JEAN-PIERRE

When Jean-Pierre woke up that morning, it was not to his brother’s hoodie under his nose, Colm’s skin made shiny and slick with burns and scarring, nor to the scent of Colm himself – earth and fertiliser and gunpowder – but to Aimé.

Aimé was sprawled on his back, as he always was, and Jean-Pierre had slept the night on top of him, his cheek rested on the comfortable pillow of Aimé’s breast, touching Aimé’s thickly-haired, bare skin, and breathing in the scent of Aimé, although it lacked in its usual consistency – he smelled of books and wine, as ever, but the paint was missing from him.

“Do we have to get up?” Aimé asked, miserably, as Jean-Pierre’s alarm sounded, and Jean-Pierre laughed into his chest, reaching over and pressing the button for his alarm to stop.

“I haven’t been to my lectures this week,” Jean-Pierre said lowly, feeling a little ashamed, and he rested his chin on Aimé’s sternum, meeting Aimé’s gaze as Aimé looked down at him, reaching to stroke one of his hands over Jean’s cheek. Jean-Pierre leaned into it, encouraged Aimé to scratch lightly over the edge of his jaw. It tickled, but it wasn’t unpleasant, and Jean-Pierre sighed at the familiarity of the touch, of Aimé’s hand, of Aimé’s body beneath him.

It was a relief beyond measure, that he had come back. The fact of it hadn’t quite sunk into him, just yet, and he felt he would burst into tears with the sheer immensity of his relief, if only it would truly burst within him, and cease to feel as though it were growing ever larger in his breast, a balloon still to burst with the pressure.

Aimé had spent the week in Grenoble, he said – he had gotten the first flight he could to France, and upon landing in Grenoble, Asmodeus had been there.

Asmodeus could do things like that, from time to time – not always, Jean-Pierre knew, because as little as he knew of it, he knew Asmodeus’ sense of premonition was often vaguer than one might assume, and he didn’t believe, if Asmodeus truly anticipated everything, that Jean-Pierre would have spent more than three days beneath Camelot’s depths, those decades past.

He still remembered the blaze of fury in Asmodeus’ eyes as he had torn Jean-Pierre’s cell door from its hinges, the way he had cracked the very walls of the cellar jail so that half of it crumbled in their wake, the wrath that radiated from him like heat from a sun—

Of course, this was not the Asmodeus that Aimé had spent his week with.

Aimé had brought Jean-Pierre gifts, and had he proffered them immediately, perhaps Jean-Pierre might have been offended, that he should bring paltry objects to placate him, but he hadn’t remembered them out on his bike until nearly ten o’clock, and then rushed out to bring them inside: a large bag of walnuts for Jean-Pierre, and a jar of walnuts in honey, too, and a bottle of chartreuse for Colm.

It had been sweet, the way he’d awkwardly set the walnuts out on the coffee table, and then, almost shy about it, held the bottle of liqueur out for Jean-Pierre’s brother to take.

Colm had grinned, had clapped Aimé on the shoulder, and Jean-Pierre had been pleased, he had been.

He was even more pleased when Aimé had said, just before he had fallen asleep, “De wanted to go to the Musée de Grenoble, but I told him no. Couldn’t stand the thought of walking around it without you making your bitchy little comments beside me.”

Jean-Pierre had thought his heart would bloom like flowers, hearing that, and he had hidden his giddy giggle into Aimé’s neck, wrapping himself around the artist more entirely.

Now, Aimé had worked both hands into Jean-Pierre’s hair, was gently massaging his scalp on both sides, pressing his fingers against his scalp and making small, pleasant movements that made Jean-Pierre sigh.

“Hey, Jean,” Aimé said.

“Mm?”

“What are you going to get De for Christmas?”

“Ah, fuck, Aimé,” said Jean-Pierre. “I don’t know.”

He was surprised, how easy it was, to return to his lectures. None of his classmates made much of a fuss, because he hadn’t truly been as involved in student culture as he ordinarily was, in his first term returning to university, and he knew that he would change that, in the new year, and although a few of his lecturers asked after his health, most of them – of course – had scarcely noticed his absence.

The days passed, one by one, and he found himself inwardly shaky, a little uncertain of himself, but every time Aimé slunk into one of his afternoon lectures and settled into the seat beside him, read his book while Jean-Pierre listened to the lecture, or met Jean-Pierre before he went to ceol night with Colm, it warmed him from the very base of himself.

Aimé himself, it seemed to Jean-Pierre, was different: he shone, now, with a different light. He walked straighter, his shoulders more squared, and while he still sauntered – Jean-Pierre believed an Aimé who did not move with some visible personality would be an Aimé no longer – he did so now with what seemed to Jean-Pierre to be a distinct confidence, and no longer with shoulders slouched, his arms drawn into himself.

He did not come to Mass, of course – again, Jean-Pierre felt that the day Aimé came willingly to Mass might be the day the world stopped spinning – but he did seem—

He seemed more interested, Jean-Pierre supposed, more invested, in Jean-Pierre’s life, and Colm’s.

On a Friday evening, Aimé accompanied Colm and Jean-Pierre to a food bank, and Aimé helped Colm as he unpacked and sorted the vegetables from his work, and then set to assisting him in packing new food crates, too. When first Aimé had come to the food bank with them, he had been nervous of interacting with anyone at all, it seemed to Jean-Pierre, and he had scarcely said a word, but now, when people greeted him by name – they knew him as the laconic extension of Colm and Jean-Pierre, if not in his own right – he looked up, and smiled his strange, lopsided smile, and greeted them in turn.

People were surprised, but not displeased.

“Starting the, hm, gifts already, are you?” asked a familiar, doddering voice to his left, and Jean-Pierre looked up to see Father O’Flaherty, giving him a small smile before looking back to his own work, neatly wrapping gifts with surgical precision.

“It is best to start these things earlier than later for the charity grotto, Father,” Jean-Pierre said pleasantly, and picked another toy from the pile to begin wrapping. “Pádraic tells me you have asked him to be Father Christmas this year.”

“We ask him every year,” said the old priest, giving a wave of one ancient, papery hand. “He’s our Gaeilgeoir Santy. Doesn’t say much, of course, but I think that only helps, hm, to sell it.”

Jean-Pierre laughed softly, and for a moment, the two of them stood in the silence together, Jean-Pierre’s hands moving rapidly to slip each parcel into coloured wrapping paper, to tape it in three places, and then to label it in marker.

Father O’Flaherty had made no mention, since he had departed, of Father Byrne’s leaving the priesthood, except for a quick, hurried word at Mass, and the announcement that Father Holmes, an exceedingly short man with a tremendously bristly head, would be assisting the congregation in his stead.

This was not surprising, and Jean-Pierre took no offence in the silence.

“You do that very fast,” said Father O’Flaherty lowly, after it grew too much for him.

“I would hope I have a surgeon’s hands, Father,” Jean-Pierre said good-naturedly, and the old man hummed a vaguely approving noise, folding his ancient hands over his belly.

“That’s what you’ll be, then? A surgeon?”

“Perhaps,” Jean-Pierre said, with a delicate shrug of his shoulders, and then truthfully added, “I have not yet decided. I worked on ambulances in Texas – I would work in emergency services again, I think.”

He ordinarily did.

He had never lasted long, working as a general practitioner or something similar – it wasn’t that he enjoyed the constant crisis of emergency centres, because truly, things moved very fast, and often, moved so fast that he could not assist as he would like, but merely that he felt as though his mind dulled, working in slower positions of healthcare. Without the quick pace, the pressure, his work suffered, and his mind wandered – he was a better doctor, with the weight of constant demand upon his shoulders…

But then, perhaps this was why he so needed a break every few decades, and returned himself to school.

“Colm said you were a radio man, in Texas,” said Father O’Flaherty, and Jean-Pierre felt himself turn pink.

“That was some years ago, Father,” Jean-Pierre said softly, “and but a silly endeavour I pursued on Sunday evenings. A community bulletin – I would read out local events, poems and letters, play music from local bands. It was part of a small community station, that was all. A quaint thing.”

It had only been for a few years that he’d been doing it, but he had enjoyed it immensely – his slot had been between six and eight on Sunday nights, and occasionally he would assist in other parts of the station, when time had allowed him. He’d liked the rhythm of the station, liked speaking with local people, and laughing with the other hosts, many of whom had been hippies, students, and the like.

“It is not something I would replicate for myself,” Jean-Pierre said softly. “I did it because I loved the people more than radio itself. You understand?”

“Hrm,” said Father O’Flaherty, furrowing his bushy eyebrows, which could have meant yes or no.

“This one ready to go into the back?” asked Aimé as he came over, pointing to a full sack of wrapped presents, and Jean-Pierre smiled.

“Father,” Jean-Pierre said sweetly, “this is my partner, Aimé. Aimé, this is Father O’Flaherty.”

The look on the priest’s face was an amusing one.

First, without taking his gaze off of Jean-Pierre, his eyes widened slightly, his lips shifting into a tighter expression, and his head tilted ever so slightly to the side as though to hear him better – next, he turned his head very slowly to Aimé, and he looked at him critically.

His watery eyes looked back to Jean-Pierre, and then back to Aimé.

In some way, Jean-Pierre supposed, one or both of them did not measure against the priest’s expected idea of a homosexual, but to the priest’s credit, he gave Aimé a smile – albeit, a slightly forced one – and slowly proffered his hand.

Before, meeting people at Jean-Pierre’s introduction, Aimé would often keep his eyes low and nod his head, mumble a word of greeting, hurriedly shake a hand and hurry away again. With Doros and Aetos, certainly, he had been somewhat more confident, but their hands had each been busy with Jean-Pierre by the time Jean made the relevant introductions.

His shoulders still back, his head up, Aimé took the priest’s hand, and met his gaze directly.

“Father O’Flaherty, I guess,” he said, clearly, with no mumble whatsoever. “Jean says you pronounce the church Latin almost correctly.”

This was so disarming, what with the way Aimé and Father O’Flaherty both laughed, although the priest did it with a sort of unpleasant glint in his eye which meant he would be filing away this slight for future reference, that Jean-Pierre felt his cheeks burn brightly pink, and shamed, he looked down at his work.

“But fond jibes, Father, I assure you,” Jean-Pierre said, and the priest chuckled, drawing his hand back.

There was approval in the way he looked at Aimé, though, even as he said, pointedly, “I never see you at Mass.”

“You wouldn’t,” Aimé said. “I don’t go.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not religious, Father.”

“Well, that’s no good reason,” said Father O’Flaherty sternly, and as Aimé turned to pick up the bag of presents, he gave Jean-Pierre a startlingly – quite delightfully – mischievous grin.

“You have gotten me into trouble,” said Jean-Pierre in an undertone as Aimé leaned toward him. “He will not forget that Latin comment.”

“Turnabout’s fair play, I heard,” Aimé murmured against his lips, and pecked him on the mouth. Jean-Pierre laughed breathlessly, despite himself, and he couldn’t help the way he watched after Aimé as he sauntered away, his lips alive with the ghost of his lips.

“Study Latin at school, did you?” asked Father O’Flaherty once he was out of earshot, and Jean-Pierre felt his lips twist as he tried to keep from smiling, even as he returned to his work.

“Yes, Father.”

“Hrm,” said the priest.

*     *     *

COLM

“Widen your stance,” said Colm. “We’re not boxing right now, Aimé – you keep your centre of balance in tight like that and you’re just going to make it easier to grapple you.”

“We are in the boxing ring,” Aimé pointed out, but it was with a kind of sheepish, almost-smile, and he shifted himself on his feet, spreading his knees a little farther apart and widening his stance. Colm stared at his hands for a second, and after a beat of not seeming to notice, Aimé seemed to twig, and he loosened his clenched fists.

It had been a weird few weeks.

Jean-Pierre, for the most part, had dialled himself back to his usual level of insanity – he was sometimes nasty, always spoilt, and often had a hot temper, but Colm was no longer woken every night by Jean-Pierre screaming at the top of his lungs, he hadn’t broken anything in weeks, and most miraculously of all, Colm had been permitted to spend every night alone in his own bed without Jean-Pierre crawling under the covers with him.

Colm didn’t mind sharing a bed with a brother from time to time, but when it was every night, and that brother clung to you like a limpet and cried in his sleep if you let him go, it got to be a little much.

He was better now, though – if anything, Colm actually thought he was calmer than he had been before Aimé had left. He still had his moments of panic, but Aimé seemed rosier to him, now, or more solid – more real. More of a commitment.

Aimé’s feelings toward Jean-Pierre had certainly became more solid, but not in the way they had been – Jean-Pierre wasn’t an obsession, anymore, a singular thought, but a part of the background. Aimé thought of Jean-Pierre the same way that he did his painting, his bike, his ugly beard: he was a fact of life.

At least he’d seriously considered leaving. It was more than most of them did.

It was early afternoon, and Jean-Pierre was still in lectures for another few hours: Aimé had come to the gym just as George was leaving, and he and Colm were bound to spend a while wrestling together before they showered and then drove via the university to pick Jean up.

There was a pleasant rhythm in it, Colm thought, and Aimé wasn’t quite as shy as he used to be about spending time with Colm, wasn’t as nervous about it. He’d spent his week in Grenoble with Asmodeus, and Colm imagined that had helped – Aimé had shifted his moorings, shifted his foundations, in a way, and as much as Colm wished for his own sake he hadn’t shifted them for Jean-Pierre’s sake, it wasn’t as though Jean was the only part of it.

When Aimé had come into the gym and seen George and Colm still in the pool, George struggling – as he would be struggling for a while – to breathe around his strokes rather than swallowing a mouthful of pool water every minute or so, he’d laughed a little, but it hadn’t been nasty, and he’d helped George out of the pool and passed him his towel from the bench, told him he’d get the hang of it soon.

And if Aimé was one of the family—

Well.

None of Jean-Pierre’s boyfriends had ever been that before. They’d always been separate, apart from the rest – Manolis, Jean, and Colm had spent a good deal of time together, but only because they were fighting the same battles, and the others that Colm had known, he’d never been close with. Spent time with from time to time, sure, even lived with, when Jean-Pierre was there, but—

This, this was different.

Aimé had just spent a week with De, just the two of them, and here he was now, in the ring with Colm, no Jean in sight. Colm liked it. He liked Aimé, he really did, no matter that he was a rich cunt with no head on him.

It was a family dinner at Pádraic and Bedelia’s tonight, and Aimé had been trying not to think about it – whenever he did, he got nervous. Colm didn’t know what it was about Pádraic that made him that way – they’d only met once or twice in passing, from what Colm knew, and given that Pádraic was silent most of the time, and Aimé was often quiet with new people, spoke only when spoken to, he was fairly certain more than two words had never passed between them.

Aimé wouldn’t dwell enough on the anxiety for Colm to skim any more out of it, and Colm knew it’d creep him out if he asked.

When Colm lunged, he feinted to the left, and Aimé didn’t fall for it, but as he pivoted the other way he tightened up his stance again to brace himself for a blow, instinct tugging his forearms up to guard his front. That made it more than easy for Colm to wrap his arms around him and slam him to the ground.

Aimé landed on the meat of his shoulders and twisted up in a jack knife, kneeing Colm somewhere in the back vicinity of his kidneys and making him grunt before he caught Colm in a headlock and rolled them over, but it was too reliant on his elbows and Colm managed to pull free.

Aimé chopped Colm in the side of the throat, open-handed enough that it couldn’t be called a punch, but Colm already had his legs wrapped around Aimé’s, pinning them under his, and before Aimé could move again Colm slammed him down on his back, both forearms braced against Aimé’s throat so that Aimé couldn’t struggle free.

Breathing heavy, Aimé stared up at him for a second, and then dropped his head back onto the mat.

“Fuck,” he hissed.

“Better than before,” Colm said, leaning back and releasing his hold on Aimé’s thighs, rolling to the side.

“I don’t fucking mean to keep doing that,” Aimé muttered, getting to his feet, and he offered his hand to Colm, pulling him up off of the ring’s floor again.

“It’s muscle memory,” Colm said, shrugging his shoulders. “You’re used to boxing: when you anticipate a blow, you tighten up and you guard yourself.”

“I didn’t with Jean when I came back from Grenoble.”

“Well, Jean wasn’t starting from five feet away from you in a boxing ring,” Colm pointed out, and Aimé huffed out an almost laugh, resting his hands on his hips and leaning back on his heels as he inhaled. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Why’d I come back?”

“No, I know why you came back,” Colm said. “’Cause you’re a fucking moron.”

Aimé laughed, leaning back against the ropes, balancing himself on his heels with his arms crossed over his chest. He was used to boxing ropes, Colm could see, knew where they gave and where they didn’t – one of the stands had been broken, but Colm had fixed that right up after the first time he and Aimé had gotten into the ring. Colm couldn’t stand broken equipment.

“Yeah,” Aimé said lowly. “Yeah, that’s true enough.”

“What I want to know,” said Colm, “is if you thought about it.”

“Yeah, I thought about it,” Aimé said. “Thought about it the whole fucking time. What kinda question is that?”

“No, son,” Colm said. “I mean, did you actually think about it – are you okay with Jean-Pierre killing people? Killing Rupert? You okay with him killing people now? Me killing people? You okay with explosives, barricades, munitions? You okay with sticking around and maybe being put in a position where you have to join in with that some day? Or did you just think about Jean’s cunt and holding his fucking hand and decide you just missed him so much you just had to come back?”

For a long moment, Aimé was completely frozen, his eyes wide – albeit one eye wider than the other – as he stared at Colm, his mouth ajar as if he was about to say something in response. He closed his mouth. His brow furrowed a little.

He said, at length, “Fuck you.”

Colm laughed.

“Let’s take a break from wrestling,” he said after a second, climbing through the ropes and dropping onto the floor, dragging his satchel closer. “I said I’d teach you to throw knives, right?”

“Seriously?” Aimé asked.

Colm wondered if he should feel guilty as he pulled a set of throwing knives out of his bag. As Aimé climbed out of the ring, the only emotions that radiated from him were curiosity, interest, anticipation – it was important, Colm thought, that Aimé knew how to fight, if only so he could defend himself if something went awry, but it really didn’t seem like it had sunk in just yet, that Colm and Jean were teaching him anything because he had to know it if he wanted to stick around.

Well.

Maybe he didn’t have to – Bui couldn’t throw a rolled up ball of parchment, let alone a punch, and Farhad had never known a thing about it, but… Colm wasn’t stupid. He could see which way the wind was blowing on this one.

“This is Jean’s spare set,” Colm said, rolling out the leather carry case over his lap, and Aimé dropped into a crouch beside him, tugging out one of the blades by the hilt and dropping it into his palm. It must have been instinctive, the way he shifted his hand, testing the weight, but Colm watched his face, the concentration there.

“They’re heavier than I thought,” he murmured. “Stainless steel?”

“Good,” Colm said. “Yeah, that’s right. These are pretty new, Jean-Pierre got them for Christmas a few years back – they’re pretty good, a little heavy for a beginner, maybe, but you have the strength to carry it off. They have to be heavy enough that once you have force put behind them they can carry that momentum forward and actually do some damage – lighter knives you don’t need to be too strong to use, but they tend to wobble when you let them fly, and I can’t fucking stand that. Jean-Pierre can throw heavier knives, but he does prefer lighter ones – his main set are Damascus steel, an antique set De got for him, and they feel a lot lighter in the hand than they do once you throw them. Enchanted.”

“Throwing knives is more Jean-Pierre’s thing than yours, I guess?” Aimé asked, and he asked it with a sort of small smile – Colm expected to feel arousal coming off him, but instead, there was a sense of affection, a sense of solidity, satisfaction. He was learning the differences between Colm and Jean – he liked that.

Colm felt himself smile slightly, and he reached out, lightly shoving Aimé in the side of the head and making him rock on his crouching heels, huffing out a laugh.

“Yeah,” Colm said. “But I’m good enough – I taught my daughter, Heidemarie, when she was young, and she got to be a lot better than me at it, by the time she was your age.”

Aimé inhaled slowly, and then said, “Yeah, De mentioned that. That you had to stop her from joining the circus.”

Colm felt himself laugh harder now as he stood to his feet, holding the leather wallet against his chest as he moved across the room, flipping over the targets on the back wall. This room wasn’t much used, but he knew that some of the big lads played at throwing axes from time to time, and that meant they had a good, hard surface to work from, although the circular targets weren’t as good as man-shaped ones.

“Yeah, she used to threaten from time to time,” Colm said, “if she didn’t get her way, when she wanted to come with me on a job. De would babysit sometimes, but I think that was worse than the fucking circus, the things he’d teach her. You know my little girl could hustle cards by the time she was thirteen?”

Aimé grinned. “De taught her that?”

“Yeah, Asmodeus is a fucking card shark – there’s not a game he can’t beat you at. He won’t gamble himself, he’s got this thing about gambling, but if you see him playing a card game and someone else wins, it’s not because he couldn’t have if he wanted to.”

Colm drew a knife from the bag, tossing it in his hand, feeling it drop into his palm, and he squeezed on the corded hilt, feeling the rungs carved into it press into his palm. There was a slight ache in his chest, thinking of Heidemarie – he’d seen her in the new year, of course, but somehow, he still expected to come to her and see his little girl in her braids and polished shoes again, not an old woman in her own right, who had to take a little while to get out of her chair to hug him.

She could barely hold a knife or a card these days, with the arthritis.

“It, uh, it must be hard,” Aimé said in the silence, and Colm glanced at him. “You, you staying young, and her getting older.”

Colm held his surprise for a second, tilting his head slightly as he watched Aimé. It was a kind thing to say, thoughtful, compassionate – it wasn’t what he’d come to expect of Aimé.

“Yeah,” he said lowly, and then he turned to face the wall targets, gesturing for Aimé to come into line with him. “Don’t worry about getting it right the first time. You’re left-handed like Jean, right?”

“Yeah,” Aimé said, and he let Colm adjust his pose, left foot forward, shoulders back, form relaxed.

“Hold it by the blade, just like that, yeah, like you’re holding a hammer. You want a nice, clean arc. And, Aimé?”

“Yeah?”

“You drop one of these on your foot, we tell Jean I wasn’t in the room and that you were practising on your own. Got it?”

Aimé turned to look at Colm, and then laughed, shaking his head as he turned back to the target. “I’ll try the fuck not to do that,” Aimé said, copied Colm’s demonstration as he threw.

*     *     *

AIMÉ

“You cut yourself?” Jean-Pierre asked as he got into the car, and Aimé didn’t try to argue, just obediently put his hand back between the seats so that Jean-Pierre could loosen the bandage over his palm and tug back to the gauze so that he could examine the nick on the side of his palm.

“I tried to throw a knife right-handed,” Aimé muttered, keeping his gaze on the road as Colm swore under his breath at the winding roads on the campus. “Would you put your fucking seat belt on?”

“Colm, you borrow Aimé and return him damaged?” Jean-Pierre demanded.

“He was taking a piss and I was messing around,” Aimé said loyally, and Colm laughed under his breath even as Jean-Pierre leaned back in the middle seat, clipping his belt over his chest.

“Did you hit the target?” Jean-Pierre asked.

“With my left hand, mostly,” Aimé said. “I kept hitting the target really high, though, or getting the angle wrong so it’d slide down and hit the floor.”

“He did well,” Colm said. “Wouldn’t let him touch your good knives any time soon, though, he’d be fucking lethal with them.”

“Thanks,” Aimé said, and he looked at Jean-Pierre’s sweet smile in the rear-view mirror, the way he giggled, his hand over his mouth. A pleasant warmth settled into his chest, and it only dissipated slightly when Colm reached across to hit him in the chest. Rubbing his breast and sparing a moment to give Colm an irritated look, he looked back at Jean. “How was class?”

“Good,” Jean-Pierre murmured. “Some of my classmates are squeamish about our cadavers.”

“Well, most people are, Jean.”

“Not doctors.”

“They’re not doctors yet,” Aimé said. “Most of them are doing this for the first time. They’re not on round seven.”

Jean-Pierre grinned, leaning back in his seat and looking out the window. “What is Bedelia cooking?”

“Does it matter?” Colm asked. “You, George, and Pádraic are going to be eating a fruit platter.”

“I cannot be curious?”

“She made chapati and a…” Aimé squinted down at his phone, which was a shitty, ancient brick of a thing that Colm had gotten hold of for him when Aimé had said he wanted something without GPS, “bhindi masala, and uh, some fried cauliflower, and mushrooms, and some baked pumpkin.”

“Bhindi masala,” Colm repeated, mocking Aimé’s accent.

“Well, how the fuck would you say it?”

“Bhindi masala.”

“That’s the fucking same!”

Colm kept his gaze on the road, shaking his head. “No, it’s not.”

Aimé scoffed, and when Jean-Pierre tried to lean right forward between the seats to turn the radio on, Aimé slapped him on the wrist and turned it on for him.

Pádraic and Bedelia lived in a fairly large cottage a little way out from the city proper, and Aimé was vaguely aware as Colm drove that they weren’t too far off from Colm’s allotment.

It was the sort of ancient old building with a thatched roof that looked four seconds away from crumbling at any moment, and Aimé didn’t think he’d ever actually been inside one – he’d just seen them in the background while flicking past documentaries on TG4. Built of mismatched grey brick, some of them covered in moss, it had a door painted bright yellow, and white painted bricks around the thin, fragile-looking windowpanes. It had been added onto through the years, Aimé could see – the main bulk of the building was two storeys, although the thatch came all the way down and he knew that the second storey likely had a sloped ceiling, and then smaller, one-sided sections adjoined on either side, built of the same brick.

Colm parked the car on a slope beside Bedelia’s motorbike, and as they climbed out, Aimé saw that Pádraic and Bedelia’s yard, which was a wide, rectangular space walled in by the same grey brick the house had been made of, with a huge farmer’s gate and a goddamn stile instead of a gate, was also alive with fruit and vegetables. They didn’t have a polytunnel or a greenhouse like Colm, but Aimé recognised a metal enchanted framework that ran on one side, the sort of thing some people grew enchanted wines with, and underneath this metal cross work were cucumbers and tomatoes. Colm’s gardens always had a sort of military regiment to them, with picture-perfect rows and labels, the same as he kept the pantry and the armoury, but in Bedelia and Pádraic’s garden, all the vegetables grew over and in between each other, and even in November, the messy, lopsided rows of planting were a motley spread of different coloured leaves.

A grey path built of huge, square slabs cut through the centre of all this wonder, leading up to the house, and it was this path that Jean-Pierre walked up to keep from getting his boots muddy, gracefully climbing over the gate.

“Concrete doesn’t exactly match the rest,” Aimé said.

“Wheelchair access,” Colm explained as he pulled the boot open, and Aimé took two plates from Colm, holding them against his chest as Colm pulled a crate of dragon fruit and a few other cactus fruits Aimé didn’t know the name of out, balancing it on his hip. “He added it in when Bedelia was born and he swapped jobs. You alright with them?”

“Yeah,” Aimé said, and as Colm headed up the path, Aimé pulled the boot closed for him.

Colm opened the gate for Aimé to let him through, and as Aimé walked up the path, he saw that Jean-Pierre had gotten distracted between the gate and the cottage’s door knocker: he was making loud cooing noises as he crouched in the mud, boots be damned, to let Pádraic and Bedelia’s chickens come up and nestle in his arms.

“Colm—” Jean-Pierre said as they came up the path.

“No,” Colm said loudly. “You complain about the noise and you never clean the coop.”

“What about—”

“You won’t walk it.”

Aimé laughed, trying to muffle it against his shoulder as he went ahead of Colm onto the doorstep, reaching up to ring the doorbell with his elbow, awkwardly shoving the knot in the rope so that it rang.

Bouncing off the stone-built porch’s hard walls, it was painfully loud.

“He took it from the abbey,” Colm supplied as explanation, and Aimé grunted an acknowledgement.

The door opened, and Aimé was met with the gangling figure of George, whose hair was wet around his face, and who had lipstick on his jaw. His clothes were ruffled and his lips were pink from a mix of mild bruising and the lipstick, but when he saw Colm and Aimé, his eyes widened, and he turned back to look with his jaw agape at the clock beside the stairs.

“Oh,” he said, “you’re here. Let me take those plates—”

“No, it’s okay, George,” Aimé said, leaning away from the angel to stop him from trying to take them – even before Colm had advised him in no uncertain terms not to let George hold anything fragile, he’d seen Colm drop enough plates himself – “Just point me in the right direction, and I’ll hand them off.”

“Uh, kitchen’s through here,” George said, stumbling on the rug but managing not to fall down (just) as Aimé stepped inside, and Aimé stepped through the archway, surprised at the extreme heat of the cottage once you were inside.

The cottage had high ceilings – they had to, to accommodate Pádraic at all – and the archways were tall, too, so that Pádraic didn’t have to duck his head as he went through them, Aimé expected.

“Bedelia,” Aimé greeted cheerfully.

“Hi, Aimé,” Bedelia said, leaning over the wood table that served as countertop – most of the cupboards in the little kitchen were floor-to-ceiling, and they didn’t have the built countertops most kitchens had – to kiss Aimé on the cheeks.

“You didn’t leave lipstick on me, did you?” Aimé asked as he put the apple pie and the strawberry tart Colm had baked on the table.

“No,” said Bedelia, and Aimé grinned at her, at the way her dress was creased underneath her just-put-on apron. She looked past him to the hall. “Oh no,” she said, and rushed past to grab George.

“Leave those boots in the hall!” he heard Colm bark from the hall.

“They’re not even that mud—”

“They fucking are.”

Grinning to himself, Aimé inhaled, taking in the scents that filled the kitchen and the house – from the huge, cast iron aga, which Aimé was fairly certain must have been a few centuries old, he could smell pumpkin and okra, a variety of spices, and the fresh, wheaty smell of the chapati bread.

Reaching over the table, he pulled a piece of candied orange peel out of the bowl Bedelia had set aside for the winged angels’ dessert, and chewed it as he went back to the hall.

Colm, gesticulating wildly, and Jean-Pierre, holding his boots in his hand, had sequed into Irish now, and Aimé didn’t even try to cut in as he stepped into the main room in the cottage, which had another large, wooden table and a variety of mismatched chairs pulled around it, as well as a roaring fire.

Bedelia and George must have gone upstairs, because it was just Pádraic in the room, laying plates on each setting.

He’d met Pádraic, or at least had him pointed out to him, but he’d never actually talked to the old man, and he steeled himself for a second, squeezing his hands into fists before he brought them up in front of his chest.

“Hi, Pádraic,” he said, and Pádraic glanced up at him as he moved his hands. “Can… I… help?”

Pádraic looked at him for a second, but then he smiled. In the light, which mostly came from the fire, because the lights on the ceiling were dimmed a little, his dark brown skin seemed to glow warm from underneath, like there were rubies in his cheeks, and he set down the last plate before demonstrating the sign that Aimé had apparently just fucked up, one wrist over the other, but with his hands perpendicular to the ceiling instead of parallel.

Help, he demonstrated. When he signed next, he did it slowly, and Aimé watched him closely. Soon, when we eat. Now, relax. Aimé smiled, gave a slight nod of his head, and Pádraic signed, Colm and Jean are fighting?

“Yeah,” Aimé said, shrugging his shoulders and leaning his elbows on the comfortable, wing-backed armchair that had been tugged to the head of the table. “Colm’s telling Jean not to track mud into the house, but Jean’s only being a bitch because Colm won’t let him have chickens.”

Pádraic laughed, nodding his head as he went to the fire and used a cloth to pull the kettle from over the flame. He nodded his head to one of the shelves, and Aimé pulled down two mugs, bringing them over and setting them on the table so that Pádraic could pour tea.

What happened? Pádraic asked, gesturing to Aimé’s bandaged hand.

“Uh, Colm is teaching me to throw knives,” Aimé said.

Pádraic snorted.

Although – because – none of the furniture matched, the room was impossibly comfortable.   

Around the fireplace was a thick, semi-circular rug, and Aimé could see the impressions in it where the big armchair and one of the wooden chairs had been pulled away from it to put around the table instead. Still resting beside the fire was a basket full of knitting, a few stacked up magazines, and a set of stokers in a tin holder. Beside the fire, you could see through the window into the backyard, and this one, longer and so full of trees and overgrown bushes it was like a miniature orchard, had a trampoline at the end of it.

Proudly displayed in the cabinets, Aimé saw the evidence of a man exceptionally proud of his daughter: Bedelia’s smile shone out of a dozen framed photographs in between little trophies and plaques and framed pieces of embroidery. On the shelves were various pieces of Catholic ephemera – little icons and triptychs of different saints, some of whom Aimé wasn’t sure of the name of – and framed on the walls were more photographs, although these weren’t all of Pádraic’s daughter.

Most of them were in black and white, or in sepia, but Aimé could tell they’d been carefully taken care of. Pádraic was in some of the photos, but there weren’t any of him on his own – he was always there as part of a group of people in a row, especially when they were wearing what looked to Aimé to be old-fashioned nurses’ uniforms, or of Pádraic with children, holding them on his shoulders.

Aimé grinned at one photograph of Pádraic in the seat of a horse and cart, dressed up in a Santa suit, wearing a thick, white beard and big boots and glasses, and in the cart were a dozen kids, all of them laughing. It was newer than some of the other photos – it was from the fifties or sixties, Aimé thought, or around that time, but he wasn’t any judge.

“Tea,” Pádraic rumbled in a voice like distant thunder, and Aimé turned to pick up his mug, taking a sip. It was a fresh, fragrant tea, and he tasted the familiar honeysuckle sweetness – Jean-Pierre liked to put dried flowers in his tea, too. He signed, then, You practised?

“Yeah,” Aimé said lowly, giving a nod of his head. “I, uh. I got an app on my phone. I was nervous about fucking it up, but I guess it must be annoying, for us having to translate all the time, uh, I’m not great, but I learned a little when I was younger. There were some deaf boxers on the circuit.”

Pádraic stared at him, his brow furrowing. Is that common?

“I don’t know about common. But there’s a few – enough that I picked up a little ISL. I always tried to learn on the side so that they wouldn’t know I knew what their coaches were saying.”

Pádraic let out a low chuckle.

You and Jean-Pierre, he said, leaning back on his heels and towering over Aimé, you are the same.

“Ouch,” said Aimé. “Just hit me, why don’t you?”

Pádraic grinned, and looked to Jean-Pierre and Colm as they came into the room.

Aimé saw that Jean-Pierre was in his socks, but that at some point, Colm had obviously lost ground in the argument, because Colm was just in his socks, too.

“My condolences, Pádraic, on having so long an acquaintance with my brother,” Jean-Pierre said.

Pádraic patted Aimé on the shoulder with a heavy hand. Help Bedelia, he advised, and Aimé nodded his head, but as he went by he caught Jean-Pierre by the waist, pulling Jean chest-to-chest with him.

Jean-Pierre’s expression, which had been at its epitome of bratty irritation, softened, and he leaned his head in closer, their noses brushing against one another.

“Be nice,” said Aimé.

“I’m nice,” Jean-Pierre lied sweetly, and Aimé chuckled, pecking him on the lips, and then patting his arse.

As Jean-Pierre clambered into one of the wood chairs and Colm sank into another, Aimé moved across the hall and into the kitchen. Bedelia had George sitting on the kitchen table, his legs wrapped around her waist, as they kissed feverishly.

Aimé cleared his throat, and as the two of them split rapidly apart, George and a metal serving tray clattered onto the kitchen floor, but Bedelia caught the jar of candied orange peels before that could topple too.

Aimé wondered if this was how Colm felt, living with Jean and Aimé.

“Your dad told me to help,” Aimé said mildly, and Bedelia ran a hand through her hair and nodded her head rapidly, giggling a little as she rushed to pull the curry off the hob.