Musketeer fic: Wolf Moon verse
Pack Mentality, part four of four, the third part of the yes it's an mpreg Wolf Moon universe. I owe comment replies and messages, I know, I'm sorry, I literally do nothing with my life anymore except be ill. And, apparently, write this fucking monster of a fic.
Disclaimer: I don't own a single functioning limb, nor any of the characters herein.
Rating: Hard R? Just because it's not written for kids.
Warnings and spoilers: Check part one, but this is the one where everything hits its peak, so if shit seemed intense before, yeah, good luck with that.
Summary: "Perhaps I think the price is worth it. Perhaps it looks a good bargain, to me."
Note: Give Aramis an orgasm and he's happy for a moment. Give him a baby and he's happy for life.
Trapped in the four walls of the garrison Aramis just keeps on getting bigger, as if to prove that this space isn't big enough for him.
Porthos has always liked to roam, liked to see things, but at least when he was younger - when his priority wasn't being near the boy, always - Aramis was the wildest of them, the most likely to gallop just to feel the wind, the most cheerful to ride off into the unknown, like all of the world was an apple he wanted to eat. This sick parody of confinement, trapped in the garrison because they don't know if someone'll take a shot at him if he just sticks his head outside, this gets to Porthos enough. Aramis . . .
For a while, he bears it as well as anyone could. He looks after his recruits, probably no recruits to the regiment have ever been so intensively attended to as this cohort, and if even one of them fails to get a commission after so much care and attention has been put into him Porthos thinks the boy's without hope. Aramis writes letters to Jean-Armand, and marks up the new Bible Athos and Porthos got for him, since he sent his own soft-edged much-annotated copy away with Jean-Armand. While Porthos and Athos are out of the garrison on duties a lot, Porthos suspects from the amount of times they catch him at it when they return, Aramis is praying what Porthos thinks of as an unhealthy amount; he lights his candles underneath the window and begs his saints with a fervour Porthos understands but is still a little unnerved by. He can tell Athos disapproves. He doesn't think Aramis is even aware of their feelings towards it, his focus is so firmly on what he's doing on his knees.
What they tell themselves mostly is that whatever gets Aramis through is fine, as long as it does get him through. Because as the weeks pass and the weather worsens - the sky looks dirty all the time, it never seems to get fully light - Aramis is bigger and heavier and more uncomfortable, and still out on the streets all the musketeers must see the glances, and sometimes men gather and stand at a little distance from the garrison gates, not doing anything illegal they say, just standing on the street they say, and they look at those gates, and Porthos wants to knee their skulls into little broken bits.
Porthos wonders, wistful and a little resentful, what a normal pregnancy is like. He wonders how it feels to d'Artagnan and Constance, he's seen them through it often enough, how they hope and plan and can laugh about it. With Aramis - it's just fear, more than anything, fear almost enough to make him queasy all damn day long, fear for Aramis being torn and bled more than he can survive through the birth, fear for the fever it could leave in him enough to drain him dead, fear for all those people and how the contempt of their hatred could be acted out with a weapon in their hand, fear for the time Athos came back through the door from too long away and told him . . .
Fear for Aramis' patience, now that the only thing that has ever kept him reliably placid has been taken from him: Jean-Armand isn't in Paris, and they know Aramis feels it like they dragged the lungs clean out of him.
Aramis loves that boy, Athos and Porthos both know, more than some people ever manage to love anything their whole lives long. Aramis loves that boy in a way that borders on alarming, the sheer fury of it, and they get why - of course they get why Aramis so clings to the only child he's got to hold - but it's still something they've got to navigate now that Aramis can't cling to him. Porthos knows that black look in Aramis' eye. Jean-Armand was sent to the countryside for his safety, removed from Aramis' side because he had to be, and Aramis reads this parting not as a matter of practicality but with the rage of the need for vengeance metal-bright in him. His boy didn't leave voluntarily, his boy was forced from him, and if Aramis ever gets his hands on the people who did force their separation, they're worse off than even if Porthos and Athos combined got to them first.
So Aramis isn't only praying for the safety of his family. He's praying for the patience not to stalk out into Paris and start slitting throats.
Over the years Porthos has noticed, he knows Athos has too, how much Aramis has slowed down, how much less his crazy seems, how much Aramis' patience is bolstered by just the thought of his son. Now his son's been taken from him and Porthos sees the younger man he once knew, back when Porthos was younger too and Aramis' crazy was a very attractive thing, unpredictable as an untamed horse, always a wild sort of ride to approach. Porthos once, when Jean-Armand was toddling and Aramis declined a nightcap at an inn due to wanting to be back for the boy's bedtime, despaired of how dull his once-wildest friend had become. But he's older himself, now, and better appreciates quieter nights. And now he sees that man he once knew again almost-unchecked behind Aramis' eyes - if not for his current pregnancy he'd have done something lunatic by now - and he finds he's not glad to see that unhealthy manic glint back in Aramis' eye . . .
Aramis bides it as best he can. They can't fault him for that. He's doing his best. He literally could not do better, he could try no harder than he already is.
Which is why it's no surprise and no cause for angry censure the morning before muster when Aramis stalks up and down the garrison yard, mist swirling heavy with the tails of his coat, eyes glaring through space and every step precise with rage. Aramis doesn't stamp the way Porthos might in a fury or lose all his pristine co-ordination the way Athos might, he's as step-by-step meticulous in his expression of anger as a musket's load - prime - aim -
Musketeers at breakfast either pretend to ignore him - of course everyone is aware of him stalking up and down behind their backs as they eat - or else watch with a sort of sullen glare, those who already think that Aramis has no-one to blame for his imprisonment within the garrison but himself. Porthos doesn't know how to approach him, because while he usually finds Aramis pretty easy to bend to his will, he can sense how beyond even hearing him Aramis is right now and it makes him nervous to try; Athos watches without a flicker to his eye, apparently only coolly assessing the situation while his husband walks fast and hard against the cold and huffs his breath out in a dragon's burst of white.
Aramis turns to stride the same path back, and draws his sword.
Athos says, "Aramis."
"Oh surely someone will take pity," Aramis says, walking with that deadly precise stride of his, sword lashing elegant figures of eight in the air. "Someone will spar with the poor pregnant wilting violet, no-one would be frightened to face me right now, how could I possibly intimidate any man here?"
"Aramis, I appreciate that you're-"
"I have enough energy," Aramis huffs, turning back the way he's come again and his sword lashes a laceration through the fog, "for ten men, and I can't walk anywhere but within these walls, and someone will grant me the great favour of spending some strength in practice, someone won't be too nervous of being defeated by the pregnant man, all these fine soldiers -"
Athos sighs, very heavily, and places his hands on the table, and pushes himself up.
Porthos is immediately grateful, because neither of them want someone else to take Aramis up on his offer - the two of them would never hurt him or push him too hard, but even men they trust they don't trust not to make a mistake in this - and Porthos doesn't want to do it himself. Aramis is much prettier with a sword than him, and in their casual sparring can have Porthos' sword off him easily enough if he wants to, which is why their sparring is usually based on Porthos trying to batter and wrestle Aramis down before he can get his sword off him. Usually it makes for a more fair match, but he's never going to do that to Aramis in this state. But no-one is better with a sword than Athos, certainly not Aramis, and Athos will be able to control the fight, Athos will be able to lead this to a calm conclusion.
Unfortunately Aramis knows all those facts as well, knows why it's Athos who draws his sword and faces him apparently only wearily, and the embers burning in his eyes flare in their fury to be so patronised as to be only offered this sop to his temper -
Porthos doesn't know if he's ever seen Aramis go for someone the way he does for Athos in that second, certainly not in sparring. In this fight Aramis knows he can go as lethal as he likes: Athos blocks easily, metal clashes and gives its smooth scrape, and Aramis only gathers his strength and all his skill and goes at Athos while he's still trying to find the time and space to back away from the table of breakfasting musketeers. Even now, heavier as he is, Aramis is fucking dangerous with that sword, he'll never be Athos but no-one ever will be Athos, so Aramis' skill is more than deadly enough. Once he skipped as light and quick as a deer. He's slower, now, though not by so much, clearly working out his new strange centre of gravity as he goes - so much lower, so much heavier - and all his focus is on Athos, getting past Athos' sword, getting Athos' sword off him -
It's never going to happen, and Athos isn't even going to allow him long enough to break his breath over doing it. He eventually traps Aramis' blade to a pillar underneath his, eyes on his, trying to hold him steady; Aramis glares back seething, panting tight and close-mouthed, eyes crazed with finally letting his blood boil over after how it's simmered these past weeks. He's not calm, it's not calmed him. Porthos is suddenly nervous of how this could end, Aramis' temper is clearly riled too high to let it go easily and all these men watching, all these men who already have their opinions on Aramis watching -
Overhead Treville's voice says, "I take it you're ready for duties, as you're already so sprightly this morning."
Athos looks up to the balcony outside the captain's office, then swishes his sword aside to free Aramis', and says easily, "Yes, captain."
Aramis lashes his sword a couple of times like a cat's tail, and some twitch of his mouth says, You have no idea.
It's the first truly cold day of the winter, Porthos squints at the sky dreading snow the whole afternoon. He hates snow. He knows what living without a roof is like, or living without a floor or fucking walls, so, yeah, he hates fucking snow.
Jean-Armand loves it. Jean-Armand's always got a warm fire and a dry blanket to come back to. To him it's a game that falls out of the sky, to him it's nothing but blessing. Porthos' throat hardens. The best thing he's ever done is give their son a life where he couldn't even imagine what Porthos' childhood was like.
So he thinks of him somewhere down south where it won't be this cold, where there's fields and animals and he's safe and happy. He knows Aramis knows that, he knows Aramis' breaking patience is not based in any denial of that, no-one could want the boy safe more than Aramis. But he can't even leave the fucking garrison, can't walk anywhere but inside those four walls, none of them are willing to risk him on the streets. All the musketeers walking out in Paris notice dark looks, glances flicking to their bellies to check for a swell there. Two were involved in a bitter tavern brawl a week ago, when drunken men got over-suspicious about them. All it takes is one bad shove, and someone keeps shooting at Aramis, they can't risk it. But of all the men ill-suited to be put in a cage . . .
"He was a professional," Athos murmurs, eyes somewhere else as he walks.
Porthos looks across, feeling oddly naked out on duties without Aramis or d'Artagnan at either shoulder, and says, "What?"
Athos lifts his head, eyes coming back to focus. "The man who shot Étienne. I assume a man, it could have been a woman. But they were a professional. I thought - sparring with Aramis - even weighed down, he's still a professional at what he does. And it made me think . . ." His brow knits unevenly. "They knew to set a lure, and they took aim from enough distance to not be able to get that good a look at the two of them, but they still managed to hit what they thought was their target. That wasn't some angry dreg of a mob. That was a professional hit."
Porthos sets it up in his head, and, yes, Athos is right; Aramis would have spotted someone fleeing the scene, Aramis is a professional himself, and so if the bullet came out of nowhere like that then the shooter set themselves up properly, had their aim all ready, had their escape route planned. They'd never thought it was opportunistic with that little kid dragged into it for bait and everything but Athos is right, and that wasn't any idiot on the street with a thing against Aramis. That was the work of an assassin.
"Why the hell," he says, slowly because he's not letting the anger get ahead of him, he's keeping the anger underfoot, not kicking it up just yet, "would someone who can pay an assassin want Aramis dead?"
Athos keeps his head aimed forwards, and shakes it; he doesn't know. Porthos chews it over, his jaw feels hard with rage, and then says in a low rough tremble, "Someone wants 'im dead. It's not just people riled up. Someone out there paid to have him killed. Him an' the baby."
"Without knowing who," Athos says, in his deadened voice, the one he uses for orders and facts he doesn't like, "or why, we can't pursue it. We have nothing to go on, and no permission to search for more evidence." His eye flits to Porthos, storm-blue under the brim of his hat. "Don't tell him."
He doesn't mean the captain, he means Aramis. And Porthos draws a breath in at that, because it's Aramis' life in danger, Aramis and -
Aramis and the baby.
Fuck. Aramis would be at best amused at an attempt on his own life, but the child inside him - and him already riled ready to break at the confinement in the garrison, hemmed by an unknown foe and murderous with fury at it - but it's his life, they can't risk Aramis not knowing and what that could cost -
"We c'n lock him in before we tell him," he says. "He can't run right out t'kill anybody."
Athos glances at him, then frowns in an odd, complicated way, and looks forward again. "He already knows that," he says. "No-one knows more about shooting than Aramis does, he must have worked it out long before we did. That we know and we can't act on it, I don't want him brooding on that. It just . . . it will upset him, knowing that we have to face our own helplessness. And he's already quite upset enough."
'Upset'. It's not just that they trapped Aramis in the garrison, unable to walk out for air without risking his baby's life. They banished his son to the south, forced Aramis to part from his son, his boy, his only little boy. To say that Aramis is 'upset' is understatement verging on absurdity; the only reason Aramis hasn't already cracked is the baby inside him, nothing the two of them say or do could compete with his feelings at being kept apart from his child. He loves that boy like a tropical storm. He loves that boy like hellfire, and Porthos wouldn't add to the tinder of Aramis' rage for anything while he's a baby in him and everything to lose.
Another long and fucking tedious day, even the weather grey and dull, and while it doesn't snow some spitefully cold sleet starts falling late in the day. Cold and damp and angry with all of it - Porthos in the tightness of his muscles, Athos in that stony look behind his eyes - they make their way back to the garrison for some supper and to see the state of Aramis' patience after another day in captivity, to find out whether he's managed to distract himself with his recruits or whether he's still as raging as an injured cat, determined not to be tended by anyone.
The garrison looks more deserted than usual, with everyone out of the way of the sleet turned to rain. The nights come in quicker now and a lot of the windows show the friendly glow of candles inside, but the yard is fairly deserted, just one man dashing out of the rain ahead of them, and there on the corner where the baths attach to the infirmary are two men under the awning out of the rain, postures erect with confrontation, one with a prominent roundness at his midriff . . .
They hurry into the shelter at the back of Aramis, standing with his arms folded over his belly and one side spotted damp from how the rain blows in. He's facing Alexandre, a little younger than them but far from a new recruit, and one of those who gives them that look sometimes even if he's never before dared to speak on it. He wears a big cross and a pinched expression, most of the time; right now his face is pale and tight with anger.
Alexandre snaps, at Athos, "I will not accept it, it is not acceptable -"
"Good evening, love." Aramis says with a weary glance back at Athos. "I hope you've had a good day?"
Porthos says, "What's goin' on?"
Alexandre's body is rigid and almost quivering. "He was trying to use the baths. He cannot - he cannot go in there, it is for soldiers, it is for men."
"Well, I can hardly go use a women's baths, I'm too much of a gentleman to cause that upset." Aramis says, and looks so tired. "My back hurts, my legs hurt, my head hurts, I just want to bathe, I won't turn it into a den of sin just by walking in."
"Aramis is a soldier," Athos says, and his eyes are on Alexandre in a dangerous way, Porthos can see all the iris exposed that way that means people need to duck. "And Aramis is a man. And you've never objected to bathing with him before."
"That is before he was - it's obscene." His shoulders squirm in something close to disgust. "You can't want men to look at him like this."
Aramis murmurs low, "There are men very glad to look at me like this," and Porthos feels his face heat, and wishes he hadn't.
Athos says, "You lack the authority to stop a member of the regiment from using the regiment's own baths. And I don't believe you're enough of a pious hypocrite to put his life in danger by sending him looking for a women's baths to use, for God's sake Alexandre -"
"Alright," Aramis says, holding a hand towards Athos, calming him, then back to Alexandre. "Both of you. This isn't a fight. We're brothers, we have no need to fight. Alexandre, I knelt underneath musket fire to hold that wound on your arm closed before you could bleed to death, you let me cauterise it there where we were after the fighting was done because we knew you'd never get to a physician in time and you trusted me, and nothing has changed -"
"You'll stand there and pretend that that is nothing?"
Aramis says, eyes darker now and ignoring the way Alexandre's finger stabs at his belly, "I am having a child. I already have one, if you marry perhaps you will too. It is neither illegal nor unnatural, and it changes nothing about who I am."
"I certainly won't have one like that. You cannot undress in front of men, have you no shame-" And Alexandre's voice catches in some choked breath of contempt, and he says, low, "Of course you have no shame."
"If you don't like to look," Aramis says, his own voice a little more dangerous - usually he's as impossible to rile as sunshine, but his internment weighs on him more even than the pregnancy does - "then it can hardly be beyond your wit to not look."
Alexandre's eye flickers in its disgust over the form of Aramis standing there - tired, visibly so, almost too weary for his own anger, and visibly, solidly, heavily pregnant - and he mutters, "My priest was right about you. You have no sense of shame. None."
"What am I to be ashamed of?" Aramis says, low on both energy and patience and it's not clear where his last resources will be divested. "The way the Lord made me? You will not say my family." Something in Aramis' eye is an ember awaiting a breath. "No musketeer would be fool enough to say my family."
Alexandre looks at him, long and tense, and then gets out in a shiver through his teeth, "You best pray this one doesn't come out even browner than the last."
Aramis is up, fast as a wolf's spring but Porthos knew it was coming - oh, Porthos knows that look Alexandre gave him even before he said it - and has him by the wrist, jerking him back before he can fall on him. Aramis' arm twists in his grip but he's not even looking at Porthos, he's spitting at Alexandre, "Where is your own shame you coward, if I call you out as you deserve you'll never dare to face me-"
"Aramis." Athos says, stepping firmly between the two men now it's come too far.
Alexandre says, "I cannot fight a woman."
"No, you'd best not, I know too many who would thrash you."
Athos says to Porthos, "Take him inside." and then to Alexandre, "Whatever you think you are insinuating, it would be best if you considered the implications."
Porthos manages to catch Aramis' other jerking wrist, turns and walks him under the shelter for the door. Aramis twists and fights but he's not putting all his strength in it, frustration more than a real fury to get loose. "You should at least have let me punch him, the bastard will never let me fight him cleanly -"
Porthos shoulders the door open, and heads down the corridor for the room Aramis and Athos are staying in, his own door is opposite. "No," he says. "He won't. But that's fine, 'cause he in't worth it."
Porthos will fight him - a clean punch-up or a damned gentlemen's duel he doesn't care - if he says enough to Porthos to give him reason that won't hurt Aramis and Athos. But Alexandre isn't the only one who wouldn't let Aramis duel in his current condition, Christ.
He manages to get the door handle open even with Aramis' wrist still in his hand, but Aramis gives a different jerk in his grip now, not eager for a fight anymore, and Porthos lets go of him so he can walk to the bed in the dark and sit on it heavily, head down, fingers digging through his hair and teeth clenched as he tries to let his own anger go. Porthos knows what he's angry about, as he goes about the business of lighting candles, closing the shutters. He knows why Aramis nearly went for Alexandre and all rules of chivalry be damned. He knows exactly what Alexandre was implying.
Not that Jean-Armand is Porthos' son, because people have implied that in a thousand ways - second-looks and aborted sentences and raised eyebrows and open confusion, it's almost fun getting to see how people notice and almost-ask and then decide not to, faced with three heavily armed musketeers quite soppy over that boy. What Alexandre was implying was more than that, worse than that, different to that, because what Alexandre brought into it was shame, and not just the shame of Aramis' supposed adultery.
Porthos lights the last candle, closes the door now they have their own light, and sits beside him on the bed. When Aramis folds his hands carefully into one fist and lets it hang between his legs, Porthos puts a hand over both of his, and neither of them say it because neither of them need to.
It is shame and worse than shame, shocking, disgusting to some people, to think of Aramis allowing Porthos to get him pregnant and then giving birth to his brown baby. They think of Porthos' hands on Aramis' skin like it's revolting, like they don't understand how Aramis could want it or endure it, and the thought of Aramis' body getting heavy with Porthos' bastard baby, his bastard black baby - Aramis gets enough shit for going around being Spanish-looking when diplomacy's gone bad, but this isn't the same, and it's worse. Aramis is still more than white enough to be a traitor to their race when some people think of him allowing Porthos' body on his. They think he should be ashamed. They think he should hide away and never make them look at the results of what he did, what foul and sickening thing he did, allowing Porthos' body to pollute his.
Aramis leans his shoulder to his, and his breath sighs out of him hard through his teeth.
The ridiculous fucking thing is, Alexandre doesn't even particularly look down on Porthos, they've never had a problem in their duties. Alexandre doesn't care about the colour of Porthos' skin until his skin's touching Aramis' like that, until his skin has been put somewhere out of bounds, not just charging into battle but in his own bed up against his own white lover, suddenly in a place Porthos has no right to be. He rubs his hair with his free hand, mutters, "Some fuckin' people." and Aramis gives another low hissed breath of rage. Some fucking people. Porthos prefers the bastards who just come out with it straight off, it's better than the ones who pretend they're not a bastard, fucking snakes, just waiting for you to step on the wrong patch of grass.
If that fucking son of a turd and a toad said one more word in the direction of Jean-Armand, Aramis wouldn't have had to demand his satisfaction, because Porthos would have lopped the fucker's head clean off him. The problem is he's not one fucker. The problem is he's the head of a snake, and it grows two more every time you chop it off. The problem is . . .
Porthos puts an arm around Aramis' back, and strokes his upper arm with his thumb. Aramis settles his cheek to his shoulder, getting his weight comfortable to Porthos' side, anger beginning to come off its slow simmer. Porthos strokes his arm, and waits for his body to feel more relaxed against his, waits for the tension's gradual loosening. Then he turns his head to nudge his nose into Aramis' hair, surprised by the scent of him - he hadn't been thinking of this, intended only to soothe but the sheer physical presence of him so close, he never gets a handle on what Aramis does to him - and he murmurs there, eyes lowering, relaxed himself now, "Aramis."
Aramis slips an arm around his back, keeping his hug pressed to him. "Hm?"
He breathes in the scent of his hair, slow, slow, slow. He says quietly, something none of them have truly wanted to face up to yet, "What do we do if this one does look like me?"
So long as people overlook his hair, Jean-Armand does just look so like Aramis, everything else is negligible. His skin is a touch darker, his nose is blunter, but none of it's obvious. But if this baby comes out much more obviously fathered by Porthos, if this one they can't bluff and brazen their way around . . .
Aramis sighs, not in a concerned way, more like Lupin when contented in front of the fire. "It wouldn't be the end of the world," he says. "Athos 'forgives' me, I retire from the regiment - I think we're under no illusions as to what my position here would be - and then I have the children to attend to. It really wouldn't be the worst thing. It would even have some benefits."
"But that's the rest of your life. That's your entire life, that's the rest of your life, you couldn't ever come back."
Aramis says, "I think our children are worth that, Porthos."
Porthos thinks about it, tries to imagine it, getting locked in the kitchen and nursery because no-one could overlook it. The blunt refusal of the regiment to bear him, the gossip at the palace, the glee of the Red Guard, all their neighbours talking, all of Paris looking at Aramis, the whore who cuckolded his husband as far as bearing a bastard twice and no-one will ever look him in the eye and see him again. He'll be a joke or a slut or a dangerous influence, even at the market no-one would ever treat him naturally again, and -
Porthos says, "What if I had to leave the house?"
"Why would you leave the house?"
"'cause everyone'd think it was - bizarre if I didn't, if Athos didn't make me. They'd think - well, they'd think pretty much exactly what would be happenin' was happening. That you and me were still fucking. I'd have to leave."
"Why would it matter what they think? They'd have got what they wanted anyway, I could never be a soldier again. I don't want to think about this, we should just - just see what happens, we don't need to worry about this now."
Porthos is worrying about this now. Aramis will be ostracised, Aramis will be the social equivalent of a plague carrier, it was bad enough the first time but twice - no-one will go near him. He'll have to give up his position in the regiment and any respect he might have left and spend the rest of his life trapped at home being talked about and laughed about and despised in any number of more open ways. 'Shame' isn't the right word, Aramis is in his element when he's surrounded by people and Porthos thinks of the isolation, the loneliness . . .
He says, thinking it through, "You wouldn't have to give up anything if it wasn't your fault. You could stay in the regiment an' not lose anything if we said I forced y-"
Aramis is sitting upright and has a hand over Porthos' mouth and is looking at him with his eyes blank with something like terror, too stricken to speak in that first shocked second before he shakes his head, only minutely, and swallows, and still his eyes are awful with fear. Porthos pulls his hand aside, says, "If one of us has to lose everythin', why's it have to be you?"
"Because they'll laugh at me," Aramis says. "Porthos, they'll hang you, if the law doesn't do it, for God's sake, the mob would. Don't - don't. Even think about it. Don't you dare. If my child turns out to resemble you then all I will feel is proud of how beautiful it is, do you - you don't think anything else would matter to me like that. Not to lose you over. Christ, Porthos, don't do that to me, I can't - I couldn't. I couldn't. I couldn't -"
"Alright," he tugs at his shoulders and Aramis squirms as if too appalled to be touched but persistence makes him squirm even more determinedly into Porthos' hold, as Porthos gets him back into the hug and rubs his back with both hands. He knows what Aramis meant. A man forcing himself on someone is one thing, and the law would be left to deal with that. But a man of Porthos' colour forcing himself on a man of Aramis', the law wouldn't have to trouble itself to get involved, the way the mob would take care of it first. "Alright. It's only - fuck, I mean, it always costs you an' we can't do anything. The pregnancies an' the way people look an' what it could do to you, it never costs us -"
Aramis is pressed to him, hands tight in his clothing like a cat's claws, like he'd have to be peeled off by brute force. He says, "Perhaps I think the price is worth it. Perhaps it looks a good bargain, to me."
Porthos doesn't say anything. He's seen Aramis jump on bombs, throw himself into other people's fights, take himself away alone maybe to die to protect them, every time Aramis would rather face the danger or the isolation or the difficulty rather than put anyone else through it. Especially them. A 'good bargain'; for his husbands, for his family, Aramis would accept his banishment to the home, away from the soldier's life he's lived since he was barely more than a boy himself. But they would know, that's the price they would bear, they would know what they had cost him, what they couldn't save him from, and Porthos' fingers find their way into Aramis' hair to raise his face, and Aramis presses up into the kiss fluid as a wave.
Porthos' mind gives the immediate flicker (shutters closed the shutters door closed but not locked Athos'll be back soon -) but the presence of Aramis overwhelms worry in that moment, and his arm pulls around his back to press him closer. Aramis hasn't initiated anything in a while, very evidently not in the mood even before the upheaval of this little exposed bedroom in the garrison and their nerves of Porthos being caught or accused of anything, but Porthos has been pulsing with wanting this. It's not just because Porthos is used to having Aramis with the regularity of an evening meal, though his body has very much noticed its recent dry spell. It's not even just because Aramis is heavy in the middle with their child, which always adds an embarrassed sort of heat to Porthos' longing. It's more, the closeness, the sureness of the life in him when they're like this, because Porthos doesn't think about it doesn't think about it doesn't think about it but Christ when Jean-Armand was born he barely survived that -
The kiss is too heavy and too much - Aramis is still on edge from that fight, and Porthos has just wanted it for too long - and it's Aramis who has to pull back, pressing the back of his hand over his mouth as if to keep it from betraying him by going for Porthos again, and he says - his voice deepens in arousal, this lovely gravelled growl Porthos wants to lick out of his throat - "We should wait for Athos. Then we can bar the door."
Porthos runs his hands around the globe of Aramis' belly, pressing at his hips. "You up for it?"
"Interesting choice of words."
Porthos is about to roll his eyes but then looks down, and says, "To be fair, I can't even tell through this."
"Over a decade we've been sleeping together," Aramis says, looking down at the heft of his own stomach in the way of their view to between his legs, "and I can't believe your seduction technique has improved no more than this."
They hear a step down the corridor and part, quickly - Aramis turns his body forwards so he's not leaned into Porthos and Porthos tugs his clothing straight - but there's no knock, the door just opens, and Athos looks in wearily before he closes it behind himself. They take him in for a moment - he looks too tired to give anything else away - and Aramis pats the empty patch of bed beside himself, where Athos sits with a sigh, heavy from the heart.
"Am I banned from the baths or not?" Aramis says.
"He has no authority on the matter anyway." Athos scratches his hair back from his face, says without looking at either of them, "I'm meeting him before muster tomorrow."
"I'm your second," Porthos says, before Aramis can jump in.
"Athos," Aramis says, somewhere between scandalised and infuriated. "I thought you were intervening because you wouldn't call him out."
"He said some things." Athos says, still not looking at them, now looking more embarrassed than anything else. "I really didn't have a choice. Also I want to break his fucking nose, so I'm going to."
"You are such a child." Aramis snaps. "You can't go fighting men just because you'd like to, what sort of example is that for the boy?"
"You as good as called him out yourself."
"That's different, he had no intention of facing me. And I didn't do it because I wanted to break his nose." Aramis rubs his own nose, folds his arms and looks to the side. "I was going to kick him in the balls."
Porthos says, "Captain's not gonna like this."
Athos has the decency to only grunt at that. It's not Treville's fault that his regiment is cracking along fault lines they've all been ignoring for too long, and he does enough for them already. They can't ask him to intervene in something he couldn't change even if he tried.
Aramis runs a fingertip down and up Athos' bicep, breath sighing out with a shiver at its end as he lets it go, again. "Porthos and I," he says, eyes dark and low on the journey of his own fingertip, "were having a little conversation." He draws a delicate spiral on Athos' muscle, through his leathers. "The kind we ought to push the dresser in front of the door for."
Athos looks at him, then at Porthos, who isn't bloody well going to look embarrassed about only this when Athos has gone and got himself into a duel over them. Then he looks at the ceiling for a long second, as if searching for patience, or making up his mind. Then he stands, and Porthos helps him move the dresser as Aramis pulls his boots off on the bed.
None of them dare to get especially naked or inventive, it's just a hurry of half-dressed hands and mouths, Aramis' hand crammed over Porthos' mouth so his roar can't alert half the regiment, Athos jaw clenched so he's silent anyway, suffocating the sounds Aramis makes on a hard kiss as he gives his own half-yelped jerk. Then there's the panting, the warm palms, the leaden limbs; then there's the cloth, the cold water, and tucking their clothes right again, though Aramis leaves himself half-undressed and just rolls under the sheets instead, Athos sitting behind him, his bent leg pressed to his upper back, Aramis taking Porthos' knee for a pillow though it can't be comfortable; Porthos shuffles down the bed a little to offer his thigh instead, to be obliging. He is pregnant, after all.
Aramis says, softly as if his attention is really elsewhere, "There is no sin in this."
The backs of his fingers stroke idly up and down the side of Porthos' leg, and Athos picks the hair back off Aramis' face, stroking it to some semblance of neat behind his ear, curl by curl. Then Athos says, in a tone of voice gentle but like he's making it like that, which Porthos finds curious, "Did you notice, earlier, when Alexandre mentioned his priest?"
Porthos looks across at him, and Aramis tips his head to blink drowsily up at Athos' face. "I noticed it," he says. "I didn't think much of it."
"I did," Athos says, fingers still combing through Aramis' hair though there's no longer any pretence that it's done for any reason other than what it is. "Because the first thing I thought was that there was no reason the Church could offer as to why a priest none of us know would be saying one word to anyone about my husband."
Aramis lifts his head, eyes more focused on Athos now. "Did you ask him about it?"
"Mm," Athos says. "Apparently your situation, if not your name - not that many need that to know you on the street - has come up in his church now and then." He strokes Aramis' hair, and Porthos watches him with the strangest rolling growl in his stomach, the feeling that there is a target out there he needs to attack if only he can get at it. "I think we should pay a visit to this priest of his."
"A very civil visit," Aramis says. "He's a man of God."
"A perfectly civil visit." Athos confirms. "So far as he turns out to be civil."
Porthos says, "Did he give his name?"
Athos looks aside, and his fingers curl in Aramis' hair. "No. We may have to just follow him come Sunday to see which church he attends."
Aramis rolls his eyes and settles his cheek back to Porthos' leg. "He goes to Saint-Merri," he says. "I've seen him there some evenings. It's a very long Mass." He closes his eyes to Porthos' leg, getting himself relaxed for sleep. "I only go when I feel that I deserve a very long Mass."
Athos looks down at him, surprised and then pleased and then, in that odd deep way of his he only ever aims at Aramis and the boy, fond. "Not for some time, then." he says, running the back of a finger around the shape of Aramis' ear. Aramis blinks his eyes open, looks up at him to check, then smiles, quietly; it's been some time since Aramis has misbehaved enough to feel himself obliged to sit through hours of Mass even before he gets to his Confession. Not that he's been able to casually take himself to Mass for some weeks now anyway. Porthos hopes that doesn't weigh on him, on top of everything else.
He nuzzles his cheek to Porthos' thigh again, cupping it close with his shoulder and looking appealingly up at him; "Must you leave?"
Porthos gives about half a smile, and shakes his head. "You know what it looks like."
"Perhaps I feel distressed that my foolhardy husband has gone and got himself into a duel over me," Aramis wheedles. "Perhaps you have to stay to help calm the situation. Perhaps that takes all night."
Athos says, in a gentle sort of warning voice, "Aramis."
"You just got yourself into a duel, you don't get an opinion. Porthos?"
Porthos runs the back of a finger along Aramis' brow, following the line of that old scar, fine as a blade's edge on his skin. And it's been a few weeks since he dared to sleep in a room with the two of them there, been a long time since he's slept with Aramis' body moulded warm to his against the winter's cold. But he's pregnant, and already in danger, and for all Porthos wants, he wouldn't do a thing to risk him, not a thing in the world.
He says, softly, "'til you fall asleep."
Aramis looks at him with a quiet face, and then just closes his eyes, and sighs, very low. Porthos leans awkwardly down - it takes a hell of a spine-crushed bend in this position - to kiss his cheek, and then sit back, and he and Athos watch Aramis just breathing, eyes closed, as if an audience of two is perfectly natural to Aramis as he takes himself to sleep.
He wonders how much longer there is, Aramis is never very certain of the timings without a regular monthly bleed to refer to. Could be weeks, but then he's not as big as he was near the end with Jean-Armand, he was celestial then, wide as the moon. Could be a month or more. Months more of this . . .
He looks at Athos, whose eye is silent with thought. He thinks there's something up with this priest talking about Aramis, and Porthos does get that it's weird. Why would someone who barely knows Aramis - a face in the back of the church on occasional Masses only - be talking to his congregation about him? And saying things about him - about his lack of shame, as if he ought to be ashamed -
And street preachers talk about him like he's the spawn of Satan, and random men on the street would see him dead, and assassins come for him . . .
Yeah. They'll go have a word or two with this priest. See what the bastard has to say for himself. They can at least get him to shut the fuck up about Aramis, they can at least persuade him that with the baby in danger as well he can't go spreading that bullshit around, as if Paris hasn't already got toxic enough.
Aramis is breathing long in some shallow-fluttering sleep, not under very heavy yet though exhausted enough to slip out with ease. That's a good excuse to not move yet. Porthos will wait until he's sleeping deeper. He'll leave then, when he can safely move without waking him.
He runs his fingers back along Aramis' hair, and even without looking at it he can see the edge of the tidal movement of his heavy belly with each slow breath.
He'll leave soon. Soon. Not now.
Soon.
Continued
Disclaimer: I don't own a single functioning limb, nor any of the characters herein.
Rating: Hard R? Just because it's not written for kids.
Warnings and spoilers: Check part one, but this is the one where everything hits its peak, so if shit seemed intense before, yeah, good luck with that.
Summary: "Perhaps I think the price is worth it. Perhaps it looks a good bargain, to me."
Note: Give Aramis an orgasm and he's happy for a moment. Give him a baby and he's happy for life.
Trapped in the four walls of the garrison Aramis just keeps on getting bigger, as if to prove that this space isn't big enough for him.
Porthos has always liked to roam, liked to see things, but at least when he was younger - when his priority wasn't being near the boy, always - Aramis was the wildest of them, the most likely to gallop just to feel the wind, the most cheerful to ride off into the unknown, like all of the world was an apple he wanted to eat. This sick parody of confinement, trapped in the garrison because they don't know if someone'll take a shot at him if he just sticks his head outside, this gets to Porthos enough. Aramis . . .
For a while, he bears it as well as anyone could. He looks after his recruits, probably no recruits to the regiment have ever been so intensively attended to as this cohort, and if even one of them fails to get a commission after so much care and attention has been put into him Porthos thinks the boy's without hope. Aramis writes letters to Jean-Armand, and marks up the new Bible Athos and Porthos got for him, since he sent his own soft-edged much-annotated copy away with Jean-Armand. While Porthos and Athos are out of the garrison on duties a lot, Porthos suspects from the amount of times they catch him at it when they return, Aramis is praying what Porthos thinks of as an unhealthy amount; he lights his candles underneath the window and begs his saints with a fervour Porthos understands but is still a little unnerved by. He can tell Athos disapproves. He doesn't think Aramis is even aware of their feelings towards it, his focus is so firmly on what he's doing on his knees.
What they tell themselves mostly is that whatever gets Aramis through is fine, as long as it does get him through. Because as the weeks pass and the weather worsens - the sky looks dirty all the time, it never seems to get fully light - Aramis is bigger and heavier and more uncomfortable, and still out on the streets all the musketeers must see the glances, and sometimes men gather and stand at a little distance from the garrison gates, not doing anything illegal they say, just standing on the street they say, and they look at those gates, and Porthos wants to knee their skulls into little broken bits.
Porthos wonders, wistful and a little resentful, what a normal pregnancy is like. He wonders how it feels to d'Artagnan and Constance, he's seen them through it often enough, how they hope and plan and can laugh about it. With Aramis - it's just fear, more than anything, fear almost enough to make him queasy all damn day long, fear for Aramis being torn and bled more than he can survive through the birth, fear for the fever it could leave in him enough to drain him dead, fear for all those people and how the contempt of their hatred could be acted out with a weapon in their hand, fear for the time Athos came back through the door from too long away and told him . . .
Fear for Aramis' patience, now that the only thing that has ever kept him reliably placid has been taken from him: Jean-Armand isn't in Paris, and they know Aramis feels it like they dragged the lungs clean out of him.
Aramis loves that boy, Athos and Porthos both know, more than some people ever manage to love anything their whole lives long. Aramis loves that boy in a way that borders on alarming, the sheer fury of it, and they get why - of course they get why Aramis so clings to the only child he's got to hold - but it's still something they've got to navigate now that Aramis can't cling to him. Porthos knows that black look in Aramis' eye. Jean-Armand was sent to the countryside for his safety, removed from Aramis' side because he had to be, and Aramis reads this parting not as a matter of practicality but with the rage of the need for vengeance metal-bright in him. His boy didn't leave voluntarily, his boy was forced from him, and if Aramis ever gets his hands on the people who did force their separation, they're worse off than even if Porthos and Athos combined got to them first.
So Aramis isn't only praying for the safety of his family. He's praying for the patience not to stalk out into Paris and start slitting throats.
Over the years Porthos has noticed, he knows Athos has too, how much Aramis has slowed down, how much less his crazy seems, how much Aramis' patience is bolstered by just the thought of his son. Now his son's been taken from him and Porthos sees the younger man he once knew, back when Porthos was younger too and Aramis' crazy was a very attractive thing, unpredictable as an untamed horse, always a wild sort of ride to approach. Porthos once, when Jean-Armand was toddling and Aramis declined a nightcap at an inn due to wanting to be back for the boy's bedtime, despaired of how dull his once-wildest friend had become. But he's older himself, now, and better appreciates quieter nights. And now he sees that man he once knew again almost-unchecked behind Aramis' eyes - if not for his current pregnancy he'd have done something lunatic by now - and he finds he's not glad to see that unhealthy manic glint back in Aramis' eye . . .
Aramis bides it as best he can. They can't fault him for that. He's doing his best. He literally could not do better, he could try no harder than he already is.
Which is why it's no surprise and no cause for angry censure the morning before muster when Aramis stalks up and down the garrison yard, mist swirling heavy with the tails of his coat, eyes glaring through space and every step precise with rage. Aramis doesn't stamp the way Porthos might in a fury or lose all his pristine co-ordination the way Athos might, he's as step-by-step meticulous in his expression of anger as a musket's load - prime - aim -
Musketeers at breakfast either pretend to ignore him - of course everyone is aware of him stalking up and down behind their backs as they eat - or else watch with a sort of sullen glare, those who already think that Aramis has no-one to blame for his imprisonment within the garrison but himself. Porthos doesn't know how to approach him, because while he usually finds Aramis pretty easy to bend to his will, he can sense how beyond even hearing him Aramis is right now and it makes him nervous to try; Athos watches without a flicker to his eye, apparently only coolly assessing the situation while his husband walks fast and hard against the cold and huffs his breath out in a dragon's burst of white.
Aramis turns to stride the same path back, and draws his sword.
Athos says, "Aramis."
"Oh surely someone will take pity," Aramis says, walking with that deadly precise stride of his, sword lashing elegant figures of eight in the air. "Someone will spar with the poor pregnant wilting violet, no-one would be frightened to face me right now, how could I possibly intimidate any man here?"
"Aramis, I appreciate that you're-"
"I have enough energy," Aramis huffs, turning back the way he's come again and his sword lashes a laceration through the fog, "for ten men, and I can't walk anywhere but within these walls, and someone will grant me the great favour of spending some strength in practice, someone won't be too nervous of being defeated by the pregnant man, all these fine soldiers -"
Athos sighs, very heavily, and places his hands on the table, and pushes himself up.
Porthos is immediately grateful, because neither of them want someone else to take Aramis up on his offer - the two of them would never hurt him or push him too hard, but even men they trust they don't trust not to make a mistake in this - and Porthos doesn't want to do it himself. Aramis is much prettier with a sword than him, and in their casual sparring can have Porthos' sword off him easily enough if he wants to, which is why their sparring is usually based on Porthos trying to batter and wrestle Aramis down before he can get his sword off him. Usually it makes for a more fair match, but he's never going to do that to Aramis in this state. But no-one is better with a sword than Athos, certainly not Aramis, and Athos will be able to control the fight, Athos will be able to lead this to a calm conclusion.
Unfortunately Aramis knows all those facts as well, knows why it's Athos who draws his sword and faces him apparently only wearily, and the embers burning in his eyes flare in their fury to be so patronised as to be only offered this sop to his temper -
Porthos doesn't know if he's ever seen Aramis go for someone the way he does for Athos in that second, certainly not in sparring. In this fight Aramis knows he can go as lethal as he likes: Athos blocks easily, metal clashes and gives its smooth scrape, and Aramis only gathers his strength and all his skill and goes at Athos while he's still trying to find the time and space to back away from the table of breakfasting musketeers. Even now, heavier as he is, Aramis is fucking dangerous with that sword, he'll never be Athos but no-one ever will be Athos, so Aramis' skill is more than deadly enough. Once he skipped as light and quick as a deer. He's slower, now, though not by so much, clearly working out his new strange centre of gravity as he goes - so much lower, so much heavier - and all his focus is on Athos, getting past Athos' sword, getting Athos' sword off him -
It's never going to happen, and Athos isn't even going to allow him long enough to break his breath over doing it. He eventually traps Aramis' blade to a pillar underneath his, eyes on his, trying to hold him steady; Aramis glares back seething, panting tight and close-mouthed, eyes crazed with finally letting his blood boil over after how it's simmered these past weeks. He's not calm, it's not calmed him. Porthos is suddenly nervous of how this could end, Aramis' temper is clearly riled too high to let it go easily and all these men watching, all these men who already have their opinions on Aramis watching -
Overhead Treville's voice says, "I take it you're ready for duties, as you're already so sprightly this morning."
Athos looks up to the balcony outside the captain's office, then swishes his sword aside to free Aramis', and says easily, "Yes, captain."
Aramis lashes his sword a couple of times like a cat's tail, and some twitch of his mouth says, You have no idea.
It's the first truly cold day of the winter, Porthos squints at the sky dreading snow the whole afternoon. He hates snow. He knows what living without a roof is like, or living without a floor or fucking walls, so, yeah, he hates fucking snow.
Jean-Armand loves it. Jean-Armand's always got a warm fire and a dry blanket to come back to. To him it's a game that falls out of the sky, to him it's nothing but blessing. Porthos' throat hardens. The best thing he's ever done is give their son a life where he couldn't even imagine what Porthos' childhood was like.
So he thinks of him somewhere down south where it won't be this cold, where there's fields and animals and he's safe and happy. He knows Aramis knows that, he knows Aramis' breaking patience is not based in any denial of that, no-one could want the boy safe more than Aramis. But he can't even leave the fucking garrison, can't walk anywhere but inside those four walls, none of them are willing to risk him on the streets. All the musketeers walking out in Paris notice dark looks, glances flicking to their bellies to check for a swell there. Two were involved in a bitter tavern brawl a week ago, when drunken men got over-suspicious about them. All it takes is one bad shove, and someone keeps shooting at Aramis, they can't risk it. But of all the men ill-suited to be put in a cage . . .
"He was a professional," Athos murmurs, eyes somewhere else as he walks.
Porthos looks across, feeling oddly naked out on duties without Aramis or d'Artagnan at either shoulder, and says, "What?"
Athos lifts his head, eyes coming back to focus. "The man who shot Étienne. I assume a man, it could have been a woman. But they were a professional. I thought - sparring with Aramis - even weighed down, he's still a professional at what he does. And it made me think . . ." His brow knits unevenly. "They knew to set a lure, and they took aim from enough distance to not be able to get that good a look at the two of them, but they still managed to hit what they thought was their target. That wasn't some angry dreg of a mob. That was a professional hit."
Porthos sets it up in his head, and, yes, Athos is right; Aramis would have spotted someone fleeing the scene, Aramis is a professional himself, and so if the bullet came out of nowhere like that then the shooter set themselves up properly, had their aim all ready, had their escape route planned. They'd never thought it was opportunistic with that little kid dragged into it for bait and everything but Athos is right, and that wasn't any idiot on the street with a thing against Aramis. That was the work of an assassin.
"Why the hell," he says, slowly because he's not letting the anger get ahead of him, he's keeping the anger underfoot, not kicking it up just yet, "would someone who can pay an assassin want Aramis dead?"
Athos keeps his head aimed forwards, and shakes it; he doesn't know. Porthos chews it over, his jaw feels hard with rage, and then says in a low rough tremble, "Someone wants 'im dead. It's not just people riled up. Someone out there paid to have him killed. Him an' the baby."
"Without knowing who," Athos says, in his deadened voice, the one he uses for orders and facts he doesn't like, "or why, we can't pursue it. We have nothing to go on, and no permission to search for more evidence." His eye flits to Porthos, storm-blue under the brim of his hat. "Don't tell him."
He doesn't mean the captain, he means Aramis. And Porthos draws a breath in at that, because it's Aramis' life in danger, Aramis and -
Aramis and the baby.
Fuck. Aramis would be at best amused at an attempt on his own life, but the child inside him - and him already riled ready to break at the confinement in the garrison, hemmed by an unknown foe and murderous with fury at it - but it's his life, they can't risk Aramis not knowing and what that could cost -
"We c'n lock him in before we tell him," he says. "He can't run right out t'kill anybody."
Athos glances at him, then frowns in an odd, complicated way, and looks forward again. "He already knows that," he says. "No-one knows more about shooting than Aramis does, he must have worked it out long before we did. That we know and we can't act on it, I don't want him brooding on that. It just . . . it will upset him, knowing that we have to face our own helplessness. And he's already quite upset enough."
'Upset'. It's not just that they trapped Aramis in the garrison, unable to walk out for air without risking his baby's life. They banished his son to the south, forced Aramis to part from his son, his boy, his only little boy. To say that Aramis is 'upset' is understatement verging on absurdity; the only reason Aramis hasn't already cracked is the baby inside him, nothing the two of them say or do could compete with his feelings at being kept apart from his child. He loves that boy like a tropical storm. He loves that boy like hellfire, and Porthos wouldn't add to the tinder of Aramis' rage for anything while he's a baby in him and everything to lose.
Another long and fucking tedious day, even the weather grey and dull, and while it doesn't snow some spitefully cold sleet starts falling late in the day. Cold and damp and angry with all of it - Porthos in the tightness of his muscles, Athos in that stony look behind his eyes - they make their way back to the garrison for some supper and to see the state of Aramis' patience after another day in captivity, to find out whether he's managed to distract himself with his recruits or whether he's still as raging as an injured cat, determined not to be tended by anyone.
The garrison looks more deserted than usual, with everyone out of the way of the sleet turned to rain. The nights come in quicker now and a lot of the windows show the friendly glow of candles inside, but the yard is fairly deserted, just one man dashing out of the rain ahead of them, and there on the corner where the baths attach to the infirmary are two men under the awning out of the rain, postures erect with confrontation, one with a prominent roundness at his midriff . . .
They hurry into the shelter at the back of Aramis, standing with his arms folded over his belly and one side spotted damp from how the rain blows in. He's facing Alexandre, a little younger than them but far from a new recruit, and one of those who gives them that look sometimes even if he's never before dared to speak on it. He wears a big cross and a pinched expression, most of the time; right now his face is pale and tight with anger.
Alexandre snaps, at Athos, "I will not accept it, it is not acceptable -"
"Good evening, love." Aramis says with a weary glance back at Athos. "I hope you've had a good day?"
Porthos says, "What's goin' on?"
Alexandre's body is rigid and almost quivering. "He was trying to use the baths. He cannot - he cannot go in there, it is for soldiers, it is for men."
"Well, I can hardly go use a women's baths, I'm too much of a gentleman to cause that upset." Aramis says, and looks so tired. "My back hurts, my legs hurt, my head hurts, I just want to bathe, I won't turn it into a den of sin just by walking in."
"Aramis is a soldier," Athos says, and his eyes are on Alexandre in a dangerous way, Porthos can see all the iris exposed that way that means people need to duck. "And Aramis is a man. And you've never objected to bathing with him before."
"That is before he was - it's obscene." His shoulders squirm in something close to disgust. "You can't want men to look at him like this."
Aramis murmurs low, "There are men very glad to look at me like this," and Porthos feels his face heat, and wishes he hadn't.
Athos says, "You lack the authority to stop a member of the regiment from using the regiment's own baths. And I don't believe you're enough of a pious hypocrite to put his life in danger by sending him looking for a women's baths to use, for God's sake Alexandre -"
"Alright," Aramis says, holding a hand towards Athos, calming him, then back to Alexandre. "Both of you. This isn't a fight. We're brothers, we have no need to fight. Alexandre, I knelt underneath musket fire to hold that wound on your arm closed before you could bleed to death, you let me cauterise it there where we were after the fighting was done because we knew you'd never get to a physician in time and you trusted me, and nothing has changed -"
"You'll stand there and pretend that that is nothing?"
Aramis says, eyes darker now and ignoring the way Alexandre's finger stabs at his belly, "I am having a child. I already have one, if you marry perhaps you will too. It is neither illegal nor unnatural, and it changes nothing about who I am."
"I certainly won't have one like that. You cannot undress in front of men, have you no shame-" And Alexandre's voice catches in some choked breath of contempt, and he says, low, "Of course you have no shame."
"If you don't like to look," Aramis says, his own voice a little more dangerous - usually he's as impossible to rile as sunshine, but his internment weighs on him more even than the pregnancy does - "then it can hardly be beyond your wit to not look."
Alexandre's eye flickers in its disgust over the form of Aramis standing there - tired, visibly so, almost too weary for his own anger, and visibly, solidly, heavily pregnant - and he mutters, "My priest was right about you. You have no sense of shame. None."
"What am I to be ashamed of?" Aramis says, low on both energy and patience and it's not clear where his last resources will be divested. "The way the Lord made me? You will not say my family." Something in Aramis' eye is an ember awaiting a breath. "No musketeer would be fool enough to say my family."
Alexandre looks at him, long and tense, and then gets out in a shiver through his teeth, "You best pray this one doesn't come out even browner than the last."
Aramis is up, fast as a wolf's spring but Porthos knew it was coming - oh, Porthos knows that look Alexandre gave him even before he said it - and has him by the wrist, jerking him back before he can fall on him. Aramis' arm twists in his grip but he's not even looking at Porthos, he's spitting at Alexandre, "Where is your own shame you coward, if I call you out as you deserve you'll never dare to face me-"
"Aramis." Athos says, stepping firmly between the two men now it's come too far.
Alexandre says, "I cannot fight a woman."
"No, you'd best not, I know too many who would thrash you."
Athos says to Porthos, "Take him inside." and then to Alexandre, "Whatever you think you are insinuating, it would be best if you considered the implications."
Porthos manages to catch Aramis' other jerking wrist, turns and walks him under the shelter for the door. Aramis twists and fights but he's not putting all his strength in it, frustration more than a real fury to get loose. "You should at least have let me punch him, the bastard will never let me fight him cleanly -"
Porthos shoulders the door open, and heads down the corridor for the room Aramis and Athos are staying in, his own door is opposite. "No," he says. "He won't. But that's fine, 'cause he in't worth it."
Porthos will fight him - a clean punch-up or a damned gentlemen's duel he doesn't care - if he says enough to Porthos to give him reason that won't hurt Aramis and Athos. But Alexandre isn't the only one who wouldn't let Aramis duel in his current condition, Christ.
He manages to get the door handle open even with Aramis' wrist still in his hand, but Aramis gives a different jerk in his grip now, not eager for a fight anymore, and Porthos lets go of him so he can walk to the bed in the dark and sit on it heavily, head down, fingers digging through his hair and teeth clenched as he tries to let his own anger go. Porthos knows what he's angry about, as he goes about the business of lighting candles, closing the shutters. He knows why Aramis nearly went for Alexandre and all rules of chivalry be damned. He knows exactly what Alexandre was implying.
Not that Jean-Armand is Porthos' son, because people have implied that in a thousand ways - second-looks and aborted sentences and raised eyebrows and open confusion, it's almost fun getting to see how people notice and almost-ask and then decide not to, faced with three heavily armed musketeers quite soppy over that boy. What Alexandre was implying was more than that, worse than that, different to that, because what Alexandre brought into it was shame, and not just the shame of Aramis' supposed adultery.
Porthos lights the last candle, closes the door now they have their own light, and sits beside him on the bed. When Aramis folds his hands carefully into one fist and lets it hang between his legs, Porthos puts a hand over both of his, and neither of them say it because neither of them need to.
It is shame and worse than shame, shocking, disgusting to some people, to think of Aramis allowing Porthos to get him pregnant and then giving birth to his brown baby. They think of Porthos' hands on Aramis' skin like it's revolting, like they don't understand how Aramis could want it or endure it, and the thought of Aramis' body getting heavy with Porthos' bastard baby, his bastard black baby - Aramis gets enough shit for going around being Spanish-looking when diplomacy's gone bad, but this isn't the same, and it's worse. Aramis is still more than white enough to be a traitor to their race when some people think of him allowing Porthos' body on his. They think he should be ashamed. They think he should hide away and never make them look at the results of what he did, what foul and sickening thing he did, allowing Porthos' body to pollute his.
Aramis leans his shoulder to his, and his breath sighs out of him hard through his teeth.
The ridiculous fucking thing is, Alexandre doesn't even particularly look down on Porthos, they've never had a problem in their duties. Alexandre doesn't care about the colour of Porthos' skin until his skin's touching Aramis' like that, until his skin has been put somewhere out of bounds, not just charging into battle but in his own bed up against his own white lover, suddenly in a place Porthos has no right to be. He rubs his hair with his free hand, mutters, "Some fuckin' people." and Aramis gives another low hissed breath of rage. Some fucking people. Porthos prefers the bastards who just come out with it straight off, it's better than the ones who pretend they're not a bastard, fucking snakes, just waiting for you to step on the wrong patch of grass.
If that fucking son of a turd and a toad said one more word in the direction of Jean-Armand, Aramis wouldn't have had to demand his satisfaction, because Porthos would have lopped the fucker's head clean off him. The problem is he's not one fucker. The problem is he's the head of a snake, and it grows two more every time you chop it off. The problem is . . .
Porthos puts an arm around Aramis' back, and strokes his upper arm with his thumb. Aramis settles his cheek to his shoulder, getting his weight comfortable to Porthos' side, anger beginning to come off its slow simmer. Porthos strokes his arm, and waits for his body to feel more relaxed against his, waits for the tension's gradual loosening. Then he turns his head to nudge his nose into Aramis' hair, surprised by the scent of him - he hadn't been thinking of this, intended only to soothe but the sheer physical presence of him so close, he never gets a handle on what Aramis does to him - and he murmurs there, eyes lowering, relaxed himself now, "Aramis."
Aramis slips an arm around his back, keeping his hug pressed to him. "Hm?"
He breathes in the scent of his hair, slow, slow, slow. He says quietly, something none of them have truly wanted to face up to yet, "What do we do if this one does look like me?"
So long as people overlook his hair, Jean-Armand does just look so like Aramis, everything else is negligible. His skin is a touch darker, his nose is blunter, but none of it's obvious. But if this baby comes out much more obviously fathered by Porthos, if this one they can't bluff and brazen their way around . . .
Aramis sighs, not in a concerned way, more like Lupin when contented in front of the fire. "It wouldn't be the end of the world," he says. "Athos 'forgives' me, I retire from the regiment - I think we're under no illusions as to what my position here would be - and then I have the children to attend to. It really wouldn't be the worst thing. It would even have some benefits."
"But that's the rest of your life. That's your entire life, that's the rest of your life, you couldn't ever come back."
Aramis says, "I think our children are worth that, Porthos."
Porthos thinks about it, tries to imagine it, getting locked in the kitchen and nursery because no-one could overlook it. The blunt refusal of the regiment to bear him, the gossip at the palace, the glee of the Red Guard, all their neighbours talking, all of Paris looking at Aramis, the whore who cuckolded his husband as far as bearing a bastard twice and no-one will ever look him in the eye and see him again. He'll be a joke or a slut or a dangerous influence, even at the market no-one would ever treat him naturally again, and -
Porthos says, "What if I had to leave the house?"
"Why would you leave the house?"
"'cause everyone'd think it was - bizarre if I didn't, if Athos didn't make me. They'd think - well, they'd think pretty much exactly what would be happenin' was happening. That you and me were still fucking. I'd have to leave."
"Why would it matter what they think? They'd have got what they wanted anyway, I could never be a soldier again. I don't want to think about this, we should just - just see what happens, we don't need to worry about this now."
Porthos is worrying about this now. Aramis will be ostracised, Aramis will be the social equivalent of a plague carrier, it was bad enough the first time but twice - no-one will go near him. He'll have to give up his position in the regiment and any respect he might have left and spend the rest of his life trapped at home being talked about and laughed about and despised in any number of more open ways. 'Shame' isn't the right word, Aramis is in his element when he's surrounded by people and Porthos thinks of the isolation, the loneliness . . .
He says, thinking it through, "You wouldn't have to give up anything if it wasn't your fault. You could stay in the regiment an' not lose anything if we said I forced y-"
Aramis is sitting upright and has a hand over Porthos' mouth and is looking at him with his eyes blank with something like terror, too stricken to speak in that first shocked second before he shakes his head, only minutely, and swallows, and still his eyes are awful with fear. Porthos pulls his hand aside, says, "If one of us has to lose everythin', why's it have to be you?"
"Because they'll laugh at me," Aramis says. "Porthos, they'll hang you, if the law doesn't do it, for God's sake, the mob would. Don't - don't. Even think about it. Don't you dare. If my child turns out to resemble you then all I will feel is proud of how beautiful it is, do you - you don't think anything else would matter to me like that. Not to lose you over. Christ, Porthos, don't do that to me, I can't - I couldn't. I couldn't. I couldn't -"
"Alright," he tugs at his shoulders and Aramis squirms as if too appalled to be touched but persistence makes him squirm even more determinedly into Porthos' hold, as Porthos gets him back into the hug and rubs his back with both hands. He knows what Aramis meant. A man forcing himself on someone is one thing, and the law would be left to deal with that. But a man of Porthos' colour forcing himself on a man of Aramis', the law wouldn't have to trouble itself to get involved, the way the mob would take care of it first. "Alright. It's only - fuck, I mean, it always costs you an' we can't do anything. The pregnancies an' the way people look an' what it could do to you, it never costs us -"
Aramis is pressed to him, hands tight in his clothing like a cat's claws, like he'd have to be peeled off by brute force. He says, "Perhaps I think the price is worth it. Perhaps it looks a good bargain, to me."
Porthos doesn't say anything. He's seen Aramis jump on bombs, throw himself into other people's fights, take himself away alone maybe to die to protect them, every time Aramis would rather face the danger or the isolation or the difficulty rather than put anyone else through it. Especially them. A 'good bargain'; for his husbands, for his family, Aramis would accept his banishment to the home, away from the soldier's life he's lived since he was barely more than a boy himself. But they would know, that's the price they would bear, they would know what they had cost him, what they couldn't save him from, and Porthos' fingers find their way into Aramis' hair to raise his face, and Aramis presses up into the kiss fluid as a wave.
Porthos' mind gives the immediate flicker (shutters closed the shutters door closed but not locked Athos'll be back soon -) but the presence of Aramis overwhelms worry in that moment, and his arm pulls around his back to press him closer. Aramis hasn't initiated anything in a while, very evidently not in the mood even before the upheaval of this little exposed bedroom in the garrison and their nerves of Porthos being caught or accused of anything, but Porthos has been pulsing with wanting this. It's not just because Porthos is used to having Aramis with the regularity of an evening meal, though his body has very much noticed its recent dry spell. It's not even just because Aramis is heavy in the middle with their child, which always adds an embarrassed sort of heat to Porthos' longing. It's more, the closeness, the sureness of the life in him when they're like this, because Porthos doesn't think about it doesn't think about it doesn't think about it but Christ when Jean-Armand was born he barely survived that -
The kiss is too heavy and too much - Aramis is still on edge from that fight, and Porthos has just wanted it for too long - and it's Aramis who has to pull back, pressing the back of his hand over his mouth as if to keep it from betraying him by going for Porthos again, and he says - his voice deepens in arousal, this lovely gravelled growl Porthos wants to lick out of his throat - "We should wait for Athos. Then we can bar the door."
Porthos runs his hands around the globe of Aramis' belly, pressing at his hips. "You up for it?"
"Interesting choice of words."
Porthos is about to roll his eyes but then looks down, and says, "To be fair, I can't even tell through this."
"Over a decade we've been sleeping together," Aramis says, looking down at the heft of his own stomach in the way of their view to between his legs, "and I can't believe your seduction technique has improved no more than this."
They hear a step down the corridor and part, quickly - Aramis turns his body forwards so he's not leaned into Porthos and Porthos tugs his clothing straight - but there's no knock, the door just opens, and Athos looks in wearily before he closes it behind himself. They take him in for a moment - he looks too tired to give anything else away - and Aramis pats the empty patch of bed beside himself, where Athos sits with a sigh, heavy from the heart.
"Am I banned from the baths or not?" Aramis says.
"He has no authority on the matter anyway." Athos scratches his hair back from his face, says without looking at either of them, "I'm meeting him before muster tomorrow."
"I'm your second," Porthos says, before Aramis can jump in.
"Athos," Aramis says, somewhere between scandalised and infuriated. "I thought you were intervening because you wouldn't call him out."
"He said some things." Athos says, still not looking at them, now looking more embarrassed than anything else. "I really didn't have a choice. Also I want to break his fucking nose, so I'm going to."
"You are such a child." Aramis snaps. "You can't go fighting men just because you'd like to, what sort of example is that for the boy?"
"You as good as called him out yourself."
"That's different, he had no intention of facing me. And I didn't do it because I wanted to break his nose." Aramis rubs his own nose, folds his arms and looks to the side. "I was going to kick him in the balls."
Porthos says, "Captain's not gonna like this."
Athos has the decency to only grunt at that. It's not Treville's fault that his regiment is cracking along fault lines they've all been ignoring for too long, and he does enough for them already. They can't ask him to intervene in something he couldn't change even if he tried.
Aramis runs a fingertip down and up Athos' bicep, breath sighing out with a shiver at its end as he lets it go, again. "Porthos and I," he says, eyes dark and low on the journey of his own fingertip, "were having a little conversation." He draws a delicate spiral on Athos' muscle, through his leathers. "The kind we ought to push the dresser in front of the door for."
Athos looks at him, then at Porthos, who isn't bloody well going to look embarrassed about only this when Athos has gone and got himself into a duel over them. Then he looks at the ceiling for a long second, as if searching for patience, or making up his mind. Then he stands, and Porthos helps him move the dresser as Aramis pulls his boots off on the bed.
None of them dare to get especially naked or inventive, it's just a hurry of half-dressed hands and mouths, Aramis' hand crammed over Porthos' mouth so his roar can't alert half the regiment, Athos jaw clenched so he's silent anyway, suffocating the sounds Aramis makes on a hard kiss as he gives his own half-yelped jerk. Then there's the panting, the warm palms, the leaden limbs; then there's the cloth, the cold water, and tucking their clothes right again, though Aramis leaves himself half-undressed and just rolls under the sheets instead, Athos sitting behind him, his bent leg pressed to his upper back, Aramis taking Porthos' knee for a pillow though it can't be comfortable; Porthos shuffles down the bed a little to offer his thigh instead, to be obliging. He is pregnant, after all.
Aramis says, softly as if his attention is really elsewhere, "There is no sin in this."
The backs of his fingers stroke idly up and down the side of Porthos' leg, and Athos picks the hair back off Aramis' face, stroking it to some semblance of neat behind his ear, curl by curl. Then Athos says, in a tone of voice gentle but like he's making it like that, which Porthos finds curious, "Did you notice, earlier, when Alexandre mentioned his priest?"
Porthos looks across at him, and Aramis tips his head to blink drowsily up at Athos' face. "I noticed it," he says. "I didn't think much of it."
"I did," Athos says, fingers still combing through Aramis' hair though there's no longer any pretence that it's done for any reason other than what it is. "Because the first thing I thought was that there was no reason the Church could offer as to why a priest none of us know would be saying one word to anyone about my husband."
Aramis lifts his head, eyes more focused on Athos now. "Did you ask him about it?"
"Mm," Athos says. "Apparently your situation, if not your name - not that many need that to know you on the street - has come up in his church now and then." He strokes Aramis' hair, and Porthos watches him with the strangest rolling growl in his stomach, the feeling that there is a target out there he needs to attack if only he can get at it. "I think we should pay a visit to this priest of his."
"A very civil visit," Aramis says. "He's a man of God."
"A perfectly civil visit." Athos confirms. "So far as he turns out to be civil."
Porthos says, "Did he give his name?"
Athos looks aside, and his fingers curl in Aramis' hair. "No. We may have to just follow him come Sunday to see which church he attends."
Aramis rolls his eyes and settles his cheek back to Porthos' leg. "He goes to Saint-Merri," he says. "I've seen him there some evenings. It's a very long Mass." He closes his eyes to Porthos' leg, getting himself relaxed for sleep. "I only go when I feel that I deserve a very long Mass."
Athos looks down at him, surprised and then pleased and then, in that odd deep way of his he only ever aims at Aramis and the boy, fond. "Not for some time, then." he says, running the back of a finger around the shape of Aramis' ear. Aramis blinks his eyes open, looks up at him to check, then smiles, quietly; it's been some time since Aramis has misbehaved enough to feel himself obliged to sit through hours of Mass even before he gets to his Confession. Not that he's been able to casually take himself to Mass for some weeks now anyway. Porthos hopes that doesn't weigh on him, on top of everything else.
He nuzzles his cheek to Porthos' thigh again, cupping it close with his shoulder and looking appealingly up at him; "Must you leave?"
Porthos gives about half a smile, and shakes his head. "You know what it looks like."
"Perhaps I feel distressed that my foolhardy husband has gone and got himself into a duel over me," Aramis wheedles. "Perhaps you have to stay to help calm the situation. Perhaps that takes all night."
Athos says, in a gentle sort of warning voice, "Aramis."
"You just got yourself into a duel, you don't get an opinion. Porthos?"
Porthos runs the back of a finger along Aramis' brow, following the line of that old scar, fine as a blade's edge on his skin. And it's been a few weeks since he dared to sleep in a room with the two of them there, been a long time since he's slept with Aramis' body moulded warm to his against the winter's cold. But he's pregnant, and already in danger, and for all Porthos wants, he wouldn't do a thing to risk him, not a thing in the world.
He says, softly, "'til you fall asleep."
Aramis looks at him with a quiet face, and then just closes his eyes, and sighs, very low. Porthos leans awkwardly down - it takes a hell of a spine-crushed bend in this position - to kiss his cheek, and then sit back, and he and Athos watch Aramis just breathing, eyes closed, as if an audience of two is perfectly natural to Aramis as he takes himself to sleep.
He wonders how much longer there is, Aramis is never very certain of the timings without a regular monthly bleed to refer to. Could be weeks, but then he's not as big as he was near the end with Jean-Armand, he was celestial then, wide as the moon. Could be a month or more. Months more of this . . .
He looks at Athos, whose eye is silent with thought. He thinks there's something up with this priest talking about Aramis, and Porthos does get that it's weird. Why would someone who barely knows Aramis - a face in the back of the church on occasional Masses only - be talking to his congregation about him? And saying things about him - about his lack of shame, as if he ought to be ashamed -
And street preachers talk about him like he's the spawn of Satan, and random men on the street would see him dead, and assassins come for him . . .
Yeah. They'll go have a word or two with this priest. See what the bastard has to say for himself. They can at least get him to shut the fuck up about Aramis, they can at least persuade him that with the baby in danger as well he can't go spreading that bullshit around, as if Paris hasn't already got toxic enough.
Aramis is breathing long in some shallow-fluttering sleep, not under very heavy yet though exhausted enough to slip out with ease. That's a good excuse to not move yet. Porthos will wait until he's sleeping deeper. He'll leave then, when he can safely move without waking him.
He runs his fingers back along Aramis' hair, and even without looking at it he can see the edge of the tidal movement of his heavy belly with each slow breath.
He'll leave soon. Soon. Not now.
Soon.
Continued