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Jehan sat curled up on his window seat, holding his cell phone away from his ear, trying his hardest not to cry while Montparnasse yelled at him. It seemed as though this was their weekly Tuesday night routine at this point. Apparently, Jehan had done, said, wore, or written something that personally offended Monty and ‘was ruining his image.’ It seemed like Jehan himself was what was ruining Monty’s image.
Jehan sighed. He knew that Monty treated him like crap, but when he wasn’t angry, Monty was really a great guy. He was everything Jehan wasn’t, and that thrilled him. Monty was dangerous, tough, hard, while Jehan was soft, sweet, and sensitive nearly to a fault.
Montparnasse began another tirade on something Jehan said that was apparently ‘really fucking stupid.’ Jehan had thought it was really fucking funny, but since when had Monty cared about what Jehan thought when he was in a mood. Jehan stared out the window, barely paying attention to Monty’s rant, when a flash of movement in the window of the house next door caught his eye.
Courfeyrac was blasting Sleeping With Sirens and dancing around his bedroom like an idiot. For some reason, he did this every Tuesday night, generally around the same time that Jehan and Montparnasse were having their weekly fight. He played the music on top volume because Montparnasse absolutely despised that band, and preferred groups like Woe, Is Me and Bring Me The Horizon. Courfeyrac also knew that Monty could hear it in the background when he was on the phone with Jehan. Which reminded him, he should probably check and see how the poor little poet was holding up.
He bounced over to his window seat and plopped down on the soft cushions. He stared across the short gap between the two houses into Jehan’s bedroom window. The small boy was curled up on his window seat and looked really sad. Courf sighed. Montparnasse was such a dick to Jehan, he really didn’t deserve the sweet sensitive boy. Courf reached under the cushion and pulled out the dry erase board he kept hidden there.
He hastily scrawled, “Are you okay?” in his sloppy handwriting, held the board up to the window and waved frantically for Jehan’s attention. He caught the boy’s eye and watched as a small smile spread across his face.
Jehan loved having Courf as a best friend. Courf was kind and considerate where Montparnasse was not, and Courf was never embarrassed by him or his interesting fashion choices. Courf never yelled at him over the phone, instead, he wrote him sweet messages on the whiteboards they had been using to communicate since they were eight years old.
He twisted around on his window seat, trying to pull out his own dry erase board with one hand while holding his phone in the other. “I’ve been better,” he wrote in his elegant and delicate print. Jehan juggled the dry erase board for a minute before he managed to press it up to the window where Courfeyrac could see it.
“Do you need a hug?” was the response. Jehan debated it for a minute, then Montparnasse said that his poetry was a stupid waste of time. That was a really low blow.
“Very much,” Jehan scribbled as his reply. The tears began to fall as Montparnasse continued to beat him down with words. Jehan didn’t know why he put up with the constant abuse from the boy he loved, but he knew that he couldn’t just walk away from everything they had.
Courfeyrac shoved his window up and climbed carefully out onto the trellis beneath his window. He scaled down it with the ease that came from years of practice. When he reached the ground he walked over to the base of the tree that stood beneath Jehan’s window. He climbed it like a monkey and within seconds was straddling the branch closest to the closed window. He tapped on it twice and Jehan jumped up and tried to open the window with one hand. When Jehan managed to pry it open a little, Courf helped him heave it up the rest of the way and then crawled inside.
“No, Monty, I’m still here. I don’t see why that would make a difference- Well, no, but- I’m sorry, Monty,” Jehan sighed into the phone and sprawled back on his bed. Courf frowned and laid back on the bed beside him, pulling the smaller boy into his arms. Jehan mumbled his attempted responses into Courf’s chest until Montparnasse screamed his final insult and hung up on him. Jehan began sobbing uncontrollably as his best friend rubbed small circles on his back and held him close.
“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. You’re way too good for him, and he is not worth the shit he puts you through,” Courfeyrac mumbled into Jehan’s fair hair. Today, there were no flowers or ribbons in the braid he always styled it in. What Jehan stuck in his braid was always a good indicator of his mood. It was the little things like this that Montparnasse had never learned to appreciate about the small poet. Actually, it was the little things like that that made Montparnasse embarrassed of him.
Courfeyrac despised Montparnasse. He despised Monty’s style, the way he always looked so effortlessly cool and badass in his converse or combat boots and that stupid leather jacket he always wore. He despised Monty’s jet black hair, it was stick straight and perfectly done in a way Courf’s mop of brown curls could never hope to be. He despised the way Monty had Jehan wrapped around his little finger, no matter how awful he was the poet kept going back to him. And most of all, he despised the fact that Montparnasse was the one who got to call Jehan his boyfriend, instead of him.
“But I love him,” Jehan gasped in between his sobs. Courfeyrac tightened his arms around the shaking boy, clutching him to his chest as if his arms were the only things keeping Jehan’s sobs from breaking him into a thousand pieces.
He was going to kill Monty at school tomorrow.
“That doesn’t mean you should just put up with this. Jehan, if who you are embarrasses him, then why do you want to be with him?” Courf said angrily. Monty’s football teammates constantly mocked the little poet for being ‘too fruity’ and ‘too flowery’. They shoved him into lockers and beat up on him for being gay. Courfeyrac was constantly finding bruises staining Jehan’s fair skin ugly shades of purple and blue. And the worst part of all of it was that Monty let them. He stood by and watched as his closest friends beat his boyfriend into a pulp because they were homophobic assholes. Monty didn’t want to stand up for Jehan because he was embarrassed by the way Jehan dressed, talked, wrote, and acted.
“I don’t know, Courf, when he isn’t mad about something, he’s really sweet.”
“So you stay with him and put up with all the abuse he and his stupid friends fling at you because he’s really sweet the two percent of time when he’s not pissed off about something?”
“Courfeyrac, can we not do this now? If I wanted someone to judge me, I would’ve just called Monty back and let him yell at me some more!” Jehan pushed Courfeyrac away from him abruptly and turned away. Courf fell off the bed and hit the floor with a thud. He had pushed Jehan too far, and let his feelings for the boy take control of his actions.
“I’m not judging you, Jehan! I just want to understand why you would want to stay with someone who treats you like the dirt beneath his feet the majority of the time!”
“Well, I can’t tell you that Courf, because I don’t know, myself!” With that, Jehan tucked his knees up to his chest and curled in on himself, letting his sobs take control once more. Courfeyrac pushed himself up off the floor, climbed back onto the bed, and wrapped his arms around the boy he had been in love with all his life. This was what they did. Jehan fell apart, and Courfeyrac was always the one to pick up the pieces and put him back together again.
They stayed like that all night. Jehan slowly cried himself to sleep, using Courfeyrac’s chest as his pillow, and Courf eventually drifted off with his chin resting on top of Jehan’s head. When Jehan’s alarm went off the next morning, they untangled their limbs from each other and got up from the bed. Courfeyrac slipped out the window and made it back into his bedroom before his parents even noticed he had spent the night next door. They wouldn’t have minded, as Courf and Jehan spent more nights together than apart, but it was easier if he didn’t have to explain everything to them.
Courfeyrac showered and got dressed in record time, throwing a beanie on over his messy curls, it was the closest to neat he could ever get them to look. He grabbed a bagel and his messenger bag, then went outside to wait for Jehan. Courf drove them both to school most days in his beat up Volkswagen Beetle. He was leaning against the hood when Jehan came out, nibbling on a piece of burnt toast.
“What the hell happened to your hair?” Courfeyrac blurted out. Jehan’s hair truly was a sight. Pieces of his long, not quite blonde, not quite brown hair stuck up in all directions, and the neat braid he had had the day before was now just a knot of hair.
“I couldn’t get the hair tie out,” Jehan shrugged. Courf sighed, pressed his bagel into Jehan’s hand, and pulled out the hair brush he carried with him for situations such as this. With gentle fingers, he teased the hair tie out of Jehan’s tangled locks, and then managed to coax the brush through it so it was smooth and tame once more. He braided it quickly, his hands nimble from the years of practice on his little sister and Jehan’s bad hair days. When he was finished, he pulled a short length of bright pink ribbon from his pocket and tied it over the hair tie at the end.
Jehan handed him back his breakfast and fingered the braid appreciatively. Courfeyrac always managed to work miracles on his hair. He shot his best friend a grateful smile and slipped into the passenger seat of the car. Courf climbed in the driver’s side, and reluctantly drove the boy to school, where Montparnasse would be waiting.
Montparnasse wouldn’t start anything at school. At least, Courf hoped he wouldn’t. He didn’t think that Jehan would be able to take any more verbal or physical abuse from Monty and his gang of friends.
“Jehan, would you mind calling Ep on my cell and telling her that I said today is a Code Fluffy Bunny?” Courf asked, taking one hand off the wheel to point to the pocket in his messenger bag where he kept his cell phone. Jehan shot him a ‘what the fuck’ look, but did as he was asked.
“What the hell is a ‘Code Fluffy Bunny’?” he asked once he hung up the phone. Courf swallowed the last bite of his bagel.
“Can’t tell you, Eponine would kill me.” Jehan shot Courfeyrac a look of annoyance. They never kept secrets from each other, not even Eponine’s. She had given the boys full license to tell each other what she confided in them because they were her closest friends and they looked out for her when no one else did. Jehan couldn’t understand why Eponine and Courfeyrac would start keeping secrets from him.
Courf wished Jehan wouldn’t ask questions. He hated lying to him, but the codes that he and Eponine had devised were for Jehan’s benefit. ‘Code Fluffy Bunny’ meant that he and Monty had had a really bad fight and Eponine should do her best to keep Monty placated and away from Jehan that day. Eponine and Montparnasse had grown up together, much like Courf and Jehan had, and Ep knew better than anyone how to keep him from taking his anger out on others.
They spent the rest of the ride to school in silence, neither one wishing to talk, and the radio of the car had given up long ago. Courfeyrac sighed. It was not going to be a good day.