Notes:

Soooo, I'm back. after like three months.
first up, sorry.

I literally did nothing over Christmas and have no last month has been insanely busy for me, I'm moving out of my parent's house and away away from home, I got into uni for my double degree and got an awesome tattoo. So yer I'm busy, but that seems to be the only time I can actually write anything down with a smidgin of productivity.

Anyway, here it FINALLY is

***

The noise was atrocious. A sort of volume that lost all meaning. The music, a twisted country-rock thing that would only be in a place like this. The insistent screeching, too high pitched for Athos's voice to reach his ears, even with the older man sitting on the bar stool right next to him. Athos himself, after giving up all hope of an actual convocation in this place, turned to his finger of whiskey and the bar nuts in the chipped ceramic bowl in front of him.

Porthos himself didn't care much. They where here drinking and that's about all that mattered. The bars and pubs, the drinking, It had become his new think, and probably had Athos to blame for it. No, he definite had Athos to blame for it. Athos, before, had seemed like a snobby rich kid, who never had to work for anything. And the grumpy sod never, ever smiled, ever. But even with first impressions as bad as that, he NEEDED to give his partner a chance, and that chance just happens to show up in a dingy pub with more cockroaches then liquor. He knew it was bad. But after finally connecting with his partner at his one year anniversary of being in the SIU a few months ago and himself barely getting along with the tight-lipped detective for that, He decided he needed to do something. The drinking had its merits as well and its downfalls. One being Athos talked while he drank, but the regular Monday morning hangovers had started to reflect in his work.

But tonight was not about getting to know the next best thing from his partner, or finally getting the man to smile. Tonight was about wallowing. Using whatever spirits would work to suffocate the guilt Porthos felt. It had happened on Wednesday, and being the good employee he was, he waited until Friday night to corner himself and his emotions. The case had ended badly, the suspect grabbed a hostage off the street and used them as a human shield. And Porthos had had to pull the trigger.

He downed the rest of his drink and singled the bartender to pour him another.

He didn't feel sympathy for the man, he had killed children, used their body parts for spells like some fucked up modern Frankenstein. Neither was it the first time he had seen someone die. Growing up on the streets had given him many many experiences. It was the recoil of his SIU issued pistol that had stayed in his mind. The heavy feel on the metal and that force from when the pulled the trigger. A sort of slow-motion version of blood and screams filled his senses. Because it was HIS first time killing someone that mattered since he got back in the civilian world. And suddenly seeing death from years ago as a bystander or his time in the army didn't hold the same compartmentalism as what happened on Wednesday. Death happened Porthos knew that he wasn't ignorant that there were bad people and good people in the world. But here away from landmines and dust swept wildness that was war… He honestly didn't know why it shocked him so much.

He rubbed the spot where his thumb met his palm with a horrid vigor, the memory of the pistols forced recoil engraved on his never. Athos shifted to his right and put an uncharacteristically gentle hand over his to freeze the insistent rubbing. Porthos looked up meeting Athos's pointed stare. He sighed and turned his back to the bar to scan the room and its occupancy, hoping for some kind of distraction.

He looked over through the throng of people as the door opened, the artifice light from the street lamp outside silhouetted the figure in the entrance. Porthos would normally dismiss the new member to the crowd, but as the door swung shut behind him, the figures feature came in focus and He had an odd moment of shocked disbelief before he was running. Or rather waving fast between old bearded men and cigaret stained women. He didn't think to stop and make sure that it was his old friend and not some desperate alcohol-fuelled hallucination to help him in his time of need. He just sort of ran at him and hoped for the best.

The figure, after his own shocked pause, hugged back. " Porthos," the man whispered, stunned, happy and relieved all at the same time.

***

Porthos woke with a jolt, dream melted into reality. All of his senses stung impossibly high. He could have sworn he heard his name being called, could still hear Aramis's voice echo in his bedroom. Breathing heavy, he listened and when nothing but his own labored breathing.

" Please please please," he whispered into the night, not yet ready to give up the smidgen of hope he had blindly grasped onto. He knew it was in his head, he knew it was. But just…just maybe it wasn't.

Porthos stood, making as little noise as he could, in fear of Athos waking. He silently made his way out of his room, down the hall and into Aramis's room. He stopped frozen at the door. The bed was still army issue made, no mug of tea on the nightstand, no jacked swung across the chair in the corner. Everything was so perfectly straight and neat and wasn't right. It wasn't lived in. Aramis had been neat, Porthos knew. And the younger man had always started the day neat and orderly. But by the end of it, all the room would be chaos and then Aramis would clean it all as part of his nightly ritual.

Porthos's breath had become shaky, he hadn't even noticed the way his hands shook either.

Porthos didn't really know what to do, he didn't have a plan or a solution because the world seemed to not matter. Later, if you asked him, he wouldn't be able to tell you how he made it into his Aramis's room or how he had even got home from the hospital yesterday. He sat on his best-friends blue, double bed, consumed by his own grief and completely lost to the world around him.

The memories of the park jolted from second to second and seemed to be put together in his mind like a stop-and-go animation that missed a few shots. Just a mess of colour that didn't make sense. But the sound. The noise of Aramis's breathing and how it just seemed to slow till he couldn't tell exactly when it stopped, that would never lose its clarity and Porthos knew it. He leaned forward, covering his face with his hands, dark hair fell, hanging around his face, hiding him from the oppressive light from the street-lamp shining through the blind-covered window.

Even now with the memories of the incident, he waited for the younger man to walk into his room and complain about Porthos sitting on his neat bed. The argument wouldn't last long, it never did. The half-hearted insults would turn into brotherly banter before either of them knew it. So Porthos sat and stared at the open door and waited for the old memories to repeat itself. He knew they wouldn't, they would never argue the way they always would, with horrid words that weren't ever meant and could so quickly be forgiven, they have only just fixed the break in there relationship. And now Porthos looked to where the gap between them had been and to the man who was equally as responsible for it as he, and found no-one, just as space where someone should be.

The apartment was quiet and a lonely coldness had seeped into its blue painted walls, in the few hours he had been out; and the world had changed. The walls only half filled with memories mocked him with the promise of more. They had redone the whole place when Aramis had moved in, painted the walls gotten new furniture, rearranged the kitchen. It had been fun and it made the fact his best-friend living with him permanently, actually a thing. But now the nights spent arguing about where the tv should good and the fond but slightly humiliating memory of getting high off of the blue paint now on the walls when Aramis refused to open the window because of the autumn chill, none of it seemed worth it. His eye threatened tears but he couldn't cry for the memories that would never happen or the life that would never be lived. The tears refused to fall, still frozen in shock.

Morgana had ruined it all. His life that he had put together so meticulously to suit himself and his makeshift family, to block out his misguided childhood. She had taken away Aramis and all the light in the world with him. Porthos could laugh at the injustices of the world, but he couldn't find it in himself to make a noise and destroy the horrid calmness that became his reality. The only light in the now ownerless room was the orange luminescent glow from the alarm clock on the bedside table. It told him that the sun would rise soon. It would spread its light across the city and slowly the streets would come alive. Porthos cursed it for its faultless timing. For as it rose, he would have to move, he would have to live and breathe. It would disturb the morbid peacefulness, he had trapped himself in since returning from the hospital with Athos. To move out of his ball of grief and misery would be to accept it, to make it real and Porthos knew he couldn't face that.

Porthos heard the door open fully, he didn't care who entered. He heard footsteps weighed down by the knowledge that the world would never be the same. Only then did Porthos look up, to meet the sorrowful face of Athos. Athos knew when he needed comfort, knew when he was welcome or not, that was where Athos had differed from Aramis. Aramis always made himself welcome even if you didn't want him there in the first place.

Athos came over to the bed, he paused by the bed waiting for permission to enter the tangled mess of misery the Porthos had built around himself. With a still nod, Athos sat down on his brother's bed, close enough for their arms to touch but not close enough to be crowding or imposing. Porthos turned to meet the ever composed man beside him, he opened his mouth to utter words he didn't want to believe. But no words seemed to be able to get past the lump in his throat, it sat lodged there, refusing to budge.

Before Porthos could find his voice, Athos spoke,
" I know," small and quiet. The words echoed inside Porthos's head. His dark eye reached for some kind of hope in his friend's vibrant blue ones.

The words made it real. Made it solid and sat at the bottom of Porthos's chest. They cut into his heart with a pain he didn't think possible. The tears that had threatened all night but had refused to fall, started flowing down his cheeks like a waterfall. Porthos pulled his friend in close, the embrace was messy but Porthos was lost to the world as he drowned in his own tears. The broken man clung to his friend in a desperate attempt to find a slither of hope in the world. Athos however, couldn't explain why Aramis was dead. He couldn't give him reassurance that everything was going to be okay, because it wasn't, not for both of them.

" I know," Athos whispered to the room, knowing that Porthos couldn't hear his words; too choked up in his own sobs to register them. The world had changed and they both knew it would never hold the same light as it did yesterday.

Notes:

Thanks for reading.

No promises for when the next chapter will be up, but the one after it has been written so it Will happen.

Hope you enjoyed. :)