A/N: Well, here's chapter two! I hope you all will like this. The prompt was jealousy. This one isn't as blatantly Stanfou- it's mostly a Lefou character study with Stan in the background. But I hope you enjoy it nonetheless!
Gaston was everything Lefou wasn't.
And Lefou hated how desperately he wanted those things Gaston had for himself.
More than anything, he wanted to be respected and admired. Gaston was undoubtedly the most adored man in Villeneuve- heads turned to him wherever they went. No one ever noticed Lefou that way, not unless he was with Gaston.
(It never occurred to him that the attention could be negative just as easily as it could be positive. How could he parse something he had only seen secondhand? It was a foreign concept.)
Lefou's world was limited to Gaston, Tom, Dick, and Stanley. He didn't mind, of course, for they were the best friends he could want. Tom knew how to make him laugh, and Dick was an excellent mentor, and Stanley always seemed to know just the right thing to say. (And Gaston? Well, he was himself. That was good enough for Lefou.) He didn't mind the limited company. It was just that… he wondered what it might be like to see someone look at him the way he looked at Gaston.
(If he weren't so focused on Gaston, he might have seen that there actually was someone looking at him that way every minute they were together. But how could he see? Love was the ultimate blindness; other kinds, at least, would give the person some knowledge that they were blind. Love simply obscured everything else.)
He wanted to be a hero, and he wanted to be respected. He wanted to be a brave and strong. Most of all he wanted love. He wanted everything Gaston took for granted.
In his darker moments, he thought that he would even like to be feared like Gaston.
Respect, to Lefou, was like a sword. It was undoubtedly a handy weapon. It looked beautiful too, and could feel comforting to have- just look at Stanley.
Fear, on the other hand, was like a cannon. When Lefou and Gaston had been in war, it was the booms of the cannons that caused more panic than anything else. It could bulldoze a crowd, and no weapon could best it. No army was complete without a powerful cannon.
Respect was powerful, but fear, Lefou thought, was the most powerful of all.
Sometimes, in those dark moments, Lefou wished that just once he could know what it felt like to have that much control. It wasn't that he wanted to do anything devious, of course. He just wanted to know what it was like to have such a thing at his disposal.
(What he really wanted, though he didn't realize it, was simply not to be pushed around. No more, and no less.)
By the time Lefou finally understood what he had really wanted all along, Gaston was long gone.
That might have made it easier to let go, when he thought about it.
Falling in love with Stanley didn't hurt, either.
Still, even when he accepted that he was Lefou and not Gaston, he wondered what it was about himself that Stanley was drawn to.
(Not until Stanley told him did he finally open his eyes.)
Gaston had been everything Lefou wasn't, but it was a good thing. He had kindness where Gaston had had callousness. He had altruism where Gaston had only had narcissism.
Most importantly, he had love. And that was something Gaston had never understood.
Letting go of the jealousy was like the first day of spring. It was refreshing and new and full of hope. It meant renewal and healing. It meant seeing what had been buried underneath the snow.
(It meant a new life. It meant warmth to chase away the cold of winter.)
(It meant being in love.)