JEAN-PIERRE
He didn’t lay flowers on Jules’ grave – he never did. He reaped a sheaf of wheat and laid that, wrapped in a shoelace, over the stone; he put flowers (daisies) on Marguerite’s grave.
It was good to fly home from there. The flight was long from Paris to Dublin, and it put a beautiful strain in his wings, in the muscles in his back, in his lungs, in his aching eyes, and he tracked Aimé’s phone to ensure he was going directly to where he was.
Aimé was not in Dublin proper, not in his new shop front or new apartment, not in the angels’ house or at Paddy’s, not at the church or at the food shelter, not on the allotment – he was, of all places, in the ballet theatre Asmodeus had been dancing at of late.
The theatre’s main doors were locked and bolted for the evening, and the fire door had a brick keeping it open – when Jean-Pierre slipped inside, he found the various dressing rooms were closed for the day, the costumes cupboard and the more important supplies’ cupboards and offices closed and locked.
Asmodeus’ dressing room-cum-office wasn’t locked, of course, and Jean-Pierre dipped his head inside just to have a look, to see the neat and tidy state of his desk, letters and papers in their in- and out-trays, his pens. There was a framed photograph on his desk of the two of them in the 60s, when Jean-Pierre was in the chorus and De was the principal, Jean-Pierre en pointe and leaning into De, the two of them almost kissing, their noses brushing.
He'd seen this photo a lot, of course – it was a favourite of Asmodeus’, and Jean-Pierre could see why. Jean-Pierre looked cool and serious, concentrating on his balance, on his poise, but Asmodeus had a slight smile, a slight curve to his lips, and the photographer had managed to really capture the light in his eyes, the shine of the stage lights off his glossed lips.
Jean-Pierre closed the door and continued down the corridor – not finding Aimé on stage, he walked into the theatre proper, up the stairs, behind the boxes.
Aimé was standing in the centre of the second balcony, the lights up so that he could work to see by – some of the stage lights were on, and Aimé had several canvases lined up on a temporary frame Jean-Pierre presumed Colm had made for him of varying sizes. He’d rather been hoping to see him painting ballerinas when he’d smelt the paint, but he saw now that this was a different project – still lifes of the red fabric that covered each of the theatre seats, carefully textured and shaded so that it looked real enough to touch; the shadows falling into the orchestra pit; the lights in the chandeliers; ropes and ballast on stage at the edge of a backdrop; discarded ballet shoes in a dusty pile…
Jean-Pierre’s feet made no noise at all as he came up behind Aimé – he was curiously haloed by the bright lights on the edge of the balcony, the darker of his stray hairs seeming golden with the bright light shining through them. Jean-Pierre had to restrain himself from tutting aloud at Aimé’s lack of awareness as to his surroundings – he was humming to himself, humming one of Colm’s more complicated favourites under his breath, singing stray words because he couldn’t enunciate deftly enough around the tongue twisters each line was made up of.
Jean-Pierre’s steps were quiet, that was true, but he ought have noticed the shift in the air of the auditorium even if he didn’t hear the faint rustle of his clothing or the movement of his wings, the occasional creak or shift of the balcony floor as he moved down the aisle.
He was ten feet behind him; five; he was scarce a foot behind Aimé, and Aimé didn’t even notice as Jean-Pierre reached for the sharp blade he used to cut loose threads of canvas or open up stubborn paints, and stepped fully forward. Gripping Aimé by the thick cloud of dark hair and pulling his head back, he pressed the blade to Aimé’s throat and smelled Aimé’s shampoo and the other scents clinging to him – paint, wine, Asmodeus’ cologne, powder from ballet shoes.
He didn’t flinch, didn’t even jump, his body not even twitching, and Jean-Pierre felt the even beat of Aimé’s heart, listened to the rhythm of his breaths.
“Hi, sweetheart,” said Aimé evenly. “Good flight in?”
“When did you know I was here?” Jean-Pierre asked.
“Heard the door on the brick,” said Aimé evenly. “It echoes when all the corridors are open.”
Jean-Pierre laughed quietly, and he felt the tension under his skin, a sort of strain in his body, and he looked from the painting Aimé was midway through, one of the boards on the stage, over the balcony. He looked over all the empty seats, the red fabric of them, and he felt the warmth of Aimé’s scalp in his grip, the beat of his heart through his neck, against Jean’s hand.
“Gonna kill me too, Jean?” Aimé asked in a low voice.
“Beg your pardon?” Jean-Pierre asked, hearing his voice come out cold and metallic, steel-sharp, and Aimé turned his head to look at him, pushing his throat slightly more into the kiss of the blade as he did so. He remembered a fragment of a dream, weeks ago, months ago, Aimé asking that question, Aimé bleeding hot over his hands… “I wouldn’t ask such a question so casually, Aimé. It’s quite possible I’ll kill you one day.”
“Gonna cut me today, ange?” Aimé asked softly. His heart still wasn’t beating any faster, and he was so completely calm, so even, and Jean-Pierre looked into his eyes, at the dilation of his working pupil – he was excited, aroused, even, but not scared.
“You trust me?” Jean-Pierre asked, and Aimé gave him a warm smile that made Jean-Pierre’s belly flip nervously, made his heart flutter in his chest, and Jean-Pierre let his wrist go lax. He laid the knife back on its tray, dragging Aimé’s head to the side so that he could kiss him, bite into Aimé’s mouth, and Aimé kissed him bitingly back.
They would each come out of this with bruised lips, much as Jean-Pierre’s wings were going to leave their frankincense scent on Aimé’s skin, and Aimé’s paint was staining Jean’s clothes.
“Good flight?” Aimé asked again when Jean-Pierre pulled away, and Jean-Pierre smiled against his mouth, stroking his palm up Aimé’s stubbled cheek and feeling the bristles against his skin.
“Yes,” he said softly. “It was nice, pleasant – I haven’t had my usual exercise in Berlin.”
“You guys gonna bring her home?”
Home. Heidemarie, elderly and grumpy and really quite the bitch, tided over with her new prescriptions and some very basic exercises to help her begin to adjust her routine, he and Colm were going to bring her home. Home to Dublin, to her father – home to all of them, home to the family, Jean-Pierre included, Aimé included.
“Yes,” Jean-Pierre said, cupping both of Aimé’s cheeks and kissing him again. “Yes, we will bring her home. In the meantime… You trusted me, hm?”
“What, I shouldn’t trust you?” Aimé asked, raising his eyebrows.
“You did not know it was me,” Jean-Pierre scolded him.
“You smell of—”
“Other angels smell of wing oil and ozone too, Aimé,” Jean-Pierre interrupted him, and Aimé looked up at him, forced to angle his head back to look up into Jean’s face. “You let me come close to you, close enough to pick up a knife, close enough to threaten you with it – and threaten you, I did.”
“And threatening is where you stopped, Jean, so I—”
Aimé’s scream bounced off the rafters as Jean-Pierre bowled them both over the side of the balcony and he felt himself in free-fall, struggling desperately in Jean-Pierre’s tight grip – Jean hardly needed his empathic powers in place to know the fear he was feeling, could see it in his eyes, his open mouth, hear it in the quaver in his noise of shock and terror.
They landed on the stage with Jean-Pierre protecting Aimé from the bulk of the impact, but the wind was still knocked out of him, and Jean-Pierre laughed in his face.
“You see,” he all but crowed, “you should not let down your gu—” Jean was cut off by Aimé’s fist making contact with the side of his face, Jean’s head snapping to the side.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Aimé demanded, and Jean-Pierre heard the laugh come out of his own mouth before he felt it, heard the sound of his own invigoration his own excitement, and at the same time a burning indignation that made him want to pin Aimé to the stage and punish him for daring to lay a hand on Jean with so little provocation.
His cheek throbbed with the force of the blow, having come against him so unexpectedly against the bullseye of the pink scar under his eye, and now Jean-Pierre raised his hand to punch back, but Aimé responded with a rapid chop to his throat.
His laugh cut off with a half-wheezing choke, and Jean-Pierre kneed up hard against Aimé’s prick – his cock was stiff. Jean-Pierre himself was growing wet, could feel the blush in his cheeks in spite of the blood flowing downward, and he grappled with Aimé on the floor for a few moments.
It was a clash of limbs and bruising blows with no words passing between them, only grunts and noises of pain or focus or impact – when Jean-Pierre, tired from his flight, was thrown onto his back on the floor, his wings spread out beneath the both of them, he stared up at Aimé.
It seemed strange that the stage beneath them should smell of wood varnish and shoe dust, and not of a wheat field he’d just fallen into.
Of course, Aimé was not kneeling beside him, gently touching his cheek – Aimé’s knee was pressing into Jean-Pierre’s belly, his whole body near to covering Jean’s, one arm braced over his throat. He had a knife in his hand, Jean realised, and with a tremulous delight realised it was not his own, but Jean-Pierre’s, from the strap on his thigh.
He said nothing, his face solemn, a bruise blossoming on the side of his chin, as he cut Jean-Pierre’s clothes.
“I liked that shirt,” Jean-Pierre said.
“Shouldn’t have provoked me, then,” Aimé said, but there was little rancour in it – he was grinning savagely, and Jean-Pierre reached up to touch his cheek as Aimé cut aside his trousers, now, sending rags across the stage in all directions.
“Do you trust me, Aimé?” Jean-Pierre asked.
“No, Jean, I promise not to trust you ever again,” Aimé said in a sing-song voice, half-laughing – the blade clattered as he tossed it aside too, falling on top of Jean-Pierre, kneeling between his legs, and he grabbed Jean-Pierre once again by the cheeks, Jean’s hands going to encircle Aimé’s wrists and grip at them loosely. He could feel Aimé’s speeding heartbeat under his fingertips and knew it was of a similar pace, in this moment, to his own. “Do not fucking do that to me again.”
“I make no promises,” Jean-Pierre said sweetly, and then moaned as Aimé ground against him, fumbling to undo his paint-stained jeans.
“I love you, ange,” said Aimé, and then promised, breath hot against the shell of Jean-Pierre’s ear, “If you don’t kill me, I’ll kill you first.”
Jean-Pierre surged to kiss Aimé on the mouth, and spread his legs wider. As he invited Aimé inside him, raking the nails of one of his hands down Aimé’s back, he wrapped his wings around them in a shroud, and knew the stage lights above them were glittering off the gold in his feathers.
FIN.
