Courfeyrac/marius - Tumblr Posts
Only the good die young AU
So, this is an AU of an AU that @shamedumpster and I brainrotted for a good while a long time ago. I was reminded of it by the Friends to Lovers poll, and I thought I might as well share. And hey, if enough of you ask for it, maybe we’ll write it!
Marius is a Catholic church boy. He helps around during mass, and he’s very involved in the church. Among his duties, there’s serving coffee and cookies to the parishioners after Sunday Mass.
One day, there’s a guy at the potluck. He doesn’t recognize him from mass and he’s wearing a leather jacket and strutting around with a slightly cocky gait, and all Marius can think of is that he is so beautiful.
Courfeyrac beelines for him (the reason he’s here is that he saw him on campus and thought he wanted that boy), and immediately starts flirting. And Marius doesn’t know how he’s feeling (he does, but he can’t acknowledge that, he can’t be gay, he can’t), so he just tells him “I’m sorry, I don’t… do that”.
The hesitation is enough to make Courf pivot. This is not a boy that needs to get laid, he’s a boy who needs a friend to help him get over his internalized homophobia. So he changes tactics, smiles his best smile and asks “do you not do friends? Because that’s all I’m asking.”
That’s how he ends up going out (as friends!!) with Courfeyrac. They hang around, and he calls him “beautiful” and “handsome” and he’s tactile and flirty, but he doesn’t push, and he finds himself feeling more and more comfortable. And he’s so interesting! He has done so much Marius would never dare to!
The Amis own a gay bar downtown, and at one point Courfeyrac manages to convince Marius to come for a drag show. That’s how Marius gets introduced to the rest of the Amis, and in particular to Bahorel in full drag. The poor boy is very confused. Especially once Bahorel tells him they’re “not a man”.
After that, Marius goes occasionally to the Musain. One time, Courf tells him he has a surprise and leaves him with the other Amis; when the next drag queen starts, Marius is startled to realise the gorgeous woman in skintight leather dancing to “Cherry Bomb” is actually Courfeyrac. Surprisingly, that gives him a certain amount of reprieve: he has been thinking that Courf was attractive for a while, and now he looks like a woman. It’s not gay if he’s attracted to someone that looks so much like a woman, right?
He’s still riding that excuse when he kisses Courf after the show. He’s not thinking. He doesn’t want to think. The kiss feels right, more right than any kiss has ever felt, and he doesn’t want to think about how it is Courf exciting those reactions. He just wants to lose himself and not think.
Courf responds at first (he is into this guy, okay?), but he quickly regains his bearings and realises that Marius will hate himself in the morning if he lets him do this. So even though Marius insists that he “wants this, Courf, please, he promises”, he makes him stop, takes him to his apartment next to the Musain and puts him to bed with the promise that if Marius still wants this in the morning, he will be his.
In the morning, Marius is wracked with guilt. The realisation he had been trying to outrun the night before has caught up with him and he can’t take it. So when Courfeyrac asks how he’s feeling, he just says “Thank you for stopping me yesterday. You did good. God bless you.” and runs.
After that, Marius tries to get back to his old routine. He confesses to having almost succumbed to the sin of lust, and the severity of the penitence makes him know that the Father was aware of what was going on, and he doesn’t approve. On the other hand, Courf has disappeared, and Marius latches to anger to keep him going. Of course he’s gone. Haven’t they warned him that gay men only wanted sex? Probably now that sex is no longer on the table, Courf wants nothing to do with him anymore.
(He tries not to think about how he offered himself to Courf, that night, and Courf didn’t take him up on it. Courf is sinful, he’s evil, and he has every right to be angry. That’s the only thing that keeps him going.)
Meanwhile, Courfeyrac is trying to give him space. It might not have been said in so many words, but it definitely felt like he was being told Marius didn’t want anything to do with him. He’s also belatedly realising that he had fallen harder than he had thought. He’s moody, snappy, and if he had never liked the Church much, he now gets a level of vitriolic that even Bahorel finds uncomfortable to listen to.
At the end, it’s Bahorel who goes to find Marius. They find him at the Sunday coffee, the same as Courfeyrac had done so many months ago. Their original plan was to make Marius apologize for whatever he had done to make Courf seem so down, but when they see how downcast Marius looks, they ask him for an explanation.
Bahorel’s bluntness is exactly what he needs. “Dude”, they say, “if all he wanted was sex, he would have gotten it from someone easier. Have you seen Courfeyrac? All he has to do is come to the Musain and flutter his eyelashes and he has five dudes at his feet. And he doesn’t look like he didn’t get laid. He looks like he got his heart broken.”
It’s a few weeks later, and Courf is bartending and trying not to show how much his heart is bleeding, when the amateur drag night starts, and the first person on stage looks stiff and uncomfortable, and… starts singing “Take Me To Church”?? And then the drag queen meets his eyes and stays there, and Courfeyrac realises it’s Marius.
After the show he goes backstage, and his heart is hammering, and Marius looks nervous but determined, and Courf can’t believe he’s really here. “Tell me if I’m reading too much into this..?” he whispers, and Marius shakes his head. So he crosses the room, takes his face in his hands, and goes in for a kiss. Right before he does, a last survival instinct kicks in. “Are you going to change your mind?” he asks, and Marius laughs softly and shakes his head, stronger this time. “Not in a hundred years.”
Hope you enjoyed it! This post is already very very long, but believe me, it is still a summary! So if you liked it, please say something and you might get more!