AIMÉ

Benedictine left the same evening that Colm and Jean-Pierre did – Paddy drove all three of them to the airport, and suddenly it was just Asmodeus and Aimé alone in the house. Brigid was going to stay with Pádraic and Bedelia for the next few weeks because Pádraic and Bedelia would be home most of the day until the schools got back, and Bedelia wouldn’t be back in class until a week after Paddy was back to work.

Colm and Jean-Pierre should be home by then, in any case.

It was strange, staying in the house, sleeping in Jean-Pierre’s bed alone and then waking up in the morning, coming downstairs to no Colm already cooking breakfast or working in the yard, no Jean-Pierre in the shower, no Bene sprawled out on the sofa.

When he came downstairs it was still pretty dark outside, but Asmodeus had already left for his dance practice, and Aimé ate his breakfast in silence before washing up his bowl and putting it on the rack to dry alongside Asmodeus’ coffee cup and plate.

He did the necessary work in the garden first, put aside the clean cups and plates, and put on a wash with the last of the stuff in Jean-Pierre’s laundry basket before he cycled out to the allotment and got to work out there – he still hadn’t decided on what grape varieties he wanted to grow in the basement grow house, but he had more than enough time to think about it.

There was something surreal about walking up and down the rows of cannabis plants, pruning back dead leaves on each of them and topping some of the plants, making sure they were growing tight and bushy rather than outward or trying to get too tall. He had never considered how to care for fucking cannabis plants in his life, how it worked, what humidity or temperature they needed to be kept at, what needed to be done to their soil, to their leaves; he’d certainly never given any thought to the fucking cacti, although they actually took almost nothing to care for.

He'd learned a lot over the past half a year – how to fight and spar, how to throw knives and axes, how to put someone in the recovery position and do the basic first aid checks, how to garden, how to care for weed plants. When he was on the stairs on the way out, he realised that one of the far-side heat lamps was flickering, and he made a mental note to check it when he came in in a few days.

And fuck, yeah, that?

Sure, he could have had a look before, but now he could look and actually know what the fuck he was looking for – a loose connection, and if it wasn’t a loose connection, he knew how to take the panel out and replace it for the time being. Colm had started to show him how to repair the fucking things, how he opened them up – to his surprise, a lot of the maintenance was almost as basic as the circuitry he’d studied at school, didn’t have nearly as many moving parts or wires as he’d expected opening up machines. He might not be able to fix shit himself yet, but he was learning.

He’d just set it aside for Colm to look at once he was home.

He could remember the first time he’d changed a fucking light bulb – he’d been seventeen and his mother had thrown something across the room at something his father had said, a glass or something, had knocked out the overhead light in the living room. He remembered being on the ladder with his phone lit as a torch because she was scared of heights and all the staff were out – it had been a holiday, maybe Christmas – and he remembered how angry she’d been that he didn’t know how to do it.

“Aimé, for God’s sake,” she’d snapped at him. “Just take what’s left of the bulb, twist it, and it’ll pop out. It’s not hard.”

He’d cut himself on the broken edge that was left on it, but he’d managed to get it out – it’d taken him three or four tries to put the new one in.

“Haven’t you ever put in a light bulb before?”

“No.”

She’d just been stunned into silence by that, and he’d not been in the mood for any of her shit anyway – she was already pissed with his father, the two of them had been arguing about work or about him or something, and she’d been having a go at him before then, anyway. If it was Christmas, it had been a Christmas where he’d made the mistake of getting her something nice and homemade; if it wasn’t Christmas, it was his grades, or a recent suicide attempt, or something.

He'd felt so fucking tiny on that ladder, fumbling through something that fucking should have been easy but wasn’t, that was so obvious, and yet, no, he’d never done it – he’d just never happened to put in a new light bulb at Mémé’s, and at home it would never have been a thought, not with housekeepers and what fucking never, let alone at school.

She’d brought it up a few weeks later – he remembered sitting in the car beside her as she’d driven him to the gym on her way to work, how she’d gone on and fucking on about learning self-reliance. He didn’t tend to talk much when his mother spoke, had learned early on that talking just encouraged her to go on for longer, especially when she was in the mood to rant, but she liked rhetorical questions.

“Don’t you see how it reflects on me?” she’d demanded as they’d stopped at the traffic lights, looking across at him. “As a parent?”

“What, that neither of you have ever taught me anything except to throw money around and be a cunt?” he’d asked lowly, his head resting on the glass of the window. She’d been so fucking stunned she actually hadn't talked for several minutes, and the quiet had been a fucking relief while it had lasted, had felt like a real victory.

It was drizzling as he cycled into town, but his anorak kept off most of the rain, and he had a Hell of a fucking time with traffic once he was in town, but he got lucky – there was a bike rack free just in front of the estate agent’s, and he came to a stop and chained it up, dismounting and hurrying inside.

“Sorry,” he said as he crossed the threshold. “Were you waiting long?”

“No,” said Asmodeus quietly, not moving from where he was sitting on one of the chairs, idly paging through a beauty magazine filled with glossy photographs of make-up and very expensive-looking dresses. “Only ten minutes or so. Traffic?”

“I hate this fucking city,” said Aimé. “Some cunt in a Mercedes tried to knock me down by Fairview Park.”

“That’s not unusual for a cyclist in Dublin, is it?”

“No,” admitted Aimé, unzipping his anorak and pulling his hat off. “But that doesn’t mean I like it.”

“Forgive me,” said Asmodeus dryly. “I assumed you enjoyed the sport of the thing.”

Aimé laughed despite himself, running a hand through his damp hair, and Asmodeus smiled back as he got smoothly to his feet. Aimé didn’t know if they looked typical in the real estate agent’s office – Asmodeus tall and dark-skinned and probably the most beautiful man most people had ever laid eyes on, still in his tights and vest with shorts on over his leotard, Aimé short and pale and probably the ugliest man most people had ever laid eyes on, still in his work boots and a set of battered, muddy jeans.

The agent seemed to think something about it as he looked them over – it wasn’t the same one who’d shown them around the apartment, she’d been an older woman who Asmodeus had seemed to know personally already, and Aimé hadn’t asked at the time, but he was pretty sure she’d been an angel too. This guy wasn’t, and Aimé itched to ask, or just to know, what exactly was going through his mind as they went through the paperwork with Asmodeus cosigning for him.

“And that’s for you, Mr, um… Norbadder.”

Aimé couldn’t help himself from sniggering, and Asmodeus glanced back at him as he took the paper.

“As if you can do better,” he said scathingly.

“Nur-Badr,” said Aimé, and Asmodeus arched an eyebrow, his lips curving into the slightest of smiles.

“Close,” he said, “but no cigar.”

“Hope you guys are, um,” said the real estate agent, “real happy together.” He was a pretty typical Fine Gael suit, had the same accent as Aimé – he was skinny, had skinny trousers and a skinny tie to match over his blue shirt, had his hair cut and swept neatly back into the fucking uniform style.

“He thinks we’re gay,” said Aimé.

“You can’t hold that against him,” said Asmodeus, and he stared the estate agent down in a way that made him duck his head with his chin against his chest. “He’s not wrong. Keys?”

This was the last thing done now, and it was all done and dusted, the papers signed, the keys in his hand, and yet it still felt not quite right, not truly real, as they walked out into the street and down to the keycutter’s to get some copies made. It seemed like this particular feeling was going to plague him all day, whether it was about DIY or about this or about—

Anything.

“You’re immortal,” he said as they waited for keys, the two of them leaning against the wall outside. “And you’re— Like, one of the oldest beings on the planet.”

“Quite right,” said Asmodeus, seeming mildly amused by the statement coming out of the blue like that – he was never surprised by anything, and probably never would be, the kind of person he was. Maybe it came with how long he’d lived, but Aimé couldn’t imagine him ever being any different.

Aimé opened his mouth, then closed it, rubbing his palm over his face. “Never mind.”

“Coward.”

“It’s just a stupid question, that’s all.”

“Is there any such thing?”

“Yeah.”

“Agree to disagree.”

“It’s about— Parenthood.”

“Ah.”

“Told you.”

“I don’t think parenthood is stupid. On the contrary, I’m given to believe it’s quite important.”

“Do people ever get over it?” asked Aimé, and he wasn’t looking at Asmodeus now, was instead staring out into the street, watching the buses go by, the cars, the several hundred bustling pedestrians that seemed to pass by every other minute. “What their parents do to them?”

“No,” said Asmodeus, immediately, smoothly. “Not in my experience.”

Aimé huffed out a laugh. “That’s a strangely definite answer for you.”

“None of us truly gets over anything,” said Asmodeus, which was a very Asmodeus thing to say, and for some reason was actually strangely comforting. Aimé’s next huff of laughter was quieter than the first one had been, and he tipped his head back into the concrete behind him, tapping his fingers against his thigh.

He thought about having a cigarette in his fingers, and for a second he thought he missed it, smoking, but it wasn’t really that – it was more the habit of the thing that was coming back to him, the sense that the two of them leaning up against a wall like this meant there should be a cigarette in his hand.

“Is that not the answer you wanted?” asked Asmodeus.

“I don’t know if I wanted an answer,” murmured Aimé. “A specific one, anyway.”

“You’ve been thinking about your father?”

“My mother.”

“Ah,” said Asmodeus. “Mothers I don’t have much first-hand knowledge of.” Aimé frowned at this, furrowing his brow, but before he could ask exactly what that meant, Asmodeus was already talking again and saying, “Your father frightens you. Does your mother?”

“No,” murmured Aimé. “I don’t think so. I don’t think my father— I’m not frightened of him killing me. I think he might one day, but I’m not scared of it. Just that when I’m in front of him, I tend to not know exactly what to…” He trailed off, working his jaw as he considered what he was thinking, feeling. His father was cruel, and more than that Aimé knew that he was cold, not just about Aimé, but about everything. His mother had always seen so much more human than he had. “My mother wouldn’t do that. Wouldn’t hurt me so much as just fucking bore me to death.”

“Is that what you want to get over?”

“… No. Not really.”

It was easy to know how he felt about his father – they’d never got on, and Aimé had known from the beginning that his father was settling, frustrated, with him rather than being particularly pleased to have him. It had been made clear to him what his father wanted from him and what he didn’t, even if half of what he didn’t want was everything about Aimé, and now he’d just made it all worse, with Jean, with actually pursuing his art, and whatever else.

His mother he tried not to think about, because it wasn’t simple.

“My father doesn’t love me,” Aimé said. “And I’m pretty sure he never has – or if he loves me, it’s not like… It’s not like you guys love each other.” He hesitated before he said, “How we love each other.”

Asmodeus’ smile was a cool and gentle thing as he glanced over at Aimé.

“It isn’t selfless,” murmured Asmodeus. “I understand what you mean. There’s a sense that if your father does indeed love you, it’s motivated by self-interest – he loves what you represent, or loves the idea of his son, more than he does you yourself. He loves you as an extension of himself, whom he loves and respects above all others”

“My mother’s different, I think. Or can be, sometimes. I don’t fucking know.”

“That must be difficult,” said Asmodeus, not without his own form of distant compassion. “At least with your father you know where you stand.”

“Yeah. Exactly. I just— I don’t know. I used to hate her, when I was a kid, and she gets on my tits, De, she fucking does, she drives me mental, but I just think… I feel sorry for her, I guess. She’s an intelligent woman, she’s driven, and she used to be a corporate lawyer, a solicitor. When she had me, she gave that up, and so now what she does is all these clubs and stuff, all these social things with women like her, and it’s like… I’m not saying it’s beneath her or something, right? Like, to have friends, to do shit or go places, just that like— Her job was a big part of her identity. It was the same kind of insane job that Jean and Bene do: long hours, everyone an obsessive, really complex tasks that require expertise. She went from that to being a stay-at-home mammy, but it’s not like she ever spent time with me.” He was staring at his boots touching the stone floor instead of looking at Asmodeus, was still tapping his fingers against his own thigh for some kind of outlet. “I was brought up mostly by nannies or au pairs or whatever the fuck – a big cycle of them, because my mother always fought with them. But the point is, she didn’t become a stay-at-home mother because she actually wanted to look after me – she just didn’t know how it would reflect on her if she went back to work, now it would reflect on my father, their marriage.”

“Your mother was affected by her circumstances,” said Asmodeus. “Like many women, she made choices, and those choices were limited by her gender. You can empathise with that without it justifying the way she’s been cruel or neglectful.”

“Thanks,” said Aimé blandly.

Asmodeus’ hand came to touch his shoulder, squeezing. “Let’s get your keys, and we’ll go for lunch.”

“You have time?”

Asmodeus’ face was frozen for a moment, a kind of strain showing on his lips, in his eyes. Very quietly and in a serious tone – even more serious than usual – he said, “I could do with the break, to be perfectly honest. I have work to do, and I’ll do it, but I’d rather settle with you a while first.”

“Sorry,” Aimé muttered. “This shit about my mother, it doesn’t… matter. I don’t have to—”

“It does matter. I want to hear it, I do.”

“If I talk about my problems, you can talk about yours.”

There was a kind of sparkle in Asmodeus’ eyes as he asked, “Can I indeed?”

His tone was rhetorical, and Aimé didn’t smile back right away, just looked at him seriously until Asmodeus seemed to actually take him seriously.

“Yeah,” he said. “You can.”

Asmodeus considered him, his expression utterly unreadable, and then he gave a slow inclination of his head. “Fine,” he relented. “We’ll talk about it over lunch.”

Asmodeus picked the restaurant, and he said in his graceful, easy way that he’d just ride on the back of Aimé’s bicycle, the same way that Jean-Pierre did. Something about it made Aimé’s brain malfunction, and he didn’t know why exactly – both De and Jean had an overwhelming grace to them, something that you could read from a distance made them more than human, so beautiful they took your fucking breath away, but Jean, he was…

Well, it wasn’t like Jean-Pierre was actually fucking small. He was only an inch or two shorter than Asmodeus, and he wasn’t actually as thin as he made himself look at home, swimming in oversized clothes, but he had a way of folding himself up small and delicate. Aimé didn’t actually know what it looked like when Jean-Pierre was behind him on the bike, but Asmodeus was so much bigger than he was – physically, but also… What, personally? Spiritually?

Asmodeus’ body was warm and solid behind him as he cycled, feeling Asmodeus’ chin tucked in against his neck as he moved, his hands settling on Aimé’s shoulders rather than wrapping around his waist like Jean-Pierre did, and the journey seemed like it was very long, the two of them moving through the city together.

The restaurant Asmodeus had selected looked fucking expensive from the outside, but he pivoted at the last minute and led Aimé up a stairwell and through another door on the balcony: this was a different place, small and cosy with mismatched cloth tablecloths.

Two older women greeted Asmodeus by name, and judging by the way they reached out and touched his arms, another reaching up to touch his cheek, they were complimenting him – he responded in the same language, some kind of Arabic, Aimé assumed, and touched Aimé’s back to introduce him before they sat down.

Asmodeus ordered for them, which Aimé wasn’t about to complain about, looking around – he didn’t even see any menus, and the writing on the chalkboard on one wall wasn’t in English, wasn’t even using the Latin alphabet.

“What was your first impression of me?” asked Aimé when they were sat alone a second later, him pouring water for Asmodeus before he poured some for himself. “When you met me? Or when you… saw me. I know Jean-Pierre stalked me before we actually talked.”

“For some time, he kept an active eye on you,” Asmodeus agreed, reaching up and touching his fingers through his hair, sweeping it to one side. Aimé wondered how often he got it cut – he always kept it at the same length, short and neatly combed, but long enough that it did have a natural curl to it when he wasn’t using product to keep it in place. He’d never actually noticed it being longer, had never noticed when he'd actually had it cut. For all he knew De got it cut every week, or somehow stopped it from growing any longer. “I liked you. I thought that you were a keen and careful judge of character, that you were wholly unlike many of Jean-Pierre’s previous lovers. I thought you would be good for him, and him you.”

“You liked me,” Aimé repeated. “You knew I’d be— sticking around? Right from the beginning?”

“I hoped so.”

Aimé almost asked why, but he stopped himself, focusing on drinking his water.

Asmodeus asked, “And me?”

“You?”

“You’ve asked me what my first impressions were of you,” said Asmodeus softly. “It’s not the first time, either. I’ve never asked you the same question.”

Aimé took it in, staring down at the water in his glass, and he exhaled, reaching up and rubbing his knuckles over the stubble on his cheeks. “You want me to be honest?”

“I’m honest with you, aren’t I?”

“Not as much as you claim to be,” said Aimé, looking across and letting the challenge show in his eyes, but Asmodeus didn’t even twitch, just smiled thinly. “I thought… I really hoped you were his brother, not his boyfriend. I knew Colm was, and I knew that the three of you were… But I didn’t know. And I thought you looked like the man on a romance cover.” Asmodeus seemed intrigued by that, which Aimé wished he didn’t, because he was cringing inwardly as he said, “Um, like— My mother really likes those ones where white ladies are kidnapped by like, Arab sheikhs?”

Asmodeus’ expression remained entirely frozen for a moment.

“Because you’re so hot,” said Aimé. “Like— like, painted hot. Beautiful.”

Asmodeus arched an eyebrow.

“Yeah,” muttered Aimé, dropping back in his seat and exhaling. “I know it’s racist. It makes it worse when I try and excuse it, right?”

“Rather akin to watching you dig faster in an attempt to disguise the fact you’ve been digging a hole at all.”

“Don’t you read those novels?”

“That’s really not the point, is it?”

“No,” said Aimé, and the put-upon note in his voice was joking – he worried for a second that it didn’t come across that way, that Asmodeus thought he was really, genuinely annoyed, but then Asmodeus laughed quietly, shaking his head. “Except you had darker skin. I remember thinking that. So my first thought was racist, but also like, super aware of the colourism of racist publishing companies.”

Asmodeus did find that funny, Aimé could tell, because he was pressing his lips together as he looked across at Aimé, his eyes glittering. “Attempting to recoup your losses, are you?”

“Is it working?”

“You’re so charming, I might even trust you enough to bring you to parties.”

“Oh, God. I’ve gone too far.”

“Dig, dig, dig.”

Aimé looked up when the waitress brought bread and wine and some small plates of humus and stuff Aimé didn’t really recognise, but was more than eager to try, and as he poured wine – again, for Asmodeus first – he said, “I would.”

“You would?” repeated De.

“Go to parties with you. If you wanted, or if you needed… I hate those rich people parties. I always have, since I had to go all the fucking time when I was a kid. But I’d go for you. I’ll be like, the opposite of eye candy on your arm.”

Asmodeus’ laugh this time was soft but rich, coming from low in his chest, and he idly touched one finger to the edge of his wineglass, stroking the rim. Aimé looked at it, at how beautiful and graceful his hand was, at how pink his nail was, in contrast to the colour of his skin.

“You don’t have to,” said Aimé. “I just— I was just trying to be—”

“It’s very sweet,” said Asmodeus quietly. “Thank you.”

“It’s hard, right?”

“Having no man to bring me to parties?” He said like it was a joke, but there was something in the undertone, something genuinely kind of hurt, or lonely.

Aimé’s chest hurt thinking about that, but he didn’t voice it directly. He was already on thorny enough ground. “It’s hard,” he said, “for you. Being so— Having to be so fucking perfect all the time.”

Asmodeus didn’t say anything right away, his wineglass coming up to his mouth for him to take a sip of it.

“Jean-Pierre’s got issues with his stability,” said Aimé, “and he finds it hard, making sure he appears like, sane and put together and stuff. But because of how he looks, because of how he talks, it’s easy for him to be perceived that way, right? Even when he is messy, when he kills people and shit. He got away with a bunch of stuff for decades before he finally killed Rupert, right, and that was actually a big deal? But everything you fucking do is scrutinised, because you’re the first angel. You’re the most important one. A lot of people are basically rooting for you to fuck up, always, constantly. Because of who you are even before it’s about what you look like. And I feel like— And I love Colm and Jean, and I know you love them, and I know that part of what’s, what’s easy about them, right, is that they don’t look up to you? That they don’t treat you as like, a hero, or super important? But that means they don’t acknowledge that, always. That it’s hard for you to be perfect. That it’s hard.”

He saw the shift in Asmodeus’ jaw, the minute twitch under the skin, which was the most that actually changed about his expression as he inhaled, his nostrils flaring for a moment.

In barely more than a whisper, he said, “Yes. It can be hard.”

“And is it harder now? With the dancing stuff, the show, is that hard?”

“It is.”

“You don’t want to talk about it?”

Asmodeus smiled slightly, sipped his drink. “I do,” he said quietly. “But we weren’t finished talking about your mothe—”

“We’ll talk about her later,” said Aimé, waving him off with a hand. “Tell me what it’s like. And we can, um—” He bit the inside of his lip, worrying it for a moment before he said, “You’re stressed about Colm and Jean, right? And Heidemarie?”

“Oh, yes,” whispered Asmodeus. “More than you can imagine.”

“It’s happening now,” said Aimé. “Nothing we can do about it. Just trust them to look after each other, and work it out themselves.” He nudged Asmodeus’ ankle under the table. “You can’t run in and save them from everything. Right?”

“… Right,” murmured Asmodeus.

“So. The ballet. Is the principal like, a complete bitch?”

“I’m the principal, Aimé.”

“Oh.”

Asmodeus shook his head as he tried not to smile, swilling his wine in his glass, and Aimé offered his own to clink together before he started to talk.