Work Text:
“Javert.”
Hearing his name, Javert turns around—and frowns.
“Who are you?”
“Me.”
“Who is ‘me’?”
“Jean Valjean.”
“Ohh.”
It’s been… how many years exactly? Javert can’t recall. Their last encounter didn’t go well, so maybe it’s pardonable that he forgot Valjean’s face.
“Hi.” Valjean awkwardly waves—an absolutely unnecessary gesture, in Javert’s opinion, as they’re standing at an arm’s length. “Well, er, long time no see, I guess.”
“You can put it that way, yes.”
Even though they haven’t met for countless years, Javert’s senses sharpen in awareness of Valjean’s close proximity. He mostly feels rather than sees him, tugging at the sleeves of that ugly yellow coat with his large hand. Javert wants to roll his eyes—it’s unbelievable that Valjean still owns this horrendous coat. All these years and nobody told him to offer this— this thing to the moths? Or is it a new one? Did he buy a new coat in the very same distasteful colour? Un-be-lie-ve-able.
“Shall we go inside?” Valjean gestures to the door; Javert instinctively follows the motion with his eyes.
Valjean aged well, he hasn’t lost his steady composure so far. The coat might be hiding his arms, but it can’t completely hide his muscular form. Javert would bet that Valjean is as strong as ever—almost inhumanly. One glance at his broad, firm hands can tell it.
Even looking at Valjean’s hands seems unbearably sensual to Javert, and he quickly draws his gaze away, out across the street where a group of girls are walking towards a club, heels too high and makeup too much, excitedly chattering on their way.
“Or have you changed your mind?”
Javert blinks in surprise. Now, this question doesn’t make sense at all. He tears away his gaze from the other side of the street, turns to Valjean, and, for the first time tonight, he looks at him, properly— and finally sees him.
And then the penny drops.
“You’re saying— you’re saying that you’re my date?”
“Okay, this is weird.” Valjean lets his hand fall and takes a step back from the café’s door. “Now you want to say you didn’t know you’d be meeting me tonight?”
Javert shrugs. “Pontmercy kept referring to you as Madeleine.”
“Because that’s my stage name and Marius is an idiot,” Valjean sighs exasperatedly. “Wait, you thought I was a girl?!”
“Pontmercy also used masculine pronouns or I wouldn’t have come. I’m not interested in women.”
“Glad to hear it.”
There is a short but awkward pause.
“So, you still sing?”
“That’s one way to put it. I’m an opera singer,” Valjean explaines “on stage I go by the name M. Madeleine. Otherwise, I’m still the same ol’ Jean Valjean, I guess.”
“Still the same, huh?” Javert murmurs. “I didn’t know opera singers went on blind dates.”
“Only those with really persistent daughters.” How can Valjean’s half-smile move something within Javert? How? Maybe he hasn’t forgotten him enough. “I guess they want me out of their hair. I understand, they’re young and they’re in love, they want to be left alone. From their point of view, love is the solution for everything so it’s only logical to send me on a date—”
“I get it,” Javert cuts him off. Much to his despise, his irritation is showing but he can’t help it. “You came to please them.”
“No. I came to meet you.”
If anything, Valjean’s statement, simple as ever, only fuels Javert’s irritation.
“Why?”
“Why?” Valjean asks back, visibly perplexed.
“Why did you come to meet me?”
“Because I still believe in second chances?”
Javert snorts. “On my part, I’ve never believed in second chances. Although I’m not sure we can talk about second chances when you didn’t even give me a first one, to begin with! I got one dance from you, then you practically ran away from me. A dance and a kiss— then nothing, and now you parade in, talking about second chances? It’s been twenty years, Valjean!”
“Nineteen!”
“What?”
“Nineteen years, Javert.”
Well, it seems at least one of them was counting.
“Look, I have a proposition—”
Javert tries to appear all sarcastic and unbothered when he says, “Oh, now you have propositions, interesting,” but it doesn’t have the desired effect. Or maybe it does—if Javert wanted Valjean to passionately push him against the wall. Truth to be told, it kind of makes his mouth go dry.
“I’m a patient man but you’re really pushing my buttons.”
“Do you still think it’s a good idea to date me?” Javert rather breathes than asks it.
“I don’t know but I’m determined to find out. So you can walk in there on your own legs or let me carry you inside, your choice. But I’m going to have that coffee with you.”
Javert might not be fond of teary-eyed conversations about first, second or zillionth chances but he likes a strong-minded man. (Although those strong muscles aren’t disadvantages either.)
“A coffee sounds good.”
“Maybe a dance, too,” Jean says, the words dropping from his lips like pearls. When did Javert start thinking of him as Jean? He couldn’t care less, not when the night has barely started but it’s getting better and better by every second. “Perhaps a kiss.”
A sharp intake of breath. “Could we reverse the order?”