Work Text:
Rain throws itself against the window in the dark. It catches the light briefly and fervently from the glow of the fire, like small explosions of colour against the window pane, before it fades back into the indiscernible depths of the night.
Constance stands by the hearth, shawl wrapped around her shoulders, hands extended towards the warmth of the fire. Her foot is rocked forward, poised on her toes, her body making allowance of the tight pull of too smooth skin. She sighs, and the sound drifts around the empty room.
It is a fine line, between the beauty and peace of solitude, and the loneliness that consumes these nights. The rain pounds against the roof and fills her head, and the silence overwhelms her.
She pulls herself away from the fire, wandering across the room to pour herself a drink. The glass is smooth and cool in her hands, and the liquor burns a warm path into her stomach. Fabric is crumpled across the kitchen table, layers of cotton and silk, a landscape in the ridges of beads, the valleys of velvet. Her throat grows tight and she takes a reckless swig straight from the mouth of the bottle.
She coughs through the burn.
When the knock first comes, she doesn’t hear it. It takes her a second to recognise the irregular banging as the smack of a fist against door. She mumbles a curse and puts the bottle down too hard, hobbling as quickly as she can to the door. Her face a little hot, and heart a little raw.
She grimaces with each step, cane forgotten on the far wall, wobbly and unbalanced, but she makes it to the door, fumbles with the lock and yanks it open. The damp air hits her face in a rush, cool enough to make her gasp.
And Athos stands on her doorstep, mouth harsh beneath sodden hair, half collapsed against the wall.
“Bonsoir.” He says drily, his voice just managing to make it over the drum of the raindrops.
“You’re drunk.” She remarks without thinking.
“It certainly appears so.” He replies and jerks his head back, flicking his hair out of his eyes.
“Come in.”
He brushes past her on the way in, and his clothes are soaking. His shirt clings to him, almost transparent beneath the darkened leather of his jerkin. He stinks of alcohol and petrichor.
She closes the door gently behind him, and she has to cling to it for a second to regain her breath. Her leg throbs.
He wanders deeper into the house, his attention flighty and drifting, fixated one second then cast away again. He grabs something from the sideboard, and she fights the distinct urge to snap at him to put it down. It’s when he finally turns to the mess of fabric on her table that she breaks the silence.
“If you touch that— I swear to God, Athos.”
He lifts his hands up placatingly, but he still refuses to look her in the eye, gaze slipping around her, never quite connecting.
“Why are you here?” She sighs, and leans her weight back against the bench top. She’s heady, too light with pain and too quickly dizzy with the drink. Dammit.
“I don’t know.” He replies, skidding away from the question. “Do you have wine?”
“No.” She lies baldly. That wouldn’t be a good idea. “I won’t enable you, Athos.”
“I respect that.” He raises a clumsy eyebrow. “But it certainly makes my efforts to get blind drunk a little more difficult.” He takes a step, then two more, and he slumps in the chair by the fire, and something shifts and drops away from him, like a guise being discarded on the floor.
“Why are you here, Athos?”
He’s dripping on the floor, a staccato of droplets running from the tips of his fingers, the curls of his hair. The firelight traces out the pensive look on his face, a furrow between his eyebrows.
“I needed to see you.”
“Here I am.” She responds. “Now what?”
He sighs, and his head dips forward, over and over, bowing his back. “I don’t know. I need a drink.”
“Christ’s sake, Athos.” Constance snaps. “I’m not a barmaid, I’m not a fille de joie. I don’t not exist at your whim to just drop in on, in the middle of the night.”
“Of course not, Constance.”
“Why are you here? What do you want from me?”
“I don’t fucking know.” Athos roars, and he leaps to his feet, the tension rippling through his body. “I’m drunk and I’m tired and I can’t think, because every second of everyday, everything is about him.” He stalking towards her, every step punctuating his words. “And I thought, I fucking thought, that maybe you would understand. Because I don’t have anyone else.”
“Athos—”
“I love him, dammit.”
She stops. Everything seems to spiral, collapsing in on itself, until it's just the three of them in the room. Just her and Athos and him, all curling into each other. “You love him?”
“I’ll leave.” Athos says, and his voice cracks like he’s breaking on the inside.
“I love him too.” She says, and she doesn’t know why she says, but she can’t let him leave. Not now. “But I’m not in love with him anymore. It’s not like that.”
“I know.” Athos replies softly.
“And… I know what it’s like. Our relationship wasn’t exactly conventional.” She stops herself. What is she saying?
“You have no idea.” Athos huffs out a laugh, but it’s less mirthful than cold. “No idea what it means to have unconventional love.”
“I—” And then a few things hit her, moments and memories and confessions that slide together to form a tapestry that she had never quite looked at in the right way before. “Oh.”
Athos just looks back at her.
“You… and Porthos… and Aramis?” It’s not really a question, when she can feel the truth of his stare in her bones, when everything makes just a little more sense now.
“You know I can’t answer that.” He says, and the weight of his voice settles around her. “Words like that mean death in this city.”
“You’ve entrusted me with your life.” With Aramis and Porthos’ lives. And that is a heavy burden. How can so simple words be so incredibly powerful, be corrupted so terribly.
“It was not intentional, I assure you.” Athos says bitterly.
“You know—” She halts, trying to find the right way to say it. This is crucial, to get this right. If not, she could lose one of the few people she has left. “I believe in love, Athos. I don’t care what form it takes.”
He looks at her, the darkness carved into his face, and she can see the gratefulness there, the relief.
Grief washes over her, smothering. Her arms buckle as the support her against the bench, and she sags. She forces herself to stagger over to the table, grab a chair and sit down. The fabric slips a little, dripping towards the floor.
“Constance…” Athos starts, but he can’t seem to form his thoughts any clearer than she can. They are both just a little too drunk, a little too sad.
“I’ll have a drink now.” Her smile is wobbly.
Athos grabs the wine from the sideboard and pours them each a generous glass. “To enabling.” He says, and they lift it to their lips together, let the wine wash their sins away.
The crackle of the fire and the thrum of the rain creates a deafening white noise, lulling and stifling.
“What is it?” Athos points to the table and the mass of fabric.
“Hopefully, food for the month.” She replies matter-of-factly. “But we’ll see, at this rate.”
He picks up one of the dresses delicately, fingers moving gently over the pine green silk and the golden lines of her embroidery. “You did this?”
“It’s all I’m capable of doing.”
He looks at her sharply, but doesn’t say anything, instead holding the dress against his body and swishing it experimentally.
“Not your colour.” She notes, and he scowls playfully.
“How rude, Constance.” He holds it out. “Seems a shame to give it away. You’d look nice in it.”
Constance shakes her head despairingly. “You’re terrible.”
“I’m drunk, there’s a difference.”
“I can’t believe you never told me.”
The mood drops considerably. Athos looks at her steadily, the silk crumpling a little as his grasp grows tighter. “It’s not information we tend to throw around.”
Constance laughs a little, hurts a little. “Of course not.” She stills though, as her mind works itself around it all. “Did d’Artagnan know?”
Athos places the dress back down among the rest, smoothes the fabric with his fingertips. “I’m getting another drink.”
It’s the first time his name has been mentioned that night, and it’s like a spell has been broken, the glass between them shattered. Enabler.
Athos takes a swig from the bottle. “He suspected, I think. But he never showed that he cared one way or the other. We knew we were safe with him, and we were a little looser.” A little less restrained, a little more free to love. “If not prior, he knew the night before… everything.” He raised the bottle to his lips again. He places the bottle down. His mouth works.
“What happened?” Constance asks softly.
“Another of Aramis’ lovers confronted him about us. D’Artagnan stood up in our defence, got in a nasty brawl, as he is tend to. The whole time he staunchly defended us.” Athos sighs, and there’s such fondness in his expression. “He came limping back to Porthos’ rooms, all banged up, didn’t say a word about it. We only found out later.”
The fire cracks loudly, and Constance flinches. She gets up carefully and moves to tend to it, shuffling the coals around with a poker and placing a new log, nestled in their midst.
Athos keeps talking, like once he’s started, he can’t stop. Like it’s been too long since he had someone to listen.
“We never told him, but I know Porthos and Aramis better than myself.” And his words slur a little, dipping at the edges. Lagging. “I know they felt the same way.”
She turns to look at him, feeling the flickering heat of the fire at her back, and something hot and sure growing in her chest. “Tell them.”
“Things aren’t as easy as that.”
“But they can be.”
Athos leaves before the sun rises. Constance doesn’t hear him go in the depths of the night, but when she wakes, he’s gone. The only evidence of his visit is the empty bottle on her sideboard and a couple of dirty fingerprints on the dark green silk dress.
She picks it up from the table, holds it against her body, the silk clinging to her. And she looks her reflection in the window, lit by the clear morning light, the embroidery sparkling. Seems a shame.
She looks for Treville that day, throat tight and heart heavy, but determined. She will do what is right. Make it right.