Disclaimer: The Musketeers are not mine. I'm just borrowing the concepts and characters for a little while.
Spoilers: 1.02 Sleight of Hand.
A/N: This idea literally popped into my head while working on a separate, longer tag for this episode…. I had a good time writing this and hope you have fun reading it. :o)
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"So, you are alive?"
"I think so."
— Athos & d'Artagnan, 1.02 Sleight of Hand.
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When Aramis woke up the next morning, he briefly wondered how he had come to have been trampled during the Running of the Bulls festival that his mother used to tell him about as a child. He immediately realized that thought was ridiculous because he was in France and not in Pamplona.
It took him far too long to comprehend that there were far more appropriate and realistic reasons behind the fact that moving equaled pain on this particular day.
Once his brain did engage in more sensible thought processes, he was able to recall why his body was actively rebelling against him. And if he felt this way, when he'd been slightly farther away from the explosion that they'd been caught in, then Aramis could definitely empathize with how his friends must be feeling.
Despite his empathy with and sympathy for his friends, he vowed to never admit just how long it took him to get out of bed and ready for the day. He would also never confess that his slow, careful movements had reminded him of a grandfather he just barely remembered sharing a house with when he was very young.
Through sheer determination and will-power, he strode into the garrison's courtyard as if all was right in the world. He sat next to Porthos at one of the tables and surveyed his friends.
Athos looked like death warmed over, but then again, he tended to always look like that after a night of heavy drinking. Porthos looked his usual, ready-to-take-on-the-world self.
"You too?" he asked.
His friends both began to nod before they suddenly stopped and winced. It was obvious that moving for them was just as much a Herculean effort as it was for him.
For the next half hour, they sat there hardly moving, except to breathe and talk quietly about their plans for the day. They pretty much decided that staying right where they were as long as possible was the best idea they'd ever had.
At one point, Serge placed a platter of bread and cheese on the table, and they stared at it longingly. Aramis wondered if his friends were also attempting to will the food to break itself into little pieces and jump into their mouths ready to be swallowed, or if that was just him. When the cook returned with a pitcher of ale, asking about their young friend, the three of them groaned in broken harmony.
They looked at each other, obviously coming to the same conclusion: if they were having this much trouble moving, then what about d'Artagnan?
Biting their lips in order to stifle their groans of pain, they heaved themselves up out of their seats and forced themselves to walk out of the garrison as if their muscles weren't threatening to fail them any second.
By the time they made it to the Gascon's lodgings, they were moving better, but only just. When they inquired after their young friend, Madame Bonacieux announced that d'Artagnan hadn't yet made it out of his room. She then gave them her permission to dump him out of his bed because she wasn't going to hold breakfast for him much longer.
Worried, the three of them hurried upstairs as quickly as was possible, which if he was honest wasn't all that swift or even that agile. They hoped that the younger man was not injured worse than they previously believed.
They knocked on his door, and after a long moment they heard d'Artagnan tell, who he thought was Constance, that he was not hungry. Less than a minute later they heard a muffled, yet pained groan. Ignoring propriety and manners, they entered his room without permission.
What they found would have made them laugh had it not required them to use sore muscles to do so; smiling was almost not worth the bother either.
D'Artagnan had apparently required his chamber pot at some point in the night, and in reaching for it, he had apparently awakened all of his own sore muscles. This had caused a chain reaction that had left their friend in his current predicament.
At the sight of d'Artagnan's unfortunate situation, Aramis quickly changed his mind and laughed anyway; it was very much worth the pain he'd felt.
From his decidedly awkward position on the floor, he looked forlornly up at his friends, and said with a groan, "Move… Can't… Please..."
Though he spoke only three words, each one was said in such a way as to indicate three separate sentences that somehow conveyed so much more.
They eventually took pity on him and moved to help him up.
In the end, all four of them solemnly yet eagerly vowed that they would never again speak of what happened next in that bedroom.
That didn't stop Aramis from laughing about that morning in the privacy of his own head for years to come.
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The end.
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A/N: I didn't think I could accurately describe the images I have in my head, so I decided to leave d'Artagnan's exact situation, and what happened when the three helped him, up to your imaginations. I think it works better that way…
Having not seen all the episodes yet (ep. 5 is next to air), I have no idea if Aramis's ancestry has been discussed. Given the fact that his character speaks the language, I thought it entirely plausible that his mother could be from Spain.
No beta; many apologies for lingering mistakes.
Thanks for reading!