AIMÉ

“You sure you can’t miss it?” Aimé asked from his place in bed, buried underneath the blankets, and Jean-Pierre looked at him with his lips curled in an indulgent smile, even as his fingers moved slowly over the lacing on his blouse.

It was a dark purple, the colour of Ancient Greek wine, and it looked good against Jean-Pierre’s pale skin, tightly moulded to him. Aimé wondered if he ever wore corsets – he seemed like the type. He liked the idea of doing the laces, pulling at them until Jean-Pierre couldn’t breathe easy, ‘til he flushed pink and looked at Aimé with his lips bitten red.

“How many times have you sat through the exact same lecture?”

“It is not the exact same,” Jean-Pierre said, pouting out his lips and giving Aimé a disapproving look. “The points of anatomy have changed many times since first I began to study them, you know. We discover new things about the human body all the time – the science evolves, Aimé, as does man himself.”

“You ever listen to yourself talk, Jean? You’re so full of shit.”

“Jean-Pierre,” l’ange corrected him, but his smile grew slightly wider, its curve growing more pronounced.

“Your brothers don’t call you that.”

“You are my brother now?”

“No, but—”

“Then you call me Jean-Pierre,” was the curt response, and Aimé leaned back on the pillows, spreading his legs under the blankets, and Jean-Pierre glanced down at the movement of the layered sheets.

“Will you punish me if I don’t,” Aimé asked, raising his eyebrows, “Jean?”

“A terribly appealing seduction,” Jean-Pierre said as he drew an oversized, black-knitted jumper over his shoulders, hiding the blouse in all its tight-fitting glory. Aimé would call it a tragedy, but he supposed it meant people wouldn’t be able to ogle Jean-Pierre the way Aimé liked to – although there was something hot about that in itself. “But I must go to school. You can stay here, if you wish it. Colm and Asmodeus will not trouble over your being here.”

“I might sleep a little longer,” Aimé said. “Thanks for, uh, for taking care of me last night.”

“How could I do anything less?” was the softly-spoken response, and Jean-Pierre looked directly at him, his gaze intent.

Aimé swallowed hard, burning with embarrassment. It was too much when Jean-Pierre looked at him like that, and it had been too much the night before. He’d never really been looked after like that, when he’d been sick – Jean-Pierre had never stopped touching him the whole night, had held his mug up to his mouth for him to drink, had stroked his shoulders, played with his hair.

He’d never really gotten sick as a child, and he remembered the one time he’d had a bad flu when he’d been thirteen or so, and lying in bed in the school infirmary, with the nurse coming every hour or so to check his temperature. The times he’d been in hospital, after he’d started boxing – after he’d started getting into fights – his mother would never say a word to him, would just come, pick him up, and take him home again when she could.

He laid still, watching as Jean-Pierre brushed out his hair, and then glanced at his phone.

“Hm,” he hummed softly, and then he turned on his heel, dragging his jumper back over his head. Aimé looked at his back, at the vents that Jean-Pierre had cut into the back of all his shirts and blouses – you didn’t even really notice them, if you weren’t looking for them, because it just looked like additional fabric.

When Jean-Pierre’s wings came free, Aimé sighed at the sight of them, and he sat up, keeping wrapped in the blanket as he moved forward on his knees.

“You know you’re beautiful,” Aimé said as he reached out, beginning to comb his fingers through the lines of soft, golden feathers, feeling them slightly oily under his fingers, like hair when it was greasy. It wasn’t an unpleasant sensation, just different, and like this, kneeling at Jean-Pierre’s back, his lungs were filled with that frankincense smell that he now knew was angel wing oil. “So I won’t tell you you are.”

“But, Aimé,” Jean-Pierre said, turning to Aimé over his shoulder, looking at him between the curve of each wing before he spread them out. His expression was pleading. “What if I forget?”

“You’re such a spoilt brat,” Aimé said, and when Jean-Pierre looked indignant, he pressed on one of the weird-looking, swollen openings at the base of his right wing – an oil gland – and Jean-Pierre groaned. Pale golden oil poured over Aimé’s fingers, smoother and slicker than any lube on the planet, and Aimé spread it between his fingers, beginning to drag his fingers through the feathers, scratching slightly at the actual flesh of Jean-Pierre’s wings as he combed through, and kissing the back of his neck when he shivered.

Jean-Pierre was so warm under him when he laid his cheek in the centre of Jean-Pierre’s back, and he closed his eyes and just groomed the wings without looking. This was how you groomed wings, apparently – you just combed through the feathers with your fingers, scratched away any bits of dirt or clumped-up oil that stuck in place.

He didn’t mind pulling out the feathers that were loose, but there was something about plucking out the bent or broken ones that didn’t quite sit well with him. Colm and Asmodeus did it all the time, just reached out and pulled feathers out of Jean-Pierre’s wings, and Jean-Pierre let out a sharp little gasp at times, but it didn’t seem to hurt him that badly – and even when they took them at the very tip, the feathers always seemed to come out very easily at the quill.

“You fly much?”

“Some. I flew back to the US some time ago.”

“How fast do you fly?”

“I normally fly at, hm. Ninety kilometres per hour? If I have a very good tail wind I can fly as fast as one-hundred-and-thirty, even forty, but it is bad for my skin, and chaps my lips, to fly too fast.”

“Oh, well,” Aimé murmured, pressing kisses to the back of Jean-Pierre’s neck and shoulders, “can’t have that. Who could take you seriously if your lips were chapped.” It was a ridiculous speed, obscene, and Aimé could barely believe it, couldn’t help the image he had in his head of Jean-Pierre kitted out like Amelia Earhart, goggles and everything, zooming along like an eagle with a pretty face.

“Will you fuck me?” Jean-Pierre asked. He kept squirming when Aimé pressed on the glands at his back, had already unbuttoned his jeans, and Aimé could see the way he’d stuffed one slim hand down the front of them, rocking into his own fingers with greedy little movements of his hips.

Aimé’s face felt hot, his mouth dry, as he pressed one hand, wet with wing oil, under the loose waistband and hooked a finger against Jean-Pierre’s arse, huffing out a laugh when the angel squeaked and spread his thighs apart. “You have time?”

“De will drive me.”

“Brat.”

Jean-Pierre giggled, and then softly groaned, wings spreading wider as Aimé slid his fingers forward.

“Could you fuck someone while flying?”

Jean-Pierre laughed, wriggling out of his pants, turning to look at Aimé, blue eyes sparkling.

“Perhaps,” he said softly, sliding his hands over Aimé’s thighs. “But what if I dropped you?”

“You’d do that?”

“Not on purpose!”

Aimé pulled Jean-Pierre into his lap, and as Jean-Pierre sank down onto him, he found himself concentrating less on the sensations he felt, and more on the expression on Jean-Pierre’s face, the soft ecstasy writ on his pretty features, the pink part of his perfect lips, the close of his eyes.

Maybe it was because he was tired, or still sick, but he didn’t really feel incredibly motivated to chase his own orgasm – he fell back on the bed and stared lazily up at Jean-Pierre, let him take whatever he wanted from him.

“Will I fuck you to sleep, Aimé?” Jean-Pierre asked sweetly, sliding his palm over the curve of Aimé’s cheek.

He was massaging strange patterns on the front of Aimé’s shoulders, his chest, skilled fingers palpating on the muscle and flesh, and it did feel good, but he moved so slowly that it really was soporific, and Aimé sighed, his eyes falling closed.

“You can do whatever you want to me,” he mumbled. “Asleep or awake.”

Jean-Pierre chuckled. “Yes,” he murmured, leaning in to kiss the side of Aimé’s temple. “I knew that. But it is nice to have permission.” Jean-Pierre’s hands carded through Aimé’s hair then, his fingers pressing and massaging on his scalp, and Aimé, head heavy, felt himself sink back further into the pillows.

When he woke, Jean-Pierre had wrapped the blankets back around him, and Aimé was alone in the bedroom. It was past noon, and Aimé crawled out from under the blankets, threw on a jumper and his joggers after he’d taken a piss. He hesitated, glancing at his shoes and socks – he still felt weird, going downstairs in any state of undress, no matter than Jean-Pierre had told him to stay, and no matter than Jean-Pierre frequently lounged around his brothers in no clothes at all, Aimé still felt uncertain about being seen barefoot.

He pulled on his socks, and went downstairs.

Asmodeus’ bedroom door was open, and he could hear the shower running: distantly, he could hear the angel singing, and although he couldn’t really make out the words or even the melody, the sound of it was deep, resonant, and distinctly inhuman. It was the sort of beautiful, Aimé suspected, that wasn’t naturally intended for human ears, and as he descended the stairs, he rubbed at his chest to try to dispel the weird, lingering echo of the song’s vibration in his chest.

The man at the table was unfamiliar.

“Hi,” Aimé said slowly, and the man looked up at him.

He was handsome, Aimé supposed, but older – he was in his forties or his fifties, maybe, with grey hair, and a messy beard growing patchily on his cheeks. There were heavy shadows under his eyes, and he wore a black shirt and black trousers – he wasn’t wearing a white collar, but Aimé was fairly sure…

“Father?”

“Good afternoon,” the priest said, looking away from Aimé and at the surface of the kitchen table, touching his fingers to the wooden surface.

The priest’s hair was messy. His clothes looked not slept-in, but ruffled, and one of the buttons on his shirt was missing – Aimé didn’t know if it was fair to assume that he’d lost it when ripping the shirt off, or when someone else was, but the man stunk of sex, and the collar only mostly hid the bruises bitten into his neck.

“I’m Aimé,” he said, trying not to sound… Well, he’d never seen a priest who’d obviously just been railed by an angel before. He didn’t really have a script for it – he doubted anybody did, unless Asmodeus made a habit out of this (he could only assume it was Asmodeus, because Colm was a devout Catholic, and he didn’t think this counted as taking communion), and Colm and Jean-Pierre were used to it. “You, uh. You have a good night?”

“Let’s not discuss it,” said the priest, which was all Aimé wanted, really.

He turned on the kettle, taking the bottle of vodka Jean-Pierre had put aside for him, and he felt the father’s gaze on him as he poured a measure of it into his coffee. He held up the bottle in silent invitation, and just as silently, the priest pushed his mug toward him, and didn’t give the nod for him to stop pouring until Aimé had poured two and a half measures into it.

“You want some coffee with your vodka?” Aimé asked.

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged,” said the priest.

“I think we’re both kind of beyond judgement at this point, don’t you?” Aimé asked, and took a drink from his own mug.

“You were with Delacroix?”

“Yeah, he’s gone to class,” Aimé said, opening the fridge and looking at the headache-inducing, brightly coloured array of fresh fruit and vegetables inside. He stared for a second, wondering if he could stomach a platter of fruit for lunch, and then he slowly closed the fridge again. “De drive him?”

“De?”

“Asmodeus.”

“I… think,” the priest muttered, and rubbed at his eye. “I was insensible at the time.”

Not asleep: insensible.

Aimé opened his mouth to ask, but Asmodeus came down from upstairs, and Aimé stared at his shirtless chest, at the moisture still glistening on the finely chiselled shape of his breast, his abs. Asmodeus wasn’t muscular like Colm was, in a sexy way, but like a normal human – he looked muscular in the way a model did, as if he was dehydrated as Hell and underweight to make every bit of muscle stand out.

He was towelling off his hair, dressed only in a pair of grey slacks, and as he stood there, stared at by both Aimé and his priest, Asmodeus asked, “You need to eat something, Jim. Let me cook for you.”

“I didn’t hear a question in there,” Jim muttered, and Asmodeus ran a hand through his damp hair as he pulled the towel down: obviously, where Asmodeus had combed his fingers through, it looked perfect, as if he’d intentionally gelled a bedhead into place.

“Aimé,” Asmodeus said.

“Yeah,” Aimé said, and then coughed. “I mean— hi.”

“Joining us for brunch?”

“Oh, no, I—”

“Sit,” Asmodeus ordered cleanly, showing his teeth as he gave one of his weird, emotionless smirks, and Aimé sank into the seat across from “Jimmy” the priest, unable to stop his gaze from falling to Asmodeus’ arse as he sauntered past, flicking on the flame on the hob and taking two frying pans from their cupboard, putting them both on the heat. “Feeling better?”

“Yeah,” Aimé said. “Thanks.”

“You think you can handle a full meal?” Aimé’s stomach gave a plaintive rumble before he could say anything, and Asmodeus’ rich chuckle made Aimé shiver. “I see.”

“You were sick?” asked the priest, and Aimé nodded.

“It passed pretty quickly. I just feel a bit run down. My cigarettes down here?” he asked, glancing around the kitchen.

“Don’t smoke before a meal, Aimé,” Asmodeus said, in a voice that might have been chiding, if it weren’t toneless. It was hard to judge Asmodeus most of the time. “But no, they aren’t. They’re not in Jean’s room?”

“Uh uh.”

“Well, he must have left them in the restaurant, you know Jean doesn’t like you smoking.”

“You have any?”

“Do I look that stupid to you, Aimé?” Asmodeus asked, turning to look at him with one eyebrow raised, his lips pressed together, slightly pouted out. It was precisely the same expression he’d seen on Jean-Pierre’s face a hundred times since knowing him, and somehow the two of them wore it completely differently. “You think I want my little brother crawling down my throat, nagging me to stop smoking like he does you?”

“He doesn’t nag,” Aimé said. “He just… complains sometimes. Makes a face.”

“Hmph,” said Asmodeus.

“You always fuck priests?” Aimé asked, irritated for reasons he didn’t want to consider in detail, and very slowly, Asmodeus rotated on his heel, looking at Aimé sternly, his green eyes alight with a glower that made Aimé feel as tiny and as unimportant as he had just crawled out of the primordial ooze. It was what he’d been asking for, so he supposed he couldn’t complain.

He looked at Jim, watched him unscrew the cap of the vodka bottle, and pour a little more of it into his mug.

Asmodeus was a good cook, and even though he didn’t eat any himself, he put bacon onto Aimé’s plate and onto Jim’s, and they ate in strange silence. Aimé laid down on the couch after that, half-dozed underneath a blanket, listened to the priest and Asmodeus talk.

“Father O’Flaherty sent me a text this morning,” said the priest. “Asked how my family is doing.”

“What did you tell him?” was the quiet response.

“I said I would be back on Monday.”

“For how long, I wonder?”

“I’m not leaving the priesthood.”

“You think Christ wants you back in his arms, after you’ve been in mine?”

“Asmodeus, are you really so convinced that you trump God’s claim to every soul?”

“Your cock seems to think I do,” said Asmodeus, and then said, “Aimé, if you are going to eavesdrop on other people’s conversation, make yourself useful and wash up.”

“I’m sleeping,” Aimé said.

“You shall be hurting if you don’t get up now.”

Aimé laughed despite himself, and crawled out from beneath the blankets, went up to the sink and washed the dishes up.

He had a vague thought of wanting to stay in the house until Jean-Pierre came home, but his classes weren’t finished today until seven, and what with the bus, he wouldn’t actually be home until eight.

He bought a pack of cigarettes and some booze on the way home, held the bag loosely at his side as he went up in the lift. He’d drunk a little more than he’d meant to before getting on the bus, and there was a pleasant buzz in his head as he came to his door, clumsily missing the key a few times before he managed to slide it home, turning it in.

The first thing he noticed was the smell.

His apartment, typically, smelt like paint and cigarette smoke: when he crossed the threshold, the scent was foreign to him, a sweet, citrusy scent that lingered on the air and greeted him gently, like a summer breeze. He stepped slowly forward, kicking the door shut behind him, and stared wonderingly around his apartment.

The kitchen was sparkling, the sink scrubbed clean, the plates stacked away, the bins empty for the first time in months; the rest of the place had been hoovered, dusted, and the curtains had been thrown open, letting light shine in. It barely looked like his own apartment, and he moved forward, staring around until he saw, on a neatly-folded pile of freshly-washed clothes, a neat card, covered in Jean-Pierre’s nearly illegible, old-fashioned handwriting.

“Aimé,

I hope you do not mind. I hired a cleaning service so that you might return, recovered, to a home that would only encourage your recovery. It is difficult to clean when one does not know where to start: it is difficult, too, to feel well when one’s home is not.

Affectionately,

Jean-Pierre.”

Holding the card in his hand felt like it burned him, and he set it down, staring at his own fingers before he moved to the balcony as if in a daze, taking the box of cigarettes out of his pocket as he stepped out onto the balcony. They’d even power-washed the floor out here, it seemed to him, because there was a square of perfectly white floor at the edges of the canopy.

He felt like crying.

It didn’t really well up in him, exactly. There was no burn in his eyes, no feeling that they’d actually overflow: he just sort of knew, in a distant way, that he wanted to cry, that he was overwhelmed and he needed to cry, but it wouldn’t come.

When he took a drag of his cigarette, he vomited again, and the sense of powerless overexposure was replaced with rage.

*     *     *

JEAN-PIERRE

Colm texted him to let him know, when he asked, that Aimé had gone home to his own apartment, and after picking up some fruit in town, Jean-Pierre made his way up to Aimé’s place. When he texted, there was no reply, and so he was surprised when he pushed open the door to Aimé’s apartment and heard music playing, saw him painting.

Several canvases were spread out on the floor, and Aimé didn’t notice him, didn’t hear him over the blasting music, some alternative pop Jean-Pierre didn’t really recognise.

He was painting feverishly, like a man possessed, and he was dressed only in his joggers, his shirt thrown aside. Sweat glistened on his skin, and Jean-Pierre noticed, not without a small amount of concern, that he seemed somewhat pale and drawn. The paintings were beautiful, an impressionistic vision of blood on cobbled streets, and the wet paint glistened as much as Aimé himself.

“Aimé,” he said softly, and Aimé turned to look at him with his eyes wild, flicked off the music with a tap of a button on his phone. For a moment, he stared at Jean-Pierre, breathing heavily, his whole body shaking.

He looked ill – he had been smoking again, Jean-Pierre would wager.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he demanded.

Ah. Yes. He had been smoking.

“Nothing,” Jean-Pierre said, spreading his hands as he slid his bag from his shoulder, and set it delicately upon the ground. “As you yourself have attested, Aimé, I am a testament to God’s perfection on Earth.”

“Not fucking cute, Jean,” Aimé said, and Jean-Pierre considered correcting him, but watching the wild way Aimé swigged from a shoulder of vodka, he thought perhaps it would be best to leave that matter for another time.

“You are angry with me,” Jean-Pierre said quietly, pressing his lips loosely together, and he looked away, wearing an expression of shame like a veil as he looked at Aimé’s apartment. “I am sorry. I thought you would like it, that it would ease your troubles – I did not mean to wound you.”

“You thought I’d like it?” Aimé demanded, and Jean-Pierre continued to wear his innocence as he stroked over the pages stacked upon one of the central tables, where the cleaning service he had hired had placed all of Aimé’s documents together. The one on top was the one Jean-Pierre had been most interested in: it was an information packet on how to quit smoking.

“It adds to our sense of stress, Aimé, to live in a chaotic environment,” Jean-Pierre said, and then added, earnestly, “I did advise them not to touch your paints, and I assure you, I—”

“I’m not talking about the fucking cleaners, Jean.”

Jean-Pierre parted his lips, widened his eyes, looked at Aimé and wore innocence on his face, but mixed a little hurt into it. There was a sort of delicious triumph in the way Aimé faltered at his expression alone. “What, then?” he asked, furrowing his brow.

“The cigarettes,” Aimé said.

“The cigarettes,” Jean-Pierre said, for all the world like a man who didn’t comprehend.

“You’ve been— you’ve been… They made me sick.” He was losing steam now. Faced with Jean-Pierre’s apparent confusion, he evidently found it difficult to sustain his rage, which was all for the best. Rage was attractive, in some men – in Aimé, it was not nearly so handsome as his curiosity, or his intrigue. “My cigarettes,” Aimé said.

“You think I have been doing something to your cigarettes?” Jean-Pierre asked, weaving scepticism into his tone.

“You don’t want me to fucking smoke.”

“No,” Jean-Pierre agreed. “I do not like the taste of the tar on your tongue when you kiss me – you think, perhaps, I prefer the taste of bile? What, you think I have poisoned you?”

Aimé stumbled at that, set his bottle down, and Jean-Pierre moved forward, touched his fingers to Aimé’s forehead with authority, letting his frown show honest concern – and he was concerned, really. He did not, after all, want for Aimé to feel very ill when he did not need to.

“You are hot, though not quite feverish,” Jean-Pierre said quietly. “You have been sick again?”

“When I tried to smoke a fag,” Aimé said. “Happened again when I tested it.”

“You have any allergies?”

“You’re seriously pretending you didn’t do anything?”

“Do— What do you think I did?” Jean-Pierre asked, showing more pain in his face now, leaning back slightly, even as he pressed over Aimé’s neck, feeling for his lymph nodes and watching the way he shivered under Jean-Pierre’s touch. “Aimé, last night I arranged to have your apartment cleaned, that you might feel better here – you think I would do this after I poisoned you? What manner of affection would that be?”

The powerlessness that radiated from Aimé was a delight in its way, and Jean-Pierre tenderly touched his cheek.

“You don’t want me to smoke,” he said, but it was without much feeling now, and Jean-Pierre could see the panic in his eyes as he thought himself irrational, as he reconsidered his position, as he doubted. How malleable he was, under Jean-Pierre’s fingers – how like clay.

“I don’t,” Jean-Pierre agreed. “And I want you to drink less, also, and to eat green vegetables, and to be happy. I would not reach this by feeding you poison, Aimé. It wounds me that you think that I would.” He had long-since perfected the art of injecting real hurt into a false statement – it was a skill any man who gave speeches or spoke in a debate chamber needed to master.

He slid his arms around Aimé’s waist, curled his body around Aimé’s, felt his body frozen under his touch.

“I overwhelmed you yesterday,” he said softly against the side of Aimé’s head, feeling the way Aimé leaned into his chest. “I hope my attention was not too much for you – I only wish to show you affection, Aimé. I would not cut you with it. Did I? Is that what has prompted these strange accusations?”

“I keep being sick,” Aimé whispered. “When I try to smoke.”

“I am sorry,” Jean-Pierre murmured. “I can test you for allergies tomorrow, if you like. Poor thing. It could be a psychological association, of course – if it was really food poisoning, last night, and you took a drag of a cigarette just before you became ill, your brain might have formed some strange association between the two. Neurochemistry can create such strange bonds between one thing and another.”

“That… That can seriously happen?”

“Of course,” Jean-Pierre said. “Not often, of course, and it is uncommon – I would think it more likely to be a sudden allergy. Does anything else make you feel so ill as your cigarettes do?”

“No.”

“You have begun smoking a different brand?”

“No.”

“The packaging is the same as it always is?”

“I think so.”

Jean-Pierre stroked his cheeks. “We will analyse the cause of this, Aimé,” he promised, tone sweet. “I am sorry to have interrupted your painting – this is very beautiful. You continue to paint. Why don’t I make you some tea, hm?”

“You don’t have to,” Aimé whispered. “You already… the apartment, I didn’t… I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to be sorry,” Jean-Pierre assured him in a voice as warm and sweet as honey. “Paint, my darling. I shall fetch you something to drink without alcohol in it.”

*     *     *

COLM, 21:49: Asmodeus wants to know if he’s realised what you did.

JEAN-PIERRE, 21:51: I don’t know what you mean. : )