College AU Frenchmen!

[road_to_calvary]

 
...this isn't his bedroom. Jean Valjean - dressed in shorts and a muscle T, covered in sweat - rubs a towel over his face, and blinks quite a lot. Then he sticks his head back through the door, and yells, 'Javert!'

'What?'

'Come look.'

Javert - mussed hair, jeans, sullen expression, a scar around his neck - slopes through the door. He also blinks a lot, and doesn't stop the door closing behind them. While Valjean spends his time staring about, his eyes fall on the leaflets nearby. He picks one up, reads it, then touches Valjean's arm to get his attention.

'Here.'

A couple of minutes later, they're staring at each other. Javert shakes his head. Valjean nods, and stretches for the door handle...which won't open. His eyes go wide as he tugs on it, and Javert has to take his wrist to stop him trying to wrench his way out.

'It's OK. We'll just get a drink and wait for it to open. It says here that it will. OK?'

'...OK.'

And so there's two wary young guys at the bar, eyeing drinks suspiciously. Well, Valjean is. Javert is eyeing Valjean, because...well. Just because.



[OOC: AU guys, obviously! Write-up on their background here. You can pretty much do what you want with them, they're only here for a week. This is open until whenever, and they'll each get an independent EP at some point. \o/]

Comments

[never_shall_yield]

Javert continues to survey him. He's got a piercing stare, usually used to keep people away from him, or shut them up. Valjean has learned to love it, but even as he watches, gets the impression Tetu won't be all that bothered by it.

'Yeah, OK, you don't know what's going on here. But there's magic where you come from?'

This is just as weird, to them.

[venerable_ibis]

No, he's not particularly ruffled by piercing stares, though he isn't particularly happy with them either. But, hey. Kids can be huge jerks when they're unhappy and in stressful situations, that's just...you gotta cut them some slack.

"Sort of. Uh. It's kind of a weird place, but, you know, like, nobody talks about the weirdness, that kind of thing? I'm a little out of my element with this. You guys know as much as I do."

[never_shall_yield]

'Like what weird stuff?'

Javert is Persistent. And the guy hasn't told him to back off, so there it is.

[venerable_ibis]

"Oh, stuff. I mean, I bought a flying carpet off a student one time, it's pretty sweet?"

[never_shall_yield]

Valjean laughs at this. Javert just looks exasperated.

'If you're not going to be serious, why bother saying anything?'

[venerable_ibis]

Tetu rubs his nose and looks pointedly over to Valjean. (Sorry about your possibly-racist, definitely-bad-attitude hopefull-not-boyfriend, kid.) "So, while I'm used to a variety of strange occurrences," --he waggles his fingers, wooooooo-- "I don't have much to go on as far as this is concerned. Sorry, man, I really am. Did you, like, eat anything from the bar yet?"

[road_to_calvary]

Valjean quirks his eyebrows back at Tetu. Yeah, he knows how Javert comes across. But he knows a lot more about him than that, so he can deal with it.

'No,' he says, hoping to stave off an argument.

'But I have to eat, I just worked out. You want to join us?'

Javert glowers at this, but only because he glowers at pretty much anything these days.

[venerable_ibis]

Tetu looks down at his piña colada for a moment, then takes a very very long sip. "--Yeah, let's do that. I'm gonna say for now that this probably isn't the kind of place where you're, like, doomed to eternity if you eat anything. It doesn't really have that vibe, you know? So, uh, I dunno. What's good after working out?"

[road_to_calvary]

'Protein. How does it say to order food, Javert?'

Javert picks up the leaflet with a long-suffering air, and flicks over it.

'Just ask. It comes like the drinks did. Or ask a...rat.'

Not gonna happen. And he wonders how they're supposed to pay for things, because he only has a few bucks on him. But the bar didn't ask for money before, so he supposes it's OK.

'I'll have steamed chicken, and broccoli,' Valjean says, decisively.

'Cheeseburger and fries.'

They both look at Tetu.

[venerable_ibis]

"...Falafel salad?" That's healthier than a big bowl of Cheetos, right? Even if it's not steamed chicken and broccoli? He doesn't straighten up or surreptitiously suck in his gut, nope. "You guys going to be offended if I offer to pay? It's a teacher thing, I get this, like, reflex reaction going that tells me to be the responsible adult..."

He already has cash out on the bar.

[road_to_calvary]

'No, no. I can pay. I have cash. This is on me.'

Javert rolls his eyes. Valjean never lets anyone pay for anything when he's around, which is humiliating. But he's also aware he has precisely four dollars in his pocket, while Valjean probably has about four hundred.

'Don't bother arguing,' he says to the guy, his voice sullen. 'He won't let you. And he can afford it. He earns a lot more than teachers do.'

Valjean's smile falters for a second, but only a second.

[venerable_ibis]

"Nah, man, it's...."

Well, fine. Teacher salaries, especially in small weird towns, suck. He takes back one of the twenties he'd put down, but leaves the other one there, and says something to the bar about a pack of Camels. "So you said you run a factory?"

[road_to_calvary]

'He owns it outright,' Javert says, shoving a fry into his mouth.

'Gives most of the money to charity, obviously, but yeah.'

'Javert...'

'What? It's true.'

It is true, but Valjean never tells anyone that. And he doesn't know what's gotten into Javert today, but he's not going to tell him to behave. So he just gives Tetu an embarrassed smile, and shrugs a bit.

'It's no big deal,' he mutters, and sits down to eat his chicken.

[venerable_ibis]

Well, that's...certainly a dynamic that they have there. Huh. Tetu nods, eyebrows up, a falafel on the end of his fork. "Cool. Cool. What kind of factory?"

[never_shall_yield]

'The kind that prints money,' Javert mutters back, darkly.

Valjean just shakes his head.

'I make a few things now. Started off with a kind of jewelry, went into fabric, diversified from there. It does OK.'

He's the best employer in the city, with a benefits and welfare package that makes most other big businesses weep. 'It does OK' is something of an understatement...or would be if he didn't, as Javert said, give most of the profits away.

[venerable_ibis]

"What kind of jewelry? I do some beadwork, myself." The salad is pretty good; and it goes pretty well with the piña colada, all things considered. So well that he's already almost finished the latter.

He's not ignoring Javert, he's just really not sure what he can possibly say that won't prompt the kid to be even more...whatever he's being.

[road_to_calvary]

Again, he looks a little embarrassed.

'Well, I started off with rosary beads. I found a way to produce them better, and more cheaply, than they were being. From there, costume stuff - I've never worked with real gold or anything I don't have any of that kind of skill. But we streamlined the process and came up with some new machinery to process and package it all, which also sells well, so-'

So. Yeah. He's really rich, all without trying very hard, and all completely undeserved as far as he's concerned. And when he says 'we' he means he did it on his own, but he'd never say that.

'But now I mostly let managers run it. Like I said, I'm in college.'

[venerable_ibis]

Tetu has his mouth full so at first he just gives a thumbs-up; but once he swallows, he grins. "Well, damn, check you out! What college do you go to?"

[never_shall_yield]

'Just the city college, nothing fancy.'

He wouldn't try to apply for a big name one, not with his record. And he wouldn't move away from Father Charles anyway, because he's not sure he could manage without him near.

Or Javert for that matter, but he's still not sure how that happened.

Speaking of Javert, he's watching them curiously. Because none of this is the most impressive stuff about Valjean, and he's wondering whether he'll tell this guy. Figures he won't, but you never know. This is a whole different place.

But then Valjean catches his eye, and minutely shakes his head. Javert goes back to his burger.

[venerable_ibis]

He shrugs. "I've written a lot of students recommendation letters to 'just-the-city-college-nothing-fancy.' Don't knock it, man."

And the guys are giving each other little cautious glances and stuff. Which has the effect of making them look even more like a (really awkward) couple, if that's what they're hiding--but Tetu doesn't press the speculation. They could just as likely be secret werewolves or superheroes or something.

[road_to_calvary]

'Oh, I'm not complaining. It's good enough for me.'

It's not like he needs a degree to be successful. He already is. And Javert snorts again, and says, into his Coke, 'no it's not.'

Neither of them would care if they come off like a couple. They probably are, in every way but the physical.