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He gave the order. For a moment, there was silence. He remembered the warnings by the other officers and wondered if they were founded. Then, the troops obeyed, their shaking hands trying to hold their muskets steady before gunpowder and smoke filled the sky. Then, it was done. A neat line of bodies lay in front of them. One man burst out sobbing on the spot, another vomited, others, too numerous to count looked sickened even as they didn’t outwardly voice their opinions.
He wiped away at a bloody cut on his face from a stray rock thrown by the protestors as he scowled at the display of weakness. It had to be done.
Thank God Ronan wasn’t there.
The thought froze him in his tracks.
No.
No.
How had he let this happen?
Years of training and discipline, and he-
No.
He wasn’t. He was a loyal officer of the king, sworn to uphold his duty, just as he had done here. He did not form unreasonable emotional attachments to dangerous revolutionaries. He didn’t form emotional attachments at all, they were utterly useless to an occupation such as his. Let other men have Philotes, he had Mars.
No.
And, if he was the sort to form attachments to dangerous revolutionaries, if his mind had somehow unhinged to that point, he would certainly, certainly be more practical than to form them for such an impudent, loudmouthed, disobedient, disorderly peasant as Ronan Mazurier. And, even if he had managed to form such an attachment in the strange mental state the last few months had found him in, (77 days and 18 hours. It had been 77 days since Ronan had entered the Bastille.) Ronan hated him. Even had the incident with his father never happened (and it did have to happen, he told himself, because if he started to doubt now, he knew he’d lose everything, and he would be no better than the man losing his stomach in the street), they were both of such temperaments that it was inevitable that they would be on opposite sides. Insofar as he was one to believe in something as abstract as fate, it was meant to be, though it was more a matter of common sense than three old crones and a pair of shears. The fact that he had taken Ronan in for the past few months had been a matter of mutual lust and reliance, nothing more. He’d desired Ronan, Ronan desired him and he needed a roof over his head and food in his stomach if he wanted to continue with his futile dreams of revolution.
No.
Why had he listened to Necker that day? Why had he allowed him to stay his hand? Was that because he didn’t want to deal with him, or was it because he’d given him the excuse he wanted? Had he not been there, had it just been his men and the crowd, with Ronan at the head of it, would he have gone through with giving the order? Would he have watched him crumble in front of him then and stoically stood by as his lover’s blood stained the pavement?
No.
It would have been better if he’d been there. Then, it would be done. Then, things would be simple again. He could go back to his drills and his chess board and if he felt the slightest bit of doubt, it could be easily brushed aside in lieu of his next assignment. He’d have his life back.
No.
He had to live with the knowledge that he was as weak as any other man.
They both did.
In the midst of the shouting and the running, Ronan found himself in front of Marat’s print shop again. Some lingering damage still remained from where the Snitches had ransacked the place, a few stray papers still littered the ground, but Marat seemed to have at least tried to make it look like it had before everything had gone to Hell. He ran his hand along a wooden beam of the printing press and smiled, remembering how he, Jacques, and Michél had gossiped and joked there once. It had really been a good job after all, he decided.
“So, this is the place that caused so much trouble.”
He startled. “Peyrol!” The Comte leaned against the doorway, his hair disheveled and his coat covered in dark red spots that Ronan didn’t want to think about but knew anyway.
“Only part of it is theirs,” he said, gesturing to a scrape on his face, “Your rebels threw rocks and glass at my regiment.”
The first thought that ran through his mind was
Was he alright?
He brushed that aside. It wasn’t the time to worry for Lazare de Peyrol, not when everything else was going to Hell. It wasn’t like he’d be doing the same for him, anyway.
“And you responded by stuffing them full of lead,” Ronan snarled, stepping closer to him. How dare he pretend like he had somehow suffered, when the streets were lined with bodies because of him?
“I did as I was ordered.” Peyrol’s eyes locked on him, dark, with that wild edge to him that he tried to pretend wasn’t there. Remembering the last time Peyrol’d looked at him like that, at the Estates General when he’d nearly shot him, how Peyrol had barely gotten the two of them out of sight of the others before pushing him against the nearest wall and fucking him, not anything like Lazare when he was in control, but hot and hungry and desperate, Ronan felt his pants tighten.
“How many times can you say that, huh? How many times can you defend murdering people because you were ordered to?” Ronan shook his head in disgust. He had to remember that, because otherwise... “You never change.”
After all that talk about how he was-how he was different, that he’d cared for him (and God, Ronan had been stupid enough to hope that one day the stubborn fool would use the term “love”), he was still just a butcher. It was all he knew. Death and pain and cold, hard duty.
Peyrol stepped closer. “Yet you knew that when you first came to my bed. What did you expect, Ronan?” He closed the distance between them, so that they were almost sharing the same breath and they were too close, this was too much like before.
His eyes flicked from Ronan’s eyes to his mouth, and it was worse than before, because back then neither one of them knew what that mouth could do. Then, more to himself than Ronan, he murmured, “What did you expect?”
He hated that he didn’t have any answer for that one except lunging forward to capture Peyrol’s mouth, hated the little needy moan that escaped him when they separated, so to distract himself from that he bit down hard on Peyrol’s lip, drawing blood and eliciting a low groan that caused his trousers to tighten around him even further. Lazare always tried to remain calm, always tried to pretend like he was in control, just like he pretended to be the perfect little officer in front of everyone else, but sometimes, just sometimes, he broke a little, and Ronan lived for those moments.
Ronan’s eyes followed the dull gleam of Peyrol’s leather gloves as they brushed against his lip. “Impudence.”
Ronan didn’t have any time to think about what the
fuck
he’d just done when Peyrol crushed his mouth to his and Ronan tasted iron as he yanked Peyrol’s hair back. It wasn’t like it normally was, he thought, when it was tied back. He had to put more into it, gather the hair together, grasping at the glossy black strands and then
pull
while Peyrol hissed, whether in arousal or anger he didn’t know.
With Peyrol, they might have been the same thing. Hell, they probably were.
Peyrol’s gloved hands went beneath his trousers, groping, grasping at bare skin. At the familiar touch of the rough, familiar leather against his flesh, right where he needed him, Ronan moaned against Peyrol’s mouth, bucking into the touch, and he felt Peyrol’s lips quirk against him. His hand went to squeeze Peyrol’s ass, pushing his breeches down, because what the Hell? He was pretty much fucking the mouth of the man who’d just shot God knew how many people on the streets and it wasn’t like he’d let the smug bastard off that easily.
Peyrol broke away, something like lucidity briefly appearing in his eyes. “What are you doing? Marat has to be nearby.”
Why did he have to be
reasonable
now? Why couldn’t he have done it before he started this whole thing? “He’s always asleep by this time, and once he goes to sleep, he’s out for the whole night. I used to print pamphlets here all the time without him knowing.”
“Very we-“ Ronan’s lips crashed against his again, muffling the sentence. Peyrol growled into his mouth, sending little, tingling vibrations across his lips, however he didn’t have too long to enjoy it as the next sound he heard was that of fabric ripping as the yellow jacket dropped to the floor.
“You did that on purpose,” Ronan said, knowing fully well that Peyrol had hated the thing from the first time he saw it, which was part of why he wore it whenever he could. Peyrol gave him a nondescript, almost quizzical look that seemed to say
And if I did?
which only served to make Ronan angrier, as he tugged Peyrol into another furious, smoldering kiss, his tongue slipping into Peyrol’s mouth easily. Lazare de Peyrol could pretend to be above it all he wanted, but at the end of the day, he wanted this just as much as Ronan. (He expected Peyrol to bite down on it. He didn’t know if he was disappointed that he didn’t.)
Ronan cried out as the other man used his surprise to pin him against the printing press, the plank digging hard into his lower back.
Fuck
him.
Peyrol hissed in his ear, breath warm against Ronan’s skin. “Where? Tell me, or I
will
take you on the floor.” While Ronan tried to come up with something coherent, Peyrol took the opportunity to nip at his earlobe, occasionally swiping his tongue at it and
fuck
Ronan was hard, thrusting blindly for any kind of friction, anything that could
help
. He didn’t care, he didn’t care, he just wanted him, he just wanted--
“Or perhaps you want me to take you like a dog? Rutting against me while I put you in your
place
? Is that what you want?” Peyrol’s voice was low and smooth against his ear, with only a hint of the bite that he knew was just under the surface.
“Fuck…off…Peyrol,” he was able to gasp out as Peyrol’s attention lowered to his neck, sucking hurried, frantic kisses into the skin, and, on impulse, he wrapped his legs around him. Peyrol’s eyes widened, and if it wasn’t for the fact that he was on top of his old boss’s printing press, about to get fucked to within an inch of his life by a murderer, he’d have laughed in his face.
Not quite so in control now, huh?
That moment of satisfaction lasted until he felt Peyrol releasing his hold on one hand to shuffle in his pocket for something.
“Hold on,” he said, and Ronan tried, his hands and nails scrambling across the wood, trying to find something to grip onto without wrecking the whole thing, because he was not going to tell Marat how he broke a printing press that was worth more than Ronan’s life. It wasn’t exactly built for this sort of thing, and he doubted he could blame the Snitches for
this
.
Ronan was vaguely aware of one of the leather gloves dropping to the floor, and soon he felt a slick, greasy finger nudging at his ass. He wiggled against the cool touch, aching for something, anything. It started with shallow thrusts, teasing him but not giving him anything he could
use
, even though screwing Peyrol all over Paris had loosened him enough over the last few months that it wasn’t like there was any resistance.
Finally Peyrol went deeper, slipping first one, then two fingers inside him, stretching him, and Ronan gripped hard at Peyrol’s back, unable to stop the whimpers at the steady, subtle pressure building every time Peyrol touched that
one
spot that always seemed to bring him pleasure.
“So impatient.” Peyrol murmured as he withdrew his fingers.
Ronan huffed even as he squirmed at the loss of contact, feeling empty now that he didn’t have anything inside him. “If you don’t get on with it, Marat will be up by the time you’re done.”
Peyrol shoved inside him, and Ronan’s fingers curled against the wood. It was about time the bastard did it. He moved to touch his own cock, neglected since this began and rock hard, but Peyrol batted him away. “No. You will take exactly what I give you. No more.” Fucking aristo, always taking control. (Though, if he didn’t, would Ronan have been interested?) He gave a brutal thrust, breaking him out of any thoughts he might have had. “And no less. Understood?”
Ronan could only nod his head rapidly, needing for it to continue. Instead he pulled himself up and buried his face in Peyrol’s neck, which shined with a thin coating of sweat, trying to forget the smell of gunsmoke that seemed to radiate off him and focus purely on the growing pressure from before. He was still pissed at Peyrol, he reminded himself, even if the man was in the process of screwing his brains out. He wasn’t going to look him in the eye, he wasn’t going to look him in the face.
That was too intimate. He’d lost that right.
Hell, he didn’t even have to think it was Peyrol fucking him.
It could be someone different, someone better. Like…Ronan tried to think of someone, which was a lot harder than it would have been if Peyrol wasn’t driving into him faster than he could think.
Printing press...Marat (NO), pamphlets, philosophy
...Desmoulins.
That was right. Desmoulins was nice, Desmoulins would never kill people in the middle of the street. Desmoulins would never hurt anyone. This was just him and his best friend having frantic sex on top of Marat’s printing press while everything went to Hell. He was scratching at Desmoulins’ back, his hair, moving and whimpering with each movement of his body.
A hard, sharp thrust from Peyrol broke him out of that thought. There was no way in Hell Desmoulins fucked like that. There was no way in Hell anyone else Ronan knew fucked like that, and he threw his head back, watching the way Peyrol’s eyes glittered as he readjusted, fighting the way his heart leapt as he tried to remind himself that he was still a murderer, damn him. Those thoughts went blank as Peyrol turned his attention to Ronan’s throat, earning a whimper that Ronan was definitely going to regret later, when he had time to think of something, anything else but
more more, fuck, Peyrol, hard, good, full, more, yes, fuck, yes
.
It was him, it’d always been him, it always would be
him, him, him
, giving him what he needed, what he couldn’t ask anyone else for, even if they set everything else on fire while doing it.
Peyrol wrapped a hand around his cock, warm and tight, pumping it at the pace of their bodies, leaving only his other hand to support Ronan between him and the press and it was all Ronan could do to hold back from coming at the contact.
A noise came out of his throat, a curse, a prayer, a name, he wasn’t sure what and it was probably for the best because he knew that, whatever it was, it was
needy
. It was what Peyrol always did to him, every time, made him break down, need him, want him, and he would have hated it if he didn’t see Peyrol’s resolve breaking down even faster than his. They both did this to one another, there wasn’t a winner or a loser, not in the end, because in the end, they wanted the same thing. (Shame that real life wasn’t as easy as that.)
All that he was aware of, all that
mattered
, was that every muscle, every
inch
of his body was filled with tension, drawing tighter and tighter with the rapid, steady work of Peyrol’s cock until finally, with a cry, he came in Peyrol’s hand, slouching against him.
Peyrol remained inside of him, thrusting several more times before coming himself, biting down hard on his neck as he did. The thought touched Ronan’s mind that it’d probably leave a mark, but at the moment he was in no position to care. Let him mark him up all he wanted, he usually did. (And it wasn’t like Ronan’d ever had any complaints, sometimes looking at the little shaving mirror Lazare used and touching the deep purple and red marks before tying on his scarf, keeping them around as his own little reminder that he had
that
waiting for him at home, all to himself.)
It took Ronan a few seconds in the haze that followed to realize that they were still suspended, Peyrol was still inside him, and he was still pinned against the printing press. Finally, Peyrol let him go, and he nearly dropped to the floor at the lack of support, his legs unused to holding him up. Peyrol caught him, and he hated to admit how
right
it felt to be like this, anchored against each other, still in the couple of moments after sex where everything seemed to exist in a relaxed, easy place. They could have been back in their bed, warm and content and as normal as they could ever be, Ronan sneaking a few last kisses before they caught some sleep for all the difference it would have made.
Then, Peyrol broke it.
“Damn you,” he murmured against Ronan’s lips, “Damn you.”
Ronan should have shouted at him then, should have asked him why the
Hell
he was the one cursing him when Peyrol was the one firing at innocent civilians, but then he was too distracted by the brush of Lazare’s mouth over his to do anything, the gentleness, the care put into it so different from the rough fucking they’d just done that he would have laughed, if he wasn’t too busy clinging onto it.
For a moment, it was like any of their other times together, despite the change in position, despite the anger, despite the fact that Marat was snoring somewhere in that very building, blissfully unaware of what they’d just done under his roof. Then they heard the distant sounds of gunfire and shouting coming from the streets and the moment was gone.
They became an officer and a revolutionary again.
Peyrol stood up abruptly, taking out a clean handkerchief from his pocket and wiping his hands, one finger at a time before buttoning his breeches back into place, the dropped glove already perfectly fixed onto his hand. “I need to go.”
Ronan looked him in the eye. “How many more, Peyrol?”
There was a moment of hesitation that was quickly broken. “I will do whatever it takes.”
Ronan resisted the urge to brush away the strands of hair that were plastered to Peyrol’s forehead, to examine that scrape he’d gotten earlier, feeling his jaw tighten instead. “So will I.”
For a second, something almost resembling uncertainty flickered in Peyrol’s eyes, only to be replaced by resolve. “Take care, Mazurier. Stay away from Place Louis XV.” He leaned forward, as if he was considering something, but Ronan turned his head aside, and then he was the Comte de Peyrol again, his boots thudding evenly against the wooden floor as he left the room, punctuated by the sound of the door shutting.
As he left, Ronan tugged his own trousers up, trying to fight off the tears that were threatening to spill because
he wasn’t worth it
, and
a part of him always knew
-
-
He wasn’t going to cry over Lazare de Peyrol.
He looked around at the place one last time, quiet now that it was just him and all the memories he’d made there (including the one that he’d never, ever be able to talk about), gathered up as many scraps of the yellow jacket that he could get ahold of, and ran back to their apartment, barely looking at the red jacket as he tugged it on to go find his friends.
He wouldn’t come back until it was finished, he decided. He couldn’t. Maybe in a couple of days, if he could, if his thoughts had cleared up. If they could be
Ronan and Lazare
again, could talk things through, figure out where they stood again. Or at least...share the same space again. Lazare had leave coming up soon, maybe he could nab him away for a little while, get him away from the army. Maybe, if he could just understand--
But not now. Now, Ronan’s friends were in danger, and the man that’d just been in there was the cause. That mattered more than anything else.
That night, Lazare de Peyrol came back to an empty room.