afineseamstress | (no subject)

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porthos

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The box is there when he wakes, settled at the edge of the bed and almost hidden by Aramis' kicked up sheets. He stares down at it for a long moment, listening to Porthos move about in the kitchen, and when he is awake enough, Aramis drags the box to him to open.

Looking down at its surprising contents, Aramis smiles.

"Washing up!" he calls, exiting the bed with box in hand straight to the bathroom, where he wastes no time, fingers busy with more than the work of slipping the silk up and over his legs. If he is surprised, Aramis is equal parts impressed, stunned, and more warm than he's ever been in his life.

When at last he is set to rights, Aramis gives the corset a last tug and opens the bathroom door, walking the short distance to linger in the bedroom doorway. He gazes at Porthos' back as he rummages in the pantry and smiles, leaning his hip against the frame. "I believe I'll need some help with the string."

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A dark tale, if Aramis remembers correctly, but most of these moving paintings are meant for children, so perhaps it is not so. "A tale of French origin," he notes, smiling, "You are a patriot."

Setting the disc down for the moment, Aramis clears his throat, asking carefully, "Should we involve Athos in the finances?" Though the argument has ended, Aramis cannot help but feel that Athos still thinks them foolish. Suppose he tries talking them out of their home, talking Porthos out of children? Should the latter occur, Aramis might actually have to duel him. "The man has burdens enough without our finances."

"Then Jim," Porthos says, finding the strange rectangular square that turns on the screen and the player. "Or René or another of our friends who's capable with money," he murmurs, continuing to allow his fingers to move over Aramis' marks, thinking with heady pleasure that he'd helped to make these. "Or," he points out, "pushing Athos is what we're supposed to do. We never had much luck letting him be. He only drowned himself more."

"It was us being ridiculous and overbearing that got him to be our friend," he says, wiggling his hips and shoulders and smiling happily when the story begins.

Aramis watches the title screens unfold, looking as much like tapestries as a painting, and tries not to worry at the cushion beneath his hand. "True," he concedes, but he is not certain he wants to badger Athos into accepting Aramis' own future happiness with his husband. "I know he wishes us well, but at times it is as if Athos does not believe in happiness. Not the lasting sort. He may think us fools."

Porthos glances sidelong at Aramis, a look on his face that's drawn by his forehead knit together and a bit of worry lingering. "I accused him of that, when I was on my pills," he says. "I said that he chooses to be unhappy, willfully." True, he feels bad about it, but it's not something he plans on taking back, either. "He claims that's not true, but he's so ... stubborn," Porthos huffs out the word, reclining back in order to pull Aramis with him as he watches the christening on the screen.

"He is stubborn," Aramis agrees, "And you already have your doubts." He loves Athos dearly, but when it comes to Porthos Aramis will always be protective, just as he is doubly protective of what they have now. "I would see him free of that poison, yes, but not if it means drawing it into we ourselves."

Porthos presses a hand to Aramis' shoulder, just enough to give him a confused look. "Doubts?" he echoes. "About what? About us? Never," he swears, a wild look in his eye as if he's willing to fight Aramis to prove this, so filled with determination and sheer stubborn righteousness to fight for the affection he feels for him.

Though, Aramis is right. If Athos means to be unhappy, then Porthos should avoid drawing himself into it. He rests his cheek on Aramis' shoulder, now, staring at the princess as she's brought to the woods with her three fairy godmothers, all equipped with care and magic.

"About rearing children," says Aramis, watching the colorful flying women onscreen with half an eye. "About your ability to parent them, doubts which will be dispeled the instant you discover your natural talent, but I must get you there first, Porthos."

He rests his own cheek against Porthos' curls. "I will not be thwarted."

Shifting uncomfortably, he knows that it's true. He does have doubts about raising and rearing children, but he's not sure if Athos could ever sway him away from wanting them. At least, not completely. Porthos may be wary, but he knows that time will help to solve that. He doesn't reply to Aramis' belief in his natural talents, choosing instead to grin when the story reaches his favourite part, the prince serenading the hidden princess as they dance through the woods.

The music is haunting and lilting, a melody that Porthos could hum in his sleep (or to a child in a crib, he thinks distantly). "You're as stubborn as Athos," he murmurs. "But you shouldn't worry. I want nothing more than to watch you raise children."

"We'll raise them together," says Aramis, stubbornly true to form, "You will see."

He sighs and rubs his face against Porthos' hair. "This is a good tale for a child," he notes at length. "Little girls in particular would be enchanted. Perhaps you will show this to ours."

Porthos' body is trembling with his soft laughter, in sheer awe at how Aramis doesn't like to leave well enough alone. He pinches at one of the red marks on Aramis' torso when he brings up the story and little girls, following it with a hard kiss to Aramis' tattoo. "You're so sure," he marvels, even though with every passing day, some of it infects Porthos and makes him believe it, too. "So sure we'll have children, so sure I'll be a good parent, so sure that you'll have a baby girl," he says, but it's all filled with fondness.

"And what is her name?" he challenges. "I know you've thought of it."

"I have always thought to name a daughter after my mother," says Aramis, some of his tension draining for the kiss to his throat. "Ana. But it seems strange after the Queen to me now."

He turns his head. "Perhaps we might name her after yours."

Porthos flushes hard with the swiftness of embarrassment and quiet dismay, swallowing as he stares at the screen. "We can't," is what he says, his eyes fixed on the players. "I don't remember her name." He barely remembers her face, and the name has been lost to history, which means that there is no daughter who can carry the name.

"Ana is a sweet name. Maybe Anabelle or something to make it a bit different from the Queen?"

If Porthos flushes, Aramis' color drains, and he lifts his head to take Porthos' hand between both of his own. "Forgive me, Porthos," he says, miserable, "That was tactless, especially when I know you have never said. You must have had your reasons. I am sorry."

He stares down at their hands, swallowing to try and lose the lump in his throat. "You didn't know," he says vehemently, trying to remind himself that he's here and he's happy and he's not lingering in the past. He offers the briefest of smiles along with a shrug. "It's not your fault. I was a kid, my memory wasn't always very good."

"I always liked to think it was something pretty. Brigitte or Caroline or Eleonore." He had a lot of time to think of what it might have been, but not what it had actually been. "I'm still not sure if she even named me what I am," he admits. "Or if that's just what they call me, like we did Flea."

"Whoever named you," says Aramis, bending his head to kiss Porthos' palm, "Did it excellent job. Porthos suits you marvelously." He shifts closer on the chaise, though they are already all but folded together. "I have always like Eleonore," he admits. "Like Aliénor d'Aquitaine - there was a spirited woman if ever history knew one."

Porthos is happy to let Aramis crush him, holding him possessively tight as he watches the princess on the screen falling prey to her sleeping spell. "I always liked Lucie, too," he admits. "For a name, in general." It's a name that he can see himself playfully calling out, and is still girlish and beautiful.

"I picked du Vallon," he says, but he's leading somewhere else with this, tracing the pad of his thumb over Aramis' brow and the line of his jaw. "And I'm picking d'Herblay, too, if you'll gift it to me."

"Everything I have and will ever have is yours, Porthos," says Aramis, filled with quiet joy at the thought of their joining in yet another way. "Naming is a powerful thing, and I know you have chosen yours with care. Du Vallon, for the man you wished to be and made yourself, and now d'Herblay. No one could be more honored than I to know that you have chosen my own, as well."

Aramis swallows, finding his voice has gone a touch unsteady. "Perhaps Ana Lucia if it is a girl. Our Lucie."

Porthos' smile is tender and soft, slow to grow, but broad and meant when it shows on his face. "I like that," he murmurs fondly. "Ana Lucia," he breathes, thinking that it's different enough from everything they're in contact with. For the first time since they began this, Porthos begins to imagine this girl as an actual being with Aramis' hair and eyes, his wit and charm.

Rather than fear, he feels excitement in the smallest of sparks, but it's enough to make his heart beat a little faster. "And I'll show her the valiant prince battling a dragon," he murmurs fondly, for what's passing on the screen.

Aramis watches Porthos' face change and feels new happiness bloom in his heart, the softest he's yet to experience, yet somehow the most powerful. "You can see her, can't you?" he asks, squeezing Porthos' hand. "How she will love sitting with you, watching these stories, listening to you read them to her. She will grow up loving adventure and desiring to do good, just like her fathers."

He nods, as if shocked that he can see such a thing in his mind. "Yeah," he breathes out, holding onto Aramis' hand as he curls the blanket tighter around their shoulders, knowing Aramis might feel a chill in the lack of clothes he's sporting. "Looks just like you, in my head. Long brown hair that I'll braid, like my bandanna," he vows, closing his eyes to imagine it. "Probably get into trouble more often than we can keep track of," he adds ruefully.

"Neither of us set good examples in that respect."

"And no less than we deserve with our record," says Aramis, moved to a laugh that pushes his head against Porthos' shoulder. "I was a torment to my own parents. She will be a terror, but all the best people are, I feel. Good that we will have our farmhouse and all that countryside to wear her out in."

He grins at Porthos. "And with our tutelage, she may even insinuate herself into Athos' affections."

Porthos barks out a laugh that has his eyes open, grinning right back down at Aramis. "Uncle Athos," he says, as if he's sharing a private joke of wonder with Aramis. "Someone's going to have to teach her swords and seeing as you've got shooting, I've got wrestling, we might as well press him into service somehow." He rubs his hand slowly up and down Aramis' back.

"What'd you do?" he wonders. "As a kid, to drive your parents batty?"

"Apart from chase every beautiful young girl in town from the tender age of eleven?" asks Aramis with another laugh. "It was not only my interest in God that had them itching to send me to seminary. But mostly other things most lads get up to - falling from trees and rooftops, stealing sweets, kisses, never being where I was supposed to be when I was supposed to be there."

He raises a brow. "I learned charm purely to survive my village's wrath."

Porthos groans. "Oh, she'll be a terror," he says, thinking of all the horror that a young Aramis might get up to. "Almost makes me want a son of yours, too, thinking of you at that age," he says with a low rumbling laugh, Aramis' body vibrating slightly for Porthos' joy. "Thin little charming thing stealing the kisses of the girls in town. I'm glad to give them heartbreak, taking you, though," he says, running his hand over his hair as he sprawls.

"Now I catch you from rooftops, bake you sweets, and kiss you wherever you like," he says. "No charm required."

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