AIMÉ

He’d been drinking less, he realised.

In the past few weeks, he’d gone back to drinking wine almost exclusively, and although he’d bought a bottle of vodka a few weeks ago, it had gone untouched in the back of his cupboard at home – he’d only drunk a little of the one he had at the angels’ house.

He didn’t know why.

He’d been thinking more about the wine he was drinking, he supposed – he hadn’t even been talking about it all that much, just thought more about the taste of each bottle. Drinking wine wasn’t like drinking vodka – the vodka he tended to drink without dwelling on it, drank it just to get drunk.

Wine, that was…

There was meaning in wine. More than taste or history – there was a depth of thought and philosophy in it, and there was something meditative in tasting different wines, in rolling them on his tongue and taking in each aroma, each taste, each texture.

Jean-Pierre had even taken to asking him about whatever wine he was drinking, asking where the grapes were grown, what they tasted like, if he would drink the same wine again.

And yet, here he was – he’d finished the bottle, a very rich, jammy shiraz that still stuck to his teeth in a way that wasn’t actually unpleasant, and he didn’t have a particular desire to open another one. He wasn’t even drunk, really – he’d been savouring this particular bottle so much that he’d been taking it in very slowly over the course of the day, and he’d eaten a fair bit in between glasses.

It was a little past two in the morning and, acting almost on autopilot, he was rinsing wine bottles under the sink until the water ran out of them clear. A friend of Colm’s was collecting glass in order to create some sort of art, and he’d been putting them aside so that he could take them to church for her.

It was fucking insane, in his opinion.

Not just that someone was collecting old wine bottles to make into art, but that he was washing bottles out for the sake of it. He still did it, though. It wasn’t even Jean-Pierre who’d asked him – Colm hadn’t even asked him, now he thought about it.

He’d just mentioned it while washing out a bottle at the angels’ house, and Aimé had started doing the same – and just started doing it in his own flat, too.

He heard the door close shut as Jean-Pierre came in, and Jean-Pierre came to a stop in the kitchen doorway.

“Oh,” he said. “You are awake… You are dressed.” His expression, which had initially been of surprise, faded into something more like concern, and just the expression, the furrow of Jean-Pierre’s eyebrows, the pout of his pretty pink lips, made something catch and twist in Aimé’s chest, making him want to flinch away even as Jean-Pierre dropped the bag that had been slung over his shoulders and come toward him.

He reached out, his palms delicately cupping Aimé’s cheeks, his thumbs brushing over the stubble there, and Aimé looked up at the angel’s face. It was a Saturday – or, it had been a Saturday, and was now a Sunday. He hadn’t been expecting to see Jean-Pierre until after Mass tomorrow morning.

“You cannot sleep?” Jean-Pierre asked softly, curling his fingers through Aimé’s hair.

“Laid down at a little past midnight,” Aimé murmured. “Tossed and turned for an hour or so, then got up again – thought I’d paint, but I just sat and looked at the canvas, finished off the bottle.”

“The Australian one,” Jean-Pierre supplied. “Full-bodied, low in tannin, jammier than it would have been if grown in a medium or cool climate – there were notes of anise in it, but because of the low acidity, it would not necessarily age well. You said other wines from the region, others made with the Syrah grape, have earthier qualities, like leather, but this one was all fruit, and all the better for it.”

Aimé’s eyebrows raised so high it felt like they’d disappeared into his hairline, and at his expression, Jean-Pierre looked almost demure, his cheeks flushing a slight pink, his blue eyes no longer meeting Aimé’s own. He could barely remember what he’d said earlier this afternoon, when he’d been talking to Jean-Pierre about the bottle in his hand, when he’d been explaining how Syrah grapes looked on the vine, how they were different to Cab Sav or Merlot, and different again to Grenache. It was difficult to believe, sometimes, that Jean-Pierre really listened so closely when he talked. God knew he tended to tune himself out.

“There’s not going to be a test, you know,” Aimé said. “You don’t have to memorise what I say.”

“Well,” he said softly, brushing his fingers over the front of Aimé’s chest, “You speak with such passion, such expertise, when you speak of wine. There is a handsome allure in it.”

He was wearing one of Aimé’s wool jumpers, one that he’d been wearing earlier today until he’d taken it off to paint – he hadn’t even realised Jean-Pierre had taken it until after the angel had gone.

“I thought I would find you sleeping,” Jean-Pierre said quietly, one of his hands sliding to pepper gentle taps of his fingertips on the side of Aimé’s neck. Like this, looking up at his face – and Aimé never forgot he had to look up at the angel, but the reminder was always wonderful when they were stood together like this – Aimé could see the shine of Jean-Pierre’s blue eyes, and like this, too, he could see the shine of the scar that cut underneath his left eye, like someone had swiped over it with their thumb.

He reached up now, gently touched the pink, shiny flesh, feeling its smoothness under the pad of his thumb, finding himself surprised by the fact that it wasn’t all that raised away from the body of Jean’s cheek.

“Does it hurt?” Aimé asked quietly.

“Do yours?” Jean-Pierre asked, and brushed a finger against one of the scars on the side of his jaw. Jean-Pierre had never asked about it, but it seemed obvious to Aimé that he knew that it had been dislocated before, because although he regularly grabbed Aimé around the throat when they were fucking, his touch always turned gentle when he grasped Aimé by the chin.

Aimé couldn’t even remember the night he’d taken that particular blow – he remembered the lines of coke he’d done in the bathroom, cut with something that had made him laugh at the time, and he remembered the way people had cheered as he’d gotten into the ring with some fucking American behemoth as pale as Jean was, if not paler – Jean-Pierre’s skin was a pretty pale, but that man had looked like he’d never seen the sun, like he’d been kept inside just to box and fight. He didn’t remember much after the first punch – he’d woken up in hospital after they’d wired his jaw back into his head.

He hadn’t boxed much after that.

No one wanted to bet on him after the mess they’d made of his face – he’d been too much of a liability, and after years in the clubs he’d tended to, he’d gotten out of the habit of boxing for the sake of boxing, of training for the sake of training.

“Aimé?” Jean-Pierre asked.

“Hurts sometimes, yeah,” Aimé murmured. “When it’s cold, or when I eat toffee, when I go down on you for too long.”

“There is such a thing as too long?” Jean-Pierre asked, raising his eyebrows, and Aimé chuckled.

“You?”

“Not this one,” Jean-Pierre murmured. “But the ones here,” he moved Aimé’s hand lower, so that his hand cupped the side of Jean-Pierre’s waist, his hip, “the fragments of bullet still there catch in the muscle sometimes. It hurts.”

“You couldn’t take them out?”

“I heal very quickly,” Jean-Pierre said. “I have a quick regenerative factor – most angels do, winged angels especially. The flesh around the metal fragments has scarred, created small pockets so that the metal does not enter my bloodstream – the most concern they cause me is an ache from time to time, although I must be vigilant for lead poisoning.”

Aimé inhaled very slowly through his nostrils, feeling his lungs slowly fill under the touch of Jean-Pierre’s hand on his chest. “Why’d they shoot you?”

“All my scars are from firing squads, as I told you,” Jean-Pierre murmured. “The odd bullet here and there, I pick it out, I heal, it is nothing – but when it is a firing squad, there are too many bullets at once. I gouge out the most dangerous – the ones at my heart, my lungs – usually, the ones in my face, my head. I have been before the riflemen six times. Mostly, for inciting rebellion, or for treason.”

Aimé tried to imagine Jean-Pierre, slender and tall and pretty as he was, leading a charge in a revolution. It wasn’t really easy – he could imagine Jean-Pierre giving speeches, even knew that Jean-Pierre could be frightening, but imagining Jean-Pierre with a gun in his hand, or even carrying a flag, wasn’t so easy.

“They really put you in front of a firing squad for giving speeches?” Aimé asked.

Jean-Pierre opened his mouth, his lips parting, and then he pressed them together again. His smile was small, and Aimé wondered if he was imagining the resignation in it, if he’d said the wrong thing – and after, almost surprised himself with the fact that he cared.

It mattered, he realised, if he upset Jean-Pierre without meaning to.

“They have put people before the riflemen for far less than that, mon cœur,” Jean-Pierre whispered.

Aimé’s father had never outright called him a fag before. He’d thought it very loudly – had even said it to other people when he’d caught Aimé with a bloke in his bed a few years back. Aimé wondered, in a distant sort of way, if Aimé’s knees going weak and his chest feeling fluttery at some asshole med student calling him his heart would be enough to qualify for the full terminology.

Jean-Pierre kissed him, then, tilting Aimé’s chin up to do so (he’d deserve to be called a faggot for that one, but it would always be worth it), and Aimé felt his eyes close shut without his thinking about it, felt himself lean forward against Jean-Pierre’s chest, fisting his hand in his own jumper as l’ange deepened the kiss.

When they broke apart, Jean-Pierre kept close to him, leaning to drag his teeth delicately over the shell of Aimé’s ear in a way that made a thrill run down his spine, one of his hands reaching up and gently squeezing Aimé’s throat.

“I had thought to find you sleeping,” Jean-Pierre whispered, “that I would have to rouse you early come the morning.”

“I’m pretty aroused now,” Aimé said.

“Yes,” Jean-Pierre agreed, sounding satisfied. “I see that.”

“So—”

“We don’t need a taxi,” Jean-Pierre said, breaking away from him, and Aimé stared after him as he moved away, picking up the bag he’d brought with him – it was a gym bag, a big, cream-coloured thing almost as big as Jean was. “We can walk.”

“Speak for yourself,” Aimé said, palming himself through his joggers, and Jean-Pierre glanced down at his crotch, then laughed.

The humiliation burned in his cheeks, but unfortunately, it was not the anaphrodisiac it would be if Aimé were anything close to sane, and he shoved the heel of his hand down against himself.

“The cool air will soothe your hot blood, Aimé,” Jean said confidently. “Come.”

“I would like to,” Aimé said. “Before we go wherever you want to go off to.”

“I’ll make it worth your while,” Jean-Pierre promised as he slowly stepped back, swinging his hips as he moved, and Aimé stared, powerlessly, at the way Jean-Pierre dragged up Aimé’s jumper and his own blouse, baring the flat expanse of his pale stomach. Jean-Pierre batted his eyelashes.

“Fuck’s sake,” Aimé muttered, and grabbed for his shoes.

Without ever looking away from him, Jean-Pierre said, in an insufferably sweet tone, “Bien joué, Aimé.”

“Va te faire enculer,” Aimé muttered.

Jean-Pierre looked at him very innocently, his eyes wide, his lips pouting. “Sans toi?”

“No!”

Jean-Pierre’s laugh was a peal of pretty bells, and Aimé hated the heat that burned in his chest, that wasn’t entirely prompted by sex.

“Where are we going?”

“On va voir,” Jean-Pierre said, and Aimé shook his head as he got back to his feet.

*     *     *

JEAN-PIERRE

“You know,” Aimé said, walking beside Jean-Pierre as they move through the empty Dublin streets. The night air was cool, and under Aimé’s shirt, which was one of his tightest, Jean-Pierre could see the pebbled show of his nipples in the cold, and the fabric of the shirt hugged tightly to the curve of his belly, riding up somewhat as he walked and showing the hair dusted over his navel. It was quite distracting. “Usually, when you slink into my apartment after you’ve been out doing shit with your brother, you just lie down in bed and watch a shitty historical drama while I try to sleep.”

If the cool air bothered Aimé, he didn’t say so, and when Jean-Pierre had offered him his hoodie, Aimé had shook his head, so Jean-Pierre had put it on himself, and now he huddled in it as they walked, his gym bag weight on his shoulder.

“Do I slink?” Jean-Pierre asked. “I don’t believe that I slink.”

“Like a polecat,” Aimé said.

Jean-Pierre regarded him with interest, surprised and delighted. “You have seen a polecat before?”

“In Montauban,” Aimé said, and Jean-Pierre smiled, reaching for Aimé’s arm and curling his own around it, so that they could walk arm-in-arm. Aimé did not pull away or complain, but gave Jean-Pierre a funny, fond smile – it was lopsided, and the mere sight of it made a warm feeling catch in his chest.

It was not that he was surprised at all to feel such affection for the other man – he had thought when first he had seen Aimé watch him that he might be interesting, that he might be delightful, and he was.

But the ways in which he was delightful…

Jean-Pierre did not think it would be unfair to say that Aimé reminded him, in some ways, of Jules. Not in every way, of course – Jules had never been rich and never so apathetic, but in the moments of kindness, in the moments where Aimé, seemingly without meaning to, did something rather sweet, and seemed surprised by it himself, in those moments…

“Tell me when,” Jean-Pierre said lowly.

“There was an old outbuilding down the end of the vineyard, near to where we composted the marc and discarded vines. We’d put deck chairs on top of it, because it was an old, flat-building built of clay brick or something, and drink some evenings. When the sun began to set, and it got a little darker, rats would come to the compost heap, and insects – and so would the polecats.”

“They were not frightened of you?”

“Maybe,” Aimé said. “If we were loud. But we were quiet, mostly, and we were a little way away from them, and on a high enough spot that I don’t think they really cared.”

“Asmodeus says they are not so common as they used to be,” Jean-Pierre said softly, “but I remember the first time I saw one. Jules and I had been walking some ways from the farm – we had walked to a town many miles away for a festival, and we walked all night to go home again.”

“Weren’t candles expensive back then?”

Jean-Pierre laughed. It was not at all a bad question, and Aimé did not seem to ask it with a view to mockery, but it reminded him, keenly, of something Bui might have asked him – why should he be so very nostalgic, all of a sudden, thinking of lovers past behind him?

A soft ache settled in his chest, and he looked at Aimé’s lopsided face, his slightly raised eyebrows, his expectant chest. The ache softened, warmed, into something sweeter.

“I did not ever light a candle ‘til I was enrolled in medical school. We saw by the light of the fire, or we did not see at all. De had taught me a few lines of enchantment when first we met, and I had made a jar that looked like an oil lamp, but needed no fuel. We had been walking very far, and I had been complaining for my aching feet, when suddenly, Jules bade me be silent, put his hand over my mouth and held me tight against his breast. I thought he had seen some bear or brigand on the road ahead of us, but it was not so. We stood frozen as a polecat walked closer on the path, peering at us very suspiciously, but evidently she decided we were not any threat to her, for walked past us upon the road, and behind her scurried the smallest of polecat kits, three of them, bouncing after their mother. Jules laughed at me very heartily after we had let them pass, and said he should wish to see me clap eyes on all of God’s creatures, if I should view them all with such awe as I did then.”

“Jean,” Aimé said, and it was only now that Jean-Pierre realised the corners of his eyes were wet, his vision abruptly threatening to blur. Aimé reached for him and grasped him by the hips, pulling him to stop, and after a moment of anxiously looking down at himself, he reached into Jean-Pierre’s own pocket and pulled out his handkerchief, offering it to him.

Jean-Pierre’s laugh was too joyful to really be called a sob, and he quickly dabbed at his damp eyes, then pulled Aimé up into a kiss. He could still taste the Shiraz on his tongue – it was fruity, heavy and sweet in the way that grape skins were, and when he pulled away, Aimé’s hands were still touching his hips.

Aimé couldn’t protect him from anything, of course – Jean-Pierre would be hard-pressed to believe he could defend himself from an angry housecat, let alone an enemy soldier – but nonetheless, there was a sense of safety in it.

“You don’t have to tell me about them,” Aimé said. “If you don’t want to. You don’t have to talk about it.”

“I want to,” Jean-Pierre said softly. “You hear me speak of past lovers, and what, you think what I feel is purely grief?”

“When you cry over it?” Aimé asked wryly. “Yeah, grief sounds about right.”

He wondered what Aimé was feeling in this moment – he hated to empathise as Colm did, found it cloying and overwhelming, and it did spoil the surprise with new lovers, but in this moment, he almost wanted it, wanted to know what was hiding under the surface, when Aimé spoke that wittily, and averted his eyes as he did so.

“Does it frighten you?” Jean-Pierre asked softly.

“Frighten me?” Aimé repeated.

“You think I compare you to men I have loved before,” Jean-Pierre said, and watched the catch in Aimé’s face, the quake of his plump, unbalanced lip, the slight widening of his eyes, and he felt so very full with feeling he could scarcely reckon with it.

“No—”

“I do,” Jean-Pierre said, cupping his cheeks and making Aimé look up at him, stopping him from wrenching his gaze away again. It was nice, that Aimé was so short, compared to him, that Jean-Pierre could hold him so easily in his hands, like something precious. “I do, you know. There is no shame in it – I have loved other men, and I shall love others after you are dead. You think this lessens my affection for you now? You would compare yourself, living, to men dead before you?”

“Would I compare myself to dead guys? When the dead guys you’ve dated have been, from what you’ve said, revolutionaries and saints? Yeah, Jean, I will a little bit.”

“You are still very young,” Jean-Pierre pointed out. “There is more than enough time for you to become one or the other.”

Aimé laughed. There was less bitterness in it than Jean-Pierre had expected, although still more than was ideal, and Jean-Pierre took Aimé by the arm again, leading him forward.

“Never have I loved a perfect man, Aimé,” Jean-Pierre said quietly.

“Well, that makes one of us,” Aimé muttered, and he stubbornly did not look at Jean-Pierre as Jean-Pierre basked at the warmth in his cheeks, the delight that Aimé should say such a thing, no matter the sarcasm in it. “Where the fuck are we going?”

Jean-Pierre took Aimé by the hand and led him through a basement door beneath a burrito shop, and down the long, doorless corridor beneath. The corridor was scantly lit and had grey-washed walls, and when he glanced at Aimé’s face, he saw the uncertainty in it.

He wondered if Aimé would show as much joy as Jean-Pierre hoped he would over this – he did hope he would like it, he did. It seemed to him that every one of Aimé’s smiles was more precious than the last, in these recent months, and he always found himself wanting more of them – and even when Aimé didn’t smile, he looked at Jean-Pierre with something like worship in his eyes, and there was a wonder in that.

It was a twenty-four hour gym, and when Jean-Pierre led the way past the grim front desk, where a satyr sprawled back in an office chair, idly paging through a woman’s magazine, Aimé walked a little faster, looking around with interest, curiosity, showing in his eyes.

They moved past the room full of exercise equipment and standing bikes and treadmills, where a few people were scattered about under the dim lighting, jogging or working their muscles, and past the stairs that led into the swimming pool, which smelt like salt instead of chlorine, and had kelp covering its bottom.

Down another set of stairs, the lights were off when Jean-Pierre pushed open the doors, and it was almost pitch black until he pulled away from Aimé to find their place on the wall and flick them on.

It wasn’t anything very ornate or pretty. Many of the practice bags were bursting at their seams or had leather so worn it looked decades old, and when you punched some of the sacks, their chains creaked ominously: the ring was plain black and serviceable, although one of the turnbuckles was bent, and the ropes were loose on the far left side.

Aimé stood at the bottom of the steps into the room, his mouth ajar.

Jean-Pierre dropped his gym bag, and unzipped it, tugging out one of the pairs of sparring gloves and tossing them to Aimé, who caught them and held them loosely against his chest as though he’d never seen their like before.

“I am unused to boxing with gloves like these,” Jean-Pierre said, fishing out his own pair, “but I am a fair boxer – not so good as my brother, but good enough.”

“De boxes?” Aimé asked.

“Asmodeus? No, no, he wouldn’t step into a boxing ring if you paid him. Colm has boxed, though, and boxed for money too.”

“These are my gloves,” Aimé said. “You pick them out of my wardrobe?”

“I thought they might like an outing,” Jean-Pierre said. He hesitated, biting the inside of his lip as he looked to Aimé, who was still staring down at the gloves in his hands, his expression unreadable. “I have made you unhappy,” Jean-Pierre said softly. “I have assumed too much. We need not box, if you would not like to – we can—”

“With you?” Aimé asked, raising his head. “You want me to box with you?”

“I won’t hurt you,” Jean-Pierre promised, and Aimé laughed.

“Uh,” he said, shaking his head, “yeah, Jean, I’m sure you won’t. I know you’re strong, but you’re barely even a flyweight, and I’ve been boxing since I was a kid. I don’t want to hurt you.”

It was sweet. Misguided, certainly, and arrogant in a way that made Jean’s blood flush and hot in his veins, but still— Sweet.

Wriggling out of Aimé’s jumper, he neatly folded it and Aimé’s hoodie and set them down on a folding chair beside the ring, then beginning to take off his jeans and put them aside too.

“I brought shorts for you,” Jean-Pierre said. “If you don’t want to box in those.”

“Why are we doing this?” Aimé asked as he slid his joggers down his legs, and Jean-Pierre stared at him unashamedly as Aimé tugged a pair of shorts out of Jean-Pierre’s gym bag, sliding them up his legs. He was smiling, which Jean-Pierre liked very much.

“I thought you might miss boxing,” Jean-Pierre said.

“Maybe I do,” Aimé said.

“Colm has a subscription to this gym,” Jean-Pierre said. “He likes to swim here – he has been teaching George to swim. I got you a membership at the same time I paid for George’s. It is always this quiet at night, you know, and there aren’t so many boxers here – this room is often forgotten. You might have the run of it, most times.”

“Oh, might I?” Aimé asked, mocking Jean-Pierre’s accent as he did so, and Jean-Pierre couldn’t contain his beam, feeling the smile tug at his lips. Aimé was smiling too, his gaze on Jean-Pierre’s face, and then he pulled his mouth guard out of the bag, tossing Jean-Pierre’s over to him.

Jean-Pierre slipped the guard into his mouth, then tugged his head guard out of the bag, holding it under his arm as he tied his hair in a bun.

“You know, for not boxing with gloves, you don’t seem like you’re new to putting equipment on,” Aimé said, and Jean-Pierre gave him a dazzling smile, but did not say anything as he went to the ring and pulled himself onto the mat. “You need to wear shorts that tight more often,” Aimé said.

“We must exercise together more often, then,” Jean-Pierre said. “As your doctor, I think it would be good for your health.”

“You calling me fat, ange?”

Jean-Pierre leaned on the ropes, his lips parting as he watched Aimé pull his own head guard on, fastening it in place. “Have you gained much weight since you stopped boxing? I like the shape you are now.”

Aimé huffed out a low, derisive sound.

“I’ve lost weight, actually,” he said. “Less muscle.”

“Ooh,” Jean-Pierre said, not bothering to keep the salacious interest out of his voice, and Aimé pulled himself up into the ring. For all his demurring, and for all he drank, Aimé was physically fit – he had a healthy body, a wide chest and a rounded belly, and fat packed over his muscle so that when Jean-Pierre laid on top of him, his body exuded heat like a furnace. Jean-Pierre had watched him – some mornings, never to any sort of schedule, he did push-ups, and Jean-Pierre liked to get him to take off his shirt to do so, so that he could watch the movement of the muscles in his shoulders as they worked, and see the beguiling shudder of his hairy breast.

“You’re fucking weird, you know that?” Aimé had said when he’d voiced that out loud, and in a mocking voice, pressing his chest together, he’d added, “What, Jean, you want to fuck my tits?”

“Yes, please,” Jean-Pierre had said, and Aimé had laughed so hard he’d turned plum red, but hadn’t complained at all when Jean-Pierre had straddled his chest.

“What are you smiling about?” Aimé asked, bringing his hands, now gloved, before his face and taking a fighting stance.

“Your tits,” Jean-Pierre said.

Aimé looked at him very flatly, his hands dropping to his sides. “Jean,” he complained.

“Desolé,” Jean-Pierre murmured, and raised his own hands. “En garde.”

Aimé stayed standing for far longer than Jean-Pierre had expected.

*     *     *

AIMÉ

Sitting back against one of the corners of the ring, his head guard and mouth guard dropped aside, Aimé stared at Jean-Pierre’s beautiful face, shining with a little sweat, his hair sticking to his temples and the sides of his jaw where bits of it had come loose from his ponytail.

They were drinking from the same bottle of water, which Aimé needed – Jean-Pierre sweated delicately like the angel he was, but Aimé was drenched, and his shirt was stuck to his chest. He was grateful for the shorts – if he’d tried this in his joggers, he was fairly certain he’d have fucking died.

Jean-Pierre was quick and nimble on his feet, and he guarded against almost every blow – he was far more patient than Aimé would have expected, and far more defensive than offensive, but when he did land a punch, Aimé felt it.

He didn’t know how long they’d gone for, but it must have been a while, because when Jean had finally managed a good hit to the side of his face and Aimé had lost his footing, falling hard on his arse, the momentary rest had made him aware of how his whole body ached, how he needed the break.

It felt—

It felt good, actually. The tired ache was more than familiar to him, comforting, a pained heat in his muscles that made him want to box again.

“That was good,” Aimé said, and Jean-Pierre’s smile was dazzling.

“You liked it?” he asked softly, sounding almost disbelieving. “You are a good boxer – easy to fell, but not so easy as I expected!”

Aimé opened his mouth, and closed it right after. He decided to let that one go. “I liked it,” he confirmed. “You didn’t have to get me a membership.”

“I thought we might come together, from time to time,” Jean-Pierre murmured, a small smile on his face. “You watch my dramas with me, and come to music sessions, and you come to volunteer with us. I would not have you give all of yourself to me, and never give in return.”

Aimé didn’t know what to make of that, exactly. He drew the bottle to his mouth, swallowing down a few mouthfuls of it. Jean-Pierre’s gaze dropped to his throat, watching him gulp it down, and Aimé felt himself shiver. There was something weird about the way Jean-Pierre watched him, sometimes, like Aimé was something very hot, very desirable, that never felt quite real.

“You sit with me when I paint,” Aimé said. “Get me to read to you. Ask me about wine.”

“But I do not know about wine, except for what you teach me,” Jean-Pierre murmured, crawling forward on the floor of the ring and putting his hands either side of Aimé’s thighs, “and I would not paint with you.”

“You can draw,” Aimé said.

“Anatomical drawings and technical diagrams,” Jean-Pierre said, shrugging his shoulders. “I do not create beauty as you do. I—”

“Wait, wait, lemme say this one,” Aimé said, squinting his eyes and looking at Jean-Pierre’s face. Mimicking l’ange’s accent, he said, “I exist to be painted, not to hold a brush?”

Jean-Pierre laughed, all teeth and prettiness. “That is rather good,” he murmured, his eyes shining. “The accent needs work, though.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“I don’t sound like a southerner,” Jean-Pierre said, and Aimé snorted, then jumped when Jean-Pierre’s fingers tugged at the waistband of his shorts.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he asked.

“You cannot glean from context?” Jean-Pierre asked, raising one eyebrow and pushing the waistband down to get at his cock.

“What the— Jean, we’re in public, you can’t just— Haa, fuck—” he gasped out as Jean-Pierre lowered his head, one of his hands grabbing tightly at his head band and the other grabbing at the ropes beside him, his thighs spreading reflexively apart. Jean-Pierre just bobbed his head lower.

He felt like he was on fucking fire the whole time, his eyes rooted the door, frightened that someone else would walk in – the goat-man who’d been sat at the desk, or one of the vampires who’d been using the treadmills, someone, but mercifully, the door never moved.

“We should go home,” Jean-Pierre said afterward, delicately wiping his mouth. “I want to shower before we go to bed.”

They walked in relative silence, until Jean-Pierre said, apropos of nothing, “You know, I never boxed with any of my lovers. Not even with Rupert, and he loved the sport.”

The smile on Aimé’s face was so wide it hurt his cheeks.

“You needn’t look so giddy about it,” Jean-Pierre said.

“If you hadn’t wanted me to smile,” Aimé said, “you wouldn’t have said it.”

That night, Jean-Pierre sprawled on top of him, hair still damp from the shower, Aimé slept like the dead. He woke before Jean, and when he elected to wake him up with his mouth, Jean-Pierre came awake with a sharp cry, and sobbed under Aimé’s mouth.

Things were better, with Jean.

Things were good.