Pack Mentality pt 3.2
The last two parts of this are waaaaay too long -_-;
Porthos can hear a bedlam of laughter in the parlour as he walks downstairs shrugging his jacket on, pokes his head in on the way to the kitchen and then hurries in with a panic, saying, "No no no Aramis -"
Aramis is holding on top of his head, with one hand, a ball that has clearly already knocked a little stack of Constance's papers on a side table to a gush across the floor; Jean-Armand is climbing up his other arm to get it, while Maria has her sturdy legs wrapped around Aramis' leg and is trying to scale the other side of him like a tree, hauling herself up with two fistfuls of shirt. Porthos quickly scoops a child off either side of him, holding one under each arm - they're still laughing - as Aramis looks at him only surprised and still amused, lowering the offending ball now the children can't possibly get it.
"What on earth-"
"You're not meant t'be carryin' heavy things!"
"Porthos," Aramis says, and he can't stop the crooked, over-amused smile, "they're children, they hardly weigh a thing."
"I'm a big boy now," Jean-Armand promptly supplies, and Porthos looks down at him, then sets him, then the kicking Maria, back on their feet. Geneviève sits in the armchair with a book, watching them thoughtfully over its woodcut letters.
"See that?" Porthos says, and points at the belly on Aramis, obvious even under his shirt. "You gotta be gentle with that. Can't jostle the baby about. Not good for 'em."
"Porthos," Aramis says, eyebrows lower now, because not being climbed all over by children is just the worst fucking thing to Aramis.
Jean-Armand looks up at Porthos with Aramis' eyes and looks so innocently confused, but nods, slowly, because he is - with occasional notable exceptions - a good boy. "But the baby's alright," he says, and Aramis puts a hand on his head, promises, "The baby is fine, little wolf, don't worry."
"He's still got our ball." Maria says indignantly, and Aramis says, "You're not to have it indoors, you know your mother doesn't like it. Now go and wash your hands, if you please, we have to go."
Geneviève puts her book down and stands up; Jean-Armand looks up at Aramis until he bends to kiss him once on top of his head and says, "Be good, little wolf." at which point he trots off easily (his big heavy dog heaves herself up from in front of the fireplace to lope after him), and Maria looks ready to argue about the ball but seeing the other children depart, hurries after them before they can leave her behind.
That just leaves Porthos and Aramis, and baby Charles sitting on the rug, chewing on a spinning top. Aramis puts his hands on his hips to look at Porthos, it would be a frown but he's still half-wanting to laugh, and Porthos can only pull him in by the waist, pressing that roundness of Aramis' belly to his own stomach.
"I'm hardly made of Venetian glass," Aramis points out. "And I'm more worried about your shoulder, I'm not meant to be 'carrying heavy things' -"
"Shoulder's fine, hardly feel it anymore. An' you are meant t'be takin' it easy, an' anyway, Maria kicks like a donkey."
"Well," Aramis says, a little rueful, "I suppose she does. She doesn't mean harm."
Porthos kisses him then, because it's usually a good way of shutting him up, and then he just sort of gets into it the way he tends to with Aramis; Aramis' hand in his hair and Porthos' hands have found themselves grasping his slightly plumper arse (Aramis does not speak of it, and will not go out in public without his long coat) when they're interrupted by a giggle and they look down to Charles, chewing his top and watching them intently over it.
"We need to start remembering not to do that," Aramis says, stepping away and scratching his hair back.
Porthos sighs. Jean-Armand accepts his parents as they are and, wise for such a small boy, doesn't say a thing about them to anyone; the other children they try to act at least not open in front of. Once Charles is talking he'll start remembering and relating the things he sees, and Aramis and Porthos being inappropriate in front of him isn't something they need the boy to be talking about. If he's anything like Maria, he'll be talking about the things he sees to all and sundry whether they want to hear it or not, so they do need to start being more careful around him.
He thinks of happier things to distract him with, he does try to keep Aramis' mind on happier things now. "You're not so sick in a morning anymore."
"No, thank the Lord. I'm still not . . . it's much less."
He still has waves of it, can't eat some foods (eats weirder things instead, Porthos has caught him tearing the corners off pages of books and letters at the kitchen table to surreptitiously dip them in vinegar before he slips the paper into his mouth), but it's no longer so all-consuming. In a way it's a relief. In another way . . .
Porthos looks down at the protrusion of Aramis' stomach, runs a hand over it, looks to his face and smiles to see the cautious and then so happy look on him. Aramis puts a hand over his and grins, and he's already given them one perfect little boy, Porthos presses and hopes he knows how much they all love him, how he's anything but alone in this. Aramis just teases, "You and my bump."
Porthos shrugs, grins. It stands out so stark on Aramis, the weight of the pregnancy, no woman's curves to make the rounding look natural, he's all straight lines but for the belly sticking out on him. Porthos can't be blamed that it really drags the eye in. He says, "Never hear you complainin'."
"Never will you," Aramis says, eyes a dangerous smile, and then they hear the thudding of small feet heading in their direction and part, Aramis brushing down and retucking his shirt as the children pile back into the room and start clamouring again, and Aramis puts the ball on a high shelf, and Porthos shepherds them out into the hallway where the others are waiting, Athos and d'Artagnan already wearing their hats.
It's chilly outside, dark, the mist's still heavy and low. Once they've dropped the kids off at school Porthos glances at Aramis bundled in his coat and cloak, who says, "Don't start." and his breath's a hazy dragon's-wisp in the air. It's barely light; night's still hanging on to the shadows and the ground, hard with cold underfoot.
Athos says, very neutrally, "You said you'd take an early confinement."
"I did, I will. Just not so soon."
Porthos had thought, with the sickness so bad, Aramis would be forced into staying home and safe a long time ago. It's not entirely a good thing that he manages the mornings much better now, it's only made the bastard more stubborn for going out. "You're meant t'be takin' it easy."
"How much easier could it really become without my being entirely horizontal? I sit in the garrison watching recruits go through their paces, the most exercise I get is standing up to correct their form. You can't honestly think I'd do less at home, you know Ester will have me in the kitchen if I'm left idle during the day. It's turnips or recruits, and honestly the recruits are less work."
Porthos twitches his mouth. Apart from that crazy bastard a couple of weeks ago, he does have to admit that Aramis isn't in direct danger in the garrison, but still. "Someone could slip," he says. "While they're sparrin'. Or bang you somehow when you're 'correctin' their form' -"
"Oh Lord, Porthos, they're terrified to touch me, they're hardly going to elbow me in the stomach. They act like it's an ill omen even to look at it."
"They said anything?" Porthos growls, and Aramis blinks at him, then grins, breath an amused white burst.
"They're not bigots, they're boys. Some of them are barely wearing beards and I doubt they've encountered the pleasures of another's body yet, they're embarrassed of the evidence of my marriage, God love them."
It's while he's saying that that Porthos hears the mutter from a small group of men working outside a stable of, "- Jezebel."
Porthos stops, and turns to them pulled to his full height; it's a gloomy day, but it's perfectly fucking clear enough for them to see who they're picking a fight with. Porthos says to them, low and dark, "One of you sneeze?"
A man holding a pitchfork stands up from his bend to move hay, and he's still holding that fucking pitchfork, and Porthos' fists creak his gloves. "Porthos," Aramis says quietly.
"Paradin' about in the King's uniform," the man with the pitchfork says, "makin' decent people watch-"
"Don't see many decent people here to watch," Porthos says, because two of the man's friends have stood up behind him, though a couple of others are making their surreptitious way into the stable, to avoid whatever this could yet become.
Athos says, "We have a duty to keep the peace, and I'm certain that you're not paid to talk like a cretin when you should be working."
"Both of you," Aramis says, "leave it. We're going to be late -"
"You don't give men orders!" the man with the pitchfork barks, so angry that spit comes out with it, his hands shaking-tight on the pitchfork's wooden handle. "You don't belong out on the street, nothing but Satan's whore -"
Aramis at least looks surprised at the way this has escalated, Athos grabs Porthos' arm before he can lunge forwards and puts the man's teeth down his throat -
But that means no-one's paying attention to d'Artagnan, who walks forwards in a steady, deliberate way, right for the man with the pitchfork who lifts it but in an unsteady, teeth-clenched, ill-aimed swing. D'Artagnan knocks it a little aside with the back of his fist and then he's already past its useful range as a weapon, leaning in to say close to the man's face, "I think you owe my friend an apology."
They forget sometimes, and can't help but remember it in the hot tremble of d'Artagnan's words, that Aramis never was their only problem of act-first-think-when-yelled-at-by-Athos.
"I think we need to get to the garrison," Aramis says, "and let these men get on with their day. D'Artagnan, come back here."
D'Artagnan is still leaning with a furious glare towards that man. "You don't know anything about him, you don't say things like that -"
"D'Artagnan," Aramis says, stepping forwards, ignoring the sagging pitchfork entirely, slipping past Porthos' frantic snatch at his shoulder and grabbing d'Artagnan's jacket to haul him around. "Come on. We're going to the garrison, Treville will be -"
The man with the pitchfork mutters something, too low now to make much out, though they do all catch the word 'bitch'.
Aramis looks at him evenly, coolly, and says, "I am married, monsieur, by the law and the Church, and I do my duty by my husband, in this and everything else." With a gesture to his belly, obvious even under his layers. "And I am the King's guard, and I do my duty for my King and country as well." Laying a hand on his pauldron, holding that man's eyes. "Neither my actions nor my existence are contrary to the law of state or God. You and I have no quarrel. Good day, monsieur."
He drags d'Artagnan back by the shoulder, and his glare is enough to make Athos and Porthos - edgy, angry, still looking back at those men gathered outside the stable - walk on too. They're further down the street when they hear something said behind them and an uneasy cruel laugh, and Porthos' body lurches around but Aramis shoves his side to keep him walking, snarls, "Leave it."
"Can't let them-"
"Do you think you'll change their minds by punching them? Do you think I become less of an abomination because you hit them? It makes me even less of a soldier, leave it, Porthos."
"He's right." Athos says, low. "We can't be the ones to 'rescue' him. Just leave it, Porthos."
"You c'n just forget that? You c'n just not hear that?"
"For Aramis' sake," Athos says, in a dark warning voice, "yes. I can."
"-what the fuck're you accusing me of-"
"Both of you, all of you, if you're going to argue then can you at least do it slightly faster so we don't miss the morning muster, I am not having Treville's ire on the back of my neck all day while you get to swan off on your orders elsewhere."
They do make it to muster - just - and Porthos is still furiously chewing over everything that's happened, everything that got said. He wants to go find those bastards again and take his pauldron off and let them face him as a man, not a musketeer with his pissing honour to pay heed to. He wants to go face them as someone who loves that man they think is sinful just for existing, father of the boy they think is sinful through conception, and make them sorry. He also wants to punch Athos in the mouth, he's trying really fucking hard not to, for Athos to accuse him of wanting it out of selfishness. He gets that they can't go around fighting Aramis' battles for him and making him look weak right now. He gets that he can't go break some bones for what got said to his lover, he gets that, but how dare Athos not even want to.
Porthos stands and steams while Treville gives them their orders for the day, they're transporting a prisoner across Paris for the Cardinal's questioning, Porthos hasn't much emotion to spare right now to feel sorry for what's going to happen to the poor bastard when they hand him over. He doesn't look at Athos. He marches fast out of Treville's office when they're done and stamps down the stairs for the courtyard, where Aramis has been waiting for them, and heaves himself up from a bench to walk to them, wrapping his arms around himself underneath the fall of his cloak against the cold.
He looks at them both, eyes searching, then looks at d'Artagnan, and smiles in a tired way. "Thank you for defending my honour, earlier." he says. "Don't take this the wrong way, but please don't do it again."
D'Artagnan sighs, and rubs the back of his neck. "Sorry."
"No, it was sweet, honestly. Just -"
"Ill-advised." Athos says.
Porthos says bluntly, "You don't deserve to listen to that bullshit."
Aramis shrugs. "I already know there are people who think it. I just don't think of them, that's all. But you'll think of each other," he says, looking at Porthos, at Athos, and then back again. "While I can't be there, you'll protect each other for me, won't you?"
Porthos' jaw gets tight because fuck Athos, it's one thing for Aramis to put all that bullshit out of his head, how dare Athos not care about it either -
He understands, in the same moment, that he could be more of what Aramis actually needs right now if he could do the same thing. And he catches a tensing to Athos' own jaw out of the corner of his eye, and hesitates on that; that Athos is doing it doesn't mean that he likes doing it any more than Porthos does. All of them are doing things they don't like but they have to do right now. Aramis can't come with them, can't be at their sides as he always is, so he's pleading with them to protect each other the way he protects them. Porthos sniffs hard in the cold air, and mutters, "Yeah."
Athos says, "Shouldn't you be indoors today?"
"It's good bracing air," Aramis says, grinning, pumping his arms back and forth in the cold. "I'll be in and out, I imagine. I'll be fine. I only ask that you look after yourselves as well." His voice falls lower. "I can't do this on my own."
"Alright," Athos says, and touches his arm. "We'll see you tonight. Don't leave the garrison before one of us has returned to go home with you."
"Honestly."
"There's - bad feeling out there. I don't like it."
"Me neither." Porthos says quietly, and he and Athos still haven't actually made eye contact, but they're as good as alright now they're focusing on this. "Wait for us, alright?"
Aramis only sighs. "If that is the bargain between us, fine."
They part for the day, and it troubles Porthos, but then there's so much else to deal with - their prisoner attempts an escape, never would've got away if they had Aramis as an extra pair of eyes but as it is they still get him back easily enough, where he turns out to be a double-triple-quadruple-Porthos-doesn't-even-know-agent, so entangled in so much political back-and-forth he doesn't even know if he's being taken to the Cardinal for reward or torture. "I wouldn't gamble on the first," Athos says, eyes imperiously forwards, and they don't trouble themselves too much about what the Cardinal intends from him. A lot of soldiers have died because of the machinations of men like him, playing games with other people's lives. Move the wrong piece of paper into the wrong office and you get Aramis led like a lamb to the forests of Savoy. They don't have a lot of time for spies.
They hand him over to the Red Guard. They walk away. Five minutes later two rushing Guards coming past them frantic inform them that the prisoner has already escaped again: perfect.
It's hide and seek across Paris for the rest of the day, and they're all wearier than they'd hoped for when they trudge back to the garrison to find Aramis leaning inside the gate, cloak huddled high on his shoulders, nodding to their approach. "You look terrible," he says, which is fucking charming. "Shall I not ask?"
Porthos just grunts and heads past him for Treville's office. Athos says, "Wait there."
Aramis rolls his eyes and pats d'Artagnan on the shoulder in a commiserating way as he passes, and leans back against the gates, and ducks his head to yawn.
Athos stays for normal duty with d'Artagnan. Porthos is fucking glad to get home early with Aramis, to get to pick up the boy from school and see his face light up to see them all again, to close the front door behind themselves and be safe back in their own home again. He doesn't like Aramis being out on the streets where people look and Porthos doesn't trust them. And having a door to close and a home to own - the sense of safety it gives is like a blanket settling around the shoulders, like a pillow beneath the head. Porthos' son has no idea that a person might grow up without a front door between himself and the cold of the world. Porthos will keep it that way whatever it fucking takes.
There's not only the boy to keep safe, though once through that front door Porthos can hike him up into one arm - Jean-Armand puts his arms easily around his neck - and say eye to eye, "What'd you learn in school today, then?" and Jean-Armand says, "I can get five knucklebones on my head before they fall off and Emilie-Marie wants to marry me." and Porthos thinks very privately that education isn't all it's cracked up to be. Aramis takes himself into the parlour to collapse on the couch with a grunt, hand on his belly, head lolled back and sighing at the ceiling. Porthos looks through at him, then puts Jean-Armand down and pats his head, says, "It's good to learn things." and lets him run off after the girls, who have already reunited and bolted into the kitchen for their post-school snack from Ester.
He sits beside Aramis, who looks across at him and smiles wearily. "Your feet," Porthos guesses. "Your back?"
"My everything," Aramis says. "Every muscle. I'm just tired."
"You were with 'im," Porthos says, and rubs his arm. "All sleepy all the time."
"Mn. They're heavy, you know. To carry all the time."
"I thought they were only children, I thought they didn't weigh a thing."
"Oh, wit."
"Alright," Porthos says, quieter, and keeps rubbing his arm. "Alright."
Aramis closes his eyes to ceiling, and stays in the drained slump where he is. Porthos can hear the children yammering in the next room, all of them and Ester in Spanish, the kids speak it like they were born to it. Which Jean-Armand was, in his way, with Aramis, he thinks. It's right he should get that, even if it drives Porthos and Athos a bit nuts when the children and Aramis, hardly the most responsible adult in the house, are having one of their private conversations without them when they're right there in the same room.
Porthos doesn't know what language his mother, his grandparents might have spoken. He remembers she spoke French with an accent but he doesn't know what accent. He holds that, that thought and its attendant pain, for a moment, and then lets it go, lets it bubble off his heart and away for another time, because he can't go around brooding on things when everything's already as tense as it is. He knows what he's like when he gets quiet and dark with thought, knows how Aramis allows it and absorbs the blame for it, wherever the blame truly lies, he has an endless capacity to absorb other people's blame. Instead, to distract both himself and Aramis from whatever might be laying heavy on their thoughts, he says, "You were all sleepy with him. Didn't do one crazy thing for months, not even one."
"Not until the act of birthing him, which never was a very rational choice," Aramis says, cracking his eyes to grin at him. "I suppose I was too tired for casual madness. I've never really done anything crazy since."
"There was that time you nearly took a bloke's head off for kickin' a dog."
"Well -"
"An' that time you threatened Constance's last husband with a kitchen knife."
"Oh, he deserved that."
"And-"
"I've done very little crazy since," Aramis says. "Proportionally speaking. Compared to . . . I don't know, I was - looking for something, before. Some reason to keep being in the world." He looks around their parlour, always a little unkempt with all the children to climb its furniture and scuff its floors, and says with distant eyes, "I think I found it, in the end."
"By gettin' accidentally knocked up."
Aramis' mouth crooks, genuinely amused, and genuinely more. "I like to think by grace."
"Grace," Porthos says quietly, and looks down at Aramis' stomach. Aramis touches his cheek, and when Porthos looks at him, he kisses him. Then he settles his own cheek to Porthos' shoulder and lets his body sag to his side, trusting in Porthos to hold his weight up. Porthos settles an arm around his shoulders, and can smell his hair, and he's never had any lover as long as Aramis, never been so comfortable with another body as his.
He closes his eyes to the top of his head, and breathes in.
That night he and Athos are undressing while Aramis is telling his beads over his little altar, prayers whispered low, fingertips caressing each bead a turn left and right before he clicks it on. It's too cold for Aramis to allow prayer to keep him from bed for long, so Porthos isn't concerned and isn't really thinking about him, which is why it's such a jolt when he gives a great gasp inwards, puts a hand on his stomach and blinks and blinks, eyes wide.
Porthos sees Athos go still, as if every floorboard around him will shatter if he moves one muscle, as if the candle of his thought just blew clean out. Porthos has to plunge forwards, grab Aramis' shoulder, say urgently, "What is it, what d'you need, is it-"
"- moved," Aramis says, rubbing his belly with a hand. "It moved. The child moved. It's always - come here give me your - you get flutters," he says, grabbing Porthos' hand and dragging him to his knees beside him to stuff his hand up his own shirt and onto the warm skin of his stomach. "Just flutters, but it just - I think it's turning over, can you feel -?"
Yes. It would almost feel like his intestines unknotting and shifting under the skin if Porthos didn't know. "Yes," he whispers, and doesn't know what the fuck else to say, that's their baby in there, already moving, already real, that's their baby.
"Athos," Aramis says. "Athos, quick -"
Athos is still frozen as if on his own personal wasteland of open overwhelming hell, before he startles himself out of it, and hurries to kneel at Aramis' other side, squeezed against the wall in this position. Aramis takes his wrist and scoops it under his shirt beside Porthos', Porthos feels the blind touch of his fingers and shifts his own hand to give Athos' room to settle; he thinks the baby's given up, before it gives another movement in there, weird as anything, a kick maybe, hard to tell what it's doing but -
Aramis closes his eyes, still holding both of their wrists, and whispers out his gratitude in the form of a prayer. Athos still looks stunned, like everything about the situation is too much for him.
It takes Porthos a moment to place Athos' obvious fear. It's fear for the same thing Porthos feared, when Aramis started and gasped: fear that it's gone wrong, that they have to go get the midwife, now, now in the night, for the bleakest fucking birth there could be. But for Porthos that's something to fear; for Athos, it's something that's already happened, and what he fears is it happening again. It's real, to Athos. He's already been there for it, already smelt the blood. And Porthos looks across at him, and under Aramis' shirt, he takes his fingers and squeezes them tight.
Athos stares at him across Aramis' body, pupils small in the light of all of Aramis' candles. Porthos says, throat too thick, "'Olivier', if it's a boy."
Athos is silent, then looks at Aramis, who's let go of their wrists to pick up his dropped rosary, which he kisses with almost the same casual love as he does their skin in bed, just because it's there.
"Maybe," Athos says, and Aramis looks at him, lets his rosary fall down his wrist and lifts his hand, fingers threading into his hair to encourage Athos' head to his shoulder. With the other hand he lowers Porthos' head to the other shoulder, and strokes his brow with his thumb.
"This," he says quietly. "This is what grace means. This."
Cradled to him Porthos feels the warmth of Aramis' body, the rhythm of his breathing, shifts his nose in his shirt collar to better catch the scent of his skin. He stares at the candles, glowing like a galaxy in front of them. And he thinks that if they'd only explained it like this to him in church, maybe he'd've gone more over the years, maybe he'd've got it. Aramis makes him understand it all better. Aramis makes him understand so much.
He closes his eyes, and rests to the warmth of him, and breathes.
*
In d'Artagnan's memory, Aramis was huge when he was pregnant with Jean-Armand. He knows that that's probably the slow warping of memory over time, the told tale that memory becomes rather than the moment actually lived the way it really was. He knows the circumference Constance gets to at full term, after all, and thinks now that his memory of Aramis knelt in monk's robes large with child has got all conflated with his memory of Aramis two or three months later, fully ready for the birth, huge and drowsy in the cellar of this house, biding his time and his own uncomfortable weight. He couldn't always have been so massive. At some point, whether they saw it or not, he was the size he is now.
The size he is now is still not inconsiderable. Aramis has always been the narrowest of d'Artagnan's three friends, though not by too much, he's never been slight. He's simply been their sprinter, Aramis, neither a wrestler nor a waif, sturdy enough for a fight but light enough for a flat-out run as well. Straight up and straight down, and not too much between those lines.
Those lines currently run straight up and straight down with a noticeable detour at stomach height. He doesn't need to advertise his state, it looks out of place on him, he clearly isn't simply stout - his face remains angled and unrounded, his arms and legs wear the lean soldier's muscle they've always carried. He looks odd. Some people on the street know, their neighbours, anyone who's had dealings with the garrison. Some look and look again, confused. Some look and, by reputation, they suspect, and those are bad looks.
Some look and know in the very worst way, and d'Artagnan's hand finds the handle of his sword, his teeth find each other and press themselves tight.
D'Artagnan knows that the child in Aramis is dangerous and controversial and desperately, painfully wanted. It's not so large a house that he can avoid hearing some of those urgent conversations of the three men who share one bedroom in it, and those three aren't so enclosedly inseparable that he doesn't know a thing or two about them. There are things Aramis goes to Constance for just as she goes to him, and no-one interferes in that, matters of the body the rest of them don't understand and would be too embarrassed by to help with, so, yes, fine, good, they have each other, fine, yes, good. But Aramis is inclined, in his worst trouble, to go to no-one but God, to bother no-one else at all, struggles even to go to his two husbands with it, though he does for their sakes, now. He certainly doesn't trouble d'Artagnan with it. So D'Artagnan makes a point of troubling himself.
He knows it's not like Constance's pregnancies. No-one judges Constance her pregnancies, they're expected of her, and Aramis in his awkward in-between life, no-one knows what to expect of him so he's judged for anything he does. It's dangerous, to him, they all know that, they were all in the house when Jean-Armand was born and Aramis as good as died, broke his body so entirely in birthing the child that he probably should have died. He lived through stubbornness, and livid love, and his undependable, unpredictable luck.
It's dangerous to the child. They've lost one already. They've lost one already, and this house is not big enough, the world is not big enough, for d'Artagnan not to know the grief it cost them.
He was there, ridiculous situation, he had no right to be there, Porthos could have been there and not him but on another level, so much better that he was there. So much better that someone there was not losing their child, so that he could tie up the horses and put up the tent and fetch water and light a fire and do everything that Aramis (praying and begging and trying not to weep) was physically incapable of, and Athos, Athos who could lead armies and confront tyrants and face any power unbowed, Athos could do nothing. Athos crumpled down to as little strength as is involved in holding a hand. Athos couldn't do a thing but stay by Aramis' side, and d'Artagnan understands that. He's lost a son. He didn't have to hold Constance while her body wracked with the pain of their child's death, but he's lost a child, and that grief he respects the way that he respects the winter: it is real, and hard, and no wishing in the world can push it away.
It's not that large a house. He was there for the afterwards, he knows that Aramis could have gone clean mad in his grief, he recognised the sounds of a man biting something and half-suffocating himself not to howl behind a door when his lovers weren't there to hear it. Aramis was a human flinch for months afterwards, and Aramis never previously flinched when bullets fluttered his hair. The three of them closed off and presented a united front of silence on the subject. Constance pursued Aramis more than once to get them shut in a room together for something said in private, while Aramis was still so raw that d'Artagnan didn't dare to touch him - when once he never needed to touch Aramis, Aramis was the one always patting his back and throwing an arm around his neck. It knocked all the ease Aramis ever had out of him, that lost child, and in the years since he's pieced himself back together but this pregnancy, this is fearful to all of them, d'Artagnan doesn't have to be that child's father, he feels the tension of this.
So yes, he notices, when people on the street look and they are not good looks. Some mock, more and less openly, turning hurriedly away when Athos or Porthos look their way. Some mutter. Some have started crossing themselves, as if warding away something evil (if that wounds Aramis - how could that not wound Aramis? - he gives no indication even of noticing it). Some stare, in a way that is not just a stare. A stare can be as belligerent as an outright threat, sometimes. A stare can be as good as an attack.
Aramis acts unconcerned, and his friends close ranks around him, and d'Artagnan happens to be one of those. But he knows, from the worst time, that Aramis can actually be a pretty good actor when he doesn't want to worry other people. He made himself normal for Jean-Armand, or almost normal, when left to himself he still shook. D'Artagnan watches him closely, and all he can read is that Aramis is aware of people's responses, but he's simply chosen not to respond to them. Aramis sets his priorities and never gives a shit if the rest of the world has a different set of priorities, and Aramis prioritises his own family and to hell with what anyone else thinks. Which d'Artagnan would think is the best way to survive some of those looks except - it's the way they look . . .
They're all released early from duties that day, as the King in a temper will deal with no affairs of state and has stamped off to his rooms in the palace, and Treville has little enough to keep Aramis himself amused with while garrison-bound, let alone a full batch of unoccupied musketeers. It's too early in the afternoon even to collect the children from school so Aramis suggests an inn - it's been a long time, tediously domestic as they've all become, since they went out. No-one has any objections, except towards the seedier kind of inn, where they're more likely to encounter the kind of comment that will ruin everyone's afternoon and the person who made the comment's afternoon most of all.
Turning down a street, Aramis and Porthos arguing over who once got them thrown out of a particular inn (Porthos' cheating at cards or Aramis' distracting influence on the innkeeper's wife, d'Artagnan is inclined to put it down to a combination of factors) when they come to a bottleneck; too many people in too narrow a space. The crowd, men and women mixed, are gathered in various states of interest, anger and amusement around a man standing on a barrel, shouting loud over their heads, waving a book aloft; a street preacher, already hoarse-voiced from proclaiming the arrival of the end times.
"We should move this along," Aramis says, rubbing idly at his belly and looking over the crowd, blocking the way and carrying an undercurrent of a potential breach of the peace in their mutters and occasional heckling. Porthos has stepped surreptitiously closer to Aramis, and slightly between him and the thick of the throng; Athos says calmly, "Porthos, why don't you and Aramis go ahead and get our drinks, and d'Artagnan and I will manage this."
"Two against at least two dozen," Aramis says, raising an eyebrow, "and I'm not to notice who definitely isn't part of that two?"
Athos says stonily, "Go to the inn and get a table near the fire."
"Well that's not what it says at all," Aramis says, distracted away from Athos by a Bible quotation being shouted over the crowd by the preacher. "If you look at the Latin-"
"C'mon," Porthos says, pressing Aramis' shoulder to try to move him past the rear of the crowd. But someone's looked back, nudged their neighbour, and the ripples beginning through the crowd attract the attention of the preacher himself, who stares and then points right at Aramis and shrieks, "Here herself in all her wantonness, the whore of Babylon herself -"
"Himself," Aramis says without alarm, as the crowd shifts and strains, turning like a wave rushing a beach to see the source of this interruption. "And a musketeer of Paris only, the uniform is quite different and unfortunately much less exciting."
A woman hides her smile under her hand, but d'Artagnan's eye is flitting over some really not good looks being cast in their direction, and he can sense in the muscles of Athos' arm how ready for his sword he is.
"You need to disperse." Athos says in a voice bred for generations to give orders no-one has ever thought to refuse. "You are blocking the thoroughfare and threatening the peace."
"The peace is threatened by that Jezebel serving the King, dragging Satan's presence into the Court like the foul vapours of hell itself -"
"I've never had any complaints about my vapours," Aramis says mildly. "A little lavender in the bathwater, you know, it goes a long way."
(Some are laughing, d'Artagnan feels the teetering balance, Aramis is always relaxed and charismatic and can maybe carry half the crowd through humour but -)
"The corrupting influence of the Devil himself, you are an abomination unto God -"
"I am God's own work as all His children are," Aramis says, and still doesn't look even slightly ruffled by being the centre of attention of an at least half-hostile crowd, and d'Artagnan knows what trying to argue with Aramis is like, his placid requests for reasonable civility are very hard to argue with without making yourself look like the unreasonable one. "You would not presume, of course monsieur, to tell the Lord Himself that He made a mistake, in me or anything else."
"Your sin is your own."
"I was made to increase the Lord's creation and abide by my husband, both of which," with an easy gesture at his stomach, "you can see that I perform. There is no quarrel to be had here. His Holiness himself sanctions my marriage and my duty."
"No pope has ever sanctioned you flaunting yourself like a man, wearing that weapon and that uniform like you've any right to it -"
"The King sanctions it. And you wouldn't be about to say anything treasonous in front of four musketeers, now." Aramis still looks so calm, so entirely and almost-amusedly calm, while Porthos' eyes flit about the crowd fastening on one furious face after another, and d'Artagnan can feel how close Athos is to drawing and he himself is trying to disguise his high-strung body's urge to shake with rage, some of the looks boring into Aramis' easy smile are of furious contempt as much as hatred.
Aramis says as if only being reasonable, "Love does no harm to a neighbour. The Lord decrees for all of us to be loved, however little we as sinners all may deserve it. Every soul, every one, is precious to Him."
"You shall not lie with a man as with a woman; it is an abomination-"
"That does not apply to my kind. My marriage is sanctified and legal."
"You should not talk back to men, abomination -"
"Of the things the Bible labels abominations," Aramis says, and scratches his nose, "I would be more careful of haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and a man who sows discord among brothers. My body was made by God in His image. It is not our bodies but our actions He holds us responsible for."
D'Artagnan could have told the preacher not to get into a Bible-quoting competition with Aramis, it's impossible to win. But another man has pushed through the crowd where d'Artagnan can tell that more than half the women have sided with Aramis - well, women tend to take one look at Aramis and side with him, and they may have some sympathy for his position, they might well want his position if they could only take it - but the men look largely dubious or hostile; they're the ones with wives who might get ideas, and who look at Aramis aghast with what could be their own fate if life had been a little different, and that makes him both terrifying and repulsive to them. The man who now strides right up to them - he has to stop when every one of Porthos' muscles tenses for the spring - spits right at Aramis, "You should be in the kitchen, hiding yourself from decent people, you should-"
Aramis murmurs, soft, "The one who fears is not made perfect in love."
Porthos throws an arm up so a stone bounces off it rather than his head, and Athos strides forwards, roars, "You will disperse-"
Someone shouts from the crowd, "Get that bitch back in the bedroom where he belongs!"
"- show 'im what happens to them as don't know their place -"
"Who the fuck said that?" Porthos bellows, and the crowd flinches, many of them are now trying to very quickly get out of the thick huddle of people they're trapped in before this descends into outright violence.
"-not right-"
"Stop shoving-"
"I'd show that slut his duty -"
Athos is trying to press Aramis back - Aramis himself stands steady, head high and arms crossed over his stomach, hesitant on what the hell can be done to settle the situation - and Porthos strides out at the crowd fists clenched, yells as Athos bellows for him to stop, "Who said-"
It's about the last spark needed for the riot; someone throws another stone and Aramis ducks it, and then there's bedlam.
More than half the crowd is trying to flee, d'Artagnan can hardly tell who's running and who's attacking, there's no room, they don't have proper weapons, some workers have tools or knives but it doesn't help. Drawing a sword against someone who doesn't have a sword, when you're the idiot with the sword and a sense of honour, only makes you hesitant, and he has to lunge backwards to keep himself from being punched and kick a man between the legs so he collapses. "Athos -" he yells.
Athos roars, "Get Aramis out of here!"
It's Aramis they're aiming for, through the pushing, surging, scattering crowd, and though the other three are trying to hold people back they're only three and they can't stop men getting around them. D'Artagnan turns in time to see Aramis disarm a man of the broken piece of wood he's wielding with an easy flick of the sword and crack his head into the wall of the house beside them with his own elbow. Porthos hasn't bothered to draw and is punching, kicking and headbutting his way into anyone who dares to come in their direction, Athos has his sword out and is scattering men with its lethal-quick flashing, roaring unheard through the chaos of noise, "In the name of the King, in the name of-"
D'Artagnan grabs Aramis' wrist and says, "Come on."
"I'm not leaving them-"
"You'll get trampled if you don't get bludgeoned by-"
Aramis aims his gun at d'Artagnan, who stares and then flings himself sideways, and the bullet takes the man roaring at his back holding a cudgel overhead in the leg. "Fine," Aramis chokes, and allows d'Artagnan to shove him ahead, pushing him towards the nearest door, because getting off the street and out of this chaos where one ill-placed kick is a danger to Aramis is the most important thing; working out where the hell they've fled to comes second.
They burst through the door and hear the scream, hear fleeing feet up a flight of stairs, there'll be time to apologise later; d'Artagnan turns to close and bar the door but at least three men burst through it, staggering him sideways into a parlour, crashed to his back heavily with a man on top of him. The man jerks his knife up in both hands to stab down and d'Artagnan punches him in the throat - idiot left himself wide open - then gets him in the head as he goes down to be sure.
He hears a gunshot somewhere in the house, starts in a panic to scramble up. He's not on his feet when the next man comes roaring into the room, no weapons but mania in his eyes, and d'Artagnan kicks his shin out from under him with everything he has to bring him down, then smashes the pommel of his sword into the side of his head.
Aramis -
"Aramis!"
He staggers, broken-winded through sheer shock, back into the hallway, body throbbing with how hard his heart's beating. There's a sword dug and stuck in a wooden doorframe from some powerful swing and he knows that hand guard, elegant as its owner. He kicks the front door closed to at least try to disguise where they fled before more follow them and screams louder, "Aramis!"
No reply, but something hits the floor hard in a room at the back of the hallway.
D'Artagnan scrambles past the staircase and into what turns out to be a kitchen, where Aramis is standing, breathing very slow, with a slim spray of blood cast diagonal across his face. He's still staring at the man on the floor in front of him; another is trying to sit himself up with his back to a cupboard, getting his groans out gritted through his teeth as he drags his leg to his chest, bleeding from a bullet below the knee. The man face-first on the floor in a puddle of blood doesn't move, and there's a heavy wooden chopping board, a massive slab of solid wood, dropped onto his back from Aramis' hand. Down one edge it's as bloody as a used blade.
Aramis blinks, breathing hard but steady, and wipes one eye with a sleeve, smearing the blood. D'Artagnan touches his arm, uneasy, then turns the man on the floor with a boot, and grimaces; "Jesus, Aramis."
His lower jaw's hanging off him. There's an ugly shattered dent in the side of his head as well. Aramis says, "He looked at me." and there's something blank and mechanical about it, no real expression in his eyes but shock. D'Artagnan looks at his face, and rubs his arm, and doesn't know what to do.
"We need to get you off the streets."
"We are . . ."
"Somewhere safe. The garrison."
"Athos and Porthos -"
"I'll go check on them, stay here, reload now."
"I - yes." Aramis thumps both used pistols onto the kitchen table, as d'Artagnan walks to the man with a bullet in his leg to tie his hands to something until they can deal with him.
D'Artagnan growls very low to the whimpering man he ties to the oven door handle, "You're lucky you're not dead, you came at the child inside him, he could've got you through the heart with his eyes closed. This was mercy, remember that."
Aramis mumbles as he works, hands moving like clockwork they know their job so well, "This floor will never come clean."
D'Artagnan looks back at him, Aramis who has blood on his face and blank eyes and entirely steady hands, and stands, and looks around. He wets in a bucket under the window the handkerchief Constance puts in his pocket every morning and walks to him, says quietly, "Come here."
Aramis glances at him, and his eyes only really catch and hold after a second, as d'Artagnan takes his chin to hold his face steady and quickly smudges the blood from his cheek, across his nose, Aramis closing his eyes to let him clean up across one and then his brow.
D'Artagnan gives him the soiled handkerchief, says, "Stay here." and takes his sword again, walks up the hallway and out of the house.
He ducks out slowly, moving the door an inch at a time, but the street sounds quieter, still calls and groans out there but no screaming, no chaos. He pushes the door open and sees Porthos walking through the prone bodies on the ground nudging them with his boot as he goes to see who moves, Athos looking around grim-faced at the scattering of what was a riot, wiping his sword on a handkerchief. D'Artagnan walks up to them not yet sheathing his sword, distrustful that so much madness could dissipate so quickly, and Athos looks at him before his face freezes.
"Where's-"
"Safe. He's fine. He has two loaded pistols and only one entrance, he's fine. You're not hurt?"
"They were mostly unarmed." Athos looks at the chaos of the scene, the street reduced to bodies requiring a physician, most battered by the crowd more than the musketeers, and his sigh comes out hard and furious. "It was a waste. A waste of life and pain -"
Porthos has seen d'Artagnan, and stumbles towards him. "Aramis-"
"Safe. He's safe. We need to get him to the garrison."
"Yes." Athos pushes his hair back. "Yes, we need to - I need to think."
"God in heaven."
They all three turn to the open doorway, where Aramis is staring blankly out across the street, where men are propped against walls, or holding their wounds where they lay. He starts walking towards a woman trying to pick herself up, she must have been caught in the mob and trampled, and Athos grabs his wrist to stop him. "We're taking you to the garrison."
"People are hurt."
"And we will bring help. But you being on the street isn't going to help that situation, Aramis."
Aramis looks at him like Athos has never, never said something so brutal to him, to lay the blame for all of this on him. And Athos' face falls, and he squeezes Aramis' wrist, says quiet and rough, "Aramis, it's not safe for you, we don't know who might still turn on you. You can't tend to a body that might yet lash out at you."
Aramis folds his arms over his stomach, and looks at the ground. D'Artagnan pushes his hair back off his forehead - he's sweating, it was a relatively mild day and in his winter leathers the fight's stuck his shirt to him - and he says, "We need to walk him back now."
"Jean-Armand," Aramis says, lifting his head with a start. "Someone has to pick up- he can't be on the street on his own -"
"I'll go." Porthos says, and he already is, there's no stopping him, Athos doesn't even bother. Aramis only looks grateful at his departing back, and then looks over the street again, eyes lost with all the chaos.
Athos snags up by the back of a collar a small boy trying to be subtle in nudging a fallen man's pockets to check for a purse. He holds a coin in front of his face, and says, "Go to the musketeers' garrison, ask for Captain Treville, tell him there was a riot on this street and people are hurt. Yes?"
"Yes," the boy says, snatching for the coin, but Athos puts him back on his feet before he gives it to him, making very intense eye contact the entire time. The boy stares back, mouth open, then turns and bolts, and d'Artagnan knows he's not just taking the coin and running, no-one would dare do that to Athos.
"Now we get you to the garrison," Athos says, but Aramis is looking at that fallen woman again, trying to get herself up and putting a hand to her abdomen, voice sharp with pain. And Athos rolls his eyes, and before Aramis can do it, he walks quickly to her side, crouches, says in a forcibly gentle voice, "Where do you live, madame?"
Mercifully, she lives on the route back to the garrison, because d'Artagnan is fairly certain that Athos would have left her on the street rather than risk Aramis out there for a moment longer than he had to. The dusk is gathering, early as it does now, while Aramis is pacing up and down the garrison courtyard, arms wrapped around himself and eyes permanently turned to the entrance, when his step hesitates and then he runs forward to meet Porthos carrying their cloak-wrapped child in. Jean-Armand is interested and curious of how odd all of this is as Porthos hands him into Aramis' arms to be swung away and whispered to with a rapid urgency, and kissed three times on his face, while Jean-Armand just says with an easy smile, "Papa . . ."
Lupin lopes in after them, ignores d'Artagnan entirely and simply follows Aramis instead of Porthos now that he's the one carrying her charge. Porthos nods to d'Artagnan, leaning against a pillar watching them. "Dropped yours with Constance, don't think anyone knows our address t'come lookin' but she's got her pistol out anyway. Problem's walkin' Aramis back through the streets."
Aramis is walking Jean-Armand around the edges of the garrison, talking to him in rapid Spanish, heading for the stables so the boy can see the horses; Lupin follows steadily. "It's dark," d'Artagnan says. "With a cloak on no-one could tell."
Porthos just shakes his head, eyes on Aramis' back disappearing into the lantern-lit warm of the stables. "I don't care if every soldier here forms a guard around him, it doesn't feel safe."
D'Artagnan looks away, and nods. He understands that. The madness of how that crowd came apart - how vicious it was, how personal it was. That preacher got them to see Aramis as an 'abomination' and that meant he was less than human, something it was okay to kill, good to kill. D'Artagnan saw the look in their eyes when they aimed for him.
He remembers Aramis, standing over a man he as good as lopped the lower jaw off with a chopping board; He looked at me. D'Artagnan has seen Aramis stand steady and only ascertain his aim while men ran screaming at him with a weapon in their hands, Aramis doesn't spook easily, never has, he understands his own capacity for self-defence, has very long been a soldier and isn't given to panic. But that man looked at him, and d'Artagnan remembers the ugly mood of the crowd, I'd show that slut his duty.
Aramis was less than human to them, certainly not male in the way they are, and that left him vulnerable to what any woman thinking she could go around carrying a sword would face in this world. They wanted to punish him in the ways appropriate to what they saw him as. And Aramis, who does not spook easily, had steady hands and yet blank eyes, and he'd lashed out like a cornered animal does. One man he could calmly take down with a shot to the leg, the other, the other looked at him, and Aramis - Aramis defended himself appropriately. D'Artagnan doesn't judge. Aramis did what he had to do.
Porthos looks around the garrison, says, "Athos out helpin' with the clean-up?"
"They're looking for that preacher."
Porthos nods, jaw flexing tight. "Maybe I'll go do some lookin' too."
"I'll go help." D'Artagnan pushes himself from the pillar. "I think he'd rather you were with him than me."
Porthos is silent, then nods, and d'Artagnan presses the back of his arm as he walks past him. When he looks over his shoulder Porthos is standing there still, a dark shape in the gathering dark, and then his shoulders move with one deep breath and he walks towards the stables, his figure gradually glowing golden as the lantern light begins to touch his approach.
D'Artagnan leaves them. The help they need from him right now is out on the streets to make Aramis safe; this night, and minding their child, that the two of them can take care of here, for now.
Continued
Porthos can hear a bedlam of laughter in the parlour as he walks downstairs shrugging his jacket on, pokes his head in on the way to the kitchen and then hurries in with a panic, saying, "No no no Aramis -"
Aramis is holding on top of his head, with one hand, a ball that has clearly already knocked a little stack of Constance's papers on a side table to a gush across the floor; Jean-Armand is climbing up his other arm to get it, while Maria has her sturdy legs wrapped around Aramis' leg and is trying to scale the other side of him like a tree, hauling herself up with two fistfuls of shirt. Porthos quickly scoops a child off either side of him, holding one under each arm - they're still laughing - as Aramis looks at him only surprised and still amused, lowering the offending ball now the children can't possibly get it.
"What on earth-"
"You're not meant t'be carryin' heavy things!"
"Porthos," Aramis says, and he can't stop the crooked, over-amused smile, "they're children, they hardly weigh a thing."
"I'm a big boy now," Jean-Armand promptly supplies, and Porthos looks down at him, then sets him, then the kicking Maria, back on their feet. Geneviève sits in the armchair with a book, watching them thoughtfully over its woodcut letters.
"See that?" Porthos says, and points at the belly on Aramis, obvious even under his shirt. "You gotta be gentle with that. Can't jostle the baby about. Not good for 'em."
"Porthos," Aramis says, eyebrows lower now, because not being climbed all over by children is just the worst fucking thing to Aramis.
Jean-Armand looks up at Porthos with Aramis' eyes and looks so innocently confused, but nods, slowly, because he is - with occasional notable exceptions - a good boy. "But the baby's alright," he says, and Aramis puts a hand on his head, promises, "The baby is fine, little wolf, don't worry."
"He's still got our ball." Maria says indignantly, and Aramis says, "You're not to have it indoors, you know your mother doesn't like it. Now go and wash your hands, if you please, we have to go."
Geneviève puts her book down and stands up; Jean-Armand looks up at Aramis until he bends to kiss him once on top of his head and says, "Be good, little wolf." at which point he trots off easily (his big heavy dog heaves herself up from in front of the fireplace to lope after him), and Maria looks ready to argue about the ball but seeing the other children depart, hurries after them before they can leave her behind.
That just leaves Porthos and Aramis, and baby Charles sitting on the rug, chewing on a spinning top. Aramis puts his hands on his hips to look at Porthos, it would be a frown but he's still half-wanting to laugh, and Porthos can only pull him in by the waist, pressing that roundness of Aramis' belly to his own stomach.
"I'm hardly made of Venetian glass," Aramis points out. "And I'm more worried about your shoulder, I'm not meant to be 'carrying heavy things' -"
"Shoulder's fine, hardly feel it anymore. An' you are meant t'be takin' it easy, an' anyway, Maria kicks like a donkey."
"Well," Aramis says, a little rueful, "I suppose she does. She doesn't mean harm."
Porthos kisses him then, because it's usually a good way of shutting him up, and then he just sort of gets into it the way he tends to with Aramis; Aramis' hand in his hair and Porthos' hands have found themselves grasping his slightly plumper arse (Aramis does not speak of it, and will not go out in public without his long coat) when they're interrupted by a giggle and they look down to Charles, chewing his top and watching them intently over it.
"We need to start remembering not to do that," Aramis says, stepping away and scratching his hair back.
Porthos sighs. Jean-Armand accepts his parents as they are and, wise for such a small boy, doesn't say a thing about them to anyone; the other children they try to act at least not open in front of. Once Charles is talking he'll start remembering and relating the things he sees, and Aramis and Porthos being inappropriate in front of him isn't something they need the boy to be talking about. If he's anything like Maria, he'll be talking about the things he sees to all and sundry whether they want to hear it or not, so they do need to start being more careful around him.
He thinks of happier things to distract him with, he does try to keep Aramis' mind on happier things now. "You're not so sick in a morning anymore."
"No, thank the Lord. I'm still not . . . it's much less."
He still has waves of it, can't eat some foods (eats weirder things instead, Porthos has caught him tearing the corners off pages of books and letters at the kitchen table to surreptitiously dip them in vinegar before he slips the paper into his mouth), but it's no longer so all-consuming. In a way it's a relief. In another way . . .
Porthos looks down at the protrusion of Aramis' stomach, runs a hand over it, looks to his face and smiles to see the cautious and then so happy look on him. Aramis puts a hand over his and grins, and he's already given them one perfect little boy, Porthos presses and hopes he knows how much they all love him, how he's anything but alone in this. Aramis just teases, "You and my bump."
Porthos shrugs, grins. It stands out so stark on Aramis, the weight of the pregnancy, no woman's curves to make the rounding look natural, he's all straight lines but for the belly sticking out on him. Porthos can't be blamed that it really drags the eye in. He says, "Never hear you complainin'."
"Never will you," Aramis says, eyes a dangerous smile, and then they hear the thudding of small feet heading in their direction and part, Aramis brushing down and retucking his shirt as the children pile back into the room and start clamouring again, and Aramis puts the ball on a high shelf, and Porthos shepherds them out into the hallway where the others are waiting, Athos and d'Artagnan already wearing their hats.
It's chilly outside, dark, the mist's still heavy and low. Once they've dropped the kids off at school Porthos glances at Aramis bundled in his coat and cloak, who says, "Don't start." and his breath's a hazy dragon's-wisp in the air. It's barely light; night's still hanging on to the shadows and the ground, hard with cold underfoot.
Athos says, very neutrally, "You said you'd take an early confinement."
"I did, I will. Just not so soon."
Porthos had thought, with the sickness so bad, Aramis would be forced into staying home and safe a long time ago. It's not entirely a good thing that he manages the mornings much better now, it's only made the bastard more stubborn for going out. "You're meant t'be takin' it easy."
"How much easier could it really become without my being entirely horizontal? I sit in the garrison watching recruits go through their paces, the most exercise I get is standing up to correct their form. You can't honestly think I'd do less at home, you know Ester will have me in the kitchen if I'm left idle during the day. It's turnips or recruits, and honestly the recruits are less work."
Porthos twitches his mouth. Apart from that crazy bastard a couple of weeks ago, he does have to admit that Aramis isn't in direct danger in the garrison, but still. "Someone could slip," he says. "While they're sparrin'. Or bang you somehow when you're 'correctin' their form' -"
"Oh Lord, Porthos, they're terrified to touch me, they're hardly going to elbow me in the stomach. They act like it's an ill omen even to look at it."
"They said anything?" Porthos growls, and Aramis blinks at him, then grins, breath an amused white burst.
"They're not bigots, they're boys. Some of them are barely wearing beards and I doubt they've encountered the pleasures of another's body yet, they're embarrassed of the evidence of my marriage, God love them."
It's while he's saying that that Porthos hears the mutter from a small group of men working outside a stable of, "- Jezebel."
Porthos stops, and turns to them pulled to his full height; it's a gloomy day, but it's perfectly fucking clear enough for them to see who they're picking a fight with. Porthos says to them, low and dark, "One of you sneeze?"
A man holding a pitchfork stands up from his bend to move hay, and he's still holding that fucking pitchfork, and Porthos' fists creak his gloves. "Porthos," Aramis says quietly.
"Paradin' about in the King's uniform," the man with the pitchfork says, "makin' decent people watch-"
"Don't see many decent people here to watch," Porthos says, because two of the man's friends have stood up behind him, though a couple of others are making their surreptitious way into the stable, to avoid whatever this could yet become.
Athos says, "We have a duty to keep the peace, and I'm certain that you're not paid to talk like a cretin when you should be working."
"Both of you," Aramis says, "leave it. We're going to be late -"
"You don't give men orders!" the man with the pitchfork barks, so angry that spit comes out with it, his hands shaking-tight on the pitchfork's wooden handle. "You don't belong out on the street, nothing but Satan's whore -"
Aramis at least looks surprised at the way this has escalated, Athos grabs Porthos' arm before he can lunge forwards and puts the man's teeth down his throat -
But that means no-one's paying attention to d'Artagnan, who walks forwards in a steady, deliberate way, right for the man with the pitchfork who lifts it but in an unsteady, teeth-clenched, ill-aimed swing. D'Artagnan knocks it a little aside with the back of his fist and then he's already past its useful range as a weapon, leaning in to say close to the man's face, "I think you owe my friend an apology."
They forget sometimes, and can't help but remember it in the hot tremble of d'Artagnan's words, that Aramis never was their only problem of act-first-think-when-yelled-at-by-Athos.
"I think we need to get to the garrison," Aramis says, "and let these men get on with their day. D'Artagnan, come back here."
D'Artagnan is still leaning with a furious glare towards that man. "You don't know anything about him, you don't say things like that -"
"D'Artagnan," Aramis says, stepping forwards, ignoring the sagging pitchfork entirely, slipping past Porthos' frantic snatch at his shoulder and grabbing d'Artagnan's jacket to haul him around. "Come on. We're going to the garrison, Treville will be -"
The man with the pitchfork mutters something, too low now to make much out, though they do all catch the word 'bitch'.
Aramis looks at him evenly, coolly, and says, "I am married, monsieur, by the law and the Church, and I do my duty by my husband, in this and everything else." With a gesture to his belly, obvious even under his layers. "And I am the King's guard, and I do my duty for my King and country as well." Laying a hand on his pauldron, holding that man's eyes. "Neither my actions nor my existence are contrary to the law of state or God. You and I have no quarrel. Good day, monsieur."
He drags d'Artagnan back by the shoulder, and his glare is enough to make Athos and Porthos - edgy, angry, still looking back at those men gathered outside the stable - walk on too. They're further down the street when they hear something said behind them and an uneasy cruel laugh, and Porthos' body lurches around but Aramis shoves his side to keep him walking, snarls, "Leave it."
"Can't let them-"
"Do you think you'll change their minds by punching them? Do you think I become less of an abomination because you hit them? It makes me even less of a soldier, leave it, Porthos."
"He's right." Athos says, low. "We can't be the ones to 'rescue' him. Just leave it, Porthos."
"You c'n just forget that? You c'n just not hear that?"
"For Aramis' sake," Athos says, in a dark warning voice, "yes. I can."
"-what the fuck're you accusing me of-"
"Both of you, all of you, if you're going to argue then can you at least do it slightly faster so we don't miss the morning muster, I am not having Treville's ire on the back of my neck all day while you get to swan off on your orders elsewhere."
They do make it to muster - just - and Porthos is still furiously chewing over everything that's happened, everything that got said. He wants to go find those bastards again and take his pauldron off and let them face him as a man, not a musketeer with his pissing honour to pay heed to. He wants to go face them as someone who loves that man they think is sinful just for existing, father of the boy they think is sinful through conception, and make them sorry. He also wants to punch Athos in the mouth, he's trying really fucking hard not to, for Athos to accuse him of wanting it out of selfishness. He gets that they can't go around fighting Aramis' battles for him and making him look weak right now. He gets that he can't go break some bones for what got said to his lover, he gets that, but how dare Athos not even want to.
Porthos stands and steams while Treville gives them their orders for the day, they're transporting a prisoner across Paris for the Cardinal's questioning, Porthos hasn't much emotion to spare right now to feel sorry for what's going to happen to the poor bastard when they hand him over. He doesn't look at Athos. He marches fast out of Treville's office when they're done and stamps down the stairs for the courtyard, where Aramis has been waiting for them, and heaves himself up from a bench to walk to them, wrapping his arms around himself underneath the fall of his cloak against the cold.
He looks at them both, eyes searching, then looks at d'Artagnan, and smiles in a tired way. "Thank you for defending my honour, earlier." he says. "Don't take this the wrong way, but please don't do it again."
D'Artagnan sighs, and rubs the back of his neck. "Sorry."
"No, it was sweet, honestly. Just -"
"Ill-advised." Athos says.
Porthos says bluntly, "You don't deserve to listen to that bullshit."
Aramis shrugs. "I already know there are people who think it. I just don't think of them, that's all. But you'll think of each other," he says, looking at Porthos, at Athos, and then back again. "While I can't be there, you'll protect each other for me, won't you?"
Porthos' jaw gets tight because fuck Athos, it's one thing for Aramis to put all that bullshit out of his head, how dare Athos not care about it either -
He understands, in the same moment, that he could be more of what Aramis actually needs right now if he could do the same thing. And he catches a tensing to Athos' own jaw out of the corner of his eye, and hesitates on that; that Athos is doing it doesn't mean that he likes doing it any more than Porthos does. All of them are doing things they don't like but they have to do right now. Aramis can't come with them, can't be at their sides as he always is, so he's pleading with them to protect each other the way he protects them. Porthos sniffs hard in the cold air, and mutters, "Yeah."
Athos says, "Shouldn't you be indoors today?"
"It's good bracing air," Aramis says, grinning, pumping his arms back and forth in the cold. "I'll be in and out, I imagine. I'll be fine. I only ask that you look after yourselves as well." His voice falls lower. "I can't do this on my own."
"Alright," Athos says, and touches his arm. "We'll see you tonight. Don't leave the garrison before one of us has returned to go home with you."
"Honestly."
"There's - bad feeling out there. I don't like it."
"Me neither." Porthos says quietly, and he and Athos still haven't actually made eye contact, but they're as good as alright now they're focusing on this. "Wait for us, alright?"
Aramis only sighs. "If that is the bargain between us, fine."
They part for the day, and it troubles Porthos, but then there's so much else to deal with - their prisoner attempts an escape, never would've got away if they had Aramis as an extra pair of eyes but as it is they still get him back easily enough, where he turns out to be a double-triple-quadruple-Porthos-doesn't-even-know-agent, so entangled in so much political back-and-forth he doesn't even know if he's being taken to the Cardinal for reward or torture. "I wouldn't gamble on the first," Athos says, eyes imperiously forwards, and they don't trouble themselves too much about what the Cardinal intends from him. A lot of soldiers have died because of the machinations of men like him, playing games with other people's lives. Move the wrong piece of paper into the wrong office and you get Aramis led like a lamb to the forests of Savoy. They don't have a lot of time for spies.
They hand him over to the Red Guard. They walk away. Five minutes later two rushing Guards coming past them frantic inform them that the prisoner has already escaped again: perfect.
It's hide and seek across Paris for the rest of the day, and they're all wearier than they'd hoped for when they trudge back to the garrison to find Aramis leaning inside the gate, cloak huddled high on his shoulders, nodding to their approach. "You look terrible," he says, which is fucking charming. "Shall I not ask?"
Porthos just grunts and heads past him for Treville's office. Athos says, "Wait there."
Aramis rolls his eyes and pats d'Artagnan on the shoulder in a commiserating way as he passes, and leans back against the gates, and ducks his head to yawn.
Athos stays for normal duty with d'Artagnan. Porthos is fucking glad to get home early with Aramis, to get to pick up the boy from school and see his face light up to see them all again, to close the front door behind themselves and be safe back in their own home again. He doesn't like Aramis being out on the streets where people look and Porthos doesn't trust them. And having a door to close and a home to own - the sense of safety it gives is like a blanket settling around the shoulders, like a pillow beneath the head. Porthos' son has no idea that a person might grow up without a front door between himself and the cold of the world. Porthos will keep it that way whatever it fucking takes.
There's not only the boy to keep safe, though once through that front door Porthos can hike him up into one arm - Jean-Armand puts his arms easily around his neck - and say eye to eye, "What'd you learn in school today, then?" and Jean-Armand says, "I can get five knucklebones on my head before they fall off and Emilie-Marie wants to marry me." and Porthos thinks very privately that education isn't all it's cracked up to be. Aramis takes himself into the parlour to collapse on the couch with a grunt, hand on his belly, head lolled back and sighing at the ceiling. Porthos looks through at him, then puts Jean-Armand down and pats his head, says, "It's good to learn things." and lets him run off after the girls, who have already reunited and bolted into the kitchen for their post-school snack from Ester.
He sits beside Aramis, who looks across at him and smiles wearily. "Your feet," Porthos guesses. "Your back?"
"My everything," Aramis says. "Every muscle. I'm just tired."
"You were with 'im," Porthos says, and rubs his arm. "All sleepy all the time."
"Mn. They're heavy, you know. To carry all the time."
"I thought they were only children, I thought they didn't weigh a thing."
"Oh, wit."
"Alright," Porthos says, quieter, and keeps rubbing his arm. "Alright."
Aramis closes his eyes to ceiling, and stays in the drained slump where he is. Porthos can hear the children yammering in the next room, all of them and Ester in Spanish, the kids speak it like they were born to it. Which Jean-Armand was, in his way, with Aramis, he thinks. It's right he should get that, even if it drives Porthos and Athos a bit nuts when the children and Aramis, hardly the most responsible adult in the house, are having one of their private conversations without them when they're right there in the same room.
Porthos doesn't know what language his mother, his grandparents might have spoken. He remembers she spoke French with an accent but he doesn't know what accent. He holds that, that thought and its attendant pain, for a moment, and then lets it go, lets it bubble off his heart and away for another time, because he can't go around brooding on things when everything's already as tense as it is. He knows what he's like when he gets quiet and dark with thought, knows how Aramis allows it and absorbs the blame for it, wherever the blame truly lies, he has an endless capacity to absorb other people's blame. Instead, to distract both himself and Aramis from whatever might be laying heavy on their thoughts, he says, "You were all sleepy with him. Didn't do one crazy thing for months, not even one."
"Not until the act of birthing him, which never was a very rational choice," Aramis says, cracking his eyes to grin at him. "I suppose I was too tired for casual madness. I've never really done anything crazy since."
"There was that time you nearly took a bloke's head off for kickin' a dog."
"Well -"
"An' that time you threatened Constance's last husband with a kitchen knife."
"Oh, he deserved that."
"And-"
"I've done very little crazy since," Aramis says. "Proportionally speaking. Compared to . . . I don't know, I was - looking for something, before. Some reason to keep being in the world." He looks around their parlour, always a little unkempt with all the children to climb its furniture and scuff its floors, and says with distant eyes, "I think I found it, in the end."
"By gettin' accidentally knocked up."
Aramis' mouth crooks, genuinely amused, and genuinely more. "I like to think by grace."
"Grace," Porthos says quietly, and looks down at Aramis' stomach. Aramis touches his cheek, and when Porthos looks at him, he kisses him. Then he settles his own cheek to Porthos' shoulder and lets his body sag to his side, trusting in Porthos to hold his weight up. Porthos settles an arm around his shoulders, and can smell his hair, and he's never had any lover as long as Aramis, never been so comfortable with another body as his.
He closes his eyes to the top of his head, and breathes in.
That night he and Athos are undressing while Aramis is telling his beads over his little altar, prayers whispered low, fingertips caressing each bead a turn left and right before he clicks it on. It's too cold for Aramis to allow prayer to keep him from bed for long, so Porthos isn't concerned and isn't really thinking about him, which is why it's such a jolt when he gives a great gasp inwards, puts a hand on his stomach and blinks and blinks, eyes wide.
Porthos sees Athos go still, as if every floorboard around him will shatter if he moves one muscle, as if the candle of his thought just blew clean out. Porthos has to plunge forwards, grab Aramis' shoulder, say urgently, "What is it, what d'you need, is it-"
"- moved," Aramis says, rubbing his belly with a hand. "It moved. The child moved. It's always - come here give me your - you get flutters," he says, grabbing Porthos' hand and dragging him to his knees beside him to stuff his hand up his own shirt and onto the warm skin of his stomach. "Just flutters, but it just - I think it's turning over, can you feel -?"
Yes. It would almost feel like his intestines unknotting and shifting under the skin if Porthos didn't know. "Yes," he whispers, and doesn't know what the fuck else to say, that's their baby in there, already moving, already real, that's their baby.
"Athos," Aramis says. "Athos, quick -"
Athos is still frozen as if on his own personal wasteland of open overwhelming hell, before he startles himself out of it, and hurries to kneel at Aramis' other side, squeezed against the wall in this position. Aramis takes his wrist and scoops it under his shirt beside Porthos', Porthos feels the blind touch of his fingers and shifts his own hand to give Athos' room to settle; he thinks the baby's given up, before it gives another movement in there, weird as anything, a kick maybe, hard to tell what it's doing but -
Aramis closes his eyes, still holding both of their wrists, and whispers out his gratitude in the form of a prayer. Athos still looks stunned, like everything about the situation is too much for him.
It takes Porthos a moment to place Athos' obvious fear. It's fear for the same thing Porthos feared, when Aramis started and gasped: fear that it's gone wrong, that they have to go get the midwife, now, now in the night, for the bleakest fucking birth there could be. But for Porthos that's something to fear; for Athos, it's something that's already happened, and what he fears is it happening again. It's real, to Athos. He's already been there for it, already smelt the blood. And Porthos looks across at him, and under Aramis' shirt, he takes his fingers and squeezes them tight.
Athos stares at him across Aramis' body, pupils small in the light of all of Aramis' candles. Porthos says, throat too thick, "'Olivier', if it's a boy."
Athos is silent, then looks at Aramis, who's let go of their wrists to pick up his dropped rosary, which he kisses with almost the same casual love as he does their skin in bed, just because it's there.
"Maybe," Athos says, and Aramis looks at him, lets his rosary fall down his wrist and lifts his hand, fingers threading into his hair to encourage Athos' head to his shoulder. With the other hand he lowers Porthos' head to the other shoulder, and strokes his brow with his thumb.
"This," he says quietly. "This is what grace means. This."
Cradled to him Porthos feels the warmth of Aramis' body, the rhythm of his breathing, shifts his nose in his shirt collar to better catch the scent of his skin. He stares at the candles, glowing like a galaxy in front of them. And he thinks that if they'd only explained it like this to him in church, maybe he'd've gone more over the years, maybe he'd've got it. Aramis makes him understand it all better. Aramis makes him understand so much.
He closes his eyes, and rests to the warmth of him, and breathes.
*
In d'Artagnan's memory, Aramis was huge when he was pregnant with Jean-Armand. He knows that that's probably the slow warping of memory over time, the told tale that memory becomes rather than the moment actually lived the way it really was. He knows the circumference Constance gets to at full term, after all, and thinks now that his memory of Aramis knelt in monk's robes large with child has got all conflated with his memory of Aramis two or three months later, fully ready for the birth, huge and drowsy in the cellar of this house, biding his time and his own uncomfortable weight. He couldn't always have been so massive. At some point, whether they saw it or not, he was the size he is now.
The size he is now is still not inconsiderable. Aramis has always been the narrowest of d'Artagnan's three friends, though not by too much, he's never been slight. He's simply been their sprinter, Aramis, neither a wrestler nor a waif, sturdy enough for a fight but light enough for a flat-out run as well. Straight up and straight down, and not too much between those lines.
Those lines currently run straight up and straight down with a noticeable detour at stomach height. He doesn't need to advertise his state, it looks out of place on him, he clearly isn't simply stout - his face remains angled and unrounded, his arms and legs wear the lean soldier's muscle they've always carried. He looks odd. Some people on the street know, their neighbours, anyone who's had dealings with the garrison. Some look and look again, confused. Some look and, by reputation, they suspect, and those are bad looks.
Some look and know in the very worst way, and d'Artagnan's hand finds the handle of his sword, his teeth find each other and press themselves tight.
D'Artagnan knows that the child in Aramis is dangerous and controversial and desperately, painfully wanted. It's not so large a house that he can avoid hearing some of those urgent conversations of the three men who share one bedroom in it, and those three aren't so enclosedly inseparable that he doesn't know a thing or two about them. There are things Aramis goes to Constance for just as she goes to him, and no-one interferes in that, matters of the body the rest of them don't understand and would be too embarrassed by to help with, so, yes, fine, good, they have each other, fine, yes, good. But Aramis is inclined, in his worst trouble, to go to no-one but God, to bother no-one else at all, struggles even to go to his two husbands with it, though he does for their sakes, now. He certainly doesn't trouble d'Artagnan with it. So D'Artagnan makes a point of troubling himself.
He knows it's not like Constance's pregnancies. No-one judges Constance her pregnancies, they're expected of her, and Aramis in his awkward in-between life, no-one knows what to expect of him so he's judged for anything he does. It's dangerous, to him, they all know that, they were all in the house when Jean-Armand was born and Aramis as good as died, broke his body so entirely in birthing the child that he probably should have died. He lived through stubbornness, and livid love, and his undependable, unpredictable luck.
It's dangerous to the child. They've lost one already. They've lost one already, and this house is not big enough, the world is not big enough, for d'Artagnan not to know the grief it cost them.
He was there, ridiculous situation, he had no right to be there, Porthos could have been there and not him but on another level, so much better that he was there. So much better that someone there was not losing their child, so that he could tie up the horses and put up the tent and fetch water and light a fire and do everything that Aramis (praying and begging and trying not to weep) was physically incapable of, and Athos, Athos who could lead armies and confront tyrants and face any power unbowed, Athos could do nothing. Athos crumpled down to as little strength as is involved in holding a hand. Athos couldn't do a thing but stay by Aramis' side, and d'Artagnan understands that. He's lost a son. He didn't have to hold Constance while her body wracked with the pain of their child's death, but he's lost a child, and that grief he respects the way that he respects the winter: it is real, and hard, and no wishing in the world can push it away.
It's not that large a house. He was there for the afterwards, he knows that Aramis could have gone clean mad in his grief, he recognised the sounds of a man biting something and half-suffocating himself not to howl behind a door when his lovers weren't there to hear it. Aramis was a human flinch for months afterwards, and Aramis never previously flinched when bullets fluttered his hair. The three of them closed off and presented a united front of silence on the subject. Constance pursued Aramis more than once to get them shut in a room together for something said in private, while Aramis was still so raw that d'Artagnan didn't dare to touch him - when once he never needed to touch Aramis, Aramis was the one always patting his back and throwing an arm around his neck. It knocked all the ease Aramis ever had out of him, that lost child, and in the years since he's pieced himself back together but this pregnancy, this is fearful to all of them, d'Artagnan doesn't have to be that child's father, he feels the tension of this.
So yes, he notices, when people on the street look and they are not good looks. Some mock, more and less openly, turning hurriedly away when Athos or Porthos look their way. Some mutter. Some have started crossing themselves, as if warding away something evil (if that wounds Aramis - how could that not wound Aramis? - he gives no indication even of noticing it). Some stare, in a way that is not just a stare. A stare can be as belligerent as an outright threat, sometimes. A stare can be as good as an attack.
Aramis acts unconcerned, and his friends close ranks around him, and d'Artagnan happens to be one of those. But he knows, from the worst time, that Aramis can actually be a pretty good actor when he doesn't want to worry other people. He made himself normal for Jean-Armand, or almost normal, when left to himself he still shook. D'Artagnan watches him closely, and all he can read is that Aramis is aware of people's responses, but he's simply chosen not to respond to them. Aramis sets his priorities and never gives a shit if the rest of the world has a different set of priorities, and Aramis prioritises his own family and to hell with what anyone else thinks. Which d'Artagnan would think is the best way to survive some of those looks except - it's the way they look . . .
They're all released early from duties that day, as the King in a temper will deal with no affairs of state and has stamped off to his rooms in the palace, and Treville has little enough to keep Aramis himself amused with while garrison-bound, let alone a full batch of unoccupied musketeers. It's too early in the afternoon even to collect the children from school so Aramis suggests an inn - it's been a long time, tediously domestic as they've all become, since they went out. No-one has any objections, except towards the seedier kind of inn, where they're more likely to encounter the kind of comment that will ruin everyone's afternoon and the person who made the comment's afternoon most of all.
Turning down a street, Aramis and Porthos arguing over who once got them thrown out of a particular inn (Porthos' cheating at cards or Aramis' distracting influence on the innkeeper's wife, d'Artagnan is inclined to put it down to a combination of factors) when they come to a bottleneck; too many people in too narrow a space. The crowd, men and women mixed, are gathered in various states of interest, anger and amusement around a man standing on a barrel, shouting loud over their heads, waving a book aloft; a street preacher, already hoarse-voiced from proclaiming the arrival of the end times.
"We should move this along," Aramis says, rubbing idly at his belly and looking over the crowd, blocking the way and carrying an undercurrent of a potential breach of the peace in their mutters and occasional heckling. Porthos has stepped surreptitiously closer to Aramis, and slightly between him and the thick of the throng; Athos says calmly, "Porthos, why don't you and Aramis go ahead and get our drinks, and d'Artagnan and I will manage this."
"Two against at least two dozen," Aramis says, raising an eyebrow, "and I'm not to notice who definitely isn't part of that two?"
Athos says stonily, "Go to the inn and get a table near the fire."
"Well that's not what it says at all," Aramis says, distracted away from Athos by a Bible quotation being shouted over the crowd by the preacher. "If you look at the Latin-"
"C'mon," Porthos says, pressing Aramis' shoulder to try to move him past the rear of the crowd. But someone's looked back, nudged their neighbour, and the ripples beginning through the crowd attract the attention of the preacher himself, who stares and then points right at Aramis and shrieks, "Here herself in all her wantonness, the whore of Babylon herself -"
"Himself," Aramis says without alarm, as the crowd shifts and strains, turning like a wave rushing a beach to see the source of this interruption. "And a musketeer of Paris only, the uniform is quite different and unfortunately much less exciting."
A woman hides her smile under her hand, but d'Artagnan's eye is flitting over some really not good looks being cast in their direction, and he can sense in the muscles of Athos' arm how ready for his sword he is.
"You need to disperse." Athos says in a voice bred for generations to give orders no-one has ever thought to refuse. "You are blocking the thoroughfare and threatening the peace."
"The peace is threatened by that Jezebel serving the King, dragging Satan's presence into the Court like the foul vapours of hell itself -"
"I've never had any complaints about my vapours," Aramis says mildly. "A little lavender in the bathwater, you know, it goes a long way."
(Some are laughing, d'Artagnan feels the teetering balance, Aramis is always relaxed and charismatic and can maybe carry half the crowd through humour but -)
"The corrupting influence of the Devil himself, you are an abomination unto God -"
"I am God's own work as all His children are," Aramis says, and still doesn't look even slightly ruffled by being the centre of attention of an at least half-hostile crowd, and d'Artagnan knows what trying to argue with Aramis is like, his placid requests for reasonable civility are very hard to argue with without making yourself look like the unreasonable one. "You would not presume, of course monsieur, to tell the Lord Himself that He made a mistake, in me or anything else."
"Your sin is your own."
"I was made to increase the Lord's creation and abide by my husband, both of which," with an easy gesture at his stomach, "you can see that I perform. There is no quarrel to be had here. His Holiness himself sanctions my marriage and my duty."
"No pope has ever sanctioned you flaunting yourself like a man, wearing that weapon and that uniform like you've any right to it -"
"The King sanctions it. And you wouldn't be about to say anything treasonous in front of four musketeers, now." Aramis still looks so calm, so entirely and almost-amusedly calm, while Porthos' eyes flit about the crowd fastening on one furious face after another, and d'Artagnan can feel how close Athos is to drawing and he himself is trying to disguise his high-strung body's urge to shake with rage, some of the looks boring into Aramis' easy smile are of furious contempt as much as hatred.
Aramis says as if only being reasonable, "Love does no harm to a neighbour. The Lord decrees for all of us to be loved, however little we as sinners all may deserve it. Every soul, every one, is precious to Him."
"You shall not lie with a man as with a woman; it is an abomination-"
"That does not apply to my kind. My marriage is sanctified and legal."
"You should not talk back to men, abomination -"
"Of the things the Bible labels abominations," Aramis says, and scratches his nose, "I would be more careful of haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and a man who sows discord among brothers. My body was made by God in His image. It is not our bodies but our actions He holds us responsible for."
D'Artagnan could have told the preacher not to get into a Bible-quoting competition with Aramis, it's impossible to win. But another man has pushed through the crowd where d'Artagnan can tell that more than half the women have sided with Aramis - well, women tend to take one look at Aramis and side with him, and they may have some sympathy for his position, they might well want his position if they could only take it - but the men look largely dubious or hostile; they're the ones with wives who might get ideas, and who look at Aramis aghast with what could be their own fate if life had been a little different, and that makes him both terrifying and repulsive to them. The man who now strides right up to them - he has to stop when every one of Porthos' muscles tenses for the spring - spits right at Aramis, "You should be in the kitchen, hiding yourself from decent people, you should-"
Aramis murmurs, soft, "The one who fears is not made perfect in love."
Porthos throws an arm up so a stone bounces off it rather than his head, and Athos strides forwards, roars, "You will disperse-"
Someone shouts from the crowd, "Get that bitch back in the bedroom where he belongs!"
"- show 'im what happens to them as don't know their place -"
"Who the fuck said that?" Porthos bellows, and the crowd flinches, many of them are now trying to very quickly get out of the thick huddle of people they're trapped in before this descends into outright violence.
"-not right-"
"Stop shoving-"
"I'd show that slut his duty -"
Athos is trying to press Aramis back - Aramis himself stands steady, head high and arms crossed over his stomach, hesitant on what the hell can be done to settle the situation - and Porthos strides out at the crowd fists clenched, yells as Athos bellows for him to stop, "Who said-"
It's about the last spark needed for the riot; someone throws another stone and Aramis ducks it, and then there's bedlam.
More than half the crowd is trying to flee, d'Artagnan can hardly tell who's running and who's attacking, there's no room, they don't have proper weapons, some workers have tools or knives but it doesn't help. Drawing a sword against someone who doesn't have a sword, when you're the idiot with the sword and a sense of honour, only makes you hesitant, and he has to lunge backwards to keep himself from being punched and kick a man between the legs so he collapses. "Athos -" he yells.
Athos roars, "Get Aramis out of here!"
It's Aramis they're aiming for, through the pushing, surging, scattering crowd, and though the other three are trying to hold people back they're only three and they can't stop men getting around them. D'Artagnan turns in time to see Aramis disarm a man of the broken piece of wood he's wielding with an easy flick of the sword and crack his head into the wall of the house beside them with his own elbow. Porthos hasn't bothered to draw and is punching, kicking and headbutting his way into anyone who dares to come in their direction, Athos has his sword out and is scattering men with its lethal-quick flashing, roaring unheard through the chaos of noise, "In the name of the King, in the name of-"
D'Artagnan grabs Aramis' wrist and says, "Come on."
"I'm not leaving them-"
"You'll get trampled if you don't get bludgeoned by-"
Aramis aims his gun at d'Artagnan, who stares and then flings himself sideways, and the bullet takes the man roaring at his back holding a cudgel overhead in the leg. "Fine," Aramis chokes, and allows d'Artagnan to shove him ahead, pushing him towards the nearest door, because getting off the street and out of this chaos where one ill-placed kick is a danger to Aramis is the most important thing; working out where the hell they've fled to comes second.
They burst through the door and hear the scream, hear fleeing feet up a flight of stairs, there'll be time to apologise later; d'Artagnan turns to close and bar the door but at least three men burst through it, staggering him sideways into a parlour, crashed to his back heavily with a man on top of him. The man jerks his knife up in both hands to stab down and d'Artagnan punches him in the throat - idiot left himself wide open - then gets him in the head as he goes down to be sure.
He hears a gunshot somewhere in the house, starts in a panic to scramble up. He's not on his feet when the next man comes roaring into the room, no weapons but mania in his eyes, and d'Artagnan kicks his shin out from under him with everything he has to bring him down, then smashes the pommel of his sword into the side of his head.
Aramis -
"Aramis!"
He staggers, broken-winded through sheer shock, back into the hallway, body throbbing with how hard his heart's beating. There's a sword dug and stuck in a wooden doorframe from some powerful swing and he knows that hand guard, elegant as its owner. He kicks the front door closed to at least try to disguise where they fled before more follow them and screams louder, "Aramis!"
No reply, but something hits the floor hard in a room at the back of the hallway.
D'Artagnan scrambles past the staircase and into what turns out to be a kitchen, where Aramis is standing, breathing very slow, with a slim spray of blood cast diagonal across his face. He's still staring at the man on the floor in front of him; another is trying to sit himself up with his back to a cupboard, getting his groans out gritted through his teeth as he drags his leg to his chest, bleeding from a bullet below the knee. The man face-first on the floor in a puddle of blood doesn't move, and there's a heavy wooden chopping board, a massive slab of solid wood, dropped onto his back from Aramis' hand. Down one edge it's as bloody as a used blade.
Aramis blinks, breathing hard but steady, and wipes one eye with a sleeve, smearing the blood. D'Artagnan touches his arm, uneasy, then turns the man on the floor with a boot, and grimaces; "Jesus, Aramis."
His lower jaw's hanging off him. There's an ugly shattered dent in the side of his head as well. Aramis says, "He looked at me." and there's something blank and mechanical about it, no real expression in his eyes but shock. D'Artagnan looks at his face, and rubs his arm, and doesn't know what to do.
"We need to get you off the streets."
"We are . . ."
"Somewhere safe. The garrison."
"Athos and Porthos -"
"I'll go check on them, stay here, reload now."
"I - yes." Aramis thumps both used pistols onto the kitchen table, as d'Artagnan walks to the man with a bullet in his leg to tie his hands to something until they can deal with him.
D'Artagnan growls very low to the whimpering man he ties to the oven door handle, "You're lucky you're not dead, you came at the child inside him, he could've got you through the heart with his eyes closed. This was mercy, remember that."
Aramis mumbles as he works, hands moving like clockwork they know their job so well, "This floor will never come clean."
D'Artagnan looks back at him, Aramis who has blood on his face and blank eyes and entirely steady hands, and stands, and looks around. He wets in a bucket under the window the handkerchief Constance puts in his pocket every morning and walks to him, says quietly, "Come here."
Aramis glances at him, and his eyes only really catch and hold after a second, as d'Artagnan takes his chin to hold his face steady and quickly smudges the blood from his cheek, across his nose, Aramis closing his eyes to let him clean up across one and then his brow.
D'Artagnan gives him the soiled handkerchief, says, "Stay here." and takes his sword again, walks up the hallway and out of the house.
He ducks out slowly, moving the door an inch at a time, but the street sounds quieter, still calls and groans out there but no screaming, no chaos. He pushes the door open and sees Porthos walking through the prone bodies on the ground nudging them with his boot as he goes to see who moves, Athos looking around grim-faced at the scattering of what was a riot, wiping his sword on a handkerchief. D'Artagnan walks up to them not yet sheathing his sword, distrustful that so much madness could dissipate so quickly, and Athos looks at him before his face freezes.
"Where's-"
"Safe. He's fine. He has two loaded pistols and only one entrance, he's fine. You're not hurt?"
"They were mostly unarmed." Athos looks at the chaos of the scene, the street reduced to bodies requiring a physician, most battered by the crowd more than the musketeers, and his sigh comes out hard and furious. "It was a waste. A waste of life and pain -"
Porthos has seen d'Artagnan, and stumbles towards him. "Aramis-"
"Safe. He's safe. We need to get him to the garrison."
"Yes." Athos pushes his hair back. "Yes, we need to - I need to think."
"God in heaven."
They all three turn to the open doorway, where Aramis is staring blankly out across the street, where men are propped against walls, or holding their wounds where they lay. He starts walking towards a woman trying to pick herself up, she must have been caught in the mob and trampled, and Athos grabs his wrist to stop him. "We're taking you to the garrison."
"People are hurt."
"And we will bring help. But you being on the street isn't going to help that situation, Aramis."
Aramis looks at him like Athos has never, never said something so brutal to him, to lay the blame for all of this on him. And Athos' face falls, and he squeezes Aramis' wrist, says quiet and rough, "Aramis, it's not safe for you, we don't know who might still turn on you. You can't tend to a body that might yet lash out at you."
Aramis folds his arms over his stomach, and looks at the ground. D'Artagnan pushes his hair back off his forehead - he's sweating, it was a relatively mild day and in his winter leathers the fight's stuck his shirt to him - and he says, "We need to walk him back now."
"Jean-Armand," Aramis says, lifting his head with a start. "Someone has to pick up- he can't be on the street on his own -"
"I'll go." Porthos says, and he already is, there's no stopping him, Athos doesn't even bother. Aramis only looks grateful at his departing back, and then looks over the street again, eyes lost with all the chaos.
Athos snags up by the back of a collar a small boy trying to be subtle in nudging a fallen man's pockets to check for a purse. He holds a coin in front of his face, and says, "Go to the musketeers' garrison, ask for Captain Treville, tell him there was a riot on this street and people are hurt. Yes?"
"Yes," the boy says, snatching for the coin, but Athos puts him back on his feet before he gives it to him, making very intense eye contact the entire time. The boy stares back, mouth open, then turns and bolts, and d'Artagnan knows he's not just taking the coin and running, no-one would dare do that to Athos.
"Now we get you to the garrison," Athos says, but Aramis is looking at that fallen woman again, trying to get herself up and putting a hand to her abdomen, voice sharp with pain. And Athos rolls his eyes, and before Aramis can do it, he walks quickly to her side, crouches, says in a forcibly gentle voice, "Where do you live, madame?"
Mercifully, she lives on the route back to the garrison, because d'Artagnan is fairly certain that Athos would have left her on the street rather than risk Aramis out there for a moment longer than he had to. The dusk is gathering, early as it does now, while Aramis is pacing up and down the garrison courtyard, arms wrapped around himself and eyes permanently turned to the entrance, when his step hesitates and then he runs forward to meet Porthos carrying their cloak-wrapped child in. Jean-Armand is interested and curious of how odd all of this is as Porthos hands him into Aramis' arms to be swung away and whispered to with a rapid urgency, and kissed three times on his face, while Jean-Armand just says with an easy smile, "Papa . . ."
Lupin lopes in after them, ignores d'Artagnan entirely and simply follows Aramis instead of Porthos now that he's the one carrying her charge. Porthos nods to d'Artagnan, leaning against a pillar watching them. "Dropped yours with Constance, don't think anyone knows our address t'come lookin' but she's got her pistol out anyway. Problem's walkin' Aramis back through the streets."
Aramis is walking Jean-Armand around the edges of the garrison, talking to him in rapid Spanish, heading for the stables so the boy can see the horses; Lupin follows steadily. "It's dark," d'Artagnan says. "With a cloak on no-one could tell."
Porthos just shakes his head, eyes on Aramis' back disappearing into the lantern-lit warm of the stables. "I don't care if every soldier here forms a guard around him, it doesn't feel safe."
D'Artagnan looks away, and nods. He understands that. The madness of how that crowd came apart - how vicious it was, how personal it was. That preacher got them to see Aramis as an 'abomination' and that meant he was less than human, something it was okay to kill, good to kill. D'Artagnan saw the look in their eyes when they aimed for him.
He remembers Aramis, standing over a man he as good as lopped the lower jaw off with a chopping board; He looked at me. D'Artagnan has seen Aramis stand steady and only ascertain his aim while men ran screaming at him with a weapon in their hands, Aramis doesn't spook easily, never has, he understands his own capacity for self-defence, has very long been a soldier and isn't given to panic. But that man looked at him, and d'Artagnan remembers the ugly mood of the crowd, I'd show that slut his duty.
Aramis was less than human to them, certainly not male in the way they are, and that left him vulnerable to what any woman thinking she could go around carrying a sword would face in this world. They wanted to punish him in the ways appropriate to what they saw him as. And Aramis, who does not spook easily, had steady hands and yet blank eyes, and he'd lashed out like a cornered animal does. One man he could calmly take down with a shot to the leg, the other, the other looked at him, and Aramis - Aramis defended himself appropriately. D'Artagnan doesn't judge. Aramis did what he had to do.
Porthos looks around the garrison, says, "Athos out helpin' with the clean-up?"
"They're looking for that preacher."
Porthos nods, jaw flexing tight. "Maybe I'll go do some lookin' too."
"I'll go help." D'Artagnan pushes himself from the pillar. "I think he'd rather you were with him than me."
Porthos is silent, then nods, and d'Artagnan presses the back of his arm as he walks past him. When he looks over his shoulder Porthos is standing there still, a dark shape in the gathering dark, and then his shoulders move with one deep breath and he walks towards the stables, his figure gradually glowing golden as the lantern light begins to touch his approach.
D'Artagnan leaves them. The help they need from him right now is out on the streets to make Aramis safe; this night, and minding their child, that the two of them can take care of here, for now.
Continued