AIMÉ

The party had run down, now, and even the energy at the orgy had mostly been exhausted – a lot of people had gone home, and although music was still playing more softly on one of the other floors, a handful of people dancing and scattered around, the five of them were gathered around a table without anyone else. Occasionally, in between packing away the tables and the food left out on them, a waiter would come by and asking if they needed more wine or more chips, but that was all.

“Why don’t you try a tiropita, Aimé?” Aetos suggested mildly, holding out a plate piled high with little folded pasties, and although he had no idea what was in them, Aimé obediently took one of them, holding it over his own plate to look at it.

“Is it like the spanakopita?”

“It’s a cheese pie,” supplied Colm, and Aimé nodded his head before he took a bite, letting out a low groan at the way the warm pastry flaked under his mouth, at the rich taste of the two cheeses inside.

“He eats well,” Doros said approvingly, though he said it to Colm as though Aimé wasn’t there.

He couldn’t tell if Aetos lacked a personality or if it was just that the weed he’d been smoking with Colm had chilled him out, but Doros was a lot like Jean-Pierre: haughty, superior, and very aware of how pretty he was. Doros and Aetos only actually addressed him about half the time, and most of the time they talked about him to Colm or Jean-Pierre in the same way one would comment on a friend’s pet dog. It wasn’t quite blatant enough to be a turn-on, but he was more alright with it than he probably should have been.

If he had a therapist, it was maybe something he’d have to try to unpack, but he’d always tried to avoid self-reflection if at all possible, and that was before an angel decided he was their new favourite plaything.

“Have to make sure I’m a good cushion for certain invested parties,” Aimé said with a downward gesture, and Aetos and Doros both laughed.

They were all around a low table close to the ground, one that reminded Aimé of the ones he’d seen in historically accurate depictions of the Last Supper: Aetos was lying on his side, reclining against a few stacked cushions, as was Colm, and Doros was sitting cross-legged, his wings a golden cowl around his shoulders.

Aimé, on the other hand, was sitting up mostly straight perpendicular to the table, a few cushions against his lower back, and his legs were spread out in front in front of him. They had to be, because he had l’ange in between them, spread out on his belly with his face mashed against Aimé’s belly and his cheek on Aimé’s thigh, his arms wrapped around Aimé’s waist and his wings blanketing Aimé’s legs.

It did not at all look like a comfortable position, but he’d even tried gently smacking Jean’s face a few times, and he hadn’t stirred at all – whether it was from getting double-teamed by Aetos and Doros, the cocaine, or just staying up until three o’clock when he normally had a much earlier bedtime for himself, Jean-Pierre was bushed, and he was snoring softly in his sleep.

“He’s going to be such a fucking bitch when he wakes up,” Aimé murmured, stroking gently through Jean-Pierre’s feathers.

“Because he missed a meal?” Aetos asked, arching an eyebrow. “He barely ever eats anything anyway.”

“Because he’s never had coke before and he’s going to be hungover as shit,” Colm supplied, and Aimé sighed as he nodded his head in agreement.

“His temper did seem even shorter than usual,” Doros said wryly, and Aimé waggled his eyebrows as he curled a lock of Jean-Pierre’s hair around his fingers, feeling how smooth and soft it was against his skin. “But it seems you know how to contain my brother’s moods when he gets out of hand, hm?”

“I wish,” Aimé said, and stroked his fingers down the back of Jean-Pierre’s neck, feeling the way he sighed in his sleep and relaxed even more against Aimé’s legs. “You’re older than him, right?”

“By a few thousand years,” said Doros. “But age isn’t everything, is it, my sweet?”

This was to Aetos, who sighed, and leaned further back onto his cushions. “Not at all, Doro, not at all.”

“How long have you known him now?” Doros asked, meeting Aimé’s gaze: his eyes were a reddish brown, like autumn leaves trod underfoot. “Jean-Pierre?”

“Only a few months,” Aimé said. “Since the summer.”

“Do you love him?” Doros asked, arching his eyebrows.

Aimé laughed. “Do you?”

“Sometimes,” Doros said, and Aimé watched the way he ate his pomegranate – Jean-Pierre was fastidious with a pomegranate, often ate the seeds one by one, but Doros scooped up a smattering of them with each shift of his hands, and sucked the juice from his fingers. “Sometimes, I don’t. I’m sure you know by now that Jean is as easy to love as a storm.”

“Storms I like,” Aimé said. “Storms are easier than Jean.”

Doros chuckled: it was a low, seductive sound, if you liked that sort of thing. “I’m sure you think so.”

“You ready to make shapes?” Colm asked, in between mouthfuls of moussaka.

“You sober enough to drive?” Aimé asked.

“It’s nearly four,” Colm said. “Even If my reflexes weren’t sharp, there wouldn’t be anyone to hit.”

More out of curiosity than a real fear of being in the passenger seat with Colm behind the wheel, let alone breaking the law, Aimé asked, “What happens if you get breathalysed?”

“I don’t,” Colm said simply. “If we meet the gardaí I’ll knock the officers out, make sure they don’t remember stopping us.”

Aimé stared at him. “Can you do that?”

“You’d rather we get arrested?” Colm asked. Aimé shrugged his shoulders, and Colm, turning to Doros, tapped his fingers on the table. “That reminds me. I have six kilos in the boot for you.”

“Very kind,” Doros murmured. “Will you trade them to me for leftovers?”

“Very happily,” was the reply, and Aimé laughed to himself at the insanity of it all, and concentrated on easing Jean-Pierre up and out of his lap. Even with his wings out, he was easily light enough to carry, and sleepily, Jean-Pierre mumbled vaguely about how les gendarmes ont percé les barricades as he wrapped his arms around Aimé’s neck, and Aimé hushed him.

He spread Jean-Pierre out on the backseat as Colm tossed Aetos and Doros their cannabis, shoving a few pillows from the trunk underneath him and folding his limbs and his wings in so that they didn’t get caught in the door, and then he slid into the passenger seat alongside Colm, clicking his seatbelt into place.

“You know how to drive?” Colm asked.

“Sure,” Aimé said. “I have my license, I just don’t see the point in having a car.”

“Your license French or Irish?”

“Irish,” Aimé said. “I learned to drive when I was still doing my leaving. If I’d waited to learn in France, I’d have had to stick at it for a few years, the expectations for drivers are a lot higher there. What is their… deal?”

He nodded toward the back window as Colm pulled out of the now almost-empty car park, and Colm glanced in the mirror as he gave Aetos and Doros a final wave.

“Deal?” Colm repeated blankly. For all he’d said about not paying attention on the road, he was a meticulous driver, and Aimé was fairly certain he was sober – even talking with Aimé, he didn’t take his eyes off the road for a second as they rolled up the drive to join back onto the main road – which wasn’t a main road at all, and was a winding, country road that even when you were on it didn’t look as if it was leading anywhere.

“You said Aetos was Hermes.”

“He is,” Colm said.

“He didn’t seem very godly.”

“Well, it was a party,” Colm said. “Night off work.”

Aimé sniggered.

“It was explained to me once as different facets,” Colm said. “All of that kind of person has them – gods, certain spirits, anyone whose power is, to whatever extent, based off of or topped up by other people’s belief, their worship, you know. They can come off as regular people if they want to, blend in with everyone, or they can appear larger than life, make your eyes hurt to look at them. I don’t know, I’m not a theologist.”

“Doesn’t it feel blasphemous?”

“A god isn’t God,” Colm said. “God is singular, absolute, eternal. But those gods, they come and they go.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“Well,” Colm said, “None of those gods are all-seeing, all-knowing, et cetera – they have their creation myths, but they all overlap with one another, so none of them is actually true.”

“Unlike your religion,” Aimé said dryly. “Which is obviously true, not like all the rest.”

“Exactly,” Colm said.

“You’re so full of shit,” Aimé said. “You got any facts to back that up?”

“I don’t know fucking proofs of God,” Colm said. “You can talk about that shit with Jean, he’s the one with all the books. I know that God is God, prayer is prayer, and alms is alms. S’all I need to know.”

Aimé considered this for a moment, and then asked, snidely, “Is Doros a Catholic?”

“Doros has been a heathen god’s consort for a few thousand years. What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” Aimé said, shrugging his shoulders and looking out the window. “You two are Catholic, Pádraic and Bedelia are Catholics. I assume with a name like Benedictine, she’s a Catholic.”

“She is,” Colm said gruffly. “But not all angels are Catholic. Some of them are wrong.”

Aimé started laughing again, tipping his head back against the seat, and then he picked one of the bottles of water that he knew Colm kept in the car door, swallowing down a few mouthfuls before passing the bottle to Colm. They passed it between them until it was empty, and then Aimé rested it in his lap, tapping it against his knees.

There was a sort of dullness throbbing in his head, a sign of the hangover to come – he knew if he had another bump of coke he’d be energised, but he also knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep, and there was a natural point in any evening where a craving for more cocaine was a sign you should stop, not that you should take more, and his had been about four hours ago.

“Are angels always going to treat me like that?” Aimé asked. “Outside of your family, I mean.”

“All angels are family,” Colm said, but his lips curved up slightly into a smile.

“Close family, then,” Aimé said. “Outside of you three and the Mac Giolla Chríosts, and George. Just… regular angels, everyday ones.”

“Some will,” Colm said. “Some won’t. Jean-Pierre never dates other immortals – fucks them from time to time, has standing arrangements here and there, but never gotten romantically involved with one.”

“The balance would be too even,” Aimé said. “He wouldn’t be able to stand it.”

Colm laughed, smacking his hand against the steering wheel with such a loud slap that Aimé actually glanced at Jean-Pierre, but he was still completely out of it, his jaw slack in sleep, and Aimé supposed Colm would know when Jean-Pierre was stirring anyway.

“True enough, true enough,” Colm murmured. “It’s not just that, though. A lot of immortals, we get cold, callous. Jean-Pierre likes humans ‘cause they’re not usually like that. When death is a genuine threat, you respect life more – your life, other people’s lives. Not always, but generally. And when you see other people die, and you never do, it’s easy to feel superior, and act superior, too.

“People like Doros treat you like Jean-Pierre’s dog because in his mind, you might as well be one. Doros thinks you’re simpler than Jean is; you have less impact on the world; your life is going to be so short it won’t make a ripple in anyone’s pool but Jean’s.”

“Jean doesn’t think of me like that, though,” Aimé said. He was surprised by how certain he was of the fact, even though he couldn’t decide whether it comforted him or unnerved him. “I know he doesn’t think of me as an equal, but it’s… He treats me like a toy sometimes, but he wants me to take care of him.”

“Yeah, he’s pretty fucked in the head,” Colm said.

Aimé, smiling to himself, shifted back in his seat to look at Colm.

Colm took his eyes off the road for a moment to glance at him, and then he sighed, squeezing the wheel. “He loves you,” he said. “That’s real, I can tell you that. But I like you, Aimé, and I think you should run for the fucking hills where Jean is concerned.”

“You think that, why don’t you run?.”

“He’s my brother,” Colm said. “It’s not the same.”

Aimé looked at Jean-Pierre in the mirror, watched his wings flutter in his sleep. He was beautiful, of course – he was always beautiful, even slack-jawed and fast asleep, he was beautiful. Beauty was his natural state.

“Yeah,” Colm said quietly. “He’s perfect, when he’s unconscious.”

Aimé closed his eyes, and tipped his seat back.

*     *     *

JEAN-PIERRE

“Hey, sweetheart,” Aimé said softly beside him, and Jean-Pierre groaned into his pillows, forcing one dry eye open. A great deal of time had passed, he thought, since the end of the Halloween party – he remembered vaguely being carried to and from Colm’s car, and he remembered Aimé waking him up a few times to force him to drink some pineapple juice.

This was the first time he had woken and not felt as though his throat were blistering in its parched dryness, and the first time he’d really been cognizant of the hunger gnawing in his belly.

The headache, thank God, was broadly faded, and there was no longer a tired ache permeating his every muscle.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Three o’clock,” said Aimé. “On Tuesday.”

“Tuesday?” Jean-Pierre blearily repeated.

“Uh huh, hangover literally hit you into next week,” Aimé said, and he eased his hand into Jean-Pierre’s greasy hair and pulled him up from the bed by the grip he had, pushing a plate toward him. “Time to eat something, ange.”

He didn’t wait for Jean-Pierre to say anything: he brought a slice of apple up to Jean-Pierre’s mouth, and obediently, Jean-Pierre took it, chewing and tasting the sweetness on his tongue, the texture of it against his stale-tasting teeth.

“You smell of sweat,” Jean-Pierre said.

“I was at the gym with Colm,” Aimé said as he picked up a piece of strawberry. “Sorry.”

“Not a complaint,” Jean-Pierre mumbled, rubbing tiredly at one eye. “You smell good. Sex?”

Aimé laughed: it was a pleasant sound, and when Jean-Pierre opened his tired eyes to look at him in the dim light of the room, Aimé was smiling indulgently. “More fruit first,” Aimé said quietly. “Then we can shower. We both need it.”

“Mmm,” Jean-Pierre agreed, and picked up the half of dragon fruit Aimé had laid out for him. He knew how to make a good platter, by now, with a variety of textures and smells, and as Jean-Pierre ate, he leaned his cheek against Aimé’s chest, felt Aimé’s fingers stroke through his wings, pulling out the feathers that were loose or bent from having been laid in bed for a few days.

“I don’t want to do cocaine again,” Jean-Pierre mumbled.

“I figured,” Aimé replied, stroking the back of his neck. “You don’t have to.”

He was very gentle with Jean-Pierre as he drew him toward the hot, steaming air of the already running shower, and Jean-Pierre all but collapsed against Aimé’s chest, letting the other man scrub him clean, letting Aimé’s hands run through his hair, and Aimé did it all for him, without complaint, without even making an amusing comment about it.

He enjoyed this, Jean-Pierre thought.

Taking care of someone, being wanted, being needed, he enjoyed that, but he enjoyed this, too: he enjoyed Jean-Pierre limp and pliant under his fingers, liked being able to touch Jean-Pierre however he pleased, with propriety, and yet for all that, his cock was hard indeed, watching Jean-Pierre touched by other men.

“I don’t like it when other people touch you,” Jean-Pierre murmured against Aimé’s mouth as they stood under the spray together, his fingers sliding over Aimé’s thighs, his hips, his waist. “You’re mine. They oughtn’t touch what’s mine.”

“And when people touch you?” Aimé asked, breathless, shaky, weak and eager under Jean-Pierre’s hands.

“You like it when people touch me,” Jean-Pierre murmured.

“Maybe I don’t,” Aimé said. It was less than convincing. 

Jean-Pierre looked into his face, raised his eyebrows, pouted at his lips: at the mere expression, Aimé shivered, his hips jerking under the stream of hot water. “You don’t want to see me fucked? You don’t want to see me overwhelmed as you can do naught but watch, powerless, aware that I am being satisfied by men beyond your means? Aware that your gaze is at times more appealing to me than your touch? Aware that you alone are not enough to satisfy me?”

“Fuck, Jean,” Aimé hissed: his cock had been half-hard but was stiffening in Jean-Pierre’s hand, and Jean-Pierre chuckled, dragging his mouth over Aimé’s chest and delighting in the way he arched his back, falling clumsily against the shower wall.

“A willing cuckold who likes to be choked,” Jean-Pierre murmured, dragging his teeth over Aimé’s nipple and delighting in the sharp sound it drew from his throat. “What does that say about you, I wonder?”

“I don’t know,” Aimé said breathlessly. “What does it say about you that you want to be topped, but if I do it, you throw a tantrum?”

“I don’t,” Jean-Pierre said, offended, raising his head.

“Oh, don’t you?” Aimé replied, raising his eyebrows, even as he gasped and thrust his hips into Jean-Pierre’s hands. “Will the world end if you let me be in control?”

“I let you at the party,” Jean-Pierre said.

“Because two other men were fucking you,” Aimé said. “Seems like the only time I could control you is if someone else exhausted you first.”

“You want to?” Jean-Pierre asked, surprised by how much it rankled, irritated him, that Aimé should say such a thing. “Control me?”

“It wouldn’t turn me off,” Aimé said. “But the main thing is that it seems like you want it. Then you rip me to pieces when I try.”

Jean-Pierre bit Aimé’s chest, and Aimé groaned.

“Is that a complaint?” Jean-Pierre asked.

“Uh-uh, nope, never, please, Jean, more—” He arched so wonderfully under Jean-Pierre’s hands, under his mouth, his touch – he liked it when Aimé gave himself over to Jean-Pierre like this, spread himself for more of Jean-Pierre’s touch, submitted so beautifully.

“Perhaps if it seemed like you truly desired command, I would let you command me,” Jean-Pierre said, and squeezed.

“Just want to make you happy, ange,” Aimé mumbled, squeezing his eyes shut, and Jean-Pierre felt himself soften.

“You do,” he murmured, and tugged Aimé’s hands down to his waist, that Aimé would lift him and have him against the wall.

Later, Jean-Pierre combed Aimé’s hair before he turned around so that Aimé could comb Jean-Pierre’s own, and groom through his wings so that they were not quite so unruly and untidy before he packed them away.

“You up for a date on Saturday?” Aimé asked. “I was thinking we could go to the art museum off the witches’ market. The IVA do a thing every year where they get immortals to pick through their storage and put some of the paintings they have gathering dust and display them.”

“You follow the events of the International Vampires’ Association very closely?”

“Last time I went, a guy put up a nude portrait of himself drawn by Da Vinci,” Aimé said. “Besides, it’s not all vampires, and we can go to the normal exhibits, too. I just like this one. It’s always, uh… Light-hearted. Fun. People don’t take it too seriously.”

Jean-Pierre leaned back, laying his head in Aimé’s lap, and he looked up at Aimé’s face upside down. “You do not think people should take art seriously?” he asked. “A curious thing for an artist to say.”

“It’s pigment on paper,” Aimé said, shrugging his shoulders. “None of it’s all that important, materially.”

“Your art is important,” Jean-Pierre murmured.

“No.”

“It is beautiful.”

“I guess. I try. But I’m not a big name – I’ll never be a big name, even if I sell my art, and the whole art business is just bullshit for moving money around without paying taxes, anyway. That’s why I like the IVA events – they’re all immortals showing the weirdest shit from their attics. No one’s trying to sell anything or make themselves seem important. There’s sales from it, sure, there’s business, a lot of them buy shit from me for Christmas, but that’s just on the side. Most of it’s all in good fun, nothing important.”

“Vampires always think they’re important,” Jean-Pierre said.

Aimé flicked him on the nose, making him laugh. “And angels,” Aimé said sarcastically, “you never think you’re important.”

“Did it anger you?” Jean-Pierre asked, finding himself curious as he caught hold of one of Aimé’s hands, tracing his palm with an idle fingertip. “That Aetos and Doros had me between them at the orgy?”

“My erection at the time seemed angry to you?” Aimé asked dryly.

“You did not attempt to join us.”

Aimé inhaled, and Jean-Pierre watched the flare of his nostrils, watched his lips moved a moment, rehearsing, before he met Aimé’s gaze properly, and said, “If I’d joined in, I wouldn’t have had such a good view. And you like people to watch.”

“Yes,” Jean-Pierre said. “But you, first and foremost. I like you to watch.”

Aimé’s expression was difficult to describe as he twisted his lopsided lips together. “Why?” he asked.

“Why?”

“Yeah. Why me?”

“You are my lover, Aimé.”

“Uh huh. But why do you want me watching? It turns you on if I’m getting cucked?”

“I wasn’t thinking of that,” Jean-Pierre said softly. “The humiliation is of your own invention, not mine. I knew you would hold me, afterward.”

“Fuck,” Aimé whispered. “Fuck, Jean.”

Jean shifted his head, resting it more solidly in the pillow of Aimé’s lap, and Aimé handed him the remote control before he could ask for it, letting Jean turn on the television.

“You are very good to me, Aimé,” Jean-Pierre said happily.

“Well,” Aimé said. “Gotta balance out the bad somehow.”

Jean-Pierre chuckled, and began to swipe through choices of what to watch.