COLM

Jean-Pierre was fastidious about the soundproofing he applied to his bedroom, both cutting out noise from the outside and ensuring no sound from the inside eked out. This was why Colm was entirely certain he could never hear Aimé and his brother doing whatever it was they were doing, even when he thought he heard a noise from upstairs.

What he could feel – because if Jean-Pierre had ever tried to find an enchantment to dampen this sort of thing on the walls, he’d never chosen to apply it – was the thrum of feeling and emotion that radiated from his room.

As Colm worked in the garden, kneeling on a mat as he carefully pruned and worked around his beds of potatoes, he could feel the twin oddities in the house: from Asmodeus’ room an oppressive coldness, a strange gap in his awareness, like a freezing blind spot; from Jean-Pierre’s, he felt Jean-Pierre’s haughty delight, his pleasure at having found a new toy, and in contrast, Aimé’s wonder, his gratitude, his uncertainty, his ecstasy.

It was not worship – not yet.

It would be.

It always ended up that way.

It had been that way with Manolis, with Bui, with Benoit, with Farhad, had even happened with Rupert, so he’d heard – up until the end, at least. He couldn’t say what exactly had happened with Jules, Jean-Pierre’s first lover, but perhaps it had been the same – perhaps it had been different. He’d never tried to ask.

There was no point, Colm didn’t think, in trying to understand it. Understanding Jean-Pierre’s love-life was as pointless as trying to understand anything else about him: Colm loved Jean, and that was what mattered.

“Colm,” said Asmodeus, and Colm looked up from his work, sitting back on his heels. Asmodeus’ expression was serious, but his eyes, which glinted an uncomfortably bright green in the afternoon sun, were far away. “I need you to drive me to the docks.”

Colm raised his eyebrows. “You forget the word for please?”

“We should hurry,” Asmodeus said calmly, already walking away. “I don’t think he knows how to swim.”

In a moment, Colm was on his feet, his tools dropped behind him as he dodged through the house, fishing his car keys out of the bowl and grabbing up his wallet and his phone: when he stumbled out of the front door, Asmodeus was already patiently waiting in the passenger seat, and Colm dropped everything into his lap as he turned the key in the ignition, reversing even as he pulled his door closed and did up his seatbelt, which meant he almost swerved into next door’s already-battered Ford Fiesta, missing it by an inch.

“Calm down,” Asmodeus instructed him, even-toned as Colm turned onto the main road, taking the bus lane to avoid what traffic there was, fully aware he could charm his way out of any ticket they might get.

“I’m calm,” Colm said tensely.

“You’re speeding,” Asmodeus said.

“Well, you’ll stop us from hitting anybody, won’t you?”

Asmodeus chuckled, a rich sound, and Colm couldn’t help the tap of his fingers on the car’s wheel even as Asmodeus began to give him directions, telling him which street to turn down, which turn-off to take, which lane to follow.

He was aware of the way his heart was thumping in his chest, of the anxiety thrumming under his skin, but beside him, Asmodeus was smiling slightly, and Colm glanced at him as he turned into a side street that led through a facility of stacked shipping containers.

“What are you so pleased about?”

“I’m remembering,” Asmodeus said quietly. “When you Fell I was three miles away – I didn’t have a car. I ran.” He said it softly, his voice warm and affectionate, and Colm remembered the sudden sensation of his stomach – he’d never had a stomach before – dragged out from inside him as he fell, the cold crash of the water on his every side, remembered heaving in a gasp with lungs he’d never used before, and then choking on saltwater.

Asmodeus had been a beacon, a strong figure that pulled him out from the water and held him over the surface as he swum Colm ashore, and had gently rubbed his back as he’d coughed out the water he’d inhaled. It was strange – at the time, Asmodeus had felt so unerringly like home.

It was only after he left that Colm realised he had no idea what home felt like, and only when they met again that he was aware of how empty Asmodeus felt.

Workers in high-vis jackets and hard-hats were walking back and forth around the portside as they unloaded containers from some huge freighter, and Colm leaned forward to peer up at the swinging crane as they pulled up, but Asmodeus didn’t pay it any heed – if he noticed the workers at all, he didn’t show it.

To his credit, none of them even looked their way.

Colm shut his door and followed after Asmodeus as he strode over the tarmac and down a corridor between bright yellow, steel containers. It was maze-like, dodging into the little alleys between the stacked crates, which were huge and towered above their heads, leaving them drenched in shadow despite the brightness of the day, but Asmodeus never hesitated or paused, except to make sure Colm was right behind him.

When they came from the labyrinth, they hopped a set of steel dividers and went to a roadway that went directly parallel to the water, which was a dark grey.

“Where—”

The flash hurt, brighter than the sun and somehow burning deeper than his eyes, and Colm hissed in pain, shielding his face with the crook of his elbow. It was a more agonising brightness than had ever hit him from a muzzle flash or explosion, and Asmodeus’ fingers touched against his shoulder, squeezing. It was meant to be comforting, Colm thought – it was comforting.

He knew without being able to see that Asmodeus wasn’t shielding his own eyes, that he didn’t have to, and after a few moments passed, where even through his squeezed-shut eyes and the flesh and bone of his own elbow, Colm knew there was an impossible conflagration ahead of him, Asmodeus said softly, “You can look.”

Colm unshielded his eyes just in time to see widespread wings the colour of chipped onyx, shining black with traces of grey, silhouetted against the sky before the figure dropped down and hit the water.

The angel didn’t even scream. It broke the surface with a resounding splash, and Colm stared as it desperately thrashed around with its arms and wings alike, and then looked expectantly to Asmodeus.

“You thought I brought you to watch?” Asmodeus asked, looking forward with one eyebrow raised, watching impassively as the angel struggled. “I can drive myself, Colm, but I’m not swimming today. It’s your turn to pay it forward.”

“As ucht Dé, De,” Colm spat, dropping his keys into Asmodeus’ waiting hand, and ignored Asmodeus’ smile as he dove into the water.

*     *     *

He carried the new angel to the car. Asmodeus kept hold of his keys, and with the new angel’s sodden wings wrapped around Colm’s body like a shuddering cowl, Colm managed to get them both into back of the car, where Asmodeus had pulled all the seats forward so that there’d actually be space.

The angel’s wings left greasy stains on the insides of the windows, and Colm hushed him when he let out a sharp, shuddered noise at the sound of the car door slamming shut.

“It’s okay,” Colm said against his hair, which was black, with a light wave to it. “I’ve got you, I have you.”

“I was… I don’t remember, I don’t remember,” the angel mumbled, his fingers so tightly fisted in Colm’s shirt that Colm almost thought the fabric might tear under his grip, his face shoved into the juncture of Colm’s neck. “I don’t remember—”

“You Fell,” Colm said softly, stroking the skin between his wings, feeling the smooth skin under his hands. “You Fell, that’s all, but we have you, you’re not alone.”

He loosened his grip slightly, adjusting the position of his hands as the angel fidgeted in his lap, and he wailed. “Don’t let me go, don’t—”

“I won’t, I won’t,” Colm promised him, rocking slightly on his awkwardly crossed legs. “I’ve got you.”

“Text Jean,” Asmodeus said as he pulled out of the port, and Colm watched his phone, which Asmodeus had connected to the car’s central unit, show the text message screen: he saw this through a huge few tufts of black feather, and kept a tight hold of the angel shivering in his arms. “The new angel has Fallen. Let Pádraic know. Please make space for him to dry in the living room. Send text.”

Colm’s phone vibrated, but the motion made his phone dip into the middle of the seat, out of his sight.

“What does his reply say?”

“I couldn’t tell you,” Asmodeus said. “I didn’t bring my glasses.”

“Should you be driving?”

“I can see the road,” Asmodeus said. “Though I’m afraid I’m rather estimating our speed.”

“Christ,” Colm said.

“I was measuring,” the angel mumbled: he had a low voice with a strange, crooning aspect to it, a funny rhythm on the words. “I had a scales. I didn’t… I didn’t do anything—”

“No one did anything,” Colm murmured comfortingly. “None of us did anything. That’s not why we Fell.”

The emotion that radiated from the angel in his arms was impossible. There was a profound grief in him, a desperate confusion, a sense, even, of aching betrayal – this cocktail of emotions was common to every Fallen angel Colm had ever known, in the initial stages, and yet in this angel there was a sense of melancholy, too, a fear of having disappointed.

Colm squeezed him all the tighter, closed his eyes and gripped him against his chest as Asmodeus drove on.

*     *     *

JEAN-PIERRE

Jean-Pierre spread his thighs a little further apart, adjusting his grip on Aimé’s hair and dragging him closer at a different angle. Aimé laughed, and rewarded this commanding movement with a graze of teeth against Jean-Pierre’s inner thigh, but then returned to work with his tongue.

To his credit, he had not made a single complaint as to any ache in his jaw, and although he was not extremely skilled in this arena, his enthusiasm afforded a certain delight.

On his sideboard, his phone vibrated with a notification, and without untangling his occupied hand from Aimé’s hair, he reached for it, turning the screen idly to face him, before he sat up in shock. “Fuck,” he said.

“If you want,” Aimé said hoarsely, looking up at Jean-Pierre with his chin shining. “You want to be on top?”

“Oh, you are adorable,” Jean-Pierre murmured, cupping Aimé’s jaw and stroking his thumb over the top of his cheek. “But no, my brothers are coming home, and it’s something quite urgent.”

“Oh,” Aimé said, sitting up, and before he could get up, Jean-Pierre put his hand on Aimé’s chest.

“Your reward first,” Jean-Pierre said, hastily texting back with one thumb as his other hand slid down Aimé’s belly.

“But isn’t it an emergency?” Aimé asked, even as his cheeks burned a dusky red, and he fell onto his back.

“As if this will take long,” Jean-Pierre murmured, and laughed as Aimé’s delicate flush become a furious one.

When Colm’s car pulled onto the drive, Jean-Pierre and Aimé had pushed all the chairs and sofas to the very edges of the living room, leaving a great space in the centre of the room where Jean-Pierre had laid out a few soft blankets. Despite the mild warmth of the evening, at Jean-Pierre’s instruction, Aimé had built a fire.

“Sit,” Jean-Pierre instructed. “He’s going to be very overwhelmed, I expect.”

“Like a newborn, you said.”

“Not precisely, but like enough,” Jean-Pierre murmured, and took the kettle, which had boiled, from the hob. He was pouring tea when Colm led the way into the house, the new angel wrapped around him like some sort of great, feathery bat, and Jean-Pierre let out a sympathetic sound at the shuddered sound he emitted as Colm lowered himself to the middle of the floor.

Gesturing for Asmodeus to take to the tea, he stepped forward and, still naked as he was, let his own wings come free. He heard Aimé’s gasp, glanced at him and saw the desperate wonder in his eyes, but he could show off for him at another time: at the moment, he focused on the new angel, who was still shivering in Colm’s lap, even as Colm took his face gently by the jaw and turned him to look at Jean-Pierre.

It was a handsome face – square but youthful, his skin a lovely brown colour, with a few beauty spots scattered on his cheeks, and huge, very round brown eyes. He held no familial similarity, but like the Mac Giolla Chríosts, he looked as though he had some South Indian heritage. At least, that was what it would look like to humans – the Embassy tended to sort out some false lineage for angels to let them move in their circles, but every angel was an angel first and foremost.

His lips – which were very thin, and naturally curved upward, giving him a nearly permanent crescent smile – parted as he looked up at Jean-Pierre, at the golden colour of Jean-Pierre’s own feathers, the curve of his wings around his shoulders.

The new angel’s wings, which were a richly black colour with a few grey highlights, dark and shining as an oil spill, looked to be in rather good condition. A few of the feathers were bent oddly, but that seemed to be the extent of the damage to them – the oil secreted from the wings’ glands did enough to insulate them from even a soaking of water, and not too much excess dripped from the new angel’s wings, although his hair was still damp.

“We’re the same, you and I,” Jean-Pierre said softly, extending his hand. “Won’t you stand for me?”

For a moment, he clung all the tighter to Colm, pressing his pointed chin so hard against Colm’s shoulder Jean-Pierre wouldn’t be surprised if he left an imprint, but then he began to awkwardly extricate himself. Jean-Pierre recognised in him the strange clumsiness he had often seen in new angels, unused to the constraint of six limbs, but he got to his feet, and put his hands out to take Jean-Pierre’s own.

Jean-Pierre loosely entangled their fingers, and smiled at the other angel. He was tall – as tall, at least, as Asmodeus, but incredibly gangling, giving the impression of a stripling tree.

“My name is Jean-Pierre,” he said softly. “Colm was holding you – our brother, here, is Asmodeus. Do you know what you are?”

“An angel,” he whispered.

“Yes,” Jean-Pierre said. “And do you know what has happened?”

“I… Fell.”

“Yes. Are you in pain?”

“Pain,” the angel repeated softly. His head tilted to the side. “I don’t… I don’t know.” The plaintive note in his voice made Jean-Pierre’s heart pang. “I feel…” The angel’s gaze searched the space between them, desperate to find the words that could explain its emotion, unaccustomed to needing words at all, unaccustomed to making use of a voice, when for all time before, someone’s Voice had sufficed.  Jean-Pierre knew the word he was searching for, but did not offer it, even as Colm stepped close again, leaning against the new angel’s back, between his wings, making him relax. “Alone,” he said softly.

“You’re not alone,” Jean-Pierre promised him.

“We have you,” Colm agreed.

“But… But I was… I am… I. Me. Alone.”

“I know,” Jean-Pierre said softly, squeezing his hand. “But there is also us. We. Together.”

He saw the grief in the angel’s face, grief so impossible it no doubt felt stifling, and he met Colm’s solemn gaze over the angel’s head: together, they sank back down to the blankets, and behind him, Jean-Pierre was aware of Asmodeus slicing fruit and putting it on a plate. He was silent: he was letting them speak with the new angel, first.

He always preferred that, Jean-Pierre knew, that he come after other angels, if other angels were present.

He’d never understood why.

“You can pick a name, if you want,” Jean-Pierre said softly. The angel was sandwiched between Jean-Pierre and Colm, warm between them: like Jean’s, his heart beat somewhat faster than the other men in the room, and his wings rubbed against Jean-Pierre’s own, the two of them folded together, feathers brushing feathers.

“I never had a name before.”

“No,” Jean-Pierre agreed. “I didn’t, before I fell. Nor did Colm.”

“What about him?” the angel asked, and he looked past Jean-Pierre’s head, to Asmodeus.

“You should eat,” Asmodeus rumbled. “You Fell a long way.”

The angel obeyed. It didn’t seem like it occurred to him to do otherwise.

*     *     *

AIMÉ

Aimé had gotten a change of clothes at home before cycling back to the angels’. He’d picked up cigarettes in the process, and now he sat outside on their little patio, a cigarette between his fingers, his travel ashtray set on the table, in lieu of an actual one.

Inside, Colm and Jean-Pierre were sitting with the new angel, and were going through a book of baby names for him to choose from.

Jean-Pierre had encouraged him to help, had asked him to look at a surname generator to pick from, but it had felt like a strange intrusion, watching the two brothers hold the angel between them, and he’d made an excuse to get outside.

He liked Jean-Pierre.

He liked him more than he would have expected to – he’d spent three nights with the angels, now, and when they weren’t having sex or watching television, Jean-Pierre talked very freely about absolutely everything. A lot of what he talked was bollocks – he seemed to be under the terrible misimpression that people were fundamentally good, that life was worth living, and that the Earth was quite a wonderful place – but he dominated the conversation with his voice, spoke at length, whether Aimé appeared to be listening or not, and there was something intoxicating in it.

They had not yet discussed, Aimé was keenly aware, anything of importance.

Jean-Pierre had avoided all talk of philosophy and most talk of history, even of his own: he had spoken about animals and plants, especially about birds, although he seemed to forget all their names; he had ranked varieties of paints based on how pleasant their texture was on the skin; he had sleepily named every bone in Aimé’s body the night previous, and giggled whenever he found one that he didn’t have himself, or feigned superiority when he found a place where Aimé had one bone, and Jean-Pierre had several.

He was inhuman.

That much was clear.

He commanded Aimé very freely, gave him instructions, spoke about him to Colm – or even spoke to him, at times – without actually saying that he felt that he was Aimé’s better, but somehow heavily implying it by virtue of his tone. It made Aimé thrill. It made him feel like his skin was on fire, and perhaps this newfound kink for subtle degradation was why in the past few days that he’d spent as many hours having sex as he had in his lifetime.

He heard the door to the porch open, and he glanced up at Asmodeus as he stepped out into the sun, closing the door behind him.

“May I?” he asked, gesturing to the cigarettes on the table, and as Aimé averted his eyes to try to blink away the ache that developed in the back of them, he said, “Yeah, sure.”

“You should shower before you go back to bed with Jean,” Asmodeus said, and Aimé watched the way he snapped his fingers under the cigarette’s head, making it flare to life with an orange glow. “His lungs aren’t like yours – they’re easily irritated by smoke, even second-hand.”

“He said last night we have different bones.”

“That’s right,” Asmodeus murmured, then took a pensive drag of the cigarette, looking out at the garden. He made no move to sit down, and beside him, as tall and broad as he was where Aimé awkwardly folded in the metal chair with his knees at his chest, Aimé felt superlatively small. The sensation wasn’t quite as sexy, coming from Asmodeus, instead of Jean, but it wasn’t not sexy. “Winged angels have a few biological differences from their more human counterparts. Typically, as well as the wings, they have light, hollow bones, more muscle on their bodies, a different digestive system.

“If you look at Jean’s eyes when he leans over you, you can see a shift at the corners of his eyes. It’s a sort of membrane to keep a sudden airflow from liquefying his brains if he dives from a great height while flying. But he has two sets of eyelids, they just normally move together – if you ever see him in flight, you’ll see them move separately. His eyes rotate separately, too – your eyes are synchronised, so that if you look in one direction, they move together, but Jean-Pierre can look two directions at once.”

Asmodeus spoke quietly, his rich voice a pleasant rumble in Aimé’s ears: although Asmodeus’ expression did not shift at all, retaining a blank look when Aimé glanced at it, his voice sounded very fond, and there was a warmth in his tone.

Angels were functionally immortal, could heal from things even vampires and other magic-users couldn’t necessarily heal from, but Aimé didn’t like the idea of his cigarette smoke making Jean-Pierre sick, even if it was just the stuff that clung to his clothes.

He’d been craving them the past few days. Not while they were having sex – it was difficult to crave for anything, when Jean-Pierre’s thighs were wrapped around his face or his hips – but in the quiet moments, when they were watching television, or when Jean-Pierre was reading, or talking about one thing or the other. It wasn’t only cigarettes he’d been craving, in fairness – he’d missed painting, the past few days, and ordinarily he’d spend his quiet moments between painting with a book in his hands, reading.

It felt rude, somehow, to want to read his book while Jean-Pierre wanted to watch television, so matter than Aimé didn’t really pay attention: it felt difficult, to talk to Jean-Pierre, when he felt almost certain that the next thing he said would make Jean-Pierre kick him out. It was easy, to listen to him. 

They smoked their cigarettes in silence, and when Asmodeus leaned over to stub out his fag end, he said, “He’ll ask you to quit, if he hasn’t already.”

“I don’t smoke in the house,” Aimé said.

“It isn’t about that.”

“He hasn’t asked you to quit?”

“No,” Asmodeus said. “But I am wiser than you, Aimé: I don’t have sex with him.”

Aimé was left with this statement hanging on the air, an uncomfortable statement when voiced about one’s brother, and he shook his head as he stubbed out his own – second – cigarette and closed the travel ashtray’s lid, walking into the side corridor beside the house and putting it back into his bike basket.

When he came inside, he started to wash his hands, and the new angel stumbled on his broad duck feet and came very close, putting his hand on Aimé’s shoulder.

“Do you have a surname?” he asked beseechingly.

“Yes,” Aimé said good-naturedly, glancing to Colm, who had his face in his hands, and Jean-Pierre, who was rubbing his temples as though nursing a headache. Several baby name books were scattered haphazardly on the floor between them. Sitting at the table, a set of paperwork spread out before him, Asmodeus sat with his reading glasses on and his chin on his hands. “It’s Deverell.”

“Oh,” the angel said, wrinkling his nose. When he scrunched it up, the whole of his face scrunched up too, and Aimé smiled at the exaggerated twist of the skin around his eyes, the puckering of his lips. “No, I don’t like that.”

“George, you haven’t liked a single one we’ve given you,” Colm said, falling back against the armchair. “You won’t even use it most of the time – just pick something.”

“But I should like it,” said George, crossing his arms over his chest. The wings had disappeared, but he was still completely naked, and the fact that he was standing right next to Aimé didn’t seem to have struck him as a potential problem. “It’s my name, isn’t it?”

“My mother’s maiden name was Downe, if that helps,” Aimé said. “But I suppose if you took that, your middle name would have to be Fell.”

“Why?” George asked.

Aimé opened his mouth, and then closed it, focusing on turning off the taps and drying his hands.

“I like it,” George declared. “Downe.”

Aimé heard Colm thank God in Irish, and saw Jean-Pierre look heavenwards, crossing himself as he murmured something he couldn’t hear. He suppressed his laughter, and watched George’s flat, square arse as he happily waddled over to Asmodeus, taking the pen and beginning to fill out his forms.

“I would kiss you,” Jean-Pierre said as Aimé stepped toward him, “if your mouth would not taste of tar and ash.”

“I’m gonna go shower,” Aimé said, trying to ignore the shiver that ran down his spine: there was something intent in Jean-Pierre’s gaze as he took Aimé’s hands. Perhaps that was what made it so exciting, that Jean-Pierre disliked the cigarettes, than infuriating.

“If you first rinse out your mouth, I will join you,” Jean-Pierre murmured. He was so beautiful. It was impossible, looking at him, to reckon with it – even looking at him like this, naked, covered all over with scars, Aimé felt as though he were holding hands with something precious, like he was in the Met and holding hands with one of the sculptures, like Jean-Pierre was priceless.

“Yes, sir,” Aimé said, giving a mock salute, and Jean-Pierre laughed, reaching out and sliding his hands over Aime’s throat, pressing his thumb to the hollow between his collarbones. It wasn’t a hard touch – it was a strange, cursory movement, like he was doing it just to see what it felt like, and for some reason, it made Aimé’s cheeks burn.

“Come,” Jean-Pierre said softly. “Congratulations on your name, George Downe.”

George, newly christened, gave them a cheerful wave, and Aimé let Jean-Pierre lead him up the stairs.

*     *     *

COLM

Once George was sprawled out on the sofa, sleeping for the first time in his life, underneath several blankets and snoring quietly, Asmodeus stacked together the paperwork to be sent off to the Embassy, in exchange for which they’d receive bits and pieces for George – a birth certificate, some made-up family history, an ID, just enough for the mundane government to accept that he was real, and of course, information for the Irish magical government.

“You want to see something funny?” Asmodeus asked.

Colm narrowed his eyes at his brother. “Will I think it’s funny?”

“I think so.”

“Okay,” Colm murmured, and Asmodeus chuckled.

Turning the front page of the papers to face Colm, Colm scanned them.

SURNAME: DOWNE

FIRST NAME(S) AND MIDDLE NAME(S); GEORGE FELL

Colm laughed, putting his head in his hands.

“Told you you’d think it was funny,” Asmodeus murmured, and slid the documents into the waiting envelope.