A/N: I like this, but I haven't read this part of the book in a while, so I'm not sure how canon it is. However, I know that Tholomyes didn't leave Fantine until 1817, and so Cosette was around two, so I think this would work. My explanation for writing this: I used the LMFFI Improviser. It's a very cool prompt. I recommend it.
Disclaimer: Guess what? I don't own it.
favourite
He doesn't want her to know. He doesn't want her to know that he leaves at night after she is asleep, withone hand on her swollen belly, and hecomes to me.
But I don't mind. He sings sweet odes to me, as we lay on the soft cushion of the bed, his lips in my hair, my listless hair that is not as pretty as hers, nor as golden.
But he does not want her now. Maybe later, when it is over, and she is pretty again, he will be impelled to take her in his arms again. Maybe.
And I do not want her to know that I have elected to take up such measures. He is such a beautiful lover, such a wonderful man, that I cannot help but like it and wish that I were always his instead of her.
And yet I am conflicted, for she is innocent and sweet and beautiful, even with her body heavy and large with child, and she loves him.
Some nights we walk among the theatre district, bustling even after it is late, and read the posters, and his hands are always around my waist or tangled in my hair, as though I am his, really his, not some substitute.
As badly, though, as she loves him, I am not surprised at how I feel. But it is not love. It will not be love. I refuse to fall in love with him.
And yet I think I have.
And then I can't help but wonder if she feels this way when she is tight in his arms and his lips are in her hair, her beautiful golden locks that are the world to him.
He whispers that he doesn't always love her, because he doesn't want to get close to her. He says he can will away love he doesn't want to be in love.
I wish I thought that were true. I wish…
I wish a lot of things. But mostly, I wish this were real.