JEAN-PIERRE

As they came up the stairs and into the big church hall, Asmodeus put his hand on Jean-Pierre’s lower back, pulling him against his chest for a moment. Asmodeus wasn’t obvious about leaning to murmur in his ear, but instead tilted his face into Jean-Pierre’s neatly tied bun, decorated with Christmas lights, as though he was doing nothing more than pressing a kiss to his head.

“Pace yourself,” he said softly. “As soon as you’re tired and you want to go home, you let me know, alright?”

“I don’t want to cut it short for you,” said Jean-Pierre.

“Jean,” said Asmodeus, “we are at a church. I am here for the family, and the family alone – that does not mean I will not be very happy to leave as soon as I can.”

Jean-Pierre took this in for a moment, unable not to smile, and hugged Asmodeus properly before he pulled away and go inside.

The big hall was normally separated out – in the back pantry they still stored everything for the food bank, but tall ceiling-length separating walls could normally be folded out to separate the room into distinct pieces. They’d been using one of them recently for the purposes of adding texture to Santa’s grotto, and while they hadn’t drawn the wall all the way across, they had half-opened it so that people could see the snowy white background on it.

The wooden house, with its neatly shingled red roof, all of its fake snow, and the pretend ice tables and chairs outside, was still set up. Colm and some of the other local carpenters had discussed the grotto in detail when they’d come to design it, and they’d intentionally made it very small, so that Pádraic, already a superlatively large man, looked gargantuan in comparison. Even the other two Santa Clauses looked larger than life in the shadow of the grotto, and the added benefit was that in the new year, they’d be able to take off the snow and the red and gold borders and varnish it to go outside for the children to play with.

They were certainly playing with it now, climbing over it and rushing in and out through the doors and windows, and the art tables for them were set up either side.

There were tables and chairs dotted all around the room, primarily toward its edges. The dancefloor was busy, and there were people crowded around the bar, too. Jean-Pierre couldn’t remember the name of the DJ, didn’t think he’d actually met him before, but he was playing music from a large turntable, and there was a place set up for live music afterward.

Colm was chatting happily to him as he put his own guitar and Jean-Pierre’s violin case down, and Asmodeus and he seemed to have a rapport, because they were both laughing as Asmodeus put his own case down.

It was nice.

“Hello, Father O’Flaherty, happy Christmas,” said Jean-Pierre as they came to the door, and he took note of the little register for the fire safety, writing down all their names. “You know my boyfriend, Aimé? And this is my sister, Benedictine. She’ll be joining us for the holiday services.”

Father O’Flaherty was looking at Benedictine with a mix of suspicion and bafflement. When Jean-Pierre loudly cleared his throat, the old man straightened slightly, and forced a smile onto his wizened features, albeit a weak one.

“And where are you from?” he asked: he didn’t extend a hand to shake until Benedictine put out hers, and Jean-Pierre watched his face tighten at the strength of her grip when he let her take his.

“Haiti, Father,” said Benedictine pleasantly.

“Oh, that’s a long way away,” said O’Flaherty weakly.

Benedictine’s face lit up like the fanal on her sweatshirt, and her tone was mockingly impressed as she said, “You know where Haiti is?”

Aimé sniggered, not least because O’Flaherty appeared not to realise she was being sarcastic, and smiled a little wider. Aimé stood in line with Bene, leaning into her while Benedictine slung her arm around his shoulders.

“Your English is very good,” said O’Flaherty falteringly.

“So is yours,” said Bene. “Well done.”

Aimé did his best not to laugh, but Jean-Pierre could see his mouth splitting into a grin that he tried to hide against Benedictine’s side.

O’Flaherty’s warm smile crumpled slightly, and Jean-Pierre stifled his own laugh as he pushed gently on Aimé and Benedictine’s lower backs, pushing them into the party proper.

“She’s nice,” said O’Flaherty. “Looks more like her mother, I expect.”

“Who can say?” asked Jean-Pierre, writing in Paddy, Bedelia, and George’s names down as they came in from parking the van. “Ashley is very fond of telling us, Father, that our father gets around.”

“Ah, yes, I wasn’t sure we’d be seeing him,” said O’Flaherty. “I thought he’d have to wear a turban or something, in a house of God.”

“You’re thinking of Sikhs, Father, and they wear turbans almost all the time,” said Jean-Pierre kindly. “My brother is an atheist.”

Father O’Flaherty looked horrified in a way Jean-Pierre had never seen before, his papery skin shifting as his mouth opened, his eyes widening. He looked, uncertain, between Jean-Pierre and Asmodeus himself, who was chatting with some of Pádraic’s friends. “But he is a Muslim?”

“No, Father, he is an Egyptian,” said Jean-Pierre. “The two are not always mutually inclusive.”

“But he had to have been raised with religion, surely,” said O’Flaherty, sounding as though he were struggling.

“Against religion, maybe,” replied Jean, “but—”

“Hello, Father O’Flaherty,” said Bedelia brightly, leaning her cheek into Jean-Pierre’s shoulder as she took the fire sheet from him, although she smiled when she realised he’d already put down their names. “Daddy wants to know if you have his non-alcoholic cider, and also where to put the poitín that Jean-Pierre made.”

Father O’Flaherty’s look of constipated consternation disappeared so abruptly that it was almost magical, and Jean-Pierre smiled as he leaned back into Bedelia.

“You made poitín?” he asked, looking at Jean-Pierre, dumbfounded. “You?”

“Ouais,” said Jean-Pierre. “Paddy has it.”

Father O’Flaherty shuffled away with a spring in his arthritic step, and Jean-Pierre sighed.

“You’re a good niece,” he said, and Bedelia laughed.

“Was he very horrible to Benedictine?” she asked.

“She’s withstood worse than that, but that hardly means it doesn’t grate,” said Jean-Pierre, and the two of them split apart as Bedelia followed after O’Flaherty to her father.

Jean-Pierre liked parties like this.

They weren’t the same as parties with students, or parties when he was working, with other doctors – for different (or perhaps the same) reasons, those were always far more frantic, frenzied affairs, with alcohol flowing more freely, the music louder. Those parties happened at high speed, as though they were timed against a ticking clock before everyone has to go back to work, as though everyone was trying to outrun their real lives threatening to encroach on the night’s entertainment as soon as possible. Parties like that had the music so loud you couldn’t hear anything else, let the bass thrum through the whole of your body, plied you with alcohol, drugs, sex, in the hopes that sheer sensation would make you forget whatever was waiting for you as soon as it was over – exams, an impossible patient load, three-day on-call shifts, blood, death, and peril.

This was different.

There was an ease here, a warmth here: when people caught Jean-Pierre on the arm, it was to wish him a happy Christmas and to thank him for his work throughout the year, not to try to get him to share a shot with them (always a no) or ride their cocks (usually a yes).

It was a comfortable warmth, a sweet and happy one, and he felt very much at home as he spoke with people he’d worked with since coming earlier in the year – people he’d worked with at the food bank, a few other students, old workmates of Pádraic’s, the many friends of Colm’s.

“You look happy,” remarked Aimé as Jean-Pierre drifted over to him. Aimé was sitting at one of the stools at the children’s arts table, and as Jean-Pierre had watched, he’d been giving very serious feedback, mouth frowning and gaze very focused on the page, to a little girl of about six or seven on her drawing of Pádraic in his Father Christmas regalia. As Jean-Pierre watched, her beam grew brighter and brighter.

Aimé was still smiling as he watched her walk away, and he was smiling now as he outstretched his arms, inviting Jean-Pierre to sit in his lap, although it was at a dangerous sloping angle, what with the difference between the height of his seat and at that of his knees.

Jean-Pierre sat on the stool beside him, and when Aimé pushed him a page and some crayons Jean-Pierre took them up. He idly drew Aimé, sketching in his features, and he thought his cross-hatched style looked very silly in pink crayon, but Aimé was still smiling.

“I am,” said Jean-Pierre. They’d been here for two hours or so, and in a little while, they were going to start playing some music. “I miss this, when I’m working.”

“No reason you have to,” said Aimé, and Jean-Pierre didn’t know how to explain, so he didn’t try.

“Excuse me,” said a little girl in a bright red sari decorated with snowflakes, and Jean-Pierre smiled at her, glancing behind her to her mother. Mrs Agarwal and Bedelia were talking together, apparently teasing George who stood between them, looking somewhere between delighted and mortified – though Jean-Pierre had learned he often looked like that.

“Hi, Sushmita,” said Aimé, without hesitation, and Jean-Pierre watched the smile on his face, his lopsided grin, his mismatched eyes. There was warmth in that smile, a real and genuine warmth, much like the warmth Jean-Pierre felt in his own chest. “Want to draw something?”

“Bedelia told me about your arm,” said Sushmita quietly, and Jean-Pierre glanced down at the neat bandage still tied around Aimé’s wrist, but Aimé shrugged his shoulders, waving his hand.

“It’s nothing,” he said immediately. “Doesn’t even hurt.”

“Snowman’s really, really sorry,” said Sushmita, stepping closer. “She doesn’t mean to be horrible, you know, it’s just… She’s just a cat, you know. And she doesn’t mean to hurt anything or anybody.”

“I know,” said Aimé gently. “Trust me, I won’t hold it against her – I won’t try holding her at all, now she’s taught me a lesson.”

He smiled demonstratively, and Sushmita’s own smile was weak, but present, as she held out a little wrapped box. Jean-Pierre was fairly certain she’d wrapped it herself – it was wrapped in pink tissue paper, messily tied with a piece of ribbon, and Aimé hesitated before he took it from her.

“Just to say sorry,” said Sushmita. “Happy Christmas, Aimé!”

She jogged back to her mother, and for a long moment, Aimé was completely frozen, staring down at the little box, his lips parted.

“I think you can open it now,” said Jean-Pierre, after a few moments of this silence.

“She didn’t have to do that,” said Aimé as he undid the ribbon and opened up the box, which contained a little chocolate bar. It was only a small thing, but Aimé looked at it as though it were made of gold, and Jean-Pierre tried to fight down the burning urge to laugh at him – not for being pleased, but for seeming quite so surprised.

He felt so happy he could burst, the sensation threatening to split him to pieces.

“Do you like kids?” asked Aimé.

“Not enough to have any,” said Jean-Pierre cautiously, but Aimé shook his head.

“No, I don’t mean like that,” said Aimé. “I’d be a shitty dad, and I wouldn’t want to put in the effort. I mean other people’s kids. I guess I just… I feel weird with them, sometimes. Like I shouldn’t talk to them, like they shouldn’t talk to me. Like they’ll be worse people just for being around me.”

“Oh,” said Jean-Pierre, and leaned closer, sliding his hand over Aimé’s back. “I don’t feel like that, I just don’t know what to say to children, at times – I know they’re just small people, but their lives are inscrutable to me. I cannot rightly comprehend how they experience the world, having never had a similar experience myself, and it makes it difficult for me to relate to them, at times. One could say that of many traits, but childhood is something uniquely incomprehensible to me.”

Aimé huffed out a low laugh. “I’d give you mine for free,” he muttered, and the two of them looked up as Benedictine and Colm came over, both of them, Jean-Pierre was pleased to see, drinking some of Jean-Pierre’s poitín.

“It’s fucking not,” said Benedictine. “I’m here, I’m drinking his poitín, I’m speaking your language—”

“It’s not my fucking language,” said Colm.

“— and in English, he’s called Santa.”

“Santy!” growled Colm.

“I won’t take English critique from a man who has no brothers, and only brudders.”

“Oh, yeah, mock my accent,” retorted Colm. “You won’t take cwitique, huh? Aimé, be my back-up.”

“What on?” asked Aimé.

“He’s called Santy Claus,” said Colm.

“Who?” asked Aimé, without missing a beat. “Père Noël?”

At the sight of Colm’s expression, his wide open mouth, his furiously furrowed brows, Jean-Pierre started laughing so hard he nearly fell off of the little chair he was on, and Benedictine’s laughter joined his as Aimé got up to meet them.

“Really?” demanded Colm, pushing Aimé in the chest. He was a little rowdy with the drink, and perhaps some months ago, Aimé would have mistaken it for genuine aggression, but Jean-Pierre could see he didn’t now. Aimé was grinning as he stood head to head with Colm, eyebrows raised, his own shoulders squared in playful hostility. “In this, of all things, you decide to be French?”

“Is it better to be French or a West Brit?” asked Aimé.

“Both are terrible,” decided Colm.

“Better to be either than a culchie though, right?”

Colm tried to kick Aimé’s foot out from under him but Aimé was too fast, lunging for Colm and grabbing him around the middle, and the two of them were laughing as they fell onto the floor, rolling over one another – this laughter, Jean-Pierre suspected, was the only reason no one stepped in.

Aimé was as at home with Colm, by now, as he was with Jean-Pierre – as much as he was with Asmodeus and even Bene, too.

Benedictine was grinning at him, and Jean-Pierre elbowed her in the side before she could say a word.

*     *     *

COLM

They only stopped wrestling because Pádraic lifted them both off of the floor by the scruffs of their necks like badly behaved puppies, and Colm could see how relaxed Aimé was even like this, the both of them lifted clear off the ground and kicking out their feet.

Aimé signed something so fast that Colm couldn’t even follow it, but it made Pádraic rumble out a laugh and drop the both of them.

Colm laughed too, and Aimé said, “You never wrestled a man?”

“This is a party,” Pádraic retorted.

“We’re wearing seasonal jumpers!” said Aimé, and Pádraic cuffed him upside the head, mostly ruffling Aimé’s hair, before he hit Colm for good measure, and Colm laughed, shoving him in the side.

“We’re going to start playing soon,” Colm said to Jean-Pierre, slinging one arm around Aimé’s shoulders and the other about halfway around Pádraic’s waist, which Paddy responded to by chuckling and patting him on the head.

Jean-Pierre looked and felt so happy, so satisfied, that Colm couldn’t get over it, couldn’t get over the warmth that exuded from him. It wasn’t inherently a good sign, and he knew that, wasn’t stupid enough to think otherwise – this was an extreme of emotion just like Jean-Pierre losing his temper, Jean-Pierre in a depression, but at least this felt good.

“D’accord,” said Jean-Pierre happily, and Colm watched his face as he looked back to Aimé, the soft look in his eyes, the curve to his lips.

Colm pinched Aimé on the side of the neck, and Aimé turned to slap his arse in response, but Pádraic shoved an arm between them and pushed them apart before they could start wrestling again.

When they got to the actual singing, a mix of hymns and carols Asmodeus mostly refused to join in with, and a handful of other songs in between, most of them in Irish.

They broke at around nine, and Aimé, who hadn’t sung a note, leaned on Asmodeus’ shoulder, elbow rested on him like he was a shelf. He and Asmodeus were drinking from the same bottle of wine that De had brought with them, although they had both sampled Jean-Pierre’s poitín.

Aimé was the drunkest Colm had seen him in a long while, his cheeks plum-red with it, and Asmodeus was smiling at him indulgently as he sipped at his own drink, his accordion rested in his lap. Jean-Pierre was smiling himself as he sipped at the mocktail an actual fourteen-year-old had made for him, one that Colm knew was so saccharine with grenadine it was probably undrinkable, but Jean-Pierre didn’t seem to mind.

They were all sitting around as they pulled out the winning raffle numbers – Pádraic was pulling them out of the bowl and passing them directly to George, who was bellowing out the numbers the loudest he could as Santy’s elf, and had only read two out of five wrong so far.

“Did Father O’Flaherty know he was dyslexic when he said he should read out the tickets?” asked Jean-Pierre.

“I think he knows now,” said Asmodeus, and Colm shifted slightly, uncomfortable with that for a reason he couldn’t define – he was uncomfortable, too, with the fact that he couldn’t feel what emotions George was feeling from the crowd, and for some reason, he was also uncomfortable with the way Bedelia was standing at George’s shoulder, helping him read.

George looked completely relaxed, had been sheepish and embarrassed and had offered to get down until Pádraic and Bedelia had crowded into him on each side, and they’d slowed down a little.

That shouldn’t have made Colm uncomfortable either, but it did, and he didn’t want to think much about why.

“This Little Babe,” said Asmodeus.

“It’s fucking Christmas, De, no one wants to hear Benjamin Britten,” said Colm.

“It’s depressing,” said Jean-Pierre.

“It’s shrill,” added Colm.

“And you were worried you’d be embarrassed,” Aimé said to Asmodeus, and Asmodeus laughed, a soft and rich sound. “There aren’t any folk songs you like?”

“Do you even know any folk songs, Aimé?” asked Colm. “Do you know any songs?”

“I know songs,” snapped Aimé, swaying somewhat on his feet.

“You don’t know anything,” retorted Colm, and Aimé leaned heavily into Asmodeus, exaggeratedly cupping his hand around Asmodeus’ ear to whisper in it. Through all the noise and hubbub, it was impossible to get much of a reading on him, except that he was in a belligerently good mood.

“Oh, he’ll like that,” said Asmodeus.

He was playing his accordion as soon as the crowd began to disperse, and Colm watched, fascinated, as Aimé dropped down from the stage and grabbed George and Bedelia both by the hands, tugging them close to him. With Bedelia on one side and George on the other, the three of them formed an extreme slope of heights, but as soon as Aimé started to sing, Bedelia sang with him: “I’ve been a wild rover for many’s the year—”

Colm laughed, shifting his guitar in his lap as Jean-Pierre finished marking rosin back onto his bow, and said in an aside to Jean, “If you don’t kiss him for this, I will.”

Aimé could not, it turned out, sing well, and Colm did not think that alcohol was helping his case.

His voice, which was already hoarse and too deep for his face, a smoker’s voice no matter what Jean-Pierre had done to his mouth, crackled and dipped as he sang, and although he knew most of the words, he sometimes couldn’t carry the tune. Whenever he missed a word, Bedelia and Asmodeus would sing louder – but by the second line almost everyone else was singing, too, albeit looking baffled as to what this had to do with Christmas.

What Colm liked was the look on Aimé’s face, not just the fierce blush on his cheeks or how wide he was smiling his mismatched smile, but how bright his eyes were, how much he threw himself into every line.

He’d not sung a word all night, until now.

“He sings sometimes when he paints,” said Jean-Pierre during the bridge. “He’s good.”

“He’s horrible,” said Colm affectionately.

“I love him,” said Jean-Pierre, and Colm laughed breathlessly before joining in to sing again.

*     *     *

AIMÉ

The buzz in his ears was overwhelming, the whole of the church hall – and for that matter, the world – swaying one way and then the other with the weight of the wine in him and the weight of Jean-Pierre’s poitín too. Every inch of his skin felt hot and full with blood, and he was aware he was slurring every other line, aware of how clumsy he sounded when he talked.

For the first time in a long time, he didn’t feel like the biggest piece of shit in the world – maybe because he hadn’t been drinking just to stop feeling like that.

Asmodeus was swaying slightly himself as Aimé stumbled back to sit on the chair beside him – he’d shown Aimé a little of how he worked the accordion earlier, how squeezing its layers had to be done at the same time he pressed on different keys, but it still seemed like a mystery to him.

Asmodeus’ fingers moved smoothly, easily, his perfect fingernails polished and shining just like the keys of the instrument, and he was smiling as he sang.

Asmodeus liked Aimé – Colm liked him too, and Jean, and Benedictine, and Pádraic and George and Bedelia.

Aimé almost liked himself, tonight.

“I’ll go home to my parents, confess what I’ve done, and I’ll ask them to pardon their prodigal son—"

He and Asmodeus leaned together to sing, but Aimé faltered when he saw his father in the doorway of the church hall, and felt like the wine was burned abruptly out of his veins when he realised it wasn’t actually a hallucination.

He went back to singing so hard it made his throat burn, made him feel like his head was about to burst.

When the song was finished, his father was still there.

Luc Deverell, in an expensive suit and his camel coat, with product combed through his hair, looked out of place in the big hall. Aimé grabbed for his wine glass, but Asmodeus touched his hand and shook his head, and when Aimé began to move through the crowd to see him, frustrated with how slow his feet moved, how he stumbled like the floor was unstable.

Asmodeus followed after him, his movements impossibly smooth.

“You’re drunk,” said his father.

“It’s Christmas,” snapped Aimé. “Get the fuck out.”

“You’re religious now?” his father asked, and Aimé glanced back, but everyone was mostly gathered around the stage, and Colm and Jean-Pierre were playing again, taking everyone through a carol. “Is that what they’ve brought you to? You haven’t been at your own home in—”

“It’s not my home,” said Aimé, so full of rage he couldn’t manage it – and here his father was, as calm and easy as anything, and Aimé wanted to fucking swing for him, but he didn’t, not really – he just wanted him to go. There was something terrifying in how calm his father looked in his moment, his lips loosely pursed, his gaze focused on Aimé’s face.

There was no pretence of fear this time: the old man was cool, his lips frowning slightly, his stare so intent that it was unavoidable. Luc Deverell’s eyes, like his son’s, were different colours, the one that wasn’t a pale brown a glassy green instead.

“You’re leaving me with little choice, Aimé,” said his father, slowly, deliberately. It was a chilling voice, brittle with a barely suppressed rage, and Aimé felt some of his organs cringe inside him, feeling as though they were rushing to the back of his rib cage just to get away from it.

It was a voice Aimé had spent his childhood fleeing the room to avoid hearing – it was the voice he used with business rivals and subordinates; it was the voice that his father had used when telling him he wouldn’t be going to his grandmother’s funeral; it was the voice he used when telling Aimé he would be completing his degree.

It was the voice he’d used when first addressing Aimé, waking up after they’d stitched his wrists together, and said, “Do you enjoy humiliating me?”

Aimé’s mouth wouldn’t move, his tongue frozen in the bed of his mouth, because he was too fucking drunk for this, and all his good cheer had been replaced with a sudden, overwhelming terror.

“We don’t want to do this, your mother and I,” his father said. “We love you – all we want is for you to come home to us, let us look after you, let us stop you from continuing in this…” He looked over Aimé’s head at the bustle in the room, at everyone singing, at Jean-Pierre with his fiddle in hand. “… downward spiral. You think I won’t cut you off? Why should we pay for this degeneracy of yours? Why should we pay for you to drink yourself to death in that little flat? Why—”

“Should Aimé take this, Mr Deverell,” said Asmodeus smoothly, stepping forward and putting his hand on Aimé’s shoulder, so that without even meaning to Aimé relaxed slightly, “to be your notice of eviction?”

“Mr Nur-Badr,” said Aimé’s father, and the steely, polite nastiness Aimé was used to seeing on his face faltered slightly in the face of Asmodeus’ height, his expression, his ease of speaking. “This is really none of your—”

“Of course it’s my business, Mr Deverell,” purred Asmodeus, squeezing Aimé’s shoulder. “My brother loves Aimé very much – we all do. And if his birth family won’t advocate on his behalf, we’re happy to do so ourselves.”

Aimé felt like crying, suddenly, or maybe being sick. Maybe both. Maybe screaming, too. He was a coward, and he knew it: it was why his mouth wouldn’t work now, why he had to let his boyfriend’s big brother do his fucking talking for him, why he couldn’t string two words together.

“Aimé will be removed from the premises you’ve graciously been allowing him a tenancy to within twenty-eight days,” said Asmodeus politely, warmly, easily.

“To move in with you people?” demanded Deverell.

“You people?” Asmodeus repeated.

His voice was abruptly so cold that even Aimé shivered, and he watched his father recoil.

“Mr Deverell,” said Asmodeus softly, “I would remind you that I am one of the most prominent counsellors within the diplomatic hierarchy of the Celestial Legation for Angels, Seraphim, Cherubim, Ophanim, and Powers, and I will be addressed, at all times, with the respect I am due as an ambassador-at-large.” He was doing it, that impossible rumble that came from deep within his chest, the magical power in his voice that made Aimé feel like crumpling to the floor, and at this moment in time, he was so drunk he might actually do so.

“And with all due respect, Mr Nur-Badr,” his father said, more loudly, Aimé thought, than he meant to, because his voice was faltering, “this is a personal matter between myself and my son—”

“Your son has made his choice, Mr Deverell,” said Asmodeus, so coldly it was like ice, but his hand was warm, and Aimé tried his best to focus on it, tried to imagine it was a fucking anchor keeping him floating away. “You will have to make peace with the fact that he did not choose you. You may send him your notice of eviction in writing – I believe, due to the length of his stay, that twenty-eight days is far from his legal entitlement of notice, but in this matter we are more than willing to—”

It didn’t feel real as his father turned on his heel and walked away, and Aimé stared after him, mouth fallen open.

His skin felt cold.

“Legal speak usually works,” said Asmodeus softly. “Are you going to be sick?”

“Uh huh,” said Aimé woodenly, and Asmodeus picked up a collection bucket they’d been using for the raffle, pouring its contents into a second in one smooth movement before pushing the bucket against Aimé’s chest.

It wasn’t a second too soon.