Chapter Text
In the early morning, the house at Rue Plumet had an air of suspension to it: the pictures hanging on the walls in too-big frames, the orange raincoat still draped over the coat rack, the shelves heavy with books and potted plants and the ponderous clay animals Cosette had made in fourth grade.
One morning, Javert had indicated the raincoat as he came inside. “That’s been there for over a month,” he observed.
Valjean wiped his hands on the blue terry cloth he was holding. “Good morning,” he replied, pushing locks of white hair out of his forehead. Javert noted the shadows under his eyes. He hadn’t slept well, then. Again.
“You’ll damage your coat,” Javert remarked as he took off his shoes.
Valjean smiled. “It’s an old thing. It’ll survive some wear.”
“The coat rack will break the shape.”
“I don’t think it really has a shape anymore.”
“You should at least put it over a chair, if you insist on keeping it out.”
“Later. My hands are soapy from the dishes.”
“I will,” said Javert, taking the coat off the rack and draping it over his arm. “May I help with breakfast?”
“No, don’t worry about it. You can sit in the kitchen until it’s ready. Today’s paper is on the table.”
“I’ll start beating the eggs,” said Javert, tracing the steps of their familiar ritual as he followed Valjean through the small foyer into the kitchen.
“This. What do you think of her?”
It was a Monday morning. Javert put down his glass of orange juice. He peered across the table at the article his friend was holding up, the headline covered by his thumb.
The girl in the picture was young with close-cropped hair and large eyes. Her lips tugged with the hint of a smile as she gazed directly back at the camera.
“16-18 years of age,” said Javert, with more confidence than he felt. “A student. In the paper for some sort of volunteer work or community project.”
Valjean nodded. “Okay. 16-18 years of age, sure. Why a student?”
“Her clothes and haircut appear new and fashionable enough. She must be reasonably financially comfortable. Therefore, statistically, she is more likely to be in school than not.”
“Unfortunate, don’t you think?”
“It is,” conceded Javert, studying his friend carefully.
“And in the paper for for volunteer or community work?”
“Your thumb is slipping.”
Valjean glanced down and readjusted his grip, concealing the headline again.
Javert continued, “As I said, she is young and apparently financially comfortable. So, it’s less statistically likely, though nowhere near impossible, for her to be in the paper for committing a crime. The victim of a crime? Maybe. But if you picked it to show to me, it must be something that caught your interest, and I know children doing community work would do so.”
“Oh, come on,” replied Valjean lightly, reaching for the grapes in the middle of the table. “That’s not fair.”
Javert quirked an eyebrow as he took hold of the stem, helping Valjean tug the stubborn grape free. “So I was right, then.” He tried not to betray the question mark.
“You can’t use contextual clues. That’s against the rules.”
“Of course I can. If information is present, it’s my duty as an officer of the law to use it.”
Shaking his head, Valjean slid the paper across the table to Javert. Javert read the headline:
"THE ANGEL OF SKID ROW’: 16-YEAR-OLD COLLECTS CLOTHING FOR THE HOMELESS”
“Wholly unfair,” complained Valjean as Javert flashed his teeth at him across the table. “You know me too well. If I didn’t know you better, I’d go so far as to call this cheating.”
Javert put down his fork. “I do not cheat,” replied Javert, affronted, while the usual relief loosed the knot in his chest.
Valjean smiled beatifically as he returned to his neglected breakfast. “I know. Which is why I said I wouldn’t accuse you of it.”
Valjean would always stand in the doorway until Javert had gotten past the gate. Of course, Javert never actually looked back or turned around, but he could always feel when he was being watched, and he always heard the quiet click of Valjean’s front door just as he reached his car, parked at the curb. He wondered to himself what perils Valjean thought he would encounter just walking through the garden. Or perhaps Valjean still feared that one day, finally, Javert wouldn’t walk away from the house. Finally, Javert would turn back around to arrest him.
Javert didn’t like to think about that.
After leaving his friend’s cloistered, sun-warmed house, he began his half-hour long drive to work. He himself lived just ten minutes away from his workplace. Valjean, however, lived quite a bit further. Javert was willing to make the trip.
He had to drive the local roads for two reasons. The first was to avoid the mess of traffic that was the freeway. The second was that it allowed him greater freedom to select his route. There were some parts of the city that looked like nothing had happened. There were others that were still ashen, crumbling, three years after the barricades, a network of cauterized veins. Javert preferred to navigate around those.
Still, the quiet smoothness of his drive was disconcerting. It gave too much room to his memory of the morning. He tried not to think about the light from the kitchen window or the scrambled eggs, or the odd, disjointed sense of loss he felt now that he was in the cool air-conditioning of his car.
A slow day, with no criminals to chase across the streets of Los Angeles. His tired muscles were dully grateful for it. He finished his work before six, but even as all the other officers went home, he remained in his office, working steadily through a stack of paperwork. In the middle of signing a sheet of paper, he briefly wondered when he would go home. A pang of anxiety chilled him.
Here, in the office, he had paperwork to be done: a poor substitute for the warmth of the house at Rue Plumet, but the next best thing, at least. It gave him a full dose of the medicine he craved, dull, soothing routine. At home, he faced an empty apartment and silence. He could go over to Valjean’s, yes—but he had already been that morning, and he didn’t wish to bother his friend more than necessary. With a flick of his wrist, he signed at the X, then turned to the next page. He had the feeling that once he left the sterile coolness of the station and stepped into the dark, deadly still Los Angeles night, he would be leaving behind that comfortable assurance and stability for good.
It was probably just the time of year that was getting beneath his skin.
He scribbled in details of the latest apprehension and signed again at the X.
VALJEAN: Do you want to come over this weekend? If you’re not busy. X
JAVERT: What would I possibly be busy with?
VALJEAN: Recovering from a busy work week?
VALJEAN: Resting from too much time spent in the company of a silly old man?
JAVERT: You’re not an old man.
VALJEAN: :-)
VALJEAN: But I am silly?
JAVERT: Yes
JAVERT: Saturday or Sunday?
The weekend Javert and Enjolras encountered each other again was one of the first scorching days of Los Angeles summer.
Valjean’s barbecue neighbor—the family across the street that seemed to throw a party every weekend—had smoke and loud chatter rising from their backyard yet again. As such, cars were crammed alongside every available inch of curb. Javert parked on the next street down and walked over to Valjean’s house.
The heat wasn’t unusual, not by a long shot, but the humidity was strange. It had been like this three years ago, just around this time. The clinging moisture was an uncomfortably physical reminder, like wearing the coat of a dead relative.
Valjean was kneeling in the garden when Javert arrived. Javert was glad of it. Valjean had given him a gate key, but he always felt unaccountably guilty using it, as if he were trespassing.
“What’s the occasion this time?” asked Javert, nodding in the direction of the house across the street. The hedges in front of 55 Rue Plumet mostly shaded it from view.
Wiping his hands on his apron, Valjean approached the gate and unlatched it for him. “Is it the 16th?” he asked, holding it open for his friend.
“I believe so. Why?”
“Someone graduated, I think,” said Valjean. “I got an invitation, but I told them I had a friend to see.”
It took Javert a moment to realize who Valjean was referring to. He frowned. “Did you want to go?”
Valjean gave him the closest thing to sarcasm he was capable of: a thoroughly genuine smile. “Would I want to go to a barbecue party?”
“You’re a hermit,” replied Javert.
“And I’m afraid you’re a hypocrite.”
Javert scowled, and Valjean’s winsome smile grew.
“I’m going to run to the grocery store,” said Valjean, touching Javert’s arm. “I meant to do so before you came, but—” He smiled sheepishly. “I was on the phone with Cosette longer than expected.”
“Of course you were,” snorted Javert. “Tell me about it when you get back.”
“Let me unlock the house for you,” said Valjean, and as he turned away, Javert regretted the loss of his friend's hand on his arm. The light, gentle warmth was a welcome change from the clinging heat of the day.
Not ten minutes after, Javert was in Valjean’s living room faintly absorbing the news, waiting for his tea to brew, when he heard a knock on the door.
Whoever it was had a gate key.
Javert’s immediate instinct was to take his phone out of his pocket. There weren’t any messages from Valjean.
Cautiously, he rose from his chair, padded to the door, and opened it. Someone was standing there in a motorcycle helmet, black leather jacket, and jeans.
“Who are you?” asked Javert, gripping his phone.
A gloved hand reached up to pull back the visor. “I was looking for Monsieur Fauchelevent. Although—” A pair of eyes scrutinized Javert. “Forgive me if I’m wrong, but don’t I know you?
“I certainly know you,” said Javert, unable to look away. “You survived.”
The boy's eyes widened for just a moment. Then, the boy's expression hardened to resolve, and the resemblance to that figure from the past became complete.
“Excuse me?” the boy asked guardedly.
“You yourself said you recognized me. I was returning the sentiment.”
“I thought I knew you,” the boy replied. “Though I’m not sure where from. What did you mean that I—”
“Enjolras,” Javert said.
As a police officer, Javert had been trained to recognize all the faces of fear. He instinctively looked for the first sign of it to twist it to his advantage. Fear was a look he had never dreamt of seeing on this boy, but there was no mistaking it now.
“You must have the wrong person. I was looking for Monsieur Fauchelevent,” the boy repeated more firmly.
“You will not put him in danger.”
“Why would I put him in danger?”
“Don’t play games,” growled Javert. “I know exactly who you are. Answer me: what are you doing at Monsieur Fauchelevent’s house?”
The boy was silent for a long moment before responding, measured, “I could ask you the same question.”
“Answer me first,” responded Javert, ignoring how heavily the words settled in his chest.
The boy never broke eye contact. “I’m Monsieur Fauchelevent’s friend. I was just passing by and thought I’d come see if he was home.” He lowered his voice. “I would never willingly put him in danger. You were there. You might know that I owe him my life.”
A hot summer breeze lifted across the grass without stirring the boy’s hair, which was plastered to his forehead with sweat. The boy did not give up his unnerving stare.
“You didn’t answer your own question,” noted the boy.
“I suppose you could say I am his friend, as well,” replied Javert, slowly.
The boy raised his eyebrows. “Oh. I see,” Enjolras replied. “That explains some things.”
“What?”
He gestured towards Javert. “You’re alive. I thought, you know, he killed you.”
“I’m alive,” Javert echoed. The boy finally glanced down. Javert stared over his shoulder at the hedges bordering the garden, hoping for the tell-tale rumble of Valjean’s car down the street. “We weren’t friends back then,” added Javert.
“I see.”
Now that the rush of fear was subsiding, the picture was becoming clearer. Who knew even the unruly leader of the revolution would become just another member of Valjean’s herd of lost sheep?
“What’s your name, then?” asked Javert.
“I’m sorry?”
“Your name. What you would like to be called now.” The boy glanced away, stubbornly silent. Javert’s mind went incongruously to the time when he and Valjean were still soaking wet from the river, when Valjean had convinced him to come back home with him, his voice tenderly trembling with cold. “Monsieur Fauchelevent is at the market,” Javert said, his tone softer. “I was also visiting him today and we were going to have dinner.” He paused. "I’m a…friend of his, too.” He had already made that quite clear, he realized.
Perhaps the words themselves had no effect, but the change of tone certainly did.
“Oh.” The fear softened around the edges, and somehow, without its sharpness, the boy looked more a child than ever. He brushed a thick lock of hair out of his face. “I go by Michel.”
“That’s on the nose,” observed Javert.
“Lots of people are named Michel,” he replied, and with dread, Javert noticed that his hands were moving to prize off the helmet.
He looked...ordinary, Javert realized with surprise. In fact, it was very possible that if he had first seen Enjolras without the helmet, he wouldn't have recognized him at all. The hair once drawn severely back into a ponytail was now cropped short and dyed a dark brown. It was mussed from the helmet, too, sticking up stubbornly even as Enjolras combed it back with his fingers.
Javert grunted noncommittally at Enjolras’s comment, trying not to take notice of how the uneven stubble somehow made the boy look even younger. He glanced back.
“If you would like, you can wait in the living room for Monsieur Fauchelevent to return. He won’t be more than another twenty minutes.”
He saw the boy hesitating again, and he opened the door a fraction wider. The boy lingered on the threshold before stepping inside.
“Living room is this way,” said Javert, gesturing.
“I know,” he replied. “I’ve—thank you.”
He has been here before, Javert reminded himself.
Javert wasn’t entirely clueless. And he wasn’t untrained in deescalating situations with skittish civilians. He left the door open and deliberately stepped away from it.
Only then did the boy take off his shoes and walk over to the sofa chair—the only seat facing the door, Javert noted.
The kettle shrieked in the kitchen. The boy flinched.
“That’s our kettle,” Javert said quickly, unnecessarily, still standing by the front door.
The boy smiled a little, only with one corner of his mouth. “I know,” he said.
“I have tea,” Javert said. “If you would like tea.”
He was escaping into the kitchen the moment the boy accepted.
It was Javert’s chair that Enjolras had taken. Valjean’s chair, he reminded himself. In fact, it was the one Valjean adored, the beige one with the awful floral upholstery. When had Javert started thinking of that hideous thing as his?
There was something Valjean did every time Cosette came over. Javert wasn’t about to argue with his expertise in these matters.
“Here,” said Javert, gingerly setting down a tray of grapes, crackers, nuts, tea—he might have gone a bit overboard, he realized.
Enjolras looked up. Javert decided that he should definitely start feeling offended by the surprise this boy kept showing towards everything he did. “Thank you, sir,” said Enjolras.
The boy reached for his cup. He quickly set it back down when it became apparent his hands were shaking.
Just then, he heard the merciful key turning in the lock. Both of them startled, pointedly did not look at each other, and turned to the door.
Valjean came in, carrying two bags of groceries on one arm as he opened the door with the other. “It’s me,” he called out, as he always did. Javert did not miss the boy’s now-routine expression of surprise.
“We’re in here,” said Javert, not without relief.
Valjean glanced over, halfway to the refrigerator. “Oh!” A smile softened his face. “Hello, my boy. I’ll be there in a moment.”
“Do you need help with the groceries, Monsieur?” he asked.
“Don’t worry about it,” Valjean said. “I’ll take care of it.”
Javert got up anyway and followed silently after Valjean. Valjean nodded at him as he approached, loading his purchases into the refrigerator. “So I see you’ve met my young friend?”
Javert scowled. “I know who he is. I’m not going to report him.”
That was relief on Valjean’s face, certainly. That would explain the widening smile.
“I know,” said Valjean.
Javert ignored the pit that had been steadily forming in his stomach ever since he heard that knock on the door.
As Valjean continued taking care of the fridge, Javert took the oatmeal, peanut butter, cinnamon, and cereal and went over to stock the higher cabinets. As he put the items away, he gave into his habit of passing a hand over the ceiling of the cabinet. The thick envelope was still safely hidden there. Valjean had many hiding spots for money all over the house; Javert mentioned none of them and anxiously checked up on all of them, and then had to remind himself they weren't even his.
Javert didn’t understand why Valjean used those cabinets for actual foodstuff if he could barely even reach them, but Valjean was a stubborn man.
“I can reach them if I want to reach them,” insisted Valjean one day as they made breakfast, and Javert had to resist an inexplicable smile every time he thought of that.
“What shall we bring him to eat?” asked Valjean, ushering him back into the present. “I just bought some cheese and crackers from the store.”
“I already brought him something."
"Thank you, Javert.” Valjean sounded surprised.
“You never mentioned Enjolras to me,” said Javert quietly, his back turned to Valjean, careful to keep accusation out of his voice.
There was a pause before Valjean answered. “I didn’t know what you would think, is all. I didn’t want to agitate you.”
“I understand,” he said. Why did it still hurt the way it did?
“It’s getting late,” said Valjean. “I can get started on dinner, if you’d like?”
“I should be getting home,” he said to the cabinets.
He heard Valjean turning around. “I thought you were staying for dinner? I bought the curry you like.”
“Next time,” said Javert, again to the cabinets, and very deliberately tried not to imagine Valjean washing the dishes alone.
Enjolras’ hand trembling on the china saucer. The summer wind barely stirring the soft, fine hair of the boys lying in the streets.
There are things that bring back memories without warning. The way the air feels when the seasons change is one of them. The shapes of these memories are forgotten; the hard facts are bypassed as one slips entirely into sense memory.
Javert needed only to stand in the street, to feel the stillness in the air that accompanies the first heat of summer, before a whole host of other sensations came crowding in: a desperate voice echoing through a tunnel, the sweat gathering at his collar, the pavement under his boots, the silence, the silence, the heavy smell of the river after rain, the silence.
JAVERT: I’m sorry about yesterday.
VALJEAN: That’s okay. We can do another time. X
JAVERT: May I still come for breakfast on Monday?
VALJEAN: What would I possibly be busy with?
JAVERT: Are you quoting me?
VALJEAN: :-)
JAVERT: You’re very rude.
VALJEAN: You’re insufferable.
VALJEAN: X
JAVERT: …
“You know, you didn’t distress him or offend him in any way,” said Valjean as he mixed the pancake batter.
Javert stood at the stove, melting butter on the griddle. He had been expecting—and dreading—this conversation from the moment he escaped Valjean’s house the other day.
Valjean continued, “Of course, he was a little cautious around you at first because he recognized you from the barricades. He was also surprised to see you because he didn’t know you were alive. But you told him you were a friend of mine, and he believed you.”
“He’d be a fool to trust my word,” huffed Javert. “I came to him as a friend once before.”
“And back then, you weren’t in my house, out of uniform, waiting for me to come home from the market,” said Valjean simply. He heard Valjean’s moment of hesitation before the man added, “And you certainly weren’t trying to protect me from him.”
Javert was silent for a moment. “Snitch,” he said finally.
“I was touched when Enjolras told me about that. I appreciate you looking out for me.”
Valjean’s voice was soft. Javert grunted noncommittally.
“The boy tried to lead a revolution, Javert,” continued Valjean. “He bet his life on believing change is possible. He wouldn’t condemn someone for a single mistake they made.”
“He’s a fool,” said Javert, effectively ending the conversation.
Valjean didn’t press. “It was nice of you to bring him a snack,” he said finally. “He likes crackers.”
Javert snorted. There was something so ridiculous about cooking breakfast with Jean Valjean and discussing how Enjolras liked crackers.
Valjean sent him a mild, questioning glance, and Javert shook his head, and the moment passed without comment.
“You take over the griddle. I’ll check the batter,” Javert said, wondering at how suffering seemed to make saints of everyone else.
During his drive to work, Javert thought about how Valjean’s arm had brushed his when they traded places in the kitchen. It would not be unpleasant for such a thing to happen in the garden, or, better, in the street—their arms brushing—and for Valjean to, perhaps…
In the first days after his recovery, going to work was the only thing that grounded him, the one constant in his life that he could hold onto. Now, however, compelling himself to go was the most difficult part of every day—second only to compelling himself to leave.
He finally forced himself out of the chair in his office at 9:00. The Vietnamese place around the corner closed at 9:15, and he didn’t want to go just as they were closing up. He drove straight home.
When he arrived at his small apartment, he sank quickly into his worn sofa, his muscles aching. It didn’t make sense for his ribs and his legs to be hurting more this time of year than any other. There was no logic in that. And yet…
As he sank down, stuffing fell out from a hole in the upholstery. He sighed and pushed it back in. He missed his chair at 55 Rue Plumet.
Valjean’s chair, he reminded himself.
He stared at the blank television.
It took all his strength to fight against the strange weight over him, to reach for his laptop and open it. The cursed machine practically roared to life when he switched it on. It was over six years old and the casing gaped wide open.
Around the weak glow of his laptop screen, the vast darkness pressed in with the heavy heat of summer nights.
His fingers faithfully delivered the familiar names into the search engine. The familiar deathless faces smiled back in school photos and news reports. He had done this a hundred times before. The laptop was hot under the soft skin of his wrists.
But there still was breakfast the next morning. And there would be breakfast the morning after that. At least he had that to count on, every day. If there's anything Javert had come to learn, it was that there was always a next time with Jean Valjean.
Valjean's voice shook with restrained laughter as he read aloud a funny headline and struggled to get to the end of the sentence. That morning, Javert especially noticed the way his friend’s hands were gentle with everything they touched, from the oranges he squeezed for their breakfast to the newspaper he folded when he was finished with it. Those hands were gentle even with the things they used, put away, destroyed.
VALJEAN: Come over this weekend? X
VALJEAN: Don’t worry if you’re busy. X
JAVERT: Valjean, we’ve established that I’m never busy on the weekends.
VALJEAN: Yes…but I don’t want to pressure you to come over if you’d rather do something else.
JAVERT: Saturday or Sunday?
The chairs at Rue Plumet were a little too narrow and the table a little too low. Thus, whenever he ate, Valjean had to hunch over, which made him look smaller and a little vulnerable, like a child trying to hide something he was working on.
“How was work this week?” asked Valjean over the breakfast they had cooked together.
“Valjean, I was over at your house every day of the week,” replied Javert.
“Yes, but I haven’t heard about Friday yet.”
“Tell me about your Friday first,” encouraged Javert. “I realized you never finished your story about the gardener.”
Valjean laughed sheepishly. His laugh had always sounded like a fragile thing, like it had forgotten to ask permission. “Oh, that…”
At work one Thursday, Javert sketched Enjolras' face in the corner of a spare sheet of paper. Javert depicted him as he had to be portrayed: staring directly at the viewer, his hands lifted in the precision of a gesture. But the boy was looking slightly upwards to meet the viewer's eyes, lending a defiant, vulnerable tilt to his chin. It was just the way Enjolras had looked on Valjean’s doorstep that day.
After a moment of thought, Javert drew his hair and stubble as it was now, ignoring the odd guilt at doing so.
A knock sounded on his office door. Javert glanced around, finding that his wallet was the nearest available resource. He tore the corner off the page and concealed it in his wallet as he called for whoever it was to come in.
One morning at the end of June, Javert gestured at Valjean’s orange raincoat, draped over a kitchen chair. “It’s not going to rain.”
Valjean glanced up from where he was dicing tomatoes, the rhythm of his knife on the cutting board never faltering.
“You never know,” he replied.
Javert rolled up his sleeves, preparing to join him in the kitchen. “It’s Los Angeles.”
“We get rain sometimes.”
“It’s summer.”
“There was one summer it rained early in June. Do you remember that? I think that was four or five years ago?”
"Three years ago."
The steady clicking of the knife on the cutting board ceased. Valjean looked up and met eyes with Javert over the counter.
“It’s not going to rain,” said Javert finally, securing his sleeves and entering the kitchen.