With thanks and compliments to CreepingMuse, who shares with me searing insights about reading and kissing.
Chapter 3: Now it is my turn to smile against your skin
Aramis soon found that to woo a heart, even one he didn't desire for himself, was nearly as entertaining as winning one.
He was not an hour back from the Bonacieux home before he rushed to put quill to paper again.
What blissful relief to imagine us together in Gascony.
A road winds through a sparse orchard of knobby, ancient olive trees where I used to climb as a boy, up to the weathered estate of my family's farm. It lies in ruins now, but with you by my side, I would rebuild it. (It didn't matter that Aramis had never seen d'Artagnan's land. Honorable, stalwart d'Artagnan, he felt sure, must have come from a place just like this. A home with the noble weight of ancestry, but dedicated to the warp and weft of the seasons.)
I would fashion the estate smaller this time. Cozy on the inside, but fitted with tall windows in every room. For I adore nothing so much as your fresh face awash in the sun's bright rays.
I would fill our salon with books, a writing desk for you, seating for at least a dozen friends because your generous heart would surely draw them there. So too our family table, heavy and long for the feasts we would share with our happy neighbors. I would gaze at you down the length of it, past candlelight and the beam of joyful faces, and bless my fortune for you.
And after you sent our last tipsy guest home clutching a bundle of sweets, I would take you in my arms and anoint every freckle upon your luminous skin with a kiss.
And then another, after two hours at attention in full sun while the King met a bewildered Portuguese duke and his pinch-faced father. It gave Aramis plenty of time to think.
Allow me to tell you more about our life in Gascony.
In the fullness of summer, westerly breezes waft scents of wheat and lavender. The trees grow heavy with fruit; overripe olives crush beneath our feet as we follow our boy and girl over the grounds. You laugh at their antics. I try to emulate your light heart, but our good fortune overwhelms me, bringing me near happy tears more often than I let on.
The boy is brave, like you. He is a far better swordsman than I, and that before a single whisker graces his pale cheek. His smile is yours as well, immediately joyful. You're sure he will break every heart in a hundred miles, but I expect he will dash his own heart against the rocks a time or two first.
The girl, you believe, has my soulful eyes. She loves to run, her black curls flying behind her, and I am the only one fast enough to catch her. Like you, she overflows with love, and she has a particular gift with animals. She stills when she draws near the lambs, calming herself so completely that they suffer no fear of her at all, and then up they come, right to her open palm, where sits a morsel of carrot or apple saved for just the occasion.
The little ones frolic in the bright summer sun and we trail behind. Soon we reach our favorite hill, from which we may survey the land for miles in each direction. You've brought a blanket for us and packed some bread, cheese, and wine, but I am impatient as ever. I set our meal aside and lay you gently back onto the blanket. Our children laugh, at play in the olive grove, and all is well as I brush your curls back from your forehead and kiss you long and deep under the wide, blue sky.
Two finished letters in hand, Aramis flew down the steps to the courtyard seeking d'Artagnan's signature. That last element was necessary: although certainly his plain swoops and lines would be simple for Aramis to mimic, the act of forgery constituted too much deception. No, d'Artagnan's own signature, made by his own hand, was just the veil of truth the enterprise needed. As long as d'Artagnan signed the letters, he endorsed them. They were his.
And, truth be told, Aramis was eager to watch his reaction when he read them.
He found d'Artagnan in the middle of a lesson: Athos and Porthos were giving some apparently muddy tips about two on one fighting. Athos swung; d'Artagnan jerked out of the way but, caught suddenly by Porthos' left jab, collapsed to his knees in the muck.
Athos stopped them all with a wave of his arm when he caught Aramis' eye. "D'Artagnan," he prompted, flicking his chin toward Aramis.
"Loverboy conference, can't miss it," Porthos taunted, offering his forearm to lift d'Artagnan to his feet.
D'Artagnan took it, brushing mud-caked straw from his boot with his other hand. "Do you figure you'll stop bothering me about this sometime soon?"
"Not likely," Athos answered, shoving him lightly in Aramis' direction. "Off with you."
D'Artagnan followed Aramis around the corner, out of earshot of their compatriots. "Please tell me you have news from Constance," he begged, despair simmering under his rapidly thinning composure.
Aramis braced d'Artagnan's shoulder, shaking his head. "I do not have news from Constance."
"This isn't working."
"It's been a day. One day."
"Perhaps she's out of town."
"She's not."
The torture was written plainly on d'Artagnan's face. "Have you seen her?"
Aramis knew what the poor man meant: Have you been lucky enough to see her when I cannot? "She seems well," he offered. It was the best he could do.
"Does she look happy? Content? In love with her prick of a husband?"
"We do not speak." Aramis tried to capture d'Artagnan's unsettled gaze. "I knock, I deliver the letter into the hands of her maid, I tip my hat to Constance where she hovers in a far doorway. I leave."
D'Artagnan heaved a frustrated sigh. "It's not working."
"Give it time." Aramis produced his two newest missives from behind his back. "To which end, these require your signature."
"Two at once?" D'Artagnan read out the first, his voice hushed and, soon, a bit melancholy. "You capture Gascony as if you lived there yourself."
It was silly of him, Aramis knew, to take such pride in his work that d'Artagnan's compliment should warm him so completely. He smiled at the ground, offering a quill.
D'Artagnan signed the first letter against the wall and then reached for the second to sign as well. His name etched heavily at the bottom, he began to read the second aloud.
"A better swordsman?" d'Artagnan repeated in the middle of the sentence.
"Far better," Aramis corrected him with a smirk. "Your words, not mine. I was impressed, to be honest. Humility is such an underrated virtue, and so unusual in the young."
Aramis returned again and again to thoughts of d'Artagnan – his longing, his desperation. How his eyes glazed with the thought of pleasure, right here, at the foot of his bed. How valiant he was in pursuit of his goal.
It must have been after midnight when inspiration roused him to write another letter.
Your mouth is my obsession, yet somehow it is never enough. When I bend to your kiss, it is apotheosis. But now the slope of your jaw beckons and I follow. You let your head fall back into my waiting palm and then it is your elegant neck desperate for my lips, and I obey.
Your mouth beckons; I long to taste your lips again. I feel, even now, sweet puffs of startled breath against my cheek as your lips curve away from mine in a smile. Ah, the roses of your cheeks, I must attend them, and just nearby, the delicate shell of your ear. You giggle; now it is my turn to smile against your skin.
Your mouth, I confide in it again as with some secret. Do I dare slide my tongue just inside, to where yours is waiting? To join this way, the barest promise of the unison I don't dare imagine, is the most delicious torture.
There was something about the letter, a kind of resonance that Aramis couldn't quite place. It felt truer than the rest. He hoped that was a good sign.
Aramis caught d'Artagnan, amid the garrison's morning bustle, just leaving his quarters.
"Here," Aramis offered, handing him the letter.
D'Artagnan flared his eyes at the page almost immediately, then fell quiet. Surrounded by activity, he read the words to himself this time. His lips moved lightly, opening, puckering. He grazed the lower with his teeth. Line after line, his lips shaped and reshaped themselves in silent pronunciation.
What an intriguing sight, to watch him mouth the words as he read. The very same words Aramis had whispered as he transferred them to the page, d'Artagnan now kissed with his own lips.
Oh. This. Oh, no.
Was this the resonance Aramis felt when he conceived the letter? Was this what prodded him awake? How had he mistaken it?
It was not some past love resounding in these lines, but a present one finally making itself felt.
D'Artagnan.
Aramis could not tear his eyes from d'Artagnan's gently moving lips.
It wasn't the first time Aramis had fallen, ill-advisedly, for someone whose heart was otherwise engaged. A quick, cursory review suggested that he may never once have loved wisely. Why should this be any different?
Nor was this the first time his heart had devoted itself to a man. Marcellus was the first, an impetuous soldier with gray eyes like clouds threatening rain. Recklessly romantic, he drew Aramis from his pain at the loss of Isabelle. Their winter affair verified what he had already suspected: that his heart could love a man or a woman with equal ardor. In that, however, he had cruelly come to learn he was rare. Even Athos, tender and surprisingly inquisitive though he was, ultimately could not return Aramis' passion, determining their convergence better a friendship.
The last line finished, d'Artagnan blew an appreciative whistle. "Are you sure you're not in love with her?" he teased as he signed the letter.
The most Aramis could muster was a rueful chuckle.
D'Artagnan handed the letter back to him, suddenly serious. "Listen, have I thanked you for all of this? You've done so much for me." He laid his hand on Aramis' shoulder. "Thank you, my friend." And then he paused, easily capturing the congested gaze Aramis was now helpless to divert.
Aramis watched d'Artagnan walk away until he was well out of sight. Then he fell heavily back against the wall, thudding his head against it for good measure. "Will you never learn, you foolish heart?"