JEAN-PIERRE

Jean-Pierre’s courses started a full week before Aimé’s return to the university, and so it was at a little past seven o’clock that he arrived on the doorstep of Aimé’s flat. Its door was secreted between the doors of two far more dilapidated buildings, housing a mix of students and the elderly, but Jean knew from the security system that it had far more money invested in its build.

He well-knew the value some of the rich put into appearing poor.

Aimé’s apartment, being as he owned it himself, and being as it was so large a space on the top of a building, a studio with a great deal of outdoor space to work by, was no doubt a keenly-kept secret from his fellows. Jean-Pierre doubted he even paid rent.

Standing in the sleek, very clean elevator, he leaned casually against one of the glass walls, and ignored the elderly woman in a cream suit that kept glancing at him suspiciously.

Aimé had given him a key to use, and had had to get it cut himself. Jean-Pierre saw why now, for there was a brand name neatly printed over the key, and he knew off the top of his head what a devil this particular lock was to pick – even when you were manipulating the pins as perfectly as one might, one still had the sidebar to reckon with.

Sliding the key into the lock, he turned it, stepping inside, and he felt the wash of the enchantments in the house over his skin. A neatly appointed system, to be sure, albeit a little overly traditional despite its blended styles – for what it lacked in innovation, it made up for in strength of character, and as Jean-Pierre flexed his fingers on the air, he could feel how deeply the enchantment was embedded in the walls, the floors, the support beams. No doubt it went all the way to the building’s foundations.

Sliding the key back into his pocket, he stood in the small corridor that opened out into the huge, square room of Aimé’s studio. His coat and his bag were hung on the coatrack beside the door, which seemed to go mostly unused by Aimé himself, for the only article hung here was a raincoat that did not look like it had been touched in months.

The room was broadly separated into three segments: a lower half-floor, which housed the kitchen and a social area, and two raised areas. One of these raised areas, directly across from the entrance, closed off, and housed, from what Jean-Pierre could see, Aimé’s bedroom and bathroom; the other, which was open, housed his studio.

Despite the high ceilings, which contained a variety of skylights, and the twin French doors on each edge opening out onto the balconies, the room was quite dark. Stepping silently forward, Jean-Pierre glanced to the small kitchen, where plates and pans were stacked high in the sink, and where the expensive marble of the countertop was hidden under cardboard packets, plastic bags, and pieces of tinfoil strewn over its surface. The rubbish bin overflowed; the recycling bin was almost empty.

The rest of the room was not drastically different. Blankets, half-eaten packets of crisps, and cans of beer or bottles of spirits in various states of consumption were stacked over the comfortable couches and armchairs, not to mention the various coffee tables and end tables scattered around the room; through the sliding door that led into Aimé’s bedroom, on a raised platform, Jean-Pierre noted that he could not at all see the carpet through the carpet of dirty clothes, and yet more cans of beer – although in the bedroom’s case, it seemed that almost all of them had been drunk to their completion.

Jean-Pierre stepped up to the raised platform that housed Aimé’s studio, and folded his hands neatly over his belly, surveying it with interest. Where the rest of his flat was in utter disarray, where fruit flies and other pests would no doubt have overrun the place were it not for the careful appointment of the house’s ward structure, Aimé’s workspace was attended to with both love and discipline – perhaps all that Aimé had in him to spare.

Against one of the walls, great shelves housed large canvases as their paint dried and cured, dozens upon dozens of them stacked neatly, many of them loosely covered with cloth. Two smaller, standing units housed the canvases that weren’t quite so unwieldy, and a series of cloths were laid out over one section of the floor, several easels holding paintings in states of various completion atop them. Against the other wall, hundreds of paints were carefully and painstakingly organised by shade, stacked in purpose-built shelving that would have made Colm weep for its ease of use.

The only messy part of Aimé’s studio was his desk, upon which were stacked various essays and drafts and pieces of paperwork: there were paint stains over his keyboard and the plastic of his rolling chair, and Jean-Pierre traced Aimé’s thumb print on his computer mouse, left in some shade of nickel titanate.

The smell of paint was overwhelming, a thick scent that sat heavy in his lungs, but he would get used to it. The smell of cigarette smoke, on the other hand, was distasteful, and he scanned the room, looking out for the cigarette packets in amongst the rubbish strewn about, the ashtrays in various states of fullness on every available surface.

Smiling slightly, Jean-Pierre stepped to the slightly open set of the westside French doors, and stepped out beneath the metal canopy there. Here, another easel – this one metal, and pinned to the ground with screws, no doubt so that Aimé could paint outside even in wind, judging by the additional windshields that were set to drag down from each side of the canopy and hook to the ground.

The painting in progress was lovely, an impressionist study of troops in red uniform, stood to attention, their rifles in hand. Their features were vague, nothing more than streaks of shiny peach-coloured paint, and while the fanciful affects of their uniforms had been painted in keen detail – the brocade on their chests and wrists, their epaulettes, the individual buttons, the shapes of their carabines – they held no marks that identified them as belonging to one nation or other.

The artist lay asleep on a battered leather couch, evidently used to the touch of the elements, a heavy tome about metaphysics and their impact on free will serving as his blanket. Beside him, on the table, was an empty naggin of vodka, and a heaped ashtray.

There was red paint smeared on the artist’s cheek, and Jean-Pierre wondered, in an abstract sort of way, how handsome Aimé might look were that blood.

He was delicate, graceful, about sitting himself for a moment on the edge of the sofa, and when he reached with marble-pale fingers for the stubbled surface of Aimé’s chin, Aimé, fast asleep, did not protest. His jaw opened freely at a slight squeeze on each side, and though the sensation was no-doubt ticklish even to the unconscious brain, he scarcely stirred as Jean-Pierre drew a few symbols on the roof of his mouth, the surface of his tongue, the inside of his lip.

When the enchantment flared, it lit Aimé’s mouth from the inside making him rather resemble, for a moment, a Halloween pumpkin carving, and it made Jean-Pierre smile as he rose to his feet.

After picking his steps through the chaos of Aimé’s bedroom to collect a blanket that smelled generally clean – although, like everything in his vicinity, it had marks of oil paint on it – and setting his boots aside, he padded back outside. Delicately removing the weight of freedom from Aimé’s chest, he replaced the book with his own weight, and threw the blanket over them both.

In his sleep, Aimé grunted, tangling his hand in Jean-Pierre’s hair, but he didn’t wake, and Jean-Pierre put his ear against his chest, closing his own eyes. He slept very easily with Aimé as his pillow.

*     *     *

AIMÉ

The first thing Aimé was aware of was that he was warm.

He hadn’t been all that warm when he’d first sat outside – the rain had cooled the air quite a bit, although once he’d drank a little, he’d barely even noticed. Now, he’d slept most of the alcohol off, and was fully aware of the heat radiating from the blanket pulled over his chest – or, more specifically, the angel between him and the blanket.

Jean-Pierre was sleeping soundly, his beautiful lips parted, his eyelashes seeming longer than usual because of the way he’d closed his eyes, and Aimé was aware that he had his fingers curled in Jean-Pierre’s hair – his other hand was curled around his lower back.

Working that hand free, he worked his phone out from his pocket and glanced at the time – eight-thirty.

“Jean-Pierre,” Aimé mumbled, and Jean-Pierre shifted where he was curled against his chest, raising his head and looking at Aimé sleepily. He looked impossibly beautiful, and not for the first time, Aimé felt as though he were going against some sort of commandment, being able to touch something as perfect as he was, as holy as he was.

He’d never much cared for the sanctity of the holy before.

“I was gonna clean up,” he said lamely.

He’d wanted to. He had. Jean-Pierre was impossible, beautiful, was all but blessing Aimé with his presence, and even if he hadn’t been, Aimé did hate how disgusting his flat was, how quickly it got that way, almost without him noticing, without his permission. He’d wake up sober in the mornings, survey the state of the place, the rubbish, the mess, and still sick to his stomach, he’d just… drink.

It was easier than cleaning up, most of the time.

He never knew where to start.

“Oh,” Jean-Pierre murmured, and almost automatically, when he sat up in Aimé’s lap, the blanket falling down around his waist, Aimé put his hands on Jean-Pierre’s hips. Aimé stared up at him, speechless, as Jean-Pierre yawned, stretching out his arms and rolling his shoulders, and then sleepily rubbed at one eye.

“How was class?”

“It was alright,” Jean-Pierre said. “We did an in-class test as part of our anatomy module, just to ascertain our base level of knowledge. A few of my professors knew me already – I was an EMT in Texas, for some time, before coming here.”

“Isn’t that the ambulance people that don’t do serious injuries?”

“An EMT only does a limited amount of training,” Jean-Pierre said. “A paramedic must pursue some twelve hundred hours of tutelage at least, if not close to two thousand. I did not want to pursue a medical degree in the US, when my past identity with the mundane system ran to an end. I knew we would be moving again soon.”

Aimé was quiet for a moment.

He’d thought about immortality before, of course. For mundies studying philosophy, immortality was little more than a theoretical concept. Sure, one could think about the immortality of the soul, if the soul existed, what happened to it, what changes it might undergo, but actual, real immortality was something that only existed in the realms of theoretical debate, or when discussing the potential existence of the Creator God – although really, these two were basically the same.

But when you weren’t mundane? When you looked at these things from a magical perspective?

Immortality existed.

There were divinities, gods, that existed in perpetuity because their mere existence was basically predilected on belief, and so long as people believed in them, they continued to live; plenty of fae were functionally immortal, from a human perspective; angels were functionally immortal; vampires were functionally immortal.

Spirits were actually immortal, in that they were eternal, although Aimé had had a few debates, with one person and another, as to whether spirits strictly counted as alive.

When people thought about immortality from a mundane perspective, the questions were a lot more lofty: they talked about the ethics of choosing to be immortal at the expense of others; they talked about what made life worth living, what made ambition worth having, if one was immortal; they talked about the degradation of ideals, or whatever else.

Actual immortals – those that interacted with mundie life, anyway – had to have rolling identities every fifty years or so, and had to fill out an additional tax form, and there were whole departments in hospitals and governments devoted to immortal concerns.

It sort of took the philosophical excitement out of it.

Jean-Pierre shifted slightly in Aimé’s lap, and Aimé felt his eyelids flutter as Jean-Pierre rolled his hips down against Aimé’s own. Through Aimé’s joggers, he could easily fell the muscle of Jean-Pierre’s thighs as he squeezed tightly around Aimé’s own, and he hissed out a low noise as he watched Jean-Pierre’s hand slid under the waistband of his tight jeans, his expression turn to bliss, the column of his neck stretch out as he tipped his head back.

“Fuck,” Aimé whispered.

“You read my mind,” said Jean-Pierre, and began to struggle out of his oversized jumper.

He’d never been with a trans man before – if that was even what Jean-Pierre was, because he had a completely flat chest and no surgery scars, and he’d never made any mention of it. It seemed rude to ask, somehow.

What he knew for certain was that Jean-Pierre’s cunt was as perfect as the rest of him, and it said a lot for its appeal that he got hard watching Jean-Pierre – perfect, holy, beautiful Jean-Pierre – wrestle himself out of his stupidly tight jeans, with no grace at all.

*     *     *

JEAN-PIERRE

They went out for dinner.

Colm, for Jean-Pierre’s sake, had already made a list of every café and restaurant in the city that offered significant raw fruit and vegetables on their menu; Bedelia had passed on some unexpected recommendations of restaurants willing to make exceptions or substitutions for the peculiarities of his diet, as her father favoured them; Asmodeus had supplied a handful of establishments that were magical in their nature, and catered to less mundane diets.

With Jean-Pierre’s tablet in his hands, the map app open so that he could see the various markers all over the map of Dublin, Aimé had stared down at it with fascination, and then looked at Jean-Pierre with dry amusement on his face.

“What?” Jean-Pierre had asked.

“You’re just— a fucking princess, that’s all,” Aimé said.

“I resent that,” Jean-Pierre had replied, and immediately, Aimé had crumpled, his lips parting.

“Oh, I didn’t— I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Good,” Jean-Pierre said. “The monarchy are a plague.”

Aimé had stared at him, baffled, and then pointed at a point on the map. “This place is good,” he said. “They have a fireplace, you’ll like that.”

“Yes,” Jean-Pierre had agreed, and had slipped behind Aimé on the back of his bike, watched him shiver as Jean-Pierre breathed on the back of his neck, and Aimé tried to keep his balance.

The restaurant was called Whitman’s, and was fae-run. Flowers and verdant leaves grew in thick, heavy thatches on the walls, and plump fruits hung down from trellises, and to one edge of the room, like Aimé had said, there was a great fireplace, which was lit and crackled with hot flame.

The table directly across from it was empty, and Jean-Pierre settled immediately into one of the seats, cross-legged, and glanced around the room. It was a beautiful restaurant, and cut off entirely from mundane view: he’d felt the shift of magic around them as they’d stepped slightly to the left of what was often thought of as the human dimension, and the strength of the enchantment in the room was a warm, heavy weight on his chest.

Unbuttoning his overshirt and setting it aside, he felt for the vents in the back of his undershirt, and as he let free his wings, he watched Aimé’s face. As there had been the first time he’d seen them, there was awe painted across Aimé’s face, and Jean-Pierre’s hairs stood on end on the back of his neck, a pleasured blush passing over his cheeks, his chest. He liked very much to be looked at – he especially enjoyed to be looked at like this.

Aimé looked at Jean-Pierre’s wings with his eyes wide and softly lit, their different colours strangely illuminated by the fireside beside them, and his crooked lips were parted as his fingers roved over the golden curve of Jean-Pierre’s plumage, curled as his wings were on each side of his shoulder like a cowl. Aimé looked at him greedily, as though he was desperate to look his fill, as though he were hungry for more.

Jean-Pierre was content to be a meal for the eyes, when Aimé’s hands touched him so worshipfully.

“You really want to show off that badly?” Aimé asked, his tone wry. He had a voice well-made for wryness: his voice was husky, had a strange, crooning note to it that made Aimé sound somewhat older than he was, and distracted from the natural grate of his D4 accent. “What, people don’t look at you enough already, with how pretty you are? You need the wings out too?”

Jean-Pierre leaned forward, putting his chin on the heels of his palms, and he looked focusedly at Aimé, smiling as sweetly as he dared. “Tell me I’m pretty again,” he said softly.

Aimé laughed even as he wrinkled his nose and shook his head.

“If they see my wings,” Jean-Pierre said softly, “it means they will take my dietary requirements more seriously. A winged angel’s dietary peculiarities are ordinarily well known to the culinary profession, but there is never any harm in a visual aid.”

“And you like it when people look at you.” There was, of course, a note of disapproval in the other man’s tone, a mild condescension, but Jean-Pierre wasn’t troubled by it. Reaching across the table, he slid his hand into Aimé’s, interlinking their fingers.

“I do,” Jean-Pierre confirmed, and squeezed Aimé’s hand. “You dislike it? All these people look at me and think how beautiful I am – would you begrudge them what you think yourself?”

Aimé’s cheeks darkened, and he looked away.

Jean-Pierre smiled.

“Good evening,” said their waitress, a handsome girl with dark curls that were more blue than black. She was plump, with an hourglass figure, her skin a vibrant orange, like the colour of stained glass – she wore no name tag, of course. Fae culture would bend somewhat to human mores in these times of integration, but there were limits. “Your menus – can I fetch you two any drinks?”

Aimé’s gaze had turned away from Jean-Pierre’s wings to the girl, had dropped to the curve of her backside, and Jean-Pierre reached across the table, grasping Aimé by the jaw and forcing him to look back at Jean-Pierre. He let out a breathless sound, his lips parting, eyes widening, as he met Jean-Pierre’s gaze. His cheeks burned hot under Jean-Pierre’s thumb and fingers, with shame or arousal, Jean-Pierre really couldn’t say, but he looked cowed, which was sufficient apology for his liking.

“I won’t drink wine,” he said softly. “But if you would be willing to supplement whatever alcohol you order, I should like to share a bottle of cordial. It’s sweet, but not syrupy. Will you?”

His grip was not very tight on Aimé’s jaw, but it was tight enough that Aimé hesitated slightly before he parted his lips to answer. “Yeah,” he said. “Fine. You pick the flavour.”

Jean-Pierre stroked Aimé’s chin with his thumb, a silent reward, and he leaned back into his own bench. The fae girl showed no offence at his act of possession, but Aimé seemed slightly dazed, reaching up and touching his own cheek where Jean-Pierre had gripped it.

Satisfaction pooled low in Jean-Pierre’s belly.

*     *     *

AIMÉ

“What happens to you if you eat bread?” Aimé asked, and Jean-Pierre laughed. He sucked the strawberry juice from his fingers, and demonstratively, reached over the table and tore off a small piece of the mie of Aimé’s bread roll, putting it into his mouth whilst keeping Aimé’s gaze, and chewing.

“Mmm,” he hummed thoughtfully, swallowing. “As you can see, I won’t explode.”

“I didn’t think you would.”

“It just makes me feel tired afterward – lethargic. Most grains do, really – a little here and there can be nice, and I like very much the breads that are very thick with grains and seeds. Asmodeus has this wonderful recipe from a friend of his in England, with a great many seeds and whole grains in it, that when you cut a slice of it, one thinks one is looking into bedrock. White bread won’t kill me, but a full portion of it would make me somewhat unwell.” Jean-Pierre looked thoughtful as he took up what Aimé now knew was called a dragonfruit, a bright pink and green fruit with a speckled white centre. “Fish is alright, especially very oily fish – tougher sea food, like octopus, is a little bit harder on me. Heavy meat, especially very rich meats, like beef or lamb, or duck, make me sick; very fatty meats, like pork, make me sick; milk and all of its products, such as yoghurt and cheese, makes me sick. I could eat meat stews – I used to, when I first Fell. But I do not like to eat meat.”

“It bother you that I do?”

Jean-Pierre considered the question, his head tilting to the side as he licked a strip of dragonfruit from the side of his hand. He usually ate with his hands – Aimé didn’t think he’d seen Jean-Pierre use a fork yet, these past few weeks. He looked very thoughtful, his brows furrowed, as he said, “My family didn’t eat much meat when I Fell. We couldn’t afford it. We lived very modestly – it was a different time. I would rather people ate meat than starve.”

“You think if people went vegetarian, people would starve?” Aimé asked, unable to restrain the scoff of condescension in his voice, and Jean-Pierre looked at him, fascinated.

“Meat is cheap,” Jean-Pierre said, shrugging his shoulders. “People are poor.”

“What, like you’re poor?” Aimé asked.

“Not anymore,” Jean-Pierre said. “But only because I come from a strong community. The Celestial Embassy has paid for every piece of schooling and training I have ever taken – were it not for the fact that Asmodeus always purchases the properties we live in, the Embassy would give us a stipend for rent, or assist us with mortgages, if we struggled with them. As it happens, Colm and I each make a moderate income, and return a lot of our excess to the Embassy, that it might help others.”

Angels were—

Weird.

He knew that they had something like diplomatic immunity, that angels had their own courts of justice internationally, in large part because a lot of places felt uncomfortable putting ostensibly holy beings on trial, and he knew that they had tight-knit communities.

He knew they didn’t pay income tax in the same way most magical people did, because his dad had mentioned it once or twice before, but…

“How much do you have to give them? The Embassy?”

“We don’t have to give them anything,” Jean-Pierre said. “If we told them we could not pay our dues, no bailiffs would come for us. On the income I shall be earning as I pursue my degree, I shall probably pay thirty percent – once I am returned to work, fifty or sixty.”

“Sixty percent,” Aimé said. “You’ll get taxed a sixty percent rate?”

It was insane. He’d heard liberals talk about high tax rates, but even then, the rate wasn’t normally sixty percent – that was obscenely high, and yet, at Aimé’s expression of revulsion, Jean-Pierre laughed.

“It is not a tax,” he said softly. “We pay no rent, our electricity is mostly provided by Colm’s solar panels, our home is well-insulated and our use of fuel is efficient. Colm grows a lot of what we eat, and trades for much of the rest of it, doing odd jobs, bartering here and there… We do not need a lot of money to live on.”

“You’re crazy. It’s one thing to pay your loan back for school, but then… You just give them all your money? What does it go to?”

“Some of it will help run the Celestial Museum in Harare, to administrative costs. Some of it is given as a stipend to those of us who cannot work, or wish to pursue unpaid labour, such as charity work, or art – or there are those who are in school themselves. The point of the Embassy is to provide for us all: we were a collective, once. That we are now of many bodies does not mean our wealth should not be of one.”

“You make angels sound like ants. Doesn’t that— You’ve spent, what, three hundred years studying medicine and healing the sick, right?”

“Yes.”

“And you just… Don’t you want a reward for that? Don’t you think you’ve earned your pay?”

Jean-Pierre was smiling, his head tilted slightly to the side, as he chewed on a grape, and swallowed.

“What are you smiling at?”

“This is the first real conversation we have had in our time together,” Jean-Pierre said musingly. “I think it is revealing a lot about us, in each direction: I hope you will not tire of me.”

“I think you’re crazy,” Aimé said, shaking his head. He couldn’t even feel frustrated, it was such a bonkers, backwards way of thinking about anything. “You’re gonna do your medical degree, work insane hours as a doctor, and then… What? You’ll be happy sending most of your money back to the angels, so that they can hand it out to some burnout who’ll just spend it on beer and do shit paintings?”

“Why not?” Jean-Pierre asked, with a delicate shrug, his wings moving in line with his shoulders. “Isn’t that what your father does?”

Aimé stared at him, stunned, unable to speak. He felt like the pit had fallen out of his stomach, his head spinning, and the whole time, Jean-Pierre just looked at him, smiling beatifically. Aimé couldn’t even start to think of a comeback. Finally, he managed, weakly, “You’re lucky you’re that fucking pretty.”

Jean-Pierre smiled as if Aimé had complimented him, a pretty flush burning in his cheeks. “Yes,” he said mildly. “I know.”

Aimé shook his head, wiping his hands on a napkin, and he stood to his feet. “I’ll be right back, I’m just gonna go take a quick smoke.”

Jean-Pierre took him by the wrist as he stood to pass by, his thumb stroking delicately over Aimé’s pulse point, and he looked up at Aimé with the most painfully concentrated expression on his face, his beautiful eyes heavily lidded, his lips parted: the expression looked credulous, somehow, ridiculously naïve. If a halo had appeared behind his head, Aimé wouldn’t have been surprised.

“Aimé,” Jean-Pierre said softly.

“Yeah?” Aimé asked. The attention was too much: he felt like he might burst into flames under it, somehow.

“I was only being facetious,” he said. “I think your paintings are very good.”

Aimé’s mouth was dry, and his cheeks felt like they really would set on fire now, they were burning so much. He nodded hurriedly, so that Jean-Pierre would let go of him, and he stepped outside into the little smoking area. Half the people out here were blue: most of the smoke was green. Aimé almost felt boring as he lit his normal cigarette and leaned back against a pillar, putting it to his lips.

He wasn’t sure what happened.

As he took his first inhale, it was like his stomach suddenly roiled and rebelled against him, and he was lucky there was a bin right beside him, or his vomit would have spattered on the floor.

The cigarette was forgotten.

Jean-Pierre called his brother to drive them home.