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As he sways in the saddle, Aramis knows he is not as alert as he should be. In fact, he is exhausted, his eyes slipping closed just as soon as he forces them back open, and he gets no mercy, no slowing of pace from the man who rides so slightly ahead of him. He resents Athos for this, but more than that, he resents Athos for the sin of daring to look so well-rested, when it is his damned fault that Aramis is in such a predicament in the first place. And even more than that, he resents Athos for being so wholly un- resentable.
They have spent the past two nights at inns along the path back to Paris from Limoges, where they delivered the Duke his letters. Inns, Aramis notes bitterly, with only one bed for the two of them. And it isn’t as if Aramis hasn’t shared a bed–or even more precarious sleeping arrangements with his brothers–a thousand times over these past years. It is just that with each passing year, it has become harder and harder to share one with Athos. A fact which Aramis has been steadfastly, resolutely, even successfully ignoring… until this accursed trip to Limoges.
The last two nights were the culmination of the years of lies Aramis has been telling himself. Because he found he very much did mind the warm curve of Athos’s back pressed against his, and he very much could not ignore the way the moonlight seeping in through the shutters painted Athos’s slack face like an angel’s. He lay awake the whole night long, his skin prickling whenever Athos shifted past him in his sleep, imagining terrible, awful, lewd things that made him stumble from the bed to splash cold water on his face, lest Athos get the slightest clue of what his bedmate thought of him.
But it seems such worries were unfounded, for Athos did not so much as stir, no matter how much Aramis moved and writhed. In fact, Aramis is certain he’d never seen the man sleep so deeply before, and if he were any less irritable with sleeplessness, the thought would warm his heart like the fiercest fire. All things considered, it still does, a bit. But mostly he is irritated–more with Athos or himself, he cannot say. And tired. Mind-numbingly so.
As such, the only warning Aramis gets is a brief sighting of the two bandits and a loud CRACK a split instant before pain envelops him. He falls from his horse, as much from the sudden shock of it all as any pain, and strikes his head against something hard–a root, perhaps, a rock–on the way down. The world blinks black for a moment before he comes around again to Athos’s hoarse cry.
“Aramis!”
He tries to make a move to sit up but he cannot; the impact has rattled through his bones, stolen his breath away, and the searing pain in his abdomen makes it impossible to steal it back. Aramis gasps, feeling the agony spread its tendrils through his core the way a lightning bolt scrapes the sky. He looks down and almost loses consciousness again at the sight of his shirt and his leathers, blown through and drenched already in red.
The crash of swords, the pop of another gunshot swim muddily through Aramis’s ears, and he knows Athos is fighting the bandits, knows he should help him, but when Aramis tries to reach for the pistol in his belt his fingers are already too weak and clumsy to do anything but fumble. Another jolt of pain races through him, and Aramis can do naught but tip his head back and pray that Athos is faring better than he.
His eyes must have slipped shut, for the next thing Aramis knows he is blinking them open at the feeling of Athos tapping his cheek with his palm, none too gently. The noises of skirmish are gone, replaced only by a rough, wet wheeze that Aramis realizes belatedly is coming from him.
“Took you long enough to–” Aramis tries for humor, tries to shift himself a bit more upright on his elbows, but both rush from him as soon as the movement redoubles his agony. He groans and flops back, limp.
Athos’s face is inches from his, his blue eyes shining with poorly-concealed worry. “I need you to tell me what to do, Aramis.” His breath is warm against Aramis’s cheek. Aramis shivers; the rest of him is already frigid in comparison.
“Shot… “ He gasps around the pain. His fingers fumble around the wound, feeling the hard pit in the midst of the bloody, raw gash. “The ball is still–”
“Then I must take it out.”
Athos sits back, about to rise to his feet, but Aramis manages to catch his wrist. His grasp is so weak it shouldn’t have stopped the man. “No, Athos!” he cries desperately, a stinging nettle of fear coursing through him as surely as any pain. “Can’t have you dig around for it when… there’s so much blood already.”
“But infection–”
“Won’t be an issue if I don’t live long enough to see it.” Aramis shuts his eyes so he does not have to see how Athos’s face crumbles at his words. “Besides, amid the mud… the dirt…”
The words are choked, but Athos takes his meaning anyway. “Then we will get you somewhere clean,” he says resolutely. “Somewhere with a physician.”
Aramis musters his fading strength enough to flop his head back and forth, attempting to shake it. “Athos, it’s–”
“Don’t,” he says lowly. “Don’t you dare.” He sounds wild, looks even more so, his breath stuttering nearly as tightly in his chest as is Aramis’s, and his tone brooks no argument. “Hold still while I bind it.”
And yet, Aramis still wishes he could find it within himself to argue, to push against this nonsense as Athos rips his own scarf from his neck to tie around the wound, for he cannot bear the thought of Athos dragging him to an inn only to find it is too late. And selfishly, Aramis would rather be here, safe in Athos’s arms, when it happens.
No death is good, but Aramis cannot think of a better one than this.
Again, Athos bids him to be still (though Aramis hasn’t moved) as he readies to tie the scarf around Aramis’s mangled torso. Aramis opens his mouth to tease him, to ask where would he go but when Athos presses down it is with all the force of a thousand vices and all Aramis can do is scream.
The world blinks black again, and Aramis comes back to awareness when he feels Athos tie off the cloth. “Shh, shh, shh,” Athos whispers. He takes Aramis’s face between his hands, tips his own head forward such that his forehead rests against Aramis’s. Aramis cannot tell whether the man’s skin feels warm or cold against his own, but he relishes in the pressure, the only thing which feels real still.
Athos’s voice is desperate, thick, choked with the tears which have soaked Aramis’s cheeks as well as his own when he speaks again. “I’m so sorry.”
And Aramis curses himself because he can’t even summon the breath to forgive him. They stay like this for a moment that feels both like a second and all of eternity bottled into one, before Athos is gathering Aramis under the arms, dragging him to his feet.
No, Aramis wants to cry, because surely Athos out of anyone could see the folly in this, but all that falls from Aramis’s lips is a smattering of blood and a hoarse moan. The world is spinning and ringing and somewhere in the background, from where Athos has his weight supported on a shoulder, he hears Athos ask if he can walk.
Aramis wishes he had the strength to laugh at such a question. Wasn’t it always you, Athos, who chided me for my naive optimism?
But for Athos, he will do anything. Aramis makes it half a step before he buckles, crumpling back to the ground in a heap once more, this time dragging Athos down with him. The pain is unimaginable, bright bursts of agony which streak through his every sense, and Aramis wonders as the world wavers how much blood he has left to lose.
It is only when they arrive at the horse, the one which has not bolted, that Aramis realizes that Athos has carried him there like a babe. Athos makes to set him down. “Can you lean against her for a moment?” He has never heard Athos sound so gentle.
Aramis doubts it, but he drops his face against the horse’s neck anyway and nods, clutching her mane with every bit of strength he has. His legs are shaking, nay, every bit of him is shaking, and he lets the horse take more and more of his weight. There is no choice but for him to trust her to be still as Athos readies her to ride. The whole world sounds as though it is underwater. Aramis’s hold on her mane is slipping fast; willpower alone does not make him strong enough.
Mercifully, he must have passed out while Athos loaded him onto the horse, for Aramis wakes to find he is slumped in Athos’s hold. The pain now is dulled, muted like the lapping of ocean waves in Aramis’s ears, and in the back of his mind a small part of him knows this is likely a bad thing, but in the moment he pushes such a thought aside, allows himself to bask in the feeling of Athos’s arms around him, firm and steadying. His head lolls on Athos’s shoulder, and he can hear the man’s heartbeat, muted but strong, and it is a sweeter sound than the most angelic of choirs. He wonders if he has already died and somehow made it to Heaven.
Such an illusion is dashed when the horse kicks a rock, and the resounding bump shatters Aramis’s insides like glass. The pain roars back to life; he is on fire, in Hell, being licked by the flames, and he screams and screams. Athos is shushing him, rubbing high on his chest where he is uninjured, but it is no use, not when each little movement is like being shot all over again.
“Athos, I-I can’t…” Aramis manages to gasp. He tastes blood in his mouth, feels it trickle down his lips.
Athos presses a kiss in his hair, right behind his ear, and whispers, “Just hold on, Aramis.” He kisses him again, and at any other time this would be enough for Aramis to rally the strength to rope the moon. “We’re nearly there.”
Aramis seeks strength in the intimacy , but he cannot draw from an empty reserve. The only part of him still given to fractured coherency thinks bitterly of the fact that it is only now when he has begun to receive from Athos what he has ached for so long, only now when he can scarcely appreciate it. He coughs, and Athos’s handkerchief is there, wiping the blood gingerly away from his lips, and even though the touch is gentle it is still too much. He coughs again and again, so that Athos is forced merely to hold the cloth to his lips and catch the life which is draining from him.
Black spots dot his vision, and Aramis does not know how much time has passed, but he does know it to be far longer than nearly there, and still they have not stopped. Every swaying movement of the horse sends Aramis straining for breath, a strain he can ill-afford when his lungs are already squeezed and ringed by fire. It is too much for him, sitting like this, even with Athos holding him up, and he needs Athos to understand.
It takes him a couple heaving breaths before he can whisper. “Athos, please–”
He lists to the side, but Athos catches him, his voice infuriatingly firm because he is not listening. “Just a little bit–”
“I can’t,” Aramis cuts him off. He is melting to the side, off the horse again, and if Athos cannot see sense, perhaps he can feel pity . It is as though every hurt Aramis has ever suffered has come together now and been multiplied by a score, and Aramis knows he will not make it through this. “I beg of you… stop, please…”
Then he is falling through the darkness, and he isn’t sure if Athos can catch him.
When Aramis wakes again, he is propped against a tree a few paces from the road, held in place by their bedrolls, packed on either side of him. Athos kneels before him, his mouth twisting in a smile, but his eyes set hard as stone. He dribbles a bit of water into Aramis’s mouth from one of their skeins, looking pleased when Aramis is able to swallow it.
“That hard-pressed for your beauty sleep that you almost fell from your horse, hmm?” he says, but his voice isn’t as dry as it should be. “We’ll stop here for just a moment, so you can catch your breath, then we keep going. The village is–”
Aramis wants to cry; why is Athos doing this to him? His breath hitches, wheezing in his chest. Why must he spend his last minutes on Earth fighting with him, the man whom Aramis loves above all else? Aramis takes the deepest breath he can muster, plasters on the firmest voice he can.
“No.”
At last, something in Aramis’s affect is enough to slash through the haze which has descended upon Athos, though Aramis regrets minutely that in flaying it open it has left nothing but utter desolation in its wake. Athos’s gaze darts away for a moment, his hair falling like a curtain across his eyes. He looks back at Aramis, and it is as though every sinew within him has been snapped, leaving him a slumped bundle of bones.
“No?”
Aramis tries for a smile to console him. “Nothing to… to catch.” He tries for a shallow, wheezing breath to demonstrate, but it only catches in his tortured lungs, sending him coughing and coughing with more vigor than his abused body can handle.
“Shh, lie back, Aramis,” Athos murmurs. He is supporting Aramis, stroking his neck, leaning him gently back against the tree as the fit eases. “I have you,” he says. “I have you.”
The blackness is closing in this time, strangling him, and yet Athos persists in wiping his face with a damp cloth. He is so foolish, and so utterly perfect. His face swims and wavers before Aramis, and Aramis studies every inch of it, letting it bathe him with a peace he has not felt in a long, long while.
“Athos…” he breathes, and for once it is enough. Athos pauses in his ministrations, all of his attention resolutely on Aramis. He feels his lips crack in a smile. “I… I love you.”
“I know that,” Athos whispers softly. “You’re my brother Aramis, I love you—“
“N-no,” Aramis says desperately, because he feels it all slipping away and he knows, more than he knows everything, that he cannot depart this world before Athos understands, even if he does not reciprocate. He needs to know. “I love you… more than that.” To speak the words is the greatest effort he has ever known, and the most valuable. He is gasping like a fish, but it is no matter, not now. “More… Athos.”
“You fool,” Athos nearly growls, and then his lips are against Aramis’s, and Aramis thinks he can taste them, sweet amidst the blood. “Waiting till a moment like this to say it,” he says, and kisses him again and again. His voice is wet and he laughs, the sound angry, sad, loving all at once. Aramis thinks he can taste the tears, too.
“You damn fool.”
On the contrary, my Athos, Aramis thinks, there could scarcely be a better time to say it. Certainly no better than this, when the feeling of Athos’s lips against his own was every bit a benediction as any final rite, any last prayer. Athos wraps him in an embrace and though Aramis can no longer feel it, he knows it for the warmth it shrouds him in, his comfort as his eyes slip shut one last time.
There is light flooding Aramis’s eyes as he slits them open, feeling as though he has been swimming dizzingly through nothingness. It is a bright light, so bright it is almost too much, and he thinks perhaps this time it is Heaven. But he discounts this notion resolutely, again, on account of the pain which pulls at his abdomen when he tries for the slightest of movements. It is not as bad as it could be, as he foggily remembers it being, but that is truly not saying much. He decides it is the second-worst he has ever felt, and he allows himself a pitiful groan at the state of it all.
“Aramis?” a voice calls, so hoarse it is barely audible. “Aramis, can you hear me?”
Aramis does not need to open his eyes to recognize who the voice belongs to, and he is grateful. His head is pounding from the light. “Mmmmm.”
“Thank God,” Athos says, and it is the closest thing to a prayer Aramis has ever heard him utter. Without warning, the cool metal of a cup finds his lips. “You need to drink.”
Aramis barely tries to lift his head so he does not choke, but even that is too much, and he falls limp into the pillows with a whimper. Then, Athos’s fingers are there, slipping behind his neck, cradling the base of his head and tipping him forward ever so slightly. This time, the movement doesn’t hurt.
“Hush, let me do all the work.”
Blessedly cool water slides down Aramis’s throat, and he drinks and drinks until Athos lays him back down again. Even after his head is cradled by the pillow once more, Athos’s hand remains, stroking back strands of dirty hair at his temple. Aramis manages to open his eyes at the soft touch, and he drinks in the sight of Athos more hungrily than he had downed the water. He takes in the circles, dark as bruises, which lurk beneath his eyes, the way his cheeks already seem more drawn and hollow than Aramis last remembered them to be.
“You look…” he begins, his voice still scratchy, his breathing still tight. “You look awful.”
“Unbelievable.” Athos drops heavily against the back of the chair he has fixed at Aramis’s bedside and rolls his eyes with a huff. “Shall I get you a mirror?”
The ghost of a smile, all he has strength for, tugs at Aramis’s chapped lips. Already, his eyes feel weighed down, anchored with lead, but he fights to keep them open, fights to take in chipped paint on the walls of the inn, the sunbeams through the shutters glistening with dust motes, Athos’s thumb tracing over his knuckles. All the things he thought he’d never see again.
Quietly, he speaks. “I thought I was dead.”
Athos drops his hand, shoots out of the chair as though Aramis has burned him. His eyes gleam with a wildness that is familiar, and after a moment Aramis recognizes it as a scarcely muted mirror of his expression the moment Aramis was first injured. “ You thought you were…”
“Athos–”
“Don’t you ever do that to me again, do you understand?” Athos bellows, his voice clipped, trembling head to toe. As quickly as it has risen, his voice drops, growing shakier by the word. “I-I couldn’t get you back on the horse. We were close enough, so I carried you here, collapsed with you onto the bed…” His eyes dart back and forth, as though he is a caged animal and the memory is his fearful master. “You were barely breathing, Aramis.”
Aramis cannot stand the hurt in Athos’s voice, and his hand twitches with the desire to reach out, but he is too weak. “I’m sorry.”
“And then you… “ Athos breaks off with a sigh, heavy and long, as though the weight of his soul is escaping through his lips. He presses his knuckle to his lips for a long moment, as if to contain it. “What do you remember? Of the last time you were conscious?”
At this, Aramis can smile, the memory flooding back to him, through him, lifting away his pain more so than could any laudanum. He feels himself grow hazy with relief. “The feel of your lips against mine.”
“And do you… you still…?”
Athos is stuttering, watching him more timidly than he has ever regarded Aramis. You perfect, perfect fool , Aramis thinks for the second time, as he watches the man’s shoulders bunch with tension. Aramis is blinking heavily, firmly at peace, before he remembers he needs to voice an answer, sometime before the man before him bursts. Aramis nearly laughs at it all.
“It’s all I’ve ever wanted,” Aramis whispers, pausing to suck in a breath, “to feel.”
It’s not a direct answer, but Athos never asked a direct question, and he hadn’t needed to. As soon as those words leave Aramis’s lips, Athos’s mouth replaces them and he cups Aramis’s cheek gently, again doing all the work to lift him a bit from the pillow, to deepen the kiss. Aramis may not be in Heaven, but he also knows this is as close as this Earth can get to it.
He catches his breath after Athos pulls away, heart stuttering at the soft smile dancing across Athos’s cheeks. “No,” Aramis descends, amending his earlier assertion, “I’d like to feel more than just that part of you on me.”
“Well, you are going to have to wait until you’ve healed for that,” Athos says, and suddenly Aramis is all too aware of his injuries, how it feels like healing is as far off a concept as the second millenia, and it is unbearable and unfair to think that he must wait even a second longer. Some of his despondency must show on his face, for Athos rolls his eyes. “Don’t even try that with me. Lord knows how you have enough energy to pull faces like that given how much blood you’ve lost.”
His tone, at first light and airy, sinks further and further as he speaks, until he finishes looking every bit as devastated as he had earlier. His gaze flicks guiltily over toward the window, where the washed bandages Aramis never noticed until now are hung out to dry, and Aramis can tell the man is imagining them as they were, soaked through with blood. Aramis’s blood. If there is anything Aramis understands, it is this.
“Athos, please,” Aramis begs, because that is all he can do. “Don’t think of that. I’m here.”
He manages to flop his hand on the coverlets, and Athos takes the invitation, curling his fingers around Aramis’s and guiding their joined hands to Aramis’s lips so he can press a kiss against Athos’s knuckles. He smiles, but there is still something there, lurking beneath it that Aramis knows well will only be banished with time, and perhaps never fully.
“Barely.”
Still, Athos’s tone is drier, lighter, more like his usual, and that is enough for now, as it seems they will have time after all to refine what this is between them and all which comes tangled up in it. The knowledge saps the last of Aramis’s strength and this time when Aramis blinks, he does not worry about forcing them open again. There will be time again for that, too.
Even so, he whispers in mock affront, “‘s a bit rude, don’t you think?”
He hears Athos laugh, feels him laugh as he leans in close to kiss Aramis’s cheek. Athos lingers there and when he speaks, his lips brush against Aramis’s skin like the soft susurrations of an insect’s wing. “Rest, Aramis. I’m here.”
“So am I,” Aramis assures him on an exhale, already feeling sleep begin to pull him under. “So am I.”