Musketeer!fic: Allowances (pt ii)
Too long oops
Aramis isn't dead, and Porthos does make it home to sleep that night.
It's strange to contemplate, staring at his dark ceiling, that he's relieved - actually relieved, actually happy - that twenty other people he knows are dead, because it means that he gets to keep Aramis. He could give up more than twenty people for Aramis. Tonight, alone in the dark, he thinks that he could let go of the entire world just to keep him. He's walked away from people that he thought he needed once before; this time, this time, he wants to know that he chose right. This time, he thinks he has.
Twenty dead musketeers. It's a very strange thing to think about, alone with his own breath: twenty dead musketeers, Marsac 'gone', Aramis alone coming back to tell what happened. He'll be another two days at least on the road, information so far has travelled in a rushed relay across the country, faster than one wounded man can ride. He remembers him in the breathless hush before dawn, gloved fingers stroking Porthos' cheek, smile a softened twitch; getting him back alive is a miracle, a blessing. Aramis must have been praying something right all along.
Twenty dead musketeers, and Porthos thinks that if they could have got any of them back alive, he won't be the only one glad it's Aramis. Aramis likes being friendly and has always been popular, acts as the gatekeeper to really being one of the musketeers - if he makes friends with you, you're probably fine. He's generous with his friendship but probably doesn't share everything, what he's shared with Porthos he probably hasn't been giving around too freely. Admittedly, Porthos may be biased, and of course other men would be missed - men with families, men with friends. But Aramis is Aramis, and the world without him would be such a poor place, so monotone, so bleak. Better to have Aramis. Anyone being sensible would want to keep Aramis. Give up whatever you have to, let go of whatever must go, if you can keep him.
Porthos breathes in the dark, and feels the weight of the covers, the still air of the room. He thinks about a winter forest, and twenty dead musketeers, and where the hell did Marsac 'go' anyway?
The sooner he's back - the sooner they know what happened, and he can touch him to be sure he's alive - pat his back as if some idiot just shot a melon off his head - the sooner Porthos can touch him again, everything will be better.
He turns to his other side, but it's still some time before he sleeps.
*
The bodies arrive before Aramis does. Musketeers stop what they're doing as the covered carts come rumbling into the yard, they stand up, stand still, take their hats off; so much silence, and now they can actually count the boots under the sheets, so many bodies. Twenty is a number. Those are just a lot of dead comrades, and Porthos has seen a lot of things it's better not to see in his life, but forty known feet never to walk again makes something in him feel very small and tight all the same.
Treville comes down, grey-faced, breathing a strange tight way through his nose as he looks at the carts. Porthos looks past them, looks for the extra horse, looks for the rider accompanying the dead - but there's no sign of Aramis. He must still be travelling. But one man on horseback, even wounded, should travel faster than carts heavily laden with bodies . . .
He puts his hat back on, heads for the stables and finds that someone's walking alongside him. "He probably got himself lost, or let himself get 'distracted'." Athos says, tugging his gloves right. "You can't let a man like that out on his own."
Porthos gives him an odd look, but then, given that Athos is both incredibly rude and impossible to defeat in a duel, the only musketeer who's ever put effort into spending time at least near him is Aramis, who responds to his insults like they're funny. Maybe even a man as self-contained as Athos can recognise that debt when it's owed.
They ride the route to Savoy, the same road twenty musketeers rode down so few days previously, and were carried back over loaded on carts like sardines in salt this morning. It's the late afternoon before they crest a low hill and there ahead, around a bend in the road, is a rider, mounted and looking back the way he's come, quite still on his horse.
Porthos' heart feels too quiet inside him.
They're close before the rider seems to hear their hooves and he turns towards them, and Aramis looks at them trotting towards him, looks not especially surprised to see them. His eyes linger on Porthos for a moment, but it troubles Porthos how little he can read from the expression there. He's got a bandage around his head spotted through with blood at one side and he's holding the reins with one stiff arm, but though he's maybe a little pale, and visibly tired, he doesn't look badly hurt. They slow their horses to stop, and Aramis smiles - faint, automatic, meaningless - and Porthos says, because he doesn't know what the hell else to say, "You cut your hair."
"It was full of blood," he murmurs, like it's a natural greeting after returning from the dead, then looks back over his shoulder again, back at the road he's already travelled. "I keep thinking it's a mistake," he says, eyes tracking the distant hills. "I keep thinking . . . maybe he's trying to catch up."
Athos doesn't say anything. Porthos leans a little to pat Aramis' shoulder - the one he's not holding stiff - and for some time all three of them just wait, silent, watching an empty road for a man who isn't going to come.
Marsac is gone. The word around the regiment is that Aramis had been confused about the fact of it - he took a musket ball to the head during the massacre, 'confused' was to be expected, but while he'd confirmed that Marsac had torn off his uniform and ridden away, he'd seemed unsure about whether he'd deserted or not. Yes, he could confirm, he'd left; but asked to confirm that he'd deserted, he'd seemed uncertain, unwilling to affirm it. Porthos and Athos wait with him out of respect for him, not Marsac, as the sun hangs heavier, as the light spills slow and drains away over the fields. Porthos knows that Aramis in all his idiot loyalty can't conceive of it, of course he's confused by it. It doesn't register as an option, to Aramis, to walk away. He can't make himself understand Marsac of all people doing it.
It's Athos who eventually murmurs, "We won't make it back to Paris by nightfall, now."
Porthos glances back the way they came. "We passed a village, they should have an inn."
Aramis is still watching the road, looking only confused, and a little hurt by how confused he is. He says without looking away, "Was there a church?"
Athos and Porthos look at each other.
They ride on either side of him, and Porthos is trying to work out what's quite so wrong. He's quiet, for Aramis, but it's not like either of them are making any attempt towards conversation either. What are they going to say to him? Porthos remembers those bodies, and Aramis knew every last one of them well enough to know how to tease them and saw every last one of them dead. What are they going to say to him? If he makes no effort to talk then maybe he doesn't want to talk, but then he's made unasked for and unappreciated effort for both of them in the past, dragged the friendship out of them kicking and fighting in its stubbornness. And now - Porthos never has seen him cry, but he's distant and quiet that way he gets, which somehow feels worse.
They drop him off at the village's church and go to secure rooms at the inn. He's still inside when they return so they wait on the steps, because Athos doesn't give a fuck about religion and churches make Porthos uncomfortable. He's only ever been in one once, checking it over for something worth stealing, but there were too many people and he was too obvious in there, and they made it clear enough in their few glances that didn't trust and didn't want some grubby little mongrel street brat underfoot.
It gets dark. Porthos rubs his folded arms against the cold, and Athos opens a hip flask of brandy, takes a swallow, offers it across.
"How long has he been in there?"
Porthos swallows, a healthy burn down his throat and into his empty stomach. "Three hours."
There's nothing to do but fetch him, he can't stay in there all night. Mercifully he's sitting in a pew near the back, alone, eyes forward and distant again, god knows what he's thinking about. They sit on either side of him, and he stares at the crucifix above the pulpit, and doesn't even acknowledge their presence.
Eventually he says, very quietly, "Is it so impious to just now and then want to know why?"
Athos offers him the hipflask. Aramis waves at it distractedly, says, "At least let us get outside."
Porthos helps him up, not because he needs it. He's just hardly touched him since he got him back and, like patting a man's back after some idiot shot a melon off his head, he needs to confirm the warmth of his flesh to himself. But his arm under Porthos' grip is cold, and Porthos rubs his arms without thinking about it, pulls his cloak closer around him, and Aramis smiles, a little, very small but the first true smile Porthos has seen since . . .
In the doorway Athos walks ahead but Aramis pauses, and Porthos hesitates with him, as Aramis stares at some little font or something, Porthos doesn't know the fucking names or what things are. Aramis spends some time just staring at it, the thoughts uneasy in his eyes. When he wets his fingertips and crosses himself, there's a bow to his neck that's either defeat or acceptance, but Porthos doesn't like seeing it either way.
At the inn they set to getting him drunk but he's barely interested in wine, hunches there in his cloak with his arms folded close, eyes still so very quiet, making no effort to speak. Athos speaks, to fill the silence, which Porthos just finds weird, Athos has never made an effort to do one nice thing for anyone before. So Porthos has a conversation with Athos, over Aramis' head, because Aramis did tell him to make friends with the miserable fuck. He keeps their cups topped up throughout their meal and questions Porthos about his sword, noticeably heavier than those other musketeers carry, and Porthos has a conversation with him about fighting styles like having civilised conversations is just something he and Athos do.
Turns out Athos is kind of alright. And Porthos does notice his small flicked glances to Aramis' low head when Athos tops up his cup after his every sip; turns out Athos is alright, and Porthos will love him, a little bit, for forever, for just those looks.
Aramis sits with his arms wrapped around himself underneath his cloak, eyes brooding and low on his wine. Porthos nudges his shoulder into his to make him look at him, but the You alright? doesn't make it out because obviously he isn't alright. Aramis, generous even now, gives him something of a smile, very small. "I haven't been warm since that damn forest."
Porthos reaches an arm around him, pulls him in to his side, and Aramis' smile quirks a little more natural and Athos raises his eyebrows, but just takes a drink. The inn is fairly quiet and if anyone wants to pick a fight with two musketeers who've started cuddling, they keep it to themselves. Aramis gives his drink another look but he actually picks it up this time, though his eyes fall off it again before he can drink.
"I don't know any easy way to ask this," he says, and his jaw tightens before he makes it not. "How is everyone else? Are they - how did they take the news?"
Porthos and Athos look at each other. "With a great deal of shock." Athos says, raising his cup again. "Which remains the dominant response."
"Imagine our surprise," Aramis murmurs, and glances across at the fireplace, and Porthos rubs his arm. "Did you want me to talk about it? I don't know if I want to talk about it, but if people are going to stare at me like that until I do then I'd rather get it over with."
Athos says, "We didn't come after you to interrogate you."
Porthos squeezes his arm. "We were worried. Idiot."
"Twenty dead musketeers," Aramis says to the ceiling. "I'm the last thing to worry about."
Athos says over the rim of his glass, "Did you see your attackers?"
"No. They were masked. I don't know what vengeance you expect, I don't know who they were or how they found us or why. I don't know why."
"How did you survive?"
His eyes flit away from them then, dark and uneasy across the floor of the inn. "I was wounded, Marsac dragged me to safety. I should be dead too. He saved my life." His forehead furrows confused again. "That musket shot saved my life. I went after their leader, don't ask me why, I was already going to die so I decided to do it good and properly. I attacked their leader who was almost as big as you and almost as good as you." Eyes flicking to Porthos, then Athos, then nervously away again, and his hands shift around his cup. "He would hardly even have noticed himself killing me. But something clipped my head after I wounded him, it felt like a horse's kick. I don't even know if they were aiming at me, it was bedlam, shots and screams everywhere, and it was so dark. I went down. Everything after that is very confused. I remember Marsac in the forest . . . I don't even know how I hurt my arm."
Porthos remembers his arm at that and lets go of it, but Aramis glances down, glances back up at him, smiles. "It's alright. You have warm hands."
While Porthos tentatively presses his palm back around Aramis' arm, Athos says, "When did he desert?", and Aramis' face closes again instantly. He's too carefully expressionless for some time, then looks away, and his eyes look strangely lost again, that bewildered look in them, a betrayal he still can't make himself believe in. Because Marsac was a good soldier, and he left. Because Marsac was Aramis' best friend and now he's a deserter. Because Marsac couldn't hack what neither of them had any choice in enduring. Because Marsac -
Something behind Aramis' eyes looks horribly young, horribly exposed, Porthos can't look away as Aramis doesn't look at them, and says, just a whisper to the wall, "Why would he leave me?"
. . . and Porthos understands, a slow opening inside, that Marsac's betrayal was towards more than just their uniform, and he understands Aramis travelling so slow along the road, stopping so often, turning back, because he'll be following - because it's a mistake - because he'll come after him, won't he - ?
Aramis' hand has gone tight on his cup.
"I couldn't get on a horse, I could hardly stand up, I had to walk to the nearest village. I had to - leave them like that, I couldn't bury them, I could hardly even - how could he leave me like - ?"
Porthos is holding his arm harder now.
"- I couldn't even think what to do for - I didn't understand why I was alive, I was just walking through the campsite not understanding -" Something flinches behind his face, some muscle ticcing in memory. He says, and there's something sharp about his mouth but no humour in his voice, "You know when you're walking through a battlefield and you slip on something and you make the mistake of looking down -"
He stops, and he's shaking a little, and he drains his cup in one. He straightens his arm to put it back on the table, mouth tight like he took no pleasure in it, and he ignores his cup when Athos refills it, wraps his arms around himself like he's cold again.
"How could he leave - how could -"
Athos says calmly, "If he's found, he'll be hanged." and Aramis looks away again, muscles all tight and twitchy, and Porthos hates that he doesn't want Marsac dead even after this. Because he understands the bereft place inside Aramis too, now, the place where the world as Aramis knows it has been tarnished forever, the place where his brotherhood was broken. Aramis is so much simpler than people think he is. They think he's playing games, they think of him as being charming for a reason, when he's really just the most guileless creature in the world, one of the worst liars Porthos has ever met - Porthos knows a thing or two about lying and cheating, but Aramis has simply never needed to learn them. He's incredibly straightforward and incredibly trusting, painfully trusting, loyal on some level even to the man who walked away and left him injured and alone in the snow surrounded by twenty dead friends.
And he knows, in that moment, holding his arm and feeling how shivery-strange his muscles are, too determinedly taut, he knows that he'll never leave him now. Porthos will never do to him what Marsac did. Porthos will never betray the idiot trust that Aramis has put in him. He knows that Aramis is as independent as an alley cat and will always need to be given his space, but he only enjoys that space when it's somewhere to roam before returning to where he knows he belongs. He needs a tether. He needs a warm lap where he'll always be welcome. He's so much simpler than people think he is; Aramis couldn't survive, alone.
Porthos rubs his arm to warm him, to make sure that he feels that he's there.
He doesn't want to be alone again either.
*
Aramis isn't interested in drinking much more and doesn't want to talk - goes very darkly silent after Marsac comes up, eyes dangerous on the cup he isn't drinking from - so Athos might as well finish off the wine on his own. Porthos hauls Aramis up by the arm to take him to bed. "Need to change those bandages," he says, patting his back to send him towards the staircase, and Aramis murmurs automatically, "I'm fine." and pauses, shifting his shoulder like it's stiff as they take the stairs.
"What happened to your arm?"
"I have no idea. I pulled a muscle, it's not . . . perhaps it happened when I fell." His face turns troubled again. "Perhaps that's how Marsac dragged me out of it."
Porthos doesn't want to hear that name again. He pushes Aramis to his room, closes the door behind them, puts the candle down and lights a couple more to take a look at his head. Aramis is looking around, a little vague and distracted; suddenly, without an alien audience, something about his face has fallen, he really does look tired, now. Porthos nods his head at the bed. "Sit down. Let me see."
"Because you're an expert physician now."
"You see any other expert physicians in the room? Sit down, Aramis."
He does sit, with a sigh that gets longer towards the end. Porthos thumbs the shadow under his eye and then finds the knot in the bandages, and begins letting them loose, as gently as he can. "Who cut your hair?"
"The same village barber who stitched me up. It was - there was a lot of blood. I wasn't sure all of it was mine." He winces an eye as Porthos puts his fingers on his scalp, either side of the cut, but he can't see anything wrong with it, and head injuries always do bleed a lot. "I wasn't really thinking, I honestly didn't care."
"Suits you."
"I suppose you can see more of my face now," he says lightly, but he's looking at the wall and his expression doesn't match his voice. "Porthos -"
"Lemme clean this first."
His eyes lower, and he just sits there, gripping the edge of the bed, while Porthos uses the last of Athos' brandy to dab the still-bloody knitting edges under his hair, and winds some clean bandages around it again. "Hair'll hide it," he says. "You'll keep your pretty face, Aramis."
He swallows, and looks strangely nervous, looking into Porthos' eyes. Porthos says, "What?"
Aramis looks at the door, looks at him. "I don't know. I sort of - wish you hadn't come. I feel like Jonah. Maybe I'm not safe to sleep near."
Porthos snorts, and shoves at the unhurt side of his head. "Don't be daft."
Aramis looks at the ceiling, looks at the wall. Aramis who uses eye contact to a degree that makes other people uncomfortable utilising a patch of ceiling behind Porthos' right shoulder makes something stir strange on the back of his neck, so he catches the back of Aramis' neck, to make him meet him in the eye. "I'm glad we came." He presses his neck a little with thumb and fingertips, trying to be comforting. "You'd've been weeks getting back like that."
Aramis does hold his eyes for a moment, but they fall again to the floor. "Is everyone . . . back at the garrison . . ."
He stops. He looks very strange and un-Aramis-like. All that easy charming confidence has been cut like the string to his spine got snapped.
He says to Porthos' left boot, "It might have been better if no-one came back."
He wants to shake him by the back of his neck. "Don't you start. Don't you dare start - idiot. What kind of maths makes twenty-one dead musketeers better than twenty -?"
"I don't want to spend the rest of my life being everyone else's reminder of -"
"Then don't. Spend the rest of your life being Aramis. You seemed to enjoy it plenty before."
He looks at him, surprised, and then his eyes go a little distant but don't leave Porthos' face. "I did enjoy it," he says, honest and musing, and Porthos has already made his choice, Porthos knows where his loyalty lies.
"None of that was your fault. Jesus, Aramis, I always knew that church crap was bad for you. You need to sleep." He tucks his head in by the hand on the back of his neck to kiss him, clumsy but meant, on his forehead. "Get you back in Paris tomorrow, a few days of decent rest back home an' you'll feel a hell of a lot better."
He unhooks his cloak from him, tosses it over the back of a chair and starts on trying to get his coat off him, but Aramis has bowed his head, made himself quite small on the edge of the bed. "Porthos," he says, quietly.
"What? You're gonna have to stand up, I can't get this off you while you're-"
"I'm not really - in - I don't really feel like -"
It takes him a moment to understand his hesitation; when he does he doesn't at first know how to respond to it. Then he leans his head in, says slowly, "Aramis. This is gonna be hard to hear, I know, but, sometimes, just sometimes, right, sometimes, people can be in a room with you without wantin' to jump you."
Aramis looks up at him from his shadowed eyes, checking his sincerity. Porthos touches his cheek - there's too much stubble, he needs to shave, but he brushes it with his thumb before he goes back to tugging his coat off him. "I didn't come out after you for that, believe it or not."
Aramis is quiet, but then says, "I believe you." and stands up to help him slip his coat free. "May I be - very needy and pathetic and unfair to you -"
"Don't ask me if you're allowed to ask stuff. Just ask it."
His fingers pick a little at Porthos' jacket. He says, and it twists, "I can't get warm."
*
In the dark, pressed all along and almost on top of Aramis on the bed - he's a cold bony thing and Porthos doesn't care - he thinks that they didn't even sleep so tangled after they had sex, but Porthos felt less defensive of him then, and Aramis felt less clingy. He rubs his arms and his back for a while, tucking his cold feet between his, trying to put some life back into him. This isn't really what he'd imagined finding, he doesn't know what he'd imagined. He just wanted Aramis back safe like he hadn't even realised he'd been promised.
He blinks, letting the dark of the room settle into the shapes of its shadows, and thinks about Marsac, and Aramis on the road, looking back.
He knows that Aramis is maybe more careful with men than with women, and hasn't openly done what he's done with Porthos so widely. But Aramis loses his silly heart twice a week, Aramis' vice is not promiscuity - merely a symptom of the deeper problem - but curiosity, insatiable because the world is so unendingly interesting to him; Aramis will stop wanting to sleep with people when people stop being so damned fascinating to him, which means never. He will chase every new body because every new body is something new to see, and touch and taste, and learn its likes and lusts and life. Aramis' sin is the original one: not lust primarily but a thirst much deeper than that, and only partially quenched by that.
Maybe Porthos would have noticed another man first if he'd trusted another man first, but he likes to feel at ease for sex, he likes to know his lovers, he needs to trust the people he's naked with. He doesn't know why people assume he'd be as bawdily lustful as they tend to. He likes sex - of course he likes sex, fuck's sake - but he likes it on his own terms, which means with people he can call friends, to some extent at least, people he can trust at least. He worries about Aramis and his curiosity. He worries about him following its call to the beds of people he doesn't know that he can trust. He worries about Marsac, and Aramis and his damned curiosity, and how much he dislikes 'being blamed for other men's regrets' . . .
He won't ask because that would be weird and it is Aramis, and the answer is always probably going to be yes. But he thinks about Marsac leaving him like that, and he thinks about Aramis trying to make friends with the entire bloody regiment, even Athos who it turns out is alright only after twenty of their own get slaughtered in their sleep, he thinks about Aramis' generosity of affection now in terms that twist his stomach: Why does he need so badly to be liked? Why does he fill his life so it bulges at its edges with the company of other people? Why is his distress so twisted not just by twenty dead friends but by Marsac leaving him alone - ?
He knows he's not asleep in his arms, so it doesn't really shock him when Aramis says, a little muffled to his shoulder, "Porthos?"
"Mm? Yeah?"
"I'm sorry." He's silent for a second, struggling, then says, "Do you mind if I put something in front of the door?"
". . . no. No, go for it."
He lets him up and Aramis moves in the dark of the room, shifts something heavy - there was a desk underneath the window - across the wooden floor, scraping long before it stops. He rustles around in their clothing for a bit before he returns to the bed, and Porthos hears the clicking thump of two loaded pistols on the table by his head, the gentle clatter of a sword propped against it, before his body slips under the sheets again, cool again, and Porthos rubs his arms and tugs him in close.
Chest to chest and he can feel his heart beat, bird-fast and bird-fragile, fast enough to break itself. "Jesus," he mutters with a hand on it, finds the back of Aramis' head and pulls him down, stuffing his cheek to his own chest. "Listen to that. That's the speed it should go at."
Aramis is silent, listening to Porthos' heartbeat crammed in huge against his ear. Then his arm settles around his side, his body relaxes, and he sighs against his chest, finally comfortable now.
Porthos runs his fingers through his new short hair a few times, avoiding the bandages. He hums a little because he knows that Aramis can hear it cavernous-vast against his ear. And then he lets the heaviness of the dark take him down, because he's tired, he's been tired and lonely and afraid for days, his body's been over-aware of its aloneness, in his big warm bed he has thought of Aramis. Lots.
He's not going to tell him that he loves him, because that would somehow make it seem smaller than it is.
He says, in the dark, half asleep himself, mumbles to the air above his head, "I won't leave you."
Aramis might not even be able to hear him, over his heart.
*
In the morning Athos is as hangover-gloomy as he always is, but Aramis is a little brighter, at least until they're back on the road with Paris coming up faster, now. His talk trails off, and Porthos can sense his growing urge to look back in the lines of his body. He rides in closer to his side, and Athos starts talking about how he'd go about defending the city were it under attack. They argue about siege defences for a while and Aramis lets their talk move around him, settles into it like a cat into bedding, but his eyes on the approaching city are still uneasy.
They all know what's waiting for them at the garrison.
He's lost his hat, somewhere, back on that campsite soaked in blood, maybe he couldn't bring himself to look for it among all the corpses, maybe it couldn't occur to him to look for it among all the corpses. So he has nothing to hide behind as they ride into the city with white bandages like a flag around his head - Porthos offering him his own hat would be too obvious - and they stay on either side of him like an honour guard. He doesn't comment on it and looks just quiet and sort of distant, now. Porthos always attributed to him a serenity of temper he knew he'd never possess himself; now he just wonders if the only difference between them is Aramis' ability to not let it show.
As they ride into the garrison yard training fights stop, voices drop off, and Porthos wants to touch his back but he can't reach, and Aramis makes no acknowledgement of all the attention anyway. Someone comes to take his horse but clearly doesn't know what to say, and Aramis climbs down, puts a smile on, touches his bandages in lieu of a hat, and looks up to Porthos and Athos.
He says, "I need to speak to the captain." and turns away. Only one musketeer tries to speak to him, fumbling with it, at the foot of the stairs, and gets sidestepped with another vague smile. Aramis has always known that charm can get him a long way.
Porthos watches his back right up to the captain's door, where he knocks, waits, goes inside.
Athos says, "I need a drink."
Waiting with Athos for Aramis to come down again, Porthos somehow knows that now they're a three. He doesn't know exactly what's happened - odd tethers Aramis threw out, such that when he needed them, the two of them tugged back to keep his feet steady. That's not what he intended, Aramis hasn't enough sense to plan ahead like that, but there's the outcome all the same; Aramis dared himself to make friends with the two most difficult men in the regiment, and whatever the stakes ever were in his head, the bet has paid itself off. Aramis goes around rescuing people from that hated state of aloneness, and he's been rescued in return, now, when it really matters.
Porthos can still see him on the road, the solitary rider turned back, watching the empty horizon. Maybe he does understand why Aramis keeps God to his side. Better to Aramis to be forever judged than forever alone.
He's in there with the captain for a long time. Porthos can't imagine what Treville is asking him, and doesn't think the captain could be cruel enough to try to force too much from him. Aramis is a soldier and unquestioning in his loyalties, but he's also a young man ridden back alone from the edge of hell with bandages around his head and a certain looseness to his gaze, like looking at anything for too long is too dangerous. Porthos wishes he could have gone ahead to warn Treville - what? That if you leave Aramis on his own, he's not quite Aramis, and it takes him some time in safe company to become himself again?
When he comes downstairs again he's paler, eyes unsettled, mouth too flat. He ignores every other musketeer in the yard, whether he's aware that he's the centre of everyone else's attention or not, walks straight up to Porthos and Athos and Porthos stands up, and pats his back. "Now you need a drink."
He keeps his hand on his back as they walk out. He would never forgive himself, denying Aramis that touch now.
In a secluded corner of a bar Athos orders brandy, and Aramis downs it in one, like it's necessary. He stares at his empty cup, lets his breath out long and hard through his nose. He says, "He put me on leave. Why would he put me on leave? The last thing I want is nothing to do." His forehead creases, something too uneasy behind his eyes in that second. "I don't understand the way he was looking at me."
"The first reports back said there were no survivors." Athos says, and Aramis' frown deepens.
"How the hell did people think reports got back if there were no survivors?"
Athos' eyes flick, perhaps amused underneath all the weariness, to Porthos. "People are always overeager to believe rumours."
Porthos just gives him a look, and drinks his brandy. Aramis slumps back in his seat, holds his hands out helplessly, says, "How the hell should I know what happened? I still don't have a clue. It was dark and then there were people screaming and -" He stabs a hand up to pull it through his hair and Porthos grabs his wrist before he can catch the bandages and hurt himself. Aramis looks at him, and understanding softens his eyes, his arm relaxes in his grip. He says again, and at least he's meeting Porthos' gaze even if his eyes look so sad, "I don't understand the way he was looking at me."
"No-one knows how to look at you right now. You're a man back from the dead." They both look at Athos, who tips his brandy about his cup. "Everyone's too ashamed to ask you an honest question."
Aramis' lips go tight. "'What happened', 'how did they die', 'why didn't you die', 'what's hell like' - ?"
"Most men are cowards. Most wouldn't want to face what you faced." Athos looks at him, over his cup. "Most wouldn't want to face the rest of us again afterwards."
The ghost of Marsac sits with them at the table, cold in the hole in their conversation. Aramis takes his arm from Porthos' grip and folds both of them over his chest, head tucked in, looking stubborn and angry. "I don't judge him for that." he says, quietly. "None of you have any right to judge him for that."
It's more than Porthos can stand, it feels like disloyalty to him that Aramis can't hate Marsac as he does. "He left you alone with twenty dead-"
"I judge him for that." Aramis says sharply, and wriggles his shoulders. "Not for walking away. Not after that. You don't know what it was like. Don't pretend that you know what decision you'd make. You don't know."
Athos swallows his drink. "You didn't leave."
Aramis scowls away. "Someone had to make sure that everyone at least got a Christian burial."
It's not just that, and they know it, but Athos has the sense or decency or both not to push. Aramis tilts his cup to make sure it's still empty and draws his breath in through his nose, says, "I am terrible company." He snaps his head up, lifts a hand at the barman like this situation can't be allowed to go on. "Let's get drunk."
*
Aramis is on leave, a ghost in the regiment. He spends his time in Porthos' room.
Porthos doesn't object to dragging a gratuitously drunk Aramis home after that first day back (it turns out that there's a reason he usually stops drinking soonest, and he's far too incoherent to work out what his emotional state really is, clinging to Porthos and mumbling utter nonsense, not always in French, into his neck), doesn't object to Aramis hungover and gloomy in his bed as he dresses to leave that morning, doesn't object to Aramis reading in his bed that evening. He gets kind of used to it; in a weird way, it's sort of nice to come home to someone at the end of the day, even if that someone is a bandaged man with a darkness behind his eyes worse than the night outside.
Books appear in Porthos' room, he doesn't ask where from. He hears the boards creaking in there some nights as he walks towards his door along the corridor, the sound of pacing like a trapped cat. The night he takes the bandages off and thinks that they can stay off, Aramis says underneath his fingertips pressing his skull to the side to see, "Were you going to fuck me again?"
Porthos tilts the wound towards the candle but it's a fine sealed line now, and while he'll feel it every time he brushes his fingers through his hair, it'll never show to any stranger he meets. He says, "If you seemed to be in the mood."
"I haven't been much fun, recently."
"Whole regiment hasn't been much fun recently, you'll fit right back in."
"Did you want to fuck me?"
Porthos tilts Aramis' head back, frowns at his eyes, now. "Still not sure you're in the mood."
Aramis tips his mouth a little. "No. I don't know. Maybe it would help."
"Maybe let's get past maybe first."
Aramis accepts that with a small sigh, and a small smile, which at least looks honest. He touches Porthos' cheek, and says quietly, "You are a very good man." and the only other person who's ever said that to him his whole life long is Flea, he's heard the reverse sentiment ten thousand times more, but Aramis is too quiet and sad to be anything but honest, and Porthos isn't just going to tell him that he loves him because that would make it sound too easy.
He does kiss him, the slow tender way you need to know someone to do.
The sun comes out, too winter-thin yet to melt the snow but Paris seems a little brighter for it. Nothing has come of the investigation into Savoy, musketeers mutter that the Cardinal must have hijacked the investigation, everything's been secret and behind closed doors, nothing has been done. Porthos passes scraps of information to Aramis but can't really tell if he wants to hear them or not. He cleans his musket, pieces of metal all over Porthos' bed, funny how the individual parts don't look like they'd be capable of killing anyone. Aramis still looks lethal, the knowing way his hands fit them back together again.
It's a very clear evening, stars stunned to the sky with the sharpness of the cold, the night he comes back to candles and Aramis, humming. There's bread and cheese and meat on the table, and a bottle of wine. "I've been shopping," he says, looking oddly pleased with himself, much more like the old smug-cat Aramis Porthos has always known. "I needed a new hat. Do you like it?"
Porthos picks it off the table - not as big as his own but fancier with feathers, Aramis all over, really - and notices that it had originally been put down on top of a little glass jar, full of some honey-coloured oil. "What's that?" he says, half knowing the answer, as Aramis' smile glitters in his eyes.
"A present. I'm in the mood."
He draws mood out, savouring the vowels. Porthos glances at him and he grins, and it catches that old looping way in his guts, and maybe he shouldn't believe him, maybe he should say it's too soon, maybe both of them are still in denial; but there's food and booze and Aramis and a bed over there, and maybe it's not as simple as should or shouldn't. Maybe they just play the hand they're dealt, and raise the stakes with every smile, and never fold, not looking into his eyes. They're soldiers. They trade in violence, they're never going to be 'alright'. Might as well take what they can get.
"I'm coming off leave whatever Treville says," Aramis says, flicking bread at him as they eat like that's a normal way to get the attention of the only other person at the table. "I'm bored. If I don't get put in official musketeer trouble soon then I'll put myself in worse trouble, and it will be unofficial, and imagine all his paperwork then."
What sort of trouble can a man who lets his drunk friends shoot fruit from his head find to get himself into? Porthos might be the one who shot at him, but as far as he can see, clearly that makes him the more sane party in this friendship. "Miss having you around. Athos is a gloomy fuck."
"I like Athos."
"Yeah," he says, because, weird thing, so does he. Aramis catches his eye and smiles, and Porthos thinks that Aramis always would have made them a threesome, it was only ever . . . Porthos won't be another Marsac. Porthos will never make Aramis choose, him or someone else, and will never walk away from him either. They'll keep on raising the stakes until there's no game left for them to walk away from. They are a living dare to each other. Porthos will never find a friend even half as crazy as Aramis again, and he wouldn't even want to.
"If you ate more quickly," Aramis says, flicking another piece of bread at him, "you could spend more time fucking me."
"You got your priorities," Porthos says, cutting more meat off the joint. "I got mine."
He does take his time when it comes to it, because he guesses that's what Aramis would like. Takes his time, runs his hands down the whole length of him, glad of the warmth of the flesh under his palms. Aramis says conversationally, "I like your arms," fingertips mapping them in ways that make Porthos' breath shiver - god damn it they're only his arms and the man's touch is just unnatural - and it's too hard to respond when he's mostly concentrating on not coming yet, and all he really knows to respond with is I like your everything you beautiful fucker. Which is nothing that Aramis doesn't already know.
He lowers his head to huff his breath over Aramis' ear and Aramis' arms cling around his back, like he's only been waiting for him to get close enough so he can grab him and touch him all over. Porthos pants at the sweaty side of his head, "We're doing this again, right?"
"Hm?" His body rolls, and Porthos has to clench his teeth. "I imagine so."
"Good." He shuffles his arm under his head so he can lift it to kiss him, and breaks back from his greedy mouth even though Aramis looks half-willing to bite him to bring him back into range. "'cause I wanna fuck you every-fuckin'-which-way an' it's nice to know I don't have to do it all right now."
"You can do it all right now," he offers, ever-generous, and then his legs press tighter around his sides. "You could at least go harder."
"I'm bein' a gentleman."
His palm slides down his cheek, his smile is dark and close and so, so wicked. He says softly, "You are a very good man." and pats his cheek. "Harder."
Their existence just is a dare to each other, and when you get a man back from the dead, you can hardly deny him such a small request.
He's not going to tell him that he loves him. The word hardly seems enough.
Aramis' fingers sink deep in his hair, scratch the best way at his scalp. He whispers, hot breath on his forehead, "Do you trust me?"
"What? Yeah." He meets his eyes through the sex-haze, blinks to try to make himself look serious, at least get his eyes to focus. "Yeah, 'course I do."
Aramis nods, like he does know that. "Then trust me." He tugs his hair, just a little. "Harder."
Part of the reason he trusts Aramis is that, deep down, he knows that Aramis will never dare him a thing that he doesn't already know that Porthos wants to do.
He's exhausted, afterwards, lead-heavy, can hardly unpeel his sweat-stuck skin off his. "Hot," Aramis mumbles, kicking the sheets further down the bed then rolling into Porthos' side anyway, nuzzling himself to a comfortable place with his cheek propped on his arm. Porthos stares at the ceiling feeling like a cannon dropped onto his chest, in sort of a good way. Sex with Aramis is like a friend aiming a pistol at you, drunk, determined, delighted, and still potentially deadly.
He says to the ceiling, "What are we gonna tell Athos?"
Aramis' fingers are picking out little patterns on his chest that suggest that he's already considering all the other which-ways Porthos could fuck him tonight. "There are things I would like to be able to suggest, but I suspect that he already knows."
Porthos looks down at him, as best he can since he can't lift his head yet. "Have you have sex with him?"
"I possess friends I haven't slept with, Porthos."
"That's not a no."
Aramis sighs, and rolls onto his back. "If you're going to ask that about our every mutual acquaintance . . ."
"I don't care who you fuck, just, I dunno how you'd get him sober enough for it." He ruffles at his hair, and Aramis makes a little growling noise but is too relaxed to move to stop him. Porthos likes it shorter. Maybe he'll keep it, even if he doesn't actually dowse it in blood again.
Aramis rolls back into his side, stretching his body, curling it to fit to Porthos' curve. He says again, sleepy and wounded into his shoulder, "I possess friends I haven't slept with."
Porthos yawns, so wide he hurts his jaw a little, and settles an arm around his shoulder. "S'not a conversation I can stay awake through right now."
Aramis hums, and breathes, very slowly.
It's not quite the same as patting someone's back to reassure yourself of their life when they've just done something utterly deranged. He knows it's more than just that.
The candle gutters out on the table and in the darkness Aramis sighs, soft.
He's not going to tell him that he loves him. This already is what it was always going to be.
*
"Porthos."
Skull shrivelled too tight by wine, he closed his eyes tighter and let his breath out slow, and someone laughed, soft, in the room. He managed to open his eyes, one, and then the other, and blinked up at Aramis' smile, as his thumb and fingers stroked his cheek and Aramis murmured, "Good morning."
He was kneeling by the bed, fully dressed, hat already in place, waking Porthos by these slow touches, these gentle words. Porthos lifted his head a little and squinted around the room - not his - and Aramis said to him, "You do remember last night."
He rubbed his eyes. ". . . shot a melon 'ff y'head."
"And . . ."
"An' then we fucked."
Aramis held his face in both hands, and stroked his cheeks with his thumbs. "I have to go, we're riding to Savoy with the sun coming up. I'm just not quite cad enough to leave you still sleeping."
"Y're not a cad." He smiled, slow and sleepy. "You were a proper gentleman, last night."
Aramis' smile got more real, then, bright in his eyes and warm in his cheeks. "I've wanted that for a very long time," he said, looking honest, and happy. "I hadn't known if you . . ."
Porthos yawned, and started trying to shuffle himself to sit. "Everyone wants you, you know that."
"Not quite everyone. You don't have to get up, you can go back to sleep. I just wanted to speak before I had to go."
He adjusted his hat, ready to stand, and Porthos smiled at him and stretched his arms behind his head. "You wanted me?"
Aramis cocked his head and his smile caught that way again, and he took Porthos' face in gloved hands once more. "You smile, sometimes," he said, tracing its shape with his thumbs, "with this side before - this side catches up - like a naughty child who is already aware that he is going to get away with it . . . yes, Porthos, I fell for you some time ago, when you had to go around being so criminally gorgeous and you know I have no self-control. And I do have to go." He touched his arm, and Porthos looked at him, at how sure and sincere his eyes were in the pre-dawn dark. "Thank you."
He kissed him, just once, and quite slow and intent like kissing Porthos in the dark before dawn had been on his list of things to longingly look forward to for a very long time. And then he stood up, and picked his musket up, shouldered it and tugged the brim of his hat and looked down at Porthos quite wondering and proud of what was in his bed.
Porthos said, "Have fun in Savoy."
"I suspect I'll have more fun when I get back," he said, meeting his eye and his growing smile. And then he touched his hat one last time, and turned to leave, and Porthos watched the dawn-blue swing of his cloak as he went.
He turned onto his back in Aramis' bed, scratched his stomach and sighed, sleepily satisfied at the ceiling. Going to be a long boring week before Aramis came back. At least he already knew it would be worth it, when he did.
Aramis isn't dead, and Porthos does make it home to sleep that night.
It's strange to contemplate, staring at his dark ceiling, that he's relieved - actually relieved, actually happy - that twenty other people he knows are dead, because it means that he gets to keep Aramis. He could give up more than twenty people for Aramis. Tonight, alone in the dark, he thinks that he could let go of the entire world just to keep him. He's walked away from people that he thought he needed once before; this time, this time, he wants to know that he chose right. This time, he thinks he has.
Twenty dead musketeers. It's a very strange thing to think about, alone with his own breath: twenty dead musketeers, Marsac 'gone', Aramis alone coming back to tell what happened. He'll be another two days at least on the road, information so far has travelled in a rushed relay across the country, faster than one wounded man can ride. He remembers him in the breathless hush before dawn, gloved fingers stroking Porthos' cheek, smile a softened twitch; getting him back alive is a miracle, a blessing. Aramis must have been praying something right all along.
Twenty dead musketeers, and Porthos thinks that if they could have got any of them back alive, he won't be the only one glad it's Aramis. Aramis likes being friendly and has always been popular, acts as the gatekeeper to really being one of the musketeers - if he makes friends with you, you're probably fine. He's generous with his friendship but probably doesn't share everything, what he's shared with Porthos he probably hasn't been giving around too freely. Admittedly, Porthos may be biased, and of course other men would be missed - men with families, men with friends. But Aramis is Aramis, and the world without him would be such a poor place, so monotone, so bleak. Better to have Aramis. Anyone being sensible would want to keep Aramis. Give up whatever you have to, let go of whatever must go, if you can keep him.
Porthos breathes in the dark, and feels the weight of the covers, the still air of the room. He thinks about a winter forest, and twenty dead musketeers, and where the hell did Marsac 'go' anyway?
The sooner he's back - the sooner they know what happened, and he can touch him to be sure he's alive - pat his back as if some idiot just shot a melon off his head - the sooner Porthos can touch him again, everything will be better.
He turns to his other side, but it's still some time before he sleeps.
*
The bodies arrive before Aramis does. Musketeers stop what they're doing as the covered carts come rumbling into the yard, they stand up, stand still, take their hats off; so much silence, and now they can actually count the boots under the sheets, so many bodies. Twenty is a number. Those are just a lot of dead comrades, and Porthos has seen a lot of things it's better not to see in his life, but forty known feet never to walk again makes something in him feel very small and tight all the same.
Treville comes down, grey-faced, breathing a strange tight way through his nose as he looks at the carts. Porthos looks past them, looks for the extra horse, looks for the rider accompanying the dead - but there's no sign of Aramis. He must still be travelling. But one man on horseback, even wounded, should travel faster than carts heavily laden with bodies . . .
He puts his hat back on, heads for the stables and finds that someone's walking alongside him. "He probably got himself lost, or let himself get 'distracted'." Athos says, tugging his gloves right. "You can't let a man like that out on his own."
Porthos gives him an odd look, but then, given that Athos is both incredibly rude and impossible to defeat in a duel, the only musketeer who's ever put effort into spending time at least near him is Aramis, who responds to his insults like they're funny. Maybe even a man as self-contained as Athos can recognise that debt when it's owed.
They ride the route to Savoy, the same road twenty musketeers rode down so few days previously, and were carried back over loaded on carts like sardines in salt this morning. It's the late afternoon before they crest a low hill and there ahead, around a bend in the road, is a rider, mounted and looking back the way he's come, quite still on his horse.
Porthos' heart feels too quiet inside him.
They're close before the rider seems to hear their hooves and he turns towards them, and Aramis looks at them trotting towards him, looks not especially surprised to see them. His eyes linger on Porthos for a moment, but it troubles Porthos how little he can read from the expression there. He's got a bandage around his head spotted through with blood at one side and he's holding the reins with one stiff arm, but though he's maybe a little pale, and visibly tired, he doesn't look badly hurt. They slow their horses to stop, and Aramis smiles - faint, automatic, meaningless - and Porthos says, because he doesn't know what the hell else to say, "You cut your hair."
"It was full of blood," he murmurs, like it's a natural greeting after returning from the dead, then looks back over his shoulder again, back at the road he's already travelled. "I keep thinking it's a mistake," he says, eyes tracking the distant hills. "I keep thinking . . . maybe he's trying to catch up."
Athos doesn't say anything. Porthos leans a little to pat Aramis' shoulder - the one he's not holding stiff - and for some time all three of them just wait, silent, watching an empty road for a man who isn't going to come.
Marsac is gone. The word around the regiment is that Aramis had been confused about the fact of it - he took a musket ball to the head during the massacre, 'confused' was to be expected, but while he'd confirmed that Marsac had torn off his uniform and ridden away, he'd seemed unsure about whether he'd deserted or not. Yes, he could confirm, he'd left; but asked to confirm that he'd deserted, he'd seemed uncertain, unwilling to affirm it. Porthos and Athos wait with him out of respect for him, not Marsac, as the sun hangs heavier, as the light spills slow and drains away over the fields. Porthos knows that Aramis in all his idiot loyalty can't conceive of it, of course he's confused by it. It doesn't register as an option, to Aramis, to walk away. He can't make himself understand Marsac of all people doing it.
It's Athos who eventually murmurs, "We won't make it back to Paris by nightfall, now."
Porthos glances back the way they came. "We passed a village, they should have an inn."
Aramis is still watching the road, looking only confused, and a little hurt by how confused he is. He says without looking away, "Was there a church?"
Athos and Porthos look at each other.
They ride on either side of him, and Porthos is trying to work out what's quite so wrong. He's quiet, for Aramis, but it's not like either of them are making any attempt towards conversation either. What are they going to say to him? Porthos remembers those bodies, and Aramis knew every last one of them well enough to know how to tease them and saw every last one of them dead. What are they going to say to him? If he makes no effort to talk then maybe he doesn't want to talk, but then he's made unasked for and unappreciated effort for both of them in the past, dragged the friendship out of them kicking and fighting in its stubbornness. And now - Porthos never has seen him cry, but he's distant and quiet that way he gets, which somehow feels worse.
They drop him off at the village's church and go to secure rooms at the inn. He's still inside when they return so they wait on the steps, because Athos doesn't give a fuck about religion and churches make Porthos uncomfortable. He's only ever been in one once, checking it over for something worth stealing, but there were too many people and he was too obvious in there, and they made it clear enough in their few glances that didn't trust and didn't want some grubby little mongrel street brat underfoot.
It gets dark. Porthos rubs his folded arms against the cold, and Athos opens a hip flask of brandy, takes a swallow, offers it across.
"How long has he been in there?"
Porthos swallows, a healthy burn down his throat and into his empty stomach. "Three hours."
There's nothing to do but fetch him, he can't stay in there all night. Mercifully he's sitting in a pew near the back, alone, eyes forward and distant again, god knows what he's thinking about. They sit on either side of him, and he stares at the crucifix above the pulpit, and doesn't even acknowledge their presence.
Eventually he says, very quietly, "Is it so impious to just now and then want to know why?"
Athos offers him the hipflask. Aramis waves at it distractedly, says, "At least let us get outside."
Porthos helps him up, not because he needs it. He's just hardly touched him since he got him back and, like patting a man's back after some idiot shot a melon off his head, he needs to confirm the warmth of his flesh to himself. But his arm under Porthos' grip is cold, and Porthos rubs his arms without thinking about it, pulls his cloak closer around him, and Aramis smiles, a little, very small but the first true smile Porthos has seen since . . .
In the doorway Athos walks ahead but Aramis pauses, and Porthos hesitates with him, as Aramis stares at some little font or something, Porthos doesn't know the fucking names or what things are. Aramis spends some time just staring at it, the thoughts uneasy in his eyes. When he wets his fingertips and crosses himself, there's a bow to his neck that's either defeat or acceptance, but Porthos doesn't like seeing it either way.
At the inn they set to getting him drunk but he's barely interested in wine, hunches there in his cloak with his arms folded close, eyes still so very quiet, making no effort to speak. Athos speaks, to fill the silence, which Porthos just finds weird, Athos has never made an effort to do one nice thing for anyone before. So Porthos has a conversation with Athos, over Aramis' head, because Aramis did tell him to make friends with the miserable fuck. He keeps their cups topped up throughout their meal and questions Porthos about his sword, noticeably heavier than those other musketeers carry, and Porthos has a conversation with him about fighting styles like having civilised conversations is just something he and Athos do.
Turns out Athos is kind of alright. And Porthos does notice his small flicked glances to Aramis' low head when Athos tops up his cup after his every sip; turns out Athos is alright, and Porthos will love him, a little bit, for forever, for just those looks.
Aramis sits with his arms wrapped around himself underneath his cloak, eyes brooding and low on his wine. Porthos nudges his shoulder into his to make him look at him, but the You alright? doesn't make it out because obviously he isn't alright. Aramis, generous even now, gives him something of a smile, very small. "I haven't been warm since that damn forest."
Porthos reaches an arm around him, pulls him in to his side, and Aramis' smile quirks a little more natural and Athos raises his eyebrows, but just takes a drink. The inn is fairly quiet and if anyone wants to pick a fight with two musketeers who've started cuddling, they keep it to themselves. Aramis gives his drink another look but he actually picks it up this time, though his eyes fall off it again before he can drink.
"I don't know any easy way to ask this," he says, and his jaw tightens before he makes it not. "How is everyone else? Are they - how did they take the news?"
Porthos and Athos look at each other. "With a great deal of shock." Athos says, raising his cup again. "Which remains the dominant response."
"Imagine our surprise," Aramis murmurs, and glances across at the fireplace, and Porthos rubs his arm. "Did you want me to talk about it? I don't know if I want to talk about it, but if people are going to stare at me like that until I do then I'd rather get it over with."
Athos says, "We didn't come after you to interrogate you."
Porthos squeezes his arm. "We were worried. Idiot."
"Twenty dead musketeers," Aramis says to the ceiling. "I'm the last thing to worry about."
Athos says over the rim of his glass, "Did you see your attackers?"
"No. They were masked. I don't know what vengeance you expect, I don't know who they were or how they found us or why. I don't know why."
"How did you survive?"
His eyes flit away from them then, dark and uneasy across the floor of the inn. "I was wounded, Marsac dragged me to safety. I should be dead too. He saved my life." His forehead furrows confused again. "That musket shot saved my life. I went after their leader, don't ask me why, I was already going to die so I decided to do it good and properly. I attacked their leader who was almost as big as you and almost as good as you." Eyes flicking to Porthos, then Athos, then nervously away again, and his hands shift around his cup. "He would hardly even have noticed himself killing me. But something clipped my head after I wounded him, it felt like a horse's kick. I don't even know if they were aiming at me, it was bedlam, shots and screams everywhere, and it was so dark. I went down. Everything after that is very confused. I remember Marsac in the forest . . . I don't even know how I hurt my arm."
Porthos remembers his arm at that and lets go of it, but Aramis glances down, glances back up at him, smiles. "It's alright. You have warm hands."
While Porthos tentatively presses his palm back around Aramis' arm, Athos says, "When did he desert?", and Aramis' face closes again instantly. He's too carefully expressionless for some time, then looks away, and his eyes look strangely lost again, that bewildered look in them, a betrayal he still can't make himself believe in. Because Marsac was a good soldier, and he left. Because Marsac was Aramis' best friend and now he's a deserter. Because Marsac couldn't hack what neither of them had any choice in enduring. Because Marsac -
Something behind Aramis' eyes looks horribly young, horribly exposed, Porthos can't look away as Aramis doesn't look at them, and says, just a whisper to the wall, "Why would he leave me?"
. . . and Porthos understands, a slow opening inside, that Marsac's betrayal was towards more than just their uniform, and he understands Aramis travelling so slow along the road, stopping so often, turning back, because he'll be following - because it's a mistake - because he'll come after him, won't he - ?
Aramis' hand has gone tight on his cup.
"I couldn't get on a horse, I could hardly stand up, I had to walk to the nearest village. I had to - leave them like that, I couldn't bury them, I could hardly even - how could he leave me like - ?"
Porthos is holding his arm harder now.
"- I couldn't even think what to do for - I didn't understand why I was alive, I was just walking through the campsite not understanding -" Something flinches behind his face, some muscle ticcing in memory. He says, and there's something sharp about his mouth but no humour in his voice, "You know when you're walking through a battlefield and you slip on something and you make the mistake of looking down -"
He stops, and he's shaking a little, and he drains his cup in one. He straightens his arm to put it back on the table, mouth tight like he took no pleasure in it, and he ignores his cup when Athos refills it, wraps his arms around himself like he's cold again.
"How could he leave - how could -"
Athos says calmly, "If he's found, he'll be hanged." and Aramis looks away again, muscles all tight and twitchy, and Porthos hates that he doesn't want Marsac dead even after this. Because he understands the bereft place inside Aramis too, now, the place where the world as Aramis knows it has been tarnished forever, the place where his brotherhood was broken. Aramis is so much simpler than people think he is. They think he's playing games, they think of him as being charming for a reason, when he's really just the most guileless creature in the world, one of the worst liars Porthos has ever met - Porthos knows a thing or two about lying and cheating, but Aramis has simply never needed to learn them. He's incredibly straightforward and incredibly trusting, painfully trusting, loyal on some level even to the man who walked away and left him injured and alone in the snow surrounded by twenty dead friends.
And he knows, in that moment, holding his arm and feeling how shivery-strange his muscles are, too determinedly taut, he knows that he'll never leave him now. Porthos will never do to him what Marsac did. Porthos will never betray the idiot trust that Aramis has put in him. He knows that Aramis is as independent as an alley cat and will always need to be given his space, but he only enjoys that space when it's somewhere to roam before returning to where he knows he belongs. He needs a tether. He needs a warm lap where he'll always be welcome. He's so much simpler than people think he is; Aramis couldn't survive, alone.
Porthos rubs his arm to warm him, to make sure that he feels that he's there.
He doesn't want to be alone again either.
*
Aramis isn't interested in drinking much more and doesn't want to talk - goes very darkly silent after Marsac comes up, eyes dangerous on the cup he isn't drinking from - so Athos might as well finish off the wine on his own. Porthos hauls Aramis up by the arm to take him to bed. "Need to change those bandages," he says, patting his back to send him towards the staircase, and Aramis murmurs automatically, "I'm fine." and pauses, shifting his shoulder like it's stiff as they take the stairs.
"What happened to your arm?"
"I have no idea. I pulled a muscle, it's not . . . perhaps it happened when I fell." His face turns troubled again. "Perhaps that's how Marsac dragged me out of it."
Porthos doesn't want to hear that name again. He pushes Aramis to his room, closes the door behind them, puts the candle down and lights a couple more to take a look at his head. Aramis is looking around, a little vague and distracted; suddenly, without an alien audience, something about his face has fallen, he really does look tired, now. Porthos nods his head at the bed. "Sit down. Let me see."
"Because you're an expert physician now."
"You see any other expert physicians in the room? Sit down, Aramis."
He does sit, with a sigh that gets longer towards the end. Porthos thumbs the shadow under his eye and then finds the knot in the bandages, and begins letting them loose, as gently as he can. "Who cut your hair?"
"The same village barber who stitched me up. It was - there was a lot of blood. I wasn't sure all of it was mine." He winces an eye as Porthos puts his fingers on his scalp, either side of the cut, but he can't see anything wrong with it, and head injuries always do bleed a lot. "I wasn't really thinking, I honestly didn't care."
"Suits you."
"I suppose you can see more of my face now," he says lightly, but he's looking at the wall and his expression doesn't match his voice. "Porthos -"
"Lemme clean this first."
His eyes lower, and he just sits there, gripping the edge of the bed, while Porthos uses the last of Athos' brandy to dab the still-bloody knitting edges under his hair, and winds some clean bandages around it again. "Hair'll hide it," he says. "You'll keep your pretty face, Aramis."
He swallows, and looks strangely nervous, looking into Porthos' eyes. Porthos says, "What?"
Aramis looks at the door, looks at him. "I don't know. I sort of - wish you hadn't come. I feel like Jonah. Maybe I'm not safe to sleep near."
Porthos snorts, and shoves at the unhurt side of his head. "Don't be daft."
Aramis looks at the ceiling, looks at the wall. Aramis who uses eye contact to a degree that makes other people uncomfortable utilising a patch of ceiling behind Porthos' right shoulder makes something stir strange on the back of his neck, so he catches the back of Aramis' neck, to make him meet him in the eye. "I'm glad we came." He presses his neck a little with thumb and fingertips, trying to be comforting. "You'd've been weeks getting back like that."
Aramis does hold his eyes for a moment, but they fall again to the floor. "Is everyone . . . back at the garrison . . ."
He stops. He looks very strange and un-Aramis-like. All that easy charming confidence has been cut like the string to his spine got snapped.
He says to Porthos' left boot, "It might have been better if no-one came back."
He wants to shake him by the back of his neck. "Don't you start. Don't you dare start - idiot. What kind of maths makes twenty-one dead musketeers better than twenty -?"
"I don't want to spend the rest of my life being everyone else's reminder of -"
"Then don't. Spend the rest of your life being Aramis. You seemed to enjoy it plenty before."
He looks at him, surprised, and then his eyes go a little distant but don't leave Porthos' face. "I did enjoy it," he says, honest and musing, and Porthos has already made his choice, Porthos knows where his loyalty lies.
"None of that was your fault. Jesus, Aramis, I always knew that church crap was bad for you. You need to sleep." He tucks his head in by the hand on the back of his neck to kiss him, clumsy but meant, on his forehead. "Get you back in Paris tomorrow, a few days of decent rest back home an' you'll feel a hell of a lot better."
He unhooks his cloak from him, tosses it over the back of a chair and starts on trying to get his coat off him, but Aramis has bowed his head, made himself quite small on the edge of the bed. "Porthos," he says, quietly.
"What? You're gonna have to stand up, I can't get this off you while you're-"
"I'm not really - in - I don't really feel like -"
It takes him a moment to understand his hesitation; when he does he doesn't at first know how to respond to it. Then he leans his head in, says slowly, "Aramis. This is gonna be hard to hear, I know, but, sometimes, just sometimes, right, sometimes, people can be in a room with you without wantin' to jump you."
Aramis looks up at him from his shadowed eyes, checking his sincerity. Porthos touches his cheek - there's too much stubble, he needs to shave, but he brushes it with his thumb before he goes back to tugging his coat off him. "I didn't come out after you for that, believe it or not."
Aramis is quiet, but then says, "I believe you." and stands up to help him slip his coat free. "May I be - very needy and pathetic and unfair to you -"
"Don't ask me if you're allowed to ask stuff. Just ask it."
His fingers pick a little at Porthos' jacket. He says, and it twists, "I can't get warm."
*
In the dark, pressed all along and almost on top of Aramis on the bed - he's a cold bony thing and Porthos doesn't care - he thinks that they didn't even sleep so tangled after they had sex, but Porthos felt less defensive of him then, and Aramis felt less clingy. He rubs his arms and his back for a while, tucking his cold feet between his, trying to put some life back into him. This isn't really what he'd imagined finding, he doesn't know what he'd imagined. He just wanted Aramis back safe like he hadn't even realised he'd been promised.
He blinks, letting the dark of the room settle into the shapes of its shadows, and thinks about Marsac, and Aramis on the road, looking back.
He knows that Aramis is maybe more careful with men than with women, and hasn't openly done what he's done with Porthos so widely. But Aramis loses his silly heart twice a week, Aramis' vice is not promiscuity - merely a symptom of the deeper problem - but curiosity, insatiable because the world is so unendingly interesting to him; Aramis will stop wanting to sleep with people when people stop being so damned fascinating to him, which means never. He will chase every new body because every new body is something new to see, and touch and taste, and learn its likes and lusts and life. Aramis' sin is the original one: not lust primarily but a thirst much deeper than that, and only partially quenched by that.
Maybe Porthos would have noticed another man first if he'd trusted another man first, but he likes to feel at ease for sex, he likes to know his lovers, he needs to trust the people he's naked with. He doesn't know why people assume he'd be as bawdily lustful as they tend to. He likes sex - of course he likes sex, fuck's sake - but he likes it on his own terms, which means with people he can call friends, to some extent at least, people he can trust at least. He worries about Aramis and his curiosity. He worries about him following its call to the beds of people he doesn't know that he can trust. He worries about Marsac, and Aramis and his damned curiosity, and how much he dislikes 'being blamed for other men's regrets' . . .
He won't ask because that would be weird and it is Aramis, and the answer is always probably going to be yes. But he thinks about Marsac leaving him like that, and he thinks about Aramis trying to make friends with the entire bloody regiment, even Athos who it turns out is alright only after twenty of their own get slaughtered in their sleep, he thinks about Aramis' generosity of affection now in terms that twist his stomach: Why does he need so badly to be liked? Why does he fill his life so it bulges at its edges with the company of other people? Why is his distress so twisted not just by twenty dead friends but by Marsac leaving him alone - ?
He knows he's not asleep in his arms, so it doesn't really shock him when Aramis says, a little muffled to his shoulder, "Porthos?"
"Mm? Yeah?"
"I'm sorry." He's silent for a second, struggling, then says, "Do you mind if I put something in front of the door?"
". . . no. No, go for it."
He lets him up and Aramis moves in the dark of the room, shifts something heavy - there was a desk underneath the window - across the wooden floor, scraping long before it stops. He rustles around in their clothing for a bit before he returns to the bed, and Porthos hears the clicking thump of two loaded pistols on the table by his head, the gentle clatter of a sword propped against it, before his body slips under the sheets again, cool again, and Porthos rubs his arms and tugs him in close.
Chest to chest and he can feel his heart beat, bird-fast and bird-fragile, fast enough to break itself. "Jesus," he mutters with a hand on it, finds the back of Aramis' head and pulls him down, stuffing his cheek to his own chest. "Listen to that. That's the speed it should go at."
Aramis is silent, listening to Porthos' heartbeat crammed in huge against his ear. Then his arm settles around his side, his body relaxes, and he sighs against his chest, finally comfortable now.
Porthos runs his fingers through his new short hair a few times, avoiding the bandages. He hums a little because he knows that Aramis can hear it cavernous-vast against his ear. And then he lets the heaviness of the dark take him down, because he's tired, he's been tired and lonely and afraid for days, his body's been over-aware of its aloneness, in his big warm bed he has thought of Aramis. Lots.
He's not going to tell him that he loves him, because that would somehow make it seem smaller than it is.
He says, in the dark, half asleep himself, mumbles to the air above his head, "I won't leave you."
Aramis might not even be able to hear him, over his heart.
*
In the morning Athos is as hangover-gloomy as he always is, but Aramis is a little brighter, at least until they're back on the road with Paris coming up faster, now. His talk trails off, and Porthos can sense his growing urge to look back in the lines of his body. He rides in closer to his side, and Athos starts talking about how he'd go about defending the city were it under attack. They argue about siege defences for a while and Aramis lets their talk move around him, settles into it like a cat into bedding, but his eyes on the approaching city are still uneasy.
They all know what's waiting for them at the garrison.
He's lost his hat, somewhere, back on that campsite soaked in blood, maybe he couldn't bring himself to look for it among all the corpses, maybe it couldn't occur to him to look for it among all the corpses. So he has nothing to hide behind as they ride into the city with white bandages like a flag around his head - Porthos offering him his own hat would be too obvious - and they stay on either side of him like an honour guard. He doesn't comment on it and looks just quiet and sort of distant, now. Porthos always attributed to him a serenity of temper he knew he'd never possess himself; now he just wonders if the only difference between them is Aramis' ability to not let it show.
As they ride into the garrison yard training fights stop, voices drop off, and Porthos wants to touch his back but he can't reach, and Aramis makes no acknowledgement of all the attention anyway. Someone comes to take his horse but clearly doesn't know what to say, and Aramis climbs down, puts a smile on, touches his bandages in lieu of a hat, and looks up to Porthos and Athos.
He says, "I need to speak to the captain." and turns away. Only one musketeer tries to speak to him, fumbling with it, at the foot of the stairs, and gets sidestepped with another vague smile. Aramis has always known that charm can get him a long way.
Porthos watches his back right up to the captain's door, where he knocks, waits, goes inside.
Athos says, "I need a drink."
Waiting with Athos for Aramis to come down again, Porthos somehow knows that now they're a three. He doesn't know exactly what's happened - odd tethers Aramis threw out, such that when he needed them, the two of them tugged back to keep his feet steady. That's not what he intended, Aramis hasn't enough sense to plan ahead like that, but there's the outcome all the same; Aramis dared himself to make friends with the two most difficult men in the regiment, and whatever the stakes ever were in his head, the bet has paid itself off. Aramis goes around rescuing people from that hated state of aloneness, and he's been rescued in return, now, when it really matters.
Porthos can still see him on the road, the solitary rider turned back, watching the empty horizon. Maybe he does understand why Aramis keeps God to his side. Better to Aramis to be forever judged than forever alone.
He's in there with the captain for a long time. Porthos can't imagine what Treville is asking him, and doesn't think the captain could be cruel enough to try to force too much from him. Aramis is a soldier and unquestioning in his loyalties, but he's also a young man ridden back alone from the edge of hell with bandages around his head and a certain looseness to his gaze, like looking at anything for too long is too dangerous. Porthos wishes he could have gone ahead to warn Treville - what? That if you leave Aramis on his own, he's not quite Aramis, and it takes him some time in safe company to become himself again?
When he comes downstairs again he's paler, eyes unsettled, mouth too flat. He ignores every other musketeer in the yard, whether he's aware that he's the centre of everyone else's attention or not, walks straight up to Porthos and Athos and Porthos stands up, and pats his back. "Now you need a drink."
He keeps his hand on his back as they walk out. He would never forgive himself, denying Aramis that touch now.
In a secluded corner of a bar Athos orders brandy, and Aramis downs it in one, like it's necessary. He stares at his empty cup, lets his breath out long and hard through his nose. He says, "He put me on leave. Why would he put me on leave? The last thing I want is nothing to do." His forehead creases, something too uneasy behind his eyes in that second. "I don't understand the way he was looking at me."
"The first reports back said there were no survivors." Athos says, and Aramis' frown deepens.
"How the hell did people think reports got back if there were no survivors?"
Athos' eyes flick, perhaps amused underneath all the weariness, to Porthos. "People are always overeager to believe rumours."
Porthos just gives him a look, and drinks his brandy. Aramis slumps back in his seat, holds his hands out helplessly, says, "How the hell should I know what happened? I still don't have a clue. It was dark and then there were people screaming and -" He stabs a hand up to pull it through his hair and Porthos grabs his wrist before he can catch the bandages and hurt himself. Aramis looks at him, and understanding softens his eyes, his arm relaxes in his grip. He says again, and at least he's meeting Porthos' gaze even if his eyes look so sad, "I don't understand the way he was looking at me."
"No-one knows how to look at you right now. You're a man back from the dead." They both look at Athos, who tips his brandy about his cup. "Everyone's too ashamed to ask you an honest question."
Aramis' lips go tight. "'What happened', 'how did they die', 'why didn't you die', 'what's hell like' - ?"
"Most men are cowards. Most wouldn't want to face what you faced." Athos looks at him, over his cup. "Most wouldn't want to face the rest of us again afterwards."
The ghost of Marsac sits with them at the table, cold in the hole in their conversation. Aramis takes his arm from Porthos' grip and folds both of them over his chest, head tucked in, looking stubborn and angry. "I don't judge him for that." he says, quietly. "None of you have any right to judge him for that."
It's more than Porthos can stand, it feels like disloyalty to him that Aramis can't hate Marsac as he does. "He left you alone with twenty dead-"
"I judge him for that." Aramis says sharply, and wriggles his shoulders. "Not for walking away. Not after that. You don't know what it was like. Don't pretend that you know what decision you'd make. You don't know."
Athos swallows his drink. "You didn't leave."
Aramis scowls away. "Someone had to make sure that everyone at least got a Christian burial."
It's not just that, and they know it, but Athos has the sense or decency or both not to push. Aramis tilts his cup to make sure it's still empty and draws his breath in through his nose, says, "I am terrible company." He snaps his head up, lifts a hand at the barman like this situation can't be allowed to go on. "Let's get drunk."
*
Aramis is on leave, a ghost in the regiment. He spends his time in Porthos' room.
Porthos doesn't object to dragging a gratuitously drunk Aramis home after that first day back (it turns out that there's a reason he usually stops drinking soonest, and he's far too incoherent to work out what his emotional state really is, clinging to Porthos and mumbling utter nonsense, not always in French, into his neck), doesn't object to Aramis hungover and gloomy in his bed as he dresses to leave that morning, doesn't object to Aramis reading in his bed that evening. He gets kind of used to it; in a weird way, it's sort of nice to come home to someone at the end of the day, even if that someone is a bandaged man with a darkness behind his eyes worse than the night outside.
Books appear in Porthos' room, he doesn't ask where from. He hears the boards creaking in there some nights as he walks towards his door along the corridor, the sound of pacing like a trapped cat. The night he takes the bandages off and thinks that they can stay off, Aramis says underneath his fingertips pressing his skull to the side to see, "Were you going to fuck me again?"
Porthos tilts the wound towards the candle but it's a fine sealed line now, and while he'll feel it every time he brushes his fingers through his hair, it'll never show to any stranger he meets. He says, "If you seemed to be in the mood."
"I haven't been much fun, recently."
"Whole regiment hasn't been much fun recently, you'll fit right back in."
"Did you want to fuck me?"
Porthos tilts Aramis' head back, frowns at his eyes, now. "Still not sure you're in the mood."
Aramis tips his mouth a little. "No. I don't know. Maybe it would help."
"Maybe let's get past maybe first."
Aramis accepts that with a small sigh, and a small smile, which at least looks honest. He touches Porthos' cheek, and says quietly, "You are a very good man." and the only other person who's ever said that to him his whole life long is Flea, he's heard the reverse sentiment ten thousand times more, but Aramis is too quiet and sad to be anything but honest, and Porthos isn't just going to tell him that he loves him because that would make it sound too easy.
He does kiss him, the slow tender way you need to know someone to do.
The sun comes out, too winter-thin yet to melt the snow but Paris seems a little brighter for it. Nothing has come of the investigation into Savoy, musketeers mutter that the Cardinal must have hijacked the investigation, everything's been secret and behind closed doors, nothing has been done. Porthos passes scraps of information to Aramis but can't really tell if he wants to hear them or not. He cleans his musket, pieces of metal all over Porthos' bed, funny how the individual parts don't look like they'd be capable of killing anyone. Aramis still looks lethal, the knowing way his hands fit them back together again.
It's a very clear evening, stars stunned to the sky with the sharpness of the cold, the night he comes back to candles and Aramis, humming. There's bread and cheese and meat on the table, and a bottle of wine. "I've been shopping," he says, looking oddly pleased with himself, much more like the old smug-cat Aramis Porthos has always known. "I needed a new hat. Do you like it?"
Porthos picks it off the table - not as big as his own but fancier with feathers, Aramis all over, really - and notices that it had originally been put down on top of a little glass jar, full of some honey-coloured oil. "What's that?" he says, half knowing the answer, as Aramis' smile glitters in his eyes.
"A present. I'm in the mood."
He draws mood out, savouring the vowels. Porthos glances at him and he grins, and it catches that old looping way in his guts, and maybe he shouldn't believe him, maybe he should say it's too soon, maybe both of them are still in denial; but there's food and booze and Aramis and a bed over there, and maybe it's not as simple as should or shouldn't. Maybe they just play the hand they're dealt, and raise the stakes with every smile, and never fold, not looking into his eyes. They're soldiers. They trade in violence, they're never going to be 'alright'. Might as well take what they can get.
"I'm coming off leave whatever Treville says," Aramis says, flicking bread at him as they eat like that's a normal way to get the attention of the only other person at the table. "I'm bored. If I don't get put in official musketeer trouble soon then I'll put myself in worse trouble, and it will be unofficial, and imagine all his paperwork then."
What sort of trouble can a man who lets his drunk friends shoot fruit from his head find to get himself into? Porthos might be the one who shot at him, but as far as he can see, clearly that makes him the more sane party in this friendship. "Miss having you around. Athos is a gloomy fuck."
"I like Athos."
"Yeah," he says, because, weird thing, so does he. Aramis catches his eye and smiles, and Porthos thinks that Aramis always would have made them a threesome, it was only ever . . . Porthos won't be another Marsac. Porthos will never make Aramis choose, him or someone else, and will never walk away from him either. They'll keep on raising the stakes until there's no game left for them to walk away from. They are a living dare to each other. Porthos will never find a friend even half as crazy as Aramis again, and he wouldn't even want to.
"If you ate more quickly," Aramis says, flicking another piece of bread at him, "you could spend more time fucking me."
"You got your priorities," Porthos says, cutting more meat off the joint. "I got mine."
He does take his time when it comes to it, because he guesses that's what Aramis would like. Takes his time, runs his hands down the whole length of him, glad of the warmth of the flesh under his palms. Aramis says conversationally, "I like your arms," fingertips mapping them in ways that make Porthos' breath shiver - god damn it they're only his arms and the man's touch is just unnatural - and it's too hard to respond when he's mostly concentrating on not coming yet, and all he really knows to respond with is I like your everything you beautiful fucker. Which is nothing that Aramis doesn't already know.
He lowers his head to huff his breath over Aramis' ear and Aramis' arms cling around his back, like he's only been waiting for him to get close enough so he can grab him and touch him all over. Porthos pants at the sweaty side of his head, "We're doing this again, right?"
"Hm?" His body rolls, and Porthos has to clench his teeth. "I imagine so."
"Good." He shuffles his arm under his head so he can lift it to kiss him, and breaks back from his greedy mouth even though Aramis looks half-willing to bite him to bring him back into range. "'cause I wanna fuck you every-fuckin'-which-way an' it's nice to know I don't have to do it all right now."
"You can do it all right now," he offers, ever-generous, and then his legs press tighter around his sides. "You could at least go harder."
"I'm bein' a gentleman."
His palm slides down his cheek, his smile is dark and close and so, so wicked. He says softly, "You are a very good man." and pats his cheek. "Harder."
Their existence just is a dare to each other, and when you get a man back from the dead, you can hardly deny him such a small request.
He's not going to tell him that he loves him. The word hardly seems enough.
Aramis' fingers sink deep in his hair, scratch the best way at his scalp. He whispers, hot breath on his forehead, "Do you trust me?"
"What? Yeah." He meets his eyes through the sex-haze, blinks to try to make himself look serious, at least get his eyes to focus. "Yeah, 'course I do."
Aramis nods, like he does know that. "Then trust me." He tugs his hair, just a little. "Harder."
Part of the reason he trusts Aramis is that, deep down, he knows that Aramis will never dare him a thing that he doesn't already know that Porthos wants to do.
He's exhausted, afterwards, lead-heavy, can hardly unpeel his sweat-stuck skin off his. "Hot," Aramis mumbles, kicking the sheets further down the bed then rolling into Porthos' side anyway, nuzzling himself to a comfortable place with his cheek propped on his arm. Porthos stares at the ceiling feeling like a cannon dropped onto his chest, in sort of a good way. Sex with Aramis is like a friend aiming a pistol at you, drunk, determined, delighted, and still potentially deadly.
He says to the ceiling, "What are we gonna tell Athos?"
Aramis' fingers are picking out little patterns on his chest that suggest that he's already considering all the other which-ways Porthos could fuck him tonight. "There are things I would like to be able to suggest, but I suspect that he already knows."
Porthos looks down at him, as best he can since he can't lift his head yet. "Have you have sex with him?"
"I possess friends I haven't slept with, Porthos."
"That's not a no."
Aramis sighs, and rolls onto his back. "If you're going to ask that about our every mutual acquaintance . . ."
"I don't care who you fuck, just, I dunno how you'd get him sober enough for it." He ruffles at his hair, and Aramis makes a little growling noise but is too relaxed to move to stop him. Porthos likes it shorter. Maybe he'll keep it, even if he doesn't actually dowse it in blood again.
Aramis rolls back into his side, stretching his body, curling it to fit to Porthos' curve. He says again, sleepy and wounded into his shoulder, "I possess friends I haven't slept with."
Porthos yawns, so wide he hurts his jaw a little, and settles an arm around his shoulder. "S'not a conversation I can stay awake through right now."
Aramis hums, and breathes, very slowly.
It's not quite the same as patting someone's back to reassure yourself of their life when they've just done something utterly deranged. He knows it's more than just that.
The candle gutters out on the table and in the darkness Aramis sighs, soft.
He's not going to tell him that he loves him. This already is what it was always going to be.
*
"Porthos."
Skull shrivelled too tight by wine, he closed his eyes tighter and let his breath out slow, and someone laughed, soft, in the room. He managed to open his eyes, one, and then the other, and blinked up at Aramis' smile, as his thumb and fingers stroked his cheek and Aramis murmured, "Good morning."
He was kneeling by the bed, fully dressed, hat already in place, waking Porthos by these slow touches, these gentle words. Porthos lifted his head a little and squinted around the room - not his - and Aramis said to him, "You do remember last night."
He rubbed his eyes. ". . . shot a melon 'ff y'head."
"And . . ."
"An' then we fucked."
Aramis held his face in both hands, and stroked his cheeks with his thumbs. "I have to go, we're riding to Savoy with the sun coming up. I'm just not quite cad enough to leave you still sleeping."
"Y're not a cad." He smiled, slow and sleepy. "You were a proper gentleman, last night."
Aramis' smile got more real, then, bright in his eyes and warm in his cheeks. "I've wanted that for a very long time," he said, looking honest, and happy. "I hadn't known if you . . ."
Porthos yawned, and started trying to shuffle himself to sit. "Everyone wants you, you know that."
"Not quite everyone. You don't have to get up, you can go back to sleep. I just wanted to speak before I had to go."
He adjusted his hat, ready to stand, and Porthos smiled at him and stretched his arms behind his head. "You wanted me?"
Aramis cocked his head and his smile caught that way again, and he took Porthos' face in gloved hands once more. "You smile, sometimes," he said, tracing its shape with his thumbs, "with this side before - this side catches up - like a naughty child who is already aware that he is going to get away with it . . . yes, Porthos, I fell for you some time ago, when you had to go around being so criminally gorgeous and you know I have no self-control. And I do have to go." He touched his arm, and Porthos looked at him, at how sure and sincere his eyes were in the pre-dawn dark. "Thank you."
He kissed him, just once, and quite slow and intent like kissing Porthos in the dark before dawn had been on his list of things to longingly look forward to for a very long time. And then he stood up, and picked his musket up, shouldered it and tugged the brim of his hat and looked down at Porthos quite wondering and proud of what was in his bed.
Porthos said, "Have fun in Savoy."
"I suspect I'll have more fun when I get back," he said, meeting his eye and his growing smile. And then he touched his hat one last time, and turned to leave, and Porthos watched the dawn-blue swing of his cloak as he went.
He turned onto his back in Aramis' bed, scratched his stomach and sighed, sleepily satisfied at the ceiling. Going to be a long boring week before Aramis came back. At least he already knew it would be worth it, when he did.