Probably should have left the alcohol to Athos, really.

[at_your_side]

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.

Comments

[armedagainstlove]

"A wish is not a covenant with anyone," Athos says, knowing all too well that fact himself. After all, does he not know this from experience? Has he not wished for another life more than once? He gives Constance a sympathetic look and knows that even despite the alcohol in her system, she does actually understand him when he speaks of this. "He was often not a kind man to you. I cannot say I approved of him," he says, carefully, as he was Constance's husband.

"You cannot change his mind or his fate," Athos says. "No more than I could change my own past. And I have lived with my own fault in that. I have learned it is too much to bear. Please, learn from my lesson so that it is of use to someone," he entreats.

[at_your_side]

Not even a new mouthful of her drink could erase the bitter taste of her own words from her tongue. She remembered too well how she had wished for freedom, for a life that had not felt as if it had been cut off with the marriage contract her father had signed for her. The world had felt too dark then, the bite of rope into the tender skin at her wrists too fitting for the weight she carried within her chest whenever she had looked at d'Artagnan and known that if she had any sense at all, she would give him up.

The scene was not the same, no rope scored her wrists, no man paced before them calling out sentences of life and death, and still, yet again Constance found herself sitting beside a Musketeer and wishing. Not for freedom or for an escape to a marriage that death had already ended, but for something she did not know how to put into words.

Alcohol stripped away the urge to defend the man she had betrayed, and who had betrayed her in return. She was quiet as he spoke, but where she nearly dropped her eyes from his because it might have been safer to hold her guilt, her fears close, his were words she needed to hear. Her heart felt as if it lodged a moment in her throat before she swallowed and, after another moment, reached out to lay a hand lightly over his. Where she could not find the words to properly encapsulate all she felt, she could speak the truth and tell him in a quiet voice, "You are a good friend, Athos."

[armedagainstlove]

"You have not allowed me to be anything but," he feels compelled to point out, given that Constance could easily do away with him with the flick of her fingers, but chooses to keep him in her life despite his list of many flaws. He knows that Bonacieux had never truly liked him, though he does feel sorry for the man. Dislike is no reason to wish harm on anyone and the loss of one's life is a difficult thing.

He reaches over to rest his other hand on hers, simply to hold there. "And you, you are a kind and gentle woman of great intelligence who deserves every ounce of happiness she can find, even if it is with someone who is not the man you married."

[at_your_side]

For all the potential hazards of keeping a connection to a man who was not her husband, who was one of the blue-cloaked King's Musketeers who carried as much scandal as the demand for respect with their pauldrons and swords, she had never regretted having found him that night in the courtyard. The rules of propriety had demanded much distance between them, but she had found that she relied in those quiet moments on the respect he had always shown her. Moreso on the way he had always seemed to view her first and foremost as herself, rather than an extension of her husband or a property of her marriage.

No matter how many times she had wanted to bar him from taverns or pull a bottle of wine out of his hand for a loaf of bread. She could only offer small comforts and no little fussing in an attempt to mitigate something of his self-destruction.

Emotion overwhelming her at his words, Constance's lips pressed together in an attempt to stem some more ridiculous display as she looked back at him with eyes more than a touch watery. It would have been the same without the amount of alcohol she'd already had, but the sincerity of his speech was felt more with more raw intensity in that moment. She could not find the words to reply, but smiled her tight-lipped smile back at him.