Musketeer fic: Wolf Moon verse

[rainjoyswriting]

Pack Mentality, part three of four, the third part of the yes it's an mpreg Wolf Moon universe. I really, really need to get caught up on comments, I know, I'm sorry -_-; Barely even been writing recently, let alone contacting people, but Gollum has now been removed from my house, and I'll hopefully have the energy to do *something* again soon. Christmas around the corner is making me feel rather jolly - fairy lights everywhere and fun things to drink - and I hope to find the spirit to contact people before the day itself <3

Disclaimer: I don't own any of it, and promise I'm only playing with it.

Rating: A very adult sort of R, for distressing subject matter.

Warnings and spoilers: See the first part for warnings, and please do take them seriously. This is the part where a lot of the issues with gender and race become very much put to the forefront, so it can get distressing in *all* kinds of ways that way, tread carefully if you need to. There's also violence and the threat of violence directed at children and pregnant people.

Summary: If people pour out poison, someone will end up poisoned.


Note: I am so fucking tired I cannot even tell you. You'll notice in this part that I've fucked with the historical timeline slightly but I ought to be forgiven because gods know it's much less than the series did . . .

By the autumn, chilling nights and drizzling mornings, it doesn't matter how Aramis tucks his shirts and ties his belts: it shows, and there's no hiding it. He looks down at his new pot belly, the lid over his growing baby, and cradles it, small as it is, in both hands. He wonders how many generations since Eve have borne this. He wonders how the Holy Mother bore it. Awe and humility, he supposes. Perhaps she didn't face the hellish sickness, sacred as her gift was.

Aramis has always had a nigh-perpetual monologue in his head intended for the Lord, a litany of questions he hopes one day to see answered, little sunny notes of appreciation for particularly fine dawns and singing birds, attempts to reach out for something in the worst of his griefs, repentances for his many, many sins, gratitude for the many, many proofs of grace he's been given. The Lord will understand that for now Aramis prays primarily to her, holiest among women, the fruit of her womb singularly blessed. Because she understands his weakness and his fear, and the insanity of the cravings he feels, and she will indulge him with a little comfort just for the thought of her. He needs her, now.

As with the Lord Himself, Aramis can't keep his curiosity to himself, and many of the thoughts he passes her way are in the form of questions; he sees now where his own ever-curious little wolf gets it from, which only amuses him more. He asks her if she did get the nausea, and when his might end, and how he can even have anything left to come up by the middle of the morning Mother Mary send some mercy please. He asks her how she didn't mind the stretch marks, which he's sure she didn't, lacking in his own bitter pride as she surely is. He asks her if she was afraid. She was only a girl, just to be married. Was she afraid, not only of the awesome holy portent of it all but just because her body now was beyond her somehow, lost to her never-before-considered control, showing the tip of its secrets on the inside but still only a mortal body, and flesh is so fragile, so weak?

There's no bluffing it away; he's showing, properly, and there's no avoiding it anymore. Treville will still not send him away to his claustrophobic confinement yet - he feels none of the acceptance for his fate he felt with Jean-Armand, could not simply sit in the house as he once did in a monastery before their own cellar, patient for whatever his body planned to do next; now he feels manic with worry, and distracting himself every way he can is the only coping method he can manage - but the captain won't have him anywhere where he might have to draw a weapon either. He finds some potential new recruits for Aramis to look over and teach what they'll need. As a task it suits Aramis well, and he's grateful for it. He knows he was a bit of mother hen even before his own baby came into this world, and a group of young men to fuss over the future of amuses, for now at least.

(His baby. His babies . . .)

He's showing, and it could never be avoided forever, the day that with his friends he's taken to the palace to be presented for the King and his court's amusement. It's strangely easy to bear. Louis has softened some since the long-anticipated birth of the Dauphin, and Aramis has to focus so hard on his own reeling nausea that keeping his facial expressions appropriate concerns him much more than minding the undercurrent of Louis' pleased mockery to the whole proceeding. He avoids looking at any face but the King's, as much as politeness dictates. The Cardinal is in the room but Aramis doesn't even look in his direction, flits his eyes skywards with a quick-flashed prayer to avoid the man's evil eye instead. He minds the Cardinal as he must. He respects the man's position in the Church, as the Church dictates, and he also knows that he's unholy and not to be trusted. It's fine. He understands transubstantiation, he can accept that a Cardinal he owes deference to is also pure evil without the least concern.

He sends his friends ahead with some urgency once they're out of the throne room, telling them he means to pass by the kitchens for a cup of water. What he actually does is find an anteroom with a window onto a quiet corner of the gardens out of which he can lean and finally retch, until he's miserable and sweating with it; too much perfume in that throne room, the scent as cloying as rot. He couldn't face the stables, the heat and the smell, he couldn't bear it, he hopes his husbands have thought to get the horses out before he finds them again, he hopes d'Artagnan has the sense if they don't . . .

He closes the window on the unsavoury present he's left for the palace's roses, and then leans his forehead to the cool of the glass, and breathes. He's had a headache for the last month or more, his body is still very undecided over whether he's pregnant or just concussed. He wonders for the first time, eyes opening with some alarm at the thought, whether he could shoot straight right now even if required; he needs to try in the garrison, as soon as they return. The thought that he's too dizzy and disorientated to snap a bullet through a bird's head is an incredibly disarming thought, leaving him suddenly far too vulnerable. He's always known he's had that if required, and felt secure for it. Now he feels bloated and ill-tempered and flimsy all the time; is he to be left with anything he truly identifies himself with at all?

He hears voices in the corridor outside, and there are a few directions they might be travelling in but he still picks himself up and wipes his face with a handkerchief, tugs his hair back to some semblance of order in case they do decide to travel his way - which they do, the door sweeping open to allow through of all people the Queen, and her ladies at her back in all their silks and embroidery. Aramis bows, immediately, feeling the slight oddity of doing so around a larger stomach, and then he feels so anxious his skin crawls at the visible largeness of his stomach, and then he tells himself to stop it. His emotions are wild horses right now, he can tame them no more than d'Artagnan has any control over Maria in a temper.

"Aramis," the Queen says, hesitating a little but the smile on her warms true.

"Your Majesty," he says, and kisses the hand she offers, and still feels awkward. He's seen ex-lovers since he had his son, and never minded a single expression on their faces; whatever they felt about Aramis and the baby he birthed was irrelevant to him, because the baby he birthed was the most precious gift in all of Creation and nothing mattered more. But those ex-lovers haven't seen him in this pregnancy, when he feels rather more tender and fragile about it all, and a single glance of contempt or revulsion at his stomach from someone he once gave his defenceless idiot heart to really might crumple him to the floor, he's little enough strength even before an attack does come. And the Queen - of all people -

"You must have seen the King," she says, and her flitted gaze has noted the rounding of him, but her expression is too complicated for contempt. Far too complicated; it would be a smile but there's that stain of sadness pressed back in it, and a flit of wry understanding, almost tired just at the thought of it, since she's faced this herself and she had many more layers she could hide it under. She's always been too kind to him. Which is why he went and fell when they were pushed, of course; the world may relate many grandiose tales of the reverse but Aramis knows how pathetically easily seducible he has always been when someone wanted him.

"I'm just returning to my friends now, your Majesty."

"How is your son?" No-one could understand that expression on her face, even Aramis can't read all of it, and knowing nothing as they do no outsider could ever read the strange history between the two of them in it. "He must be getting big, now."

"By the day. He's well, very well, thank you. And the Dauphin, your Majesty?"

She smiles, and says, "Strong." and he smiles back, and both of those smiles mean everything in the world except a smile. If hers hurts half as much as his does, God help the woman. "Send to the kitchens," she says to a servant at her side, who immediately curtseys. "Have some lemons taken to the musketeers before they leave. For the sickness," she supplies to Aramis, who bows, uncertainly.

He says, "You're too kind, your Majesty."

She smiles, and says, "Take care, Aramis." and he steps aside, still bowing, so that she and her ladies in waiting can pass. And he doesn't look at any of them beside her, torn on his confusion of what she must be feeling, to see the man she once carried the child of pregnant himself, married to someone else, an object of amusement for her husband and gossip for her court. He is aware that to most people his position falls somewhere between awkward and risible. But she is kind; what have they ever been able to give each other, in their stifled, stunted grief, but that?

He stands, and rubs that place where the headache bangs between his eyebrows with the pad of a thumb, and thinks that Athos and Porthos will be getting impatient at where he must be. He turns -

Across the wider corridor through the open door, on the other side of a staircase, the Cardinal is standing, staring at him, hands fisted at his sides and in his eyes - Aramis understands the subtle revulsion. What he doesn't understand, what freezes him in that moment fearful for his own vulnerable exposed bump, is that flare of inexplicable triumph on Richelieu's face.

He crosses his arms over his stomach, and feels too small and isolated and cornered even to back away. Richelieu's mouth just twists with a nasty, gleeful half-smile, and he turns and walks away without saying a word.

Well. Aramis must be among the man's least favourite people in the world, and here he is in Richelieu's own eyes debased and humiliated and certainly never stealing any of his mistresses again. To Richelieu, this must be a cause for celebration indeed.

By the time he finds his friends - and thank God they have his horse outside the stable and ready for him - a servant is leaving them, and there are lemons as yellow as summer in their saddlebags. "Where've you been?" Porthos says, and Aramis heaves himself up into the saddle, patting the side of his horse's neck. He enjoys riding and knows he'll be banned from it very shortly, and so he takes what pleasure he can in it while he's able.

"I always bump into people in the palace. I can't help being popular."

Porthos makes a noise of what he thinks of Aramis' popularity, and Aramis laughs, and jigs his horse on. "Slow," Athos warns, and Aramis rolls his eyes, and the unpredictable gamble of his emotions offers him a secret, warm sort of glow, to be so cared for, even if to such an excessively smothering degree.

In the garrison his friends go to the captain for their orders, and Aramis pulls the raincloth off one of the targets at the end of the yard, and paces the distance out, and then busies his hands for some time on checking the preparation of his pistol. He tries not to make it too obvious to himself that he's putting off the moment when he actually has to fire, nervy of the outcome of it. But he takes too long fussing, and feels eyes on him, looks up as if to check the sky, adjusting the hat on his head, so he can then cast a surreptitious glance back at the ground and see how many shadows lay still marking musketeers who have stopped what they're doing to watch him. Him and his damn reputation, and the show he's now obliged to give.

Well. He can't miss now. Some of his new recruits may be watching, he certainly can't miss.

His mouth is dry.

He eyes up the target, lifts his gun, closes one eye and then trusting the aim of his own arm, both, in the same second that he shoots.

The world gone dark under the afternoon sun he breathes, breathes, hears the grinding of swords being sharpened in the forge, a bird singing on the roof of the kitchens, the tumult of noise beyond their walls of Paris on any given day, ready for all the life in the world.

He opens his eyes and looks at the small, perfect hole in the perfect centre of the target, and tips his hat back with a small sigh, to anyone else only satisfaction, to himself, relief so deep it shakes his bones' marrow.

Athos, Porthos and d'Artagnan are coming downstairs, Porthos nodding at the target. "Showin' off?"

"Merely showing how it's done," Aramis says, and turns to gesture for his new recruits. "Come on, now you know what you're aiming for, let me see that you've kept your pistols as I asked and we'll see if you're ready to shoot."

"Go easy on them." Athos says, walking over to casually kiss his cheek as he puts his hat on. "We can't all be you."

That pleased warmth inside threatens to overwhelm him to the point of tears, fuck his emotions right now, honestly, he's so happy he could weep. Instead he presses Athos' hand and stifles it inside and says, "You'll be back before the children's bedtime?"

"We hope to be." Athos glances at the gathering of Aramis' new little troupe of recruits, one of his blandly assessing looks, it will be months before they get a glance from Athos that even begins to flatter them with any emotion at all, let alone one of approval. But he approves of Aramis. Aramis preens to that thought, even as he knows why Athos just came over to visibly stake his claim on his husband when in public he so rarely does; when better to remind everyone of Aramis' status when he's just proved that he can still outshoot any man here? They don't need them to forget Aramis' marriage and his pregnancy for his soldier's skills instead, they need them to openly associate Aramis, married to a man and pregnant, with exactly the same skill and strength that their duty requires. Aramis can't be only one, soldier or husband, and so he must be both, and must excel at both. One kiss to his cheek and he feels like he can, too.

Porthos gives him a smirking grin, eyes dark, as he heads for the entrance and Aramis' heart bumps, throat drying with how he feels himself wanted in that glance (d'Artagnan is rolling his eyes amused as he walks out after them) and Aramis can cope with anything, anything, for the love of those two men.

Right now what he has to cope with is the lavatorial state of young Jacques Perrault's pistol which he has apparently cleaned in an open gutter, and which Aramis will have him cleaning the bloody gutters of the entire garrison for until he can be trusted around the damned things with his poor innocent weapons, hell.

He doesn't throw up again that afternoon. He thinks he will but retrieves a lemon from his saddlebag instead, and inhales the clean, sugary scent of its rind until the worst of the nausea passes. Then he breaks the rind open and eats the flesh like it's an apple, spitting the pips. He has no idea if that's what the Queen intended him to do with them; it's the most delicious thing he ever knew could exist, and he spends the rest of the afternoon nibbling the rind, staving off the nausea's return, and casting calculating looks at Jacques Perrault, pistol-besmircher, who scrubs at the weapon on the tabletop with ever-increasing mania, and Aramis hasn't even mentioned his grubby, blunted sword yet . . .

*

Aramis is showing. Porthos can hardly keep off him.

Athos attends to all of this with no little admiration for the stamina of the two of them, though for all their regularity he only rarely excuses himself from proceedings, fascinated himself by just how hungry they prove. All day Porthos just so obviously wants Aramis and yet can't have him - Aramis is still crippled by nausea every morning, wretched with it, and then there's all the day out in public to face; but the evening over dinner means Porthos' eyes all dark and burning on Aramis and Aramis, for his part, looking open and obviously awakened by his own blood's lust right back at him. It turns out that it really is true, Porthos has some particular keenness for Aramis when pregnant, and Aramis, well, Aramis knows no greater aphrodisiac than being wanted.

Athos suspects it's not the physical rounding of Aramis so much that does this to Porthos. He sees the forced care in his touch, sees the strained control of his body's desire to surge and crush and, quite simply, fuck. Aramis has always been to Porthos a partner he can go at as heavily as desire dictates, he's never had to hold his strength back for him if he's been in a mood to use it - but now he does, in deference to the fragile little life inside him. Now he has to be gentle, and it drives him wild with wanting more of it. Whether it's because he needs to go harder or because he doesn't understand himself how much he loves the gentleness, Athos is still working out. It's not like they're not giving him ample time to assess the possibilities. And for all he says he's tired all the time, Aramis is gracious - eager - about Athos having his turn as well, which is something to be grateful for, because he really doesn't know how he'd sleep in any ordinary way after watching the two of them like that, God.

They've never seen Aramis in these stages of pregnancy, Jean-Armand was already a significant heft to Aramis' stomach by the time Athos and Porthos walked in on Aramis in a monk's cell. He's more emotional than they're used to, more fragile, for joy as well as hurt. The tearfulness seems to have largely run out, which is a mercy, it puts the two of them into panic, they simply don't know what to do with a crying Aramis. He's never been given to it, Athos is hard pressed to name an occasion he's ever seen Aramis cry before . . . well. Before. Having met Aramis' father he now suspects that crying was removed from Aramis as an acceptable option for emotional display at a very young age, and that that lesson stuck too hard. Only the internal upheavals of pregnancy, and grief too much to bear, could ever inspire it from him now, and never without shame.

His equilibrium is matched by that of his son, though Athos had feared the boy could respond like the King himself to feel displaced from Aramis' affections by this new bump, tyrant to Aramis' devotion as he's used to being. He doesn't descend into a Louis-esque tantrum, though. He lays on the settee in the parlour to hold his ear to Aramis' stomach, while Aramis runs a hand over his hair, and murmurs to him, "What can you hear, little wolf?"

"Your tummy rumbling."

Aramis grins, says, "That's because I'm hungry. The baby already ate all my dinner for me."

"Is that why you're fat? Because the baby's fat?"

"There are words that gentlemen do not use," Aramis says, aiming for delicacy and sounding just a little put out, "and 'fat' is one of them. Particularly when referring to one's own beloved parents."

Jean-Armand sits up, and squints at Aramis for some time in his thinking, and then attempts, "Round?"

Aramis sighs, and slumps his head back against the settee's high back. "'Round' I will endure."

In the doorway Athos stands with his arms folded, leaning against the frame, smiling slightly at the both of them. He doesn't know why he feared it, Jean-Armand has never been given to tantrums, though he's also had little need for one with Aramis so willing to fulfil his every desire without hesitation. The only time Athos has ever really seen Jean-Armand hysterical was the first time Porthos cut his hair, and for all his screaming, Athos still thinks that Aramis was more upset by the entire affair than Jean-Armand himself was.

By the time he was toddling Jean-Armand had a large bouncy cloud of dark hair, which Porthos said had to be cut. "People don't like our hair." he said bluntly. "They'll laugh at him, kids can be dicks. He c'n grease it back when he's older, now it's got to be cut. Anyway," with an almost guilty glance at Athos, "makes him look too much like me."

Aramis looked dubious in the extreme - it was no secret that he liked Jean-Armand's hair, though he said nothing, biting down his own opinion that nobody else's opinion matters a damn because his son is beautiful and perfect exactly as he is. He kept his own counsel and deferred to Porthos because he always does in these matters, he knows that Porthos knows it all better than he does. They've both lived as outsiders, more and less subtly - even besides his currently-heavy womb, Athos always raises his eyebrow for the particular tone of voice in which Aramis responds to questions about whether he might be Spanish with a dropped-stone, "I'm French." - but Aramis knows that Porthos' outsider status is a great deal less subtle than his own, and so he trusts him to know best when it comes to their son trapped in the same position. Athos, for his part, felt no right to interfere, and anyway, a haircut is only a haircut, and there was no need for Aramis to look so anxious about it.

It is not unusual for a child to respond with shock and horror to the first time that pieces of them appear to be chopped off. At the kitchen table for his haircut Jean-Armand screamed, and then wept, and Athos had to help hold him in his squirming so that Porthos could finish the job, Aramis was clearly too distressed to do anything, standing in the doorway torn between rushing forward to snatch his child back and fleeing because he couldn't interfere and just couldn't stand it. As soon as Porthos was done he did bolt forward and grab the boy, and hurry him away from the scene of the crime. Porthos brushed the hair up from the floor, while Aramis holding his baby's shorn head to his throat hushed all his comfort to him, Jean-Armand clinging to him with both hands and his locked legs around his sides and howling, and Porthos looked stony, and dealt with what was practical.

Apart from then, while Jean-Armand can be impetuous - taking him out in public shouldn't be as stressful as it is when three grown men are trying to keep a harassed eye on him - he has never been one for screaming or crying or sulking, and retains a generally sunny outlook on life. He responds to the new child in Aramis' belly with the same delight with which he greets more or less everything, and by asking Aramis for something more, which is also his response to most things; "Can it be a sister please?"

"It might be."

"Is it?"

"It might be. It's a surprise. Wouldn't you like a little brother?"

"Yes," said doubtfully. "But girls are nicer than boys."

Athos rolls his eyes to the ceiling and on the couch, Porthos bursts out laughing; Aramis solemnly pats Jean-Armand's back, and tells him, "You are indeed your papa's son."

Aramis is more relaxed than he was, somewhat returned to his casual cheerfulness. Athos knows there's an underlying anxiety but he's no longer so entirely brittle, so easy to puncture into weeping with the smallest wound. Just that they've admitted between themselves that the miscarriage happened seems to have settled him away from the worst of his self-loathing, at least now it's been confirmed that they certainly don't loathe him for it. How many years, Athos thinks, did they each carry their own private hell around with themselves, each of them finding a way to spin a noose out of their guilt, because none of them dared to speak of it to another because all of them feared too much the other's response . . . ?

It can't be that much longer to Aramis' confinement, he promised them he would go early and carefully. But he's got attached to those damned recruits, and while Athos appreciates that they keep Aramis occupied in safety all day, had he been left to more boring duties, he would have probably felt a lot easier about abandoning the garrison to prepare the nursery again. Instead he's now at least big enough that he feels the need to walk around in public with a hand on his belly at all times - this, Athos knows, done to signpost what is in his belly, so that people don't assume that gluttony rather than lust put him into that shape - and yet he's not said another word about his confinement. Which means that Athos is going to have to bring it up at some point soon. Athos is perpetually forced into being the villain just because he's the only one of them with any fucking sense.

Aramis does keep a hand on his belly, and it does, actually, soften something in Athos, because his vanity might be amusing but his already-obvious tenderness towards the creature inside him is difficult to watch without emotion. Aramis' thumb strokes unthinkingly at it, and when he's clearly deep in some thought or another on the child inside him, he hums, quiet children's melodies. Aramis isn't thinking yet about making a nursery for the child, bringing a cot back into their bedroom, because he's focused on attending to the nursery that he currently acts as. This is why that miscarriage nearly broke Aramis. The baby is already a baby, to him. Already it's a little warm squirming thing he can all but feel in his arms. The baby inside him is a baby, to Aramis, already it has a personality, it takes up space in the world. It is already a child, and so are those other lost children, and they always will be, to him.

Athos wishes he knew some way to tell him to gather his hope in tight and be careful with it without hurting him so unbearably much that he could never mute the pain in him again.

Aramis eats erratically, but more, and Athos can only be grateful that he seems to be eating more than the nausea gets out of him, now. He eats odd things. He craves sour food and baulks at the fat on meat, craves cold food, takes to keeping apples in buckets of water in the cellar to make them so icy that the others can't bear to bite into them. One morning Porthos goes to the ice house, brings him a brick of ice back, and Aramis looks so touched and so greedy for it. They thought he'd make something cold with it, and eat that; he smashes chunks off the block with a knife handle and eats them as they are, crunching ice chips blissfully, while Athos' teeth hurt even to watch.

He prays more. They don't comment on it. One corner of their room is now given over to candles, to a makeshift altar they find Aramis at whenever he's trying to conquer the nausea, or his own coldly risen fear. He's always been more inclined towards the Church than either of them, Porthos awkward with ritual he didn't grow up inside, Athos only angry at God if He even exists, for even half the shit He puts people through. It's so natural and intimate and friendly, to Aramis, his relationship with God, and so even if they don't really know what it means and what to do about it, they let him have his ways. He's got enough to worry about without them interfering in this. Athos does very pointedly put a cushion on the floor in that corner and Aramis does, mock-meekly grinning, accept the silent order not to kneel on bare wooden boards for too long while pregnant with their baby Aramis, but Athos doesn't question him or try to stop him. Maybe, to make up for Athos' impiety, they really could use all the grace Aramis can attract in their direction after all.

Athos logs Aramis' pregnancy to himself almost obsessively, and he's not only being practical. He is, in many ways, being practical, looking for any sign of danger, any slight difficult change. But mostly he just feels fascinated by Aramis right now, the casual alchemy of Aramis' body making a person out of - nothing, really, very little indeed. He feels a little jealous and resentful of his own past self, for how little he liked to have to do with Aramis while pregnant with Jean-Armand. He didn't pay any proper attention then. Didn't notice that even his hair seems thicker and shinier, that the sweat smells a little different on him. Athos even believes he tastes different, though it'll be a few months before he has a chance to compare the taste of him now with his non-pregnant self. Aramis will not decline the experiment, he feels.

If God is good. If God is good, it will be a few months.

Please.

He's perpetually exhausted and yet sleeps in a shallow stop-start way, and says his dreams are fantastical and so vivid. He naps even more than he ever used to and he used to do it just to casually annoy Athos sometimes. The nausea's definitely worse this time, he doesn't understand it, and there are more dizzy spells, though he's the sense to sit and be quiet for them to pass and not risk another faint. His skin feels warmer. But the autumn is turning cold, and that is only a blessing, really.

"You still want 'Isabelle', for a girl?" Porthos says, heading through the streets together - the drizzle spatters off the guttering, gathers and drips from their hats - for the garrison, and another day's shift.

"Hm? I - yes, unless - you -"

"Nah, s'fine. S'a pretty name. What about a boy, then?"

Aramis frowns at the street ahead of them and strokes clearly with no real idea that he's doing it at his well-wrapped-up belly. D'Artagnan says, "If you were being practical," with an eyebrow-raised nod between Porthos and Athos, "he'd have Aramis' husband's name, really."

It is what men do, Athos knows, naming their children after themselves, children being nothing but an extension of the ego to so many tediously egotistical men. And were they being practical, they would take what steps they could to ensure that Aramis' children, whoever truly sired them, really look like Athos' children. Porthos says, "Can't really imagine a baby called 'Athos'."

"It's not my given name," Athos says. "It would be 'Olivier'."

D'Artagnan pulls a face, says, "I don't know if that's better really."

"It could be quite cute," Aramis muses. "'Athos' would be a terrible idea though. Unless it comes out with that frown. Then I hardly see how we could call it anything else."

"What frown?"

Aramis says to the others, "He's never seen the frown."

D'Artagnan says, "He's the only one in Paris who hasn't seen it." and Porthos shakes his head.

"Never pissed himself off in front of a mirror, has he?"

"What about saints' names? So he'd have someone in particular to mind him."

"Better'n the patron saint of frownin'."

"I really don't frown that much," Athos says, and Aramis throws his head back and laughs, d'Artagnan grins too broad, and Porthos steps a little forward, leaning past Aramis, so Athos can see the parody of apparently his own unamused scowl he's put on -

And Porthos' shoulder bursts bloody red, and the whole world seems to snap to stillness, and Athos hears the bang and screams of people on the street only from a distance.

Porthos staggers and Aramis catches him with an arm around his chest but shit Aramis is faster than a snake when he's riled and shit shit Athos only just yells out the, "Ara-"

Aramis is holding Porthos to himself with one arm; the other is out straight and he's already sighted down the barrel of the pistol, already fired. Athos looks up and only sees the man who took aim at Porthos as he slides down the roof, then falls off it and with a sick thud to the wet ground, people fleeing from his body, scattering so only the musketeers stand on the street.

"Cover," Aramis huffs, d'Artagnan shielding the two of them with his pistol out as Aramis tugs Porthos towards an abandoned cart stacked with barrels to their side. Athos quickly grabs Porthos' other arm before Aramis tries to heft too much of Porthos' weight on his own, helping him to drag him out of the open street as d'Artagnan covers their backs. He doesn't snap out that it would have been so much better to have had that bastard alive, because there's no point. It's not only just because the man's already dead, it's because he never could have said anything to make Aramis react any differently to that situation anyway. Someone hurt Porthos; Aramis killed them. It was reflex as much as gagging to an intrusion of the throat or flinching to touch a burning surface. Someone hurt Porthos so Aramis killed them, and the best hope they have now, in their ridiculous life, is that there's an accomplice out there who's going to try to kill them again so that they get some chance to find out why.

Ducked under the cart's side, half-shielded by its oversized wheel, Aramis is slitting aside Porthos' uniform for his shoulder. "Just caught you," he says. "Stitches but the ball's not in deep, it'll slide out easily, don't worry. I can bind it for now. Are you alright?"

"Aimin' for you," Porthos huffs through his teeth. Athos looks at him, and then understands in the same second like headbutting a wall as Aramis, interested only in tugging the sash off himself to tie around Porthos' shoulder, says, "What?"

Porthos wets his lips, grits his teeth again, and says without unclenching them, "He was aimin' for you. I stepped between the two f'you at th' wrong second, he was aimin' for you."

Aramis' hands have stopped their automatic motions, sash hanging limply between them, staring at Porthos with his face entirely blank as he works it out too: the angle the bullet came, the way Porthos moved in that moment. And then something behind his face falls like a catastrophe and Athos sees his shoulders hunch in, his arms hunch in, his entire body trying to make itself smaller around his own stomach, his entire body a shield around the baby inside him when his body is no shield, no safe place at all, because he just almost took a bullet to the throat and nothing would have saved that child then.

D'Artagnan, pistol in hand, looks around the cart wheel at the street and says, "I don't think he brought friends."

"Who would," Aramis whispers, and the thought can't seem to complete itself. Who would shoot at him? He's pregnant. He's pregnant. He shakes himself out of it but in the jagged motion of his looping his sash around Porthos' shoulder and tugging it to tie it taut, he's not calm, he's nothing like it.

Athos stands up and Aramis grabs his calf and hisses, "Down," frantic not to deal with two injured lovers at once. But Athos, even if he keeps his pistol in hand because he's not stupid, is reasonably confident that there's no-one left to shoot at them, and just walks towards the body of the man who did.

"Apparently," he says as he walks, "I'm not their target."

He doesn't recognise the man on the ground as he turns him with a boot, and not just because he's covered in mud and blood and half his head's staved in by the street, he just doesn't know him. He looks around the rooftops, looks back and gives d'Artagnan a small tight smile of gratitude that he's stayed with Aramis and Porthos, Porthos compromised and Aramis white with shock, one hand tight in Porthos' shirt and one huddled over his stomach as if that will help in the slightest; they need d'Artagnan guarding them.

"I don't know him," he says. "And I believe he came alone. Aramis, we need to know if you recognise the man. Mind his back," he adds to d'Artagnan, who stands and scans the windows around them as Aramis just kneels there beside Porthos, dumb and apparently numb, before with a few deep breaths he can pick himself up, drawing his fresh pistol, and with a vicious glance all around the street for anyone who wants to step forward and risk it, he walks to Athos' side. Porthos stumbles to pick himself up to follow, hugging Aramis' side like he's happy to be a human shield if that's what it takes.

Aramis stares down at the man on the ground and shakes his head. He swallows, and his voice comes out rasped; "Never seen him in my life."

"The angry husband of an old lover?"

"Then he took his bloody time in deciding on revenge, unless you're actually accusing me of unfaithfulness here, now, and pregnant, Athos."

Athos can only shake his head, looking down at that man's body. "We need to tell Treville, and have a warning passed out. We don't even know that he was aiming at Aramis in particular. The target might have been any musketeer, and it just happened to be you he chose."

Aramis says as if he simply can't believe otherwise, "No-one would shoot at someone pregnant. No-one."

"Might not've known," Porthos says, face still tight with pain. "Might've thought you're just like that."

Aramis looks at him clearly ready to feel riled at the accusation that stoutness looks natural on him, but his face drops again, and he touches Porthos' side. "I need to get you to the garrison and get that sewn," he says. "Athos, what do we -"

"D'Artagnan, stay with the body. I'll send someone to help you collect it, be vigilant. I'll escort them back."

"We're escorting each other back," Aramis says, hand still tight on that gun.

"Yes." Athos allows. They may well be; but Porthos clings to Aramis' shoulder, and Athos takes up his own guard at his other side, eyes suspicious on the streets. People watch them from the doorways where they're huddled, from the alleys they slipped down for safety at the sound of the shots, and the musketeers watch them suspiciously, impotently, back. They rarely think of the streets of Paris as hostile to them but if someone does have another gun, they don't know that they can stop another bullet hitting home, and somewhere worse this time.

Treville's response is a dark cold anger, controlled into action; he takes seriously that his soldiers were fired on but he's not about to do anything stupid about it. Aramis is cool enough again once they're in the garrison, clearly very bothered by then about Porthos' shoulder, which means at least that they're both out of the way in the infirmary when the body is brought back and d'Artagnan can inform them that someone passing recognised the man, and gave his address. So Aramis isn't there in that moment to demand his right to storm off to find out what the fuck that man thought he was doing when he aimed a gun at his own pregnant body and hit Porthos instead.

The address leads them to the man's wife and a gaggle of ill-dressed, ill-washed children underfoot; the thin woman in her shabby room looks at the floor, reacts very little to the news of her husband's death, and says very little in reply to their questions. No, she didn't know what her husband had done this morning. She didn't notice anything unusual about him this morning. She didn't know where he got the gun from. She didn't know. She didn't know. She doesn't know anything.

The neighbours tell them that he was an ex-soldier, an odd closed-off twitchy man with a habit of muttering to himself, on generally cold or openly bad terms with most men he knew, much given to church but showing few Christian virtues they'd ever noted. By the afternoon they still know nothing, walking back to the garrison with d'Artagnan scowling at their defeat, Athos icy with it. Someone shot at his husband and hit his best friend, and he doesn't even fucking know why. If only Aramis hadn't shot to kill . . .

Stupid thing even to wish for. He shot Porthos in front of Aramis. What did he think would happen next?

"Religious," Treville says in his office.

"Weird," d'Artagnan says. "Weird and crabby seemed to be the general consensus."

"We couldn't find any clear motive or any clear reason at all." Athos says, bitter in his heart, he shot at his husband right next to him, if Porthos hadn't blocked it with his relatively expendable shoulder - high in the chest or low in the throat, that's where it would have hit, not a clean headshot like Aramis might have aimed for himself but it would have killed him there on the street just as much, just more slowly.

"Religious," Treville says again, quietly, thoughtfully.

"I doubt any more so than Aramis himself," Athos says, but his jaw tightens. He knows from some of the more vinegar-pious amongst their own regiment - Aramis' God is all for love, comfort and grace, but for some, God is mostly concerned with self-righteousness, denial and brutality - that, yes, there are those who are 'religious' who take against men like Aramis. The Church has its position, but that position has changed from Pope to Pope, and Aramis' unstable situation teeters on the tolerance of Church men who don't, can't understand his life at all. "You think he was motivated by religious bigotry."

"We have nothing else to run on."

"Even if he'd heard of him, how did he even know who Aramis was?" d'Artagnan says. "He doesn't exactly carry a flag saying who he is."

Treville can only shrug behind his desk, and drag a hand back through his hair. "It's out at Court, and his face is known there, and you four are memorable. If it seeps out through the staff, the servants, onto the streets . . . it gets to some people. I know none of you are naïve about that."

"No." Athos says, and nothing else. No. Arguments in inns, sneered comments on the street, the looks they can catch across their own garrison courtyard; no, they are not naïve about that.

In the infirmary Aramis is long out of his shock, sitting impatient only to know what they know because someone, some bastard, shot Porthos. Porthos himself, shoulder sewn and bandaged, is nursing a bottle of wine in an evidently very dark mood, because that bottle's still very full for the length of time they've been away. What he's taken for the pain has been very little; he'd clearly rather keep his sobriety and his wits about him, in case he might get a chance for revenge, or in case he might need to protect Aramis without warning.

Aramis stops twirling his hat between his hands and looks hungrily to Athos as soon as he's through the door. "Did you find out who he was?"

"We spoke to his wife and his neighbours. As much as we can tell, which is little, he acted alone, and his only motivation was zealotry."

Aramis' forehead creases and he hesitates on saying something, and eventually doesn't. Porthos looks belligerent. He'd been too shocked by the bullet and the pain to do much on the street, but now he's clearly had more time to think about it and that someone took a shot at Aramis, pregnant with their child, while he was standing right next to him is as gut-snarlingly enraging to him as it is to Athos. That man didn't just fire on Aramis because of the potentials of Aramis' body and his view on the sin of Aramis' very existence. He fired on him while he was pregnant. He fired on Aramis and the helpless child inside him. Their bigot didn't even have the decency to sit on his hatred until the baby, innocent of anything, was safely in the world and leaving Aramis only a soldier again, and much more able to manage other men's idiocy. Aramis doesn't deserve the bullet either way but why the fuck bring the baby into it as well?

"We're to go home," Athos says. "It's already been a long day. Porthos needs to rest."

Aramis looks at him, eyes narrowed with calling out Athos' bullshit: they are going home because both Porthos and Aramis need to be off the streets today, and apparently they both need Athos to mind them safely home right now. "D'Artagnan's seeing to something at the palace," Athos says. "And it's nearly time to collect the boy anyway."

Aramis gives him a long look of knowing Athos too well to be tricked by any of his tactics - marriage has its pitfalls, Athos knew that long before this - but there is the boy to collect, and Aramis shifts the arm around his belly, and pushes himself up; he won't leave his son unprotected out on the street, not today. "Alright," he says, and offers Porthos a hand, and Athos hurries forward immediately to help Porthos up before Aramis can try to move his entire weight alone.

"Honestly." Aramis says, but very quietly, as if his frustration runs too deep for this.

Athos suspects that Porthos has thought of it, which is why he's so furious in the eyes. It's hard to tell if Aramis has thought of it, given Aramis' confusing-to-alarming ability to let trauma run off his back like rainwater off his leathers. Athos has certainly thought of it. The thought that Aramis might have survived, had the bullet hit him. Say that Porthos hadn't got between them but Aramis had turned his own body, taken a step too fast or slow, say that Aramis had just shifted so the bullet skimmed him or lodged in his shoulder or clipped an artery but they were able to cauterise it, to save him - say they saved him -

They don't know what could trigger a miscarriage in him, what could spend too much of his blood elsewhere and starve the child of it and force him to birth it out already dead and hardly human, frost underneath them and blood steaming in the night. Athos is not ranking his potential horrors, the loss of Aramis and the child, the loss of the child and having to live with that. He isn't assigning them strict values of the grief they would cost him as if pain is a form of currency to be added out. He doesn't know which would be worse, because he knows that neither can be faced. Some bastard aimed a gun at Aramis, and they don't know why, and that the man was unhinged to begin with and tipped the wrong way by too many of the more brutal Bible verses is the nearest possibility they have because they don't know anything else. A lone, unhinged bigot.

Isn't that safer than some conspiracy floating somewhere in Paris that means that their pregnant husband is in danger still . . . ?

Back at home Constance is already out with her work, and Aramis in his play lifts the children for Ester to sweep underneath them as she works, and Maria giggles like it's the funniest thing that's ever happened, and Athos thinks that being five must be the greatest gift. Aramis glances at Porthos now and then but quickly back to the children again, because Porthos' expression doesn't change, and is still far too heavy with brooding to risk an easy confrontation.

Once the children have been put to bed, over dinner with Constance and d'Artagnan, Constance has them relate the story again with a look on her face of almost puzzled alarm, that they manage to attract so much madness even when just walking in the street. "His wife knew nothing," Athos says, and can't keep the bitterness out of his voice. "She has very conveniently failed to notice anything that might help us."

Aramis, head bowed and both hands on his stomach, says quietly to his plate, "She just lost her husband."

Athos says sharply, "I almost lost mine."

Aramis says nothing to that, just looks at his plate, hands folded close on the bump.

"But he's not hurting anyone," Constance says, and to Aramis, "You're not hurting anyone. Why is it even any of their business? And why - nothing allows it. Nothing in the Bible allows you to kill a child inside someone, they'd never hang you in this state -"

"Thank you for the reassurance."

"You know what I mean. It's - it's one thing to hate you for some stupid reason but the baby -"

"I know." Aramis says, and hugs his own stomach almost imperceptibly closer, says quietly, "I know."

Porthos puts his good arm around him. Aramis just looks at his plate, eyes all dark and confused, and Athos doesn't know what to make of his expression, possibly because Aramis doesn't currently know what to make of his emotions himself. Then he looks at Porthos, says, "I'm sorry."

"Don't fuckin' start on that again, had this shit all afternoon." Porthos snaps. "You didn't ask the bastard to shoot at you, you didn't ask me to get between you. An' it's fine, it's a scratch. Been hurt worse by my own damn horse."

Aramis looks at his plate again and sighs, softly, then looks up to Athos' gaze and offers him a small smile; they are alright, all of them are alright, and they can do nothing now but move on. Athos looks back for some time, then gives a half-nod. He's willing to accept that to get them all a decent night's sleep, at least.

"That felt like the good old days," d'Artagnan says. "The bad old days. Never knowing what the hell would happen one minute to the next around you."

"Was I really so unpredictable?" Aramis says with a smile, and Athos grinds his sigh out, and Aramis laughs. "I'm better now," he says appeasingly. "Aren't I? There's the children to mind, I get enough excitement just when Maria wants something she can't reach, I just - don't really think like that anymore."

Athos chews the thought over, then allows, a little grudgingly, "Yes. You are better." He hasn't seen Aramis needlessly risk his life just to get something done quicker or with slightly less risk to other people in a long time. Aramis is determined to live, finally, and doesn't like to gamble with his neck so much. He has a lot more to live for, now.

Aramis cleans and rebinds Porthos' shoulder in their bedroom that night, which Porthos is tense and angry about - he hates being in pain, is always the most vocal of the three of them about it though he bites it in now because the children are in the next room. Jean-Armand accepted his bluster that he's fine, though he looked at first fragile and uneasy about the bandages on Porthos' shoulder, and hugged his leg in the parlour while Aramis read the children their story before bed. They're all 'better' than they once were, Athos thinks idly from the bed as he watches Aramis tying off the bandages, hovering over Porthos' back where he sits in the chair. Porthos no longer snarls and tantrums so much, because he doesn't want to frighten his son; Aramis does not pursue active idiocy just to see what will happen next, because the only thing he ever wants to happen next is a return home to his family; Athos keeps himself much less isolated, opens in ways he never knew he could, for the children, and his husband, more vulnerable to his own emotions than he should ever be left alone to endure.

Aramis kisses Porthos when the bandage is settled, kisses his jaw, kisses his throat with a hand sliding down between his legs. He gets himself with only a little grunt to his knees between Porthos' wider-spreading legs, working on his belt, no comment towards Athos sitting on the bed in the room, still watching them.

He thinks, as Aramis gets Porthos' clothing opens and for one moment just presses his cheek and nose to his waking cock, eyes closed as if inhaling the scent of him, of that man who took aim at them today for reasons of high and vicious piety, and how he didn't know this much about them. It's irrelevant. Athos knows the man was an idiot and feels no regret for his death, even if he senses the subtle trouble in Aramis that the man's wife is now left with the children and no money to raise them. That man was an imbecile towards his own family and towards Athos' family, there is nothing unholy about this, there couldn't be, the two of them are so beautiful together. Athos watches in the quiet candle-lit bowl of their room and knows, feels in the silence, their hitching breath and his own gradually opening, lengthening breath, that this is sacred.

When Porthos' body has lost its tension into Aramis' mouth, he cleans them both a little with a handkerchief - he is always Aramis - and then turns to Athos, a hungry little darkness in his eyes, and Athos stands to help him to his feet, only to pull him backwards towards the bed again.

Afterwards - they're both naked by then, and Porthos, who watched them with mellow interest, brings a damp cloth to at least clean up the worst of it - Aramis' face nuzzles in the warm damp cave of Athos' throat, and Athos sighs to the ceiling, says, "I'll take his wife a purse tomorrow. His widow. For the children."

Aramis is silent for a second, then lifts a hand to press Athos' cheek to keep his head still, so he can kiss the other, and murmur there, "Thank you."

Porthos wrings the cloth out of the window and closes it quickly as the autumn air flickers their candles, and comes to climb under the blankets where their bodies glow with warmth. Aramis turns to him and kisses him, runs his touch so gentle down his arm, below his wounded shoulder. Porthos ruffles his hair, says quietly, "Alright," and means himself, Aramis, all of them, everything.

"It's such a strange and stupid waste of life," Aramis says, settling himself between the two of them, Porthos' chest and Athos' shoulder, kissing absently at the nearest piece of skin to him; the side of Porthos' neck. "And if it was done for God - God loves all His children. That is the most dangerous thing in the world to forget."

Athos' mind flits to the beds in the next room, to the small sleeping bodies in them, innocent and warm and safe in their blankets. He thinks he understands the way Aramis understands religion, sometimes, when he thinks of them. He lifts himself to extinguish the candle, then settles back again into the warmth of the mattress, runs a hand down Aramis' back, kisses the back of his shoulder, relaxes himself to his back to sleep. It was a strange and stupid waste of a life and a day of their lives. Tomorrow they can return to normality.

He feels Porthos settle himself more comfortable on the mattress, shifting Aramis so his ankle slides over Athos'; well. Tomorrow they can return to what is normal for them.

Continued