AIMÉ

Jean-Pierre didn’t ask him to, but when he let his wings out, Aimé pulled him to sit down on the edge of the bed, kneeling behind him to work on them. It was strange, how normal this had become for him – maybe normal was the wrong word, because every time he still marvelled at the golden sheen of the feathers under his hands, their slightly greasy texture between his fingers. He’d been scared, in the beginning, of pulling out the bent feathers or of digging his fingers hard into the places where the wing oil crusted or scabbed and dragging it free even though it must hurt.

It did hurt, he think, because Jean-Pierre often hissed in pain after, but even if it wasn’t the case that Jean-Pierre was a masochist, which he certainly fucking was, this was a pain that satisfied him afterward, and the hisses always turned to soft hums.

He tore a bent feather free, and Jean-Pierre sighed his satisfaction.

“Good?” asked Aimé.

“Good,” said Jean-Pierre.

“I’ve been learning,” said Aimé.

“Learning?” Jean-Pierre repeated, his voice low and soft – it was the same way his voice turned when he was sleepy, but there was a slightly hard edge to it. He was dazed, stuck in his own head, but nowhere close to actually sleeping.

“The parts of the feather,” said Aimé. “The parts of the wing. Anatomy study. I know the calamus,” he said, and pressed hard on a tertial feather, tapping against where it fitted its shaft beneath the flesh, hearing the hollow noise of it, “and the afterfeather, where even on a big quill it looks and feels like down, and the individual barbs on each feather, the way they form the vane, like threads form a piece of sail, and going all the way up the middle, the spine of the feather, the rachis.”

“And on each barb?” asked Jean-Pierre, sounding a little more with it now.

“A barbule,” said Aimé. “And tiny, tiny little hooklets. They help the barbs keep shape?”

“Mmm.”

Aimé leaned in close to Jean-Pierre, pressing his face to the frankincense fragrance between the base of each wing, and Jean-Pierre shifted his wings back so that his face was squeezed beneath the weird additional shoulderblades they formed, their muscle pressing his cheeks together as surely as Jean-Pierre’s thighs did, but thick and soft with tiny feathers, and greasy with excess oil.

Closing his eyes, keeping his body spooned up against Jean-Pierre’s back, he reached up with both hands. “Coverts,” he said, pressing on the top curve of his wing. “Lesser at the top, medium in the middle… Then these down here are the greater coverts, right? And the primary at the edge, which I can’t reach, but there’s also your bastard wings, like a creepy little bat’s finger, where the joint connects.”

Jean-Pierre laughed, and relaxed his second shoulders, letting Aimé tilt his head to the side, so his cheek was against his skin instead.

“I prefer to call them alulae to bastard wings,” he said.

“Winglets.”

“Winglets,” Jean-Pierre agreed softly.

“Tertiary,” Aimé said, stroking some of them, and then reached further out, “Secondary… Primary all the way out there. Learning the muscles, too, so I can do all those sexy anatomical sketches you do best.”

Jean-Pierre’s laugh was soft as he leaned back against Aimé, so that his head could rest on Aimé’s chest and Aimé was looking down at him. His eyes were half-lidded, his eyelashes catching gold in the light. “Are you going to paint me?” asked Jean-Pierre as he looked up at him, his eyes very blue.

“Can I paint you naked?”

Disgusted, Jean-Pierre asked, “You were going to paint me clothed?”

Aimé smiled down at him, curling his fingers in Jean-Pierre’s hair. It wasn’t as though he’d stopped being anxious about his father, because he knew it was there, the fear, but he felt more comfortable now, somehow, like it was overshadowed, like there was another priority to hand.

“You want to talk about it?” asked Aimé.

“Why?” Jean-Pierre asked. “My brothers think I’m a crazy irrational monster. Why shouldn’t you?”

“They don’t fuck you,” Aimé said. “I do.”

“That is a reason you should think better of me?”

“It’s a reason I should know what I’m up against,” said Aimé. “Could literally get caught with my dick out.”

It wasn’t that he felt as though he were Jean-Pierre’s equal, because he didn’t, not really.

He didn’t think he ever could, with Jean-Pierre being what he was – not actually holy, not truly more impressive or even worth more than Aimé was, intrinsically. Logically, he knew that, that one life was worth the same as another, that immortality didn’t actually make someone’s life worth more – sure, he could table it out, come up with different vectors of value. Jean-Pierre was a doctor, had been for centuries, and he’d saved countless lives – but how many had he taken, and how many had he ruined? How many organisations, groups, governments, had he destabilised?

He admired parts of Jean-Pierre just like parts of the rest of him terrified him – if this was worship, it wasn’t anything he’d learned at church.

But sitting here with Jean-Pierre sprawled back in his lap, wings laid over him, Jean-Pierre looking up at him with his gaze focused and his lips pressed loosely together, no mask, with Aimé looking down at him in pretty much the same way, it felt like they were two parts of a whole, somehow, like two figures on the back of a playing card, maybe.

“What’s the card you play with an angel?” asked Aimé. “Not… Not two angels. An angel trumps a king, and two angels trump an army, the king, queen, the general, two soldiers. But there’s an angel and something that trumps some of the other card spreads, like a royal council or a sorcerers’ coterie.”

“I didn’t know you played cards,” said Jean-Pierre.

“I used to,” Aimé said. “Not so much here in Ireland, I, uh, I kick it with mundies most of the time, but, but at home in France, with Mémé, I played. And she did, uh, tarot style stuff with a magical deck. My mother hated it, so obviously, I became an expert.”

Jean-Pierre laughed. “Not so much of an expert,” he said. “You can’t even remember the cards.”

“It was a long time ago,” said Aimé. “You hate me talking about it because it’s based on you?”

“It’s not based on me,” said Jean-Pierre. “You’re talking about a Camelot deck, and it’s not a new deck of cards, and none of the games you play with them are new either. After my escape from Camelot, and after my execution of King Rupert, Myrddin suddenly claimed to have invented a new set of cards for magical folk. It’s not new, of course – like everything original Myrddin Wyllt has ever done, it is stolen from what the fae taught him, those years ago when he fell into fae lands.”

Aimé felt his stomach twist. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck, I’m sorry—”

“You don’t have to be sorry,” said Jean-Pierre, reaching up to stroke his face, and to his credit, he didn’t look pissed off or even sad. “It was certainly intended to insult me, but it never landed, never really bothered me. It’s a fae deck, I can’t remember the family name, with very few modifications – he mostly just put new faces on the same cards and values, gave them new names.

“The angel card was a kind of fox, in the original deck, and the card you speak of was a mushroom. The fae foxes eat the mushrooms, and the mushrooms let them fly. It all sounds very whimsical, and is depicted so in art, but a fox is still a fox: a fox that flies just has another way to get into the hen house.”

“And in a Camelot deck?” asked Aimé. “What’s a mushroom?”

Jean-Pierre laughed softly.

“Angel,” said Aimé, trying to remember. “Angel, king, queen, wizard, general, knight, soldier. Baker, pellar, blacksmith, tailor, uh, hobo?”

Jean-Pierre sniggered.

“It’s bouc in French.”

“Vagabond or vagrant,” said Jean-Pierre. “The mischief-maker, in disguise as an old man. Bouc is a billy goat.”

“It’s one of the minor cards.”

“It is only minor when played alone,” said Jean-Pierre. “Paired with most other cards, it becomes quite powerful – and there is only one in the deck, to be played to either side. It’s the herdsman.”

“Fuck,” Aimé said, putting his head in his hands. “I thought I was saying something sexy and impressive, but it’s the fucking shepherd card.”

“The herdsman isn’t just a sheepfucker, Aimé,” said Jean-Pierre, in tones full of affection. “He’s the guide, the man with hidden wisdom, the unlikely advisor.”

Aimé sighed. “You know, that meaning makes more sense as a magic mushroom than a shepherd.”

“I agree,” said Jean-Pierre softly. “But a game invented purely to insult a man is often not one keenly considered.”

 Aimé stayed in place for a second or two, still stroking his fingers through Jean-Pierre’s hair, tugging at it where it curled up slightly, soft waves between his fingers.

“You ready to talk about it now?” asked Aimé.

Jean-Pierre turned in Aimé’s lap, and the two of them scooted up the bed, Aimé falling back against the pillows so that Jean-Pierre could lie on his belly between his legs, resting his cheek on the pillow of Aimé’s belly and curling his wings in around his legs.

“Great blanket,” said Aimé. “They seemed surprised, Colm and De.”

“Colm thinks he knows everything,” Jean-Pierre said quietly. “You think I’m being unreasonable about Heidemarie.”

Aimé hesitated before he answered, not wanting to upset him, but not wanting to just fob him off, either. “She’s a little old lady, Jean,” said Aimé. “I know I don’t have the context, I’m not trying to attack you for it, but like… What you said about her the other night, when Colm punched you, that was fucked up, especially when it sounds like, you know, fucking elder abuse.”

Jean-Pierre rested his chin on Aimé’s belly, twisting his lips slightly. “I know it was wrong of me to say what I said. I don’t always mean to… I speak without thinking, sometimes. Something clouds in me and—” Jean-Pierre set his jaw. “But that’s part of what I mean, you know. I love Colm. He’s my brother and I love him very, very dearly, but sometimes he makes me feel very small, and he likes that he does so.”

“Colm?” Aimé repeated, gently cupping Jean-Pierre’s cheek and stroking his thumb over the side of it when Jean-Pierre leaned into his palm. “What, Colm— he intimidates you, or…?”

Jean-Pierre laughed, looking up to Aimé and shaking his head. “No, not that. He just… He likes his own way.”

“Unlike you,” said Aimé. “King of letting other people control things.”

“I can do what he does, you know. The empathy. I can… feel the feelings of everyone around me, their thoughts, their uppermost considerations. If I reach out, touch someone, I can delve even deeper, into things considered more deeply. I put an enchantment on my skin, here,” he leaned up to gesture to his chest, and for a moment Aimé saw the symbols drawn on his chest flare white for a moment before they disappeared again, fading into nothing.

“You can do a lot of that, right?” asked Aimé. “Enchantment on the… on the skin. It’s dangerous, difficult to do right.”

“It’s delicate work,” said Jean-Pierre. “Easy to do incorrectly, if you are not an expert like me.”

“Like you,” Aimé repeated, grinning, and Jean-Pierre smiled. “So, what, he’s pissed you don’t feel other people like he does?”

“He thinks it makes me less kind,” said Jean-Pierre. “That’s what he says. He thinks I do it because I don’t care about people, but that’s not true, I do. I don’t need to delve into people’s heads to believe them when they tell me they’re suffering. But it’s the other thing he does I don’t like.”

“The other thing?”

“He did it to you,” said Jean-Pierre. “When he reaches out, touches you, saps whatever you are feeling off the top of your head. I hate it when he does it, he knows I hate it when he does it, and he does it anyway.”

Aimé could feel himself frowning as he looked at Jean-Pierre’s face, at the twisted expression pulling at his mouth, his eyes. “Am I missing something?” he asked.

“Did Asmodeus tell you I’m crazy?” asked Jean-Pierre.

“No,” said Aimé.

“He did,” said Jean-Pierre. “But he used some other word. Unstable?” His voice was sharp, brittle, in a way Aimé didn’t like to hear, in a way that made him fucking ache.

“Injured,” said Aimé. “He said you were hurt. I think another time he said that you had, um, difficulty with emotional regulation. He doesn’t think you’re crazy. He loves you.”

Jean-Pierre said, “Sometimes my feelings are too much, and I… Black out, sometimes. Lose awareness of myself. Other times, I know what I’m doing, I know that I’m being… But I still can’t pull myself back. It’s too much. And I don’t like it, but I have, um, I have sedatives. They used to give me morphine, but I don’t… I don’t like it. It makes me feel very sick. The sedatives I have now are non-narcotic, and they knock me unconscious, until I can, um, until I can control myself.”

“That’s good,” said Aimé.

“Good?”

“Well, I mean, not good, but it’s good that, um, that you don’t have to have morphine anymore, that you can work through it, right?”

Jean-Pierre looked up at him distrustfully, twisting his mouth again, and said, “You left, before. You left because I scared you.”

Aimé nodded his head slowly, and he didn’t know what to say, how to explain it, to say that he trusted Jean-Pierre regardless, to say… what? Sure, the idea of Jean-Pierre having an episode and ripping his throat out was scary, but Jean-Pierre had said before, hadn’t he, that he wasn’t normally violent? And even if he was—

“That was before I knew I could hold my own,” said Aimé, and Jean-Pierre’s distrustful expression faltered, then faded into a quiet laugh.

“He always tries to take it off me,” says Jean-Pierre. “My feelings. When I am too full of rage or too full of grief, he wants to help, so he reaches out and he does what he likes to do, what he wants to do, and he takes it away from me, but he can’t do that. It doesn’t fix…”

“Why not?” Aimé asked. “It makes you— it makes you sick…?”

“Because what I feel isn’t like what you feel. My feelings are not fleeting, they don’t come and go as quickly, I have mood swings but they are from one extreme to another. Emotions are not just feelings, Aimé, least of all mine, they are complex neurochemical processes that affect our whole bodies – the rate of your heart, the function of your lungs, your gut, your inner ear.” As he spoke, Jean-Pierre sat up, touching Aimé’s body to illustrate what he was saying, and Aimé rested his hands loosely on Jean-Pierre’s hips, looking up at him. “All of is it is connected, because the soul is not just a spirit that pilots a, a meatsuit, with all its feelings disconnected: it is part of us, and we part of it, and this is the same whether we are human, angel, vampire, fae. The body, its processes, our emotions, are holistic in their nature. When Colm pulls my feelings from me he thinks it is a solution because he is no longer bothered by the intensity of my feeling, but it is me that bears the uncomfortable and much more longstanding after effect. It makes me worse, Aimé, and he doesn’t care.”

“Baby,” Aimé said, reaching up to touch Jean-Pieerre’s neck, now, stroking the sides of his jaw, because Jean-Pierre looked almost on the verge of tears. “It’s okay.”

“And I tell him no,” whispered Jean-Pierre. “I always tell him no, not to do it, and he does it anyway. That’s why he didn’t look for me, you know.”

“When Myrddin took you?”

“He never apologises for anything,” Jean-Pierre muttered. “I always try to say sorry. Even when I mean it, even when I’m angry, I try to… And I do say things, and I do things too, and I try to… I had an episode, and he took it, because I didn’t have, um, I’d run out of my pills, they were new, and I didn’t want the morphine, and I just wanted him to leave me alone, I told him I wanted him to leave me alone, so that I could just— just scream and cry until I could get a hold of myself, and Asmodeus wasn’t there or he would have stopped him, because he knows that I don’t… And he took it from me, and I was so sick, after, I was dazed and confused. It was as bad as morphine. He can’t just skim my feelings away when they’re like that – he takes away whole parts of me. So I left, and I was angry, and I wanted to hurt someone, so I… And then he didn’t look for me, because he felt guilty, and that made me angry, too. He avoided me for a long time, after. I was angry, and I let him, and I avoided him too, and then when we were finally together again I just wanted to forget it, and go back to…”

Jean-Pierre sat back in between Aimé’s legs, wiping at his eyes.

“He said you’d refused to meet her,” said Aimé. “Heidemarie.”

Jean-Pierre shook his head. “No,” he said. “The first time he said he didn’t need me to come slit her throat, and another time he said he didn’t need me confusing her about what being an angel is. But the time he talked about at dinner today, I don’t remember it, when he said I called her a Nazi. I think it might be true, I don’t think he’d lie, but I remember that he did it to me, I remember he took the… And it makes them even harder to remember, when he does that. And I love him and he loves me and I know he does it because he loves me, but he never says sorry, Aimé, and he tells everyone that everything’s always my fault.”

“No,” said Aimé. “No, he doesn’t, Jean, he doesn’t…”

Jean-Pierre was looking at him in a sad, doleful way, and Aimé wrapped his hands under Jean-Pierre’s legs and pulled him more solidly into his lap.

“I know I’m difficult,” whispered Jean-Pierre against Aimé’s neck. “I don’t mean to be. I don’t mean to be hard or cold, or… I do care, Aimé. I just don’t care the same way he does, and he makes me feel like I’m a cancer for it.”

“You’re not a cancer,” Aimé said quietly, kissing the side of Jean-Pierre’s temple, then his cheek, then his nose, until he felt Jean-Pierre’s lips shift, until he heard him breathlessly laugh. “And if you are, I’ll let you kill me. How’s that sound?”

“Not for a long time.” Jean’s voice was thick, but he sounded like he was trying to laugh, and that was good, Aimé thought – and it was good, too, that Jean-Pierre was pulling his wings in around them, squeezing Aimé as if in a second hug on top of the arms around his neck.

“Not for a long time, no, for now you’re just, uh, a benign tumour.”

Jean-Pierre laughed louder this time, although he sniffled, and he nodded his head.

“Do you all have to lie all the time?” Aimé asked. “All three of you?”

Jean-Pierre leaned back from him, tilting his head to the side and looking at Aimé seriously.

“Colm mostly doesn’t tell lies he isn’t also telling to himself,” he said quietly. “And I don’t lie to you, anymore – I love you. I tell you the truth, when you ask me. Even… Even when the truth Is unpleasant. Or complicated.”

“And De?”

Jean-Pierre’s frown deepened, his cheeks a little shiny with tears still. “He doesn’t lie,” he said seriously. “Asmodeus never lies. Not to us.”

“You want some cocoa?” Aimé asked when Jean-Pierre opened his mouth to go on, and Jean-Pierre bit his lip. “I know too much of it makes you sick. Or, or I could run a bath for you, if you want—”

“No, my feathers are clean,” Jean-Pierre said. “You’ll get them wet. I shouldn’t have any cocoa, I think I already ate too much richness with the plum from your duck.”

“Oh, shit,” Aimé said. “You feeling okay?”

“Mm, yes, just a slightly upset stomach. It will pass by tomorrow. Do you think if you go downstairs and call for Peadar, he’ll come and sleep in bed with us?”

“I can try,” said Aimé, pulling one of Jean’s hands up to his mouth so he could kiss the back of his knuckles.

“Do you believe me?” asked Jean-Pierre. “Everything I told you?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“People like Colm more than me,” said Jean-Pierre.

“You know,” Aimé said, “there’s a pretty big clue that I don’t like Colm more than you, and—”

“It’s not that big,” said Jean.

“Ouch,” said Aimé, mocking hurt, and Jean-Pierre shifted in his lap, swallowing. “What, you want to tell me something else? You think I won’t believe you?”

“He’s listening to everything we’ve said already,” Jean-Pierre muttered. “He’s already going to be pissed off.”

“Well, that’s his fucking problem if he decides to eavesdrop all the time. Bet it only pisses him off you don’t do it because it stops him having the moral high ground.” Jean-Pierre’s eyes teared up, and Aimé reached up to wipe them. “Oh, sweetheart, Jean, don’t—"

“I say that,” he said. “That’s all. I like that you take my side.”

“De takes your side.”

“Only when he thinks I deserve it. He’s fair, Asmodeus, he tries to be. But he’s not perfect, he’s not God. And I don’t always like to tell him things.”

“Why? Why wouldn’t you tell him things?”

Jean-Pierre shrugged his shoulders, shifting uncomfortably in Aimé’s lap, and Aimé gently stroked his lower back. “That what you wanted to tell me?”

“No,” said Jean. “Just— We’ll find out soon enough, when she’s here. And I don’t say this because I am jealous of her – I am jealous, I know I’m jealous, and I know no one likes it, and I don’t like it either, but I am, sometimes, and I know I don’t have the right to be, with Colm. But she’s cruel to him, too, you know.”

“Heidi?”

“Mm.”

“What do you mean, cruel to him?”

“They’ve gone years without speaking, before,” said Jean-Pierre. “He never likes to say it to me, but I always know, because people tell me, and I hear about it, which he doesn’t like. She’s said horrible things to him, before, and didn’t let him meet the grandchildren for years – he still hasn’t met the youngest, you know, unless he met her this time. I know they’re mundies, but she uses it as an excuse, to keep him all to herself.”

“How do you know that?” asked Aimé. “You’ve never met her.”

“I’ve met me,” said Jean-Pierre. “And I’ve felt him feel it, before. Say it without saying it when I’ve let myself…” He gestured to his chest. “We’re similar, me and Heidemarie. She has a temper, too. She can hurt him more than I can, and she has. You do believe me, don’t you?”

“I believe you,” Aimé said. “I do.”

Jean-Pierre didn’t look triumphant or pleased – he just looked sad, still, felt small where Aimé had him all but folded on top of his thighs, and Aimé gently leaned him back.

“Will you be awake for a long time?” asked Jean quietly.

“A little while, but if Peadar doesn’t come, I’ll come back up to sit with you. Unless you want to come down with me?”

Jean-Pierre shook his head, reaching for his phone. “Leave the door open. Please.”

“I know. I never close it.”

He didn’t even need to call Peadar, once he went downstairs – he opened the door and Peadar blinked up at him, swishing his tail, and walked right past him.

“Jean’s in bed,” he advised. “Go on, up you go.”

Peadar bounded up the stairs, and Aimé smiled after him as he went, even knowing that if he stayed the night through he’d wake up spitting ginger hair out of his mouth, like he always did when Peadar chose to stay up in the bedroom with them – why such a big cat felt that his neck was the most comfortable place to lie, Aimé had no idea, but he liked Jean-Pierre’s wings, liked to be curled up between them.

Peadar and Aimé both.

“Okay?” he asked Asmodeus as he came into the other room, shutting the door behind him.

Asmodeus was sitting very still at the table, drinking a mug of coffee and staring into the middle distance, and when he glanced up to Aimé, his face didn’t change: he was frowning in that distant way of his, the tiniest of furrows between his handsome brows.

“Is Jean alright?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Aimé said. “We had a big DMC about it.”

“DMC?”

“Deep meaningful conversation,” said Aimé, and Asmodeus huffed out a sound that was not a laugh as Aimé came past him, taking up De’s cafetiere. “You feeling guilty?”

“You’re very astute,” Asmodeus murmured. “I didn’t know, that’s all. About— The precise nature of Colm and Jean-Pierre’s disagreements regarding Heidemarie, and I took Colm at face value every time he said Jean-Pierre had refused to meet her. It can be difficult sometimes to stop the two of them from quarrelling, and when I ask questions, I usually make it worse, so I’m afraid for some things, I don’t delve as deeply as perhaps I should.”

“I don’t think it’s for the likes of us to make that worse or better,” Aimé muttered. “Tonight, he said a lot of… Colm lies?”

“Of course, all the time,” said Asmodeus. “You thought he didn’t?”

“I don’t know what I thought,” Aimé said, and sank into the chair beside him. The turf had been allowed to burn down, but the heat from the fire still hadn’t dissipated from the room, and Aimé didn’t see the point in lighting the fire again when he doubted he’d be up for more than an hour longer. “Jean’s worried Colm’s gonna shout at him, though, for what he said to me tonight.”

“Eavesdropping?”

“Yeah.”

“Colm won’t mention it,” said Asmodeus. “He’ll just sulk for a time, and perhaps be swifter to anger than usual.”

“Does it really upset Jean?” Aimé asked. “When Colm calls him a slut? Is that why he does it so much, because he knows it upsets him?”

“Colm doesn’t like to think about anything he does,” Asmodeus said quietly. “It’s what sets him and Jean-Pierre apart.”

“I know he doesn’t like sex, but he never calls you a whore or calls you stupid. Me neither. Well, he calls me stupid, but only because I am, not because… Not because of whatever the fuck their problem is with each other.”

“You think it’s bad now,” said Asmodeus.

“What do you mean?”

“Benedictine and Jean-Pierre are birds of a feather,” said De. “She’ll provoke them just to see if they’ll fight.”

“We’re not going to let her, are we?”

Asmodeus laughed, the sound low and rich and powerless. “I’m certainly willing to try, but I don’t hold out a great amount of hope.”

“Well,” said Aimé. “I’m here now. I’ll turn the tide.”

Asmodeus squeezed his shoulder.

“I want you to hit me the next time I call him crazy,” Aimé said quietly.

Asmodeus arched an eyebrow. “Hit you?” he repeated.

“It hurts him,” he said softly. “Hurts him a lot. I don’t… I don’t want him to think I think of him like that.”

“Alright,” said Asmodeus. “I’ll hit you.”

“Not that hard,” Aimé said quickly.

“I’ll hit you as hard as I think you need.”

“Because that’s not ominous at all.”

Asmodeus smiled at him, thinly, but it was a smile, one of Asmodeus’ weird smiles. “I’m very glad he has you,” he said quietly. “I’m very, very glad.”

The two of them sat for a while together, until Aimé gave in and went to bed.

In the morning, he spat out a mouthful of ginger cat hair and feathers, and Jean-Pierre laughed at him for it.