all_inclusive | Grief is the price we pay for love

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Grief is the price we pay for love

Athos doesn't even realize what's happened, at first.

Ever since Milady had arrived insisting that Athos had been on his way to meet her, ever since he had returned back to Paris and discovered Aramis' treason with the Queen and the result of such a coupling, ever since Rochefort's rearrival on the scene caused him to slouch back to the Nexus, he has been drinking like he hasn't since right after his wife's supposed death. It is in this state that he'd fumbled through a well-known door that he'd thought harmless to him.

Intoxicated with the red wine, he does not notice the shift of gravity in his body, nor the length of his hair different, swept up by the hat. All Athos knows is that he has drank two bottles and is eager for a third, lest he fall into the eager pit of grief and the other complicated affections that lie in wait for him, all coaxed on by the woman whose locket he no longer wears.

When he arrives at the bar for his usual, he's met with confusion. The bartender states that she hasn't been around enough to have a usual. Athos smacks his palm against the counter, his rage brought forward with the incense of it all. "Wine," he snaps, calming himself before his demands grow angrier and more frustrated. "Just bring me wine," he mutters, voice hoarse from the drink.

He slumps into his seat and peers down for the first time, unsteadily taking account of how his clothes now seem to sag and slump on him. Sighing with the inevitable realisation, he lifts an elegant long-fingered hand to the bartender. "Make that two," he adds, before allowing his forehead to collapse against that waiting hand.

How could he have thought this would pass him by forever?

He grasps both bottles of wine greedily when they arrive, eager to trudge back to his room and escape the prying eyes of the public.

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Athos sighs heavily and rolls his eyes for the implication that he will remain like this. "No, I don't," he finally concedes, pushing the blanket off and leaning forward to stare her down, unwilling to look away from the woman in his bedroom, when at one point in their lives, it might have been their bedroom. Unbidden, memories flood his mind and he flushes pink when he thinks of their history.

Of fields and white dresses and forget-me-nots and Athos' mouth between...

He clears his throat and looks askance to avoid eye contact now. "Something of d'Artagnan's might suit me. He's slight," Athos remarks.

There might be the slightest smirk that crosses Milady's face; she can still read him, though perhaps a little less accurately like this. That expression and the blush, however, is hard to miss.

Now, Athos? Really? She doesn't look away. She remembers too. Sharply and well.

"d'Artagnan," she drawls. Won't that be fun. But she shrugs. Why not. "Where's his room?"

Athos gestures wildly in the direction of the hallway. "Out, and then three down," he says, trying to think about anything but Anne's soft skin and her kisses, but his drunken mind is betraying him and allowing him to think of little else. "Don't hurt him," he warns her.

That earns Athos a leveled gaze. She has no reason to hurt d'Artagnan.

She slips into the hall and down. She knocks first, listening at the door. It would seem d'Artagnan isn't in. And while these doors are somewhat more complicated than the ones she's used to getting into, they are not impossible. She is able to get inside, poke around just for a moment, the come away with a tunic and some very interesting smallclothes (smaller and lighter than she's seen), as well as a pair of trousers. She returns with them to Athos's room and hands them over. "Do you need help?" She asks, eyebrow arched.

Athos leans forward to take the clothes from her hands, knowing that he'll have to apologize to d'Artagnan later for the theft of his clothing. He pushes to his feet and walks into the washroom to start stripping away the normal set of clothes, kicking them out into the main room. He doesn't answer when she asks if he needs the help, though he's still swaying more than he'd like as a result of the drink.

After a moment, Milady follows, leaning on the doorjamb to make sure that Athos doesn't fall and crack his skull wide open. "I assumed his boots would still be too big for you," she notes, almost idly. "Do you wish for a corset?"

She might be smirking a bit when she asks that.

"Why, do you wish to see me in one?" Athos retorts sharply, giving Milady a long look as he tugs on the smallclothes, scowling as he reaches for the tunic to yank over his head, tousling the hair even further before he sets himself to rights.

Milady shrugs, amused. It might be interesting, if nothing else. But for the moment, she points to the rat's nest that is Athos's hair. "Shall I?" she asks, taking a step closer. "Or do you wish to go about looking like a crazed woman in man's clothes?"

Athos says nothing in turn, tugging on the trousers without breaking eye contact. When he is bare-foot, but clothed fully, he gestures to the hair as he slouches and slumps against the chaise that lies in his spacious bathroom, a room not quite like the one at La Fère, but reminiscent in the right lights. "You might as well try, else I fear I will leave it to disarray and nesting."

Taking the two steps closer so that her hip brushes Athos's shoulder, Milady reaches up, carding her fingers through his hair.

She had always liked his hair. She moves behind him to face the mirror, gazing at the both of them in the reflection.

Even like this, being close to him affects her; it's behind her control.

Athos closes his eyes for the contact, the touch an infernal and intimate thing that makes him lean back into those familiar hands. He'd always loved her hands and it takes a long moment, but Athos' eyes flicker open finally to stare in the mirror, but he hasn't any time for his own reflection. There is only her. He grimaces and bows his head forward to permit Milady to work. "Do whatever you will with it," he instructs. "Make it workable."

With deft fingers, Milady curls the hair around Athos's current face, the jaw not altogether changed in the transition. She pulls a few pins from her hair, tucking his behind his ear and fastening it in place. That she leans forward so that Athos leans further against her goes unmentioned.

The sober part of his mind tells him that she knows what she's doing and Athos shouldn't be so weak to this, but the smell of her and the comfort makes him drift ever closer, closing his eyes as he breathes in deeply and stares up at her with a lovesick look in his eyes that cannot be hidden. "Not too complicated," he warns in a hushed voice. "Else I will never replicate it."

While she very much knows what she's doing, it isn't as if Milady isn't entirely unaffected either. This is Athos, regardless of the form, and whatever it is that ebbs and flows between them colors her cheeks just a little. When Athos speaks, she meets his eyes and sees that affection, however sodden and she feels her chest tighten with it, her fingers stilling.

She still wants that hope, she still wants to be that better woman. What an irony that she now faces a woman in this moment. "You have undone the pins in my hair enough times to know something," she reminds him, "of the reverse of that."

"Then I must sober myself to do so," Athos says, for each time he had twined his fingers carefully and slowly in her hair to tug out the braids, he had been sober. "I always admired the complicated styles you put in your hair," he admits, eyes closed as the memory tugs at his consciousness. "Though when you were laid plain and bare was my favourite."

Desire runs down Milady's spine, pooling hot in the cradle of her hips. Being sober would benefit Athos in a number of ways. Right now, her hair is only pinned up in the front. "... is that a request?" she asks quietly, smoothing her fingers through the back of his hair. Whether she would grant that request or not would depend on a good many factors.

Athos' eyes remain closed and there's the smallest of nods, despite the fact that he mutters a, "Don't be ridiculous," mere seconds later. Everything is at war, at the moment, and he has no idea how to cope with any of this -- her being back in his life chief among them.

"You're done," she says, not giving in to the urge to touch his face as she steps back, just a step. She could go now; she should, she supposes, but she stays for the moment, unable or unwilling the break the spell of whatever it is at the moment that's occurring.

Athos reaches out slowly and clasps those thin, long fingers around Anne's wrist, feeling dainty (yet not delicate) as he marvels at the difference between them. "Thank you," he musters out the words, breathing in deeply to think of this mad situation between them. "You didn't have to," he notes, which makes it all the more meaningful that she had.

No, she didn't. Milady looks down at the hand gripping hers, so feminine and yet calloused from swordplay and pistols.

"Do you think - "

Does she dare finish her thought? Can she bear to be rejected again?

"We are both here. It can be a new beginning."

If Athos lets it.

Athos does not reject it outright. He believes that says a great deal about where his mind lies on the subject. "I don't know that I can answer that yet," he admits. "Not until we are of equal standing and memory. There is still a gap between us and I cannot give you a response until I know what it is that you have lived and I have not," he says considerately.

"Allow me to return to Paris and live my life through before I give you an answer?"

It is an entirely reasonable request, said in a way not meant to offend. Yet, for a moment, Milady de Winter feels a surge of displeasure at being denied - however mildly and perhaps temporarily - as she is.

To her credit, though, she bites it back, nodding. It is, after all, only fair.

"Yes, all right," she murmurs, lifting her gaze to Athos's eyes, which, even in this form, call to her.

Athos reaches out for her hand, clasping at it like it's still the anchor that grounds him to reality, no matter how much has happened between them. He squeezes firmly and knows that unless she pulls away, he will not be able to do it first. "Good," he murmurs thickly. "Let us be fair and thorough. And then I will do my best to decide with the facts at hand."

The touch contradicts the words. She is being tried? The 'facts' are often up to interpretation and there have been facts that Athos has ignored before.

The damned place, taking people from different times and trapping them here. To say that she hates it would be an understatement.

"You should lie down," she says, standing as straight as she always does. "Before you fall down."

His strange new body weight and balance unnerve and frustrate him in turns, blinking as he tries to reconcile what he must do. Cautiously, carefully, he inches towards the bed and settles before sinking down, the room spinning and Anne with it. "You look a touch as though you are glowing, but I fear it must be the alcohol."

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