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Chapter Text

Valjean was in a state of shock, he thought, when he first heard the news. Maybe it was also disbelief, but he couldn’t quite puzzle through the truth of his emotions, because the news simply felt too surreal. There was no way for his mind to reconcile the idea that Javert had died. It seemed impossible.

He made inquiries—discreet, unassuming inquires that would not seem out of place to anyone who might matter. He discovered where it was Javert had been buried. He had needed to know, for perhaps having a definite location where he was buried would make it less an abstract concept and more a reality that he was. 

Because if it was a reality, then Valjean was free… but for what purpose was he free? For years, his life had been defined by hiding from Javert specifically, the one man who knew the truth of him more than anyone else. If Javert no longer lived, he need no longer hide. But hide he did, more from himself than anyone else at this point in his life.

Valjean tried to rest in this new reality, but he found he could not rest—sometimes at all. He tried to focus on his reading, on his garden, on anything, but he found he could not focus. He wanted to cry, to scream, to wail, at the thought of this strange hollowness, but he found he could not cry.

It was not right. No, more than that—it was wrong. There was no sense in it. One of the defining challenges of his life, reduced to a few overheard sentences, a few splotches of ink on paper? It could not be. How could one of them be gone without the other?

Cosette was as always an oasis in the desert of Valjean’s soul, but he could not explain to her what caused his crippling melancholy. Even if she knew the whole truth of his past, he could not explain to her why he wasn’t relieved by this. Again, there was no sense in it.

Who was he if he was not hunted? Was there anyone still alive who had even known Jean Valjean? Or had the man he once was been snuffed out along with Javert as he fell?

An untold number of days passed for Valjean in this fugue state, until at last one day a strange compulsion overtook him and led him out of doors, out into his garden, and after some fathomless moments spent there in contemplation, out into the streets of Paris. He needed to purge this ache from his soul, to etch the truth upon it in its stead, or else he would run mad.

The overcast sky was bleaker as he walked without a conscious destination along the lonely, crowded streets than it had been in his garden surrounded by the plants he tended to there. Something about the diffuse brightness of sunlight through solid cloud cover sapped all color from the world save for the rich, dark red of the rose he had selected and carried with him.

In time, Valjean found himself in exactly the location he knew he would, somewhere deep inside his soul. He’d been retracing his steps the entire day, without being fully aware of it—from Valjean’s door, through the meandering streets, to the bridge that stood between Justice and Mercy.

Valjean’s legs threatened to give way under the weight of what had transpired here. There’d been a hopelessness suffered here, a grief too strong to endure, a hairline fracture in a man forced apart, splintered and shattered to bits.

Valjean made it off to the side of the bridge and genuflected there before his legs had time to fail him; with one knee to solid ground and his head bowed, his lips moved in whispered prayer, and he crossed himself as he stood again, still unsure of his footing. 

He meant to toss the rose he carried into the rushing waters below but he could not—his fingers would not part with it, no matter how many times he moved to let it go. There was a metaphor in that, he thought, but he was not yet ready to examine it closely.

The sensation of Javert’s presence wrapped around Valjean like the wind as he walked—it did not cradle nor comfort but chilled him through and through, like the cold metal of a shackle clasped around his ankle, trailing a heavy chain. He had long imagined the man’s gaze on him even when it was not, but perhaps now it would follow him forever, no longer bound by the restrictions of flesh and blood.

The thought held no consolation. His loneliness was not relieved by spirits in the air. To go from hunted to haunted was not a welcome change at all. Either way, even all these years after Toulon, he was still as ever chained to Javert.

Valjean’s feet led him next to a modest cemetery, one whose graves were mostly unnamed, and often unmarked entirely. It was a somber place, as cemeteries often were, but this one felt even more dreary, filled as it was with the unclaimed dead, the wretched, the lonely, the abandoned…

If Valjean had known before the burial, he could have paid to do it properly… but Javert would not thank him for it. If he could not accept mercy in the final moments of his life, he would never accept charity in the moments after.

And so at last he stood there in the dying light above his pursuer’s final resting place. 

The soil over the grave was still too freshly disturbed to have grass grown across it. There were a few stubborn blades that tried, but it would be a while yet before it blended in with the ones around it. A while before others wandering through this place would pass it by without a hint of a second glance, without giving it even half a thought in wonder at its story.

The simple stone bore nothing but the name Javert, in thick chiseled letters, and two dates. Seeing it brought Valjean to his knees, and this time he could not cover it with a genuflection.

A stark, blunt stone befitting a severe man.

No. 

It was not fitting. It was not. 

Seeing the stone with his own eyes did not help to make it real. Feeling the edges of the letters, still sharp, not yet weathered with age, did not offer him closure. 

When Valjean had freed Javert the night of the barricade, he had expected him to live. That he had still died tasted sour in his mouth, like milk gone off too early.

“You should not be in the ground,” he said aloud. “There is something wrong about that. I feel as if at any moment, I could turn around and you will be there. But if you are in the ground…”

Valjean trailed off, and shook his head.

“I have not been myself since you’ve gone,” he confessed. “I had found peace in the idea that you would take me, I had found closure that I would finally clean my slate. But then you were not there, you did not take me. I thought perhaps my freedom would satisfy me at last but it does not. I am free now only from you, for I still haunt myself with my past, with my sins.

“Have you rested yet? Have you learned to rest?”

Valjean held the rose in his hands, speaking more to it than to the stone. The rose still had life in it, even if its time was limited now that it had been severed from its bush. It was easier to face than the cold, wet stone.

Valjean moved to lay the rose against the headstone; in doing so, he pricked his thumb on a thorn, and stopped to stare as the blood welled up. He sucked the droplet into his mouth, pressing on the tiny wound with his tongue until the bleeding stopped.

“If the boy’s recovery continues, my daughter is soon to be married. She will leave to build her life, as is proper, as is to be expected of the young and lively.” A strange bout of laughter bubbled out of him. “You would not care about any of this, but I have no one else with whom to share it. If it bothers you, pray ignore the maudlin musings of a lonely old man.”

Valjean laid his hand on the stone, feeling along the rough-hewn edge with his tender thumb.

“I fear I won’t last long once she is gone. For the first time, I will truly be alone in this world.

“You should not be in the ground,” he said again, quieter now, but with even more conviction. “If I think of it, of your body lying cold and empty and unmoving, I cannot… I cannot breathe. It is wrong. How am I the one who’s left? How can a man honest all his life deserve this at the end of it? How is that just?”

A breeze swept through then, swirling underbrush and needles from the trees, and brought with it an eerie fluttering like fabric flapping in the wind. It was not Valjean’s own coat that moved so—the sound was not close enough. The hair on his neck rose, and for the first time that day he allowed himself to turn his head to look behind him.

A figure stood in shadow there, backlit by a distant streetlamp. Valjean had been expecting no one. He had been expecting a conspicuous absence, not a familiar silhouette. He’d been expecting to feel a presence, but not see one.

Though he could make out no features from where he stood, Valjean still knew him at once. There was no second-guessing. A strange peace overtook his body as he rose from his knees and approached the figure, as if being drawn forward by the chain that bound them one link at a time.

There was no mistaking Javert.

Closer, Valjean could see his hair was shorter and his whiskers fuller and his coat unfamiliar, but he cut the same imposing figure. Lit the way he was, Valjean thought Javert resembled an unfathomable angel of old. He half-wondered where he might have concealed his wings.

“You have come to take me. Fitting that it would be you. Fitting that you should take up such an occupation so soon. No rest for the weary.” Valjean glanced back at Javert’s grave, oddly serene at the thought that he should die there, at his side. It felt… fated. “Might I send a message to my daughter first so she will know where to come collect my body?”

Javert shook his head, exasperation bleeding into his countenance. It was a familiar expression to find there, but in this case, there was something… softer in it, like time had worn down his harsh edges. 

“Jean Valjean, you old fool,” he said, even the customary sharpness of his tone smoothed over.

“What…?”

“You are not dead. Nor am I.”

“But—” Valjean gestured towards the gravestone.

Javert heaved a sigh so deep it seemed to come up from the very ground upon which they stood, unearthing ghosts along with it. “That is a long story. You are not the only one resurrected from the depths of the water, it seems.”

“What do you mean?”

Javert made a gesture with one hand, a furtive beckoning. “Might we continue this conversation elsewhere? It is an imprudence for me to even show myself here, and a storm brews.”

In truth, it had already started to drizzle at some point as Valjean knelt at Javert’s grave, and he hardly noticed. The knees of his trousers had grown muddy, and he hardly felt it.

Still, Valjean hesitated before he followed. 

“Valjean?” Javert prompted.

An unusual rush shot through Valjean as he bent to retrieve the rose leaning against the headstone; he turned back and held it up.

“Would you like this? It belongs to you more than whomever it is buried there.”

Javert’s gaze dropped to his feet for a moment, and then he nodded, reaching to take the bloom from Valjean. He allowed it to twirl back and forth between his thumb and forefinger curiously—once, twice, thrice—before threading through his lapel. The deep red looked handsome against the dark fabric of his coat, set off by the silvering of the hair that now grew across his chin and the bright blue of his eyes. 

“From your garden?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Valjean had selected the rose so carefully that morning; he never dreamed it would end the day twined through Javert’s lapel, resting above the man’s still-beating heart.

“You carried it with you today with the intention to leave it at my grave?”

“I found I could not toss it into the Seine.” He stared at the ground. “I could not watch it fall.”

A beat, and Javert cleared his throat. “We should go,” he reiterated, his voice odd. “I live nearer to here than you.”

“Lead the way, then.”

Chapter Text

It felt to Valjean like each of the words he and Javert shared while they walked along the dimly-lit streets together, limited though they were, had taken on an extra degree of meaning in his heart. Perhaps it was even true outside of himself. Perhaps every topic, no matter how inconsequential, seemed to hold more significance when the impossible became real. Perhaps if Javert was not dead, the sorry state of the cobblestones mattered as much as an international treaty. Perhaps the weather warranted a sonnet—who was Valjean to judge?

He felt fanciful and light in ways he hadn’t felt in ages—perhaps in all his life. He knew now that he had in fact been weighed down these past weeks and even was beginning to get a sense for just how severely, his sorrow a heavy chain that sapped his strength more with each passing day. 

His delirious near-giddiness was so notable, it had Javert assessing him rather often during their trek, the other man surely thinking Valjean had at last gone round he bend in his misplaced grief and the unexpected end of it. 

“This night is not a kind one for those who rely on the stars for navigation,” Valjean mused aloud.

Javert’s eyes slid away from Valjean’s face and he angled his head to look up into the thick black night, not a pin-prick of distant light in sight due to the storm clouds rolling in.

“There have been many nights like this one, since the rebellion,” he said. “One learns to adjust, with time.”

“Charting a new path is an exhilarating prospect. If one can bring oneself to submit to the unknown, of course.”

Javert shook his head and allowed the lower part of his face to disappear into the high collar of his coat. “Finding one’s own way is treacherous. Submitting, in itself, is easy.”

“I think perhaps our strengths and weaknesses differ. I’ve never found it easy to submit.”

“It should come as no shock that I have long known this about you,” Javert replied, his tone wry enough despite the still barely concealed worry that rang within it.

It occurred to Valjean in that moment that these were perhaps the first honest exchanges he and Javert had ever taken part in as themselves, without the shadow of some obligation or other, some secret or lie or omission threatening to undermine their conversation. It seemed odd how simple it was to fall into an easy rapport, to set aside the years Javert had spent hunting him and converse as men. 

But Javert had, after all, let him go free. That had irrevocably shifted the state of equilibrium between them. Even if Valjean still did not fully grasp what had inspired Javert’s choice, perhaps it would be more foolish to expect nothing to have changed after he made it than it would be to embrace what had changed.

Valjean had always trusted Javert to do his duty and not stray from it. That eventually he chose to stray from it to Valjean’s benefit only after Valjean had at last chosen to submit… There was something of a divine irony to it. 

Valjean could even enjoy such a twist of fate now that he was armed with the knowledge that Javert still lived. He no longer had to run his every word and deed through a guilty calculus, wondering had he done or said something differently that fateful night, if it would have changed the unhappy outcome. If he had insisted Javert accompany him into his home, say, or if he had not asked Javert to allow him time at home at all, would Javert’s feet still have carried him to the bridge…?

None of it mattered now. Javert was alive and because of that, so too was Jean Valjean.

Did Javert not realize why Valjean was so elated? Did he not realize he had carried Valjean’s whole identity in his hands for years? 

Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he thought Valjean had told his story to those close to him. (Cosette. He had no one close but Cosette.) Maybe he didn’t know Valjean still felt shame enough about his past to tell no one.

Rain started to patter down in earnest then as the skies above split open in a late summer storm; Javert turned again to look at Valjean, his mouth curving down into a frown. He began to take longer, more determined strides and Valjean sped up to remain even with him.

“This is me,” he said soon enough, gesturing to a humble apartment building. 

Javert let them into the building quickly, impatient to see them out of the rain. The part of Valjean that was most present in his body was relieved for the reprieve from the inclement weather as well, while the rest of him still could not quite fathom that he was standing inside the building where Javert lived—not had once lived, currently lived. Just that fact alone would have made a normal day surreal, but today was far from a normal day. 

It was not every day a man was reborn. It was even less common that two were.

“It’s the first door on the right at the top of the stairs,” Javert said, placing his key in Valjean’s palm and closing his fingers around it. “I’ll be with you shortly.”

Once inside Javert’s apartment, Valjean found and lit a candle on the small table, going through the motions of such a thing by rote. His mind was there, in that room, but it seemed to exist outside time, taking in the kind of details he had never thought to see, a glimpse behind the curtain of a man he knew so well and not at all.

The space was as he would have guessed it to be, if he had ever thought to guess.

Javert’s apartment, small and neat; Javert’s bed, nearly as human a thing to stand in front of as Javert’s headstone; Javert’s key, cold metal tucked safely away inside Valjean’s pocket. 

It would not stay cold for long. Neither, it seemed, would he.

When Javert pushed open the door and joined Valjean in the apartment, he carried a tray with a modest selection of food from his portress’ kitchen. There was also, curiously, a bud vase with water on the tray, but Valjean’s attention did not hold on the tray after Javert set it down and went about building a fire in the grate.

Javert built the fire with a neat efficiency, as unsurprising a discovery as any Valjean had made. There had always been something quite fulfilling about observing a competent person perform a task well, with a confidence that never once bordered on arrogance, all sure movements and an ease borne of much experience. 

This had long applied to observing Javert in particular, ever competent and confident, but Valjean had never admitted such a thing to himself. There was a difference between openly admiring a man who held his fate in his hands, and simply acknowledging the truth of him.

“Valjean.” 

Valjean shook himself to see Javert still crouched before the stove, looking up at him with a clear concern on his face. It was obvious it had not been the first time he had said his name.

“Forgive me, my mind wanders.”

“Your coat is wet through.”

“Oh.” So it was. “I hardly noticed.”

“Allow me to dry it for you before you catch your death,” he said, climbing to his feet and standing perhaps a shade closer to Valjean than it was necessary to stand. His looming presence brought not the intimidation that it once strove to instill. Instead, there was a queer comfort to it, one which whispered to Valjean’s cold and lonely soul a promise of warmth.

“Thank you. It is appreciated.”

Javert’s gaze was heavy when it followed Valjean’s fingers as they undid the buttons down the front of his coat. When Javert helped him slide it off his shoulders, Valjean was suddenly Madeleine again, and Javert his obedient servant. 

Valjean had allowed those moments to fade in his memory, the way they had taken small liberties with each other in Montreuil-sur-Mer well before the end, tied up in a strange game of suspicion and authority. A steady grip offered on an icy path, for instance, or a helping hand to don a coat or hat and the like after a meeting. 

Javert’s touch lingered in the smoothing of a coat over Valjean’s shoulders then as it did now, assessing the strength in them, moving in such a way as to almost qualify as a caress if it didn’t come from such a rigid man…

He was not quite so rigid now. In lieu of meeting Valjean’s eye, Javert turned and hung the coat by the fire, and then set about unbuttoning and removing his own coat to hang beside it. That, too, provided an odd image for Valjean to process—his and Javert’s coats hung on pegs together, side by side.

In fact, Valjean was still attempting to reconcile the image both of the coats and Javert in only his waistcoat when Javert pulled the worn old blanket from his bed and approached him. Before Valjean could fully make sense of what he was doing, Javert had wrapped the blanket around his body. He held it closed, the backs of his fingers pressing against Valjean’s chest, until Valjean could convince his hands to grasp hold of the fabric and keep it closed himself.

“Thank you,” Valjean said again, quieter than the last; Javert gave a sharp bow of his head and finally took his hands away.

“Do you still often wander the streets late at night?” Javert asked, quiet.

Oddly, the question brought Valjean up short—it wasn’t often he spoke with someone who could casually make reference to his eccentricities borne of years past. The only other person in his life with whom he shared history was Cosette, and even her knowledge of him was severely limited, both by the time she had known him and by his own design. 

But he and Javert… Their paths had crossed many times—in Toulon, in Paris, at the barricade, and, yes, late at night in the streets of Montreuil-sur-Mer. To mention it now made it sound almost like a normal reminiscence, rather than yet another ridiculous chapter in the story of their improbably intersecting lives. 

“Not often,” Valjean said. “Sometimes. It clears the mind. I haven’t lately, but perhaps now…”

Javert nodded, unsurprised. “The key I gave you—keep it. I have another.”

“Whatever for?”

“If you find yourself caught unawares again by a sudden storm… or for any other reason, you are welcome to come here, rather than tempting fate due to the vagaries of the streets at night.”

The thought of doing such a thing caught in Valjean’s chest and twisted something there until it tightened painfully. Was Javert proposing, as if it were nothing, a sort of friendship between them? Could Valjean even picture himself coming to call on someone unannounced after a lifetime of avoidance, not only of Javert, but of any strong bonds outside the ones he built whilst hidden away in the convent?

“You are sure you are not an apparition?” he asked, before Javert had the time to put more space between them.

“What would make you ask such a question? You have not caught cold already, have you?” Javert’s hand twitched, as if he had meant to move it to check Valjean for fever before thinking better of it. Valjean reached out and took that hand in his own; Javert’s next breath caught in his throat, stuttered and ragged, and if he were not so close, Valjean would not have heard it. 

“Valjean—”

“You dry my clothing and keep me warm and sheltered from the storm. You fetch us food,” he said, gesturing to the tray on the table. “You share kind words and concern. You have invited me into your home now, twice over. How else should I reconcile these things? The man I once knew did not allow himself the luxury of mercy—given or received.”

“I revealed my home to you because you revealed your home to me,” Javert said, as if it were an obvious thing to do. Not just obvious—the only clear explanation for his actions. “As for the rest… Would all of it truly be more likely to be the actions of a ghost rather than a man? Do ghosts require food, or warmth, or shelter?”

It was curious, Valjean thought, that Javert had yet to pull his hand away. Just as curious, perhaps, that he had yet to let Javert’s hand go.

It was true, though, that he felt solid enough. Real enough. Alive enough. Perhaps he did speak the truth.

“How did you find me in the cemetery?”

Javert fell silent for a moment. “I’ve been with you since this morning,” he said, not without a certain remorse at having to admit it. “This is the farthest you’ve ventured from your home in weeks.” 

“And of course you know that because—”

“I have been watching you. A difficult habit to break, I’ve found.”

Valjean nodded—as difficult to break as Valjean’s own habit of watching for Javert. “So if I have felt your presence…”

“Then your instincts are as sharp as ever. That should be a comfort.”

Valjean cut his eyes up sharply to meet Javert’s. “It wasn’t. After I heard what had become of you, I thought I had gone mad to still feel you there.”

Javert’s jaw clenched.

“I suppose I should have expected you to find out about my supposed fate with time. It did not occur to me it would spur such a reaction in you as I have witnessed today. For that, I apologize. I could have saved you the confusion of it if I had anticipated the necessity of bringing you into my confidence.”

“It was not only confusion, Javert. If you had any idea what my life has been while I believed you were no longer somewhere out in the world, as steadfast and tenacious as ever…” He shook his head. “I mourned you.”

Javert blinked, a dull surprise that bordered on disbelief written in the furrow of his brows. “You may have been the only one who did.”

“That can’t be true.”

“Valjean… who else? My superiors who thought I’d lost my mind at the barricade? My underlings who were glad to be rid of me? The criminals who could sleep soundly at last without me dogging their every step?”

“I did not sleep soundly.”

“Again, you were the only one daft enough to miss the danger.”

“It was not the danger I missed. When the numbness broke, it felt as if someone had cleaved my soul from my body. We are entwined, you and I, in a way that’s inextricable without causing damage. I didn’t realize how deeply entrenched you were in my understanding of the world until I thought you gone from it. For better or for worse, I always knew that someone, somewhere knew me. Once you were gone, I fear I lost myself,” he said. “After all, who is Jean Valjean without Javert?”

All of the breath left Javert in a deflating gust. “You cannot mean that. I have been nothing but a plague on your life.”

“Of course I mean it. And you have not been a plague,” Valjean said. “Without you, I am lost. No one else knows who I am but you. Not even my daughter.”

Javert made several aborted attempts to speak. “And now no one knows who I am but you,” he ground out at last.

Chapter Text

A complete and utter silence followed Javert’s words.

Valjean could hardly wrap his mind around what Javert had said to him, and what was implied by what he had said. Even at its most basic, it had to mean Javert trusted him above all others with so critical a secret as his continued existence, and that… that… was near impossible to fathom. 

Valjean rescued him from the barricade, to be sure—but since when was one good deed enough to earn Javert’s trust, especially so completely? Even more so because, for all intents and purposes, Javert had already repaid him for it by letting him go free that night.

Valjean was at once acutely aware of himself, of Javert, of their place in front of the crackling stove, of the rough warmth of Javert’s skin where his hand still gripped Valjean’s. It was odd how the thought of being seized by this man had for so long filled him with fear and dread, when on the other side of everything the contact only brought reassurance.

Reassurance that somehow they existed in a world where he and Javert were both alive, and both free, and both there, in Javert’s apartment, waiting for something, anything, to break the near endless quiet that had settled over them. 

There was so rarely this much silence between them on other occasions when they were alone. Time spent together had been previously filled with talk of town business, and later disagreements and arguments, and even confrontations that devolved into physical struggles. Moments did not stretch like this. If anything, time moved more quickly in the past, to sometimes disorienting degrees, as they grappled with each other.

Just when Valjean thought the strange feeling could not possibly continue to build unless something released the queer, suffocating tension, Javert turned away, ceasing to hold his gaze and his hand at the same moment. 

At last, Valjean could breathe again. There in front of the hearth, a heat finally started to properly suffuse his body after their time in the rain, whether it was due to the fire, the blanket around his shoulders, or even just Javert, still standing so close. 

“You have truly told no one else who knows you that you still live?” he asked quietly, sure his incredulity was clear as day. If Javert would repeat the proclamation, maybe then Valjean could learn to believe it, as difficult as it might be.

Javert shook his head sharply, causing his now-shorter hair to fall below his brows; he looked a bit wild in comparison to his customary impeccable dress, his striking eyes desperate by firelight. 

“I have told no one else. No one but you.” Roughly, he pushed his fringe back from his forehead with both hands and held it for a moment as if that might keep it in place and out of his eyes. “That is not an exaggeration—I do not say it lightly. Is it such a difficult thing to believe of me that I would be truthful about this?”

Valjean felt an odd straining ache at the question. Javert had rarely been untruthful, to a fault, but the most glaring example of when he had been still rang fresh in Valjean’s memory like the clang of a bell too close to one’s head—‘I will wait for you here.’ These weeks had been a kind of torture with those words echoing in his mind, a perverse sense of abandonment settling into his bones. 

What right did he have to feel abandoned by the man who hunted him when that man decided to end the chase? Who in their right mind would feel that way?

But maybe Valjean was not, in fact, in his right mind about that night. Javert hadn’t been. That had been the motivation behind his most conspicuous untruth, a heartrending motivation. 

“It is certainly not difficult to believe you would be truthful as a rule, no. But it is because of that I find all of this so incredibly bizarre.” 

“Pray, tell me what about this you would consider bizarre?”

“Why, everything about it is bizarre! For a start, I hardly see you as the type of man who would fake his death—it is, at its core, a kind of lie, is it not?” Javert opened his mouth, but closed it again into a frown. Yes, then. It was a kind of lie, by Javert’s standards at least. 

“But even if you were the type,” Valjean continued, “I can’t see you ever revealing yourself to someone who knew you from your life before once you had committed yourself to leaving it behind. Wouldn’t that risk undoing all of your efforts?”

“Would it risk undoing my efforts to reveal myself to another man who does not exist? Who has as much, if not more, to lose than I do if it became common knowledge that I still lived? Your discretion shields yourself as much as it shields me.”

“Oh. Well. I suppose, posed that way, it is not so strange to choose me to reveal yourself to. I am still puzzled as to why you would not remain hidden completely despite the lack of danger from me specifically.”

“If I did not reveal myself, what would you have done? Continued to march an inexorable path towards your own destruction?”

“Pardon?” Valjean said, a feeling of shame beginning to creep up the back of his neck.

Javert scowled at him. “I heard the things you said at my graveside. I am familiar with despair, but you are still hale and hearty. The only way you are not long for this world is if you allow yourself to waste away. It is not so different from the end I almost chose—when I freed you that night, I expected you to live. What you are doing is not living, it is waiting to die.”

Valjean could not manage more than a few sputtered attempts at objections in response to Javert’s words. His shame deepened at the comparison he made, at the way Javert’s words echoed his own thoughts on freeing the man at the barricade. Valjean had not wanted Javert to die, that night or at all. Javert obviously felt the same. It was an odd thing to know.

“I am sorry—”

“Do not apologize to me!” Javert said, strained. “I shoulder much of the blame for your grief, however little expected it was. I should have stepped forward sooner—this I now know. Another misjudgment for which I will have to atone. But if I may ask one thing of you despite that misjudgment, let it be this: if I must stand above your grave, Valjean, I would like it to be long from now, and if not, then let it be a false grave like mine is.”

Chapter Text

“I don’t know if I can make you a promise such as that, Javert. I do not have the power to predict God’s will for my life.”

“You know very well what I mean. I am not asking you to pledge immortality against all odds, merely to temper your recklessness with regards to your safety.”

“Recklessness? And this complaint comes from you, sir? You who accepted your death that night with little fight in you at all? Even if it was to be at my unworthy hand?”

A bark of laughter escaped Javert then. “No hand would have been more worthy than yours, Valjean. Your hand was far more worthy to put an end to me than those schoolboys’.”

“And I suppose the next worthiest hand would have been your own?”

Javert took a step back, broad shoulders curved down as he, in effect, shrunk in on himself, the blunt truth of the question like a reproach on its own. 

Again, he pushed his hair back from his face. A newly acquired nervous habit, or was his shorter hair merely a nuisance he had yet to acclimatize himself towards? Valjean could not say. His agitation vibrated in Valjean’s chest, though, making him itch with a restlessness he did not know how to quash.

“You still haven’t told me why,” Valjean said. “Why let me go? Why die?”

“Because you don’t deserve to.”

“You have intimated as much, but I fail to see how it correlates. Why am I meant to live and you to die? What makes me worthy of life and you unworthy? And why would such things be linked at all?” Valjean asked.

“It is simple—if Inspector Javert lives, he has a duty to fulfill, a duty which reflects dire consequences upon your safety. If he is dead, he need no longer fulfill that duty.”

Valjean sucked in a sharp breath. “You mean to say that after you chose to let me go free, to ensure I remained that way, you thought to…” He trailed off, unable even to voice the words. “Javert, I never would have asked that of you. I hope you understand as much.”

“I understand it is the truth even if I do not in truth understand it. You would sooner save a wretch of a spy like me than let me die, God only knows why. Of course you never would have asked for me to end my life, least of all for you. You likely even think it a mortal sin. It was, however, the only path I saw that night.”

“You could have come to me. We could have… plotted some other course together.”

“And what course would that have been? You were too set on surrendering yourself that night to be reasoned with either, you would have likely chosen to martyr yourself in self-sacrifice, thinking it would satisfy me.”

“Me, self-sacrificing? Me, a martyr? And yet you tell me you meant to die for me!”

“I did. For all intents and purposes, Javert is dead and buried. And he shall continue to be, for I have no intention of revealing myself to anyone but you.” Javert took a while to collect himself, to calm the swiftness of his breathing. 

“In any case,” he continued after a long moment, “now you know, regardless of the outcome, I had no intention to fake my death. That I still live proves I had little choice in the matter to begin with—the world took it upon itself to fake my death for me.”

“It seems to me an obvious sign you were not meant to die, despite your opinion on the matter. Why remain dead, then? Why not take your second chance for what it is and simply correct whatever mistake transpired and return to life as usual?”

“Why should I correct it? What about my previous life is worth returning to?”

A pang pierced through Valjean’s stomach at the brusque way Javert had spoken of such a heartrending sentiment. “Javert… I did not realize you were as unhappy and unfulfilled as that.”

Javert waved off his concern. “I doubt if I would ever have classified my thoughts as such before,” he said. “It is true, however, that I had nothing left to live for if I survived and everything to lose, as well.”

“Did you not lose everything by allowing yourself to die?”

“Not everything. Nearly. I thought it might be so, but today you have proved me wrong.”

“Now that I do not understand at all. What have you not lost, if everyone believes you to be dead?”

“You, Valjean. It is you I thought I lost, but did not lose,” Javert said, and Valjean’s heart ached with a parallel surety; until today, he had also felt such a loss. “I believed that I must forever leave behind any chance to see you, for it was the only way I knew to protect you from myself. It would have been worth it all if I knew that you would thrive without the threat of the chase, but… Your grief has shown me that I need not, and should not, let you go completely from my life. 

“If you cannot live with my death, then I shall resurrect myself for you alone. I see now that I was mistaken to hide away from you and, as such, I was mistaken to seek out the bridge at all.”

“I am glad you have seen your life has worth beyond your duty.”

Javert scoffed. “I speak not of worth. You bought my soul when you set me free. It was selfish of me to try to determine what should be done with it without your counsel.”

“If I bought your soul, Javert, I did not buy it for myself. Though I dare not make assumptions that your soul needed buying in the first place. Who am I to say you weren’t already saved?”

“If you will not say it, I shall. I could have had the faith of the prophets, and none of it would matter when my actions caused as much damage as they have. I have stolen peace from you for years—what is that if not a grievous sin?” 

Javert shook his head when Valjean opened his mouth to dispute him, holding up a hand to forestall his protest. “We talk in circles and make little forward progress. Come—let us eat before the food is left to spoil and perhaps with sustenance, we will find our way in the end.”

He crossed in front of Valjean and took hold of one of the sturdy chairs, pulling it out a decent distance from the small table. It took Valjean a moment to realize Javert meant for him to take the seat, but he did, feeling a bit of a flush warm his ears.

Likely, this was the first time someone had ever held his chair out for him, just as a man—not a mayor, or a wealthy gentleman, or a small child in Faverolles so long ago. 

Javert began to busy himself with their meal then, carefully splitting the food he had collected precisely into two servings. Valjean watched him work, at a loss for what to do with himself. He had very cursory experience being tended to this way by someone neither subordinate nor superior. His mind flashed for a moment to the meal he had shared with the Bishop, but Javert could not be more different than he. 

“You don’t have to go through this trouble for me.”

“It is no trouble, I only gathered an extra portion than usual,” Javert said, and Valjean knew he was not dissembling. “I did not see you stop to eat anything in your wanderings—was today unique in that regard, or have you made a habit of it?”

Valjean felt chastised, the discomfort at being caught out a knot in his stomach. “Not a habit,” he said, defensive.

“But it still happens often enough.” Valjean had no further defense, so he offered none; Javert scowled again. “That cannot stand.”

“You have made your point.”

“I pray I have,” Javert said, moving to take the other chair.

His eyes lit on the forgotten bud vase and he stood again as quickly as he sat. Back to the coat hooks he went, rifling around between the folds, and when he returned to the small table, he had the rose Valjean had given him held gently between finger and thumb. He slipped it into the vase, and finally settled.

Silence again fell over the pair at the table as they began to pick at their food. Valjean barely registered the taste of it, so caught up in the idea Javert would take such care with so delicate an item as that slightly wilting rose.

Javert noticed Valjean’s attention lingering on the vase and answered his unspoken question, “No one has ever seen fit to give me a flower before.”

“It’s a rose.”

“I know it’s a rose, I am not a simpleton.” Javert gave Valjean’s face a quick appraisal and said, “It has become my practice, these last weeks, to make note of fresh experiences, that I might remember life carries possibilities I have not previously considered.”

“It seems a good practice.”

“I have found it educational.” He tapped a restless meter against the wooden tabletop. “You might as well,” he added, and there was a weight to his words that threatened to turn to guilt on Valjean’s shoulders. 

Valjean cleared his throat, his eyes still fixed on Javert’s fingers as he worried the woodgrain with a thumbnail. “I could show you how to press it later, if you’d like. If you should wish to preserve it longer.”

“Perhaps I will take you up on that offer, if we find the time.”

When Javert’s fidgeting became too much of a distraction, Valjean reached across the table and grasped his fingers in his. Javert’s eyes dropped to their joined hands, struck dumb for a moment at the contact.

Eventually, though, he found his voice again.

“At my grave,” he said, “when you said after your daughter marries, it will be the first time you would truly be alone in this world… What did you mean by that?”

“Well, that is simple. I thought you gone forever. I did not know how to go on without you chasing after me. My heart was already half-broken from your loss—losing Cosette would break the rest. You were in my life before Cosette, and without you, she was all I had.”

“My looming presence could hardly be a comfort. More of a curse, I imagine.”

“You were a constant—a steadfast presence, I’d call it. Through everything, you were the one thing in my life that never changed,” Valjean said. “Perhaps it is an odd thing to find solace in, but I have learned much about myself since I thought I lost you.”

Javert turned his hand so that he could better hold Valjean’s; he swiped his thumb over a knuckle, and there was no mistaking the motion for anything but a caress. “I doubt very much that your daughter would choose to abandon you, regardless of marriage. But in the unlikely event that she did… I shall not leave you on your own. If I owe you nothing else, I owe you a life. If I’m to ensure that you live it, well, that is to be my penance, then, for threatening so many years of it.”

Chapter Text

“I see a question in your eyes,” Javert said, studying Valjean’s face as if it might help him unravel all the mysteries of life still beyond his understanding. “Go on. Ask. I won’t make excuses to take my leave as I often did in Montreuil-sur-Mer.”

Valjean smiled softly. He saw more than a question in Javert’s eyes. He did not know exactly what it was he saw there, but it was a wonder just how warm his clear, bright eyes were in the firelight. They no longer held even a ghost of the coldness that was once so common to see reflecting back at him. 

He supposed that made sense. After all, why would a man look coldly upon a man he gave his life to protect?

They had managed to eat some of their meal in a comfortable enough companionship, though they spoke little and of nothing of consequence. It was a relief to have an excuse to delve deeper into the puzzle that was Javert, rather than pretend they were but ordinary friends sharing a meal without years of confusion between them—enmity and esteem both.

“However did the world come to fake your death?” Valjean asked.

Javert finished chewing his bite of food and sat back in his chair. “How much have you gathered about my actions the night I left you at your home?”

“Besides what you have told me tonight, only hearsay and what was published in the newspaper.”

Javert nodded. “Then you likely know enough to grasp this. It is not overly complicated. My fate was decided by little more than dumb luck and happenstance.

“When I left you that night, a battle raged within me. It was the first time I recognized a severe conflict between my duty to the law and what was right and just.”

“And this crisis came about because of me?”

“Indeed,” he said; Valjean could not quite describe his tone, but the weight of his gaze, while heavy, was not uncomfortable. “You have always had the power to turn my world on its head, Valjean. I have never second guessed my own judgement about any other person on this earth more than you. It has been… an education. A dire one, as it turns out.

“Your actions at the barricade dismantled everything I believed about the world and the hearts of men. You saved my life when killing me or simply letting me die would have been not only the easier course of action, but also the more beneficial to you—and indeed well within understanding to seek revenge upon me. You gained nothing at all by coming to my rescue and risked your own life and freedom for it. I could not understand your choice.

“Then to witness the lengths you went to save the fool of a boy whom your daughter loves when you believe he will only take her away from you… Good Lord, Valjean—what manner of man are you to make such selfless choices? It would not surprise me to see you canonized for your sacrifices during the uprising alone.”

“Javert, I… I believe you know I have never been one to deal well with praise,” Valjean said, “and I fear I know even less how to respond when such praise comes from you.”

“Respond however you like, but know I mean every word that I say.”

“I know you do. That is what makes it so unfathomable. I never thought to have your good opinion, for I believed it impossible. It means a great deal to me to know I have earned it at last.”

“You need never have earned it. I only required the blinders be removed from my eyes to see the man you always were.”

“Not always.”

“If not always then long enough. Men like you do not spring fully formed from barren soil.” Javert then pinned Valjean with his gaze and asked, “Might I continue my explanation, or shall I first offer more reassurances I have not taken leave of my senses in knowing you to be a good man?”

Valjean inclined his head. “Speak on, I shall endeavor to hold my tongue.”

Javert lowered his eyes for a moment to track said tongue as it moved to moisten Valjean’s lips before he did in fact manage to clear his throat and speak on. 

“As I said earlier, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that you did not deserve to die. That knowledge meant I could not carry out my duty knowing your death would be the outcome. I am unsure how much time passed before I found myself on the bridge. My memories of that period are, perhaps understandably, quite hazy. 

“Possibly I was too preoccupied to form memories properly at all, or possibly they became faded and jumbled in the aftermath—I cannot rightly say. Regardless… the waters called to me as a solution to the conflict brewing within my soul. I could not hurt you if I no longer walked the earth—or so I thought until tonight.”

“In my distress, I did not notice I was not alone on the bridge until it was far too late. A miscreant thought to take advantage of my distraction to ambush me. We were evenly matched, of similar height and build; if I were not so compromised, I likely would have prevailed against him. As it happened, I did not.

“Once he had subdued me, he took from my person what he thought valuable—my hat and coat, most notably. Having collected his spoils, he left me for dead tucked in a small dirty alcove below the bridge, where I was later found quite delirious by passersby and brought to hospital. 

“As I was in no condition to vouch for myself, no one reported my presence there to the police. While I lay incapacitated in my hospital bed, a body, disfigured with bloat, was dragged from the Seine and found to be wearing my greatcoat with my identification still inside. He was quickly and quietly buried in my stead, so as not to draw attention or disgrace upon my superiors due to the apparent manner of my death. 

“I woke only days later, but exhaustion and the cudgel to the back of the head kept me out of commission long enough for me to read the report of my own supposed death in the newspaper. As I have explained, I had nothing to motivate me to correct the report once I was able. I had no choice but to take it as a sign that I was meant to allow the Javert of old to pass away,” Javert said. “The clean break… it settled my turbulent thoughts. There was a clear line drawn—the man I had been was dead, and his obligations died with him. And so here we are.”

“Who are you to be now, if Javert is dead? Is there another name you might wish me to call you instead, since I am the only one who might inadvertently unmask you?”

Javert’s eyebrows lifted, his surprise at Valjean’s question clear on his face. “I have not given names much thought—I’ve only ever been Javert,” he said, and with an amused twitch of the lip, he added, “Which name would you suggest? Did old Fauchelevent have another brother?”

Valjean laughed. “I don’t believe so. But perhaps a cousin?” 

Javert gave an appraising shrug. “I shall think on it.”

“You are serious? Fauchelevent?”

“It’s as good a name as any other. Better—because you have made it better. I am not averse.” Javert held Valjean’s gaze for a moment across the small table, his expression unguarded to a disconcerting degree. “I would take your name. Whatever it may be.”

Inexplicably, Valjean felt his face heat. Or perhaps it wasn’t inexplicable at all. His eyes dropped to the rose—easier to observe than the candor behind Javert’s eyes.

He’d known the truth, or at least something close to it, that night after the sewers—for the first time since Montreuil-sur-Mer, Javert’s familiar deference towards authority had returned to direct itself at Valjean again, and with it a painful, crushing longing, too powerful to endure. 

Valjean had known the truth, but that didn’t mean the truth had not confused him. He’d felt it in the weight of Javert’s gaze in the carriage, in the weight of his hand on his shoulder as he bid him to follow after delivering Marius, in the weight of his words when he said he’d be waiting outside Valjean’s home. 

But then he had gone, and left Valjean with no explanation for his absence until the idle gossip and the scrap of news in the paper had explained for him. Yes, Javert was dead and gone, and between the lines, it was obvious it had been intentional. He hadn’t even afforded Valjean the chance turn that crushing longing around in his mind and decide how he might feel about being on the receiving end of it, confusing as it was.

Only now Javert wasn’t gone, and the longing hadn’t left him, and it made him pledge himself, in a way, without shame or reservation. Valjean found that the time he had spent resigning himself to its permanent absence had in fact made his heart grow fond of the concept. Grow fond, and perhaps experience something like it himself.

“I would consider it an honor for you to have my name.”

Javert blinked, a bit bewildered. “Valjean, I did not intend to… I must know if you mean that as I meant it,” he said, wary. “I could not accept this gift of sharing your name if you only offer out of pity or charity, nor even brotherhood.”

“Believe me when I say one does not mourn his brother carrying the sentiment I carried for you. I had a sister once. She is probably gone, as she was old enough to raise me. Mourning her does not risk snuffing out my spirit as mourning you has done.”

“But—”

“Javert. If we have found it so vital to remain within each other’s lives as these weeks have proven, perhaps we shall have to learn to trust each other to relay the truth of what we feel,” Valjean said. “You want to share my name, you are welcome to it. I do not offer it lightly, and certainly not out of pity. As I said, I would consider it an honor. It has served me well, led me through much confusion. It might do the same for you.”

“I shall think on it,” he said again, still incredulous, still searching every line on Valjean’s face for hidden evidence he had not been sincere in his assertions. 

Well, Javert would not find any such evidence of insincerity. His death had left Valjean hollow and broken-hearted—no simple offer of fraternity would mend the hole he had left. Javert was, in some way, his as no one had ever been save possibly Cosette, and if Valjean failed to lay claim to him now, he feared he might lose him again.

Javert tugged surreptitiously at his beard, at the sections that had long been only sideburns. The hair atop his head, too, had again fallen out of order, but he had not yet been bothered by it enough to set it to rights.

“Here, let me…” Valjean said, reaching to fix the errant locks of hair himself; he combed the hair to one side with his fingertips, rather than straight back as Javert had done each time. 

Javert gave a sharp inhalation when Valjean’s fingers dragged over his scalp, but judging by the open expression on his face, it had not caused him any discomfort.

Valjean finished his task by smoothing down Javert’s poor, maligned whiskers, so that he less resembled a startled cat. “There. If it still does not stay put, perhaps you might consider some pomade.”

Javert cleared his throat. “I have never had reason to learn how to manage hair of this length. It was simpler to keep it tied back than to maintain it day to day. I am unsure if I would tolerate the residue from the pomade.” He eyed the white curls atop Valjean’s head. “Do you use it?”

“Pomade? On occasion.”

“Now?”

Valjean shook his head, caught in the observation that Javert must want to reach for his hair as well. “Not today,” he said; he bent his head a bit in unspoken permission, and Javert took a single curl between his fingers. He let it go soon enough, but his touch did not leave, tracing a tentative, curious path from his head to his face.

Almost guiltily, he swept his thumb along the curve of Valjean’s cheekbone, at the upper edge of his beard. Perhaps this gentle touch gave Javert the same reassurance it gave Valjean, reassurance that they both still lived, beyond all odds.

“The shorter hair suits you better than it suits me. More often than not, I lately appear something like a bedraggled dog. Whereas you appear a respectable gentleman.”

“It is an effective mask, I suppose.”

“Not a mask,” Javert said, quick and sure. “I have observed you closely these last weeks, to see what of Madeleine might still exist.” 

“And your determination?”

“If Madeleine was a mask, he was molded from your own visage. There’s a quiet dignity to you that even the most skilled actor could not fake. It is something I could only dream of embodying.”

“You are an honest man, you should not feel inadequate.”

“I was an honest man,” he said. “I am a liar now every day I walk this earth with that man moldering in my grave.”

“It is not so bad to build a new identity. To choose a new name.”

“You would think as much, of course.”

“If you believe I am good despite doing exactly that many times, why cannot you be good then also?”

“I have done more evil than you ever could. What power have you had to make the lives of the wretched worse? Even as mayor—”

“Montreuil-sur-Mer collapsed once I was gone. What is that if not power to make lives worse?”

“That was more my fault than yours.”

“Is this a competition to see who is the more wicked between the two of us? If so, I would ask to withdraw from it.”

Javert pressed his lips together, sullen, but gave a sharp nod in agreement. 

Chapter Text

Moments passed slowly between Valjean and Javert before Valjean at last discovered a topic with which to break the heavy silence. His curiosity had been piqued by Javert’s predicament—if Inspector Javert was dead, how did he have means to exist as he did now? Surely the police had never paid him well enough to build much savings, and Valjean knew he did not come from wealth.

“We have spoken of your most recent brush with death and, I suppose, of mine. What I wonder now is how have you kept busy since…”

“Since I died?” Javert asked, a hint of wryness coloring his tone. “Doing this and that. Mostly odd jobs for those who do not care to see my papers, just enough to keep me housed and fed. In the course of this, I have discovered I’m somewhat of a dab hand at mending things, which I’ve found is quite useful a skill for a man in my position. There are always things that need to be mended more than questions need answers.”

“You needn’t worry about those day-to-day expenses if you don’t wish to.”

“Pardon?” Javert said, as confused as if Valjean had suggested he turn to a life of crime to pay his way in the world.

“There is room enough at my home if you would like to join me there rather than maintain your own apartment. Once Cosette is married, there will be even more room and I confess I do not look forward to the emptiness.” 

Javert’s silence was once again heavy, heavier than the chains that had once bound Valjean, but his face did not reflect offense at all, only utter, utter bewilderment.

“We have shared our longest civil conversation in decades only tonight,” he said at last, “and yet you would have me come and live with you without a thought to… to the conflict that has long been between us?”

“Reservations of that sort do not worry me. Certainly not more than the prospect of losing you again.” Javert made an odd sound, almost wounded, and shifted in his chair as if he meant to do something but decided against it. “We have reached an accord tonight, I believe, and even if that weren’t so… Javert, if you would take my name, the very least I can do is care for you.” 

Javert’s mouth opened as if to speak again, but it hung there unused, unable to formulate a response. 

Valjean reached out and brushed back the hair that had again flopped down into Javert’s eyes with his agitation. Javert froze, his mouth still open in aborted speech, every muscle in his body tense as he watched Valjean strangely until he remembered himself, shaking off the shock of Valjean’s offer and snapping his mouth shut.

“It should be I who cares for you,” he said, “after what I have done. If you had not been forced to hide yourself away…” He shook his head. “Your isolation is as much my fault as anything.”

Valjean smiled, slight and melancholy. Javert obviously thought more of his charms than he himself did if he thought Valjean would be surrounded by a large circle of friends and loved ones if not for Javert. Valjean was far too conscious of his own shortcomings to form deep connections easily. That he had Cosette’s love at all was a miracle for many reasons.

“If I think I should care for you, and you for me… perhaps, then, the solution is for us to care for each other. Which would be a simpler task to accomplish in the same location—don’t you think?” 

Javert had no argument to offer in response, and so Valjean continued.

“I have more than I will ever need. More than Cosette and her family will need. Together we would want for nothing… though perhaps you already live without want.”

Valjean glanced around the sparse space for a moment, but then his gaze returned to Javert.

When Javert found his voice again, it was oddly thick, and his eyes were drawn and pleading. “There are different kinds of wanting,” he said. “Beyond material comforts and possessions—I have little want nor need for material things.”

“I am much the same. It seems then we are not incompatible in that.”

“Valjean, if only you would…” Javert shook his head with a sigh. 

“If only I would what?”

“Enough of this.” Here, Javert held out a piece of bread with a portion of sliced meat on top. “Eat,” he said, “and we will contemplate potential life-altering decisions after.” 

At first, Valjean thought to balk. Surely, Javert was not attempting to feed him directly, and what he actually intended was for Valjean to take the food from his hand with his own. But there was something in the way he held Valjean’s gaze that made Valjean instead take up Javert’s unwitting challenge and lean in for a bite. 

Javert’s lips parted in astonishment at the move and his eyes darkened. Valjean had only just managed to swallow the bite before his senses were overtaken by Javert’s mouth on his, chasing the flavor of the morsels of food he had eaten.

Oh.

This was the answer then, wasn’t it?

This had to be the reason he’d been trudging through the world for weeks now, searching desperately for the resolution to an undefinable grief he thought would not come to him in this life.

Valjean’s surprise at this revelation only lasted a few moments. He had never known romantic love or infatuation, so it was no wonder he had not been able to recognize it brewing in himself until the probing heat of Javert’s mouth on his drew the truth out into the open. 

Valjean’s heart had decided all on its own that this man’s existence was as essential to him as breathing—how fortunate he was that such sentiment was mutual! Oh, to be so beguiled by another, and to beguile them in turn! Oh, to overcome such insurmountable odds to find their way back to each other in time to share these experiences before it truly was too late!

Javert did not kiss like any other man Valjean had ever observed kissing, and not only because no other man had ever kissed him—though that was indeed true. Javert kissed like Javert did anything else—deliberate, zealous, with an air of tightly coiled ferocity, barely contained. Valjean far preferred to experience those traits in this context than in the others he had been privy to—a battle with lips and tongue was more agreeable than fists or knives or other weapons.

Javert groaned low in his throat when Valjean tightened his grasp through the hair at the back of his head, maneuvering him in search of an angle that would allow a deeper kiss. He came out of his chair with the slightest tug, all but lunging towards Valjean, sending Valjean’s chair skidding back a few creaking inches along the floorboards. 

Javert did not seem to care one whit about the hardwood beneath his knees, nor the strength with which Valjean held fast to his waistcoat or his skull. If anything, he welcomed Valjean’s reciprocation with an impassioned gratitude, following him in this as he had at other intersections of their lives—though this night was again the first time he had chosen to walk beside him on equal footing.

It was Javert who chose to set them on this path with a kiss and, eventually, it was Javert, too, who broke the kiss, chest heaving beneath Valjean’s grip. 

“Sweet Jesus,” he breathed, his pulse beating a rapid pattern beneath Valjean’s fingers above his collar. 

“You are all right?”

Javert nodded as well as he could with his forehead still pressed against Valjean’s; Valjean pulled back far enough that he could examine Javert’s face for evidence of dissembling.

“You are sure?”

Javert barked a laugh. “I have wanted that for far too long to be unsure.”

Valjean held the side of his face, meeting his eye. “Have you? Truly?”

“You believe I would lie about such a thing?” he asked, his eyebrows as high as they could rise. 

Valjean lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “No one has ever wanted me this way before.”

Javert shook his head with a huff of incredulity. “Oh, but I have. You were a torment long before I came to terms with what it meant to harbor this wanting. It puzzled me for ages without a satisfactory answer—why should I care so much about your transgressions over the transgressions of any other thief? Try as I might to put you out of my mind, you called to me, and I could not let you go—not even through death, yours and later mine. 

“It was only after the barricade I deciphered the reason, when I no longer wanted to see you caged, and yet I still wanted. I had never felt the ache of wanting stronger than I did that night, and it made clear to me a great many things just as much as it set me adrift with nary a working rudder to direct my path.”

“I believe I sensed the shift in you that night. If you hadn’t left me, I might have found the courage to inquire as to the cause of it.”

“I doubt I would have had an answer for you beyond the nonsensical. I could hardly put my thoughts in any semblance of order even for myself. I merely knew life could not go on as it had.” Javert shifted closer again, drawing a thumb along Valjean’s bottom lip, his eyes following the movement. “I lacked the imagination necessary to consider you might ever entertain receiving the sort of attentions from me I would have thought to offer you. Should I have asked?”

“That night?”

“That night, perhaps… or even tonight.” He tensed beneath Valjean’s hands. “I should not have presumed—”

Valjean closed the distance between them again before Javert could decide his attentions tonight had not been wanted simply because Valjean was unsure what his response would have been on a night he’d hardly expected to survive.

Perhaps Valjean’s kisses were clumsy and inelegant, but Javert did not seem to mind at all. In fact, the less he tempered his attentions, the more they seemed to encourage Javert’s. The heat of Javert’s torso was close enough to tease where he knelt up between Valjean’s parted knees, a closeness foreign to Valjean in such a context, but enticing all the same. 

If Javert were to shift just so he would no doubt feel the aftereffects of his admiration clear as day… and then he did, and a strangled sound of half-embarrassed pleasure broke free of Valjean’s throat at the contact.

An answering sound escaped Javert, one of relief as much as pleasure. He swallowed convulsively and, face upturned as he sat back on his heels, he asked in a desperate tone, “You feel as I feel, then?”

“Could a man be kissed as you have kissed me and not be moved?”

“I’m sure many would not be moved, although I doubt any of those would have kissed me so in return, so I am left no choice but to assume—”

“Assume it,” Valjean said. “Know it. You have enthralled me like no other before you.” 

There was an odd pleading in Javert’s gaze, urgent, restless, charged with a tension Valjean had not known until Javert’s lips had touched his.

“Would your daughter be distressed if you did not return home tonight?”

Valjean flushed as he felt the weight of the implication behind Javert’s words as surely as he felt the weight of Javert’s hands on his thighs. Oh, the scandal of it all! Cosette would never guess if he did not return that he had gone off to begin a love affair.

“I cannot leave you. Not this night,” he said. “Cosette will worry, but it’s hardly the first night I have not returned home in time to see her off to bed.”

“The risks you take disturb me to my soul, Valjean. Perhaps your earlier proposition has merit if it would mean I could watch over you more easily.”

Valjean let out a sharp laugh. “Perhaps.”

Chapter Text

Javert agreed at once when Valjean asked him to go and find a gamin with whom to send a short message to Cosette. It did not take him long at all to accomplish this task, but even so, time seemed to stop for an interminable while as Valjean sat alone in Javert’s apartment to wait for his return. 

He could have taken those few moments to prepare himself for what might occur afterwards, but as he had never engaged in these sorts of amorous activities with others, he was unsure what might be expected of him. Should he undress, for instance, and climb into bed? Somehow, he could not see himself act in so bold a manner with regards to seduction. Should he rifle through Javert’s supplies for extra candles to light, to set the mood? Somehow, that, too, did not seem like something Javert would expect from him, and he likely would not even wish to use a spare candle when one would suffice.

Valjean needn’t have worried over the minute intricacies of intimacy, however, not when faced with a man who now considered any attention from him at all as an undeserved reward. Valjean, himself, just as he was—that was what Javert expected. That was what Javert desired.

Javert’s footsteps were quick against the wooden stairs as he ascended again to his flat and soon enough he stepped through the door and locked it securely behind him. Valjean sat fixed in his gaze, silent as the grave, awaiting his next move. 

Javert stood so still just inside the door that Valjean was nearly convinced that neither of them would budge an inch from their present location, until finally the other man again came to kneel in front of Valjean’s chair, and wrapped his arms around him in an odd embrace, half-rested on his lap. 

Valjean knew not what to do with such a display, but laid his hand against Javert’s cheek, captivated by the way the other man seemed to savor the contact. He traced his thumb over the whirls of his ear, down along his whiskered jawbone, all the way to the curve of Javert’s lip; he inhaled in surprise when Javert closed his mouth around it.

A sharp spike of heat twisted through Valjean at the attention Javert began to lavish upon his flesh. The awareness of the implications of their current positions slowly dawned on him with each movement of Javert’s mouth and tongue against his rough skin; he shifted his thighs, restless with heightening arousal.

Javert took hold of Valjean’s hand with both of his, held it close as he pulled his mouth off of the thumb and made to press hot, open kisses down the palm, at the wrist, and higher still, as far as he could shift the cuffs of Valjean’s shirt without undoing the fastenings. There, Valjean’s skin was especially sensitive, above the toughened scar tissue, oft unseen and untouched by the hands of another.

“Will you allow me to show you what else I have wanted?” Javert asked, his voice deeper and somehow richer than usual. 

Valjean swallowed reflexively. “Am I to infer from your attentions thus far that you would wish to-to…”

Javert snorted a laugh. “I would wish to. I have wished. More than I wished to preserve the man I was.”

“That is remarkable. I can hardly fathom it.”

“I have had much time to think—less frightening a prospect than it once was, before the burden of my duty was lifted.” Now, Javert ran the flat of his hands up the outside of Valjean’s thighs and then back down again, digging his thumbs into the meat of the muscle there. “It is you who have shown me the worth of the world outside my duty. I believe you should be shown the worth of the world outside of your duty as well. You’ve done well by your daughter, but your worth is not only in her happiness.” 

Javert pushed himself up so he was at the correct height to brush his mouth against Valjean’s. “You are a man as any other,” he said, his breath washing over Valjean’s lips, “and thus deserve to seek your own desires, too. If you desire me as I desire you, then you should have me.”

From his mouth, he moved on to kiss Valjean’s cheek, under his jaw, down his throat. Slowly but surely, he worked his way down Valjean’s body. “I am… more than willing, as you see, to accept whatever it is you should wish to offer me.”

Javert was right, Valjean thought. In fact, it almost did not feel proper for the connection between them to remain chaste in the face of the need that had only grown since last they saw each other. The tension Valjean felt in his chest and in his gut when faced with the intensity of Javert’s courtly devotion would surely have grown too great with time, threatening to crush him with its strength, if not for an outlet like this for relief. And what an outlet it could be…

“I have little experience—”

“That matters not. We shall learn each other as we go,” Javert said with his lips against Valjean’s chest, words slightly muted through the layers waistcoat and shirt. His hands were still hot through the fabric covering Valjean’s thighs, tantalizing and distracting.

Valjean felt himself rising more with every press of Javert’s lips on his clothed body, lower and lower still, and when he nuzzled at his belly, Valjean’s hips gave an involuntary jerk. “Oh. Javert, that’s…”

“It is not objectionable?”

Valjean barked a sharp laugh. “Hardly.”

“You have had no one this way before me?”

“Never.”

“But you have witnessed the act.”

“I have.” He cupped Javert’s face in his hand for a moment. “I am surprised at your desire for it. You are a prouder man than the ones I have seen in your place.”

“Perhaps your image of me has been warped with the distance of time. You must remember how I implored you to assert your authority over me when I believed I had wronged you.”

“If that is what you seek tonight, I would not be party to your self-flagellation.”

“No. That is not what I meant to imply by invoking that particular memory, only that submitting is not a problem for me, and I desire it,” he said. “I seek not to abase myself before you, Valjean, but to avail you of the wonder of… fresh experiences.”

“Fresh experiences.”

“Mmm. You shall have no doubts as to my enjoyment, I assure you,” he said, hovering near to the buttons straining to contain Valjean within his trousers.

Valjean took a breath, deep and slow, and let it out again slowly as well. “Go on, then. Enlighten me.”

Javert’s hands, always strong and sure, trembled slightly now as they uncovered Valjean’s prick and pulled it free from his trousers, whether it be from as yet unspoken nerves or pure excitement, Valjean could not say. 

It was near impossible to remain self-conscious with Javert’s ravenous eyes on him, staring at his length with such blatant awe and appreciation. Javert wasted no time familiarizing himself with its heft and size and shape, the way the foreskin moved along with his touch, the way Valjean’s body tensed and relaxed as he explored him.

Holding Valjean’s prick steady and aloft with one hand, Javert bent to press a lingering kiss to the base, and then another, and another. His mouth was hot, his breath heavy, the drag of his lips an impeccable teasing… Then he buried his nose into the hair at Valjean’s groin, inhaling deeply into his lungs and exhaling with a voracious groan. 

A sharp pang of pleasure thrummed in Valjean at the sights and sounds of Javert savoring his body. Oh, to be wanted this way…!

A traitorous thought whispered to Valjean that Javert was born for this, for giving pleasure, far more than he had been born to inflict fear and dread and the blindness of supposed justice. Could not his drive to serve have always been just as suited to love as it was to duty? 

The question mattered little in reality. It was not as if Valjean could have seduced Javert from his duty in Montreuil-sur-Mer, even if, ultimately, he had unwittingly done just that at the barricade.

When Javert finally moved to stroke him properly from base to tip, Valjean’s hips began to rock entirely of their own volition. When he finally licked and tasted his way back upwards to take him into the wet heat of his mouth, Valjean barely bit back an embarrassing whimper at the sensation. 

It was a wonder Valjean did not spill the moment Javert closed his mouth around him. At a loss over what to do with his hands but sure he could not simply remain still and maintain his sanity, Valjean held onto Javert’s head, cradling it against himself like something precious, tracing the curve of his skull even as it moved smoothly in its rhythm, taking him deeper with each determined descent. 

Javert’s persistent tongue chased Valjean’s pleasure just as steadfastly as Javert himself had always chased Valjean. He dug his thumbs into the bones at Valjean’s waist, clinging desperately as he pushed his chest closer between his parted legs. Valjean could have driven his hips past the restraint of Javert’s grip if he so chose, but he was grateful in this one thing to be caged so as not to move too harshly and hurt Javert. He was too new to this sort of ecstasy to trust his own willpower alone to keep the strength of his hips at bay. 

Valjean could have watched Javert for ages as he lavished his attentions hotly upon Valjean’s flesh, but his own body decided for him that it was not to be. One last stroke, a purposeful twist of the hand, the vibrations of Javert’s appreciative groan and he was gone, lost in his own pleasure.

It was Javert, of course, that Valjean noticed first when he came back to himself, Javert resting breathless in his lap as he gazed up at him in something like punch-drunk wonder. Sweat plastered Javert’s hair to his forehead and Valjean pushed it back with both hands, bending to take Javert’s mouth, letting out a quiet moan at finding the taste of himself there. 

Javert, it seemed, expected Valjean to recoil from it, but Valjean simply could not abide the thought of accepting the pleasure Javert had given him and shying away from the reality that followed. He clutched at Javert and pulled him even closer, drinking down the hedonistic noises that escaped from Javert’s throat, possibly beyond the other man’s control.

“Kneel up, please,” Valjean said, quiet, “I wish to see to you.”

There was no hesitation in Javert’s movement; he knelt, tall and proud to display himself for assessment before Valjean. His prick pressed an obvious curve against the flap of his trousers, as eager at the attentions Valjean had bestowed upon Javert as Javert himself.

“Shall I…?” Javert asked, poised to follow Valjean’s direction with his fingers near his own fastenings.

“By all means.”

There was a tremor in Javert’s hands as he worked the buttons free, worse than the one when he had undone Valjean’s. He could not be nervous now, not after what had already transpired, but perhaps he approached the edge of his own control.

Then the fabric fell and Valjean’s breath caught, any other thoughts abandoned. 

“Oh, Javert—all that for me?”

“Yes,” he said, with a level of conviction that implied he had never meant the word more than at that moment. “Frankly, I am surprised I have not yet… ehem. That is to say…”

“I am glad you have not, or I wouldn’t have had that chance to give you even a fraction of the pleasure you have given me.”

Valjean took his mouth again, and Javert leaned into the kiss, and neither cared much that it involved just a bit more teeth than was perhaps advised. 

“Show me what you like. What do you need from me?” Valjean asked eventually, his lips near to Javert’s ear, one hand holding the back of his head while the other hovered, waiting.

“Please. Please put your hands on me. I have wanted—oh, yes! Dear God in Heaven!” 

Valjean had closed his fist around Javert’s length, finding in its shocking heat a dizzying intoxication. It was imperative his hand did not leave Javert, that he wring from the other man a thrill like Javert had wrung from him. He drew the moisture that beaded at the tip of him down his shaft, easing the movements of his hand.

Javert held his own body rigid alongside Valjean, thrusting into Valjean’s fist with stiff, jerky motions as he clutched at the back of Valjean’s waistcoat nearly tight enough to rip the seams. Such tension could not last, and Valjean was thankful for it, for he feared Javert might just cause himself distress if he did not soon find relief.

Javert finished with a sound that could have been a sob, his face buried in Valjean’s neck.

Chapter Text

The warmth of Javert’s body, large and long and sturdy in its ferocious masculinity, enveloped Valjean as they lay down to rest the same as the worn blanket the man had wrapped around him had earlier. The very same blanket now draped over the two men, cloaking them both in its protection from the cooling night air as the fire in the stove died down.

It was odd, Valjean thought, to find such solace in Javert’s arms when for so long Javert’s absence set his teeth on edge if only due to the anticipation of what his all-but-inevitable reappearance in his life could bring. Now, Valjean could not fathom wanting to be parted from him. Now, he knew what a true parting could feel like and he wished to never again experience the hollow ache of hopelessness, the fog of melancholy which made it impossible to enjoy anything unabashedly, only to wait like he was a ghost already for his own inescapable end once Cosette left him also.

Valjean never dreamed he would end the day twined around Javert, his head resting above the man’s still-beating heart. The mere thought of it seemed a miracle, nearly too good to be true, considering what he had believed when he had awoken that morning, the fateful last morning in which he would think they were both lost. There was a part of him, however small, that still feared he would awaken into his old reality, where Javert would again be dead and he himself still living.

It was the sound of Javert’s heartbeat, strong and true, which lulled Valjean into a peaceful slumber the likes of which he had rarely experienced since he was a young boy, before his life had begun to fall to pieces. It was tangible proof that this reality was in fact true, and his worries were not.

More proof would arrive when Valjean woke with the sun, with he and Javert lying on their sides facing one another, still quite entwined; between them, their hard pricks pressed together through the fabric of the shirts they had worn to bed. 

It could not be a dream, for the realities of their flesh and blood bodies made that obvious, though it was still a novel sensation if Valjean had ever experienced one. Alone, when he woke in such a state, he often ignored it until it subsided on its own, and on the rare occasion he was in the mood to indulge himself, it was still quick and perfunctory. He had no image in his mind’s eye when he indulged, no fantasy to fulfill besides the brief, sometimes guilty pleasures of the flesh themselves.

This morning, that would change forever. He would never again take himself in hand without the memories of Javert’s touch guiding him, without the knowledge of the heat of the man’s mouth, the attentiveness of his tongue, the desperate bliss on his flushed face as he took everything Valjean offered him. 

Valjean could even take himself in hand right then and there and test out his newfound fodder for illicit daydreams, but his impulse of the moment lay in a different direction. The man himself, the genuine article, lay before him, after all. There was no need as of this moment for fantasy at all.

Valjean stroked his fingertips gently through Javert’s whiskers and settled in to watch the tiny flicker of expressions flit across the other man’s features as he rose through layers of unconsciousness to wake as well. 

Once Javert’s eyes opened, it only took a moment for him to focus on Valjean and when he did, what little confusion that had been visible upon waking melted away like frost upon sunrise. His gaze was warm at first, but soon enough it grew heated as he also registered both their physical state and close proximity.

Javert mirrored Valjean’s position, drawing his fingertips through Valjean’s whiskers, and Valjean could not suppress a shiver at the sensation. Javert’s lips turned up in the corner, amused, and then he bent forward to press those lips to Valjean’s throat, just below his jawbone.

Javert mouthed his way towards Valjean’s pulse point and lingered there, tasting and suckling at the sensitive, vulnerable skin not covered by his beard. Valjean could not long resist the need to push his pelvis against Javert’s, to seek relief in rocking against the stiff heat of Javert’s own arousal. His body was too unused to these desires to have mastered them already. It was as if he and Javert were new men, even in their passions.

Rocking soon gave way to curious helping hands, the pulling and rucking up of shirts, stunned gasps at the sensation of hot flesh sliding against hot flesh. It was easy to move like this, slick with sweat and fluid from their own excitement. It was easy to embrace Javert, clutch at his back, his hips, his thighs, as they both ground their way towards oblivion. It was easy to know each other this way, when knowing each other in different ways had always been difficult.

This was instinctual, animal, raw… 

As natural as breathing.

It required little thought beyond seeking one another’s pleasure as there were no artificial barriers between them, constructed by a society meant only to separate—the only violence the nipping of teeth, the only struggle the striving towards the race’s finish, the only friction the heated movements against each other.

Unable to scrabble close enough to satisfy his ravenous need, Valjean grabbed Javert’s leg behind his knee and hiked his thigh up over his own in order to press even closer. Javert took Valjean’s guidance and locked his legs around his waist and rolled onto his back, pulling Valjean atop him. 

When Valjean’s weight and strength at last bore down on him, each rubbing thrust more desperate than the last, Javert cried out and clutched at him about the shoulders; Valjean suspected he drew as much pleasure from the grinding slide of the movement as he did from the display of Valjean’s hardiness.

The wetness of Javert’s release soaked their bellies and Valjean’s own soon added to the flood, as he was too overwhelmed, too overcome, too affected, to continue on alone in the face of Javert’s obvious fulfillment at being on the receiving end of his attentions. With their completion came a sudden shattering of the tension between them and they collapsed against each other with a boneless drowsiness.

Valjean paid little mind to the unpleasant stickiness between their bodies with Javert’s broad hands at his waist beneath his rucked up shirt, holding him close. He had never felt more solidly planted in the earth, never soared higher into the clouds in the sky above.

“I suppose it is a tad late to be offering a wish of good morning, at this point,” he said, once he had regained the power of intelligent speech.

“A good morning—I should say it is.” Javert lifted a hand to cradle Valjean’s face and pull him into a kiss. “I would not object to beginning each morning in that manner for the rest of my days,” he said when he pulled back again.

“Waking in such a state is certainly more memorable with a partner, I dare say.”

A strange expression came over Javert’s face, almost as if he were lost for a moment in his own mind. When he reemerged from his sudden detour, his gaze was again heavy with hunger. “You have now given me reason to imagine you waking in such a state on your own, and how you might have dealt with it.”

Valjean chuckled, surprised. “Nothing as tantalizing as what we have just done together, I assure you. I have never been particularly adventurous in this regard. With you, I feel I have rediscovered my youth, or the parts of my youth I rarely gave much thought to.”

Javert raised his brows. “We certainly have found a way to make a youthful mess of my bed linen.”

“I mean it in a less crude and literal sense,” Valjean said. “More that I see a future now, unburdened by strife. You have returned my life to me, Javert.”

Sobering quickly, Javert said, “It is all I have wished since that cursed night in June, that you might be free and unburdened.”

Valjean met Javert’s declaration with a kiss, deeper and more earnest than the last and an embrace tinged with the longing Valjean had come to recognize in Javert, only now he had discovered it in himself. Let Javert be as important to Valjean’s future self as Valjean was to Javert’s. Let them strive to heal each other of their wounds, regardless of how and where and why they were acquired.

The pair would eventually grow uncomfortable here in bed, Valjean knew. Such was the consequence of their haste and lack of proper consideration for the spoiling of the sheets that would accompany it. Valjean found he cared little. Less, even, than he might have expected if he ever seriously imagined himself in such a situation with another person. 

With Javert close, however, Valjean felt contentment where he might have felt embarrassment. He felt at ease where he might have felt shame. No one but the man whom had known him longest could have enticed him into sharing of himself in this way without fear, especially when the other man shared himself fearlessly and shamelessly as well. 

At long last, there was nothing for Jean Valjean to fear from Javert. They had at once made peace and found it.

It was only the looming specter of facing Cosette, of detailing the reason for his brief disappearing act beyond the contents of a hastily scrawled note, that prevented Valjean from sleeping the day away where he lay, eventual discomfort and all. He could not leave his beloved daughter to worry indefinitely over so sudden a disappearance and if Javert were to know he was hiding away from his obligations in Javert’s bed, he would no doubt object.

Cosette would understand. Surely. Valjean knew he was preoccupied with her potential judgment over more than just one single night’s unexplained absence, but for this one night and more, his mantra applied—if Javert could come this far, then how could she not?

“Your mind wanders,” Javert said. 

“It does,” Valjean agreed. 

Javert studied him for a moment, his brows drawn together. “Is there anything you require of me, or should I leave you to your wanderings?”

“I am endeavoring to prepare myself to part from you, even if I know it to be temporary. We have entangled ourselves more inextricably than ever, I believe. It shall not be easy, especially as I no longer wish to be unbound.”

“We should clean ourselves, for a start,” Javert said with a hint of mischief, and then he was extricating himself from Valjean’s embrace to shift down the mattress.

“What are you doing?”

“As I said—we should clean ourselves.”

“You don’t mean to—”

Javert drew a finger through their mess and pointedly licked it clean, holding Valjean’s gaze with his own; Valjean felt his face heat.

“Surely—” he started, and then was forced to clear his throat. “Surely you need not trouble yourself with that when a good scrubbing with a rag and soap would do the job just fine.”

“I suppose you are correct; my method lacks a certain efficiency, and your daughter will be waiting.” Javert took one last taste and rose from the bed. “I shall fetch a rag.”