet about his gender at work, sometimes they meet at Bahorel and Jehan’s place in the week-ends and go on what they collectively call “their gender-fuckery benders”. What goes on in them is the matter of legends. Feel free to add your headcanons on what happens there.
They aren’t really sexually attracted to men, making them the only non-ace member of the Amis to be so. They’ve been told once of twice that they “aren’t queer enough” for queer groups, “because they’re basically cis-straight”, but the person in question had the bad luck of saying it in hearing range of Jehan, and... let’s just say: if you aren’t afraid of Jehan, you should.
I’m pretty sure I’m forgetting some, but this is already waaaaay too long, so I’m going to publish it anyway. Hope you like them! ^^
