all_inclusive | Probably should have left the alcohol to Athos, really.

Entry tags:

Probably should have left the alcohol to Athos, really.

Intoxicated. Yes, that was- that was the word she was looking for. Intoxicated was just the very thing she could use to describe herself...or her state...the state of herself?

While the details of it had become increasingly fuzzy with each of the delightful, oh so colorful cocktails the bartender sat in front of her (how many had she had again?), Constance was fairly certain the day had begun well enough. There had been a bath, a bath! One with an endless supply of hot water piped right into her room so she might lie in her tub with the dawn light filtering in through the glass of her colored windows and wiggle her toes in easy contentedness.

But then there- ah! There had been the issue of dressing. Or, rather, not of dressing but of what to dress herself in when her only...dress, yes, had been worn already for the day before. She could have made do with it if she had had to, had even pulled it on while not pulling too much of a face, but had been all too grateful upon meeting the lovely Ruby in the hallway not far from her door.

Never had she seen a woman who wore so little out in public. It had left her gaping in the second before she had recovered herself, to see so much skin on display with not so much a flicker of concern in the other woman's expression as she had smiled and introduced herself. Somehow - now here the details were particularly fuzzy at that moment - they had gotten onto the subject of Constance's singular dress and somehow further the conversation had become one of the other woman, still a stranger, but so earnestly friendly, had volunteered her help.

All of which led to her sitting there at the bar of the Smoking Room, wearing pants of all things while Ruby slid a drink in front of her. She was certain there had been sense behind the action, and no, she did not feel the least bit overexposed with the buttoned shirt she wore beneath her corset or the coat she wore that hung down to her knees (she tried not to giggle at the thought of needing to cover her bum, but was only partially successful). What was even more certain was that these - those little cocktails, they were delicious.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I'm sure they were," Aramis says, smiling; Constance is quite charming when she's sober and that doesn't seem to change when she's quite soused. "Shall I suggest that perhaps you ... slow down a bit? So as not to be too sick tomorrow."

As she didn't fancy the thought of being sick, with all the wobbliness of stomach and lightness of her that entailed, Constance had to reluctantly nod an agreement. Her aim might have been too much to borrow a page from Athos' book and forget any semblance of responsibility for a night, but she had to accede that Aramis was likely right.

"Why is it," she began, leaning on one elbow on the bar as she looked at him, "That no woman is allowed to be a Musketeer?" The facts were ones she was all too familiar with while sober, but then with her fingers slipping along the run of her glass, the inevitable truth of their time and place seemed to be a little hard to grasp. "I would have quite liked it, I think. Better than pricking my fingers on needles and sitting by the window to watch the world go by."

"I think you would make a fine Musketeer," Aramis says and he's not just indulging her sodden whim; he means it. She is strong and courageous and quite apt with a blade and a pistol.

He waves the barkeep down for some hot tea for Constance. With honey.

The world was built for men, a construction that allowed little room for women to speak their mind and be heard. Where their value was limited to the idea of virtue and faithfulness in a way men were free of. She might have resented it then if Aramis had not agreed with her and let her forget the unfairness of the world a little while longer. It was easy to feel comfortable in her own skin when it felt as if she was actually seen in a way that had naught to do with who she was married to or what reflection she was upon her husband.

Who she had been married to. A definite past tense, and one that had added to her desire to drink her fill at the bar.

Constance did not think before she curled her hand around the mug of honeyed tea set before her. "I missed you all," she told him, reaching up another hand to pat his cheek with the remembrance but not the force of the previous times she had slapped him. "Life is more exciting with Musketeers."

Aramis [the musketeers] (averygoodshot http://averygoodshot.dreamwidth.org/profile) replied to a comment you left in a Dreamwidth entry "Probably should have left the alcohol to Athos, really." http://all-inclusive.dreamwidth.org/95931.html. The comment they replied to was:

Smiling, Aramis has to ask, "when were you without us?" he asks, curious. "I have to think you will not be without any of us for very long, Constance." Especially if she and d'Artagnan truly find a way to be together, which he, the appreciator of Romance, does hope.

It's true that the world is uneven. It is not a world that Aramis agrees with.

"You used to use my kitchen for your plotting and planning," she reminded him, her words coming with more the tone of nostalgia and fondness than the annoyance one might have imagined for having Musketeers using their home to figure out their scheme to reveal a terrorist who had stolen so much gunpowder or in discovering what plot had lay behind Marsac's presence in Paris. "I saw so much less of you all after Bonacieux-" her words choked off, and she amended, "After d'Artagnan and I had to go our separate ways."

Perhaps she did not see the matter as clearly as she then thought she did, but she remembered too much of missing their presence to not speak of it in that alcohol-slip moment.

Where she did not yet begin to drink her tea, she smiled at him over it. "I would like to have the Queen and you all both. I never had such adventures before you all came crashing into my life."

Finding her hand again, Aramis gives it a squeeze. "You are one of a kind," he tells her most sincerely. "Here, we can find many adventures. And you and d'Artagnan can be ... well, whatever you wish to be. We are all here. Together."

That is good, though that does not deal with Rochefort, which is a problem. One that weighs on Aramis a great deal.

Where she was never foolish enough to pretend she was the Queen's equal, months at the other woman's side and knowing that her presence, her advice, what comfort she might offer were valued had fought off much of the hopelessness Bonacieux had attempted to instill in her. No matter how he had pleaded with her and sworn that he loved her, that he could not live without her, he had delivered a thousand cutting words a day and left her in doubt of all that she was. Even had she not been too entirely in love and aware of her mortality too much to give up d'Artagnan once more in her attempting to leave her husband for any happiness she could find, she could not have returned to a life trapped beneath her husband's constant scrutiny and let herself wither away in hopelessness.

Aramis's words did not undo her so much as make her smile widely, her lips still pressed together as if in fear that she might cry at the sincerity of that compliment.

"How could I not love that?"

Exactly. And really, Constance being here and her reaction to having such freedoms as she would here - ones not allowed her in their Paris - made the promise Aramis had made to the Queen, to stay here, away from Rochefort, more palatable.

"I understand," Aramis tells her, though, grinning conspiratorially, "that there is a door which, when passed through, changes one's sex. I would recommend avoiding that one."

The idea that she could sit in a bar with a drink in her hand (albeit tea with honey at that very moment) and a Musketeer at her side and there would be no repercussions for her reputation, no gossip spread among her neighbors or those in Court who acknowledged her existence, was...exhilarating. It was a freedom she had never been before allowed, and while she had made a spectacle of herself with d'Artagnan a time or two before, that new freedom had not been a part of what had had her reaching for her first cocktail.

That he did not remember or did not yet know that she was free of Bonacieux, yes. That she did not think she could tell him what had happened there, certainly.

Never that freedom.

Her eyes widened at his words, her shocked "No!" immediate. Where her voice had not risen with the quiet exclamation, Constance gaped at him before looking down at herself as if in contemplation of such a change. The sight of her own decolletage did nothing but remind her of her own shape (which she quite liked, thank you, all matters of station and freedoms aside) and leave her asking, "How?" and a moment after, "Have you-?"

Her shape is quite pleasing; Aramis will freely tell her that should she need to know that from him - but he would doubt she needs his affirmation of that.

"I have not," he is quick to say, chuckling. "However, Porthos and your own d'Artagnan both have." And he is unaware that very soon, Athos will fall victim as well. "They were both quite striking, which, I suppose, can be expected."

Any opinion Aramis might have had about the shape of her waist or the shadow between her breasts the fashions of their day were so fond of drawing attention to would have surely have earned him a smack had he shared it. Then again, Constance couldn't be too sure he didn't enjoy her slapping him more than she had ever meant him to.

She tried to imagine either d'Artagnan or Porthos as women, but failed. Strange, considering she had no doubt that d'Artagnan would've made a pretty woman, although trying to figure great big Porthos, with his strong but handsome features through the filter of womanhood was far too much to handle. "I saw d'Artagnan only yesterday," she told him, a bit stymied over being told one thing and having seen another.

(Aramis does enjoy a good slap by a beautiful woman. But that's private.)

"This was a bit of time ago," he assures her. "Perhaps it is that you arrived after he had reverted back to his natural form. He was quite stunning, truly. But stubborn in not accepting any help."

Perceptive though she had been described as being, she would have surely been saving face to say that a gleam of an understanding of that had been behind slapping Aramis twice over rather than her temper having gotten the better of her. Or that, truthfully, there was something about the man's face (however handsome and well-groomed he was) that just called for a slap from time to time.

She snorted, unladylike, at his assessment of d'Artagnan. d'Artagnan as a woman, just then, but one she thought applied across the board. "When is he ever not stubborn?" Truly, she thought she must have been a little mad to find such a thing endearing.

A good point; one Aramis acknowledges with a smile (though he would argue that neither he - nor his face - ever calls for a slap). "You and I have been the lucky ones so far," he tells her. "So we should do what we can to avoid that fate." Though he still wishes to get back to Paris, to do what he can against Rochefort, despite the promises he made to both the Queen and to Athos.

The Musketeers had to have been the most bull-headed, reckless creatures she had ever had the fortune to come across. It was a fact she had acknowledged openly on more than one occasion, and yet found herself still drawn in by that fact that (for all their failings of logic and the common sense they seemed to have been mostly born without) the four men had some of the best hearts she'd ever seen. Aramis had well and truly deserved both times she had slapped him before, but for all that and the recklessness of his love life (what little she knew of it), she was fond of him all the same.

Constance preferred the illusion that she was wholly untouched by his charm, of course.

"I arrived all of yesterday," she reminded him, her brows lifting as she made her point. "Seems to me that the odds are that you're likely to trip across such a door before I might."

"You have just arrived and already you are wearing the clothes of the more modern residents here?" And drinking heartily?

Well, Constance, you have Aramis's admiration. (And while he likes to think that he can charm her, he respects her greatly, never having wanted to compromise that for any other form of attraction that might have existed.)

He plans, for the record, on staying male. He's quite comfortable as a male, as she most likely knows.

In exchange for his question, she shot him a look that suggested that for all his love of women...he knew nothing about them. Perhaps some time in the female form could have done him some good after all. Certainly d'Artagnan had proven several times over that he lacked a basic understanding of what it was like to a woman in their world, no matter how she had attempted to explain it to him.

"I had only the one dress," she reminded him, before she had to remind herself that she was speaking to a Musketeer and that they were a species who only ever seemed to switch out the shirts they wore beneath the layers of their leather. One could hope the same could be said of their smalls, but with men, in her opinion, 'hope' was the key word. "I could hardly wander about for more than a day or two without a change of clothes."

Where she had made a point of remaining covered as much as her dresses had ever offered, it was true that she had chosen a pair of pants over any of the shorter dresses or skirts that had been for sale. There was a freedom to them, to the way they allowed her to move, she could not say she was not already fond of. "Besides, I don't see why men should be the only ones to wear pants when no one is about to give me a second look for them here."

What? Even the Queen had something of a limited wardrobe. It was all, yes, about what goes on underneath. Aramis does make a point of keeping his smallclothes clean, thank you very much.

"And how do you find wearing trousers?" Aramis asks, grinning as he takes a sip of his own drink. True to what he's said, he is in support of women doing whatever they please. And really, the trousers allow him to appreciate the shape of a woman more openly.

The thought of the Musketeers learning what it was to be a woman, particularly one in the Paris they knew, was one she thought would linger with her after. It sparked too much amusement to do otherwise, then leaving a smile on her lips in between sips of her tea. She was careful enough to keep from burning her tongue on the steaming liquid and resisted the urge to giggle over the mental image of either d'Artagnan or Porthos in a skirt.

Just as she resisted the urge to wriggle in place as she had upon first donning the pair of pants she wore. Even with the lines of her outfit softened with the length of the shirt she wore beneath the corset and the jacket that was...on the barstool next to her? When had it gotten there? there was something truly novel in the way the fabric clung to her legs. A way she found she quite liked. Her smile was easy as she leaned in toward him, whispering conspiratorially "Free" with her brows lifted before she did, finally, giggle aloud.

To be fair, Aramis isn't sure either of them wore skirts. They might have stuck to trousers.

At her word, though, he grins outright, making sure to keep his shoulder there lest she turn a lean into a list. Her laughter is entirely charming and engaging. "Then, I think," he whispers in reply, "you should wear whatever you'd like."

After he had traded out her delightful little cocktail traded for tea and honey, she was unlikely to have told him aloud that her attempt to picture Porthos and d'Artagnan in dresses had not come with any guess as to what they'd look like female. The image of big, broad Porthos in a skirt was too much for a sober mind, let alone hers at that moment.

There has been too little laughter in recent days, weeks or months, even, if she stopped to consider it. It felt amazing. So much so that she could not imagine why she had not done more of it, or how she had managed as long as she had either before they (with the exception of Athos) came crashing into her life or after they had been banished from it before she had been given the escape of the Palace and her place at the Queen's side.

Her smile was broad as she agreed, "Then I will."

Her joy is indeed contagious and Aramis smiles more broadly than he has in a good time, free, for the moment, from the weight of what awaits them in Paris. He leans in then, knowing he risks a slap, to kiss her cheek. "I'm most glad to see you here, Constance."

In any other mood or any other state, he might have at least gotten a stern warning that she would not fall for his ridiculous charm. Not for any belief that he would forget his friend and try something with the woman d'Artagnan was in love with, and whom loved him dearly even when she wanted to shake some sense into the man, but because she doubted the kiss he pressed to her cheek had any thought behind it. That it was just who Aramis was.

Instead she could not help but roll her eyes at Aramis being Aramis, and patted him on the cheek. "Fool that I am," she told him, the fondness of her tone belying the rest, "I am glad to see you too."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Probably should have left the alcohol to Athos, really.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject