Of Chickens and Sunflowers
Summary: D'Artagnan lies on his back, Constance's head pillowed on his chest, and tells her about a place that Constance wouldn't mind living in. Post 1.07.
Disclaimer: The Musketeers belongs to the BBC and its respective owners. I just wrote this for fun with no copyright infringement intended.
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Its still light; the sun comes through the window of D'Artagnan's room and makes everything bright and beautiful. D'Artagnan is warm and soft, a fine dusting of dark hairs on his chest. They tickle Constance's cheek. She looks up through half-closed eyes, watches the way the light bounces off her lodger's body. Her lover's body.
She looks back upon their first meeting, all those weeks ago. Did she know when he had kissed her that this was how they would end up, a tangled heap in his narrow bed? Would she have done anything to stop it, if she had?
"What are you thinking about?" D'Artagnan sounds tired, sleepy. Worn out, she thinks with a smile.
"Nothing."
"Liar." D'Artagnan's fingers slide along her bare arm. They're callous and rough, too much time with a musket in sword in his hand. She prefers them to her husband's hands, which are as soft and dainty as hers. Hardworking hands, to be sure, but in a different way. "You're always thinking about something."
Constance snuggles against his chest. "Is it wrong, that I feel no guilt about this?"
"Do you want to feel guilt?"
"I feel like I should. You aren't my husband."
"You're not my wife."
"We aren't married."
"I meant what I said, earlier." D'Artagnan's voice is so quiet that Constance is worried that she's imagined it.
"Men always say things like that when desire warms their blood."
"Since when did you become an expert on men?" D'Artagnan kisses her temple, leans to kiss her mouth. "I don't want you to be an expert on other men. Just this man. And I did mean it." He stares at her with those big brown eyes, so young and serious. Why shouldn't I list all the ways I love you? Constance can't help but smile a little, at his easy admission. That's D'Artagnan all over, not seeing the wrong in listing all the ways he loves another man's wife, or seeing it and not caring. She's sure that there's a Commandment or three that they've broken; how can she go to church and hold her head up now?
"We could go away, if you wish." D'Artagnan says, his words sucked into the ceiling. "My farm, in Gascony. Pack a bag, take the cart, or go on horseback with nothing but the clothes on our backs. Its peaceful there, quiet. No-one would bother us."
"I've never been to Gascony before."
"Its beautiful. Boring, but beautiful. There's a distillery on the other side of my village that makes the most perfect brandy; when I was a boy I stole a bottle and drank so much I thought I would go blind."
Constance smiles. She tries to imagine D'Artagnan as a boy but can't. When she closes her eyes and thinks about him as a child, she doesn't see it. She just sees him as he is now. "I would have liked to have known you as a boy."
D'Artagnan laughs. "You should be careful what you wish for, you know. I was always running, jumping, sword-fighting with the other children. I beat them all, even the ones older and bigger than me. My mother despaired, I am sure."
Constance feels him stiffen when he talks about his mother. He's never mentioned her before and more than anything she wants to ask but it feels wrong, somehow, to ask him about something he has not offered freely. He shakes a little, she can feel the muscles in his chest and arm tremble, but then its gone as soon as its there and he's talking again.
"My farm's in a valley, greenery and grass everywhere. We had chickens and cows, my father would churn butter to sell. Crops too, onions and potatoes, beans, maybe even some fruit. There's a stream that runs at the back of our house, water so clear you can see right to the bottom. When you cup your hands and drink its like tasting the sweetest, clearest nectar. The sunlight comes through the kitchen window in the morning and you can see the whole valley, it warms the sink by the window and its like looking onto heaven. There was a field, about half a mile from my house. In the summer they would grow sunflowers and all you could see was yellow. It was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen."
"You must miss it."
"Sometimes." D'Artagnan shifts on the bed beside her, his flesh warm and inviting against hers. "I miss the fresh air, the smell of summer. I miss the first frost of winter, the way it sounds beneath my boots." He swallows, his throat trembling a little. "I miss my mother. And my father. We didn't have much, but they made it beautiful." He pulls her closer, kisses her deeply. "I'll take you there one day, if you wish. We can stay in the farmhouse and eat eggs that are still warm, drink fresh milk every day."
Constance laughs. "I would love to see you try and catch and chicken or milk a cow."
D'Artagnan's hands slide over her stomach, down further, beneath the sheets. "These hands are very talented, or hadn't you noticed?"
"You think awfully highly of yourself." Constance half-laughs, half-moans when he kisses her, words soon forgotten.
Her husband comes home sooner than either of them expect. Constance leaps out of D'Artagnan's bed as though its on fire, ignores the flash of hurt in his eyes when she dresses and races downstairs to greet Bonacieux. Her husband doesn't try to kiss her and for that she's glad, sure that he would smell D'Artagnan on her if he did, see the stubble burn that grazes her cheek. He frowns when she comes into the kitchen.
"You look flushed, are you ill?"
"No, I am well." She shakes her head, grips the counter to steady herself, her eyes wide with horror when she sees the mess they have left, the spilled fruit and vegetables on the floor, a shattered bowl, D'Artagnan's pistol, there on the table. Her husband hasn't noticed, too engrossed in his bolts of cloth and Constance gets the sudden urge to hit him. Would it be so difficult for you to notice the chaos in your home, your wife's flushed cheeks? Would it be so difficult for you to open your eyes and see me as the woman that I am?
She moves to the table by the window and begins to clean up, tucks the pistol into the pocket on her dress before Bonacieux has noticed. As she looks outside she sighs and sees a world so different from Paris and its slums and poverty. She sees gently rolling hills of lush green grass and rich brown soils, blue skies as far as the eye can see. She sees that field of sunflowers, sees some of them in a vase on a worn kitchen table that he would bring home for her every day. She sees him chasing a chicken around their back yard while she stands in the kitchen and laughs. She sees a little girl and a little boy with their father's dark hair and eyes. She sees happiness, more happiness than she ever thought possible. It is so sweet and wonderful and above all, so real that she swears she could reach out and touch it, if she just concentrated a little harder.
The front door opens and footsteps sound in the corridor; D'Artagnan appears with a bag of fruit in his hand, an apple in his hand, half-eaten. Where did he get those? How did he get outside? "Monsieur Bonacieux. Madame."
"Your rent is late." Bonacieux does not glance up when he addresses D'Artagnan.
"Forgive me, Monsieur." D'Artagnan says. "I have had no income from my farm these past few months."
"And still no commission from the Musketeers?"
D'Artagnan's jaw goes tight and still and he sets the fruit upon the table. "Not yet."
"You misplaced your pistol, sir." Constance presses the musket into D'Artagnan's hand. "You'll need it, I expect."
"You have my thanks, Madame."
D'Artagnan smiles and Constance's dream melts away. We could go to Gascony, back to the farm, but what would we do? He might have come to Paris as a farmboy, but a farmboy he is no longer. He might miss his farm, but he will not go back there, not for years and years, maybe alive, as an old man, maybe dead, another corpse to lie beside the rest of his family. Right now he is young and alive and he belongs here, in Paris, with a sword in his hand and a musket at his side. He belongs with the Musketeers, and Musketeers do not run away, not from danger or from the husbands of the women they're in love with.
She meets D'Artagnan's gaze, sees the softness in his eyes. I cannot give him up, she thinks. I cannot and I will not, but I cannot stay like this, either.
She finds him the next day, sharpening his sword in their small yard, long smooth strokes. He puts the blade away as soon as he sees her, smiles that smile he has, his eyes soft and warm and inviting.
"Did you mean what you said, the other day?"
Something flares in D'Artagnan's eyes, fire and passion and love, always love. "Always." He reaches for her hand, squeezes. "A marriage without love is no marriage, Constance."
He is right. Despite everything, even if he did not mean what he said to me when he told me that he would try to help me get a divorce, if it was what I wanted, he's right. A marriage without love is no marriage.
She turns her head back to the house, her house. Her husband's house. She laughs a little. "I've never liked this house, right from the moment Bonacieux carried me across the threshold. The only room I ever liked was yours."
"Do you want me to come with you?"
"No." Constance shakes her head. "No, this is something that I need to do alone."
She squares her shoulders and walks towards the house. She is not long; why drag out something painful? She leaves Bonacieux in stunned silence, his mouth flapping open like a fish pulled from the sea by a net. She pulls the door shut behind her and smiles when the sun hits her face. Today is a new day, and I am free.
D'Artagnan waits for her outside her house and they walk together. Where will she go? How will she live? Constance doesn't know. Soon, perhaps sooner than she thinks, she will think about those things, worry about how she will support herself, take care of herself. But for now, the day is clear and bright and she is happy.
"What are you thinking about?" D'Artagnan smiles at her and her heart skips a beat, like she'd read about in poetry books.
"Nothing."
"Liar. You're always thinking about something."
Constance smiles, and takes his arm. "Maybe I'd like to see your farm after all."