Bubbles
Summary: D'Artagnan attempts to give Raoul a bath. Said child wants none of it. From the 'Bitter to Sweet' universe.
Warnings: Mild slash at the end between Athos and D'Artagnan. Other than that, fluff during bath-time.
Disclaimer: The Three Musketeers and its characters rightfully belong to Alexandre Dumas. I'm just a serial borrower.
Raoul squirmed and whined as he was carried up to the bathroom, but D'Artagnan held him fast in a firm, if somewhat slippery, and muddy grip.
"Don't complain," D'Artagnan told him. "You know better."
Raoul would have begged to differ, but he was only two years old after all. And boys that young just did not understand the necessity of cleanliness. Some boys five times his age and even ten times his age still didn't. But one simply couldn't spend their day covered in mud. And knowing Athos he likely wouldn't have let the boy play outside at all after a rainstorm, but D'Artagnan had been generous and perhaps a little naïve to trust a two-year old to abide by his wishes. He didn't mind the consequences. And he had wanted the house quiet for his mother's stay so she could rest from her journey from their old home in Gascony. It gave him about an hour before he decided the boy couldn't get any more dirty.
Raoul started to whine again, and louder.
D'Artagnan shushed him as they climbed the stairs. "You don't want to wake up your grandmother, do you?"
"Want go play," the boy complained. "No bath!"
"You, little fish, are covered in mud. You know what happens when you get dirty. And your Papa will be back from the fields soon. We don't want him finding you covered from head to toe, do we?"
Raoul squirmed again anyway, fully intent on not enjoying said bath no matter what.
But soon enough Raoul was doing just that, and seemingly enjoying himself with his wooden duck floating among the bubbles of soap. He grabbed at the bubbles with his hands, trying to pop them. Some of the smaller ones disappeared, but the bigger ones weren't so easy to defeat. He tried slapping them gone with his hands, and when that didn't seem to work fast enough, he threw the duck at them in the water, laughing and making babbling noises.
D'Artagnan handed the caked clothes over to Planchet and returned to scrub the rest of the wet earth from his boy. Raoul didn't protest until it came time to wash the mud out of his hair. By this point D'Artagnan was well versed in Raoul's protests and knew how to turn bath-time into a successful endeavor. Athos had gone through plenty on his own to happily turn the reigns over to D'Artagnan. He hadn't quite believed Athos when he said that there was more bathwater on the floor at the end of it all rather than on the boy, but it didn't take him long to find that out either. It didn't help that D'Artagnan encouraged Raoul's splashing and playing in the wooden tub, but a change of clothes was a small price to pay for a clean and happy little boy.
"Alright, time to get out, little fish."
D'Artagnan picked him up under the arms and lifted him out of the tug, dripping in bathwater and some lingering soapsuds. Before he could grab a towel to dry the boy off, Raoul jumped out of his reach and dashed across the room behind the tub, knowing what was coming next.
D'Artagnan took a breath, and spoke calmly. "Raoul, come over here."
Raoul shook his head back and forth, a smile threatening to break out on his face and mischief in his eyes.
D'Artagnan stood up and got closer to the tub. He knew he couldn't reach across with any hopes to grab the boy, so he had no choice other than to go right or left. In the end it didn't matter which way he chose. Once Raoul had learned how to run, he had the legs of a full-grown horse under him with how fast he could get from one side of the room to another. It was comical watching Athos try to keep up with his son, their son. But D'Artagnan no longer laughed at Athos' expense, not when he had been forced many a time to try and catch the little boy on his own…and often with Athos and his smirking as his audience.
This time he mercifully had no audience as he attempted and failed to snatch Raoul. The boy took off, stark naked, out the door and down the hallway. D'Artagnan tried to sprint after the little scamp but wound up slipping on the wet floor and falling face first in a tangle of his own limbs and promising bruises. He groaned and tried to get up but found himself in a large slippery soapy puddle of bathwater. He was lucky he didn't wind up with a broken nose, but all his mind was preoccupied with was getting up and getting to Raoul before he reached-
Skirts filled his vision as he picked his head up from the floor. He followed them up, craning his neck to see and found his mother with a squirming Raoul under one arm, the other placed on her hip, and an amused expression on her face. "Lose something, my son?"
D'Artagnan cleared his throat and sat up before getting on his own two feet, and carefully. "What are you doing up, mother," he asked, sheepishly.
"I believe the better question would be what were you doing on the floor?"
D'Artagnan blushed and couldn't really come up with an intelligent-sounding answer.
Wordlessly, Joanna reached around her son for a towel and together they dried their still dripping Raoul. That was how Athos found them when he returned, D'Artagnan's mother with Raoul wrapped snug in a towel and D'Artagnan…Athos raised an eyebrow at his lover's appearance, but after a moment's thought he instantly understood the chain of events that led to his muddy, wet, and soapy attire. Instead of commenting on the obvious, Athos initially chose a neutral approach. "It would seem all our afternoons have been eventful."
Raoul turned in Joanna's arms and tried but failed to get himself free from the evil fluffy towel. "Papa-bubbles!"
Athos smiled and placed a kiss on top of Raoul's clean head. "I can see that. But how did they get on your godfather's clothes? Did he fight a losing battle?"
D'Artagnan glared at Athos who dared to openly smirk in his direction. It certainly wasn't the first time he had wound up having to change his clothes after giving Raoul a bath, but it was the first time Athos had seen him so disheveled. Having his mother see him like this was bad enough, but Athos was the icing on the cake. He could feel his cheeks burning, but he avoided any direct eye contact in efforts to get it under control.
"It would seem both our boys need cleaning up," Joanna said to Athos as she passed him. "I will see Raoul into cleaner clothes if you would be so kind as to see to my son's attire?"
"Consider it done, Madame."
She turned to correct Athos but shook her head at the look in his eyes, knowing the man was deaf to anyone and anything else as he took a step closer to her son. With just one hand on the side of his face, her son's eyes brightened. The defiance was still there at the earlier teasing, but the flush at his cheeks deepened with a different meaning as she turned away and closed the door to the washroom behind her.
"No clothes," Raoul exclaimed, shaking his head and putting up his best fight at trying to get free and out of his grandmother's arms.
Joanna had to bite her lip to keep from laughing out loud. "You, little one," she whispered. "Have no excuse."