JEAN-PIERRE

They were into the early hours of the morning, and Jean-Pierre was in a bad mood. He was tired, was up many hours after he would normally be asleep, and even though he knew that it was best that he stay up tonight, so that tomorrow he’d be able to stay out longer after the party at the church, he was irritable and grumpy, and slow.

But Colm and Asmodeus were both having a good time – Asmodeus had shared a cigar with Benedictine and Pádraic outside, and was a little tipsy. He wasn’t drunk – Jean-Pierre had never seen him drunk – but he was doused enough in wine that he laughed more often and was looser, swaying more on his feet with the music on Bedelia’s phone.

He was barefoot, and as Bedelia showed what she had learned in her childhood ballet classes – she hadn’t stuck with it during junior cert, because it had taken up too much of her time, and she concentrated on her jiu jitsu instead – George tried to copy what the two of them did.

A plié he could just about manage, but as soon as Bedelia and Asmodeus started doing actual steps, Asmodeus en pointe, George couldn’t keep up, and kept laughing. He was giggling as he tried and failed to do every step, and Asmodeus and Bedelia were both helping him, putting their hands on his shoulders, his waist, to reposition him and to help him keep his balance as he tried his best to do as they did.

They were all laughing, not just George.

Asmodeus had taught Jean-Pierre to dance, when Jean-Pierre had still been too shaky to go back to work in the high-paced environment he was used to – he had danced a little, here and there, but while he’d gone to ballets with Asmodeus, he’d never tried it himself until later.

It had helped, afterward, dancing with Asmodeus.

People looked up to Asmodeus in that circle, idolised Asmodeus in general, not just other angels but people in the whole of that industry, on the magical side of things, anyway.

Asmodeus had kept him with him, those few years in the aftermath of his imprisonment, because Jean-Pierre couldn’t bear to be alone for more than a few moments, and wasn’t fit to practice medicine, wasn’t fit for anything.

The dance had let him centre himself again, had allowed for him to find a sort of core again. Long hours in a mirrored studio with Asmodeus’ hands on his body, forcing him into position after position, snapping his fingers.

Jean-Pierre had served alongside armies, had taken orders, had given orders, had trained and trained within militias, even – none of it compared to sweating the whole of himself out through his pores, with Asmodeus demanding he improve his form more, no, legs higher, no, more grace, Jean, do you want to look like marble or like clay?

Colm didn’t always like it when Asmodeus gave orders – Benedictine didn’t either, didn’t like to be the one not giving them, but Asmodeus never gave orders because he liked giving them, because he cared about the attention, because he was insecure about control.

Jean-Pierre had seen him give other ballet classes, and he was hard on everyone who took tutelage from him, on the rare occasion he gave tutorials, but it never seemed to Jean-Pierre that Asmodeus was as hard on anyone else as he was on him. He appreciated it – he did appreciate it, would always appreciate it.

It was the same as when Asmodeus lectured him, at the very beginning, when Jean-Pierre tried to avoid his violin practice.

This wasn’t proper tutelage now, and it didn’t seem to Jean-Pierre that Asmodeus was trying to teach George at all – it was play, and while Asmodeus answered the questions Bedelia posed him in earnestness, and his own form was perfection personified, he didn’t expect it of George or even Bedelia.

It was cute, watching him tickle George when George stumbled and making him laugh and squeal, and he tickled Bedelia too: twice, when she’d run toward him, he’d lifted her easily like ballet-dancers were meant to. It occurred to Jean-Pierre, distantly, that Asmodeus had probably given Bedelia her first ballet lessons, or been the inspiration for her to start.

Heidemarie hadn’t stuck with ballet, but she’d given it a try, Jean-Pierre knew, because Colm and Asmodeus joked about it sometimes, when they thought Jean-Pierre wasn’t listening.

Twice, Asmodeus had come over and asked if Jean-Pierre didn’t want to join them, given that he was a wonderful dancer in his own right, that he knew more than enough about ballet to show George, that he moved beautifully on his feet, and could show George how to dance with his wings, too. It was nice, flattering, and it wasn’t that Jean-Pierre didn’t believe him, because he knew that Asmodeus had always applied his high standards to Jean-Pierre. He wasn’t a perfect dancer, but then, he’d never tried to be – but he was good enough for Asmodeus to approve, and that was important.

Jean-Pierre was in no mood to dance now, though, trying to keep himself awake as he sat up in Pádraic’s armchair beside the fire.

He wanted Asmodeus now, wanted Asmodeus to take him home, wanted Asmodeus to sit with him quietly by the fire or let Jean-Pierre go to sleep next to him as he worked – and if not Asmodeus, Colm.

If he asked either of them, he knew they’d say yes. Asmodeus would say yes immediately, and Colm might complain after – might complain during – but he’d say yes, too.

But—

He didn’t want to ruin everything.

Colm and Benedictine had been playing cards with Aimé, and Benedictine was showing him how to cheat. Jean-Pierre knew the techniques she was using because Asmodeus had taught them to him, too – Colm had never gotten the hang of sleight of hand, could be tremendously delicate with his fingers but not fast, not fast enough to hide things, to swap cards with one hand, to pick pockets.

Colm could fix a pocket watch, but he couldn’t steal one, and it had never occurred to Jean-Pierre before seeing him try that the latter might be harder for someone than the former.

Aimé was having a good time, Jean-Pierre thought, and it did make Jean-Pierre happy, that everyone seemed to like him so much, and treated him with such affection, and welcomed him in.

He wondered if other angels would do that.

Not just Doros, or Jean-Pierre and Colm, or other angels at the edge of everything, but the rest, the angels that apparently, George had now been welcomed into the fold of, and Bedelia too.

It was wrong of him to be jealous of that.

They were young, and hadn’t done anything wrong, and it was no surprise that other angels weren’t frightened of them, because they had no need to be. He had assumed when first they had met Bedelia that she would remain an outcast because of their suspicions of her being Nephilim, no matter that it wasn’t the case, and he’d never accounted for George.

Judging by how Colm was being, a little bit too quiet, a little bit stunted and a little oversensitive with Benedictine poked fun at him, he hadn’t accounted for it either.

Asmodeus had tried to say something about it just now, the second time he’d invited him to dance, but at least for now he seemed to have given up on it, and Jean-Pierre was glad, because he wanted time to think about his feelings on the subject.

He had a lot of feelings. Too many feelings, but they were distant and far away, bubbling far under his surface, because there were so many of them at once he couldn’t feel any of them at all, and he knew that Asmodeus was pleased that he had been exhibiting self-control, but this didn’t feel like self-control.

He just felt numb.

He realised that Aimé had gone from the room, probably gone to the kitchen to get more wine, and he stood sleepily to his feet to follow him, to see if maybe he would be interested in calling a taxi to take them home, given that Colm and Asmodeus didn’t seem interested in driving them anytime soon.

He found Aimé crowded up against the fridge, Benedictine leaning in against him, and his hands clenched tightly into fists at his sides.

“You pick him or he pick you?” asked Benedictine.

“I like to think he picked me because he saw me looking,” said Aimé, “but he’s your brother, you know him, and I know him enough by now to know that he probably did his research first, and stalked me. Benedictine, can you— Can you step back a little, please, can you—”

“I want to know if you’re going to hurt my brother,” said Bene.

“Only the way he likes to be hurt. Bene, the— I can smell the, the—”

“You cheat on him?”

“What? No. Ah, fuck, would you get your hands off my—!”

“Bene,” said Jean-Pierre, and Benedictine stepped back from him. Aimé tipped his head back, rubbing his crotch – he looked pale and sick, and the second Benedictine was stood more than a foot away from him he ran to the sink, retching. The scent of acid-tainted wine filled the room.

“He’s not like Benoit,” said Benedictine. She was a little drunk, but not very, and Jean-Pierre could see the expression on her face, the tight twist of her lips. She looked more than sad, but aggrieved, and he reached out, touched her chest, slid his hand to her shoulder, and she touched him back in the same way.

A soldier’s embrace.

“Are you angry that he isn’t like Benoit, or that he is?” asked Jean-Pierre softly.

Benedictine opened her mouth, closed it. “I miss him, that’s all,” she said.

“Yes,” said Jean-Pierre. “Me too.” They hugged before she went back into the other room, and he wondered if she realised he wasn’t feeling well, but he didn’t think so, because she would have made something of it.

He wanted to go home.

Aimé was rinsing his mouth out with water, bent as he was over the sink still.

“I don’t like when she touches you,” said Jean, because he wanted to say something, but it was the wrong thing to say, because Aimé gave him a sour look, his eyes heavily lidded, his skin pale.

“Priorities, ange,” said Aimé darkly, and Jean-Pierre reached for him, touched his hand to Aimé’s back, his shoulder.

“She likes you, I promise, she is protective of me, that’s all. And she was quite close with Benoit – she introduced us, you know. She thought he would keep me in line.”

“Benoit,” said Aimé, swallowing, “he was the Haitian guy, right?”

“Ouais.”

“You haven’t told me about him.”

There was no expectation in it, it didn’t seem to Jean-Pierre, but he wanted to answer. He thought of Benoit as he moulded himself against Aimé’s back, holding Aimé to him, wrapped his hands over his chest, pressed a kiss into the back of his hair.

“Do you like that you’re taller than me?” asked Aimé.

“Yes,” said Jean-Pierre. “I’m taller than most people.”

“Not De.”

“De is taller than almost everyone.”

“Not Paddy,” Aimé pointed out, turning to give Jean-Pierre a playful smile, despite still being pale and looking ill. Jean-Pierre wanted to laugh, but it wouldn’t come, and so he leaned and pressed his mouth to the back of Aimé’s neck again.

“Benoit was kind. Thoughtful. He was very tender, he liked for things to be in their place, to be organised, he was, um. Anal retentive, you’d call him now – or autistic. Like Asmodeus. He wasn’t like him, in most ways, but they shared that in common, a sort of um, organisational flair, except that Asmodeus is so severe and so demanding. Benoit was as easy going as a breeze. He called me bijou. He thanked me when I repaired his uniforms, and he treated me like I was a, a bird he had temporarily caged. He never complained when I strayed, when I fucked other men. He was a poet. Not in the way of a man who writes things down, but in the everyday way of a man who loves what it is he sees, everything he sees.”

He should have had more to say, he knew. He loved Benoit. He still loved him now, but although he tried to pull at his memories of Haiti, how he had felt there, living there, living with Benoit, it wouldn’t quite come to him, wouldn’t gather to him the way it ought.

He was adrift at sea.

“Bene liked him?” asked Aimé, and Jean-Pierre clung to the question like the buoy it was, and clung tight to Aimé too.

“He was a patriot,” said Jean-Pierre. “But more than that, he was a citizen. He worshiped people, because in man is the image of God. That’s how Benedictine is, too.”

 “He worshiped angels too, I guess,” said Aimé. Jean-Pierre wasn’t sure what to make of his tone, and couldn’t see his face.

“Yes,” said Jean-Pierre, and Aimé turned around from the seat to look at him. Jean-Pierre reached for him, gently cupped his cheeks and slid his palms over the stubble there, and Aimé reached up to touch his hand.

“You don’t seem angry,” said Aimé softly.

“Mmm, I’m angry, I think,” said Jean-Pierre.

Aimé raised his eyebrows, looking at Jean-Pierre critically for a moment or two, and then he reached for Jean-Pierre’s own face, tilting Jean down to look at him, pulling slightly at his eye as though to check the dilation of his pupils. Jean-Pierre might have been forgiven for thinking, in the moment, that he was a doctor in his own right, but Aimé just slid his hands further up, through his hair, stepping closer.

“Hey,” he said quietly, looking up at him seriously with his mismatched eyes. “Hey, you feeling okay?”

“Yes,” said Jean-Pierre.

“You feeling anything?” asked Aimé.

Jean-Pierre didn’t know how to answer that question, couldn’t skim anything off the top of the distant swirl inside him. He felt very large inside, and very empty.

“I’m sorry she touched you,” he said, although his voice sounded dull to his own ears. “She shouldn’t have, it was— Invasive. I’m not happy she made you sick.”

“Baby, I’m glad you understand that that was shitty of her,” said Aimé, “but I was sick ‘cause your sister stinks of cigar smoke, not because she groped my dick. The only invasive thing fucking me up is you.” He tapped his own mouth, and Jean-Pierre couldn’t tell if he was meant to feel guilty, or if he was meant to feel triumphant, or if Aimé just wanted him to laugh.

He couldn’t tell what he was meant to feel at all, and when he did laugh, it sounded wooden, and forced.

“Okay,” said Aimé quietly. “I think you need bed, and something to eat. And maybe Peadar.”

“You’re angry?” asked Jean-Pierre, one feeling, anxiety, making itself known above the rest, and Aimé shook his head.

“No, ange, not angry. Just worried.”

“I want to go home,” said Jean-Pierre, and Aimé nodded his head, pulling Jean-Pierre down and brushing their noses together. “I don’t feel anything,” Jean-Pierre whispers. “I’m just… tired, I don’t want to feel like this, Aimé—”

“Sleep’ll fix it,” said Aimé. “You know that, ange, you know it’s just a serotonin drop or something. I’ll call us a cab, okay?”

For some reason, Jean-Pierre hadn’t expected Aimé to arrange for them to go home, even though he had been about to ask, and the tears came hot to his eyes even as Aimé reached for his phone.

“Fuck,” said Aimé as he pressed Call, and he pulled Jean-Pierre to him, cradled him against his chest as he called for the cab.

“Sorry,” said Jean-Pierre dully, and Aimé shushed him quietly, rubbing his nose into his hair.

“Don’t be sorry,” he murmured. “I feel like you do right now all the time. You want me to ask Colm for a bump of coke?”

“No thank you,” said Jean, and Aimé laughed a little wheezily, squeezing him more tightly.

“I was kidding, ange, the drop after’d be fucking life-threatening if you’re feeling like this right now. Sleep will help – you need to eat something, too, okay?”

“You don’t have to look after me.”

“I know.”

“I didn’t want to ruin everyone’s night.”

“You’re not, I was ready to go anyway.”

“Don’t you want to leave me?” asked Jean-Pierre, and Aimé shook his head, lips rubbing against the top of his forehead. Jean-Pierre didn’t mind that he was bent over slightly, pressed against Aimé’s chest.

“It’s gonna be alright, baby,” said Aimé quietly, ignoring the question. “You’re not gonna feel like this forever.”

Jean-Pierre fed his hands more tightly around Aimé’s belly and squeezed.

 *     *     *

AIMÉ

The next morning, Aimé came downstairs to find that Benedictine and Colm were still lying on the sofa together – Colm had had a lot of difficulties with the stairs, and while Aimé and Asmodeus had both offered to carry him up, he’d just given in and sprawled onto one of the long sofas with Benedictine, arms loosely wrapped around Benedictine’s calves and his head rested against her knees.

They were still asleep now, Benedictine storing quietly into the crook of her arm and Colm still dozing, cheek rested on his sister’s leg and curled right into her. They were used to sharing a bed – they were all used to it, Aimé knew, all four of them would probably sleep in a pile like puppies, if they were left to it.

Peadar hadn’t been around last night, but when Aimé opened the door, he came rushing in, and wound his way around Aimé’s feet as Aimé went into the kitchen.

Asmodeus had brewed coffee already, and the pot was still hot as Aimé poured some for himself.

“Good morning,” said the angel in question as he came out of the cellar.

“Needed gunpowder to wake you up?” asked Aimé, and Asmodeus gave him a dry look, holding out his mug for Aimé to pour more coffee into.

“I was checking the poitín for the party later.”

“Jean-Pierre’s poitín? Is it good?”

Asmodeus exhaled in what appeared to be relief, and sipped at his own coffee, leaning his head into Peadar’s as he stood up on the counter to bump his cheeks against Asmodeus’ face.

“It’s very good. Colm’s problem is that he brews it too strong, and I was worried that it was his, I didn’t realise it was Jean’s.”

“Colm asked him to make it,” said Aimé, trying to rack his brains for when he’d said that. “Said he’d nearly blinded a boy, last time he did it himself.”

Asmodeus released a low, rueful noise. “Yes,” he murmured. “That’s right. No, Jean-Pierre’s is good, strong, but not dangerously so. In fact, I’d actually say that the taste might be a little too pleasant – he brews very smooth spirits, and one doesn’t like for strong drink to go down too easily.”

“I’ll tell him when he’s awake, he can add something to it,” said Aimé.

“He’s alright?” asked Asmodeus, sounding like he knew the answer, and Aimé looked down at his coffee.

Jean-Pierre had been very quiet in the taxi home, leaning right against Aimé’s body, and he’d not talked much as Aimé had taken him inside, carried him up the stairs. He’d not wanted to eat anything at first, but he’d eaten half the plate Aimé had brought up for him, and when he’d slept, he’d slept deeply.

“He gets like this at Christmas,” said Asmodeus quietly. “He’s not very good at staying up late at parties – when he’s working, his focus on the work carries him through, but parties are a bit too much. Jean-Pierre requires focused tasks to keep himself in order. Too much time at ease, particularly amongst a crowd, is a sensory overload.”

“He just does it for attention,” muttered Colm against his sister’s leg. “Everyone’s having a good time instead of paying attention to him, so he says he needs to go home.”

“Shut the fuck up, Colm,” said Aimé with little heat, and scooped up the cat, laughing as Peadar purred like a little engine in his hands. When Aimé gently tossed him up the stairs, he sprinted up them to seek out Jean-Pierre, and Aimé turned back to Asmodeus. “Will he come out with us tonight?”

“He doesn’t like to miss a party,” said Asmodeus. “He just gets overwhelmed by them once we come out, if we stay out too long. Tomorrow will be a bit more his pace – and I’m not planning to stay out all night, I’ll be coming back relatively early, so you three can stay out if you really want to. I would have last night, but he’s sensitive to if we seem as though we’re cutting our enjoyment short for his benefit.”

Aimé looked to Colm, and Colm, sleepily, gave a small nod of his head.

“He wanted us to bring him home,” said Colm. “But if I’d said to him, hey, if you want to go home, we’ll go home, he’d have freaked the fuck out on me for reading his mind. There’s no winning with him. Stay out and party, he’s upset because we stayed out too long – say we can go home early, I shouldn’t be digging into his head.”

“What were you digging into his head for?” asked Benedictine in a sleepy mumble, pulling her wrap up where it had fallen almost into her eyes.

“Coffee, Bene?” asked Aimé, and Benedictine grinned at him, vaguely patting Colm’s head as she sat up on her elbows.

“I like this boy,” she said, and Aimé chuckled, pouring more coffee into another mug as Asmodeus brewed Colm’s tea. Aimé handed the both of them their mugs, and Benedictine sat up, letting Colm lean his head against her hip.

“Jean says you’re going to bring your accordion tonight,” said Colm, and Benedictine laughed.

“I thought you were too good to play that in public,” she said, and Asmodeus gave them both a mildly amused look. “Won’t it ruin your image?”

“I don’t expect so,” Asmodeus said. “So long as no one shares too much photographic evidence.”

“You’re such a fucking snob,” said Colm, and Asmodeus gave a neat bow at the waist, nodding as he did so. He opened his mouth to say something else, but then he reached out, touching Aimé’s hip. “He’s awake.”

“Thanks,” said Aimé in a murmur.

When he jogged up the stairs a few minutes later, it was to find Jean-Pierre sprawled on his belly with his face mashed into Peadar’s side, nose and forehead pressed directly into Peadar’s thick, ginger fur. Peadar was purring very loudly, and when he saw Aimé he blinked at him slowly and lovingly, and Aimé scratched between his ears.

“Bonjour, ange,” said Aimé softly. “Ça va?”

“Oui ça va,” mumbled Jean-Pierre, but although he looked sleepy when he raised his head from Peadar’s belly, he was smiling slightly, and the smile widened and brightened when he saw the pineapple juice in one of Aimé’s hands and the plate of fruit drizzled with honey in the other.

“Better?” asked Aimé.

“Yes,” said Jean-Pierre. “Are they very angry at me?”

“Who, Colm and Benedictine? Nah, they’re not angry. Colm said one bullshit thing and then reeled it back when I told him to fuck off,” said Aimé, and put the plate down beside Jean, pulling Peadar’s face back when he immediately went to stick his whiskers in it. “I wanted to ask if you still wanted to go to the party tonight.”

“Of course I do,” said Jean-Pierre, scrunching up his face. “I don’t want not to go.”

“Asmodeus said he’ll be coming home early tonight, if that helps,” said Aimé, and he was glad to see Jean-Pierre look slightly relieved, shoulders relaxing somewhat, and he sat cross-legged with Peadar pulled up against his chest, using his other hand to pluck pieces of strawberry from the plate and suck them from his fingers.

“It does,” said Jean-Pierre.

“You want to do something today?” Aimé asked. “I was thinking we could go to the zoo or—”

“The gym,” said Jean-Pierre immediately. “We can box. And wrestle, too.”

Aimé laughed slightly, surprised, and felt his head tilt. It wasn’t expected, but he was glad to see the enthusiasm in Jean-Pierre’s face, glad to see him look so engaged.

It must have shown in his own face because Jean-Pierre said, “It helps. Exercise.”

“Yeah, it does,” said Aimé softly. “We can box for as long as you want, ange.”

“Asmodeus should teach you to dance,” said Jean-Pierre, sucking honey from his fingers, and Aimé blinked, considering this. As far as non-sequiturs went, it was as unexpected as could be.

“I can strip for you, you know,” said Aimé. “I don’t need the Burlesque King to teach me.”

Jean-Pierre laughed, shifting to put his feet in Aimé’s lap as Peadar wriggled free, sprawling on the blankets beside them. As Aimé pressed his fingers hard to the flesh on the bottom of Jean-Pierre’s feet, massaging them and watching the way the angel shifted and squirmed, he watched Jean-Pierre’s face, the smile there.

It was a good smile.

Aimé couldn’t get over the fact that this was his Christmas, that instead of his sitting stuck with his parents, getting gifts wrong, getting chided for hiding in his own room or for being around other people and saying the wrong things. Instead, it was this: families, parties, Jean-Pierre’s pretty smile.

“He does dance burlesque, you know,” said Jean-Pierre. “He’s danced at the Moulin Rouge.”

“Asmodeus can do the can-can, huh?”

“Yes, of course,” said Jean-Pierre, sliding a raspberry through a smear of honey, “but he doesn’t normally like music so fast-paced. When he does cabaret it’s normally the late evening, he does slower things. He says the slower the dance, the harder it is to control, to show grace while keeping your movements smooth.”

“You think it’d make me better at wrestling?”

Jean-Pierre grinned. “I don’t know that it could make you worse.”

“Can I ask you a question?” Aimé asked, and Jean-Pierre shifted back, chewing the piece of starfruit he’d picked up, licking his fingers very carefully.

“About why I was upset?” he asked. “About the angels?”

“Asmodeus told me to ask about that,” said Aimé. “But no, I had a different question. Had a dream last night.”

Jean-Pierre peered at him, tilting his head to one side. “A prophetic dream, you think?”

“No, I don’t think so,” said Aimé, laughing. “I had a dream that my dad was declared king, or… Or not declared king, but he had a crown, maybe he was always a king?”

“And I killed him?” Jean-Pierre asked seriously.

“No,” said Aimé.

“I killed you?”

“No,” laughed Aimé, shaking his head. “You kidnapped me, but you were flying with me – and you were bigger than me, except you were still the same size? But you had me like, under one arm to fly with. I remember how it felt, the way the air like, shot past me.”

The way that Jean-Pierre’s eyes lit up was somewhere between terrifying and arousing. “You want me to fly with you?” he asked.

“I wanted to ask why you picked me,” said Aimé. “What made you think… me?”

“You watched me,” said Jean-Pierre. “You did watch me, you noticed me. You didn’t follow me, didn’t try to— to take me. To demand my attention. You were… non-threatening. I like how you look, there is no lie in that – I like your eyes, and your face, your hair, your belly. Your tits.”

“I know you like my tits,” said Aimé dryly, but he was surprised how weird it made him feel, Jean-Pierre describing him as non-threatening. He was shorter than Jean, sure, but he was still bigger than him.

If he’d said that before, he didn’t know if he’d make anything of it, but knowing about Myrddin, that was different, knowing exactly what happened when Jean-Pierre did have someone demanding his attention. It made his stomach give a strange flip.

“You did stalk me beforehand, though,” said Aimé. “Right?”

“Mm. I saw what you had on social media. Asked questions. I knew you’d had depressive issues, that you had been a boxer. That your father was rich. I didn’t look more into that until later. It makes me nervous, you know. That your father may try to kill you.”

“Aw, ange. You’re nervous?” asked Aimé, raising his eyebrows, and Jean-Pierre smiled weakly at him. Aimé was nervous too, sure, but didn’t want to scratch at that scab right now, didn’t want to pick at the issue, not when it’d make him nervous too. Aimé stroked Jean-Pierre’s knee. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” Jean-Pierre nodded, and when Aimé asked, “Do you want to talk about the angel thing?”

“I expect you have surmised the long and short of it,” said Jean-Pierre quietly. “We are not approved of within the Embassy, Colm and I. Other angels think we’re frightening.” Jean-Pierre looked down at his knees, pressed them together. “They think I’m frightening,” he amended. “They always used to— We were never involved in angelic communities, either of us. I came from where I came from, and I was already too committed to Jules and Marguerite to put my time into other angels nearby, didn’t want to. And Colm, he stayed with humans in his village for a long time. It was difficult for him, when he was younger, to be around other angels, any immortals. The longer the life, the more feeling, the more memories.”

He ate the last piece of strawberry from the plate, and licked the honey from the tips of his fingers, pushed the plate aside.

“But that we weren’t actively involved, we weren’t being ostracised. People thought of us as off-colour, questionable, maybe. In the beginning, we were a little strange, a little unusual; later, we were questionable, because it was an open secret that we are disposed to violence, but it was polite, still, to accept us. Angels aren’t meant to involve ourselves in political things, one way or the other – we have too much power from a lobbyist’s perspective, because our approval can be spun by magical churches as tacit approval by God. It’s bullshit, obviously. It’s really to keep us safe, angels. Neutrality protects us. Asmodeus and the other eldest angels, across millennia they have ensured we have certain legal powers across every country, every earthly magical territory, so that they can move freely, can find new angels as we Fall, and in the event anything goes wrong – if an angel commits a crime, or is a victim of a crime, or if there’s a disaster, many hospitalisations, or… Or something else. It covers a lot of things. De is the ambassador, not me.”

Aimé watched Jean-Pierre’s face, the expression of quiet concentration on his face as he stroked his hand over Peadar’s fur, his fingers sinking into the thickness of the hair, Peadar’s eyes closed, his mouth open and his tongue sticking slightly out.

“But until what I did,” said Jean-Pierre quietly, “we were just… weird. A little uncomfortable, maybe, at a fancy party, at an official event. People told jokes about it. About me, about Colm. That we were crazy, explosive. We weren’t appropriate to have at parties in case we killed a guest, except that that was a joke, a tongue-in-cheek piece of commentary. Until, that is, I went on an international stage and killed my fiancé in front of his entire kingdom, and the world. It’s not a joke anymore.” Jean-Pierre pressed his knees tighter together, leaning them into Aimé’s chest, and Aimé kissed each of his knees, lips against the warm skin. “It made a lot of work for Asmodeus, what I did, you know. For the Embassy. It made— It made a lot of angels in sensitive situations very unsafe, because my actions were viewed as potentially representative of all of us. They tried to execute me the same night, and when it didn’t kill me, they wanted to lock me up, and I was… I was so frightened, I was a danger to absolutely everybody until Asmodeus took me away.”

“Every angel knows Asmodeus,” said Aimé. “All of them.”

“Yes,” said Jean-Pierre.

“All of them love him?”

Jean-Pierre opened his mouth. Closed it. “No, not necessarily,” he said slowly. “But he’s— he’s our brother. And he loves all of us.”

“So every angel knows De, and cares about De, and the fact that Asmodeus lives with you two?”

“He protects us,” said Jean-Pierre. “More than either of us know, I expect, he protects us. Me especially, I’m more recognisable than Colm. But people associate us together, and sometimes, I think Colm hates that he’s blamed for what I did. That people think of us together.”

“How do you feel?” Aimé asked. Jean-Pierre was quiet, thoughtful. Sober.

Aimé wondered, sometimes, with the number of Jean-Pierres he’d seen since knowing him, which of them was the most real – and he wondered how many Jean-Pierres he had yet to meet.

“I don’t feel guilty for killing Rupert because he was a king,” said Jean-Pierre said slowly. “I don’t like that I did it the way I did. And I feel guilty for how it impacted other angels. I could have had so many of them imprisoned, tortured. Everything short of killed.”

“Please don’t take me threatening the profits of a private security enterprise with you potentially impacting the safety and security of your entire species,” said Aimé, and Jean-Pierre began to giggle, “but did you pick me because we have stuff in common? Pádraic told me he thinks we’re the same.”

“I think we share things in common,” said Jean-Pierre. “But I think that you challenge me. And I think I challenge you, also.”

“Speaking of,” said Aimé, squeezing Jean-Pierre’s calf, “you want to go now? To the gym?”

“No,” said Jean stubbornly.

Aimé sighed long-sufferingly, and gave Jean-Pierre a very tired smile. “You want to have sex?” he asked.

“Yes, please,” said Jean-Pierre primly, and Aimé pulled Jean-Pierre toward him, touching their noses, their foreheads together. Between their bodies, Peadar released a muffled chirrup.

“Then he needs to go,” said Aimé, standing and taking up the fruit plate with one hand, and reaching for Peadar with the other.

“Bye, Peadar,” said Jean-Pierre as Peadar miaowed quietly but let himself be picked up and carried, ridiculous ragdoll of a creature that he was. “I’ll miss you.”

Aimé laughed, and carried the cat downstairs.