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Bahorel had long since gotten used to being alone. His family home had never been a place he could bring friends back to. His father made sure of that, Bahorel was to stay at home and buy him cigarettes and beer. After a while, he stopped trying to make friends altogether. By fourteen he had the art of sprinting through the front door and up to his room down to a tee. His attic room was his oasis - where everything was clean and neat and the two padlocks on the door meant his father couldn't get in. No matter how hard he pounded on the door.
The second he was able he got a job, working in the diner downtown and, after two straight years of back-to-back shift serving tables and washing dishes, he had enough for a downpayment on an apartment in the more dangerous areas of Santo Domingo.
When the too cheery estate agent had opened the front door - forcing the lock a little to get it past the warped frame - the stale air smelled like nothing but freedom. The landlord was shady as hell and none of the appliances had been replaced since some time in the 70s but it was his.
The fact that he’d jumped into the shower after class only to find some stranger washing under their arms and along narrow shoulders was a surprise to say the least. Bahorel nearly fell out of the shower altogether as he pushed himself up against the far wall, trying to put as much space between them as possible.
‘What the fuck! Who the fuck are you? Get out of my shower-’ a torrent of red liquid trickled down the strangers legs and into the drain ‘-is that blood?’ The stranger jumped and turned round, hands raised.
‘Relax! It’s dye. I work in a factory. It’s dye!’ His accent was harsh but the words sounded nice - all elongated vowels and over pronunciation. Belgian maybe.
‘Don’t tell me to relax, you’re the one that broke into my house and climbed into my shower when I wasn't looking!’ Saying it out loud reminded him that he was in fact naked and Bahorel jerked to covered himself, moving so fast he almost hit himself in the face with his own hair. The guy cracked a smile as he continued running soapy hands across his chest and Bahorel tried not to follow his movements. Creepy and unexpected as his presence was, there was no denying that this guy was extremely attractive. He was tiny, easily a foot smaller than Bahorel’s 6’ 3 and there a sort of fragileness about him. He was positively fairy like; with delicate narrow hips and absolutely covered in tiny light brown freckles. He finished washing off the soap and stepped past him out of the shower. Bahorel pulled shower curtain around himself and glared out into the bathroom.
He blinked.
The curtain was a soft yellow, like the inside of a banana. Bahorel’s shower curtain was white. And his bathroom window wasn't blurred out. The floor tiles were gritty and coming up at the edges, not clean and bright and new.
This wasn’t his bathroom.
‘What the fuck is happening?’ He looked around for a towel and found two sitting on the side of the sink. He stretched for the first and it fell to the floor out of his reach. He cursed, grabbing the second between his fingertips - definitely not his, they were far too soft - and tying it around his hips before following the stranger into the other room. ‘Where am I, just- who are you?’
‘Feuilly,’ the stranger, Feuilly pulled on a pair of underwear, hopping on one foot when it got twisted around his ankle, ‘and you’re in Warsaw.’ As Feuilly bent to search through a set of drawers Bahorel just stared. He felt like he was missing a joke; how could he be in his apartment one second and then somewhere completely different in the time it took him to blink? Was it some sort of hypnosis thing? Maybe he’d been hypnotised to think it had only been a few seconds when in reality it'd been months and he'd only just woken up. He shook his head frantically.
‘What year is it?’ Feuilly still wasn't really paying attention to him. He’d pulled on a pair of dark jeans and was holding two shirts out in front of him - one white and one green. He was glancing back and forth between them deciding which one to wear. ‘Would you stop moving and answer me!’ He stopped, shoulders dropping.
‘I really didn’t want to be the one to explain this… uh- okay.’ He walked over to Bahorel and took him by the shoulders. He had to crane his head to make eye contact and once he did he narrowed his eyes and strained his face like he was concentrating very hard on something.
‘rozumiesz mnie?’
‘I- of course I can understand you you’re speaking-’ It wasn’t Spanish. The words didn’t have the right pacing to them. ‘But… how can I understand you if you’re speaking- Warsaw is Poland right?’ Feuilly nodded with a laugh. ‘So Polish… I don’t know Polish.’
‘You don’t have to. It sort of- it’s already in your brain. Because I know Polish, that make sense?’ Bahorel squinted at him. Feuilly’s shoulders slumped again.
‘Courfeyrac would be so much better at this. Even Enjolras-’
‘Who’s Enjolras?’ He could feel the warmth of Feuilly’s hands on his shoulder blades and remembered awkwardly that he was still draped in the white towel from Feuilly’s bathroom.
‘He’s like us. Look, uh…’ Bahorel realised he hadn’t given his name and quickly rattled it off. ‘Bahorel. We can talk to each other… kinda. It’s basically… you know X-Men?’ Bahorel nodded. ‘Okay, so, we are Emma Frost.’
‘You mean we can read minds, do astral projection, boost the powers of other mutants through accessing their brain waves and look incredibly hot in a white bikini?’
‘Well I don’t know about you but I look radiant in white- as for the others, yes, no… kinda?’
‘So.. not like Emma Frost at all?’
‘I said I wasn't good at this…’
‘I would have said Jean Grey.’
‘That… would have been better yeah. Basically, we’re linked. Don’t ask me how but we are. We can feel each other’s emotions and talk to each other inside our minds even though we’ve never met and- are you thinking about me in a white bikini?’ Bahorel flushed.
‘Uh, actually it was more of a Marilyn Monroe white dress scenario?’ Feuilly raised his eyebrows and Bahorel grins back at him with a shrug. ‘Can you blame me? Look how good you look.’
‘That’s not how that works I can’t see what I look like in a white bikini.’
‘Shame.’
‘Well if it ever happens I’ll send you a picture.’
‘A mind picture?’ Feuilly scoffs.
‘Sure.’
Bahorel blinked. He was back in his bathroom. He looked around, disorientated again by his surroundings.
‘cześć mam na imię Bahorel i mówię po polsku.’ The words sounded heavy on his tongue; awkward but he grinned. ‘polski polski polski.’ His shitty apartment was quiet and dark at night but he thought of Feuilly and remembered Courfeyrac and Enjolras. Strangers that could talk to each other in their minds? That he could visit whenever he wanted? It made him feel warm. Not so lonely. He thought of Feuilly and his smile grew.
Bahorel stood for a long time in the doorway to his bathroom, smiling like an idiot and testing out his Polish - saying anything and everything he could think of. Then he remembered the water was still running and rushed to turn it off.