AIMÉ

They all went out to the allotment before the party. From the allotment, they were going to walk over to Pádraic and Bedelia’s, because they were all going to pile into the back of Pádraic’s minivan, which Aimé was certainly looking forward to, given that of their party, half of them was over six foot tall.

He was expecting to be one of the early drop-outs with Jean-Pierre and Asmodeus, if Colm and Bene didn’t drag him out with them, George, and Bedelia, and Pádraic had already said he’d be going home at eleven, and was happy to drive whoever wanted driving home.

He, like Jean-Pierre, could barely stomach any alcohol at all, and had been content to be nominated as designated driver.

It was a cool afternoon, too damp to be frosty, and as Aimé sat back in one of the plastic lawn chairs Colm had stacked up in his shed, Jean-Pierre shivering in his lap – although Aimé was pretty sure a lot of this shivering was for reasons of theatre, because when he’d been arguing with Colm a second ago about what sort of sparrows they were looking at, he’d forgotten to keep doing it – he sipped at a glass of wine.

Asmodeus wasn’t sitting down, but standing beside them. Aimé couldn’t imagine him sitting down in a plastic chair, and half-expected the things to morph into something more stately as soon as his arse touched the seat, or perhaps burst into flames.

Ahead of them, Colm was showing sketches he had on a piece of paper to Benedictine and pointing out the ends of the land, telling her what he planned to build where, showing where Heidemarie’s bedroom would go, where he’d put the second bedroom, talking about how he’d plumb the bathrooms.

Jean-Pierre had twisted himself in Aimé’s lap so that as much of his body as possible was crammed against Aimé’s, his knees curled into Aimé’s chest, his chin on top of Aimé’s head and Aimé’s head pressed against the silk of Jean-Pierre’s shirt, Jean’s fingers absently playing with Aimé’s hair as he scrolled on his phone. His wings were out, curling around them in a warm cowl, and Aimé was enjoying the fresh air, the taste of the wine he and De were sharing, the smell of frankincense and citrus from Jean’s feathers.

With a sort of casual boredom, Jean-Pierre was swiping through a gallery of erect cocks, examining them with the same critical expression Aimé had seen him wear whilst scrutinising fabric to buy for Colm’s Christmas present, or while looking through a menu.

“Which one is Gavin Swift’s?” asked Aimé, and Jean-Pierre scrolled back through his phone to show him. Jean-Pierre had said before that the guy in his choir soc had a thick-looking cock, and looking at a photo of it, Aimé felt his eyebrows raise, his lips parting. It was a short cock, a little shorter than Aimé’s own, which was maybe below average, but it was thick around as a can of something, and Aimé put on a thoughtful expression, sliding his fingers between Jean’s thighs and pressing at his cunt through his jeans. “Mmm, I don’t know…”

“I can stretch,” said Jean-Pierre.

“Yeah? How— Ow, De, the fuck!?”

Jean-Pierre laughed at him as Aimé reached up to rub the back of his head where Asmodeus had smacked him, the movement so lightning-fast that Asmodeus’ hands were already back at his sides, one holding his wineglass and the other loosely looped in his pocket. He must have reached over Jean-Pierre’s wing to do it, and Aimé was furious that he found himself impressed.

“I’m right here, you know,” said De.

“Yeah, like you’re shocked your brother has sex, why didn’t you hit him?”

“Hitting doesn’t work with him,” said Asmodeus with a slight smirk pulling at his lips, watching Colm and Bene instead of them. “I have my hopes it might with you.”

“Anyway,” said Jean-Pierre said, “it looks like it will hurt.”

“Yeah,” Aimé agreed, and when De glanced at him, he put his hands up as though there was a gun pointed at him, showing he wasn’t putting his hands anywhere he shouldn’t, Asmodeus laughed. “He send you those?”

“No,” said Jean-Pierre. “He shares them in a group chat with Corey Mendel, you know the American boy with the stretchers in his ears?”

“Should I?”

“Well, these are his and his friends’ cocks, and Corey is in the same chat, so he shows them to me.”

“You’re disgusting, you know that?”

“They know the risk when they send the photos,” said Jean-Pierre breezily, and Aimé looked up at Asmodeus.

“You don’t have anything to say about this?” he asked.

“It’s a breach of consent, Jean,” said Asmodeus blankly, without looking at him. Aimé didn’t get the impression that he didn’t care – if anything, Asmodeus’ dry, irritated tones implied to Aimé that this was a point he’d discussed before, albeit unhappily.

“I don’t care,” said Jean.

“Happy?” asked De, taking a sip of his wine.

“As a clam,” muttered Aimé sarcastically, and took Jean-Pierre’s phone so that he could look through the gallery himself, trying to see which ones he recognised when Jean-Pierre told him their names.

Asmodeus went to speak with Colm and Benedictine when Colm waved him over, and Aimé stroked Jean-Pierre’s lower back as he scrolled through his phone. Jean-Pierre, true to form, kept his  stolen dick pics in neat folders and subfolders, because of course he did.

 Two of the biggest cocks belonged to Gavin Swift’s roommates, he was happy to see. “Are any of them gay?”

“I’m beautiful,” said Jean-Pierre. “What does it matter if they’re gay or not?”

“You’re right, babe, how could I forget that the world and the universe revolves around your cunt?”

“I’m not saying it does,” said Jean-Pierre primly. “It is merely that they both would, if they had any sense.”

Aimé should have been irritated with that – he should have been angry, should have found Jean-Pierre tiresome and petty and more than a bit evil, and instead he felt full to the brim with a warm, satisfied feeling, and he realised he was looking very lovingly at Jean-Pierre when Jean looked at Aimé’s face and looked disgustingly pleased with himself.

“I hate you,” said Aimé.

“You love every part of me,” said Jean-Pierre confidently. “Desperately and with uninhibited fervour.”

“I wouldn’t say uninhibited,” said Aimé, but when Jean-Pierre leaned to kiss him he smiled, and laughed softly into Jean-Pierre’s mouth. He didn’t miss the slight catch in Jean-Pierre’s face when he leaned back from him, and he reached up, cupping the sides of Jean’s cheeks and sliding his thumbs over the smooth, soft skin of his cheeks, touching the scar under his eye. “Jean?”

“Ouais?”

“I’d like to see Gavin Swift fuck you open.”

Jean-Pierre’s slightly tight mask of glee shifted into something that was both more honest and softer: his eyes widened slightly, his lips parting as his smile upturned at their edges.

“He watches me,” said Jean-Pierre. “In the corridors when he sees me, he watches me – and Corey said one of them put a picture of my arse in the chat because he mistook me for a woman and they were admiring my thighs.”

“Have you had sex with Corey Mendel?” asked Aimé.

“No,” said Jean-Pierre. “But he sent me a video of him touching himself – would you like to see?” He scrolled back through his phone history with him, passing his phone back to Aimé, and instead of pressing play on the video, Aimé scrolled back up through the message history, vaguely interested.

Jean-Pierre used emojis, made jokes, pasted in memes. When Corey started talking about being horny and thinking about Jean-Pierre’s arse, Jean-Pierre, if anything, sounded politely interested, and while Jean’s side of the conversation was various emojis in reply to pictures and then the videos of Corey’s cock, it almost struck Aimé that he didn’t even care.

“Didn’t you sent him pictures back?” he asked.

Jean-Pierre frowned as though the question was a complicated one, and he looked at Aimé thoughtfully, his head tilting to the side. “No,” he said. “I’ve never done that before – I wouldn’t know how to take enticing photos myself, and Corey Mendel isn’t all that attractive and his cock is too small, so I don’t see the point of going to the effort with him.” Jean-Pierre smiled then, sliding his hands over Aimé’s upper chest and then up to his shoulders, thumbs coming up to slide against his neck on each side. Aimé’s cock was half-hard underneath Jean-Pierre’s weight in his lap, and Jean-Pierre’s smile was a sly, filthy thing. “Would you like for me to send photos of myself to other men?”

“See, that’s bait,” said Aimé. “You want me to say, yes, I would, of course I would, Jean, that makes my dick hard, and then you want to say that if it makes my dick hard, I’ll have to take the photos to make sure that you only send ones I approve of, which, yes, is also extremely hot, but I feel like the end of this line is not, as I’d like it to be, you texting people pictures of my cock in you or my come on your skin, but you texting people paintings I’ve done of you with a cock in you or otherwise.”

Jean-Pierre’s cheeks were blooming like roses with red pigment, and the smile on his face was full of what looked like wonder as much as delight.

“Would you think me very spoilt indeed, Aimé,” said Jean-Pierre, “if I told you I would like to have both?”

Aimé pulled him down by the chin into another kiss, and Jean-Pierre’s fingers carded in Aimé’s hair on each side, his wings tightening in around them like a little privacy shroud.

“You really expect me to believe you’ve never sexted?” asked Aimé.

“I have,” said Jean-Pierre. “I found phone sex very exciting at its advent, when it was new. I just haven’t sent photographs of myself – it’s such effort.”

Aimé laughed, squeezing Jean-Pierre’s hips and bouncing his knees to make Jean-Pierre unsteady, making him giggle too, almost losing his balance until he spread his wings a little wider to keep himself in place. “Is that what this is, then? Outsourcing labour?”

“I’m not an artist, Aimé, which I have told you before – I am art. I am very content to model, but photography is not among my passions.” He curled a lock of Aimé’s hair around his fingers, playing it around and around. He was a little more serious when he said, “And I don’t really care. If a man wants to touch himself over me his imagination likely suffices, and I like for people to gossip, I like…” Jean-Pierre trailed off for a moment, tipping himself forward, his nose sliding against Aimé’s own. “I like for there to be an ambiguity in my appearance, as people see it. The mystique makes me more desirable.”

“You don’t need mystique to be desirable,” said Aimé. “I’ll paint you a thousand times if you want me – you can pay your commissions fee in blowjobs. And you’ll have to pose.”

“I think we can kill two birds with one stone if you learn to take photographs of me,” said Jean-Pierre. “Then you can paint from those.”

“That mean no blowjobs?”

“I love you,” said Jean-Pierre, and Aimé squeezed his hip again.

“You think if I do some nice ones they’ll put them up in an exhibit about angels?”

“Which nice parts of me are you thinking you might paint?” asked Jean-Pierre.

“Which nice parts do you think?”

“I like to be painted,” said Jean-Pierre softly. “I like to have my skin painted, touched – I like to be admired as a piece of art. May I tell you a secret?”

“Yeah, course. Always. Especially now – it’s Christmas.”

Jean-Pierre smiled slightly. “It’s easier to be art, sometimes,” he said in a very soft voice, curling into Aimé and looking over the curve of his own wing, to where Colm and Benedictine and Asmodeus were talking together as though to make sure Colm wasn’t listening. “Aimé.”

“Yeah, babe?”

“It is nice to be made object, at times. It is… freeing to be made free of personhood.”

“Why do I feel like this is a little more than the normal BDSM philosophy?” asked Aimé, and curved his hand up around Jean-Pierre’s back, sliding his thumb gently over the line of his spine. Jean-Pierre didn’t make eye contact, but Aimé could glimpse his face looking up at it, the twist of his lips, the uncomfortably familiar distance in his eyes.

“You know it is complicated,” said Jean-Pierre quietly. “Myrddin held me captive, but before that, it… Colm blames me, he says it’s my fault.”

“It’s not your fault,” said Aimé immediately, and Jean-Pierre bit his lip.

“He never treats me as an object, Aimé,” said Jean-Pierre. “If he did, I think I could bear it. But he doesn’t. He sees me as a person, a man – an assassin, an angel, a beastly person, but a person. And he…” Jean-Pierre’s voice had a tightness in it, a slight catch, when he said, “Aimé, I believe Myrddin Wyllt sees me as an equal.”

“Because we all hold our equals hostage in the hopes they give into Stockholm Syndrome?” Aimé asked sharply, more sharply than he meant to, because it made Jean-Pierre’s features tighten.

“If he thought anything less of me,” said Jean-Pierre, “I don’t know if he would have gone to the trouble.”

It made Aimé’s whole chest clench, the look on Jean’s face, the quiet tightness in his voice. It made him want to put his hands around the king regent’s neck and tear his throat out with his bare hands, and to his distant, disgusted surprise he almost craved the brutality of it, the feel of breaking skin and hot blood sticky and wet on his hands, the choked cough and yelp that would come from Wyllt’s throat as he did it.

“You’re angry with me,” said Jean-Pierre.

“No, I’m not,” said Aimé.

“You are. You think I cannot read your face?”

“You certainly can read my face – you can read in my face that I’m fucking furious and I want to kill a man. Do you think it’s more likely I want to kill you or him?”

Jean-Pierre closed his mouth, adjusting and then readjusting Aimé’s shirt collar. “I think of it because of our discussions of your father of late, that it frightens me that he should kill you – but as you have your pursuer, I have mine. It seems to me I should be forthright in this. For better or for worse.”

“Want me to marry you?” asked Aimé. He meant it as a joke – a half-serious one, a half-genuine one. It didn’t make Jean-Pierre smile the way Aimé wanted it to.

“One would think given what happened to my first and final fiancé that you would not wish to follow in his footsteps.”

“Well, I know his mistake,” said Aimé. “He didn’t actually marry you.”

Jean-Pierre sniggered, but didn’t entirely relax. “When Farhad was dying, in the last two or three weeks, the pneumonia had begun to take hold. It was a very difficult time for me. I had nursed Jules through illnesses before, Benoit too, and it so aggrieves me to linger with a dying lover. Bui died of tuberculosis, and it was... The setting was very different, an American hospital room and on a mundane AIDs ward, no less, with sometimes such unkind and cruel staff at times – because we were gay, because he was Persian, on top of the hatred they already had for his illness. I was…”

Jean-Pierre’s eyes were watering, and Aimé reached up to wipe his eyes, careful not to do it too hard.

“It wasn’t at Christmas,” said Jean-Pierre. “We’d had Christmas together at least, managed not to have it in hospital. I don’t know why I think of it so much at Christmas time. It was February, but it was very mild, at least – it wasn’t the cold that made him… Farhad never knew what we were, really, not me, not Colm or Asmodeus. He knew so little of anything, he was in many ways an innocent, which I suppose is why his death was quite so agonising. He wasn’t like any of my other lovers, he didn’t… He had a very, very untrue idea of who and what I was. He knew that when he came, Myrddin, I think. I came into the hospital room to find him sitting at Farhad’s bedside, telling him things, and I don’t even know if Farhad really understood – he was sick and crazed with fever, coughing out his lungs, his skin a thin film over his bones because his bones were all he had left. And there was Myrddin at his side, telling him his loving boyfriend was a murderer and a monster. Apologising that said boyfriend’s affection for himself was no doubt a shadow on his relationship.”

Jean-Pierre was glassy-eyed, buried in the memory.

Aimé felt sick.

“He didn’t understand it,” said Jean-Pierre quietly. “How could he? A mundie who didn’t know the difference between ward and spell strike, let alone the ins and outs of magical politics, that he had the king regent of two influential kingdoms at his bedside, and ordinarily had a king slayer in his bed. All he knew was that he was being told upsetting things about a man he loved, things he didn’t want to believe, that he couldn’t believe – things that confused him.” He stifled a sob, and Aimé squeezed his waist, not looking away from him. “There was no need for it. He remembered it only in snatches in the days after, which distressed him, as I’m sure you can understand. You see, in that moment, Farhad was most certainly an object – a tool to pull at my heartstrings for the sake of cruelty.”

“Is that what I’m meant to agree is complicated?” asked Aimé. “That he decided to torture a dying man just to hurt you?”

“Suppose Colm is correct in what he says?” asked Jean-Pierre tightly. “Suppose it is my fault? That I encouraged him, what I gave him the impression that I wanted him to do it?”

“Suppose,” said Aimé, “that you accidentally sent signals that said, “Please kidnap me and keep me chained in your cellar for years,” which he misread?”

“Don’t say it as if I’m crazy,” said Jean-Pierre – his tone was pleading, and Aimé hurried to shake his head, pulling him closer, wrapping his arms around his middle.

“No, baby, I don’t mean it like that. I’m just saying it’s not your fucking fault.”

“But what if—”

“What did you do?” asked Aimé. “Flirt with him at a party? Give him a blowjob? Something small, something that he was obsessed with, after?”

“I didn’t know who he was,” said Jean-Pierre quietly. “His face, I didn’t recognise it, I’d never seen a portrait of him before. He doesn’t like his portrait taken. I had slipped into a coat closet at a party to poison an ambassador.”

“As you do.”

“Do you want for me to tell you or not?”

“Put your fingers in my mouth and I’ll be quiet.”

That, at least, made Jean-Pierre smile, albeit thinly. “It was a slow-acting poison, an enchanted patch of my own design – I slipped it into the inner lining of the ambassador’s coat pocket over the heart and at the same time Myrddin came into the room. I secreted myself in the shadows, watched him take the gloves out of the same ambassador’s pocket and daub a contact poison into the inside of the fingertips. He is an alchemist, you know, Myrddin. His, his garden of ingredients is—”

“You were both poisoning the same ambassador?”

Jean-Pierre nodded. “For different reasons – this was in the time leading up to the Renfrew Strike, do you know what that is?”

“No.”

“I… Well, then it doesn’t matter. Suffice it to say he was of great interest to fae and demonic communities, an ambassador from a fae kingdom himself. I wanted him dead for his conservatism – Myrddin wanted him dead for the opposite. He sensed the enchantment – he is not possessed of great ingenuity as an enchanter, but he has a great sensitivity to magic and its flows, more so than perhaps anyone I’ve met outside of Asmodeus. He didn’t sense me in that closet, but I saw him notice the poison patch, and later it— I was feigning myself a waiter. He recognised me later, reached for my watch and commented on the enchantment in it, on its unique signature. I thought we were each two assassins, each of us… I didn’t realise who he was until after. I wanted to distract him, to make him think of me as vapid, stupid, a slut, and I think perhaps I succeeded in that in the first instance.”

“The second time?” Aimé asked.

“That time I was trying to assassinate the king,” said Jean-Pierre. “I knew who Myrddin was, by then. I felt stupid for having fucked him before, having not tried to kill him when I could have. Perhaps I wanted to prove a point. He caught me and he talked to me in a way I didn’t…” Jean-Pierre trailed off, his lips pressed loosely together, his gaze far away. “We didn’t have sex. He let me go.”

Aimé watched Jean-Pierre’s blank face, squeezing his hips again, pressing his thumbs against the fabric of Jean-Pierre’s Christmas jumper, the pads of his thumbs pressing against the wool.

“He talked to you?” Aimé asked.

Jean-Pierre didn’t immediately say anything.

“What, he said the second time he wanted you, liked you, or?” Aimé didn’t like what he saw on Jean-Pierre’s face, didn’t like the tightness there. “You don’t want to talk about it.”

“No,” said Jean-Pierre. “No, I do, I am not trying to lie to you, to hide it.”

“It’s okay,” said Aimé, drumming his fingers on Jean-Pierre’s lower back. He didn’t want to hear more right now and he was grateful not to have to say it, didn’t know how to tell Jean-Pierre that hearing about Myrddin made him feel sick to his fucking stomach without Jean-Pierre thinking it was about him, that it was his fault. “You don’t have to tell me right now.”

There was a loud, popping bang from the other side of the ground, and Aimé jumped, feeling Jean-Pierre shift in his lap, his wings spreading to keep his balance as they both turned to look.

Benedictine had a pistol in her hand – had she been carrying that the whole fucking time? – and Colm had lined up a few empty beer cans on top of one of the walls so that Bene could shoot.

“Colm says you can’t shoot a pistol,” said Aimé, trying to stop himself from flinching when Benedictine let off three rounds at once, knocking down a can each time. She and Colm were talking to Asmodeus, both of them looking up at him as De shook his head and Colm tried to take the wine glass out of his hand.

“I can,” said Jean-Pierre. “But the recoil from a lot of handguns can do me damage – the bones in my hand are very light, and they break easily, the muscle straining easily, too. When I use rifles I can brace myself better. I can shoot a little with one, I just would need to be careful with the calibre and how long I was using it for.”

“It’s loud,” said Aimé, and Jean-Pierre smiled as he stood to his feet, cupping Aimé’s cheek and tugging him up by his wrist, and Aimé let himself be led toward the other angels, close enough that they could hear Benedictine needling at De.

“Come on,” she was saying. “Please? For me? For your little sister whom you love so much?”

“You aren’t especially little,” said Asmodeus, and Benedictine dropped the fem act and punched him in the arm, making Asmodeus laugh and pull her close to him. Bene let out a wordless protest before complaining loudly in Creole, trying to grab Asmodeus around the middle and wrestle with him.

Asmodeus, strong as a steel pillar, didn’t even budge as she tried before he bent at the knees, caught her around the middle, and lifted her clean off the ground. Benedictine was a muscular woman, the same height as Jean-Pierre – tall – and it made Aimé laugh to see how easily Asmodeus lifted her, passing her around himself and throwing her over his shoulder.

“I remind you I still have a gun!” said Benedictine, and Asmodeus replied, “Are you sure of that?”

Bene’s hand went to the holster at her arm, and Aimé laughed even harder as he watched Asmodeus flip the pistol in his hand, twirling it between his fingers like it was a fucking yo-yo.

“You’re such a fucking show-off,” said Colm.

“Am I?” asked Asmodeus, and turning with Benedictine hanging down his back so she could see, he held up the gun and shot a bullet through the last can on the wall, doing it at such an angle that it teetered on the brick but didn’t actually fall, and sent the ring pull sailing into the air. “Oh, yes,” he said. “It would seem I am.”

De put Bene down, kissing her on the cheek before he passed her the gun back, and Benedictine scowled at him until she turned away, and on her face Aimé saw a slight grin as she came to nudge Colm in the side.

“You want to try?” asked Benedictine, doing something to the gun that made it click, and before Aimé could reply she’d placed it in his hand.

“Is this a Glock?” he asked.

“It’s a Taurus,” said Benedictine, shifting the weight of the gun in his hand, and Aimé swallowed, surprised by how heavy it was, how the grip was textured, surprisingly cool to the touch. “You’d probably be better off with a Glock – my hand is bigger than yours, and all your strength is in your arms, not your fingers.”

“Is this where I make a joke about you being a lesbian?” asked Aimé.

“Fire it,” said Benedictine. “Feel the recoil.”

Aimé’s stomach did an anxious flip, uncomfortable with the weight of it, the faint smell on the air that he recognised as burnt powder mixing with the smell of Jean-Pierre’s feathers.

He thought about Colm digging a bullet out of his side, and he looked back to Jean-Pierre’s face, at the scar under his eye shining in the cool afternoon light. It was different to the knives, somehow – maybe because he was shit with knives, maybe because throwing one he’d probably not even nick the skin, let alone kill someone.

A blast of gunpowder launching a bullet from a chamber didn’t much depend on the strength of one’s shoulders.

He raised the gun, felt the weight of it, and Benedictine reached to adjust his grip and the angle of his wrist. She was talking about recoil, about how he had to hold his wrist to make sure he didn’t jar anything, but the actual words mingled together into something like wet glue, sticking in his ears but not actually getting any further.

“… and pull the trigger,” said Bene.

“No,” said Aimé, pushing the gun back to her.

“De doesn’t like guns either,” said Benedictine.

“He won’t touch them for me or Jean,” said Colm pointedly, and Asmodeus finished the last of the wine in his glass.

“You and Jean aren’t ordinarily asking me to shoot at cans,” said Asmodeus coolly, and Aimé relaxed into his hand when it landed on his shoulder, squeezing slightly. “Ready?”

“Where’s your accordion?” asked Aimé, and Asmodeus gave him a flat look as Jean-Pierre shook himself like a pigeon and put his wings away, going to help Bene stack Colm’s chairs away as Colm threw open the shed.

“In the back of Paddy’s minivan,” he said mildly. “Why, are you planning to give it a try?”

“You notice he was upset?” asked Aimé, and Asmodeus’ thumb patted against the top of his shoulder before he drew his hand back, looking to the other three.

“He’s in a hard place at the moment,” said Asmodeus. “He’ll be alright.”

“How do I tell him it’s not his fault?” asked Aimé.

“I don’t know,” said Asmodeus, his expression serious, but distant. “When you find the answer, make sure to share it with me, would you?”

* * *

JEAN-PIERRE

“We don’t have to go if you don’t want to, you know,” said Aimé as they came up to Pádraic and Bedelia’s house, where Pádraic had brought the minivan out front so that they could all pile inside.

“I want to,” said Jean-Pierre. “I don’t want to ruin it for everyone.”

“I know, I know,” said Aimé, kissing his hand. “I’m just saying, if you’re too upset—”

“But I want to,” Jean-Pierre repeated, looking down as Aimé as Aimé gave him a concerned look. “I do feel fine,” he said. “Really. It is only that I think of it a lot, at times like these. It’s… It is the time I recall my captivity most keenly, when I am surrounded by those I love.”

He’d gone through the post that morning, and among the various sheafs of correspondence intended for Asmodeus, there had been cards for Jean-Pierre and Colm.

Some of the ones for Jean had been nice – Ephraim Margolis, a doctor he knew who was now working in Bristol, had sent him a nice card wishing him a happy holiday even though he didn’t even celebrate Christmas, and there had been a few others. Another had arrived with a royal seal on the back of it, and Jean-Pierre had tossed it on the fire before anyone could ask about it.

When they came up the path into the house, it was to the sound of Bedelia and George laughing, and to softly jingling bells.

“Wow,” said Aimé, and Jean-Pierre realised, his own lips curving up into a bright beam of a smile, that Aimé hadn’t seen Pádraic in his full Father Christmas regalia before.

It was a beautiful suit, and it delighted everyone who laid eyes on him, when he was fully decked out. Pádraic wore some padding in the front because as large a man as he was, he lacked the plump belly for which the character was so famous. The suit was a vibrant red velvet, and apart from the thick, white fur ruff around the neck and trimming the cuffs of his sleeves, gold bands of filigree hemmed the jacket and the cuffs of the trousers; the buckles on his black belt and heavy black boots were gold too, and bells hung from around the red, white-furred sleeper’s cap and from his breast.

Pádraic bade Aimé hello, to which Aimé replied, and then signed something about Pádraic looking sexy and asking to sit in his lap – it made Pádraic laugh, a rumbling chuckle from deep in his chest, before he tried to cuff Aimé upside the head, but Aimé dodged it nimbly.

“I love the wig,” said Aimé, and Pádraic leaned down for him to reach up and touch the thick, white beard that Pádraic wore around his mouth, not to mention the long, wavy-haired wig that came around his shoulders. “Is it real hair?”

Pádraic nodded, and Aimé wrinkled his nose.

“It’s horsehair,” said Bedelia, kissing Aimé on the cheeks when he leaned to greet her. She was wearing a beautiful red dress, trimmed in gold and white fur to match her father, and in between the two of them George looked quite ridiculous in a red and green elf suit, beaming brightly.

Pádraic signed, “It’s the wrong colour,” to which Aimé responded out loud, “No, it’s not. You’re just old. Would you rather wear a mitre, too?”

Pádraic arched an eyebrow at him, and signed, “Yes.”

Aimé sniggered.

“What’s a mitre?” asked George.

“A bishop’s hat,” said Asmodeus. “Are we ready?”

Jean-Pierre, Benedictine, and Asmodeus sat in the back so that they didn’t have to fold up their legs – Aimé, Colm, and Bedelia obviously had no trouble in that arena, and George sat up front with Pádraic, chattering cheerfully away to Colm and Aimé about what he’d been learning on his course.

Jean-Pierre curled in against Asmodeus’ side, his head leaned into Asmodeus’ chest as Asmodeus gently stroked his hair.

“Feeling alright?” he asked quietly.

“Yes,” said Jean-Pierre.

Asmodeus pressed a kiss to the top of his head, and for good measure, he turned and kissed the top of Benedictine’s head, which made her laugh and elbow him in the thigh.

Most of them were in Christmas clothes – Colm was wearing a jumper that reads Nollaig shona dhuit! with a picture of a sheep wreathed in Christmas lights, and even Aimé had allowed himself to be wrestled into another of Colm’s jumpers by Jean-Pierre, a wonderful green jumper strung with lights and baubles, as if he was a Christmas tree himself. Benedictine’s was a wonderful sweatshirt that Jean-Pierre hasn’t seen before, one she brought with her – it was a batik design showing a fanal painted in bright pale colours, and he wondered if she’d send him one, if he asked where she got it.

 Asmodeus, in neither costume nor novelty shirt, looked impossibly secular between them, dressed in tight, dark trousers and a dark blue shirt – he hadn’t even picked out a particularly seasonal colour.

“Couldn’t you try, at least?” asked Jean-Pierre.

“My accordion is in the boot,” said Asmodeus. “I’ll even sing a carol, if it’s Benjamin Britten.”

“Nothing Benjamin Britten wrote can be called a carol,” said Jean-Pierre scathingly, and Asmodeus, smiling, squeezed him and Benedictine against him at the same time. “Joyeux Noel, Benedictine,” Jean-Pierre said pointedly.

“Joyeux Noel, chou,” said Bene, and between them, Asmodeus sighed like he was having the worst time in the world, but his lips were smiling.