du_vallon | (no subject)

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It's only been a few days since they've escaped from the underworld they'd been trapped in and there are two things he's been doing since. One is making sure to obsessively watch over Aramis and Athos, and the second is that he's been basking in the sun as much as he can, indulging in the feel of it on his skin. Today, despite his project of assembling the pieces of a fancy crib he'd purchased at the flea market, he's opened the window to the fire escape and perches half-in, half-out, allowing the sun to shine on his face and make him feel right.

He leans inside to pick up the screwdriver and two slats of wood, bringing them outside as he begins to assemble them in the crisp air. He knows he's getting far, far ahead of himself here, but he also thinks it will be a treat for Aramis. Besides, if nothing else, they can keep the Captain in it until they actually need it.

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"I would have told you," says Aramis at once. He looks at his phone, still lying by his scarf. He's turned the volume up to its highest setting, but there's been nothing in the days since he called the agency.

"Our surrogate was not sucked into the madness of that ashen world. That is something."

Porthos gives a grateful hum as he bows his cheek to rest against Aramis' shoulder, hand sliding up and down Aramis' arm as he stares at the half-finished crib, thinking of when a child will fill the space. Then, suddenly, panic hits him and he freezes, because now he's thinking of what would have happened if all of them left and their baby was still here.

"We're going to need guardians on call," he says suddenly.

"Yes," Aramis agrees. And the will is a sound idea, now that he can look past his own grief to the benefits it would have for their child. "Godparents, they call them now. To take the child if something ever happens to us, so she will always have a place to go."

Porthos hadn't thought to equate it to the church at all, but now that Aramis has brought it up, he supposes that he can't imagine any other way for it. He gives Aramis a rueful look as he eases away from him in order to look him in the eye. "You're going to make me attend a baptism, aren't you?" he realizes, not entirely grudging, but it's the first time this has occurred to him.

"I would like it if you did," says Aramis, watching Porthos. "A christening is to be done before a child's family. It will not feel right if one of her fathers is not there." He touches Porthos' cheek, creased with his frown. "Athos will be there."

"I know," Porthos says, and he's grumbling for the sake of grumbling now. "Of course I'll come too," he vows, because he doesn't think he could allow Aramis to go through such a thing alone. "Are you still set on being called Papa?"

"I think so," says Aramis, smiling faintly. "Nothing else has quite that ring. The children here say dad." He grimaces. "Where is the romance in that? Père if she really must, but papa is best."

Porthos laughs fondly at the notion of that, but he, who never had a father to call anything, likes the idea of Aramis being called Papa. "Papa for you. Daddy for me," he says, embracing the modern way as he slats in the last of the crib and gets to standing, kneeling as he peers into it and settling the duckling-covered blanket on the base.

"What do you think?"

Aramis sucks in a breath as he rises to view the completed crib, his eyes growing hot as he skims his hand along the top of it, reaching down to press his fingers to the blanket. "I think you will find me snuggling with this more than once in the future," he says in a thick voice.

"Don't suck your thumb at the same time and I'll allow it," he says with a wink, easing back to Aramis' side to press his face into his neck, not kissing but just breathing him in as he stares at the ink of the tattoo. "When you were down there, were you worried something might come out of the shadows for you?" he asks quietly.

"What of other things?" asks Aramis for the thumb sucking, but he sobers quickly when Porthos questions him. "Only in the moments quiet enough for us to think," he says, thinking of the times they'd managed to lie quietly and attempt sleep. "And there were precious few of those. Perhaps that's a blessing."

"You're not sucking me off while wrapped up in a baby blanket," Porthos informs him matter-of-factly because he loves Aramis dearly, but maybe not that dearly. He breathes slowly and tries to pretend that he hadn't feared things down there, except he had. "It's people's worst fears, yeah? Mine's being left alone again, mine's you and Athos dying or leaving me."

"And I kept waiting and waiting, but it never came and I was so grateful."

"Well then," says Aramis, curling his arm around Porthos, rubbing his back until his breathing evens, "I suppose I protected you from something down there after all." His smile is tender. "We all survived, and you are far from alone."

"And I'm grateful every day," Porthos promises, setting the blanket straight with a smoothing motion of his hand. "Now," he says, standing and tugging Aramis to his feet as well. "You need to help me move this somewhere to keep until there's a little one to fill it."

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