Les Miserables Fanfiction: Passed Away
Apr. 1st, 2013 03:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrasteA few weeks ago, I saw a prompt on the Les Miserables kink meme: Do you know what this meme needs? Frottage. Any/Any, clothes on, accidental, intercrural, ANYTHING, I just need me some non-penetrative sexy times.
I thought 'hey, I could write a quick fill for that!' And then I wrote this. Great Maker. This ridiculous story is the second-longest thing I have ever posted. I think this is what happens when you let your inner fifteen-year-old fangirl become your co-writer.
Summary: Javert lives and learns. A post-Seine AU.
Pairing: Javert/Valjean
Word Count: 6,730
Continuity: This is stage musical fic where the point of AU divergence involves something that only happens in the Brick. Has some other things borrowed from the Brick, and at least one point of characterisation stolen from the 2012 movie. *waves hands*
Contains: Discussion of a canon suicide that does not work out the same way in this universe, hurt/comfort, pining, angst, fluff, dangerous quantities of clichés, passive-aggressive notes, awkward old French virgins. Some frottage. Eventually. Dammit.
When he leaves Valjean's house, Javert knows precisely where he is going. The Pontmercy boy has been returned to his grandfather, although Javert doubts that he will live to see the next dawn. Valjean is inside, changing his clothes and writing to his daughter.
He stands at the door for some minutes, although he already knows what he must do. He cannot not turn Valjean in. He cannot not let 24601 go free. The solution is obvious.
Turning on his heel, he makes for the river. For once, Javert pays little attention to the streets as he walks, his eyes fixed on the cobblestones. If there is a crime in progress he does not want to see it. He does not look at the stars above. The Seine will soon swallow him. He will conclude his career by avoiding an unavoidable error, and by justly punishing himself for his mistake. Its neatness is appealing.
By the Pont-au-Change, he hesitates long enough to make certain that he is alone. He does not look across the river toward the Palais. The dark water below moves fast, and he cannot swim. It will suffice.
When he hits the surface, the shock takes all the air from his lungs, and he begins inhaling water immediately. Yet drowning is more difficult than he thought it would be. He kicks and struggles in spite of himself, an animal panic that his mind cannot prevent, although he wants nothing more than for it to be over with. After what feels like hours but is probably a scant few minutes, everything is dark and he no longer knows the direction of the sky.
He is just beginning to relax when he finds himself seized by strong hands and dragged upwards. They can only belong to one man. Now he struggles with purpose, but Javert knows that he cannot win. Jean Valjean has the strength of the devil.
***
He is barely aware of being pulled from the river. He revives a little when rolled onto his side, and vomits half the Seine onto the bank. Valjean holds his head while he does so, and Javert feels his humiliation complete.
"Why did you do that?" he asks, when he can speak again, his voice rasping.
"I do not understand," Valjean says. "I followed you from my house, and I saw - I do not understand."
He cannot be less than honest. "I cannot turn you in. I cannot not let you go."
In the dim light, Valjean's face is stricken. He looks almost as tired as Javert feels, which is hardly a wonder given how he has spent the past two days. "No," he says. "I said I would allow you to arrest me!"
"It was not done on your account. To arrest you would not be right, but I could not -" Javert has to stop talking in order to bring up the other half of the river. It would surely be more pleasant to be dead, whatever might have awaited him beyond the veil.
"You need a hospital," Valjean says.
"No," Javert says, finding some firmness left within himself after all. "If you must take me somewhere, take me to my lodgings."
***
Being alive is a terrible inconvenience. Javert is bruised all over, he has lost one of his shoes and his greatcoat did not survive the immersion. For the second time in one night, he has to pay a driver an improvident sum to carry himself and Valjean while they dampen the seats of the fiacre in awkward silence. When he is in his room alone, he glances at his razor, but where there was conviction an hour before he finds only awful weariness. He leaves his river-soiled clothes on the floor, a thing he has never done in his life, and sleeps.
The next day he wakes with a fever, too weak to rise from his bed. His lungs feel as if they are full of the Seine once more.
After he has had the land-lady send word to his superiors and lain in bed for several hours, coughing too hard to sleep, there is a gentle knock at the door. He's still wondering if he can muster the energy to tell whoever it is to go away when it opens and Jean Valjean enters.
Javert does not have enough manners left to ask why he is here, if he ever did.
"Get out."
"I came to see if you were well. I see that you are not."
Javert wipes the sweat off his brow with the back of his hand, exasperated. "I have a chill. Your concern is unnecessary." And incomprehensible. Obviously letting Valjean know where he lived was an error, although he doubts that he could have escaped without showing him he had a home to go to.
Javert's room is not large, and there is only one chair in it, so Valjean has little choice in where to sit. He pulls the chair closer to the bed than Javert would like.
"It is the cold of the water," Valjean says. "I knew I should have taken you to hospital."
"I tell you, it is nothing," Javert says, and coughs again in a way that makes him a liar. He is too distracted to push Valjean away when he reaches over to put a hand on Javert's forehead.
"You are burning," he says. He stands up, and Javert hopes, fruitlessly, that he will go away. "Perhaps it is not a good idea to move you. I will go and get you some soup."
Javert groans in frustration, but he drinks the soup nevertheless.
***
The next day he is worse. He drifts in a fever for more than a week, neither waking nor truly sleeping. It seems that whenever he opens his eyes Jean Valjean is there, and if not Valjean then the doctor or the nurse he has set to watch Javert. Whenever he is lucid he asks to be left alone. Nobody listens, but the second time the doctor doses Javert with tartar, he stabs the man with his own lancet. They do not try to bleed him or give him any more emetics after that. He wonders if he might be lucky enough to die after all.
Pneumonia is a much slower way of drowning than the river would have been. The fluid rises to choke him until he coughs it out, his lungs burning. It is not what he wanted, but perhaps it is justice after all. His dreams are terrible.
One night he wakes and feels himself, more or less. Valjean is sleeping, slumped in Javert's single chair. The planes of his now-familiar face are made strange by the darkness.
"I wish that you would go away," Javert says quietly.
Valjean's eyes open. He is not asleep after all. "You are awake," he says, smiling. He cannot possibly be happy to see Javert improved. "Are you thirsty?"
Javert can barely raise his head to drink, but once again his animal instincts make him greedy for life. He swallows the water Valjean gives him until he coughs again.
"I do not know why you are bothering with this," he says when he can speak again.
"Because you need my help," Valjean says, "and because I have done you harm without intending to."
Javert thinks of Montreuil-sur-Mer, and of a dying whore, and hates Valjean's holy pity more than ever.
"I am still thirsty," he says, and Valjean fetches him more water.
***
In spite of himself, Javert gets well. The fever does not remain. At first he only manages to stay awake for long enough to hate his enforced idleness, but eventually he can rise from his bed. The cough persists, but it seems unlikely that it alone will kill him.
Valjean persists also. It seems that Javert must be shown his error again and again. The man he hunted is not the menace he imagined, but the kindest of souls. His every consideration is a rebuke.
Javert finds that he is now in possession of a complete pair of shoes and a greatcoat. Both are brand new, and of fine quality. After weeks without working, he does not have enough coin to pay for these, let alone for the doctor and the nurse and the soup. He reconciles himself to this by reasoning that he would not have needed any of these things if Valjean had not pulled him out of the river.
When Valjean sees Javert standing firmly on his own feet, he beams like the sun itself. "I am glad to see you recovered," he says. He reaches up to put both of his hands on Javert's shoulders.
Javert wonders if he is recovered, and why Valjean should be glad if he is. He is not glad. He feels as if he is a hundred years old and made of glass.
"I think you may have wasted your investment," he says.
Valjean's face clouds over. "Javert, you cannot mean to -"
"No," Javert says, shortly. "I do not intend to repeat myself. You do not need to keep watch on me any longer."
"Give me your word."
Javert is angry. Valjean is not his keeper. "I have broken one vow," he says. "What makes you think that I can be trusted with another?"
"You need not break that vow," Valjean says, looking away and staring out of Javert's narrow window. "I am still prepared to go with you to the police and confess my crime, if that is what you demand."
"I cannot demand it," Javert says. "I have told you, it would not be justice. That is all that I wanted."
Valjean looks at him again, his expression unreadable. "What is it that you want now, Javert?"
"Nothing," Javert says, and means it. He amends his wish. "Except for you to leave me in peace."
He returns to work, taking his cough with him. He does not say anything of the river Seine, or of Jean Valjean. His absence has left him many tasks to perform, but he does not turn to them with the same relish as before.
The cough vanishes in time, but his disquiet does not go with it.
***
When he has somehow clawed his way out of the mountain of paperwork that needs his attention, Javert writes a note to the Prefect of Police about the foolishness of requiring prisoners to stand on cold cobblestones in their bare feet. It is not as if the state has Valjean paying for their medical expenses. He half expects to be dismissed; instead he receives a polite reply. The prisoners' shoes are still removed. He sends another letter, this time about the interdict against prisoners having a chair. Again, he receives a bland response. He starts keeping a list of things to write, although he is careful not to send too many at one time.
"I do not think I will run out of things to complain of," he says to Valjean when he visits.
"You never do," Valjean replies, not unkindly. He hesitates, looking around the room at nothing. Javert admits there is not a great deal to look at. "You told me, once, that you were born in a jail."
He had not thought that Valjean remembered that conversation, wondered that he had even heard what Javert said as they shouted at each other that night.
"It is true," he says. "My mother was a fortune-teller, and she bore me in a jail. It was not the last time she was arrested."
"Your father?" Valjean asks.
Javert shrugs. "He was a convict. A petty thief sentenced to the galleys. Must we speak of this?"
"I apologise if the subject is painful."
"It is not that. It is – a long time ago." Javert does not often think of his childhood, or his parents. "I chose a different path."
Standing in this room with a parole-breaker, he wonders if the path has not brought him around again to where he began, if everything he did in the name of the law was a lie. He manages not to say this to Valjean.
"My parents were honest," Valjean says, "as far as I recall."
Javert does not need to ask why the son of an honest family turned to crime – it had all been there when he had looked into Valjean's life at Faverolles. A widowed sister and seven little children. Javert had felt no sympathy when he learned of this.
"I must ask," he says, because it preys upon his mind still, "did you truly steal the Bishop of Digne's silver?"
"Yes," Valjean says, gravely. "He made a reformed man of me when he gave it as a present rather than returning me to the galleys."
The shoes on Javert's feet were, ultimately, purchased with the profits of theft. He supposes that he knew that already. Half the beggars in the city must be fed by the descendants of the coins Jean Valjean acquired by stealing.
"Then you did break your parole at the first opportunity," he says. It brings him no joy to know it for a fact.
"Not the first, Javert. I did try to find work, but my yellow papers made it impossible. Perhaps you should raise that matter with the Prefect of Police." There is an old bitterness in his tone.
"Some reform of the parole system should perhaps be attempted," he concedes, without specifically agreeing.
All at once Valjean's dark mood is gone, and he smiles. "I think it is not only the health of your lungs that progresses," he says, clapping Javert on the arm.
Javert does not know if it is progress, but it is impossible to continue disliking Valjean when he smiles so. Even for Javert, who is practised at disliking people in general, and Valjean in particular.
***
Before they were directed toward the Prefect, Javert directed his petitions towards God. Now he does not know what to say to Him. It has become all too apparent that God is not as Javert thought He was, and he finds himself suddenly shy. He prays by rote and by habit, without saying anything. He does not know how to say that he fears he has been wrong all this time, that he fears he is wrong even now but he is not sure in which direction his error lies.
He often walks by the river at night, but he does not think to throw himself into it. It is partly because he is irrationally convinced that Valjean would only pull him out again, like some unwanted guardian angel. He has no wish to go through all of that again. It is partly because he feels he has gone beyond that – if he has done wrong in letting Valjean go free, then he has surely compounded his error to the point where it cannot be expiated so straightforwardly.
His dreams trouble him still, but as autumn continues and his body returns to its strength, other spectres replace the river in his mind. The first time he dreams of Valjean kissing him and wakes with his cock straining against the bedclothes, he is not even surprised. He used to tell himself that he admired 24601 as a man might admire a strong horse, and that he found M. le Maire merely exasperating. Javert thinks that he is more honest with himself than he used to be, in balance for being less so with the world.
As he writes to the Prefect to criticise the gendarmes for speaking of what they hear during interrogations, he cannot help praying that nobody else knows that the man Javert is seen visiting at all hours is a convict. He prays also that Valjean does not notice the way Javert sometimes looks at him.
***
Valjean does not stop touching him. It is small things only - the way Valjean extends a hand to him whenever they meet, quite unnecessarily. The way he takes Javert's arm when they walk down the street together. A friendly hand on his shoulder. He cannot mean anything by it; Javert knows that he is reading lines that are not there.
Valjean leads a retiring life. Javert gathers that it has been so ever since he came to Paris. Doubtless he wished to avoid pursuit. He can only imagine what might have happened if they had come upon each other in the street during the past ten years. Still, he seeks Javert's company. If he passes several days together without taking himself to Valjean's door, he can be certain of receiving a letter politely inquiring of his health. He feels as if he is on parole.
Javert was surprised, at first, to find that Valjean's company is not unpleasant. Now he almost enjoys it. They don't speak of Toulon, or of the river, but they find other things to talk of. He can argue freely about all the things he wished to criticise Monsieur Madeleine for in Montreuil-sur-Mer. Javert also tells Valjean of his work. Having spared one criminal - and the Pontmercy boy besides, Javert must remind himself - he watches himself for signs of unpardonable leniency. He knows he has been sufficiently strict if Valjean frowns at his stories. He barely admits to himself that he prefers it when Valjean smiles.
He is hardly the only man who has stirred Javert to such thoughts. Yet if he has been stirred by other men, it has been rare that he has actually liked them. He is beginning to fear that Valjean might be his friend.
***
It is January, already more than six months since the summer and his fall, and the air is freezing at night. Javert walks with his hands in the pockets of his coat. He tells Valjean that he hates the winter cold in Paris, something he has never bothered to tell anyone before. At night he finds himself staring skyward more than ever, although more often than not he sees nothing but clouds. It is an uncommonly wet winter.
Valjean seems increasingly troubled by something. Javert does not ask what it is. He adds it to the list of subjects that he does not mention - Touloun, the river, whatever it is which Javert has come to feel for him.
Valjean tells him at last, as they are sitting before the fire in his dining room. It is late in the night, and Javert did not mean to come here at all, but he arrested a murderer today and he is contented to sit and tell Valjean of how the case had unfolded and an evil man had been brought to justice.
"I am glad," Valjean says, "that you find satisfaction in your work again."
Javert regards him cautiously. "I always have." He may not have resolved all the new shades within his mind, but he is still pleased to see the guilty punished. Today he knows that he has done well.
"It is just -" Valjean stands up, and stares into the fire. "I am afraid that I shall not be here much longer."
Javert's heart skips within his chest, but it cannot be that his first thought is correct. Valjean is healthy for a man of his years, hale and strong. He keeps silent and waits for further intelligence.
"I have delayed too long already," Valjean says, still not looking at Javert. "My daughter is to be wed next month, and I must leave before that happens."
Javert's mouth is dry. "Why?" he asks.
"I am a thief," Valjean says, with half a smile, "and a parole-breaker. I cannot bring shame to her and her husband."
"I am the only man who knows of this, and I have told no-one. Besides, a girl who would be ashamed to have you as a father does not deserve you," Javert says softly.
Valjean looks at him, and there is a strange fondness in his expression. "I will not risk it. I still do not know who it was who tried to climb into our garden that night."
It is obvious that Valjean does not intend to be swayed. On this point, however, Javert's conscience is clear. There is only one thing to be done.
***
The Pontmercy boy seems, perhaps understandably, alarmed to see Javert at his grandfather's door.
"I am not here to arrest you," Javert says. There would be little point; doubtless he would only be pardoned anyway. Once Javert would have done it just the same. By rights, Marius Pontmercy should be dead with his fellows, but Javert sees the corpses of those rebel children in his mind's eye and cannot wish for it to have happened.
"I am here to speak of your fiancée's father," he says.
"What is it that you wish to tell me?" Pontmercy says, dismissing the servant who answered the door and leading Javert into an opulent sitting room. "I hope that he has not been involved in any impropriety."
It is all Javert can do not to burst out laughing.
The story pours out of him in a torrent while the boy stares and gasps. He begins at the beginning, with Touloun and what he knows of Valjean's path since then. He elides the details of Fantine's destitution - another lie of omission - but nothing else that is known to him. The boy's eyes widen further when he comes to the end of it.
"He was the one that saved my life? Why did he not tell me?"
"He did not wish to be a burden upon you, or an embarrassment to his daughter. If you allow him to do so, he will go away and never trouble you again."
"I cannot dream of it," Pontmercy says, springing to his feet. "If all you have said is true - and I do not doubt it, Inspector - then the man is a saint."
"He is the best man I have known," Javert says, and means it.
***
"You told him."
Valjean pushes past Javert and into his room. Javert closes the door. This is not an argument to be had where anyone else is likely to hear it.
"I did," Javert admits. Doubtless Pontmercy has blabbered all to Valjean, perhaps even to the bride-to-be.
"You had no right." For a moment, he sees 24601 staring at him from out of Valjean's eyes. He thinks the man may strike him.
"You were being ridiculous," Javert says. "I did not give you your life so that you could make yourself miserable."
"I did not give you yours so that you could fling yourself into the Seine in a fit of pique." Javert's reaction must show in his eyes although he holds his face still, because as soon as he has said it, Valjean begins apologising. "My friend, I am sorry, I did not mean -"
"I am not your friend," Javert says, "nor a needy orphan child, nor a stray dog that you have rescued. Get out."
This time, Valjean leaves without protest. Javert looks at the floor until the sound of his steps dies away.
***
They invite him to the wedding.
Javert does not intend to go. Pontmercy's effusive gratitude for his honesty - and for his forbearance from arresting him, not that he has written that part down - is clear enough in the letter. It will be worse in person. People do not invite Javert to weddings. He cannot recall ever having been to one. Valjean has let him alone since they fought, and he should not risk renewing their acquaintance.
He goes with his shoes and buttons polished to a fault. Some of the guests give him odd looks, like sheep studying a dog in their midst, but Javert likes to think of himself as a deterrent to crime. The bride and groom seem not to notice, having eyes only for each other. Javert observes and listens but tries to set aside any speculation on which of these people have committed which offenses, as is his instinct whenever he is in a crowd. Doubtless they have a better class of criminals here than the ones he usually arrests, although he sees a baron who looks almost familiar.
He manages to avoid the bride's father at first, but Valjean has, after all, the soft tread of a criminal. At the wedding feast he creeps up to Javert and is at his elbow before he can gracefully withdraw.
"You were right," Valjean says, when he sees the look on his face, doubtless to forestall him from leaving at once.
"I am glad that you realise it," Javert says.
Amidst the crowd, Valjean reaches out and takes one of Javert's hands in both of his own. "I have forgiven you for your good deed," he says. "Can you forgive me for my unkind words?"
Javert curses himself for hesitating, and then again for not pulling his hand away immediately. "There is nothing to forgive," he says.
***
Javert does not realise that he is drunk until they are walking to the Rue de l'Homme Arme together, late in the night. It is not as if he can't walk a straight line, but the celebration was long and the wine was good. He is not accustomed to drinking so much at a sitting. From the way Valjean leans into him as they walk, he suspects that he is not the only one. Somehow they ended up in a corner of the room, talking about nothing in particular, until midnight came and they were thrown out with exquisite politeness.
".. and that is Canis Major" Javert says, pointing at the sky, which is clear for the first time in weeks. "And there is Orion. The three stars in the middle are his belt, and there is his sword. He is a hunter."
Valjean laughs. "Yes, I see. He reminds me of someone."
"... and there ..." Javert goes to point to Canis Minor, but it is behind a roof. Frowning, he looks about him and sees a nice, sturdy wall. "I cannot show you properly from down here."
He extracts his arm from Valjean's grip, puts his hands on the wall and begins climbing. Soon enough he is perched atop it, looking down.
"Javert," Valjean says, laughing, "I think you are drunk."
"Possibly," Javert admits. He is an honest man. "But I confess that I have climbed this wall before, or one very like it, to get a better look at the sky."
Valjean looks up at him, and then after a moment's hesitation he scrambles up as well, as easily as if he is climbing his own stairs. Javert forgets immediately why they are there.
"Jean-le-Cric," he says with a smile. He does not think that the thought of Toulon has eve made him smile before. "I remember, you were forever climbing things."
For a moment he thinks he has erred in mentioning it, but Valjean still seems amused. "They could not make me stop," he admits, "any more than that could make me stop trying to escape."
"I never understood," Javert says, sitting down on the wall, "why you would not stop running." They have both stopped smiling now, but he wants to know. To understand. Valjean sits down beside him.
"In that place, I was more like a trapped animal than a man. I did not think. All I wanted was the open sky above me."
"Even though we would not stop beating you for it."
Valjean looks at him steadily out of the darkness. His hand brushes against Javert's own where he grips the wall.
"You were always fair. I hated that about you, in Toulon. I hated to think that any punishment I received was just. It was not until Montreuil that I appreciated it."
"I am not sure I was ever fair to you in Montreuil-su-Mer."
"It is not as if you were wrong about what I was. Although the way you watched maddened me."
"I wondered," Javert says, "that you did not find some pretext to denounce me. You could have said anything, and the populace would have stood with you."
"Nobody would have believed you to be dishonest," Valjean says. "Besides, I could see your usefulness to the town, and I could have been burdened with far worse police inspectors. I did not wish to be rid of you, at least not all the time."
"It seems that has not changed."
"Javert, you think that I pity you. I promise you, I am far more selfish than that. You are the only man in the world who truly knows who I am. I do not think you know what that means to me."
"I am terrible company."
Valjean laughs again. "Well, then, what of it? So am I."
For want of elsewhere to look or something else to say, Javert raises his eyes to the sky and points toward the horizon. "Orion's prey, whom he is forever chasing but can never catch, lies there. He cannot even set eyes on his scorpion from where he stands. I think your comparison was apt."
Valjean holds up his hands, palms facing each other, close enough that Javert could put the cuffs around his wrists right now. "Javert, you have me. If that is what you want."
Not trusting himself to reply, Javert stands up. "The Greeks said that Orion was put in the sky to punish him for his pride."
"Or to reward him for his dedication to his craft," Valjean says. "There is more than one version of the story."
Angel or devil, Valjean is the most exasperating man in France. Javert does not venture a guess as to whether there are more vexing ones in parts of the world he has not known.
"We need to go home," he says, "before these good people of Paris awake and find us on their garden wall."
He gives Valjean his hand to help him down. They walk the rest of the way to Valjean's house in silence, but it is not an uncomfortable one.
***
There is no doubting now that they are friends. It torments Javert as much as it pleases him, but he finds that he would not have it otherwise. Valjean is delighted that his daughter is married, and that spring has come at last, and his delight infects even Javert. Not that he admits to it.
One Sunday afternoon in March they walk through the Luxemborg Gardens and back to Valjean's door together, arguing about what Javert should write in his next letter to the Prefect. Valjean is not at all useful as a source of practical suggestions, despite having toiled on a chain for nineteen years. 'Universal mercy and charity' does not constitute a sensible plan for prison reform in Javert's informed opinion.
"I cannot tell the Prefect to stop the flogging of prisoners altogether," Javert protests. "He will think I have gone mad."
"Are you still concerned that you will be dismissed?"
"On the contrary. I fear they may promote me." Valjean laughs. "I am not joking. I think the office of the Prefect believes this is some kind of political campaign."
"Perhaps they will make you the next Prefect. Then prisoners will be permitted to keep their shoes on in the yard and to buy chairs."
Perhaps they should make Valjean the Prefect, and have him open every jail and bagne to the streets. Javert grimaces. He still feels that he is balanced on a high wall, that he may slip if he steps too far to either side. "You are a poor influence on me," he says, as they climb the stairs to Valjean's apartment. "If I had not met you-" he stops himself. They hover awkwardly in the doorway of the dining room.
"I am not sorry that we met," Valjean says quietly.
"I am," Javert replies, "but only intermittently."
If he had never met this damnable man, he would never have been confused enough to have thrown himself into the river. No other could have turned him aside from his stated course. He would have trod on his straight path all the way to his grave without looking to either side. It would have been easier.
Valjean looks sad, but not surprised. "Thank you," he says, "for your honesty."
"There is only one matter in which I have ever known myself to be less."
Now there is a gleam of the old anger in Valjean's eyes. "Javert, you say that you do not understand me, and I find that I understand you no better. If you think that you have done wrong by letting me go free -"
"That is not what I meant. It would have been incorrect of me to send a man whom I know to be nothing but good to the galleys for life. My dishonesty was in respect of my motivations."
Now confusion replaces the anger. Javert thinks that he could watch these changes in Valjean's expression forever. "I am not a marble saint, Javert. I am a man, no worse than any, and no better either. I do not understand what you want from me."
That, finally, is too much for Javert to bear. His mind cannot contain the impulse any longer. He steps forward and puts a hand on the back of Valjean's head, and when Valjean does not pull away, he bends and kisses him.
Javert is no expert on the subject, but when Valjean's lips open under his own and he slides his tongue into Javert's mouth, he is reasonably sure that Valjean is kissing him back.
One of Valjean's hands rises to cup the back of Javert's head, pressing them more closely together. Their teeth knock against each other, and Javert pulls himself away.
"I have never -" Valjean says, helplessly.
"Nor have I," Javert replies, and kisses him again anyway. They are getting better at it already.
Awkwardly, without looking where they are going, Valjean pushes him backwards through the dining room until they reach what is presumably Valjean's bedroom, and Valjean's bed. Without ceasing to kiss, Javert finds himself half-sitting and half-lying upon it with Valjean atop him.
Javert cannot remember the last time he was so close to anybody, at least anybody he was not trying to handcuff at the time. Very soon it is far too warm to be wearing a coat indoors. He pulls away far enough to remove the outer layer of his clothing.
"I have wanted to do this for months," Valjean says, looking as astonished at Javert feels.
"You might have said something sooner," Javert says irritably, cupping Valjean's chin in his hand and kissing him again, less intently this time. Since Valjean does not seem to be in a hurry to remove his own coat, Javert begins to undo the buttons for him.
"I did not know what you would do," Valjean protests. "I could hardly imagine that you returned my -" Javert kisses him again, before he can say anything further.
Valjean slides even closer, his weight on Javert's lap. He wonders, briefly, what the good God thinks of this. Sodomy is perfectly legal. Assuming they are to proceed as far as sodomy. Javert does not think he will last so long if Valjean continues moving against his cock like that. Perhaps now is not the moment to ask Valjean his theological position on unnatural acts committed on the Sabbath.
Valjean pushes his leg between his and Javert thrusts up to meet him. With the weight on him, he cannot move as quickly as his hips will him to, but that is probably just as well. At some point Valjean unbound Javert's hair and he has a hand tangled in it.
Valjean licks his neck, drawing a sound from Javert that he did not intend to make. "We could have done this months ago," he says, "we could have - I wanted -" Javert puts his hand over his mouth before he can foolishly declare his passion for 24601 or M. le Maire. Then he has a better idea and grabs for Valjean's hand instead. Valjean does not protest as Javert licks the palm and pulls two fingers into his mouth.
It is difficult to thrust against Valjean's leg and to suck on his fingers at the same time, and eventually he cannot get enough air and releases the hand. Valjean slides it down between them and fumbles with the buttons of Javert's trousers for a moment before he gives up and reaches under the waistband instead. Javert shuts his eyes, and then opens them again. He does not want to relinquish the wondering look on Valjean's face. Perhaps that is unwise, because Valjean barely gets a hand around his cock and strokes once before Javert is spending all over Valjean's hand and his own trousers.
As he lies there stunned and panting, his mind clears, like the moon breaking from behind a cloud.
Once he feels able to move again, he sits up and pushes Valjean gently backwards onto the bed. Valjean restrains himself better than Javert did when his trousers are unbuttoned, but his hand goes to Javert's wrist and grips it tightly when Javert takes his cock.
"Please," he says, and Javert isn't sure if he's asking for this to stop or continue, but then Valjean's cock twitches and he decides to give it the deciding vote.
Here, at last, is familiar ground. More or less. If the angle is strange and the strokes perforce a touch longer than the ones he would use on himself, it is not so very different. "I have done this to myself a hundred times," he says, "and thought of you."
Valjean does not reply, which is probably just as well. His eyes are closed. With his left hand, Javert pulls up Valjean's shirt. There are scars even here, although not as many as he knows there must be on his back, and he traces one with a finger. Valjean tenses, and this time the meaning of his hand on Javert's wrist is clear. He raises the hand to stroke his face, instead.
"I want to look at you," he says. "You do not need to hide yourself from me, Jean Valjean."
Javert does not have a word for the sound Valjean makes as he spends himself, but he wants to hear it again.
For a moment they stare at each other, and it is only now that Javert truly notices that both of them are a sticky mess and still wearing most of their clothes. He still has his damned shoes on.
Seeing that this is as good a place to begin as any, he removes them, then unbuttons his trousers and slides those off as well, with a grimace of disgust. How he will get home in such a disreputable state, the Lord alone can tell.
"I believe it is traditional," Valjean says, still breathing hard, "to remove one's trousers before beginning."
"I can see why," Javert agrees dryly.
"Ah, well. We have learned a valuable lesson which we may benefit from in future."
Javert goes very still. Most of his clothes are now in a pile on the floor. The spring sun is streaming through the window. Valjean is smiling at him. It occurs to him that he is in love.
"I think," he says after he can trust his voice again, "that this afternoon has been an education."
Valjean laughs. It is not like any laugh Javert has heard before, and would like to hear that again too. He removes his own shoes and trousers, and lies down in nothing but his shirt. Javert lies beside him, wondering where the ribband that bound his hair got to. When Valjean starts running his fingers through it again, he decides that he can pursue the matter later.
It is ridiculous to be lying down in the middle of the afternoon, but it would not rank highly on the list of ridiculous things he has done today. He puts an arm around Valjean.
"There world is a great deal stranger than I ever thought it was," he observes. "If I had not met you, I would not have learned that."
"Strange indeed." Valjean shuts his eyes. "Please do not go away," he says.
"I will not," Javert says. Having Jean Valjean within his grasp at last, he has no intention of letting him go.
The End
I thought 'hey, I could write a quick fill for that!' And then I wrote this. Great Maker. This ridiculous story is the second-longest thing I have ever posted. I think this is what happens when you let your inner fifteen-year-old fangirl become your co-writer.
Summary: Javert lives and learns. A post-Seine AU.
Pairing: Javert/Valjean
Word Count: 6,730
Continuity: This is stage musical fic where the point of AU divergence involves something that only happens in the Brick. Has some other things borrowed from the Brick, and at least one point of characterisation stolen from the 2012 movie. *waves hands*
Contains: Discussion of a canon suicide that does not work out the same way in this universe, hurt/comfort, pining, angst, fluff, dangerous quantities of clichés, passive-aggressive notes, awkward old French virgins. Some frottage. Eventually. Dammit.
When he leaves Valjean's house, Javert knows precisely where he is going. The Pontmercy boy has been returned to his grandfather, although Javert doubts that he will live to see the next dawn. Valjean is inside, changing his clothes and writing to his daughter.
He stands at the door for some minutes, although he already knows what he must do. He cannot not turn Valjean in. He cannot not let 24601 go free. The solution is obvious.
Turning on his heel, he makes for the river. For once, Javert pays little attention to the streets as he walks, his eyes fixed on the cobblestones. If there is a crime in progress he does not want to see it. He does not look at the stars above. The Seine will soon swallow him. He will conclude his career by avoiding an unavoidable error, and by justly punishing himself for his mistake. Its neatness is appealing.
By the Pont-au-Change, he hesitates long enough to make certain that he is alone. He does not look across the river toward the Palais. The dark water below moves fast, and he cannot swim. It will suffice.
When he hits the surface, the shock takes all the air from his lungs, and he begins inhaling water immediately. Yet drowning is more difficult than he thought it would be. He kicks and struggles in spite of himself, an animal panic that his mind cannot prevent, although he wants nothing more than for it to be over with. After what feels like hours but is probably a scant few minutes, everything is dark and he no longer knows the direction of the sky.
He is just beginning to relax when he finds himself seized by strong hands and dragged upwards. They can only belong to one man. Now he struggles with purpose, but Javert knows that he cannot win. Jean Valjean has the strength of the devil.
***
He is barely aware of being pulled from the river. He revives a little when rolled onto his side, and vomits half the Seine onto the bank. Valjean holds his head while he does so, and Javert feels his humiliation complete.
"Why did you do that?" he asks, when he can speak again, his voice rasping.
"I do not understand," Valjean says. "I followed you from my house, and I saw - I do not understand."
He cannot be less than honest. "I cannot turn you in. I cannot not let you go."
In the dim light, Valjean's face is stricken. He looks almost as tired as Javert feels, which is hardly a wonder given how he has spent the past two days. "No," he says. "I said I would allow you to arrest me!"
"It was not done on your account. To arrest you would not be right, but I could not -" Javert has to stop talking in order to bring up the other half of the river. It would surely be more pleasant to be dead, whatever might have awaited him beyond the veil.
"You need a hospital," Valjean says.
"No," Javert says, finding some firmness left within himself after all. "If you must take me somewhere, take me to my lodgings."
***
Being alive is a terrible inconvenience. Javert is bruised all over, he has lost one of his shoes and his greatcoat did not survive the immersion. For the second time in one night, he has to pay a driver an improvident sum to carry himself and Valjean while they dampen the seats of the fiacre in awkward silence. When he is in his room alone, he glances at his razor, but where there was conviction an hour before he finds only awful weariness. He leaves his river-soiled clothes on the floor, a thing he has never done in his life, and sleeps.
The next day he wakes with a fever, too weak to rise from his bed. His lungs feel as if they are full of the Seine once more.
After he has had the land-lady send word to his superiors and lain in bed for several hours, coughing too hard to sleep, there is a gentle knock at the door. He's still wondering if he can muster the energy to tell whoever it is to go away when it opens and Jean Valjean enters.
Javert does not have enough manners left to ask why he is here, if he ever did.
"Get out."
"I came to see if you were well. I see that you are not."
Javert wipes the sweat off his brow with the back of his hand, exasperated. "I have a chill. Your concern is unnecessary." And incomprehensible. Obviously letting Valjean know where he lived was an error, although he doubts that he could have escaped without showing him he had a home to go to.
Javert's room is not large, and there is only one chair in it, so Valjean has little choice in where to sit. He pulls the chair closer to the bed than Javert would like.
"It is the cold of the water," Valjean says. "I knew I should have taken you to hospital."
"I tell you, it is nothing," Javert says, and coughs again in a way that makes him a liar. He is too distracted to push Valjean away when he reaches over to put a hand on Javert's forehead.
"You are burning," he says. He stands up, and Javert hopes, fruitlessly, that he will go away. "Perhaps it is not a good idea to move you. I will go and get you some soup."
Javert groans in frustration, but he drinks the soup nevertheless.
***
The next day he is worse. He drifts in a fever for more than a week, neither waking nor truly sleeping. It seems that whenever he opens his eyes Jean Valjean is there, and if not Valjean then the doctor or the nurse he has set to watch Javert. Whenever he is lucid he asks to be left alone. Nobody listens, but the second time the doctor doses Javert with tartar, he stabs the man with his own lancet. They do not try to bleed him or give him any more emetics after that. He wonders if he might be lucky enough to die after all.
Pneumonia is a much slower way of drowning than the river would have been. The fluid rises to choke him until he coughs it out, his lungs burning. It is not what he wanted, but perhaps it is justice after all. His dreams are terrible.
One night he wakes and feels himself, more or less. Valjean is sleeping, slumped in Javert's single chair. The planes of his now-familiar face are made strange by the darkness.
"I wish that you would go away," Javert says quietly.
Valjean's eyes open. He is not asleep after all. "You are awake," he says, smiling. He cannot possibly be happy to see Javert improved. "Are you thirsty?"
Javert can barely raise his head to drink, but once again his animal instincts make him greedy for life. He swallows the water Valjean gives him until he coughs again.
"I do not know why you are bothering with this," he says when he can speak again.
"Because you need my help," Valjean says, "and because I have done you harm without intending to."
Javert thinks of Montreuil-sur-Mer, and of a dying whore, and hates Valjean's holy pity more than ever.
"I am still thirsty," he says, and Valjean fetches him more water.
***
In spite of himself, Javert gets well. The fever does not remain. At first he only manages to stay awake for long enough to hate his enforced idleness, but eventually he can rise from his bed. The cough persists, but it seems unlikely that it alone will kill him.
Valjean persists also. It seems that Javert must be shown his error again and again. The man he hunted is not the menace he imagined, but the kindest of souls. His every consideration is a rebuke.
Javert finds that he is now in possession of a complete pair of shoes and a greatcoat. Both are brand new, and of fine quality. After weeks without working, he does not have enough coin to pay for these, let alone for the doctor and the nurse and the soup. He reconciles himself to this by reasoning that he would not have needed any of these things if Valjean had not pulled him out of the river.
When Valjean sees Javert standing firmly on his own feet, he beams like the sun itself. "I am glad to see you recovered," he says. He reaches up to put both of his hands on Javert's shoulders.
Javert wonders if he is recovered, and why Valjean should be glad if he is. He is not glad. He feels as if he is a hundred years old and made of glass.
"I think you may have wasted your investment," he says.
Valjean's face clouds over. "Javert, you cannot mean to -"
"No," Javert says, shortly. "I do not intend to repeat myself. You do not need to keep watch on me any longer."
"Give me your word."
Javert is angry. Valjean is not his keeper. "I have broken one vow," he says. "What makes you think that I can be trusted with another?"
"You need not break that vow," Valjean says, looking away and staring out of Javert's narrow window. "I am still prepared to go with you to the police and confess my crime, if that is what you demand."
"I cannot demand it," Javert says. "I have told you, it would not be justice. That is all that I wanted."
Valjean looks at him again, his expression unreadable. "What is it that you want now, Javert?"
"Nothing," Javert says, and means it. He amends his wish. "Except for you to leave me in peace."
He returns to work, taking his cough with him. He does not say anything of the river Seine, or of Jean Valjean. His absence has left him many tasks to perform, but he does not turn to them with the same relish as before.
The cough vanishes in time, but his disquiet does not go with it.
***
When he has somehow clawed his way out of the mountain of paperwork that needs his attention, Javert writes a note to the Prefect of Police about the foolishness of requiring prisoners to stand on cold cobblestones in their bare feet. It is not as if the state has Valjean paying for their medical expenses. He half expects to be dismissed; instead he receives a polite reply. The prisoners' shoes are still removed. He sends another letter, this time about the interdict against prisoners having a chair. Again, he receives a bland response. He starts keeping a list of things to write, although he is careful not to send too many at one time.
"I do not think I will run out of things to complain of," he says to Valjean when he visits.
"You never do," Valjean replies, not unkindly. He hesitates, looking around the room at nothing. Javert admits there is not a great deal to look at. "You told me, once, that you were born in a jail."
He had not thought that Valjean remembered that conversation, wondered that he had even heard what Javert said as they shouted at each other that night.
"It is true," he says. "My mother was a fortune-teller, and she bore me in a jail. It was not the last time she was arrested."
"Your father?" Valjean asks.
Javert shrugs. "He was a convict. A petty thief sentenced to the galleys. Must we speak of this?"
"I apologise if the subject is painful."
"It is not that. It is – a long time ago." Javert does not often think of his childhood, or his parents. "I chose a different path."
Standing in this room with a parole-breaker, he wonders if the path has not brought him around again to where he began, if everything he did in the name of the law was a lie. He manages not to say this to Valjean.
"My parents were honest," Valjean says, "as far as I recall."
Javert does not need to ask why the son of an honest family turned to crime – it had all been there when he had looked into Valjean's life at Faverolles. A widowed sister and seven little children. Javert had felt no sympathy when he learned of this.
"I must ask," he says, because it preys upon his mind still, "did you truly steal the Bishop of Digne's silver?"
"Yes," Valjean says, gravely. "He made a reformed man of me when he gave it as a present rather than returning me to the galleys."
The shoes on Javert's feet were, ultimately, purchased with the profits of theft. He supposes that he knew that already. Half the beggars in the city must be fed by the descendants of the coins Jean Valjean acquired by stealing.
"Then you did break your parole at the first opportunity," he says. It brings him no joy to know it for a fact.
"Not the first, Javert. I did try to find work, but my yellow papers made it impossible. Perhaps you should raise that matter with the Prefect of Police." There is an old bitterness in his tone.
"Some reform of the parole system should perhaps be attempted," he concedes, without specifically agreeing.
All at once Valjean's dark mood is gone, and he smiles. "I think it is not only the health of your lungs that progresses," he says, clapping Javert on the arm.
Javert does not know if it is progress, but it is impossible to continue disliking Valjean when he smiles so. Even for Javert, who is practised at disliking people in general, and Valjean in particular.
***
Before they were directed toward the Prefect, Javert directed his petitions towards God. Now he does not know what to say to Him. It has become all too apparent that God is not as Javert thought He was, and he finds himself suddenly shy. He prays by rote and by habit, without saying anything. He does not know how to say that he fears he has been wrong all this time, that he fears he is wrong even now but he is not sure in which direction his error lies.
He often walks by the river at night, but he does not think to throw himself into it. It is partly because he is irrationally convinced that Valjean would only pull him out again, like some unwanted guardian angel. He has no wish to go through all of that again. It is partly because he feels he has gone beyond that – if he has done wrong in letting Valjean go free, then he has surely compounded his error to the point where it cannot be expiated so straightforwardly.
His dreams trouble him still, but as autumn continues and his body returns to its strength, other spectres replace the river in his mind. The first time he dreams of Valjean kissing him and wakes with his cock straining against the bedclothes, he is not even surprised. He used to tell himself that he admired 24601 as a man might admire a strong horse, and that he found M. le Maire merely exasperating. Javert thinks that he is more honest with himself than he used to be, in balance for being less so with the world.
As he writes to the Prefect to criticise the gendarmes for speaking of what they hear during interrogations, he cannot help praying that nobody else knows that the man Javert is seen visiting at all hours is a convict. He prays also that Valjean does not notice the way Javert sometimes looks at him.
***
Valjean does not stop touching him. It is small things only - the way Valjean extends a hand to him whenever they meet, quite unnecessarily. The way he takes Javert's arm when they walk down the street together. A friendly hand on his shoulder. He cannot mean anything by it; Javert knows that he is reading lines that are not there.
Valjean leads a retiring life. Javert gathers that it has been so ever since he came to Paris. Doubtless he wished to avoid pursuit. He can only imagine what might have happened if they had come upon each other in the street during the past ten years. Still, he seeks Javert's company. If he passes several days together without taking himself to Valjean's door, he can be certain of receiving a letter politely inquiring of his health. He feels as if he is on parole.
Javert was surprised, at first, to find that Valjean's company is not unpleasant. Now he almost enjoys it. They don't speak of Toulon, or of the river, but they find other things to talk of. He can argue freely about all the things he wished to criticise Monsieur Madeleine for in Montreuil-sur-Mer. Javert also tells Valjean of his work. Having spared one criminal - and the Pontmercy boy besides, Javert must remind himself - he watches himself for signs of unpardonable leniency. He knows he has been sufficiently strict if Valjean frowns at his stories. He barely admits to himself that he prefers it when Valjean smiles.
He is hardly the only man who has stirred Javert to such thoughts. Yet if he has been stirred by other men, it has been rare that he has actually liked them. He is beginning to fear that Valjean might be his friend.
***
It is January, already more than six months since the summer and his fall, and the air is freezing at night. Javert walks with his hands in the pockets of his coat. He tells Valjean that he hates the winter cold in Paris, something he has never bothered to tell anyone before. At night he finds himself staring skyward more than ever, although more often than not he sees nothing but clouds. It is an uncommonly wet winter.
Valjean seems increasingly troubled by something. Javert does not ask what it is. He adds it to the list of subjects that he does not mention - Touloun, the river, whatever it is which Javert has come to feel for him.
Valjean tells him at last, as they are sitting before the fire in his dining room. It is late in the night, and Javert did not mean to come here at all, but he arrested a murderer today and he is contented to sit and tell Valjean of how the case had unfolded and an evil man had been brought to justice.
"I am glad," Valjean says, "that you find satisfaction in your work again."
Javert regards him cautiously. "I always have." He may not have resolved all the new shades within his mind, but he is still pleased to see the guilty punished. Today he knows that he has done well.
"It is just -" Valjean stands up, and stares into the fire. "I am afraid that I shall not be here much longer."
Javert's heart skips within his chest, but it cannot be that his first thought is correct. Valjean is healthy for a man of his years, hale and strong. He keeps silent and waits for further intelligence.
"I have delayed too long already," Valjean says, still not looking at Javert. "My daughter is to be wed next month, and I must leave before that happens."
Javert's mouth is dry. "Why?" he asks.
"I am a thief," Valjean says, with half a smile, "and a parole-breaker. I cannot bring shame to her and her husband."
"I am the only man who knows of this, and I have told no-one. Besides, a girl who would be ashamed to have you as a father does not deserve you," Javert says softly.
Valjean looks at him, and there is a strange fondness in his expression. "I will not risk it. I still do not know who it was who tried to climb into our garden that night."
It is obvious that Valjean does not intend to be swayed. On this point, however, Javert's conscience is clear. There is only one thing to be done.
***
The Pontmercy boy seems, perhaps understandably, alarmed to see Javert at his grandfather's door.
"I am not here to arrest you," Javert says. There would be little point; doubtless he would only be pardoned anyway. Once Javert would have done it just the same. By rights, Marius Pontmercy should be dead with his fellows, but Javert sees the corpses of those rebel children in his mind's eye and cannot wish for it to have happened.
"I am here to speak of your fiancée's father," he says.
"What is it that you wish to tell me?" Pontmercy says, dismissing the servant who answered the door and leading Javert into an opulent sitting room. "I hope that he has not been involved in any impropriety."
It is all Javert can do not to burst out laughing.
The story pours out of him in a torrent while the boy stares and gasps. He begins at the beginning, with Touloun and what he knows of Valjean's path since then. He elides the details of Fantine's destitution - another lie of omission - but nothing else that is known to him. The boy's eyes widen further when he comes to the end of it.
"He was the one that saved my life? Why did he not tell me?"
"He did not wish to be a burden upon you, or an embarrassment to his daughter. If you allow him to do so, he will go away and never trouble you again."
"I cannot dream of it," Pontmercy says, springing to his feet. "If all you have said is true - and I do not doubt it, Inspector - then the man is a saint."
"He is the best man I have known," Javert says, and means it.
***
"You told him."
Valjean pushes past Javert and into his room. Javert closes the door. This is not an argument to be had where anyone else is likely to hear it.
"I did," Javert admits. Doubtless Pontmercy has blabbered all to Valjean, perhaps even to the bride-to-be.
"You had no right." For a moment, he sees 24601 staring at him from out of Valjean's eyes. He thinks the man may strike him.
"You were being ridiculous," Javert says. "I did not give you your life so that you could make yourself miserable."
"I did not give you yours so that you could fling yourself into the Seine in a fit of pique." Javert's reaction must show in his eyes although he holds his face still, because as soon as he has said it, Valjean begins apologising. "My friend, I am sorry, I did not mean -"
"I am not your friend," Javert says, "nor a needy orphan child, nor a stray dog that you have rescued. Get out."
This time, Valjean leaves without protest. Javert looks at the floor until the sound of his steps dies away.
***
They invite him to the wedding.
Javert does not intend to go. Pontmercy's effusive gratitude for his honesty - and for his forbearance from arresting him, not that he has written that part down - is clear enough in the letter. It will be worse in person. People do not invite Javert to weddings. He cannot recall ever having been to one. Valjean has let him alone since they fought, and he should not risk renewing their acquaintance.
He goes with his shoes and buttons polished to a fault. Some of the guests give him odd looks, like sheep studying a dog in their midst, but Javert likes to think of himself as a deterrent to crime. The bride and groom seem not to notice, having eyes only for each other. Javert observes and listens but tries to set aside any speculation on which of these people have committed which offenses, as is his instinct whenever he is in a crowd. Doubtless they have a better class of criminals here than the ones he usually arrests, although he sees a baron who looks almost familiar.
He manages to avoid the bride's father at first, but Valjean has, after all, the soft tread of a criminal. At the wedding feast he creeps up to Javert and is at his elbow before he can gracefully withdraw.
"You were right," Valjean says, when he sees the look on his face, doubtless to forestall him from leaving at once.
"I am glad that you realise it," Javert says.
Amidst the crowd, Valjean reaches out and takes one of Javert's hands in both of his own. "I have forgiven you for your good deed," he says. "Can you forgive me for my unkind words?"
Javert curses himself for hesitating, and then again for not pulling his hand away immediately. "There is nothing to forgive," he says.
***
Javert does not realise that he is drunk until they are walking to the Rue de l'Homme Arme together, late in the night. It is not as if he can't walk a straight line, but the celebration was long and the wine was good. He is not accustomed to drinking so much at a sitting. From the way Valjean leans into him as they walk, he suspects that he is not the only one. Somehow they ended up in a corner of the room, talking about nothing in particular, until midnight came and they were thrown out with exquisite politeness.
".. and that is Canis Major" Javert says, pointing at the sky, which is clear for the first time in weeks. "And there is Orion. The three stars in the middle are his belt, and there is his sword. He is a hunter."
Valjean laughs. "Yes, I see. He reminds me of someone."
"... and there ..." Javert goes to point to Canis Minor, but it is behind a roof. Frowning, he looks about him and sees a nice, sturdy wall. "I cannot show you properly from down here."
He extracts his arm from Valjean's grip, puts his hands on the wall and begins climbing. Soon enough he is perched atop it, looking down.
"Javert," Valjean says, laughing, "I think you are drunk."
"Possibly," Javert admits. He is an honest man. "But I confess that I have climbed this wall before, or one very like it, to get a better look at the sky."
Valjean looks up at him, and then after a moment's hesitation he scrambles up as well, as easily as if he is climbing his own stairs. Javert forgets immediately why they are there.
"Jean-le-Cric," he says with a smile. He does not think that the thought of Toulon has eve made him smile before. "I remember, you were forever climbing things."
For a moment he thinks he has erred in mentioning it, but Valjean still seems amused. "They could not make me stop," he admits, "any more than that could make me stop trying to escape."
"I never understood," Javert says, sitting down on the wall, "why you would not stop running." They have both stopped smiling now, but he wants to know. To understand. Valjean sits down beside him.
"In that place, I was more like a trapped animal than a man. I did not think. All I wanted was the open sky above me."
"Even though we would not stop beating you for it."
Valjean looks at him steadily out of the darkness. His hand brushes against Javert's own where he grips the wall.
"You were always fair. I hated that about you, in Toulon. I hated to think that any punishment I received was just. It was not until Montreuil that I appreciated it."
"I am not sure I was ever fair to you in Montreuil-su-Mer."
"It is not as if you were wrong about what I was. Although the way you watched maddened me."
"I wondered," Javert says, "that you did not find some pretext to denounce me. You could have said anything, and the populace would have stood with you."
"Nobody would have believed you to be dishonest," Valjean says. "Besides, I could see your usefulness to the town, and I could have been burdened with far worse police inspectors. I did not wish to be rid of you, at least not all the time."
"It seems that has not changed."
"Javert, you think that I pity you. I promise you, I am far more selfish than that. You are the only man in the world who truly knows who I am. I do not think you know what that means to me."
"I am terrible company."
Valjean laughs again. "Well, then, what of it? So am I."
For want of elsewhere to look or something else to say, Javert raises his eyes to the sky and points toward the horizon. "Orion's prey, whom he is forever chasing but can never catch, lies there. He cannot even set eyes on his scorpion from where he stands. I think your comparison was apt."
Valjean holds up his hands, palms facing each other, close enough that Javert could put the cuffs around his wrists right now. "Javert, you have me. If that is what you want."
Not trusting himself to reply, Javert stands up. "The Greeks said that Orion was put in the sky to punish him for his pride."
"Or to reward him for his dedication to his craft," Valjean says. "There is more than one version of the story."
Angel or devil, Valjean is the most exasperating man in France. Javert does not venture a guess as to whether there are more vexing ones in parts of the world he has not known.
"We need to go home," he says, "before these good people of Paris awake and find us on their garden wall."
He gives Valjean his hand to help him down. They walk the rest of the way to Valjean's house in silence, but it is not an uncomfortable one.
***
There is no doubting now that they are friends. It torments Javert as much as it pleases him, but he finds that he would not have it otherwise. Valjean is delighted that his daughter is married, and that spring has come at last, and his delight infects even Javert. Not that he admits to it.
One Sunday afternoon in March they walk through the Luxemborg Gardens and back to Valjean's door together, arguing about what Javert should write in his next letter to the Prefect. Valjean is not at all useful as a source of practical suggestions, despite having toiled on a chain for nineteen years. 'Universal mercy and charity' does not constitute a sensible plan for prison reform in Javert's informed opinion.
"I cannot tell the Prefect to stop the flogging of prisoners altogether," Javert protests. "He will think I have gone mad."
"Are you still concerned that you will be dismissed?"
"On the contrary. I fear they may promote me." Valjean laughs. "I am not joking. I think the office of the Prefect believes this is some kind of political campaign."
"Perhaps they will make you the next Prefect. Then prisoners will be permitted to keep their shoes on in the yard and to buy chairs."
Perhaps they should make Valjean the Prefect, and have him open every jail and bagne to the streets. Javert grimaces. He still feels that he is balanced on a high wall, that he may slip if he steps too far to either side. "You are a poor influence on me," he says, as they climb the stairs to Valjean's apartment. "If I had not met you-" he stops himself. They hover awkwardly in the doorway of the dining room.
"I am not sorry that we met," Valjean says quietly.
"I am," Javert replies, "but only intermittently."
If he had never met this damnable man, he would never have been confused enough to have thrown himself into the river. No other could have turned him aside from his stated course. He would have trod on his straight path all the way to his grave without looking to either side. It would have been easier.
Valjean looks sad, but not surprised. "Thank you," he says, "for your honesty."
"There is only one matter in which I have ever known myself to be less."
Now there is a gleam of the old anger in Valjean's eyes. "Javert, you say that you do not understand me, and I find that I understand you no better. If you think that you have done wrong by letting me go free -"
"That is not what I meant. It would have been incorrect of me to send a man whom I know to be nothing but good to the galleys for life. My dishonesty was in respect of my motivations."
Now confusion replaces the anger. Javert thinks that he could watch these changes in Valjean's expression forever. "I am not a marble saint, Javert. I am a man, no worse than any, and no better either. I do not understand what you want from me."
That, finally, is too much for Javert to bear. His mind cannot contain the impulse any longer. He steps forward and puts a hand on the back of Valjean's head, and when Valjean does not pull away, he bends and kisses him.
Javert is no expert on the subject, but when Valjean's lips open under his own and he slides his tongue into Javert's mouth, he is reasonably sure that Valjean is kissing him back.
One of Valjean's hands rises to cup the back of Javert's head, pressing them more closely together. Their teeth knock against each other, and Javert pulls himself away.
"I have never -" Valjean says, helplessly.
"Nor have I," Javert replies, and kisses him again anyway. They are getting better at it already.
Awkwardly, without looking where they are going, Valjean pushes him backwards through the dining room until they reach what is presumably Valjean's bedroom, and Valjean's bed. Without ceasing to kiss, Javert finds himself half-sitting and half-lying upon it with Valjean atop him.
Javert cannot remember the last time he was so close to anybody, at least anybody he was not trying to handcuff at the time. Very soon it is far too warm to be wearing a coat indoors. He pulls away far enough to remove the outer layer of his clothing.
"I have wanted to do this for months," Valjean says, looking as astonished at Javert feels.
"You might have said something sooner," Javert says irritably, cupping Valjean's chin in his hand and kissing him again, less intently this time. Since Valjean does not seem to be in a hurry to remove his own coat, Javert begins to undo the buttons for him.
"I did not know what you would do," Valjean protests. "I could hardly imagine that you returned my -" Javert kisses him again, before he can say anything further.
Valjean slides even closer, his weight on Javert's lap. He wonders, briefly, what the good God thinks of this. Sodomy is perfectly legal. Assuming they are to proceed as far as sodomy. Javert does not think he will last so long if Valjean continues moving against his cock like that. Perhaps now is not the moment to ask Valjean his theological position on unnatural acts committed on the Sabbath.
Valjean pushes his leg between his and Javert thrusts up to meet him. With the weight on him, he cannot move as quickly as his hips will him to, but that is probably just as well. At some point Valjean unbound Javert's hair and he has a hand tangled in it.
Valjean licks his neck, drawing a sound from Javert that he did not intend to make. "We could have done this months ago," he says, "we could have - I wanted -" Javert puts his hand over his mouth before he can foolishly declare his passion for 24601 or M. le Maire. Then he has a better idea and grabs for Valjean's hand instead. Valjean does not protest as Javert licks the palm and pulls two fingers into his mouth.
It is difficult to thrust against Valjean's leg and to suck on his fingers at the same time, and eventually he cannot get enough air and releases the hand. Valjean slides it down between them and fumbles with the buttons of Javert's trousers for a moment before he gives up and reaches under the waistband instead. Javert shuts his eyes, and then opens them again. He does not want to relinquish the wondering look on Valjean's face. Perhaps that is unwise, because Valjean barely gets a hand around his cock and strokes once before Javert is spending all over Valjean's hand and his own trousers.
As he lies there stunned and panting, his mind clears, like the moon breaking from behind a cloud.
Once he feels able to move again, he sits up and pushes Valjean gently backwards onto the bed. Valjean restrains himself better than Javert did when his trousers are unbuttoned, but his hand goes to Javert's wrist and grips it tightly when Javert takes his cock.
"Please," he says, and Javert isn't sure if he's asking for this to stop or continue, but then Valjean's cock twitches and he decides to give it the deciding vote.
Here, at last, is familiar ground. More or less. If the angle is strange and the strokes perforce a touch longer than the ones he would use on himself, it is not so very different. "I have done this to myself a hundred times," he says, "and thought of you."
Valjean does not reply, which is probably just as well. His eyes are closed. With his left hand, Javert pulls up Valjean's shirt. There are scars even here, although not as many as he knows there must be on his back, and he traces one with a finger. Valjean tenses, and this time the meaning of his hand on Javert's wrist is clear. He raises the hand to stroke his face, instead.
"I want to look at you," he says. "You do not need to hide yourself from me, Jean Valjean."
Javert does not have a word for the sound Valjean makes as he spends himself, but he wants to hear it again.
For a moment they stare at each other, and it is only now that Javert truly notices that both of them are a sticky mess and still wearing most of their clothes. He still has his damned shoes on.
Seeing that this is as good a place to begin as any, he removes them, then unbuttons his trousers and slides those off as well, with a grimace of disgust. How he will get home in such a disreputable state, the Lord alone can tell.
"I believe it is traditional," Valjean says, still breathing hard, "to remove one's trousers before beginning."
"I can see why," Javert agrees dryly.
"Ah, well. We have learned a valuable lesson which we may benefit from in future."
Javert goes very still. Most of his clothes are now in a pile on the floor. The spring sun is streaming through the window. Valjean is smiling at him. It occurs to him that he is in love.
"I think," he says after he can trust his voice again, "that this afternoon has been an education."
Valjean laughs. It is not like any laugh Javert has heard before, and would like to hear that again too. He removes his own shoes and trousers, and lies down in nothing but his shirt. Javert lies beside him, wondering where the ribband that bound his hair got to. When Valjean starts running his fingers through it again, he decides that he can pursue the matter later.
It is ridiculous to be lying down in the middle of the afternoon, but it would not rank highly on the list of ridiculous things he has done today. He puts an arm around Valjean.
"There world is a great deal stranger than I ever thought it was," he observes. "If I had not met you, I would not have learned that."
"Strange indeed." Valjean shuts his eyes. "Please do not go away," he says.
"I will not," Javert says. Having Jean Valjean within his grasp at last, he has no intention of letting him go.
The End
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