With special thanks to CreepingMuse, who is simultaneously the most wise and entertaining beta in the history of fic, not to mention an enabler of the highest order.

If all I am allowed is your echo

Did d'Artagnan stroll patiently away, satisfied with the victory? God forbid Aramis be so lucky.

"So, shall we begin?" d'Artagnan prodded.

Aramis hung his hat on the stand beside his cabinet. "Tomorrow. It's been a long day, dragging you around. Give a man a chance to recover."

But d'Artagnan wouldn't budge from the doorway. "Don't put me off, Aramis. Please."

Aramis folded his arms, studying him. Just this side of adulthood and so promising. Aramis couldn't help but be moved by d'Artagnan's struggle. To beg another to reach out to his beloved on his behalf would indeed be agony for such a man of often impulsive action.

Perhaps tomorrow was too much to ask, especially of one so ill-suited to waiting.

"Come in then," Aramis conceded with a gentle sigh.

"Thank you," d'Artagnan said, lurching into the room. He didn't sit in the desk chair but, with no other seating save the bed, instead perched like a crane in the middle of the floor.

First things first. If d'Artagnan refused him even five private minutes to settle himself, Aramis would simply do it under his hawkish eye. Never too exhausted to tease, he hung his cape with slow precision in the cabinet, then unbuckled his scabbard, rifle belt, and gunpowder purse and laid them carefully in his trunk. Only after he draped his leather coat on a stand did he lower himself into his chair in front of the heavy old table he had long ago claimed as his desk.

He lay some clean paper in the space before him, smoothing it only to prolong d'Artagnan's mounting discomfort, then finally dipped his quill in ink.

"Assure her of my passionate devotion," d'Artagnan blurted then, as if Aramis were some sort of assisting scribe.

Aramis dropped the quill back into his inkwell. "Nothing more from you, or I won't allow you to stay."

"But -"

"My way or not at all. Are we agreed?"

Met with silence, Aramis twisted to peer at him. D'Artagnan rolled his eyes but pumped a nod, deliberately sealing his lips against any further argument.

Aramis turned again to the waiting page. What would sway brave, willful Constance? What would intrigue her enough not to burn the letter at first sight?

She wasn't wrong, that much was certain. Although Aramis had certainly been known to commit infidelity when offered by a willing, intriguing partner, still he appreciated the notion of marriage. He admired the romance of pledging oneself to another, of staking one's honor on another's protection. It felt rather like the vows he made years ago to the Musketeers. If Constance was determined to preserve her marriage, then turning her handsome young boarder away demonstrated a degree of resolve he had to applaud.

And with that, he knew just how to begin their siege. "You are right, Madame Bonacieux," Aramis recited as he scratched the words into the paper, "to prevent my return."

"What? No!" d'Artagnan erupted.

"Honestly?" Aramis shot back.

D'Artagnan raised his hands in reluctant surrender.

"Better." Aramis continued, reciting as he wrote. "I would bear the torment of your absence a thousand times over to protect your good name. I would sail away across the western ocean, never to be heard from again, only to assure your peace."

"This is not strictly what I had in mind," d'Artagnan muttered under his breath.

"And so," Aramis intoned over d'Artagnan's complaint, "I brush lonely fingertips across my mouth, where yours first yielded to my inquiry."

"Oh," d'Artagnan whispered in quiet surprise.

Now, that was closer to the response Aramis felt he deserved. He continued: "My lungs tighten at the memory of your warm palms upon my chest."

His bed finally squealed under d'Artagnan's weight.

"I do not sleep, for even as I am lulled by memories of your curls tangled about my fingers, fevered dreams of your breasts beneath my lips urge me awake."

At d'Artagnan's stuttering inhalation, Aramis spun to face him, his lips spreading in a wide grin. "Not strictly what you had in mind?" he teased.

"Go on, go on," d'Artagnan hurried.

"I am tortured, haunted," Aramis obliged, laughing lightly, "but I do not bemoan your ghost. If all I am allowed is your echo, still I embrace my good fortune."

"Oh, that's good."

"And in that joy again tonight, as your ghost's diaphanous fingers encircle me, I will spend all my bliss in you."

D'Artagnan gasped. "Did you just…? Fingers encircle… spend? Aramis, you can't."

"And yet I did."

"But you imply -"

Aramis interrupted him then, standing to face an unsettled d'Artagnan. "Oh, I do indeed. And is it not true? Look at you. Your cheeks are ruddy. Sweat slicks your hairline. After you leave my room, will you not… spend some bliss in her ever-receptive ghost?"

D'Artagnan stood too, determined to deny it. "I would never -"

"Please," Aramis countered with a withering glance.

"Believe what you will," d'Artagnan blustered, flushing crimson, "but what would possess you to bare it to Constance? In what way could that possibly entice her?"

Aramis dragged his gaze over d'Artagnan then, face to knees and back. For someone who must have had plenty of attention already, he was stunningly naïve. "No, you're right. The image of you, ecstatic and desperate, on the cusp of release? With her name on your lips? Your head rolled back into the pillow, shoulders wide, every muscle taut? Tiresome, I agree. Not the least bit intriguing."

D'Artagnan was too disoriented to grasp his sarcasm. "Tiresome? Really?"

"No," Aramis droned, "not really." He dropped his palm onto d'Artagnan's shoulder, urging him back down to the bed. "If she wants you the way you tell us she does, then she wants you like that. She wants you hard and eager."

"Aramis, I don't -"

"And if she wants you the way you hope she does…" Aramis watched d'Artagnan lick his lips. "Well, then she knows what it is to be visited by an amorous ghost."

D'Artagnan's worry seemed to melt away with the distracting thought of it. Aramis could well imagine the performance d'Artagnan attended in his mind. Would he have her entirely disrobed, alone in the bath, breasts blushing and floating just at the surface? Or tangled in the bedclothes by flickering candlelight? Or could it still be the revelation of his own pleasure, mirrored back to him in black and white, that unfocused his eyes?

D'Artagnan heaved a long breath.

"Just leave it to me," Aramis said, gentling him.

D'Artagnan had no words for Aramis, just a starry-eyed nod.

Despite the hour, Aramis took no pains to be quiet. He knew from years of adventures that his footfalls were loud enough to awaken Athos or Porthos. But d'Artagnan slept in the brightening dawn like a dead man. Even when Aramis walked all the way into his quarters, even when he his steps thudded heavily beside his pillow, d'Artagnan's breath was obliviously calm.

What intimacy, Aramis mused, not for the first time, to gaze upon a sleeping face.

Did Constance gaze upon him like this when he boarded at her home, perhaps peeking in on his slumber during her husband's morning ablutions? Aramis hoped, for her sake, that she had. For d'Artagnan's figure was undeniably pleasing, with dark eyelashes unfurling over his cheeks – lashes full enough for women to covet – and broad, high cheekbones. His head lay twisted toward the pillow, revealing the long muscles of his neck, descending to a collarbone that anyone might mistake for the work of Michelangelo. Below that, ebony wisps of hair over his sternum matched those on his calf, half-exposed, tangled in the bedclothes.

Aramis left his gift, wrapped in a wine-hued ribbon, on the pillow beside d'Artagnan's head.

A kind friend would let the drowsy Romeo lay in as long as he could. But it seemed d'Artagnan's impatience was catching, for instead of walking out the door, Aramis found himself rapping loudly at it, grinning with anticipation.

As sweetly marble-hewn as d'Artagnan appeared at rest, he was wild-eyed as a startled stallion when jolted from it. "What – where –?" he gasped.

"A message for you," Aramis explained, jutting his chin toward the pillow.

"Constance," he whispered, tearing at the bow.

Aramis watched d'Artagnan scan the first line. It did not read "Dearest perfect darling d'Artagnan," as he so transparently hoped.

"What is this?" D'Artagnan glanced up at Aramis, his brow furrowing with the question.

"Read it," Aramis insisted.

"What purpose does this heart in my chest serve if not to glorify yours?" d'Artagnan began. His voice fell soft and low, pooling warm in his throat. "What future awaits these arms, if not to enfold you, or these lips, if not to kiss you? These eyes were meant to gaze upon you; all else is but a poor substitute. You are not mine to adore, I remind myself, but alas – I am too sleepless a fool to remember it. Accept my letters, I beg you; for it is only while I write them that I recognize myself."

Aramis leaned against the doorjamb, a small bloom of pride twinkling behind his eyes. It sounded good in his head, yes, but so much more enticing from d'Artagnan's tongue. "It only needs your signature," Aramis said.

D'Artagnan's eyes ranged over the words again. "A second letter? Has she even responded to the first one yet?"

"What, and give her better angels time to make their case? Never." Aramis slapped the wall on his way out. "Bring it downstairs and I'll deliver it straight away."

"But how will we know if it's working?" d'Artagnan called after him.

Aramis ignored him. "It's a barrage, d'Artagnan," Aramis shouted through the courtyard, "an onslaught!"