WARNING: This particular story might need to be rated a bit higher than PG for married sex

Summary: My extended version of that tender little reunion in S3:E1.

How many time's did she have to tell them she was neither their mother nor the maid. Constance huffed a sigh as she trundled down the stairs, tempted to gang press the next tall man passing the garrison to help her hoist the boots, with the gloves tucked inside, somewhere just out of reach of the owner.

Weary and exasperated, she pushed open the next door.

Armor? Who in the garrison wore metal armor? Puzzled, her gaze shifted to the set of stairs going up, and encountered a jacket, the sleeves still tucked inside a familiar pair of vambraces.

Her feet stopped of their own accord. The collected gloves dropped from suddenly numb fingers, the boots fell with a dull thud and she was mounting the stairs rapidly, trepidation and anticipation making her heart flutter madly in her chest. She had to pause at the next door for just a moment before pushing it open.

She did not rush madly through, she could not. If he was home ... if he was home ... sweet, holy mother, what would he think? Would he find her so changed he did not want her anymore? She'd known him for two years, been married to him for a month, but she was much changed from the cloth merchant's wife he'd married. The lady-in-waiting to the queen who'd worn pretty dresses and smelled nice. Good God, she smelled of butchered meat and scallions and hadn't bathed since yesterday.

The ten feet to their chamber door was the longest she'd trod in her entire life. Her gloved hand around the edge of the door, as she opened it wider, was the only thing grounding her feet to the floor. "d'Artagnan." Her throat closed around the whisper of sound.

Time stopped - she did not know for how long, nor did she care - as her avid gaze swept the striking profile that had captured her inconstant heart the moment he'd walked through her door looking for a room to rent. He stood before the window, in the flesh, and with a lot of it on display since only a pair of drawers hung from his lean hips, the light lovingly limning him like a Madonna's halo. She counted fingers and toes in those breathless suspended moments, saw he had two perfectly good eyes, legs in good working order, two arms still, and the proper parts springing to attention as that profile turned toward her.

She saw his lips shape words but she did not hear them, she was too busy thanking a benevolent God for returning the handsome man she'd watched ride off to war four years ago. Shallow it might be, but she was grateful he had not returned maimed and broken as many of the soldiers she'd seen already returned to Paris.

"Did you miss me?"

Constance blinked. Her husband of two months and four years was standing in her bed chamber, his hair wet, a towel in his hands, looking as if he'd never been gone.

The sound came to her belatedly, like an echo - did you miss me? It curved her lips and set her feet in motion. She was across the room and in his arms before she could formulate words.

And then their lips met and she was a wife again and her feet were off the floor and they were laughing together, their hands everywhere at once as they fell onto the bed, heedless of the open doors and half-full garrison.

"You have too many clothes on," d'Artagnan grunted, naked himself, having miraculously shed his drawers as they'd tumbled to the mattress. "What are you wearing anyway?"

"My work clothes," she mumbled, sucking in a deep breath in order to undo the wide belt closing the leather jacket belted over the split skirt and bodice she wore for work. It landed on the floor, the jacket on top of it and Constance found herself face down on the mattress, d'Artagnan's nimble fingers loosening the laces of her outer corset. She squirmed enough to free her face from the mattress. "Why didn't you let us know you were coming? How long are you here for? Surely the war isn't over, we would have heard."

"There was no opportunity to send ahead. I don't know. And no, the war is not over." In those three short sentences, d'Artagnan had her divested of all five layers of clothing and they were body to body, flesh to flesh. "Don't talk, just listen," he whispered, framing her face with his callused palms.

A door slammed, though neither of them heard it. Constance's hands came up to touch his face as well and d'Artagnan leaned to kiss away the tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. "God, I missed you."

Constance locked her hands around his wrists, lifting herself off the mattress to seal her lips to his and they exploded in a ball of fire. Their joining was a fast, furious affair, all tangled limbs, frenzied hands and hot bodies. It was over almost before they realized it, the fireworks so intense and brilliant, they lay entwined beneath that first rain of sparks panting.

Don't talk; just listen.

As breath returned, Constance let her hands begin the next conversation. d'Artagnan though, took it over masterfully, and oh his hands spoke eloquently, shaping her body over and over again, scattering pins as they combed through her hair, gliding over sensitive skin, touching those secret places with a tenderness so breathtaking she was sliding over the edge into madness long before her husband joined her in the delirium of insanity.

She was wild thing, no longer the worshipped but a worshiper herself, unable to get close enough, unable to hold him tight enough, her legs clamped around his waist as he came into her, the ride to the little death so sharp and intense and glorious, they were both panting again as they drifted back to earth.

And then he was tasting her, mapping those same places with lips and tongue in a long, slow, dreamy manifesto of silent wonder and praise, his breath a soliloquy of sighs and moans unremembered from their brief foray into married life together. She heard how he had missed her in the reverence of those sword-callused fingers, listened to the ardent voiceless articulation of the love he had stored up over four long years, harkened to the impatience with which he had yearned to return to her.

Without a single word, they shared the longing of four long, infinitely lonely years, the anguish of separation, the pain of losses they had been unable to share.

He fell asleep in her arms, those long, lean, limber limbs slackening as sleep stole in as silently as their love making. On a long, deep, replete sign, d'Artagnan succumbed.

Before she could ask him if he was alone. Before she could ask if Athos and Porthos were with him. If Tréville knew he was in Paris. If he could stay for a few days. Ohhhhhhhhhhh ... if only he could stay for a few days at least.

She would beg if necessary, Minister Tréville was not a hardhearted man, though he was currently a very harassed one. Governor Feron was growing bolder by the day, ostensibly advising the king, while making a laughing stock of him behind his back. Constance had thought Rochefort conscienceless but at least the man had had an excuse; torture had a way of eating away a man's soul. Feron had been born without conscience or soul.

Constance lay for a long time, her head on her husband's warm chest, an arm around the lean middle, her hand tucked under his side as if she could hold him here in their bed forever. As if tomorrow would not see him back on a horse, riding away again.

Surely he had done more than his part already? Send Marcheaux and his crew to the front lines for a change; bring home what was left of the Musketeers. Let the Spanish give the Red Guard a chance to distinguish themselves in service for their king and country.

It would not do to let d'Artagnan see her anger, he had enough on his plate without having to worry about a shrewish wife at home, but it was not fair that Marcheaux and his ilk languished here in Paris in relative comfort and safety while far better men sacrificed their lives to hold back the Spanish invasion.

Her hand, of its own volition, freed itself and began to stroke over the solid expanse of chest, feather light so as not to wake him, but her fingers took a tour of their own. She had seen a young man off to war, a beanpole of a youth not yet grown into the full measure of his body. The man who had come home to her was broader in the shoulders, his chest deeper and as sculpted as those palace statues she'd admired so often. There was not an ounce of extra flesh on him, yet he was no longer the skinny boy she'd waved off to war. Now every warm, flat surface of skin rippled and flexed with hard muscle, his arms might have been carved out Damascus steel, even the pulsing blue veins on the backs of his hands were mesmerizing.

She nuzzled her nose into his neck, inhaling the clean, soapy scent of him, trying to memorize it against the lonely nights to come and his arm came around her again, one of those warm hands pressing her head back down on his chest where the strong, steady beat of his heart echoed her own.

In the frenzy of their initial love making, her hands had wandered over his body too, but the sensory input had been so elevated, her fingertips had failed to note the raised ridges and valleys of scars both old and new. She explored them now, carefully, but curiously. Here, across his left shoulder, her fingers outlined a ridge of scar tissue. Down over his left side, she met a series of furrows, at least three side by side.

Very carefully she worked the sheet down he'd drawn over them against the cool in the aftermath of ecstasy. Moonlight gilded the long, lean length of him and she caught her breath at the magnificent sculpturing of legs and thighs, the quiescent beauty of his stillness in sleep. She hoped the essence of the boy she had married was still there, inside this new, strikingly handsome creature the war had returned to her.

She tallied a thin red line scoring his right ankle, and what had probably been a saber slash that was still a lurid purple mark across his right flank. He half turned toward her, murmuring I missed you, as he nestled her head under his chin, one arm wrapping around her as if to return the favor of holding on forever.

Her hand slipped over his shoulder. And stilled instantly. The marks beneath the pads of her fingers were barely noticeable, but they were chartable still, if one knew the legend of the map. Some time ago - likely early in his deployment - her husband had been flogged. The scars of it were old and textured, hidden beneath skin toughed by the elements, but she could feel the weal's still, the shallow valley's between them, though it was unlikely anyone else would notice, even if they saw him shirtless. The surface was a long sweep of smooth skin beneath her questing palms.

A hand came up to bracelet her wrist, drawing her hand back down over his shoulder with authoritative gentleness. Her fingers curled in his, hesitantly at first, then with sympathetic resolution as warm lips caressed her knuckles.

"What happened?" she whispered against the lips that had moved from her knuckles to her check and then to her lips, unable to rid her voice of an anguish that was both useless and clearly undesirable on her husband's part.

She felt the stillness in him, a vastly different motionlessness than the peacefulness of sleep she had only moments ago been admiring. She felt his sigh, too, though he give it neither breath nor sound.

Instead of answering, he kissed her again, a long, slow, deep kiss, and lifted her over him, burying himself and his secrets inside her with a deftness she'd often dreamt about during his long absence. And loved her so thoroughly she knew he thought he had erased all thought.

She knew better than to ask a second time, her war hero had gently, but very firmly, closed that door. He kissed her again, chastely on the forehead, and whether purposely or thoughtlessly, turned over, buried his face in the pillow and slept once more.