JEAN-PIERRE
Jean-Pierre enjoyed decorating for Christmas.
Beyond a decorative wreath and perhaps some candles, they would never really decorate for St Nicholas’ day, and it was not as though he were a monarchist simply because he agreed to bring a tree into the house, because people had done it long before the British Victoria’s inclination, no matter that Colm grumbled about it.
He enjoyed the ritual of a tree’s decoration, and he enjoyed how festive it made the house feel, to have everything decorated with garlands and have the tree shining and beautiful.
It was late in the morning, and Aimé would be back from working Colm’s allotment soon, having already done the necessary work in the yard, and he had painting work to be done, too.
Perhaps it ought have bothered him, that Aimé was not there to assist with the decoration, but Colm wasn’t either, and although Asmodeus was sitting beside the fire, writing letters on the wooden clipboard he often kept on his knee for purposes like this.
It was often for Jean-Pierre, he knew.
He had a handsome desk in his bedroom, one that he liked. It was an impressive piece of carpentry, could expand to have a sloping surface like an architect’s work surface if he didn’t wish to sketch upon a flat one, and it had a great many spaces for storage, was enchanted so that glasses and ink pots never fell over, even when knocked.
Not that Asmodeus ever knocked anything over. He was far too graceful for that.
“Are you writing Mr MacKinnon?” Jean-Pierre asked as he stood back from the tree, looking at it critically to ensure that the garland of tinsel was symmetrically banded about its branches before picking up the next.
“No,” said Asmodeus. “I’m replying to an angel named Ignatius recommending texts for his university studies.”
“Ignatius Olsen? Or Ignatius Laguerre-Georges?”
“Mwangi.”
“Oh,” said Jean-Pierre, disappointed, and stepped around the tree to pull more tinsel into place. “I don’t know him.”
Asmodeus chuckled. “He’s studying economics, so I expect you wouldn’t want to.”
Jean-Pierre huffed out a sound and pulled the step ladder closer, taking up to the steps to put the last garland into place. He needed the steps in order to string the lights on and put the star on top of the tree – Jean-Pierre only hoped Colm wouldn’t notice once he was back and replace it with the terrifying tree-topper angel he found very humorous with its tatty fairy wings – because the tree was tall enough to brush the ceiling, and even as tall as Jean-Pierre was, he couldn’t reach without straining on his very tip toes.
And Asmodeus wouldn’t help – he never wished anyone a happy Christmas, and while he participated in gift giving and general festivities, neither would be participate in singing carols or decorating. He didn’t celebrate the holiday, truly, and only came for their benefit.
“Did you meet with him?” asked Jean-Pierre.
“Meet with whom?”
“MacKinnon.”
“Mm,” Asmodeus hummed, singing the page with a neat flourish of his wrist and blotting his page, folding it into three perfect sections and sliding it into an envelope. He had some sort of mailing service, Jean-Pierre knew, but he only answered letters from certain people while he was travelling – from Jean-Pierre or Colm, if they wrote, but neither of them liked to bother him if it wasn’t an emergency, from MacKinnon, from the Embassy – and even then, he would often go weeks or months between checking the box. “For a few days.”
“He is well, I take it?” Jean-Pierre asked. He tried his best to keep his voice mild, not allowing any stiffness or jealousy to work its way into his voice, although as he always did when considering the strange enchanter to whom Asmodeus regularly returned in Nottingham, he ached to ask what it was that made him quite so appealing that he should like him better than Jean-Pierre and Colm, at times.
But—
But he was not unkind to Jean-Pierre, and he would buy paintings of Jean-Pierre and Rupert, when he came across them, and instead of selling them in his shop – he sold antiques – he would keep them aside, so that Jean-Pierre could decide whether they be destroyed or not.
And he texted Jean-Pierre the ones of him anyway, although he didn’t have to do that at all – he didn’t have to do any of it. Jean-Pierre had asked Asmodeus before, if he had told MacKinnon to do it, but he had said that he didn’t.
Jean-Pierre paid it back – if he came across certain interesting enchanted items or antiques, he would send them onto him.
It was a strange relationship – it could hardly be called a friendship.
And the relationship between MacKinnon and Asmodeus, Jean-Pierre didn’t understand at all. MacKinnon had no photographs of Asmodeus, and Asmodeus none of MacKinnon, but MacKinnon had gifted Asmodeus his travelling trunk, and Jean-Pierre knew that MacKinnon had Asmodeus’ every album on one shelf in his lounge.
“He’s well,” Asmodeus said. “He’s taken an apprentice.”
“A carpenter?”
“An antiques dealer,” Asmodeus said cleanly, setting the envelope for Ignatius Mwangi on top of his outgoing pile and picking up another letter to reply to. “And an enchanter, as well.”
“I didn’t know he took apprentices.”
“He hasn’t before,” was the quiet reply. “But he seems to be quite fond of her, and I see why. She’s a funny girl – very direct, inquisitive, strong. You remember those years ago, Raphael pulled that man out of the fire, and left some of his fire within him?”
“Yes,” Jean-Pierre said, glancing at Asmodeus’ face as he continued to untangle fairy lights, but as ever, it was unreadable. “He became a fireman, didn’t he, immune to the flames?”
“His name was Robert Young,” Asmodeus said, “and he was already a fireman. Anyway, Hamish’s new apprentice is his granddaughter. She inherited Raphael’s gift.”
It didn’t happen often. Most angels didn’t so burst out of their skins as Raphael did, didn’t struggle quite so much to contain themselves within skin and flesh and bone, but when angels did overflow, they could cause damage or strange creation.
Jean-Pierre knew of angels who had Fallen into deserts and made oases in the sand, their very touch making of the barren earth green grass and sprouting trees; he knew others who had been beacons for nearby animals, or had found themselves magnetic, that ore dug itself out of the ground and crawled to touch their skin as though made animate.
And Raphael—
Raphael frightened Jean-Pierre.
He wasn’t a man to be frightened of much, he didn’t think, and he was proud of the fact, but Raphael frightened him – when he had Fallen, Asmodeus said all those years ago, the flame had burned so huge and hot from within him that it was too powerful even for him to contain, and that was why his eye sockets were empty, the skin inside cauterised and bare, because they had popped and fizzled and evaporated to nothing by the time Asmodeus had come upon him.
Most of the time, he was just a man with a cane and a purifying touch, but Jean-Pierre had seen him angry, and when he was angry the flames burst from his head as though he were some fiery Medusa, and the bandages he wore around his face burnt and charred and dropped away, so that flames filled the empty sockets instead.
“Where is he?” asked Jean-Pierre.
“Hamish?”
“Raphael.”
“Oh. Ghana, last I heard. Working in the hospital in Nalerigu.”
“Will you go to him? After Christmas?”
Asmodeus gave him a funny look. Jean-Pierre wished he understood the friendships he had, outside of he and Colm. “Do I usually?”
“I don’t know. What about Djedkhonsuefankh? I heard that he was putting out feelers, of recent, as to leaving that little house of his.”
Asmodeus frowned at him, but he showed no surprise. “Who told you that? Neither he nor his counterpart use social media.”
“People they talk to talk to my people,” Jean-Pierre said. “You’re not the only one with connections, you know.”
“I won’t be going anywhere until February,” said Asmodeus, and Jean-Pierre turned to look at him, his mouth falling open. He felt a bright, sunny feeling warm within him, felt his lips dragged into a smile.
“Really?” he asked, and Asmodeus smiled at him, the expression indulgent.
“Really,” he said, “assuming no necessitating circumstances. There are only two Falls next year, and neither of them ought be particularly arduous, spaced apart as they are. I should be here quite a bit.”
“Oh,” Jean-Pierre said, beaming as he flicked the lights on, and beginning to adjust them, making sure they settled nicely on the tree. He preferred real pixies, but it had really seemed to disturb Aimé, for whatever reason. Last night, Jean-Pierre had asked him why not, and Aimé had laughed, asked why Jean-Pierre was so interested in keeping little creatures captive.
That wasn’t what Jean-Pierre wanted at all, and he had stayed awake for some time afterward, wondering if that was what Aimé thought of him.
“Asmodeus,” Jean-Pierre said.
“Yes, Jean?”
“Did you tell Aimé to come back to me?”
“No,” said Asmodeus. “Nor did I tell him not to.”
“Did you want him to?”
“Yes,” Asmodeus said cleanly. “I like what he brings out in you – I like what you bring out in him. But it was his choice, not mine, and this was one choice of his I didn’t wish to influence one way or the other.”
“Colm would rather I was alone forever,” said Jean-Pierre. “Or dead.”
Asmodeus sighed, and set his board aside. “Come here, Jean.”
When Jean-Pierre climbed into his brother’s lap, Asmodeus wrapped his arms loosely around Jean-Pierre’s side. Jean-Pierre pressed his knees into Asmodeus’ torso, his cheek on Asmodeus’ shoulder and his forehead pressed into the side of his neck. When Asmodeus’ hand dragged slow, gentle lines up and down Jean-Pierre’s back, Jean-Pierre released a quiet, unhappy noise, but not because he wanted him to stop.
“Colm doesn’t want you to be alone,” Asmodeus murmured into the top of his hair. “You know that, don’t you?”
Jean-Pierre said nothing, and Asmodeus squeezed him a little more tightly.
“Do you think he will leave me again?” asked Jean-Pierre, squeezing his fingers around the front of Asmodeus’ cardigan, and Asmodeus shook his head, his chin rubbing against the top of Jean-Pierre’s head.
“No, I don’t think so,” Asmodeus said softly. “I think he was bound up with you from the moment he laid eyes on you.”
Jean-Pierre pressed closer, shifting his position so that Asmodeus would scratch his back with his nails instead, dragging over Jean-Pierre’s shoulders. Jean-Pierre knew that he was testing if Jean-Pierre had been looking after his wings, because he pressed and dragged at the most sensitive spots, but Jean-Pierre didn’t complain, sighing at the pleasant sensation.
“You like him better,” said Jean-Pierre, “than you liked Manolis. Or Rupert.”
“I do. Truth be told,” Asmodeus said, “I like him better than Bui and Benoit, too.”
“What about Farhad?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be unfair to Farhad,” Asmodeus said quietly, softly. “He was always different to the rest.”
Asmodeus had liked Farhad, Jean-Pierre knew that – they had talked a lot about literature, about philosophy, and sometimes, when Farhad was in hospital, Asmodeus would read to him where Jean-Pierre could not.
It had been Asmodeus who had found an angel who would do the funeral for them, when so many of them turned away men like him.
“Do you think he’s like Jules? Aimé?” asked Jean-Pierre quietly.
“I think what makes him like Jules,” said Asmodeus, “is that in his head he is making no excuses for what you are, and who you are. He sees the truth in you, and he accepts it – embraces it, even, for all you terrify him. None of the others did that, Jean-Pierre.
“They all made one or another excuse for you, or rationalised you, in their heads. Rupert edited away what he knew of your violence; Bui thought you an angel there to punish him; Benoit an angel to elevate him. Aimé doesn’t see you as some religious reward or punishment, and nor does he imagine away the faults of yours that scare him. He loves you entirely. But for Jules and Farhad, none of the others gave you that.”
“That’s not fair,” Jean-Pierre whispered, feeling a sort of cold, clawing discomfort in his very heart, his eyes welling up and threatening to tear. “They did love me, they did—”
“Shh,” hushed Asmodeus softly, kissing his temple. “They did love you, of course they did. You know what isn’t what I meant.”
“I want him to be like us,” Jean-Pierre said. “Colm has been teaching him to throw knives, you know, and he’s been learning to fight properly. That makes you angry?”
“Who says I’m angry?” Asmodeus asked, curling his fingers around Jean-Pierre’s hair.
Jean-Pierre shrugged his shoulders, and for a little while longer, he kept close to Asmodeus, felt the heat of his body, the slow beat of his heart, and the cold depth of no feeling he exuded, like a well of neutrality.
He felt, deep in his bones, that things were soon to change, and it rendered in him an impossible anxiety.
“Is Colm going to leave us?” he asked.
“I don’t think he wants to,” Asmodeus said. “But we are each immortal, Jean – Heidemarie only has a few more years left. Would you have had Jules unhappy and alone at the end of his life, if Colm had called you to?”
“That’s different,” said Jean-Pierre, and Asmodeus kissed his head again.
“Finish the decorations,” he said, stroking his fingers over Jean’s cheek.
When Jean-Pierre stood from Asmodeus’ lap again, he heard Asmodeus laugh, and he looked back.
“A Christmas card?” he asked.
“From James Byrne,” murmured Asmodeus, tapping his nail against the card. “He’s working at a rape crisis centre as a counsellor. Has a little flat for himself, and is growing roses. He’s adopted a parrot.”
Jean-Pierre hesitated, feeling a strange emotion in his chest. “That’s good for him,” he said softly.
Asmodeus smiled. It was a genuine smile, Jean-Pierre thought – it was small, as muted as any of Asmodeus’ other expressions, but his eyes had a depth of feeling in them Jean-Pierre didn’t know how to quantify. “Yes,” he rumbled. “Yes, it’s very good.”
“Peadar, you prick,” came a voice from the hallway as the door opened, “would you— fuck off, I’m trying to walk here! Yes, I like you very much too, get your mouth off my laces.”
Jean-Pierre giggled into the pine branches as he picked up a bauble from the box, and when Peadar padded cheerfully into the room with his tail up in the air, Jean-Pierre greeted him warmly, and scratched his cheeks.
When Aimé entered the room, his trousers held a second coat of orange fur.
“I brought you strawberries,” he said when Jean-Pierre leaned down to kiss him, and Jean-Pierre felt his heart give a little jump in his chest, cupping Aimé’s beard.
“Thank you,” he murmured, and put himself back to his work.
* * *
AIMÉ
“You’re home earlier than I expected,” said Jean-Pierre. He was wearing an incredibly ugly Christmas jumper that must have been from his own wardrobe, because Aimé didn’t think either Colm or Asmodeus would be caught dead in an oversized jumper that read SANTA’S FAVOURITE HO.
Well.
Asmodeus, maybe.
“I wanted to borrow your brother,” Aimé said as he put the strawberries in the fridge and pulled out a dish of tuna Peadar hadn’t finished earlier and put it on the floor for him. “If he lets me.”
“It rather depends on what you want to borrow me for,” said Asmodeus, not looking up from his paperwork.
“Colm said he’d drive me around and help me deliver the paintings I’m not sending by courier, keep costs down,” Aimé said. “I’d just need help packing the car up and driving them around – I’d ask to borrow the car, but I’m not on Colm’s insurance. I assume you are.”
“I’m not sure that Colm is on Colm’s insurance,” Asmodeus said.
“Yes, he is, and so are you,” said Jean-Pierre primly. “I did it so that it would get done.”
“Do you pay for his insurance as well?” asked Asmodeus, raising an eyebrow.
“Go deliver your presents, Saint Nicholas,” replied Jean-Pierre archly, turning around, and Aimé laughed at the offended look on Asmodeus’ face. “Peadar and I shall continue to deck the halls.”
Aimé laughed, moving up behind Jean-Pierre and pulling up the hem of his jumper so that he could slide his hands into Jean-Pierre’s back pockets, making him release a sharp yelp of delight and laugh, leaning back against Aimé’s chest and turning to look at him.
“Take you for dinner after?” asked Aimé.
“Alright,” said Jean-Pierre. “But you remember we’re meeting Pádraic after the grotto is finished for today?”
“When’s that done, six?”
“Mm.”
“We’ll all go somewhere,” Aimé said. He was in a good mood, and it was made better by the soft way Jean-Pierre smiled up at him, the way he reached back to card his hand in Aimé’s hair.
“D’accord,” Jean said softly, and pecked him on the mouth before looking back to the tree.
Aimé squeezed his arse for good measure, and Jean-Pierre laughed, slapping his hands away. At the light of Jean-Pierre in his stupid fucking Christmas jumper, tinsel around his neck and his tree half-decked, Aimé found himself actually looking forward to Christmas for once, and grinned.
“You okay to go?” he asked De, who was standing to his feet, and somehow was managing to stroke Peadar without getting any cat hair on him at all.
“If you are,” he said pleasantly, and led the way out to the car.
They had driven a little ways toward Aimé’s apartment when Aimé said, “Can I, uh… Can I ask you something?”
“Another favour?” Asmodeus asked, though he didn’t sound irritated.
“Advice.”
“If you like.”
“I, uh. I know Jean fixed up the enchantment in my place, but I really don’t, um. You know, it’s in my father’s name, it’s his property. You know we talked about finding somewhere else?”
“Ah,” Asmodeus said softly. “Yes, I’ve been looking at space for you – I wasn’t sure if you’d want to live very close to us or linger in the city, what sort of budget you’d like to have. We can sort out your business plan first, have a look at your savings, your finances. Do you have any stock?”
“I think so,” Aimé said. “I have the papers and shit in my desk, shares in my dad’s company, and gifts from birthdays and stuff, stock in other companies.”
“Do you ordinarily receive your dividends?”
“I don’t really check my bank account,” Aimé muttered.
Asmodeus’ lip twitched, and although he didn’t actually laugh at Aimé, Aimé shifted uncomfortably, feeling a sort of guilt stew in his stomach. He didn’t even want to think what Colm would say about it, about Aimé not even having any idea how much money he had, that he’d never had to worry about it.
“We’ll sort it out,” Asmodeus said. “Don’t worry.”
“I didn’t realise you were looking for me,” Aimé said. “Thanks.”
“I told you I would.”
“Yeah, but…”
But what? Aimé didn’t want to say it, didn’t want to say he’d almost thought Asmodeus had said it just to chill him out and get him to stop talking, didn’t think he’d really want to, didn’t think Asmodeus would really… care.
But he did care. Cared enough to look.
“Do you want to receive clients in your studio?” Asmodeus asked.
“I don’t know,” Aimé said. “I guess I didn’t really think about it. Should I?”
“Well, we could get you somewhere where you’ve an open plan space, where you could paint, but also have a waiting area for clients, for anyone who might want to post for portraiture – either way, it would be my recommendation that you have paintings in a window display regardless, either in your studio or in someone else’s window, and you need a proper website.”
“I have a website.”
“You have a Facebook page,” Asmodeus said disapprovingly.
“I thought you didn’t use computers.”
“And yet even I realise you need a website.”
“You don’t have to help me, you know.”
“I do know,” said Asmodeus. “And before you say it, I’m not helping you only for Jean-Pierre’s sake – Jean couldn’t care less if you had an occupation at all, and wouldn’t bat an eye if you decided to live with us, and you know that if you ever tired of painting or if you didn’t want to expand your business directly after graduating, you could work alongside Colm, or we could find something else for you.”
“Job market is shit.”
“You have nepotism on your side,” said Asmodeus said. “That hasn’t disappeared simply because you have a new family now – just that the roles available have changed.”
“A new family,” Aimé repeated, and looked at Asmodeus’ face as he drove. “You really think that?”
“You can call it something else, if you like,” said Asmodeus. “But Colm and I have embraced you as an extension of Jean-Pierre, as has Pádraic, Bedelia, Doros. Other angels will typically follow suit, and that’s without Benedictine’s word. The more of us you meet, the more angels will consider you a part of our network, so to speak.”
“Jean-Pierre’s word wouldn’t be good enough?”
Asmodeus cleared his throat. “Jean-Pierre has a reputation for… I’m afraid angels don’t necessarily assume a companion of his is long-term on sight alone.”
“You know, Colm would just say—”
“I know what Colm would say,” Asmodeus said.
Aimé laughed softly. “You’re a good big brother. You know that?”
There was, for just a moment, a little tension in the car between them, a pause that went on just a little bit too long. Asmodeus said, then, “I really do try my best.”
“What did you get Jean for Christmas?”
“New boots. I had them commissioned for him.”
“Do you have to get presents for every angel on Earth?”
Asmodeus laughed quietly. “No,” he murmured. “My celebration is broadly secular and done out of obligation – I only do it for Jean and Colm, Jean especially.”
“That mean you didn’t get me anything?”
“Helping you sort out your life isn’t enough for you?”
“I can’t unwrap my life,” said Aimé, and Asmodeus smiled, his white teeth showing as he did so.
“I suppose I’ll simply have to put something under the tree for you, then,” he said mildly, and Aimé tapped his fingers against his knee. “You haven’t heard word from your father?” asked Asmodeus.
“Can you do what Colm does?”
“I could, if I wanted to,” said Asmodeus. “I never have before.”
“Then how do you…?”
Asmodeus said nothing, and after they’d driven past a few more streets, Aimé said, “No. But he must be keeping tabs on me. He does that.”
“So does Jean,” said Asmodeus. “I expect his people have noticed your father’s people, if you care to ask him.”
“I don’t know whether to find that creepy or charming,” Aimé muttered, even though he was fairly, embarrassingly sure that he felt it was the latter. He felt just a little bit warm, and while he knew he should have felt scared, he didn’t feel frightened at all.
“That is the quandary he typically poses.”
“You gonna come to the Christmas party, if you don’t celebrate? The church one?”
“I’ll come,” Asmodeus said. “It’s on the 22nd, isn’t it? Benedictine will be here by then, she’ll come along as well.”
“What’s she like? Benedictine?”
“She shares quite a bit in common with Colm,” said Asmodeus softly, although there was an edge in his tone Aimé didn’t know what to make of. “She’s very community-focused, is quite fit, does odd jobs where she can. She knows her way around building a rifle or a henhouse. But she’s a lawyer, by trade, does a lot of pro bono defence work and so on. And she’s a human rights activist in her own right.”
“You don’t like her?” Aimé asked.
Asmodeus glanced at him. “I do,” he said. “I love Benedictine very much. I only really see her for the holidays, that’s all.”
“Is It going to be shit?”
“The party?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, it’s a church party with members of the local congregations and several priests. I think there’ll be an art table, if that appeals to you.”
“The kids’ art table?”
“You could donate some nice paints,” Asmodeus suggested, and Aimé sniggered, shaking his head. “No, Aimé, I don’t think it will be particularly exciting. We’ll be hosted in the big community room until around eight or so, I think, perhaps nine, and then we’ll filter off to pubs.”
“And then we can start doing coke,” said Aimé.
“No one’s stopping you from starting earlier,” said Aimé. “But don’t share it with the children.”
Aimé shook his head. “I’m not gonna do fucking coke at the church party. I’m just taking the piss.”
“I think it will be fun,” Asmodeus said. “Jean and Colm will bring their instruments, I’ll bring my accordion. It will be, as Colm would say, excellent craic.”
“Please crash the car,” said Aimé, and Asmodeus laughed from deep in his chest as he pulled up in front of Aimé’s flat.
