JEAN-PIERRE

They were sitting just inside the green house.

Colm had installed heavy sun lamps so that he could continue to grow his vegetables through the long winter, although he’d have to pollinate everything by hand, but that had never bothered him. Between Colm’s complicated system of artificial heat and light, and Jean-Pierre’s own carefully inscribed runes at the base of the greenhouse glass panes and into the concrete slabs that made up its inner path, the greenhouse would be a veritable stronghold of heat and light, even in the depths of a freezing February.

What it meant now, of course, was that Jean was sprawled out on in one of their lounge chairs with one of the heat lamps on, basking in the heat of it like a snake. Aimé had made a few sketches of him, but he’d been surreptitious about it, so Jean-Pierre hadn’t commented.

He’d been sat with Colm and Asmodeus earlier, but when Asmodeus had shared a cigarette with the ex-priest in their midst (he’d begged off when Jean-Pierre had glared at him, had said, “It’s only one, Jean,” very plaintively, “and I won’t be here for much longer…”), Aimé had caught a whiff of the smoke and coughed, hovering for a second with his hand over his mouth.

Then, he’d come to sit with Jean-Pierre, which was only right.

 “It pisses you off,” Aimé said. “Colm too.”

Jean-Pierre opened his eyes, and he looked through his eyelashes at Aimé in the chair beside him. Aimé had dragged over one of the proper chairs with a hard back to sit in, and read by the light of the greenhouse’s sun lamp. Jean-Pierre had twisted to put his feet in Aimé’s lap, and Aimé had responded by unlacing his shoes and setting them aside, and had been idly stroking Jean-Pierre’s ankles while reading his book.

Glancing to Colm, Jean-Pierre could see the stiffness in his brother’s spine, the tightness to his mouth, but the ex-priest looked almost at ease for the first time since Jean-Pierre had met him.

There were still circles under his eyes, and grey in his hair, but he was smiling, albeit distantly.

“He does this,” Jean-Pierre murmured, idly curling a lock of hair around his fingers. “Seduces priests. It is not always a physical seduction that he mounts. He says… He said to me once if it is God’s will that man should act freely, according to his own desires, then it is only right that he should show some men they need not take the cloth to be free.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Aimé asked, and Jean-Pierre huffed out a sharp sound, not pleasant enough in his own ears to be laughter.

“Asmodeus finds priests with doubts, and puts his finger upon the scale,” he explained quietly. “When they tip the way he likes, he declares them free.”

“He doesn’t force them, though,” Aimé said slowly. “Just… What, tempts them?”

“My brother believes very strongly that everyone on this planet should have choices,” Jean-Pierre said quietly, aware of the tension in his voice, aware of how thin his lips were as he worked to keep from actually frowning. “But as much as possible, he should prefer they make the choices he would have them make.”

“Huh,” Aimé said.

“Huh?”

Aimé was smirking down at Jean-Pierre’s feet, and gently squeezed his ankle. “You two are birds of a feather, that’s all. You both think people are perfectly free to do whatever you want them to.”

“Écrase,” Jean-Pierre muttered, and Aimé laughed. The bright light caught the shine of his curls, showed the scattered paint flecks staining his hair, every small piece of stubble on his face, the shine of his eyes.

“D’accord, mon ange,” Aimé murmured as he stood slowly to his feet, hooking one hand under Jean-Pierre’s ankles and tilting them back onto his own chair. He set them down gently, as though Jean-Pierre were something fragile, something he was concerned about breaking. As he held up his own empty wine glass, Jean-Pierre felt his heart swell in his chest. “Je t’offre un verre?”

“Ouais, mais pas—”

“Pas du vin, j’sais,” Aimé interrupted him, a fond grin on his lopsided face. “Jus d’ananas?”

Jean-Pierre tugged Aimé down first by the hem of his shirt, until Aimé tilted down to meet him. When they kissed, Aimé’s mouth tasted of Bordeaux, and it really wasn’t all that bad.

There was something about being addressed in his own tongue that was unspeakably intimate – being angels, all spoken language should be the same to them, for it was all understandable. But for certain slang, and words that were either very old or very new, most language was the same in his ears – and yet, even as he thought it, he knew it wasn’t true.

The meaning was the same, but what language in all the world compared to the voice of the Republic that had borne him? What language could bring him so much comfort as that?

Aimé spoke with a southerner’s accent, said tarpin instead of très, and there was something sweet about it, something genuine and very real, as though Aimé stripped off a layer of his own armour to speak to Jean-Pierre in French.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Aimé murmured against Jean-Pierre’s mouth, and when Jean-Pierre cupped Aimé’s face, stroking his thumb through the hard scruff of his stubble, Aimé’s gaze softened slightly, and his lips curved into more of a smile.

“Do you despise me?” Jean-Pierre asked softly.

“Someone should,” Aimé murmured, tilting his head and musing on the question before he met Jean-Pierre’s gaze again. “But it couldn’t be me.”

Jean-Pierre sighed, and laid back in his chair, basking in the heat of the lamp as Aimé walked back into the house. Asmodeus met his gaze, and arched one eyebrow.

Jean-Pierre closed his eyes, and ignored it.

He must have fallen asleep, basking under the green house lamp, because when he was next aware of anything, his legs were wrapped loosely around Asmodeus’ waist and Asmodeus had slung Jean-Pierre’s arms around his shoulders, and was carrying him into the house. Jean-Pierre grunted, shifting slightly and pressing his face more into the warmth of Asmodeus’ neck.

He stayed limp, however, and when Asmodeus brought him into the main room, he didn’t lay Jean-Pierre down on any of the chairs, but sank down beside the fire, letting Jean-Pierre settle in his lap.

“I could have gotten him,” Aimé said. “He’s not heavy.”

“Or you could have just turned the light off and left him out there,” said Colm dryly. “Serve him right.”

“Easy for you to say,” Aimé said. “Would he have come crawling inside crying about being cold and jump, freezing, into your lap?”

“If he couldn’t find one of you two? Probably.”

Aimé laughed, and so did the ex-priest and Asmodeus. This close, Asmodeus’ laugh was rich and resonant, thrummed through Jean-Pierre’s chest, and Jean-Pierre felt himself relax more against Asmodeus’ chest as he felt the fire behind him lick at his back, keeping his eyes closed.

“Have you been to vineyards in Tuscany?”  asked the ex-priest in the voice of one continuing a conversation, and Jean-Pierre heard the glug and trickle of wine into a glass, smelt its acidic tang on the air.

“No,” Aimé said. “I spent the whole time in Montauban working on our vineyard – I didn’t travel anywhere, but I read books about wine, and I talked about wine with my family. Tuscan soil quality is typically pretty poor – they have a lot of vineyards, and a lot of their land is devoted to viticulture, but the actual yield from the vine isn’t great.”

“Funny,” said the ex-priest. “I’ve never heard anyone talk like you about wine.”

“Like a labourer, you mean, instead of a sommelier?” Aimé asked dryly.

“You sound like you miss it,” said Colm.

“I do,” Aimé said, after a not insignificant pause. “But our vineyard’s gone, now. Been sold on, the land split up… They’re building holiday villas there.”

“You could go back to it here,” Colm said, in his typical fashion, voice dripping with empathy, and perhaps Jean-Pierre shouldn’t have felt quite so triumphant when Aimé responded with scarcely disguised ire.

“Uh huh,” he said. “Great land for grapes in Ireland, so. There are a handful of plants that’d be hardy enough to live out the winters here, but Christ, with how wet it is… It’s a delicate process, growing grapes for wine. The taste is concentrated as you deprive the plant of water. There’d be no sense in trying it in Ireland unless you were going to do almost all of it artificially, and what’s the point in that?”

“Spoken like a man who’s thought about it in depth,” rumbled Asmodeus, and Aimé went quiet.

“Is that where you’re going to go?” asked Colm, after the silence had gone on for long enough. “Italy?”

“No,” said the ex-priest. “No, I’m going to, ah… I’m going to go to America.”

“Family there?” asked Colm.

“I don’t have family anywhere,” was the immediate response. “But you knew that.”

Jean-Pierre felt his lip twitch, and he felt the shift in the room as Colm took that in. Probably leaned back on his feet – Colm was standing where the others were sitting down – and took a sip of his drink, probably gave the ex-priest a particular stare.

“Could be that your mother’s still alive,” said Colm. “Have you tried to look?”

“I tried,” was the response, low and quiet. “These past months, I’ve tried. I’ve made requests, filled in all the right forms. Information is, as is typical, not forthcoming.”

There was a deep and uncomfortable tension in the room, and Jean-Pierre curled further into Asmodeus’ chest, tugging at the loose part of his shirt hem and curling it around his fingers. Aimé turned to glance at him, and when Jean-Pierre met his gaze, Aimé held up a tall glass full of orange liquid, a green cocktail umbrella resting on its rim.

Jean-Pierre smiled at him, albeit thinly, and smiled when Asmodeus reached out to take it for him, gently setting it into Jean-Pierre’s own hand.

“I’m sorry,” Colm said.

“Me too,” said the ex-priest. “But, as your brother has pointed out to me these past few weeks, I’ve been part of it. I don’t really have the right to be surprised or disappointed.”

Jean-Pierre shifted in Asmodeus’ lap, and he watched the way Colm stiffened, watched the way his lip curled, although he tried his best not to make his indignation too obvious. The bitterness in the ex-priest’s voice was palpable.

“That’s not—” Colm started.

To Jean-Pierre’s surprise, it wasn’t Asmodeus who interrupted, but Aimé.

“I know this is a tough subject,” he said, “but, Christ, Colm, I think Jimmy has the right to take it more personally than you do. We’re all Catholics here, but none of us has been hit with it like he has.”

Jean-Pierre studied his brother’s face as he regarded Aimé, his lips parting in surprise, and despite his anger – and he was angry, Jean-Pierre knew, and protective, wished to speak on behalf of the church if no one else would – Colm smiled at Aimé, looked surprised, and delighted.

“Alright,” Colm said, and sauntered to the fridge to get another beer.

Even Aimé looked surprised at the ease of that particular battle, and Jean-Pierre took a sip of his pineapple juice, felt its acidity on his tongue, swallowed. Asmodeus’ fingers had begun stroking slow, methodical lines up and down the line of Jean-Pierre’s spine, rubbing over his shoulders between every third or fourth beat in the rhythm.

“How is school?” asked the ex-priest. He was looking at Jean-Pierre, and there was a desperation, a sort of keen adherence to a faith apparently fading, writ in his face. He craned to the edge of his seat, hunched over the glass of wine in his hands.

“I have missed the rhythm of university. It has been a long time since I last attended. There is a sort of youthful fierceness in every other student, even the other mature students. There is something about higher education that imparts in one the fervent belief that one can change the world.”

Aimé released a snort of sound, condescending, before he took a sip of his wine.

It was an old old wine, Jean saw now – at least two or three hundred years old and out of Asmodeus’ more secreted collection, having been sealed with emery. Those very old wines he didn’t often share, but he shared the bottle now, with Byrne and with Aimé.

Jean-Pierre was as pleased as he was irritated by the fact.

“I felt that way when I attended university,” Byrne said quietly. “I studied abroad in Rome, for my Erasmus, and… It felt like things were changing for the church. That things might change.”

“Which parts did you think needed changing?” asked Colm, his voice very hard.

“More than what was changed,” said Byrne, and he swallowed, and Jean-Pierre watched the wince that came after in his brother’s face. He wondered what sort of pain Byrne was broadcasting, for Colm to wince like that.

Asmodeus felt it too, Jean-Pierre supposed, because Asmodeus’ hand curved around his waist, and squeezed: his lips were pursed, and his gaze was far away. Jean-Pierre thought about the monk in Thessaloniki, the one De had made kill himself.

“When I Fell,” Jean-Pierre said, “it was to a small town many miles outside of Paris, near Chartres. My family were very poor – we farmed wheat. We subsided on very little, shared what we had to eat – the rare meat we got, it was of pigeons, local birds. My lover, Jules, he couldn’t bear to kill them: it was always his mother who broke their necks, or me. And for all that work, that effort, we gave most of the meat to the dog.”

Byrne was looking at him as though he was frightened of what Jean-Pierre might say next, but couldn’t bear to turn away. His lips were parted, quivering: Aimé watched him too, but seemed bewitched. In their way, Jean-Pierre supposed, they were both of them enraptured.

“I could scarcely believe it, living so modestly as we did,” Jean-Pierre said, “the first time I stepped foot inside the church. Its beauty and its splendour took my breath away: such fine fabrics Father Aubuchon wore, such fine silver and gold was made and stood upon the altar. Such richesse created in praise to God – and yet still I could not reckon with it. What did God care of fine things in His temple when the worshipers within were starving? In the Revolution, James, I never killed a priest, but my brothers killed them, and I watched. They did not care for their community except for that which they could leech from them – they grew fat on the blood of starving Christian children, and wore jewels in their parody of devotion while their congregations wore only rags. But the Church stands for more than these men did.”

“Tell that to the Vatican,” said Asmodeus.

“There is need of further reform,” Jean-Pierre said. “I would not deny it. There are injustices still that need be corrected. I believe you might correct them better from within than without.”

“I thought so too,” Byrne said quietly. “For a few years.”

“And now?” Colm asked. “What will you do now?”

“I don’t know,” said Byrne. “I… I have never really had a holiday. I’ve abandoned my vocation: my life is distressingly blank.”

“Would you like to go back?” asked Asmodeus softly, gently even. “You still can.”

Byrne – James – smiled. “No,” he said quietly. He looked younger, when he smiled. “No, I think I’ve made the right decision.”

Aimé stood to his feet, and Jean-Pierre watched him as he drained the dregs of wine left in his glass, setting it down on the table again. He didn’t ask before leaning forward, hooking one arm around Jean-Pierre’s waist and lifting him out of Asmodeus’ lap: De caught Jean-Pierre’s glass before he could spill it, and Jean-Pierre laughed as Aimé threw him over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift, carrying him easily.

He was tipsy, but not drunk, and he was steady as he carried Jean-Pierre up the stairs, toward the bedroom, and laid him gently down on the bed. Jean-Pierre laid in place and let Aimé undress him, let him push De’s cardigan off of Jean-Pierre’s shoulders, let him unlace his blouse and slide that free, too, and unfasten his trousers.

Once Jean-Pierre was undressed, Aimé began to undress himself, and Jean-Pierre laid back on his pillows and watched him fold his clothes and put them aside, watched him turn down the lamp, pour water from the jug on for each of them.

“How long was I asleep?” Jean-Pierre asked.

“A few hours,” Aimé said, sliding onto the bed between Jean-Pierre’s legs, curling his arms around Jean-Pierre’s thighs and laying his chin on Jean-Pierre’s belly.

“You were talking with him for some time, then,” Jean-Pierre said. “Byrne.”

“I didn’t know he was born in a laundry,” Aimé said in a low voice. “Colm smacked me in the head earlier ‘cause I made a joke about paedo priests. Thought he meant ‘cause Jimmy was a priest until he told me that. I don’t get how Colm can feel what people are feeling and still defend it.”

“My brother’s empathy does not simplify his feelings: it complicates them.”

“Are you guys pro-life?” Aimé asked. “Anti-abortion?”

Jean-Pierre shook his head. “Colm used to be. He believes very strongly in the sanctity of young life – but in the late 1800s I made him assist in my surgery. I was known in various underground circles, it was known that I was safe, in a way other male doctors were not.

“There were abortifacients. Poisons, most of them, to be taken orally, but there were douches, too, hot baths, alcohol. Induced miscarriages – the right fall down the stairs, the right blow to the belly. And the surgery, it was…” He sighed, and he curled his fingers in Aimé’s hair, tugging him slowly up toward him, until Aimé was laid on Jean-Pierre’s breast, a heavy, beautiful weight. “It was distressing, even as a medical professional. Colm shrank away from some of his more absolute views seeing what desperate lengths these people would go to ensure they did not have another hungry mouth to feed. Colm loves children, and he cannot suffer a young child begging his assistance.” His voice sounded bitter at that, perhaps, but Aimé didn’t appear to notice.

“I don’t get it,” Aimé murmured, and Jean-Pierre wound locks of Aimé’s hair around and around his fingers, watching him. “You can’t have kids, right?”

“No,” Jean-Pierre murmured. “I bear no eggs – no angel does. We can neither be fertilised or fertilise others. There are rumours, of course, as to accursed Nephilim, but I have never seen such things prove to be true. There have been few studies into such things, but I do not believe even an angel acting surrogate would confer any of their facets upon the child they carried.”

“Why?”

“I do not know,” Jean-Pierre said softly. “This bothers you? You thought to impregnate me, have me bear your children?”

Aimé recoiled with such horror writ on his face that Jean-Pierre laughed, and at Jean-Pierre’s amusement, some of his disgust faded, and he gave a slow shake of his head.

“No, I don’t… I don’t want that. Just— You’re a Catholic.”

“You’ve noticed?”

“But you’re pro-abortion,” Aimé said.

“I am not,” Jean-Pierre said. He hooked one of his legs loosely over Aimé’s shoulder, pressing his heel between his shoulders and watching the sigh that left Aimé’s throat. “I believe in the sanctity of life. But tell me, Aimé: a woman comes to you with an infant in her arms, already starving, and another grows in her womb. She already struggles to feed herself, the child she has – how could she bear with another? How sacred is life, if we bring it into being only to snuff it slowly, painfully out again? I am a Catholic – but I am a doctor, too, and more than that, I can feel for myself what is just.”

Aimé was sleepy, tipsy as he was, and he wrapped one hand loosely around Jean-Pierre’s thigh, pressing on the flesh and tapping his fingers against the muscle there, but this was not to say he wasn’t listening. Aimé was listening keenly, his brow furrowed, his lips pressed together.

“You think Mass should be in Latin.”

“Yes.”

“All Mass?”

“You wish to know if I would ban Mass in English, or Irish?”

“Yeah.”

“No,” Jean-Pierre said. “Mass in the common language makes a congregation feel closer to God – it strikes me as right, therefore, that one should have the right to commune with God in the language of one’s choosing.”

“Why not commune with God,” Aimé said, and Jean-Pierre tightened his grip on Aimé’s hair at the mockery in his tone, making him let out a hissed noise that wasn’t altogether a sound of pain, “in French, then?”

“Because Mass should be conducted in Latin.”

Aimé groaned, and then he laughed, pressing his nose against the crease of Jean-Pierre’s thigh. “What I’m trying to ask,” Aimé said slowly, “is how you can be three hundred years old, see the church change, believe that parts of the church should change, won’t change, and still be a Catholic. Doesn’t it drive you crazy?”

“Sometimes. Parts of the church are very corrupt, cold, calculating – they profit off the alms that ought be given to the poor. But I have faith in God – and faith in man. Many of the programs Colm and I volunteer with, you might notice, are organised through the church.”

“Only ‘cause you might convert people in the process.”

“What is wrong with that?” Jean-Pierre asked, arching one eyebrow. “One is saved, one is grateful – one puts one’s faith in God. I fail to see what could be more natural than that.”

Aimé shook his head, rubbing his chin against the base of Jean-Pierre’s belly and making him shiver, but he didn’t duck his head just yet, instead looking thoughtful again, despite the fact that he seemed unconvinced by what Jean had said a moment ago.

“He smiled when I told him to shut up,” Aimé said.

“Colm?”

He nodded.

“He was surprised to see you defend something,” Jean-Pierre said. “To believe in something.”

“I don’t believe in anything,” Aimé said. “But it’s fucked up to talk to a guy like he’s not the expert on priests when he was a priest, and might have gotten abused by them.” Aimé was quiet for a moment, pressing his elbows into the sides of Jean-Pierre’s torso, and Jean-Pierre studied his face, the expression on it, the hesitation. He met Jean-Pierre’s gaze, then, opened his mouth, closed it. “Can I ask you something?”

“You have been asking me a great many somethings already.”

“That a no?”

“I believe you know it is not.”

“You said you didn’t kill anybody in the Revolution,” Aimé said slowly, his gaze somewhere distant, “but that you watched people die.”

That was not, in fact, what Jean-Pierre had said. He did not point this out. “That is a question?”

“Asmodeus said he’d killed people before, earlier. He said it so casually, but I just… I don’t know. I don’t think I could ever kill someone.”

Jean-Pierre smiled slightly, stroked his hand over Aimé’s cheek, and wondered how long it would take to change that. More than one night, certainly, which is why he would not tonight ask the question – but merely that Aimé had asked so many questions, had shown such interest… It was a good sign, Jean-Pierre thought.

“Will you kiss me?” he asked.

“I taste of wine,” Aimé said.

“I taste of pineapple,” Jean-Pierre replied, and sighed into Aimé’s mouth when Aimé crawled up and kissed him.

When he bit Aimé’s lip – hard enough, this time, to draw blood – Aimé moaned, thrusting up against Jean-Pierre. He was a natural masochist, that much was true, but when Jean-Pierre pulled back, Aimé’s blood staining his mouth, Aimé looked at him with terror in his eyes, and spread his legs apart like it was instinct.

“Do you have lectures tomorrow?” Jean-Pierre asked softly.

“Uh huh.”

“You won’t be sitting down for them,” Jean-Pierre promised, and swallowed Aimé’s shuddered moan in another kiss.

 *     *     *

AIMÉ

His lectures were dull that day, and made his head fuzz – he’d had a few lecturers in a row without much charisma, and it had wrecked his head trying to concentrate on anything any of them were saying, even to read what was written (in full fucking paragraphs) on the projected slides. The bruises on his arse, let alone his sensitive cock, which Jean-Pierre had wrung all but dry, didn’t actually bother him that much – in fact, Aimé was fairly certain it was the only thing taking the edge off his messed up head, the only thing keeping him halfway grounded, and he was grateful for it.

He couldn’t paint, not with his head like this, so he made his way to the angels’ house, and was surprised to find that Jean-Pierre and Colm weren’t home.

“Are they out doing music?” he asked Asmodeus quietly.

Jimmy had fallen asleep in the chair beside the fire, and Asmodeus was cooking, finely slicing vegetables into discs. There was a cat in his lap, and Aimé vaguely recognised it as belonging to one of the old people across the street – it was purring softly, and Jimmy’s hand sunk right into its fur. The cat was ancient, ginger, and had mats in its thick fur, but it always wound its way around Colm’s ankles, from what Aimé had seen, and it actually seemed to like Aimé, not that he really knew much about cats – or about any animals, really.

“Start the aubergines,” Asmodeus said as he sliced potatoes into thin discs, making another chopping board and a knife slide out from one of the flat drawers, and obediently, Aimé went to wash his hands. “No, they got called out on a job.”

“A job?” Aimé repeated. “What, something medical?”

“Colm and Jean have other responsibilities,” Asmodeus said cryptically. “A few friends required assistance in Brazil. Finer than that, Aimé.”

Aimé hesitated, glancing at the discs of aubergine he’d cut already and looking to Asmodeus’ potatoes, and after a moment’s pause, he started cutting more pieces, doing them as fine as he could. Asmodeus didn’t look quite satisfied, but he did nod his head, and Aimé kept cutting the aubergines into the thinnest discs he could manage as De quickly moved through potatoes, and then started on some squash.

“What are we cooking?”

“Ratatouille,” Asmodeus said. “Jean enjoys when I cook it like a cartoon he likes.”

Aimé looked at the many discs of potato and squash, each of them heaped up in a bowl each. “Ratatouille isn’t a cartoon, it’s an animated movie.”

“I fail to see a distinction.”

“You’ve never seen it?”

“I’ve seen the titular dish.” Asmodeus worked quickly with a knife, and by the time Aimé had finished one aubergine, it seemed like he’d filled a whole new bowl with finely chopped vegetables. He stirred a pot of thick, red sauce that smelled of basil and garlic before returning to his work, now beginning to render courgettes very quickly into discs. “I don’t typically take in cinema. Occasionally, I will watch a romantic comedy.”

“You prefer Notting Hill, or Love Actually?”

Asmodeus looked at him, his green eyes showing no recognition at all, his expression blank. “Roman Holiday,” he said.

Aimé huffed out a laugh, and concentrated on his aubergines, listening the regular rhythm of Asmodeus’ knife on the wood board. He’d miss De’s dry humour, he thought, when he was gone – Jean-Pierre said he’d be gone for months, that he’d be helping newly Fallen angels, that he wouldn’t be home ‘til Christmas.

He’d been stiff about it, and he’d changed the subject very quickly.

“I noticed you were limping this morning,” Asmodeus said.

“I noticed too,” Aimé said, and he watched Asmodeus’ lips curve into a small, wry smile. “Where’d Jimmy get the cat?”

“Oh, Peadar? He just wandered in – I left the door open when I went out to pick some vegetables from the greenhouse. I expect he was disappointed he didn’t come in to find Colm, but James is evidently proving an adequate substitute.”

“Colm always stops to pet cats,” Aimé said, trying to go faster as he chopped, but he only ended up cutting the vegetables unevenly, and earned a stern look for his troubles. “Jean-Pierre doesn’t.”

“Oh, Jean likes animals,” Asmodeus said idly. “Especially dogs. He’s just fussy about his clothes, that’s all, and his instinct is to let them clamber all over him once he’s stopped to greet them or pet their fur – he really can’t resist, once he gets too close. He doesn’t love by halves.”

Aimé swept his clumsily chopped discs into the bowl Asmodeus held out for him, and then leaned on the counter to watch as De spread some of the ratatouille sauce through the middle of a huge, circular oven dish, working smoothly.

“You know, that movie only came out a few years ago, what, in 2005? You’re making this like you’ve made it a lot of times.”

“Dozens,” Asmodeus said. “It came out in ’07 – Jean didn’t see it until ’09.”

“You really love him, huh,” Aimé said. “And Colm, too.”

The idea made him ache, somehow. He couldn’t even imagine what that was like, couldn’t even fathom it, loving someone enough to make a fucking meal from a movie for them, and yet he couldn’t help but be aware he was watching every movement of Asmodeus’ hands, committing them to memory, taking note of how many discs he had of each vegetable, how full the bowls were, already had the question burning on his tongue of what Asmodeus had put in the sauce.

“Very much, I do,” Asmodeus said. “It has been said a great many times that I spoil my brothers, Aimé, and I often do. It is the right of any older sibling to dote on his brothers and sisters, I think, if he so chooses.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Perhaps not,” Asmodeus allowed. His fingers were impossibly deft as he began to layer discs of vegetables in the wide pan, creating a brightly coloured spiral effect as he worked. For how big Asmodeus’ hands were, it was amazing to see how dexterous they were, how delicately he could work – if Aimé tried what he was doing, he’d fuck it up in an instant, and smear all his beautiful work. “Something’s worrying you?”

“Just having a bad day for concentrating, that’s all,” Aimé mumbled. “I’d normally smoke a fag, but, uh. I can’t. Jean-Pierre is going to do a scratch test on me later in the week for allergies.”

“No closer to ascertaining the cause, hm?”

“Do you know?”

Asmodeus huffed a low laugh. “Contrary to what my brothers often seem to think, Aimé, I don’t know everything.”

“De.”

Asmodeus turned his head very slowly to look at Aimé, and Aimé worried for a moment that he was offended at the use of the nickname, but he didn’t seem offended at all. He stood there, wearing a neat little black apron over his white shirt, his hands held in front of him as though he were midway through surgery – on the handsome skin of his hands, Aimé noticed, he didn’t have even the barest stain of red sauce.

“I really… I really like your brother,” Aimé said, aware of the way his voice cracked. “I’m not used to that. And he keeps talking about all these fucking dead guys, and they’re— I don’t know anything about them, but I doubt any of them were fuck-ups like me. And I’m trusting you to tell me here, because I know if I ask him, he’ll just make up some bullshit, but what the fuck does he see in me? How can he want… this?”

He gestured at himself, and he realised all at once that he was far too sober, which was probably why he was being such a little bitch all of a sudden. His eyes were stinging, and he crossed the room, finding his vodka in Jean-Pierre’s cupboard and beginning to pour himself a measure.

Casually, as though Aimé hadn’t walked away, Asmodeus said, “I don’t think he sees anything in you, Aimé, except you – and, perhaps, the few gaps he might fill with himself.”

“Your brother always been this fucking crazy?”

“He’s had his ups and downs,” Asmodeus said, and Aimé didn’t look at him as he knocked back some of the bottle, then poured a few more measures into a glass. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Aimé, but I hardly think you’re concerned about Jean spouting any of his bollocks if you ask him what he sees in you. I expect you’re worried he might be too honest.”

“What happened to not knowing everything?”

“I know enough to get by.”

Aimé turned to look at Asmodeus, who gestured for him to come closer. “Help me,” he said softly. “We’ll be done faster with two of us.”

“I’ll fuck it up.”

“It’s stewed vegetables, Aimé. You can’t fuck it up.”

“And Jean? What about him?”

Asmodeus looked at Aimé very seriously, and Aimé watched as he wiped his hands off on a dishcloth, and then reached out. He took the glass of out of Aimé’s hand, setting it down on the counter, and then he pulled Aimé toward him, tilting Aimé’s head up to look at him.

It was terrifying, somehow, or at least, it should have been terrifying, but Aimé got the impression – from where, he didn’t know, because it was impossible to read the angel’s expression – that Asmodeus really did like him, and probably wouldn’t hurt him.

“I’m going to tell you a secret now, Aimé,” Asmodeus said quietly. “I’m going to tell it to you because I like you very much, and it strikes me that you and my brother are well-suited to one another. Do you understand?”

“No,” Aimé said. Asmodeus’ lip twitched.

His voice was quiet, more delicate, as he said, smoothing down the front of Aimé’s paint-stained jumper in the process, “For all his scars, my brother appears to be quite put-together, but he is not without his injuries. You wear the signs of your damage on your wrists, in your face… Believe me when I tell you my brother is almost as broken as you are, albeit with his cracks in different places.”

“Jean isn’t broken,” Aimé said. “He’s perfect.”

“He’s riddled with bullet holes,” Asmodeus said. “He can’t stand to be alone in a room for more than five minutes at a time – even when he showers, he leaves the door open. His temper has a hair trigger, and his mood spins on a dime. Or has that all escaped your notice?”

Aimé was silent for a moment, thinking about the pink scars dappling Jean-Pierre’s thighs and arms, his torso, his cheek. “He said— He said he’d gotten shot at by a firing squad.”

“A few times,” Asmodeus said.

“But—”

“In any case,” Asmodeus said, turning away from him to wash his hands away, “if you are concerned with his physical scars, you’re missing the point of what I was trying to tell you.”

“No,” Aimé muttered, although he felt hot and cold with it, and felt like he might be sick, “I think I get it.”

“Good,” Asmodeus said. “Wash your hands, then, and let us to this ratatouille before our soldiers return from war.”

Aimé had no idea what that last bit meant.

When he woke up on the sofa a few hours later, Peadar the cat purring merrily away on his chest, Jean-Pierre was standing over him, towelling off his wet hair. Aimé looked up at him blearily, his mouth dry and half full of cat hair.

“You showered without me?”

“I didn’t wish to wake the cat,” Jean-Pierre said, smiling sweetly at him. Aimé’s gaze flitted to the scar under his eye, at the pink, shiny skin there. Had the bullet pierced right through, or had it glanced off the cheek bone? “Asmodeus said you helped him make the ratatouille. It’s in the oven now.”

“How was your job?”

“It went very well,” Jean-Pierre. “Colm and I were effective as always. Come, eat with us.”

Aimé opened his mouth, but Jean-Pierre was already walking away, and Aimé sighed, looking down at Peadar’s stupid, crushed-in face, at his crooked teeth and exaggerated overbite. Aimé felt a bit like he was looking into a mirror, and he patted his big head. “It’s a vegetarian meal, you know,” he said. “I don’t think you’ll want to join us for dinner.”

Peadar purred very loudly.

“Stupid cat,” Aimé murmured, but he smiled slightly as he pulled himself up to sit, and after dinner had been revealed, Peadar decided to make way for greener pastures where meat was on the menu.

Asmodeus and Jimmy left for the airport after dinner, and Jean-Pierre fell asleep that night with his head in Aimé’s lap, as though it were the most comfortable pillow in the world.