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Five Les Mis Fusions I don't Know Canon Well Enough To Write More Of (Thankfully) (1/5)
Things wrangling Les Mis fandom makes you do: start wondering really desperately which other fandom you've been in in which bread!sex was a thing. (I know there must have been one! I wouldn't have images this vivid in my head if there wasn't! Possibly it was actually in canon, in fact! But where??)
Anyway, I just saw Javert/Valjean Sentinel/Guide tags come through! So YAY I am not the only one wanting this! I haven't looked at the tags yet, but por encourager les otres (to quote Sergeant Colon) I thought I'd post Part One of this series that I am almost finished playing with. :p (And then go see what's in the one on the AO3).
Every morning before dawn, Inspector Javert woke in his room in the town of Montreuil-sur-mer. It was a plain room, severely so, beyond what his poverty might excuse - all of the few furnishings simple in shape and texture, the colors limited to dull greys and browns; the only concession to comfort was the smooth linen of his bedding.
He lit a single candle, by the dim light of which he washed carefully in lukewarm water, dressed in his aged clothes and boots, tidy but worn now to a delicate softness, and shaped by time to the exact contours of his body, breakfasted on a tasteless, textureless, room-temperature porridge; and stepped out onto the streets of the town to begin a day's work enforcing the peace.
Javert kept every day to this strict routine, so that one could predict, at any moment, where he might be and what he would be doing. One might think that such clockwork regularity would be difficult for a man with such a fundamentally chaotic profession, but Javert had an uncanny manner of simply arranging matters so that he would appear where he was needed, and for events to work out around him with such precision that he might have foretold them.
It was not foretelling, no more that his mother's had been; merely observation, well-used. From the street he could hear the unwonted silence in a third-floor room, and know that in the evening the man of the household would be drunk and angry. He could smell the slurry in an alley and know that the baby in the garret was ill again, and its mother would be walking the streets to earn money for medicines. He could see a young pick-pocket plying his trade six blocks down the street, and track his twisting escape through the town merely by the sound of his foot-falls, to suddenly appear before him, just when he thought himself free. He could tell from the smell of the powder and the sound of the hammer that a gun would misfire on the next shot. He could feel the temper of the town through the thin soles of his boots.
Every morning at the same time, he would pass by the mayor on his way to his business; they would offer polite greetings to one another as they passed, and Javert would hear Monsieur le maire's heartbeat speed suddenly, though he remained outwardly serene. Perhaps Javert's heartbeat sped as well, but he could not hear it over the sound of the other's. This sound stayed with him throughout the day: whenever he began to lose himself, in the smells of the rookeries, the noise of the factories, the tumultuous motion and riotous color of a town, he had only to listen to that heartbeat, as steady and calm and ever-present as the stars in the darkness, and be brought back to himself and his purpose.
He did not think, 'No normal man could discern one heartbeat alone among those of all the people in this town, no matter the distance, no matter the distractions.' He did not think, 'Were it not for Monsieur Madeleine, and the focus he gives me, I could not fulfill my duties here: I would be ill and dreaming in my rooms, as I was before I was posted here to Montreiul-sur-mer for the quiet and the sea air.' He did not think these things, for of course, none of them were true.
Instead, he thought, 'I have heard that same heartbeat before, the strength and power of it churning through those veins; I heard it in Toulon, running through my sleep and my waking; for years in my youth I thought it was the sound of the sea, until a certain convict was paroled, and he took my peace with him as he took his undeserved freedom when he ran. There cannot be two men with that heartbeat. But M. Madeleine cannot cannot be that brutish man, for there is nothing else they share; and yet he must be. I have no proof; no court will take the sound of a heartbeat as proof. And so I must remain vigilant; I must stay near him, in the service of justice; whenever I feel myself wavering, I must turn all of my senses to him, and be steadfast again.'
M. Madeleine did not think any of these things, for he was in some ways a much simpler soul. He thought only that each morning, as he greeted the Inspector, the one man who might denounce him and be believed, that despite the rush of old fear he felt at his presence, he felt also that he was safe with this man: that so long as Inspector Javert kept watch upon his town, so long as each morning they passed each other in the street and spoke their polite hellos, so long as there was one man who knew his soul in all its parts and that man was Javert, then all would be well with them.
(Some decades in the future, in distant Paris, a young man by the name of Combeferre would begin studying under the eminent natural historian Maturin, compiling newly-rediscovered myths of the savages of Asia and America and the dark continent, finding to match it half-forgotten folklore of his own people, and begin to understand, and experiment with, certain paths of knowledge that had been long forgotten in the civilized West, and down them guide a dear friend of his to a greater destiny: but for Javert and Valjean, such knowledge was too late and too little. They had only a greeting in the street, and a heartbeat in the night, to go on with.)
This wins the award for One I Most Wish There Was a Bunch More Of! C'mon, Javert's a Sentinel, Silent and Sure! And somebody really really needs to write the one where Combeferre's the Guide of the Amis! It's practically canon.
Anyway, I just saw Javert/Valjean Sentinel/Guide tags come through! So YAY I am not the only one wanting this! I haven't looked at the tags yet, but por encourager les otres (to quote Sergeant Colon) I thought I'd post Part One of this series that I am almost finished playing with. :p (And then go see what's in the one on the AO3).
Every morning before dawn, Inspector Javert woke in his room in the town of Montreuil-sur-mer. It was a plain room, severely so, beyond what his poverty might excuse - all of the few furnishings simple in shape and texture, the colors limited to dull greys and browns; the only concession to comfort was the smooth linen of his bedding.
He lit a single candle, by the dim light of which he washed carefully in lukewarm water, dressed in his aged clothes and boots, tidy but worn now to a delicate softness, and shaped by time to the exact contours of his body, breakfasted on a tasteless, textureless, room-temperature porridge; and stepped out onto the streets of the town to begin a day's work enforcing the peace.
Javert kept every day to this strict routine, so that one could predict, at any moment, where he might be and what he would be doing. One might think that such clockwork regularity would be difficult for a man with such a fundamentally chaotic profession, but Javert had an uncanny manner of simply arranging matters so that he would appear where he was needed, and for events to work out around him with such precision that he might have foretold them.
It was not foretelling, no more that his mother's had been; merely observation, well-used. From the street he could hear the unwonted silence in a third-floor room, and know that in the evening the man of the household would be drunk and angry. He could smell the slurry in an alley and know that the baby in the garret was ill again, and its mother would be walking the streets to earn money for medicines. He could see a young pick-pocket plying his trade six blocks down the street, and track his twisting escape through the town merely by the sound of his foot-falls, to suddenly appear before him, just when he thought himself free. He could tell from the smell of the powder and the sound of the hammer that a gun would misfire on the next shot. He could feel the temper of the town through the thin soles of his boots.
Every morning at the same time, he would pass by the mayor on his way to his business; they would offer polite greetings to one another as they passed, and Javert would hear Monsieur le maire's heartbeat speed suddenly, though he remained outwardly serene. Perhaps Javert's heartbeat sped as well, but he could not hear it over the sound of the other's. This sound stayed with him throughout the day: whenever he began to lose himself, in the smells of the rookeries, the noise of the factories, the tumultuous motion and riotous color of a town, he had only to listen to that heartbeat, as steady and calm and ever-present as the stars in the darkness, and be brought back to himself and his purpose.
He did not think, 'No normal man could discern one heartbeat alone among those of all the people in this town, no matter the distance, no matter the distractions.' He did not think, 'Were it not for Monsieur Madeleine, and the focus he gives me, I could not fulfill my duties here: I would be ill and dreaming in my rooms, as I was before I was posted here to Montreiul-sur-mer for the quiet and the sea air.' He did not think these things, for of course, none of them were true.
Instead, he thought, 'I have heard that same heartbeat before, the strength and power of it churning through those veins; I heard it in Toulon, running through my sleep and my waking; for years in my youth I thought it was the sound of the sea, until a certain convict was paroled, and he took my peace with him as he took his undeserved freedom when he ran. There cannot be two men with that heartbeat. But M. Madeleine cannot cannot be that brutish man, for there is nothing else they share; and yet he must be. I have no proof; no court will take the sound of a heartbeat as proof. And so I must remain vigilant; I must stay near him, in the service of justice; whenever I feel myself wavering, I must turn all of my senses to him, and be steadfast again.'
M. Madeleine did not think any of these things, for he was in some ways a much simpler soul. He thought only that each morning, as he greeted the Inspector, the one man who might denounce him and be believed, that despite the rush of old fear he felt at his presence, he felt also that he was safe with this man: that so long as Inspector Javert kept watch upon his town, so long as each morning they passed each other in the street and spoke their polite hellos, so long as there was one man who knew his soul in all its parts and that man was Javert, then all would be well with them.
(Some decades in the future, in distant Paris, a young man by the name of Combeferre would begin studying under the eminent natural historian Maturin, compiling newly-rediscovered myths of the savages of Asia and America and the dark continent, finding to match it half-forgotten folklore of his own people, and begin to understand, and experiment with, certain paths of knowledge that had been long forgotten in the civilized West, and down them guide a dear friend of his to a greater destiny: but for Javert and Valjean, such knowledge was too late and too little. They had only a greeting in the street, and a heartbeat in the night, to go on with.)
This wins the award for One I Most Wish There Was a Bunch More Of! C'mon, Javert's a Sentinel, Silent and Sure! And somebody really really needs to write the one where Combeferre's the Guide of the Amis! It's practically canon.
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(Actually, I remembered another one a few minutes ago: there's also Sandoval from Oglaf and his nsfw pastry fetish, but I'm pretty sure it's Brooker I was remembering, because the part where it was a loaf is relevant.)
(You know, as a result of Les Mis fandom there's now a "Bread (Character)" canonical with two ships linked to it, but no British Comedy ones...)
(...so that's three fandoms where bread!sex is a thing.)
(I have not read any of the Les Mis ones. ...Maybe it's platonic and there's no actual sexual contact? Not that I'm judging people's kinks, but I just can't see it as IC with J and JVJ.)
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(I can't believe I'm asking that question.)
ETA: Wait, are you implying the baguettes top? Okay, that simultaneously makes a lot more character sense and a lot less physics sense.
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au bon pain is the one where the ducks tragically eat Valjean's beloved. I...think it's pretty IC? And funny.
echoes unspoken is the one where the
baguetteficelle tops. It is...explicit, and I think about as in character as any "things get really intense and then they do it" Valjean/Javert fic.grist for the mill is the one where the bread bottoms. The Valjean/Javert part is kind of dubcon, and I don't know what I think of the characterization.
But they're all rather impressive. Voksen is dedicated to crackfic.
(I can't believe we're having this conversation.)
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....I can't believe that I've discovered that I apparently have very strong feelings about top vs. bottom in man/bread pairings...
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Um. So I guess it comes down to the symbolic etc. value of penetrator/penetrated? Which when it's two people in the pairing I'm usually going to reserve judgement on but I guess with person/inanimate object, where either a) it's going to be purely about desperation for physical release, or b) a large part of the interaction's going to be mental, I have stronger feelings? And I really don't read Javert or Valjean (outside a crack!AU) as ever being the sort to be so desperate for pure physical release beyond their own hands that they turn to pastry, so it comes down to b), and what are their emotions around sex and bread and penetration that would lead to this? And while I can totally see them both as switches in relationships with people, there's a huge difference between "I need to dominate something so I will dominate bread" and "I need to submit to something so I will submit to bread" especially given the symbolic weight of bread in Valjean's life and Javert's relationship with him, and I don't really see either of them as the kind to need to assert dominance that desperately, either.
And here I'm conflating top/bottom dynamics with d/s dynamics aren't I? But see again with a difference when it's an inanimate object. Although if someone can write a man actively fucking a loaf of bread while being emotionally submissive to the bread, I will a) read that story and b) admire the writer greatly. (And there's a difference here I think between being submissive to the bread itself as opposed to humiliated by the act, a la the clip with Brooker, where he's humiliated by his own degraded penetrative sexuality, which again is a thing that seems OOC to me with Javert and Valjean (i.e. I think if they want to feel degraded by sex acts, fucking pastry - as opposed to being fucked by it - is not where they'd go), and also disrespectful of Valjean's history with bread?
I guess I can see it working in a d/S scene where the desecration of the bread is about their dynamic with each other, but not in a solo scene.
...man I must really not want to do the paperwork I'm supposed to be doing right now.
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I AM DYING. THIS PARAGRAPH. IT'S LIKE SOLID
BREADGOLD.I love this fandom and you are awesome.
Yeah, I kind of figure that all Valjean/bread stories are going to be crack AUs, though. (And I think fandom in general is waaaaay more fixated on bread than Valjean ever was in canon, unless the canon is Shoujo Cosette [official Tumblr tag: "everything is bread"].)
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I can easily believe that fandom cares a lot more about bread than Valjean. (Honestly, I can easily believe that Javert cares more about The Bread Incident than Valjean. Valjean seems like he's pretty much over it, honestly. But I suspect Valjean would still value bread-qua-bread, as sustenance and as symbol, the way someone does who knows what it is to be short of it.) (Actually given the importance of the price of bread to Paris insurrections, I can easily believe that the Amis care deeply about the symbolic and cultural value of bread, now I kind of want to challenge somebody to write that bread!porn...)
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But I suspect Valjean would still value bread-qua-bread, as sustenance and as symbol, the way someone does who knows what it is to be short of it.
Oh, sure.
And if you prompt Amis/bread loud enough, IDK, it might be the Voksen-signal (plus if ANYONE can write someone topping bread while submitting to it, I bet she can. I have faith)....
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(The new 'wipe series is pretty good, IMHO. I like that it's not limited to just TV.)