Work Text:
{kiss! the word is sweet}
The kiss on the balcony is not the first. There is a moment in the garden, a moment when her duenna has turned away and Christian is half shadowed, the light through the arbor dappling his face—he falls silent abruptly, suddenly looking to her with a gaze so open, vulnerable, that it steals her breath.
You are beautiful, he says, as though so blunted a line is a truth he has only just discovered, as though it is the only poetry worthy of speaking. It is nothing she has not heard from de Guiche, from Valvert, from every scribbler in the Academy, and yet—she has never heard it said that way, stripped down to the bones, half-awed and love-heavy. And Roxane—Roxane thinks—
His mouth is sweet, parting a little in a hitched breath when she presses her lips to his. By the time her duenna has turned back, they will have parted, Christian blushing, his poetry having abandoned him.
Roxane does not much mind.
.
{your hand to kiss}
Sometimes, Christian can see the stars through the haze of smoke left by gunpowder and greasy cooking fires. They are somehow different over Arras than in Picardy—the stars, that is, not the fires. They seem yellowed instead of silver, sickly rather than brilliant. They make him strangely melancholy, longing for those he might never see again—his mother, his father, his sisters, Roxane.
Especially Roxane.
Sometimes Cyrano joins him—thinner every day and insisting he is not hungry, feeding himself on de Guiche’s outrage and the slim volume of Descartes that he secreted in his pack. Christian cannot help but admire him this way, still silver, uncompromising and steady when even the stars have gone strange.
Can you read my future, Master Astrologer? Cyrano sometimes asks, his eyes soft to show he is in jest. Christian always lies extravagantly, tells him he will live a hundred years, with twenty children and a fat wife, and fame enough to rival Corneille—or no, perhaps he will journey to the Indies, and make a fortune in spices only to return and snub those who disdained him—or perhaps—
And Cyrano always laughs, long and loud, and it is easy to imagine him laughing at Death that way—Cyrano whose white plume never dirties, never droops; Cyrano who writes poetry even under siege, and quotes Socrates at starving men, and claps Christian on the shoulder with his big, warm hand. Cyrano who always laughs, and Christian laughs with him.
Except one night when Christian can find no stars, and the shadows beneath Cyrano’s eyes have been deepening for weeks. He does not ask Christian for his future then, merely gazes upward, listless.
What future can there be for you or I, Cyrano says, though Christian does not ask. Let me tell you a secret, my friend, no man ever truly leaves the battlefield.
And Christian—Christian is so gripped by the misguided, desperate wrongness of this that he seizes Cyrano’s hand and brings it to his lips violently, as though to kiss a ring Cyrano does not have, as though to pledge himself to this foolish gascon with his Socrates and his swordplay.
(and if Christian lingers too long, feeling Cyrano’s roughened knuckles at his lips and the rabbit-pulse at Cyrano’s wrist, that is no one’s concern)
You are not of the battlefield, he says, so fiercely that Cyrano stares. You were never of the battlefield. The stars that guide us through this night are not a part of the darkness. So thus are you.
Cyrano does not reply. Nor does he take his hand from Christian’s, not for a long time after.
.
{she kisses the words I spoke}
After Arras, Christian tells her the truth. Of course Christian tells her the truth, because Christian is fine, and good, and brave, even if his voice shakes when he says, Our union was never consummated, should you—should you wish an annulment…
No, she tells him. Je suis ta femme. I am your wife.
(Christian is fine and good and brave and handsome, and he loves Roxane—there is poetry enough in the way he touches her, his eyes speaking volumes such that she doubts ever reaching the end of his love. Roxane knows women who settled for half so much and considered themselves fortunate.
It is easy to love him, and she does.)
But sometimes—only on the very rarest of occasions, mind you—Roxane finds herself watching her cousin.
He is the Hero of Arras now, yet he still stalks through Paris, nose before him and white plume above him, making enemies and verses in the same breath. He is somewhat slower on his feet, limping from the musketball to his leg, but his fury and his wit are untouched. Roxane delights in his stories, which he comes once a week to relate to her—his scathing satire of the soft, ribboned popinjays that make up the court, the subsequent duels for their honor.
Once she brings him a list of gentlemen known for being ungallant with the précieuses, tells him, Were I a man, they should be my enemies, and I should strike them down like dogs.
His smile at that is brilliant that she thinks she can see the soul in him, the one of his letters. Dearest cousin, I have called your enemies my enemies since they were armies of phantom and shadow on the riverbank of childhood. I shall cut a reed for my sword, and fight them all.
Once, she shows him her own verses, written under the pseudonym ‘Olimpica.’ What does your poet-husband say? Cyrano asks, bitterness touching his mouth. Surely he is more equipped than I to be your editor, having won you.
And Roxane almost tells him then; says, I know if was you beneath my balcony, your words that came to me from the battlefield, in letters that smelled of gunpowder even in my hand. I know it is you who won me, I know your love cries out, I know—
Can she be blamed for confusing them, this one soul in two bodies? For it is easy to love Christian, with his beauty and untaught graces, the innocence he wears like white mantle—but Cyrano has won her, Cyrano who is vicious as she is vicious, proud as she is proud, who wears his finery within and spills it out only in words, words enough to shake the firmament. But even now, even here, it does not feel like loving different men—
(Oh.)
Cyrano still waits for her answer.
Instead, she kisses his forehead as she did as a girl in short skirts, playing at mother in Bergerac. Though all that time ago Cyrano’s eyes had not fluttered shut, an expression of pained longing passing quickly across his face—he had not sighed a little, nor his body swayed toward hers like a flower’s seeking the sun.
And Roxane—Roxane had not lingered there, breathing him in and search about wildly for words which were not I love you I love you I love you.
You tremble, Baronness, Cyrano says quietly.
I tremble, cousin, she returns, her voice almost-breaking. Yes, I do tremble.
(Je suis ta femme, she tells Christian that night, feeling lighter than she can recall, and yet somehow full, whole. Et je suis votre femme.
And slowly, Christian smiles.)
.
{I ask but one thing more}
Were this a poem, Cyrano would say that the morning light slanted on their hair, transmuting it to gold more precious than gold, each strand worth kingdoms in the eye of its beholder. (Though its beholder is somewhat partisan, it must be said.) He would say that his lady looked like Ophelia, pale and wreathed in the flowers embroidered on her pillow; that his lord was fair and sad as Adonis, dying in Venus’s arms and rising with her morning star.
But instead Roxane has her nose pressed up against Cyrano’s shoulder, her breath hot and damp against his skin; Christian has his arm draped over them both, his elbow digging sharply into Cyrano’s chest. Cyrano was not awakened by beauty, but his old wounds aching anew—most likely they will have rain later. (Arras always returns to him when it is about to rain.)
And yet—this is sweeter than any verse. To have his lovers heavy against him, bodies of flesh and sweat instead of insubstantial gauze, or dreams that vanish at the waking. Ophelia is cold, a creature of ink and riverwater; Adonis is marble, cannot laugh. Cyrano is not so foolish to wish them here in Christian and Roxane’s stead—better elbows and Roxane’s cold feet, better the ache of his scars, better the clumsy earnestness of the night before, and anticipation of all the nights to come.
He steals a kiss to the crown of Roxane’s head, then Christian’s bared shoulder—it still feels illicit, to touch them thus, with all their golden beauty in the Beast’s rank bed. But it seems the world is full of strangeness that poetry will not hold, and morning has broken.
There will be rain later, Cyrano murmurs, and waits for his lovers to wake.