Author's Note: this silly, slightly smutty little fic is set sometime after episode 5, The Homecoming, where Porthos wakes up from his drunken birthday celebrations with no memory of the night before. This wouldn't be unusual, but for the dead body by his side...
Oh, and there were melons as well.
~
Porthos’s Birthday Game
“Marry, shag, throw off a cliff?”
“Sorry, what did you say?” Aramis lifted his head from the grey-looking pillow he’d pinched off Athos’s bed and cocked an unfocused eye at Porthos.
“You heard,” Porthos replied, helping himself to another cup of wine. “You’re playing too.” This directed at Athos and d’Artagnan, the former perching on the edge of his dishevelled bed, the latter slouching under the open window.
“Playing what?” d’Artagnan asked, holding out his cup for a refill and finding his friends too full of wine-fuelled lethargy to bother to oblige him.
“It’s one of Porthos’s childish games, “Athos informed him. “Though, arguably, not the most childish he’s ever played.”
“What’s the most chil—”
Athos shook his head, warning d’Artagnan not to go there.
“Look,” Porthos said. “It’s me birthday and I’m allowed to play games on me birthday.”
“Not blowing melons off Aramis’s head this year, then?” d’Artagnan asked, lurching to his feet in order to refill his cup. He put out his hands to steady himself. “Whoa. The floor’s moving.”
“No, that would be you.” Athos leaped to his feet and grabbed d’Artagnan around the waist. “I think you’ve had enough wine, my friend,” he said, helping the young man back to his former position under the window.
“Nah.” Porthos poured and handed the young musketeer another drink despite Athos’s cautionary words. “After the muddy-street-dead-man-almost-getting-hanged-thing last year, I decided it would be safer to give the melons a miss this year.”
“That is no reason,” Athos said, “for us all ending up in my less than salubrious room, drinking my entire wine stock.”
“Your room was the closest,” Porthos said, “and you’ve got wine to spare. Now, let’s play.”
Athos gave Porthos a withering look and poured himself another drink, a large one.
Aramis pushed himself off the bundle of cloaks he was lying on and did likewise.
“Must we?” d’Artagnan asked.
“The only way to avoid playing,” Aramis advised the young musketeer, “is to drink yourself into oblivion.”
“Precisely,” Athos said, lifting his cup and then downing the contents in one go.
However, by the time the musketeers were close to reaching oblivion, the idea of not playing Porthos’s game didn’t seem such a good one any more.
~
“That Alice what’s-her-name,” Porthos said, staring dreamily into his empty cup. “The candle maker’s widow. I’d marry her. That’s if I wanted to marry anyone.”
“Shag?” Aramis asked, rolling onto his back in an effort to get comfortable.
“Flea, of course. She was great. Not the cleanest bed linen in town, I’ll admit. Sometimes I didn’t know if it were the bed bugs or her pinching me bum. Great with her hands she was.”
