Inspiration for the letter fragments d'Artagnan reads below were found in poetry by Emily Dickinson and Tennessee Williams. Inspiration for everything else came from these goddamn swashbucklers and conversations with the incomparable CreepingMuse.

Chapter 5: I swell to meet your amber cheek

It was probably nothing. The garrison was full of all kinds of bumps in the night.

Then it came again, quiet but deliberate: three slow raps on his door.

Aramis pulled his breeches on as he twisted out of bed, still not entirely awake. He lit his bedside candle and swung the door open. There, leaning his forehead against the outer threshold, was d'Artagnan. He seemed to have wilted there, his hands full of letters.

Without a word, Aramis let him in. D'Artagnan, staring at the clutched pages, sat down heavily into the desk chair. Aramis, bracing himself for a sure eruption of blame or despair, lowered himself onto the edge of his bed, facing him.

But d'Artagnan didn't rail or accuse. Instead he read, in a velvet whisper. "You race into a future where I cannot follow." He sighed. "What does that mean?"

"Lamenting that you're apart," Aramis answered, now entirely unsure what to make of the visit.

D'Artagnan turned to the next letter. "I dwell in the shade between worlds, neither forsaking my love's luminous dawn nor accepting the cursed midnight that threatens without you." He shot a questioning glance at Aramis.

"Just that… you refuse to stop loving," Aramis explained. What was wrong with d'Artagnan? He vibrated with tension, but apparently not from anger. Aramis was usually more intuitive than this; was it lingering exhaustion that had him so confused?

The pages crinkled in d'Artagnan's loose grip. He found another, clearing his throat to read. "Let me recast every moment when I might have kissed you, but did not. Give me the hour we wasted in silence, each cocooned in our own mind, so that I may erase regret."

The images that swam before his eyes the morning he wrote those words retook Aramis: gallant d'Artagnan astride his mount, windblown. Oblivious in his beauty. Lost in his thoughts.

Another; Aramis let his gaze fall to d'Artagnan's lips as he read, the tart pang of longing all too familiar now. "You are the moon to my tide. Attuned to your least whim, I swell to meet your amber cheek." D'Artagnan slipped the page to the bottom of the messy pile. "Her cheeks are pink."

But yours are smooth, dusky amber. Aramis flashed an embarrassed grimace as he registered his oversight, then improvised an excuse. "The full moon is amber. Sometimes. It's a metaphor."

D'Artagnan found another and read. "Might we find each other at the blush of sunset, in a garden heavy with the scent of lilacs? I would wait under an arbor grown thick with evening blossoms, breathless with anticipation. And could you come running, suddenly and perfectly, into my arms?" He looked up, almost stricken.

Aramis shrugged. "You can't argue against that one. It's lovely."

"It has nothing to do with Constance."

"Of course it does. She comes running."

But d'Artagnan clearly hadn't the strength to argue. "Aramis," he said, pleading. For what, Aramis wouldn't dare guess. "Where's the one about the kiss?"

They sat so close, and the night was so silent around them, that Aramis was sure d'Artagnan could hear his heart suddenly pounding. "Which?"

D'Artagnan stared down at his bundle of letters. "The letter you wrote about the kiss. I remember reading it, but it's not here."

Careless! Caught, Aramis scrambled. "She could have kept it as a souvenir." It wasn't precisely a lie: she could have, if she'd ever seen it.

The man shook his head. "She wouldn't."

Aramis watched d'Artagnan exhale, wilting even more.

"I was wrong to blame you," d'Artagnan said without meeting Aramis' eye. "Forgive me."

Aramis couldn't help but smile at d'Artagnan's forgiveness, blowing through him like the first clean breeze of spring. "Nothing to forgive," he told him.

"There is. You were right. I should have listened to you." D'Artagnan smoothed his thumb over a page, running the pad of it over the loops and slant of Aramis' words. "I thought you might have left off writing these. But you never did."

Aramis tipped his head.

"They're beautiful. I didn't realize. They." D'Artagnan swallowed. "I can feel the passion in them."

Lightly, d'Artagnan's knee fell against the inside of Aramis' thigh.

Aramis held his breath, looking at their legs together. D'Artagnan didn't move away. He just breathed, slowly, and Aramis could hear, at the edges, the barest tremble. "Where's the letter about the kiss?" d'Artagnan asked, softer this time. "Did you keep it?"

Silence hung between them.

"Aramis," d'Artagnan breathed, frozen.

"I kept it," Aramis told him. Risking a hell of a lot.

"Why?"

"Because it wasn't meant for her."

D'Artagnan didn't look up at him, didn't entirely acknowledge the meaning there except to press his knee just a bit more into Aramis' thigh, gently prodding him to explain.

"When I started, I tried to see her through your eyes. I did. But then. Then I began to see you through hers: your honor, your hopeful soul. Your strength. I knew how she must long to thread her fingers through your hair, how she would yearn for your lips."

Aramis leaned closer, whispering to d'Artagnan's downcast face.

"And then, that letter. That kiss, in such naked detail. I watched your lips shape the words and I knew: I hadn't written it for you. I'd written it to you." There were hours more confession to make but Aramis faltered. He fell silent, watching his face, waiting.

D'Artagnan took a fragile, shuddering breath. "Do you still have it? Here?"

Aramis didn't have to speak; they were so near each other that he knew d'Artagnan would sense his nod.

D'Artagnan lifted his eyes, deep and dark, and met Aramis' gaze. "Read it to me."

"Your mouth is my obsession," Aramis breathed without a second thought, recalling with perfect clarity the lines he had read over too many times now to count. "Yet somehow it is never enough. When I bend to your kiss… apotheosis. The slope of your jaw beckons, I follow. You let your head fall back into my waiting palm, your neck is desperate for my lips. And I obey."

Aramis watched d'Artagnan's gaze drop to his lips, could almost feel it on his skin.

He continued, his voice so soft it broke. "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."

D'Artagnan's lips twitched toward a smile.

"The roses of your cheeks, I must attend them, and the shell of your ear. You laugh; now it is my turn to smile against your skin."

D'Artagnan's breath caught as he slid his warm palm slowly over where Aramis' linen sleeve opened above his wrist. "There's more, isn't there?" he asked, the words molasses thick.

Aramis nodded, so inextricably ensnared by those dark, soulful eyes that he couldn't have stopped now if he wanted to. "Your mouth, I confide in it again as with some secret."

D'Artagnan let all the pages of letters fall to the floor.

Aramis licked his lips. "Do I dare slide my tongue just inside?"

"Yes," d'Artagnan gasped, launching himself into Aramis' arms, standing them both up with the force of his need.

Aramis crashed into him, kissed him hard enough to bruise, hard enough to convince himself it was truly d'Artagnan, d'Artagnan whose lips he had memorized. But they were so new to him this way, opening fevered and strong against his. Aramis wrapped a hand around the nape of d'Artagnan's neck, another under his shoulder to curl his body into his more, more. D'Artagnan spread his palm wide on Aramis' cheek, sucking at his bottom lip, licking, nearly frantic and Aramis loved it, loved being handled like this, having his head shifted so d'Artagnan could kiss him deeper, kiss him better.

Aramis slid his hand down d'Artagnan's spine, savoring its muscular curve to his waist and then squeezed him closer still. D'Artagnan bowed into him, teasing the tip of Aramis' tongue with his own and sucking at it, letting his palm find the blade of Aramis' jaw. He traced it with a finger, hard, then with his thumb before he buried himself in the hollow beneath it, biting at it, sliding his arm up along Aramis' spine, his neck, into his hair. Aramis let his head fall back into d'Artagnan's waiting palm, let d'Artagnan squeeze his waist until his own hips bowed now, nearly thrusting.

With a sigh, Aramis threaded his fingers through d'Artagnan's hair, pushing it back from his temples to look into his eyes, and took his mouth again. He brushed his lips over d'Artagnan's gently, stroking them, reminding him they could be soft together. D'Artagnan yielded to his lead, letting Aramis devote himself to the lips that had haunted him so. Their mouths pulled, pushed, fit together and came exquisitely apart only to pounce again, unwilling to be separated. Neither of them could get enough and at the revelation of it, Aramis had to smile.

D'Artagnan bit Aramis' bottom lip, tugging the smile from it and drawing a groan from deep in Aramis' chest. He wrapped his arms around Aramis, squeezed him close again, pressing his hips against him. Aramis paused to catch d'Artagnan's thick gaze, his lusciously dark eyes. It was so much richer than anything his mind had attempted to conjure. D'Artagnan was animal and angel in one.

That one look unlocked a new urgency. They tore each other's shirts from under the waistbands of their breeches, d'Artagnan intent on the front of Aramis' waist, Aramis pulling d'Artagnan's out at his back. They parted lips only long enough to tug the fabric over their heads and off, gone, thrown to the floor and d'Artagnan thrown to the bed. Aramis was immediately above him, hovering, kissing into d'Artagnan's sternum, licking around his nipple, tracing his collarbone with swollen lips, letting his weight press d'Artagnan into the mattress.

D'Artagnan arched into Aramis with a low, sizzling moan. Was it the delectable shock of skin on skin that elicited it? The intoxicating feeling of slotting in hard beside him? Aramis leaned a thigh between d'Artagnan's opening legs, curling up and over him like a wave, and surrendered his lips to d'Artagnan's waiting mouth. D'Artagnan's palms were feverishly hot over Aramis' flanks, nails dragging over his ribcage, over muscles that curved under the leather of his breeches. His hands were hungry for skin, clutching and sliding under the waistband and over the curve of Aramis' arse. It earned d'Artagnan a painfully slow thrust, which d'Artagnan answered with a hiss.

Aramis trailed his fingers to where their hips urged into each other in slow rhythm and opened d'Artagnan's fastenings with one practiced hand. D'Artagnan's mouth fell open as Aramis dragged his breeches down over his smallclothes, over his legs, pushing his boots and stocking off with them, with d'Artagnan's eager help. All of it gone but a thin layer of fabric, Aramis paused to drink in the sight of him.

When Aramis stretched himself beside him, d'Artagnan reached for Aramis' breeches. "We have time," Aramis assured him, "all the time in the world," and laid him back into the pillow, trailing his fingers over his nose, his moist lips, over his prickly chin and down the center line of his chest, his belly, trembling deliciously beneath his fingertips, and finally to the laces that strained to hold back his exuberant cock. D'Artagnan's breath stuttered when Aramis tugged at the tie.

Aramis already missed his lips and as if d'Artagnan knew it his head fell to the side and he offered his mouth. Aramis sank into his kiss just as his hand slipped under the last veil of fabric, encircling d'Artagnan's cock as it leapt in his hand. The low sizzle returned, longer, more urgent this time, as d'Artagnan fucked up into Aramis' waiting fist.

D'Artagnan laid his palm on Aramis' cheek, straining to pull him closer, curling his body with every thrust until, still anchored to Aramis' firm fingers, he faced Aramis chest to chest. And then, desperately sucking at Aramis' lips, nearly incoherent, he thrust once, twice, and spilled against Aramis' belly. Aramis gazed as the pained constriction of climax melted from d'Artagnan's features into something blessed and easy. He was utterly astounded by his good fortune to know, finally, that d'Artagnan's heart was made of the same supple stuff as his own.

"Why didn't you tell me how you felt?" d'Artagnan asked, smiling lightly, still catching his breath.

"Fear. Pride." Aramis tugged a sheet out from beneath them, cleaning them both off. He watched as d'Artagnan lifted his hips to meet his ministrations. Had there ever in the history of love been anything so glorious as d'Artagnan, freshly spent and still eager? "If I'd known your reaction would be so positive, I would have told you immediately."

D'Artagnan hummed at that and captured Aramis' lips again. Aramis let himself be laid back into the mattress, let d'Artagnan unfasten his breeches, flashing a lascivious grin, and tug them off. His smalls were untied before he knew it, and then it was as if d'Artagnan was torn, pushing himself up, dragging his linen-sheathed thigh against Aramis' cock to kiss him, to bite at his lip, then down his neck to swirl his tongue around his nipple, then back again to his lips, his tongue. Aramis gave himself over, let d'Artagnan explore, let him taste every inch of his chest, his neck, his mouth, let him open those impossibly delicious lips over his cock and suck, good God, suck long leisurely strokes with his hot, hungry mouth until Aramis couldn't hold back and came, and still d'Artagnan sucked until every drop was gone.

Dawn threatened behind the shuttered window. The candle flickered out. The two lay tangled together, basking in the new delight of their union, bare but for the necklace d'Artagnan let play between his fingers over Aramis' chest, rising and falling with soft breath.

"No letter today," d'Artagnan said, kissing a nipple.

"No need," Aramis answered, letting d'Artagnan's hair fall around his fingers.

"I'll miss them."

Aramis laughed lightly, twisting a lock of his hair.

"Aramis?"

"Mm?"

"Would you write me a letter?"

The line "I didn't write the letters to you, but for you" (give or take) is CreepingMuse's, as is the necklace at the end. A body curling into another like a wave, which was so gorgeous that I just stole it like a raging klepto, belongs to breathtaken. I am pretty taken with this little quartet, clearly, and may not be able to prevent myself reporting on all the glorious boning Aramis and d'Artagnan will now enjoy, plus Aramis' eventual hook-up with Porthos, and the whole Athos/Aramis backstory. So if you're interested, keep an eye out.