Fic: Lies of Omission
For aramis_chan who has kindly requested this to help_japan
Title: Lies of Omission
Rating: PG-13 to M?
Pairing: Aramis/D’Artagnan
Warnings: mild bondage, fuckery entirely of the “mind” variety
Background: It is 1661 and D’Artagnan is on a spying mission for the King - he had been sent to Belle Isle to find out whether Fouquet is having it fortified. Interestingly, he finds Porthos there, and suspecting Aramis is behind the fortification plans, d’Artagnan follows Porthos to Vannes on a “visitation.” Over dinner, Dumas conveniently left the hour between midnight and one o’clock unaccounted for.
Plot: It is midnight at the house of the Bishop of Vannes, and someone is about to lose their considerable cool. Aramis delivers a sermon on knowledge and d’Artagnan learns a lesson about trust.
"And you know well that I was never able to resist your seductions; you will cost me my salvation, D'Artagnan." - Aramis, “Le Vicomte de Bragelonne” Chapter LXXIII
Lies of Omission
At midnight, when Porthos was conducted in his somnambulating state to his bedroom, Aramis and d’Artagnan remained seated around the remnants of the supper, looking at each other in silence for a few moments. D’Artagnan, a bit exasperated from having each one of his oral sword thrusts parried, constructed elaborate plans of attack for breaching the armed ramparts of Aramis’s mind. For his part, Aramis appeared to be watching his friend with a vaguely disarming and curious smirk. The dimly lit room cast shadows upon his calm face, and the candlelight reflected a glow in his dark eyes that would have seemed sinister had it not been for that Mona Lisa smile upon his lips.
“So,” d’Artagnan was the first to break the silence.
“So..,” echoed the Bishop of Vannes. “I suppose we can now speak of other things.”
“Hm?” d’Artagnan gave a little inquisitive noise.
“Truly, you wound me, d’Artagnan,” Aramis rose from his seat and began to walk around the sizeable table. “You show up here… what? Ten? Twelve years after we last saw each other? You claim to be on a mission driven by friendship and altruism, and yet, you treat me with abject distrust.”
Taken aback by this startling turn in the conversation, d’Artagnan had to take a moment to compose his thoughts and abandon his previous plans of attack in order to deflect this unexpected charge.
“A strange statement, coming from a man who seems ignorant of most worldly things and yet appears very well informed about my own escapades.”
“What are you insinuating?” Aramis approached the musketeer, having circled the table.
“That you have informants?”
“Informants! Say, rather: friends.”
“Friends? But you claim never to have met M. Fouquet.”
“I do not refer to M. Fouquet,” Aramis paused, “With whom you, my friend, seem rather preoccupied.”
“Surely, you did not mean Athos,” d’Artagnan quickly evaded, “You are no longer in touch with him.”
“As far as you know,” the tone of the prelate took on a rather sinister tinge, yet Aramis appeared to master himself quickly returning his voice to its prior tunefulness. “My friend, what ever are you driving at?” Aramis sat back down and steepled his hands.
“Are you calling Athos a liar?” D’Artagnan seemed to revel in finding this soft spot.
“His are all lies of omission, as you very well know.”
“Touché,” d’Artagnan ceded, reluctantly. “As you say: you are a changed man, touched by Providence.”
“But still, you have no trust for me. No… love.”
“You wish me to love that which I do not know? The man I have love for, the man I knew, you profess to no longer be. And yet, that same man had many mistresses. Would it surprise me then that he should change them for a new master?”
“Surely! Now you are insinuating that I am having an affair with M. Fouquet?”
“Am I?” d’Artagnan smirked.
“Do I even need to honor that with a reply?”
“I generally prefer that, yes.”
“D’Artagnan, you know very well that I only have one master.” Aramis leaned towards the table and propped his face up with one elegant hand.
“Athos?”
“Jesus Christ.”
“I shall tell him you said so.”
“D’Artagnan, you’re picking a fight.” Aramis gave a nonchalant chuckle.
“Lies of omission,” the musketeer mumbled under his breath.
“You look well,” Aramis declared, rather jovially, suddenly changing the subject. D’Artagnan appeared to choke on air from this unexpected pronouncement.
“Well… I…” D’Artagnan, who was never at a loss for words, found them to be tragically lacking in this situation. “Speak for yourself!”
“Bah!” Aramis made a dismissive gesture with his bejeweled hand. “As you pointed out to me in my convent of Noisy-Le-Sec so many years ago, I am even older than yourself, and my looks are no longer of any consequence.”
Internally, d’Artagnan laughed at this assertion, but he schooled his face into an expression of sincerity.
“Vanitas vanitatum, isn’t that so?”
Aramis nodded.
“My dear Aramis, you want me to trust you, and yet, you lie so blatantly! You know as well as I do that despite your fifty-seven years of age, you are still breathtakingly beautiful!”
“You are flattering me.”
“Not at all!” d’Artagnan exclaimed in a moment resembling his youthful ardor.
“Then you are flirting with me,” Aramis concluded, his face taking on an entirely wicked glow.
D’Artagnan felt caught. In fact, he had to admit to himself, he was flirting with him. Not necessarily in the same way that Aramis had implied, but he did feel overcome with a sudden desire to please the man, to start over. Indeed, he wanted to believe him, to drop his guard, to stop playing the game. But d’Artagnan knew that with this particular man that was never an option.
“I do trust you,” d’Artagnan stated suddenly, desperately trying to veer the conversation anywhere but where it seemed to be constantly heading.
“Now who is the liar?”
“Aramis, what would you like me to say or do?”
“Really?” Aramis perked up. “Are you saying you’re willing to prove to me that you trust me?”
“That sounds like a challenge,” d’Artagnan uttered, suspiciously.
“Pshaw. I knew it: you do not trust me.” Aramis got up and moved towards the window, adopting a stoic and melancholy pose there.
“Look… all right!” D’Artagnan thought for a moment that he must be very drunk. “I’ll do it.” Or insane. “Whatever it is.” Or both.
Aramis held his back towards the musketeer, appearing to be playing with the curtain.
“You’re going to show me that you trust me?” he asked, not turning around.
“Sure, sure,” d’Artagnan maintained. “What do you want me to do?”
“Nothing,” Aramis said, turning around, his hands behind his back. “Just sit where you are.” And he approached the other man, moving with his customary grace of a cat. He circled the chair and put his hand on d’Artagnan’s shoulder, pausing behind his back. “And trust me,” he whispered into his guest’s ear. D’Artagnan looked up into the bishop’s impassive face, nervously. “Give me your hands, please.” D’Artagnan held his hands out in front of himself. “No, behind you, if you please,” Aramis instructed, in the same soothing tone of voice.
“What? Why?” d’Artagnan realized that being drunk and insane was definitely outside of his realm of functionality. They usually left that for Athos.
“You don’t trust me,” Aramis sighed and straightened out again, quitting the other man’s side.
“Oh damn,” d’Artagnan stated, resigned, and stretched out his arms behind the chair. “Like this?”
“Exactly!” Aramis approached him again.
“I am not familiar with this game.”
“Then I will teach you how to play it,” the bishop promised and collected his friend’s hands into his own. “Do not worry, it’s only the curtain cord.”
“It’s a what?” D’Artagnan tried to jerk his hands away instinctively but realized that they were already tied together.
“We call this ‘the perfect knot.’ And this is how you play the game we call ‘Trust.’”
“You are joking.”
“Not in the slightest.”
D’Artagnan’s position did not permit him to see what was happening on the other side of the room, but he heard Aramis walk away and rummage around somewhere. He detected what sounded to him like silverware clinging and keys being turned.
“Aramis,” d’Artagnan called out weakly, silently cursing himself.
“I’m still here, my sweet,” a melodious voice sounded from somewhere in the depths of the dining room.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting another toy for our game, darling.”
“You’re making me very nervous.”
“That’s because you do not trust me.” Aramis took a very instructive tone.
“Well… you just tied me to your chair!” d’Artagnan protested. He felt movement behind his back and then a hand was back on his shoulder, massaging it gently. “Aren’t we too old for games?” he asked, trying to look over his shoulder at his host.
“D’Artagnan,” Aramis began in the same soothing voice, as his hand traveled up to his friend’s neck, rubbing in that same strong yet relaxing way, “The world is a magnificent place. The capacity for learning, for knowledge, it is limitless! And think, d’Artagnan, think! Knowledge is the only true power.”
“Are you going to untie me?”
“Not yet,” Aramis said dismissively and continued his sermon. “Take, for example, your body. It has certain needs, certain desires. How does it know that it wants this as opposed to that? Hm?” He pulled d’Artagnan’s head back by the hair, looking into his eyes as if expecting him to answer the question. Finding only a clouded stare, he continued. “Well, let me tell you. It doesn’t. Your body only knows that it likes the things that it has tasted. As for everything else, it cannot conceive of it until it has been experienced. Knowledge, my friend. Knowledge is power.” Aramis let go of the other man’s hair, letting his head fall forward. “For example, have you ever been tied to a chair before?”
“No one has ever dared, no,” d’Artagnan responded, becoming progressively more confused as to the happenings, given, especially that he was finding himself in a state of increased arousal. And he definitely did not want Aramis to see that.
“See? Now, that statement is predicated on the fact that you assume that someone wants to tie you to the chair in order to cause you some harm, right?” D’Artagnan nodded slowly. “Whereas, what I am trying to impart upon you is that it is also possible to tie someone to a chair for a veritable cornucopia of reasons. Harm, yes, but also… pleasure?”
“And which are we doing now?”
“Now, we are teaching you a lesson.”
“About chairs?”
“About trust.” Aramis looped around the chair and stood in front of his friend. His face was in the shadow as he was backlit by the candelabra, giving his form a somewhat ominous appearance. “Now, do you see this?” Aramis held up an implement that he had apparently brought back with him from one of the drawers. D’Artagnan could not make it out very well in the dim lighting, but it seemed to be made out of metal and was shaped a bit like some kind of a fruit. “Do you know what this is?”
“Um… No,” D’Artagnan stated with conviction.
“Well,” Aramis brought the implement closer to d’Artagnan’s face, “Some people call this a choking pear, while I prefer the more poetic term - the pear of anguish.”
“What… the… hell…”
“You see,” Aramis went on in the same instructive voice, “The pear of anguish has many uses! You’d be curious to know that this particular one is actually intended for the mouth, whereas some other ones can go into a variety of orifices. It can be experienced in a number of ways, ranging from excruciatingly painful to mildly uncomfortable, depending on how far I turn this screw here. See?” And Aramis turned what d’Artagnan could clearly see now was a metal screw attached to four metal lobes that did, in fact, resemble a pear when folded together. At the movement of the screw, the lobes began to separate, widening.
“No. Really. What the hell?” D’Artagnan inquired again, in earnest.
“We actually had one of these hidden in the cake that we sent to the Duc de Beaufort,” Aramis uttered, wistfully, as if trying to go back to those glory days, if only in his mind.
“Aramis? Why are you showing it to me?”
“Oh! Right!” Aramis returned to the present and turned the screw again, bringing the lobes back together into a tightly shaped pear. “I am going to put this in your mouth.”
“No, you most certainly are not.”
“This is not how we play the Trust game,” Aramis wagged his finger at d’Artagnan’s nose. Then, he brought his own face very close to that of his guest-turned-captive, and whispered, “You do trust me, don’t you, d’Artagnan?”
D’Artagnan did not know what to say. He felt caught. Moreover, with the heat of the prelate’s breath on his face like that, he found himself rediscovering his prior arousal.
“In the name of all that is holy!”
“That means, yes?”
“God damn you, Monsieur Bishop!”
“Wonderful,” Aramis declared. “Open wide.”
D’Artagnan stared at the cursed device as if at the devil itself. Then, he raised pleading eyes to Aramis.
“You are just doing this to humiliate me, aren’t you? This is some sort of revenge?”
“For what?”
“For… everything! Damn it! For lies of omission!”
“D’Artagnan,” Aramis said in a commanding voice, “I will not ask again. Open your mouth.” He put one hand on d’Artagnan’s shoulder and brought the pear to his lips with his other hand. His eyes were burning a hole right through d’Artagnan, who felt as if all the forces in the world have conspired against him. What on earth was he doing? He opened his mouth and the pear was slipped into it. Aramis tightened it by turning the much-lauded screw.
“Does this feel bearable? Can you breathe?” he asked with an infuriating touch of sincerity. D’Artagnan nodded his assent and grunted around the gag. “Good,” Aramis brought his lips to his friend’s ear. “All will be explained soon.” He gave d’Artagnan’s thighs a gentle squeeze with his hands. “I shall return,” he said, straightening out and walking out of d’Artagnan’s range of vision again.
The musketeer tried to struggle against his bonds, but they held tight. He heard Aramis’s steps moving further away from him, then the opening and shutting of the dining room door, followed only by the ticking of the clock. He contemplated breaking the chair and getting out of this ridiculous situation. What if someone came in and found him? What if this had been part of the plan all along? Aramis was on to him, and had betrayed him! Perhaps Fouquet had men at Vannes. He would be assassinated. He was not afraid to die, but like this! This was unbearable. To die by the treacherous hand of a friend? But, no, Aramis was capable of a lot - but of this? And with Porthos sleeping innocently in the chamber next door? No, no, even Aramis was not capable of doing such a thing. And yet… here he was: gagged and bound to a chair.
The seconds passed. Minutes, surely, but how many he could not tell. It might have been only a few minutes, or an eternity, he had no idea. The one thing he was sure of was that despite the panic inside him, he had not dared move from the spot where Aramis left him. He had not made a single attempt at escape.
The door opened and the familiar, soft step of the Bishop of Vannes approached him from behind again.
“Incredible!” Aramis’s voice sounded just above d’Artagnan’s head. “I left you alone in here for a whole fifteen minutes and you did not make an attempt to escape!” Aramis circled him and knelt at his feet, reaching up for the pear screw. “Despite my better judgment, d’Artagnan, I am forced to admit that you do trust me.” He slowly extricated the pear from his friend’s mouth. The latter let out a sigh of relief and then spat on the floor angrily.
“What was the big idea?” he demanded, eyes fixed on the amused face of Aramis, the taste of metal still prominent on his tongue.
“I wanted you to feel something,” Aramis whispered and brought his lips up to his friend’s ear again as if what he had to say was of the most intimate nature. “I wanted you to feel the passage of time.”
Then, circling behind his captive again, Aramis quickly untied the curtain cord from his hands, massaging the reddened wrists gently as he set them free. D’Artagnan looked up at the other man from the chair, rubbing his own wrists a bit, a look of longing passing across his features. For a moment, he thought of taking this infuriating man in his arms, of crushing him, of teaching him his own lesson of the interconnection of pain and pleasure. Suddenly, the clock in the roomed chimed, announcing that it was one in the morning.
“Come, d’Artagnan,” Aramis stretched out his arm. “I will show you to your sleeping chamber.”
As if on queue, the door flew open and servants filed in to begin clearing off the poor vestiges of supper. Bewildered, d’Artagnan took the proffered arm and followed his host out of the dining room. He would probably not sleep a wink that night.