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Even drunk Athos’ skills were unparalleled. D’Artagnan did not so much as stir from his sleep until the moment a hand closed over his mouth, at which point he reacted as one might expect him to, flailing for his pistol and at his attacker and attempting to shout the alarm. Having anticipated this, Athos had taken care to remove from around the bed all objects that might be useful as weapons, though he hardly needed to; all of d’Artagnan’s protestations ceased the moment his eyes adjusted to the dark well enough to recognize that the body pressing him down was not that of some unknown assassin but his friend, at which point his expression of furious terror shifted its aim from that which resided currently within his room to the world outside it, certain that there was good reason in Athos’ having roused him in this manner.
How bold was this young man. Athos knew that if he had come in such distressing circumstance he could count upon d’Artagnan’s strong arm without needing to explain himself. There was no annoyance at being woken, no repugnance at his actions. Fondness, liquid and bright, burned through his veins and Athos did not even attempt to tamp it down. Without removing his hand he allowed his thumb to trace the sharp line of d’Artagnan’s cheekbone beneath the corner of one dark eye, drinking in the soft little stutter of d’Artagnan’s breath against his palm, the rise of his throat as he swallowed away sleep. A third reaction introduced itself into d’Artagnan’s expression then, one which bit acrid at Athos’ throat but which he also had expected and braced himself for: realization.
“Athos,” d’Artagnan whispered, as soon as he was allowed to, “what is it?”
During his approach Athos had climbed fully onto the bed, body arranged to straddle d’Artagnan’s without touching. Still fully dressed, he appeared like a mass of shadows broken through only by the ghostly paleness of his two delicate hands, gloveless, and his drawn visage. He did not respond, only continuing to trace down d’Artagnan’s jawline, then his throat. It was a hot summer night, the kind that left one’s skin dewy and soft without exertion. D’Artagnan had removed all but the sheets upon his bed, and Athos could see his meager breasts gently rising with his breath beneath it, naked.
“Do you think it’s proper to sleep this way, with a lady in the house?”
D’Artagnan’s brows knit.
“Madam Bonacieux is at the palace tonight,” he said. Then, still carefully; “You’re drunk.”
He was, extremely so. Another flare of shame flushed through him, but, like the first, it was a dead feeling, long ago resigned to.
“Would it matter if she was not?”
Reddening a bit, d’Artagnan tried to push himself up on his arms, but Athos' roaming hand became a capturing one and pushed him to remain still. Agitated, d’Artagnan bit his lip, a motion he often resorted to when vexed by emotion or question.
“How did you get in without…”
Then he saw the window, open to allow in what little movement the thick air permitted.
“Why not use the door?”
Athos’ hand was tracing the lines of his clavicle, searching for something no longer visible but well remembered. In spite of the heat d’Artagnan found himself shivering, distinctly aware of how his nipples hardened and how Athos could see that they did through the heavy lidding of his drink-dulled eyes.
“I had to see you.”
He kissed d’Artagnan on the lips with all the ardor and violence of intoxication, yet still somehow retaining that austere nobility which never left him no matter how he was gripped by his vices. D’Artagnan could do nothing but melt against him regardless of his apprehension, so very deeply effected by Athos’ presence.
“You may see me any time,” he gasped, hardly able to get the words out between the lingering attentions of Athos’ lips.
Athos did not reply to this because he did not believe he was able to properly convey the immensity of his reality. Before he had climbed into the bed he had stood beside it for some minutes simply staring. Sprawled beneath his thin covering, d’Artagnan had been so beautiful that he felt it might kill him to behold, as if he had seen the light of divinity uncovered before him and was to be struck down for it. D’Artagnan was sprawled in a fashion disordered but so naturalistic he appeared as if painted that way, arranged with one arm loose above the sheets and one laid beside his face upon his pillow, fingers half opened. The dark rings of his hair, which he had begun to grow out since his arrival in Paris, were spread about him in a dark and glimmering areola, starkly framing his features which were as relaxed and peaceful as Sebastian knowing he was to be martyred, golden with sweat and moonlight. He was as powerless before his Ganymede as if it were he instead snatched by the talons of adoration, carried off to his fate no matter how he might struggle.
Kissing d’Artagnan long and breathless, Athos pulled down the sheet, now reaching with both hands, fumbling to bare as much as he was able to without parting their mouths. D’Artagnan rose up to meet him, eager to please in defiance of his misgivings, the way he always was, so obvious and unashamed. Despite the growing capability of prudence d’Artagnan held his passionate heart was never guarded around Athos, even when it would behoove him for it to be so, and this to Athos was as piercing and painful as the thrust of a sword to the gut. Cupping d’Artagnan’s cheek and putting their foreheads together he breathed him in, shaking from the pain of this wound.
“It was too easy,” he whispered, kissing d’Artagnan’s fluttering eyelids.
“You should not have let me in. You should not let anyone in, like this.”
Not understanding, d’Artagnan frowned a bit.
“You climbed my wall,” he said; “you came through the window. How would I expect a gentleman to develop from nowhere the ability to climb sheer heights like a spider? Has God given you suddenly a pair of extra arms?”
Athos palmed at his uncovered breasts and d’Artagnan jolted, surprised by how cool his hands had somehow remained.
“I had to see you,” Athos said again, with a sort of solid closure. D’Artagnan, gratefully, only offered him a small smile, pushing back the falling waves of hair from his friend’s brow.
“Then see me,” he said.
Closing his eyes, Athos bowed his head low, until his forehead was against d’Artagnan’s chest, a portrait of the damned, of a bull lead to sacrifice, of a supplicant weeping. D’Artagnan’s skin smelled wonderfully warm. He prevented yet more heart rending words from being spoken by nuzzling sloppily against it, taking in the gradual but sharp shift in the stark firmness of his sternum to his thin muscles to the soft peaks of his tits.
“Oh,” d’Artagnan gasped, rising up to meet him, “oh, oh!”
As if burned, Athos rushed to kiss his mouth again, hands groping for something to steady himself as his world swam. The purchase he found was d’Artagnan’s breasts which he held onto far too hard, far too clumsily, and d’Artagnan took it anyways. He could feel d’Artagnan’s heartbeat as if within his palms, madly fluttering as he kneaded the flesh with ill coordinated desperation, as if he were a beast mauling his willing victim. Sucking the breath from d’Artagnan’s lungs, Athos spread himself over him as best he could, shielding him and capturing him at the same time. At the same time he pinched d’Artagnan’s thick nipples between thumb and forefinger and pulled just to draw more out of him, unfairly rough, so that d’Artagnan’s little sighs became pained gasps.
Alcohol swimming in his eyes, Athos pulled back enough that he could watch the look on his face as he obediently arched into the hands that tortured his chest. Already the skin of d’Artagnan’s tits was darkened, drawing attention like two anxious targets. He swayed down and took one nipple into his mouth, sucking and biting as d’Artagnan’s head fell back and a fountain of beautiful sounds issued from his kiss-plumpened lips. His skin was blazing, seasoned with sweat and the dust of the city, and Athos wanted to have all of it against him, enveloped by him, to replace the leavings of the world outside with those of his own body, his own sweat and hair and skin. Leaving behind wet patches of unrefined affection with each kiss, lick, and bite, Athos traveled down from d’Artagnan’s breast to his ribs, to the rippled trail of his abdomen, beyond his navel, wrestling aside the sheet more as he went until he bared d’Artagnan’s thighs.
He did not have the patience to tease. D’Artagnan watched with bright eyes as Athos tore the sheet from the bed entirely so that he might pull d’Artagnan’s legs apart and stare with an almost defeated desperation.
“Athos,” he said softly, trying to sit up and reach for him, but Athos would not allow it and yanked him back onto the bed by the thighs. Sat up on his knees, Athos wrapped his arms around d’Artagnan’s hips so that he, afraid as he was that too much horizontality would allow the alcohol’s soporific effect too much leeway over his already fleeting agency, might instead bring the chalice to his lips to drink. He buried his nose into the wild black curls that nested there, inhaling his scent with a longing that almost made him quake. D’Artagnan’s hands flexed at his side anxiously, wanting to grasp Athos but knowing better.
“Athos, may I-”
Athos gripped him harder, kissing his pudenda until he reached the bud of d’Artagnan’s clitoris where it stood out to greet him. He was already fully aroused, slicking Athos’ cheeks and chin where he awkwardly rubbed his stubble, making it quite easy enough for him to be immediately sucked into Athos’ greedy mouth. D’Artagnan gasped, a hand flying up to grope for the headboard, miss, and instead bunch into his limp pillow instead.
He drank of d’Artagnan with a lust that alcohol could not hope to inspire, running his tongue down the open length of his cunt and back as his lips sought to encircle and suckle at his clit, too mad to focus upon any one thing but too adoring to fail in his pursuit either. D’Artagnan was writhing in place, good enough to not do that which he had been taught not to but still unable to contain his excitement as he was pleasured. Athos could feel him moving but was hardly cognizant of anything else, too entirely absorbed by his task and the sounds that made the perilous journey from d’Artagnan’s lips to between his thighs. Heat boiled inside him with the slow intensity of pooling magma, arresting his movements in a slow, forceful march down.
“Wait, wait- oh, Athos, I-!”
Thrashing his head from side to side, d’Artagnan could hardly keep himself from pleading, but he managed it. Athos noted this, and the pride it inspired in him throbbed through his core like a physical compression released, terrifying in its gentleness, in how it emancipated a small part of him. He himself wanted to beg, and in his horrible freedom may have, were his mouth not otherwise occupied. Dizzied by thankfulness for this small relief, he laved his tongue into d’Artagnan’s hole, eliciting a host of sweet sighs.
“If you don’t- oh, oh, Athos, Athos, I cannot stop myself!
D’Artagnan’s voice grew strained in a shout and Athos vaguely realized that he had cum. Even in his daze he recognized that it had been shockingly fast; d’Artagnan was not inexperienced nor poorly controlled. The part of him concerned with d’Artagnan’s discipline knew he should correct this habit of spending without permission – the part of him concerned with himself, far greater the bully in his inebriation, demanded to see more.
With immense effort he pulled back panting as if it were he who had been forced into orgasm, rock solid in his breeches but barely aware of it as he stared down at d’Artagnan. Red to the roots of his hair, d’Artagnan stared back, eyes glassy, lips parted. It was the most beautiful thing Athos had ever seen, and that same clenching inside him returned, gripping at his insides with long pale fingers so unlike d’Artagnan’s. His savior, d’Artagnan reached for him, chest heaving, sweat pouring between his bosoms.
“Athos,” he said, wetting his lips with his tongue, “I’m sorry, I could not stop myself.”
Athos was hardly able to comprehend the words. Instead his attention returned to d’Artagnan’s pussy, still inches from his face, plump with pleasure.
“It doesn’t matter,” Athos said, bringing his hands around from their vice like hold to beneath d’Artagnan’s buttocks, thumbs rising together to pull d’Artagnan’s cunt wide.
Spit-slicked and dripping with its own effusions, d’Artagnan’s pussy twitched against the open air, lightly tickled by aftershocks of his orgasm. Not exactly a virgin when they first met, d’Artagnan had still become visibly developed since then, blossoming from the tight nervous bud that had first peeked from the garden of his dark curls to a bright and dewy carmine rose. Constant attentions had begun the process of drawing forth the inherent eroticism d’Artagnan possessed, just as Athos aimed to shape him in all other manners and skills required for a gentleman, and the sight of how apparent these changes were, impressed upon his flesh, was more titillating than he was willing to admit. Focusing on d’Artagnan’s already sizable clitoris, Athos determined his target.
“I should think it matters a little- oh!”
He jolted when Athos dove back down, sucking his clit into his mouth voraciously.
“A-Athos,” d’Artagnan stuttered, voice rough with panic, “I don’t think- I only just came, you can’t-!”
Keeping his pussy spread, Athos began to assault his tender little gem, sucking and lapping at the swollen head with such rapacity that it seemed he intended to tear it from d’Artagnan’s body.
“Athos!”
D’Artagnan jerked and twisted in his arms, daring to attempt some escape. Athos bit at his clit in punishment and he howled. Normally such behavior would not be tolerated, fragmented images of taking d’Artagnan over his knee flittering through Athos’ mind, but he could not pause long enough to grasp at them. Instead he held tighter and sucked harder, allowing d’Artagnan to twitch and cry until the pleasure was enough to subdue him. Tomorrow, perhaps, if his sluggish mind was capable of memory.
“Oh, please, please!”
His legs all but kicked, avoiding causing Athos discomfort but unruly and ill behaved nonetheless, and Athos continued to punish him by ravaging his clit with a mix between unbearable ecstasy and threatened pain. D’Artagnan’s heartbeat was on his tongue and it made him ache with the knowledge that he was here, in this moment, between the thighs of this beautiful boy.
“No, I- Athos, I’m so- it’s so-!”
Surely the late hour and his sudden arrival had played their part in making d’Artagnan so insensate, but Athos still felt himself somewhat preening at his gibbering. D’Artagnan twisted in his hands and he nipped again, cock throbbing at the little wail the action produced. The cotton that filled his head writhed in strange ways, itching at the back of his eyes and the base of his skull. It was not unusual for d’Artagnan to make his voice heard in any situation, but the way he yowled for Athos was like none of his usual Gascon blustering. No battle wound made him weep as he did in Athos’ arms, no insult had him whimpering and whining, and though he spouted reams of youthfully quaint poetry to the women who cast him lidded eyes he did not show to them his open heart with raw pleading the way he did when Athos had him on his back.
Jealousy roiled in his guts as venomous as the guilt.
“I- I’m going to cum again, Athos! Oh, I’m going to cum- please, please let me cum-!”
Athos had two fingers inside of him before he could process the words, spurred by the animal magnetism of his friend’s desperation like a dumb mating beast. D’Artagnan cried and shook his head from side to side, the muscles in his belly rippled with effort. Unhindered by the drink in knowing exactly where the pressure points inside d’Artagnan were located, Athos curled his fingertips directly back up against the underside of d’Artagnan’s clitoris and was rewarded with the immediate sensation of his coming apart around him.
Sobbing Athos’ name like a holy chant, d’Artagnan squeezed his fingers, pulsing with hard waves of his second orgasm. Athos blithely continued to suck and rub at him, as peaceful as if he were in his own home, lips to the bottle instead. He let d’Artagnan down, finally, slumped flat on the bed, the sweat and strain that had collected in the folds of his abdomen when curled back painting red stripes across his stomach. He was not, however, released, Athos continuing to work his fingers into the overly tight passage of d’Artagnan’s cunt, pushing him into convulsions of ecstasy as his spending summited, peaked, and then fell. Even then he did not stop, lowering himself dumbly over his spread thighs and lapping at his twitching clit.
“No, no!”
D’Artagnan writhed, inconsolably torn asunder.
“I can’t, oh Athos, please, I can’t-!”
Normally such heart wrenching protestations would earn him response. Athos would hold him down, slapping his palm against d’Artagnan’s pussy with curt fucking thrusts, and command him with his voice. You can, he might offer, encouraging, loving; And you will, because you are so good for me, aren’t you? You are going to take all I have to give, my pretty child, and you will do it so well, so perfectly. Or, perhaps, I know you can, dear d’Artagnan, I know that you are strong enough. Show me your conviction – this said firmly, a lesson from teacher to student. Lastly, punishment; You do not get a say in how much you can take. Gentlemen do not beg.
But Athos was not here to be a lover, or a teacher, or a master. He was simply, pathetically drunk.
“My boy,” was all he said, quietly, but d’Artagnan stiffened like an impaled stag.
“Athos,” he replied through tears, “I’m sorry.”
Athos could not even comprehend at this point what d’Artagnan could possibly be apologizing for. All he wanted was to remain here, laying against his thighs, sucking and frigging his cunt and listening to him wail. They would grow old together in this bed, without need of food or drink or sunlight because d’Artagnan was all that Athos could require and d’Artagnan himself was a pure thing who wanted for nothing.
“No, no-!”
He knew somewhere in the back of his mind that d’Artagnan was far too overstimulated, but he continued to accept Athos no matter how he squirmed and pleaded. The part of himself that he tried desperately to drown each night lay in the sheets at his side, gripping d’Artagnan’s wrists with incorporeal hands that called to Athos’ real ones, dotted lines that required filling. He was not sure he would have let d’Artagnan go even if he had fought back in earnest. Athos wished he would so that he might stop him, refuse to be another of his victims. Athos wished he would so he would have the pleasure of subduing him, holding d’Artagnan down and capturing him with a strength so lethal he would feel it in his bones for the rest of his life.
D’Artagnan’s body smeared against the insides of his eyelids like the writhing flame of a candle imprinting itself through the cornea. The walls of his cunt clung around his fingers in little red flashes of mucus membrane, open and giving as a wound around a blade. Athos, home intruder, man who had stalked the night slavering for this slice of flesh, who had crawled in through the window of a boy nearly half his age who slept in uncovered innocence, dug into him without pity and wondered why d’Artagnan allowed him to do this.
Another wretched orgasm was wrung out of d’Artagnan, thighs splayed and dripping with fluids in a manner so openly resembling the victim of a fatal stabbing that Athos could see in his mind an overlay of countless figures whose existence his memory only held in fleeting scraps; the losers of duels and bar brawls, dying men on roadsides, people far beyond the point of attempting to defend their vital areas who stared down with numb detachment at their leaking bodies as if only observers of their misfortune completely unrelated to the crime. D’Artagnan was present, though, entirely vital in his suffering unlike the banal boredom of the dying. When Athos rose above him, beard so streaked with drool and cyprine that he appeared a vision of Cronos in the dark, withered by the vice of fear, devouring those who should have had his protection.
With mechanical preciseness found only in those so accustomed to inebriation so as to have learned the sociopathic art of mimicry he rose back and began to work the ties between his breeches and undone doublet apart. Through lashes caked with lumps of drying tears, d’Artagnan watched as he pulled apart his clothing to reveal his cock. Athos imagined the sight at one which must further the absurdity of their coupling, how d’Artagnan’s viewpoint passed between the quivering peaks of his tiny breasts, over his rippled stomach and the soaked mound of his swelling pussy to where Athos’ cock pointed down like an arrow preemptively soaked in blood, above which swayed this disheveled ruin of antiquity. The crippled Adonis willingly spread his thighs for the boar’s tusk.
Maneuvering them both again Athos pushed their hips together, allowing his cock close access without yet making contact. D’Artagnan heaved in an attempt to raise higher his vantage point, barely able to get up on his elbows. He had observed before how d’Artagnan loved to watch them connect, almost obsessive in comparing the size of his trembling clit to Athos’ length. Frotting them together, Athos felt the pulsing of their sexes together in a slightly off-center cadence. Chasing it forward he crushed their two erections against one another as if he could meld them into one, the engorged flesh of their heads latticed together into the hemispheres of a beating heart. D’Artagnan made a sound of suffering want and visibly leaked cyprine.
Attracted to this gushing hole, Athos slid down, grinding against him the whole way, until the bulbous head of his prick kissed against d’Artagnan’s cunt mouth. The small ring of muscle that was normally hidden between the defensive folds of his inner labia had been pulled open so thoroughly by his fingering that it opened readily for him, just barely parting in occasional spasming gasps. For a moment he could only stare, swaying in place on the precipice of collapse before managing to turn this decent from a free fall to a controlled dive, hugging d’Artagnan’s thighs up around his waist and driving his cock inside.
Through the use of his fingers and the various dildos he wore with the strap Athos had accustomed d’Artagnan’s pussy to larger insertions, but nothing had the same effect as feeling the real richness of his virility against and inside him. Whereas d’Artagnan’s clitoris was encouraged into growth via continuous efforts on Athos’ part, his own cock had been a natural part of himself since his puberty had swung its pendulum from a budding softness to the sudden sharp angles of his maleness. It protruded from the cleft of his vulva with its head hung low, carrying the weight and presence of a member ten times its size, its smooth crown lowered in charge. His wife had been impressed in the same smooth manner in which she had been with everything in his life, only noticeably false in retrospect, when her crimes were known and thus every past interaction was knocked into a surrealist slant. Her excitement was less one of sexual interest than of novelty, however, something Athos had been aware of even then, her tiny hands palming his cock with an unusually unconcerned humor for a girl of her age.
D’Artagnan had been so hungry for Athos when they first fucked that he would have taken anything Athos offered, or did not offer, with the same pleasure. There was no sense of waning eagerness in him as their liaisons became more regular, only one of greater understanding. When allowed he could suck himself to Athos’ cock for hours, so engrossed in the practice that his own cunt would grow so plaintively wet Athos was sure he could convince him to cum untouched. Already he had achieved this with his straps, turning the rhythmic abuse of d’Artagnan’s throat into a convincing enough facsimile of cock entering cunt that he had begun to shudder through release as his face was used. Being capable of holding such a beautiful creature in so utterly crushing a grip without any effort on his part was terrifying. Sex had become real again, no longer a series of movements and sensations performed more out of the love of habit than sense.
He pushed in the inch or so he was capable of and d’Artagnan made a sound like a stirred wound. Shifting his hips in minute, rolling gyrations Athos watched himself be taken in. D’Artagnan was so wet and warm that very quickly his fluids were running down over the thin lips of Athos’ own sex, subsuming any fluids there he may have produced, defending him from even the implication of his own penetration with a graciously overt display.
In situations more stable Athos thoroughly enjoyed the use of props between them for gratification. Making d’Artagnan cum was far more pleasing that eking out his own orgasms, so much so that Athos often forwent them entirely in the pursuit of wringing a series of endless climaxes from his friend. The pleasure of d’Artagnan’s body was transformed into the cerebral as it passed between them, satisfying the wounds in Athos that were too separate from his physical form. Sometimes he would simply use his mouth and fingers on him until d’Artagnan was so utterly fucked-out that he lay helpless as he was now, and sometimes Athos would pull the leather straps of his harness on over his breeches or around his naked hips and fuck him through it instead, feeling the squeeze and shift inside of him through practice and intuition. Just watching one of his growing collection of carved and stitched cocks pumping in to d’Artagnan’s maturing pussy had him almost on the brink of orgasm often enough anyways, so that when he was ready he could hunch himself over d’Artagnan and jack himself off like a criminal in an alleyway or slot his real dick in between d’Artagnan’s welcoming lips and finish there, and sometimes he would have already cum in that manner or some other before even beginning to fuck him, getting done with the business perfunctorily so that his focus might be entirely upon reaching the peak of desperation that turned d’Artagnan’s bravado to tears.
It felt obscene to fuck his cunt raw like this, now more than ever, self-obsessed of him. The false cocks that he wore to fuck were as close to his own flesh and blood as a sword was in his hand, bone and glass and leather made alive by a sense of intimate need as primal as the human lineage, but so too was it a shield. To cut through a man’s throat with a sword was often noble; to wring his neck was brutality. Athos had done both, felt death both ways. He felt d’Artagnan’s pulse on his cock with the same shocking violence as he had felt the thundering jugular against his palms.
“Athos, Athos.”
He fell forward as much as he could while keeping inside d’Artagnan, beached between his breasts. D’Artagnan raised his shaking arms to clutch nervously at Athos’ shoulders, one hand sliding into the waving tresses of his hair to cup at his skull as he grazed his lips and teeth against the side of a sweating teat. The sound of them moving together was like sucking mud, beautifully wet, his cock stirring bubbles in the cyprine strings that flooded from d’Artagnan’s cunt. Wrapping his grip around d’Artagnan’s hips Athos rode him hard enough the bed frame creaked, the surface tension of their moist bellies gluing them together in tight momentary unions that broke like preserved tree sap with the inevitable jumping rolls.
“Kiss me.”
Athos pretended he could not hear him, chewing a swollen nipple.
“Kiss me, Athos, please.”
The severity of his coming orgasm against all the common sense of his attempts to neuter himself with wine made him angry enough to pull back and meet d’Artagnan’s eyes, even knowing it was a mistake. D’Artagnan had black eyes, dark country eyes with a purity that made even his lies honest. His face was red behind its healthy chestnut sheen, giving him a look of ripeness that spilled out from his eyes where the pleasure continued to make him weep. Even then he was smiling. He was too happy for the fragility of that look, too wanting. It wasn’t fair.
Athos kissed him and came at the same time, bracing himself awkwardly on the sheets as his hips jerked in uneven palsy. D’Artagnan mouth and cunt opened and embraced him with a strength they should not have had after such abuse. Their open mouths slid together at bizarre angles, tongues and lips engaged in a dance of touches and twists like naked courtiers whose pleasure was in the movements more than the skinship. Even with his eyes closed Athos could see in ruddy splashes an omnipotent vision of their bodies on the bed, of d’Artagnan’s swollen cunt pulsing out against him, his clit peaked upwards like the steeple above the open doors of a church.
He rut until he physically couldn’t, mashing his cock and mount into d’Artagnan’s bluntly and without reason, to the point of bruising. Their lips separated and d’Artagnan’s head fell back, sighing with long and beautiful exhaustion. He looked satisfied with Athos’ rough treatment, like he had been balled so tightly against the continuous use of his body only until Athos’ own orgasm set him free from it. The importance of Athos’ pleasure to complete his own had become increasingly a part of their relationship, as had withholding such finality from him as a lesson in patience. D’Artagnan had already shown immense progress in his self control in only the scant few months since they had begun the project. If nothing else, at least Athos could give him this.
Hardly having the strength to move, Athos rolled himself off d’Artagnan’s body, laying at his side with an arm thrown across d’Artagnan’s chest as if they were both the results of the same accident. With the energy of youth d’Artagnan had retained enough of himself to turn in to Athos where he sprawled, reaching up to hold his wrist gently, palms warm from their struggle in the sheets. He could feel a world of thoughts rotating in d’Artagnan’s chest but he articulated none of them, content with laying beside him, head falling neatly into Athos’ bicep so that he might feel the hot chuffs of air that escaped him.
“Don’t allow me to do this again,” Athos said.
D’Artagnan huffed breathlessly.
“You’re drunk,” he replied, a non-answer. His fingers flexed against Athos’ arm warmly.
The waves of exertion crashed ruinously with the wine and Athos was unable to do much more than succumb, sucked down into a deep dark emptiness without the time for greater exploration of what he had done, but it would come. Nothing he did to himself was enough to suppress the true nature of his being and he would find himself awake, still slightly inebriated but with more presence than he should have, long before the dawn, d’Artagnan sleeping still with the sheets tangled at his naked ankles and his thighs crusted with dried sex. As he had come in he would leave, tucking away his cock and half buttoning his doublet, missing the proper order of the buttonholes, hose loose at the knees above his boot lips. D’Artagnan would wake in the morning as if ravished by a dream, alone and with only the evidence of his own cooled pleasures clinging to him.
He would still find Athos first among all their friends, casually slipping their arms together as they walked, touching at his knuckles with his fingertips like one appreciating a marble sculpture or cut glass. He would not treat Athos like the rapist who had entered his room and his body without permission the night before, like the drunk old man who had stripped away his dignity, and later he would find a moment alone in a quiet corner to daringly press a kiss to Athos’ cheek while his fingers worked into the front of his breeches as if the both of them were but teenagers exploring their first flirtations with an unsullied sexuality. He would trust Athos like an angelic messenger inerrant.
Athos would try, very hard, to be his friend – courteous and good to him, noble and gracious, teacher and father – and he would fail.