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The story of how Legle and Joly met wouldn’t have surprised any of their friends, if they’d ever bothered to tell it. They’d been twelve and fifteen, respectively, and at the time Joly thought he was dying.
Specifically, Joly thought he was dying from a bee sting, so Legle sat with him while they waited for medical help to arrive.
They’d been working at a summer camp, Legle as a counselor and Joly as a junior counselor, and Joly had gotten stung during a game of capture the flag. Legle carried him over to a picnic table and tried to keep him calm, as he’d been hyperventilating and looked close to passing out. He told the terrified boy jokes and held his hand and did his best to get him to smile, until eventually his breathing evened out and he started laughing at the bad jokes and telling a few of his own.
Legle cocked his head to the side, contemplating the tween. “I think your allergic reaction’s clearing up. That’s…not supposed to be how it works.”
One of the other counselors stomped over to the picnic tables, threw her hands in the air, and started shrieking at them. “I told Mrs. Lucas that she needed to call an ambulance because of the bee sting, and then she went to get an EpiPen instead because anyone with allergies is supposed to have filled out a card and left their EpiPens with the staff. That stupid kid doesn’t have one because he’s not allergic to bee stings! What the hell are you doing panicking everyone like that?!”
Legle had thought it was the funniest thing in the world, even if his fellow counselors didn’t agree, and he and Joly became fast friends.
He’d never once been bothered by Joly’s fits of panic and bursts of hypochondria, finding the little nervous spells endearing instead of infuriating. In a similar vein, Joly never minded the streaks of bad luck and folly Legle just couldn’t seem to get away from.
The three year age difference between them might have created a ‘big brother/little brother’ dynamic between them had they met any sooner, but Legle had been a particularly immature fifteen year old and Joly was a pleasant enough twelve year old that the older boy didn’t mind bringing him around with his group of high school friends. When Joly entered high school himself the petite, sickly freshman had a posse of seniors to look after him. By that same token though, all his friends graduated at the end of the year, and all the kids they’d defended him from felt more resentful than ever of the little dweeb after being pushed around on his behalf for an entire year.
Sophomore year had been difficult for Joly. By junior year, Legle started driving him to and from school every day to make sure he got there safely. When his car broke down, which was frequently, he walked Joly in. On one notable occasion a group of kids drove up alongside them and started throwing trash at them. Legle went nuts, jumped on the hood of their car, and started screaming swears at them until they drove off in a panic.
To Legle’s eternal amusement, Joly had been questioned throughout the day about his crazy bodyguard.
By Joly’s junior year there were also mutterings among his classmates that his crazy bodyguard was likely his crazy boyfriend. This wasn’t actually the case yet, but he was spending more time with Legle than ever before, and some of that time was spent walking through the woods together at sundown holding hands. They didn’t talk about it though, and holding hands was the most overtly romantic thing they’d done.
Joly’s parents had also become suspicious that Legle was his boyfriend, and he started getting the negative consequences of being gay without any of the perks. He didn’t have the freedom of being out of the closet, and he wasn’t in a relationship with the boy he was falling for more and more every day. In a fit of boldness, he decided to confront Legle with his feelings.
They’d been walking through the woods sharing a two liter of Mountain Dew when Joly suddenly stopped walking, turned to his friend, and asked him what he thought of him.
Legle eyed him quizzically, though his smile was as easy as ever. “What do you think? You’re my best friend, Jol.”
“Do you like me?”
“Of course I like you.”
“Not…you know what I’m talking about! Everyone thinks you’re my boyfriend. If I’m going to get harassed for being gay with you, then I’d at least like to get to be gay with you.”
Legle looked thrown. “…really?”
“Yes!” Joly shouted. “Of course! Why wouldn’t I? You’re my best friend and I’ve been mad about you for ages!”
“Jol…why are you shouting?”
Joly’s indignation lasted barely ten seconds more, and then suddenly they were both doubled over with laughter. Legle cautiously put his arms around Joly and pulled him close for a hesitant kiss flavored with high fructose corn syrup. It was Joly’s second kiss, and he liked the sweetness of Mountain Dew much more than the sweetness of strawberry Lip Smackers.
“I didn’t say anything because I’m nineteen and useless and you’re a minor and you’re beautiful. You’re going to go off to school in a couple years and do great things, and I’ll probably be living in my cousin’s basement still, unemployed and watching cartoons all day. Frankly dear, I think you can do a bit better than a slacker like me. Plus I think I might be losing my hair.”
“Of course you’re not losing your hair. It’s just a bit thin. It’s always been thin, hasn’t it? And I don’t care that you’re a slacker. I’ve known that. I thought you didn’t like me as much as I liked you.”
Legle framed his face with his hands and kissed him again. “That’s what I think of that.”
They wandered back to Joly’s house well past sunset, smiling goofily and still holding hands. Joly’s parents threw a fit when they saw him, and he ended up spending the night in an old rusty camper he’d used as a play fort when he was little.
Things got worse at school and home after that, but Joly didn’t regret a minute he and Legle spent together. He had to sneak around his parents’ backs to see his boyfriend, because even though he tried to deny that they were more than friends, anyone who looked at them could tell that they were in that sappy adolescent phase of love. Try as he might, Joly couldn’t suppress the ridiculous swell of emotion he felt whenever he even thought of his boyfriend. It would take him years of practice to mask the powerful emotions he felt regarding Legle.
Eventually things got so bad at Joly’s home that Legle tried to break up with him. When Joly had a nervous breakdown at the prospect, he ended up rocking the smaller boy in his arms and tried to cheer him up with jokes. It reminded him faintly of how they’d met, and how the phantom bee sting allergy had robbed Joly of breath the same way his fear of losing his boyfriend was doing at that moment.
“It wouldn’t be forever, Jol. Just until you’re done with school and we can get away from here. I just think we need to stop seeing each other for a little while. Just until things get easier. I don’t like being the cause of so much trouble for you.”
“Y-you’re not,” Joly insisted. “You’re the only good thing in my life right now. P-please don’t leave me alone with everything.”
Legle kissed his temple and stroked his back and apologized for upsetting him until eventually his breathing evened out. “We’ll just have to come up with something else then.”
Something else presented itself in the form of a pale, plump little sixteen year old girl with pretty eyes and a ringing laugh. She was a friend of Legle’s cousin, and she started crashing in the basement as well. She’d been forced to leave her mother’s house in Greenfield when her mother’s boyfriend started sexually harassing her and her mother did nothing to defend her. Despite the awfulness of the situation, the girl took it in stride. Her pleasant outlook and approachable manner made her an immediate intimate of Legle’s.
Her name was Musichetta, and she volunteered to be their beard.
For a few months it even worked. Musichetta transferred to Joly’s school instead of her original plan, which was to get her GED and enroll in a community college. They started holding hands in the hallways and kissing against lockers, and as Joly had never come out to anyone and only ever denied being in love with Legle, his classmates figured they’d been wrong about the slightly effeminate hypochondriac. They still gave him shit. He didn’t stop getting bullied overnight or anything, but his bullies stopped calling him a faggot when they threw trash at him and shoved him into lockers.
His parents were definitely relieved when he brought Musichetta over for dinner the first time. She played her role remarkably well, expertly charming the both of them. In fact, by the time Joly’s mother put dessert and coffee on the table she was asking Joly when he was going to marry the pretty young lady and give her some grandchildren.
Musichetta also doubled as a beard for Legle. He’d managed to get a job putting away stock for one of the only department stores in the area, and his boss didn’t like the whiff of scandal that came from having an employee who appeared to be dating an underage boy. For whatever reason, those doubts were eased entirely when it was an underage girl instead. After all, the age difference really was rather small. Inconsequential, even, when faced with Musichetta’s pearly smile and melodic laughter.
So Joly and Legle both pretended to date Musichetta while they really dated each other. Accordingly, the three of them spent a lot of time together and became impossibly close. Musichetta was even present for some heated make out sessions when they stopped for breaks during their walks through the woods, though she usually sat to the side and did homework while her friends went at it. One particularly nice summer afternoon, she feared she may have been present for Joly losing his virginity. She sat down on a low fence, kept her headphones on, and kept her eyes on the book she was reading until the moaning stopped, and if her cheeks were a bit red when the boys reappeared with rumpled clothing and glowing smiles, no one felt like commenting on it.
Their arrangement worked beautifully up until senior prom, when they’d grown so comfortable that they got a bit bolder than was wise. Joly had grown attached to the idea of having a slow dance at prom with his actual lover, and sappily in love himself, Legle wanted to arrange a way to give him that. A lot of kids at their school brought friends from other grades as their official dates, just to get them in, and then danced and did all the couple stuff with their boyfriend or girlfriend instead. So Musichetta took Legle as her date even though everyone in the school thought she was dating Joly.
The night started off well enough. The three of them sat at a table together with a few of the other seniors who got shoved against lockers and chased home from school. Joly and Legle’s suits both matched Musichetta’s dress, and they were wearing boutonnieres that complemented her corsage. They danced together as a trio, but they couldn’t figure out how to give Joly the slow dance he so desperately wanted (and really, at this point Legle wanted the dance too).
Then Musichetta came back from the bathroom with a particular gleam in her eye that had always meant good things for the couple. “Follow me darlings.” She took them to the hallway leading to the bathrooms, which was nicely decorated and deserted. “Stay here until the next slow song and have your dance. I’ll keep an eye out.”
“You’re a life saver ‘Chetta,” Legle said. He leaned forward to kiss her cheek.
“Just enjoy yourselves. You guys deserve it.” Then she skipped off to stand lookout for them.
Joly smiled shyly at his boyfriend, tugging on his lip with his teeth. Legle strode over to him and took his hand. “I’m not actually much of a dancer…”
“Neither am I. It’s okay. I don’t care if you step on my toes. I just wanted the memory.”
At the next strands of generic soft rock, the two of them swayed together, smiling stupidly and appreciating the little gesture more than anyone else in the building. After all, it was a given for most of the students that they’d get to dance with their significant other if they had one.
Unfortunately, Musichetta only had one end of the hallway covered. There was a second door none of them had noticed, and half of the football cheerleaders and dance team came out in the middle of the song for a group bathroom break. They walked into the middle of Joly and Legle’s quiet, tender moment of unmistakable devotion, and no beard in the world was convincing enough to get them back into the closet after that.
Joly finished up the school year living out of Musichetta’s car. He skipped classes left and right in favor of hiding out in a locked bathroom stall trying to get his nerves under control. Really, it was a miracle he managed to graduate. Seeing as his family had disowned him, he felt no desire to walk in the ceremony.
He was glad he managed to suffer through it though, because Joly did want to go to college and he was glad to have his high school diploma. He looked into schools in Eastern Massachusetts so he could take advantage of state school tuition breaks and scholarships while also putting as much distance between him and his parents as possible. Content as he’d been to live in a basement and work a minimum wage paying job, the prospect of losing Joly gave Legle the swift kick in the ass he needed for motivation, and he applied to the same schools his boyfriend did.
When they moved east they fell into a new peer group almost immediately. Legle found friends the first week of the semester, when he spilled hot soup on a cheerful theater major in the cafeteria. Rather than bitch him out, the two struck up a conversation while Legle helped him clean up the mess with some napkins, and the kid invited Legle to sit with him and his friend, a surly looking art major.
Legle introduced his boyfriend to his new friends, though he and Joly pretended they were best friends instead of lovers. The next time they joined Courfeyrac and Grantaire for lunch they’d added another kid to their clique, a muscular redhead sporting a black eye and a brash smile.
By the end of October they added Enjolras, Combeferre, and Jehan to the group, and that was the last time their regular circle expanded until Joly got an apartment off-campus and found Feuilly to be his roommate through Craigslist. Marius and the high school girls would cap them off junior year.
Joly spent the night before the last day of classesof their first semester in Legle’s dorm room. They put a pillow and blanket on the floor in case one of his suitemates happened by, in which case Joly would roll onto the floor, but other than that the pillow and blanket remained untouched.
Joly was resting against the pillows with his boyfriend half curled up on his lap, like a balding cat. He ran his fingers through what was left of Legle’s hair, alternating the gesture every now and then with a tender stroke down the side of his face.
“If you didn’t like playing with it so damn much I’d just buzz it off,” Legle grumbled. “I think it’s time to admit defeat, love. I’m going to be completely bald before I hit twenty five.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that,” Joly assured him. “I can start buying you hats if you want though.”
“That’s not quite the same as being pet by you like this, but it’s something.” Legle let his eyes drift shut, and they enjoyed the quiet moment of privacy and the accompanying snuggles. Then their phones went off with texts.
Joly fumbled his out of his pocket first. “It’s Combeferre. The guys are meeting up at that café to go over a petition Enjolras is writing up on tuition hikes. I suppose we ought to go.”
“I guess…Courfeyrac sent my text.” Legle sat up and grinned when he read it. “’Hey Bossuet, we could use a little of your oratory genius for our political discourse. Grantaire’s being an absolute shit and I think you can help me shut him up.’ I guess Courf’s paying more attention to his French History class than he’s letting on.”
“Who the hell is Bossuet?” Joly asked.
“He was a theologian and a brilliant orator. I don’t think I’d mind if people called me Bossuet. Do you think it’ll stick? I like that much better than Mr. Clean or Professor X.”
“I’ll do what I can to help.” Joly leaned forward for a quick kiss. “I suppose we’re going then? I mean, if you need to defend your right to a new nickname…”
“One I actually like? Yeah, we should definitely go…” Legle looked down at where his fingers were tangled with Joly’s against the mattress. “You know…we could just tell them. There’s something about these guys…I think we can trust them.”
Joly stiffened and pulled his hand away. Legle immediately gathered him up in his arms and started dropping kisses everywhere he could reach. “Sorry, I’m sorry. I know I didn’t go through half as much as you, and really it’s okay. If you’re not ready, it’s okay. I care way more about you feeling safe.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to be able to hold your hand and cuddle whenever we want and all that other wonderful stuff, it’s just…I just…”
Legle kissed his temple. “Just not yet.”
“Right. Just a little more time. I think you’re right about our friends though. This is a good group of guys.”
“Mm,” Legle agreed. "I think we should keep them."
Joly smiled weakly. “Alright, enough sulking then. C’mon Bossuet. Let’s go help Courfeyrac shut Grantaire up.”