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The second summer after they get married Aramis goes to Colorado Springs for a week. There’s an arts-based education conference and he’s teaching a four-day seminar on elementary music integration. It’s a week. It’s not the end of the world. They’ve been apart this long before.
Except they haven’t. Not since Aramis moved in and Porthos started making sure his favorite cereal was in the cupboard. Not since Porthos had to promise he wasn’t on pain killers before Aramis would accept his marriage proposal. Not since the girls told a friend they were going to the beach “with our dads.”
Aramis leaves on Sunday and somehow it takes until Tuesday afternoon for either one of them to realize this is their longest separation. The email messages get more frequent. The texts as well. Thursday night, after his last class is finished and Aramis only has to be prepared for a Q&A late the next morning, they get on the phone. God, they’d wanted nothing more than a good Skype, to see each other’s faces and imagine that skin under their fingers, but the hotel’s wi-fi is terrible. So Aramis calls Porthos, and Porthos tells Luci to come finish making the pasta while he takes this call in the living room.
“Hey,” Porthos says.
“Fuck me, I miss you,” Aramis says.
“If I could fuck you, you wouldn’t be missing me.”
“I can hear you grinning. What did we learn? No dirty talk while the girls are awake,” Aramis says, and he’s serious. It’s not a lesson either of them wants to learn a second time.
Instead, Porthos talks about how the girls did at camp that day. Luci is in a voice class that week and Salomé is doing rocket building. For more than an hour, they go back and forth about how incredible the kids are, what their lives will be like and whether Mémé will blow up the kitchen. (Yes, but only with Luci’s help.)
Aramis listens while Porthos talks the girls through the last of their homework, and then he talks Porthos through what he’s having for dinner. Porthos talks about his day, about Athos’ smartass asides during the staff meeting and how the afternoon was nice enough that Porthos had eaten his lunch outside.
It’s quiet for a few minutes, then Aramis talks about the bed in his hotel room. It’s comfortable, sure, but it’s cold. The sheets are too white and when his feet go searching for warm skin to press against there’s only more cold, white sheet. Porthos says he keeps waking up with his face buried in Aramis’ pillow, he’s used to waking up with it buried in the curve of Aramis’ neck.
“There’s no noise,” Aramis says. Porthos knows he means, ‘I can’t hear you breathe. I don’t hear the girls get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. The garbage truck didn’t wake me up Wednesday morning.’ He promises to snore directly in Aramis’ ear for the entire next week.
Aramis promises to put his cold feet right in the crook of Porthos’ knees. He promises to put his cold nose right up against Porthos’ chest and suck away all of his body heat. “Will that mean you’re in the same room with me?” Porthos asks.
“Yeah.”
“Works for me.”
They talk about how good it is to feel their skin touching, for Aramis to feel Porthos’ arm wrap around him at night. Every time one of them tries to make it dirty, it somehow fails.
“I’m going to drape myself over you and whisper in your ear every little thing I’m going to do to you all night,” Porthos says.
“Yes,” Aramis says. “I want that. Your neck will be right under my nose and I’ll be able to smell your skin, your soap and your warmth. I miss how you smell. When I see you, I’m going to hug you until I’m done smelling you.” Aramis spends twenty minutes telling Porthos how good his neck smells and by the time he’s done, Porthos just wants to hug him right back.
Later, Aramis says, “Can’t wait to hold you, feel your amazing ass under my hands. Do you know how hard it is for me to resist?”
Porthos says, “’Course I do, I’ve even learned the exact sound you make when you’re coming across the bathroom to grab me when I get out of the shower. I miss hearing you in the mornings. Humming, cooking, playing grab-ass.” They spend a foolish while talking through their morning routine, saying how comforting it is, how it makes them feel like they’re ready to face the day because they started it together.
It’s Porthos who realizes how late it is. “Fuck, babe, it’s almost half past four.”
Aramis groans. “I love you, I have to go to bed. You have to go to bed even more.”
“I love you, I’ll see you at the airport on Saturday?”
“I’ll be the one with my arms around you.”
Porthos grins and Aramis can hear it in his sigh. There’s another round of, ‘I love you’ from each before they hang up. He only sleeps for two and a half hours, but it’s the best sleep Porthos has had all week.
In the morning, Aramis sends a bleary-eyed picture of himself with his head still on the pillow, hair mussed and curling around his face. Porthos responds with a picture of his own tired face, half hidden by an enormous cup of coffee. Every time Aramis almost falls asleep during the Q&A he looks at his phone and smiles.
At lunch, Aramis gets another message, this one from Athos. It’s a picture of Porthos curled up on the sofa in Athos’ office at the embassy. He’s fast asleep and his face is so soft and relaxed that Aramis wants to reach out and touch it.
Under the picture, Athos has added a note. “Thanks for your part in compromising the readiness of our military forces. Asshole.”
Aramis smiles and wonders if he can get a flight out Friday night.