COLM

Between Colm and Asmodeus, they’d gotten George a room in a boarding house in the Mórrigan’s Arcade.

“There are pocket dimensions,” Colm had explained as he’d led George down one of the alley entrances, “which is basically… You have a place with closed off borders – like a closet, or a building – and you magically widen the space within those borders. It’s a kind of magical expansion. But this is different – Mórrigan’s doesn’t have distinct borders: it just exists in a dimension slightly to the side of this one. It only seems like it has borders from the mundane side, because that’s where the entrances are. Understand?”

“No,” George had said beatifically, but it didn’t seem to bother him, so Colm let the matter drop.

The room was nice enough, a space broad and high-ceilinged enough that George could sit at his desk, could lie in his bed, could exercise a little, with his wings out. There were no angels staying there, but the head of the kitchen, a Peruvian woman named Dayana, was, and Colm knew, at least, that she’d take the dietary stuff seriously.

They’d signed him up for cooking classes, and in the meantime, different angels would teach him one thing or another as he settled into his new skin – that was how they did things, how they’d always done things.

Different angels reacted to the Fall in different ways. Most were out of it for the first few days, and then many of them were sad, or bitter, confused; some were more cheerful, in a sort of optimistic way; some of them – Colm had been like this – just wanted to work, to put themselves to labour, to make themselves feel like they were doing something.

George—

George was cheerful, that much was true.

He was duck-footed with flat soles, and he stumbled over often, clumsy on his feet when he had his wings put away – when they were out, he moved them instinctively to help him keep his balance, and seemed to do far better. Even when they were folded away and he was all but falling over himself, however, he usually had a smile on his face, and although his face fell cartoonishly at the understanding he’d made a mistake, after apologising profusely, he was always smiling again quickly enough.

Colm hadn’t yet gotten a handle on whether he was optimistic or simple.

It didn’t matter either way, not really – he was still one of them, and Colm would still love him as a brother regardless – but it always felt like such a puzzle, when he struggled to understand someone from the get-go.

George wasn’t quite as clumsy with his hands as he was on his feet, but he dropped stuff often, and it seemed to Colm he had a slight trouble maintaining a grip on anything, or doing any particularly complex motions with his hands. It was possible, Colm supposed, that it was a clumsiness he’d grow out of after a few weeks settled in his body, but it seemed too extreme for that. When Colm had asked him, George had told him it didn’t hurt, and when Colm had held George’s hands and pressed on the different parts of his palm, on the knuckles, one-by-one, George had felt no pain, and admitted to none.

He’d teach him to whittle at some point, if he was interested, but for the time being, Colm didn’t want to put a knife between his fingers. Instead, they had a jigsaw between them, and although George was a little slow at picking up each piece, like he had a hard trouble convincing his hands which once he wanted to pick up, he was smiling as they worked together, humming something out-of-tune and disconnected from any real melody.

He’d like music, Colm thought – they’d have to bring him along to a session.

So far, they’d mostly talked about his room at the boarding house: he liked the room, and he liked Colm’s garden, and when they walked through Dublin – slow, so that George didn’t stumble too much – he always looked with fascination up at the buildings, asked questions about how they were built, how the bricks were layered and stuck together, how you went around building something.

They’d talked about that a lot, the past week – how things were built.

He’d asked it about the jigsaw too, and Colm had shown how the cardboard was layered, explained how the pictures were printed in a glossy layer on top, described what a printer looked like, how they worked, and then explained how pressure was used to cut the jigsaw pattern in, to separate the pieces. George listened very keenly, and Colm could feel the emotion that radiated from him: curiosity, interest, satisfaction at the thought of a mechanism working as it should. Contentment at the warmth of the room, the feel of the carpet underneath his knees; affection for Colm and his company.

“I don’t know anything,” George said, apropos of nothing. They’d been sat in silence for half an hour or so, and Colm glanced up at him. There was no anxiety in him about it, no uncertainty, and it was posed as a statement, not a question.

“Well,” Colm, tilting his head slightly to the side as he considered it. “You’re only a week Fallen. None of us is expecting you to know everything.”

“But I don’t know anything,” George said. “Won’t people find it so odd?”

George hadn’t talked to many people just yet. He had been spending a lot of the week with Colm, sitting with him as he worked in the garden (he had spent much of the week deciding which way was most comfortable of sitting on the floor, and making very little progress), helping him carry crates of vegetables or food donations into one place or other (he always held the whole box from the bottom, cradling it in the crooks of each elbow, so it was harder to drop), and otherwise spending time in Colm’s company.

“I suppose,” Colm said. “But you’ll learn quickly.”

“There’s an awful lot to learn,” George said softly. There was something there: a slight catch of uncertainty, of anxiety. Colm couldn’t quite get the thread of it, couldn’t quite find where the feeling was rooted and tug.

Colm turned as the bottom stair creaked slightly behind him, and Asmodeus stepped into the living room. He had a leather clipboard in his hand, closed so that they couldn’t see what was in it.

“What’s that?” George asked, looking up at Asmodeus, and Asmodeus turned to look at him, his lips shifting into a small smile. The smile was cold, like Asmodeus’ smiles always were, but George didn’t seem put-off by it – he didn’t seem to be intimidated at all by Asmodeus, didn’t seem to find him frightening or weird.

“It’s a clipboard,” Asmodeus said lowly. “When you place paper between it, you have a hard surface to write on, and an easy way to transport the pages without them becoming creased or bent.”

“Why? Does creasing the pages make the letters harder to read?”

“Not ordinarily,” said Asmodeus. “But there is an aesthetic concern – a letter to a friend has as few deliberate creases as possible, and ideally, none which are accidental.”

“Who are you writing to?”

“A friend.”

“An angel?”

“No.”

“Oh.” George furrowed his brow, and although confusion came off him, confusion and a sense of aimlessness, not knowing what to say next, there was no trepidation whatsoever, no trace of nerves, despite the fact that in the course of their conversation, Asmodeus’ expression had been utterly frozen in that icy smile of his, even though Asmodeus spoke so tonelessly, even though Asmodeus radiated no feeling at all for George to navigate by. “Is he human?”

“No,” Asmodeus said. “He’s fae.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Exposure to magic, primarily,” Asmodeus said, “or a different stream of magic, at least. The fae dimensions flow with a heavier magic – in the mundane world, there is water from a deep spring; in the magical world, flows water from the mountains. The taste is different, but the appearance is the same. In the fae worlds flows wine.”

“Isn’t everyone drunk all the time?”

“A metaphor, George.”

“Oh,” George said unhappily. “I’m not very good with those.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Asmodeus assured him, and he reached out, curled his fingers in George’s hair for a moment. Colm saw George’s lips curve into a small smile, his wide eyes widening further, felt the warm burst of affection. “Tea, Colm, George?”

“Alright,” George said.

“Thanks,” Colm murmured, and before Asmodeus pulled away, he touched Colm, too, cupped his cheek for a moment and looked at him seriously, concentratedly. There was no feeling in it that Colm could skim, but the look in Asmodeus’ eyes seemed focused, and as sincere as Asmodeus could get. Colm touched the back of his hand, and Asmodeus nodded before he pulled away.

“I’m meeting Pádraic tomorrow,” George said. “He said that he was sorry he had not been able to meet with me before. Because he was working.”

“He works in a school,” Colm said. “Works with children with special needs.”

“What’s a special need?”

“Another euphemism, George. A child with special needs is deemed as a child who causes some manner of “disruption” to a classroom,” Asmodeus supplied from the kitchen, placing the lid on the teapot. “Special needs children are considered inconvenient to have in mainstream classes, either because they are slower or faster than their classmates, or require different tools with which to pursue the tasks set them: they are thus often separated from the primary part and put aside. Pádraic works with them, to understand their needs from their perspective, as opposed to what which is dictated by an uncaring educational system.”

Colm stared at Asmodeus’ back for a second or two, feeling his eyebrows raise. When George looked at him askance, he shrugged, “Uh, I don’t… I don’t know, George. I don’t know much about it. He’s a kind man – quiet.”

“I said I liked texting even though I was slow at it,” George said quietly. “He said that he did too.”

George looked to Asmodeus, who was leaning against one of the kitchen counters, writing smoothly on the page pinned to his clipboard with his fountain pen in his hand. It was very old, at least a hundred and fifty years older than any other pen in the house, but whenever he refilled the ink in it, he never spilled a drop, and there were enchantments carved in the tiniest symbols on the nib, so that it blotted and dried the ink as he went.

“I don’t know how you hold it like that,” he said, his expression, his mood, his tone all wondering.

Asmodeus looked up at him, and taking up a sheet of notepaper from one of the spare pads by the fruit bowl, he shifted the grip on the pen to mimic how George did it: his three middle fingers curled around the centre of the pen’s shaft, his thumb braced against its top, the tip of his pinky touching almost against the blade of the pen’s nib. It looked uncomfortable, to say the least, and Colm guessed that the fountain pen would barely write like that, that it would only be successful in cutting through the paper, because it needed to be held at a tilted angle.

Asmodeus looked at George, and George nodded his head, his lips pressed together.

“Yes,” George said. “It’s easier like that, to hold it steady.”

Asmodeus gave a neat inclination of his head, and once he’d picked up his teapot, he stepped into the stairwell and went back upstairs.

Colm glanced down at George’s hands again, at the way he held them as he picked through the pile for the next piece. He was thinking that he would ask Jean to have a look at George’s hands when Jean called him.

“Hi, Jean,” Colm said. “You alright?”

“Aimé is very ill,” Jean-Pierre said quietly. “We are at the restaurant, Whitman’s – I was wondering if you could bring us home? I can call a taxi if you are busy, I don’t know—”

“I’m not busy,” Colm said, standing slowly to his feet and gesturing for George to get up with him. “He eat something funny?”

“Oh, no,” Jean said serenely. “He smoked.”

Benoit had never smoked in all his life, and Farhad had occasionally smoked a qalyān, but never a cigarette, and he’d stopped, when he and Jean-Pierre had gotten involved, but Bui had smoked, and so had Manolis. Bui had caught on quickly, had smoked two or three times and decided he’d developed an allergy – but Colm remembered Manolis, remembered when he’d figured out what Jean had done.

He’d never seen a man so angry as he was when that particular penny dropped. Jean-Pierre had laughed when Manolis had grabbed him around the throat and pinned him down, let him think he had the run of things for a second or two before he turned the tables, had Manolis spread out beneath him with Jean-Pierre’s arm crushing his windpipe and the knife in his pocket pressed at an angle on the soft flesh between two of Manolis’ ribs, primed to puncture the lung if he pierced the skin.

“You do not want your lungs?” he’d asked, had smiled sweetly as he asked the question, looked lovingly into Manolis’ eyes. “You would rather go without?”

Colm understood torture. He even enjoyed it, after a fashion – he was good at interrogation, always had been, and he’d had countless enemy soldiers tied and bound in front of him, had made them scream, choke, sob for their mothers, and give him everything he ever needed to know.

But that was so different to what Jean did.

What sort of fucking person tortured the people they said they loved?

He’d left the room, hadn’t been able to sit there and watch them, and the next time he’d seen Manolis and Jean-Pierre together the next morning, Jean-Pierre had been back in his lap with Manolis laughing into his breast, the only sign anything had been awry the handprints around Jean’s neck.

“I’ll pick you up,” Colm said, and hung up the phone. “George, no, you— you stay here.

“Oh,” George said, and he looked at Colm with concern, his mouth twisting. “You are… angry.”

“Yeah,” Colm said. “Gimme, uh, gimme half an hour and I’ll be back, okay?”

“Alright,” George said, and sat down again.

*     *     *

JEAN-PIERRE

He made certain that Aimé was quite finished vomiting before he allowed him into the back of Colm’s car. This, really, was a fairly mild case – now that the enchantment had a practical example to go by, the next occasion would be rather more brutal, and Jean-Pierre rather hoped Aimé understood before he attempted to smoke a third or fourth time.

He did look quite good, like this – Jean-Pierre was reminded of when Bui had been ill with tuberculosis, and his skin had become this glowing, pale imitation of the warm brown it had been before, and his lips had seemed very pink indeed; the lost weight had made his eyes seem all the wider, and they always sparkled in the light. He had lived four years with the consumption before it had killed him, and that had been after some twenty-five years together.

He still had far more time with Aimé.

His brow was somewhat feverish, and Jean-Pierre turned toward him where he sat in the car, gently stroking his hair back from his head, having cooled his hand for the purpose, and Aimé looked at him dolefully, looking quite miserable.

“Poor thing,” Jean-Pierre said softly, his tone very sympathetic, and he ignored the quiet, disbelieving huff of sound from Colm in the driver’s seat.

“Sorry,” Aimé mumbled. “Must have— I don’t know. Bad reaction to something I ate, I guess.”

“I expect so,” Jean-Pierre said, stroking his thumb over each of Aimé’s cheeks, where his beard gave way to flesh. “We’ll put you to bed, and I’ll rub your shoulders. Perhaps, if you can manage it, some crackers before sleep. How does that sound?”

It embarrassed him. Jean-Pierre could see that in the stiffness of his shoulders and the way he held his knees tight together, the twist of his mouth, but it delighted him, too: his cheeks were warm with more than the exertion of having been ill, and Jean-Pierre noted the slight twitch of his lower lip as he bit the inside of it. A subtle motion, but one Jean-Pierre kept a keen watch for.

Aimé wasn’t used to being taken care of, from what Jean-Pierre could tell.

He liked that.

It wasn’t merely that this was useful – of course it was useful – but that it rather allowed Jean-Pierre to set the terms of their arrangement he might not otherwise, if Aimé had other points of comparison. There was a delightful vulnerability in a man not used to being cared for: one could teach him what it meant to be cared for, and tailor the definition to what one was willing to give.

Colm brought the car to a stop, and looked at them in the mirror. “You okay getting up the stairs, or you want me to carry you?”

Jean-Pierre suppressed a giggle at the wide-eyed look on Aimé’s face as he said hurriedly, “I can— I can walk them myself.”

“Right,” Colm said.

“Aimé,” Jean-Pierre scolded him, and pinched the lobe of Aimé’s ear, making him hiss in pain. “Thank him.”

“Thanks,” Aimé mumbled, and Jean-Pierre opened the door, gently taking Aimé by the hands and pulling him out of the car, keeping himself all but glued to Aimé’s side as they rose up the stairs. Aimé was significantly shorter than him, and as they ascended the stairs, Aimé’s cheek pressed against Jean-Pierre’s chest, making him smile.

At the top of the stairs, Asmodeus met them, a leather clipboard in his hands – he was writing a letter, Jean-Pierre supposed, and it was probably a personal one, based on how quickly he closed the case when he saw Jean-Pierre’s glance.

“Ill?” Asmodeus asked, without surprise.

“Mmm,” Aimé hummed, his embarrassment palpable.

“I’ll make you some tea,” Asmodeus said softly to Aimé, giving Jean-Pierre a small nod of acknowledgement, and Jean-Pierre, pleased, returned it as he brought Aimé into his bedroom. Aimé just bowed his head further – they really did need to discuss his capacity for please and thank you, but that was a matter for later, Jean-Pierre supposed. He’d learn his manners eventually. 

Once he’d undressed him, he gave Aimé a chemise of his, an oversized one that didn’t fit Aimé too tightly, and he watched Aimé’s expression go to one of protest to one of uncertain pleasure as he felt how soft and worn the cotton was, how smooth it felt on his skin.

It fit him rather well, actually.

“Do remind me to put you into some of my clothes more often,” Jean-Pierre murmured. “You look very fine in a blouse.”

“Please,” Aimé muttered as he reclined on the pillows. “I’m already sick.”

Jean-Pierre chuckled, and descended the stairs.

“Oh,” he said at what he found there. “Hello, George.”

“Hello, Jean-Pierre,” George said brightly, giving Jean-Pierre a dazzling smile. He was sitting at the coffee table in the living room with a jigsaw in front of him, which in its way was rather adorable, but also meant that Colm didn’t trust him to hold a whittling knife, which was what he ordinarily started with, with new angels.

“Did your little nicotine addiction program, then,” Colm said darkly as Jean-Pierre entered the kitchen. As Asmodeus set a teapot on a tray for them, already drawing on its lid with his own, flowing style of enchantment, Jean-Pierre reached for some crackers from their box, and laid them on a plate with a little fruit and cheese.

“It works,” Jean-Pierre said primly. “Why fix something that isn’t broken?”

“Why not just break it further?” Colm agreed sardonically,

“Why do you always aim these little barbs at me, and not at him?” Jean-Pierre asked, nodding to Asmodeus as he turned to look at Colm. He crossed his arms over his chest, pressing his lips together very tightly, watching Colm’s sour face. “He’s broken far more men than I have – and he really breaks them. I just mould them into shape.”

“Thank you for drawing me into the argument,” Asmodeus said dryly, without offence. He finished the enchantment on the teapot, and then reached for Jean-Pierre, curling his fingers in Jean-Pierre’s hair for a moment, a pleasant pressure, before he drew away.

“You’re welcome,” said Jean-Pierre. “And really, Colm, what would you rather – that he keep smoking?” Jean-Pierre pouted his lips as he asked the question, raising his eyebrows in a way he knew made his eyes look that much the larger.

Colm’s falter was infinitesimal, but undeniably present, before he said, “And the drink? Are you going to dispel him of that, too?”

“He’ll drink less when he is happier.”

“You’re the key to that, are you?”

“I don’t see anyone else queuing up for the privilege.”

“Oh, is that why you picked one so ugly this time? Less competition?”

“Where I’m concerned, there’s no such thing as competition.”

Colm smiled, a kind of severe, knife-edge smile that Jean-Pierre resented being aimed at him. “And Rupert?” he asked kindly.

All the enjoyment to be found in exchanging barbs with one’s brother faded quite abruptly with Jean-Pierre’s possession of the high ground, and he turned on his heel, laying some foil over the cheese plate before he put his hands through the handles of the tray, but he didn’t pick it up.

“Colm,” Asmodeus scolded.

“What? He’s just pissy that he’s not getting his way, except that he is fucking getting it, because I’m not going to stop him, and neither are you.”

“Colm,” Asmodeus said again, and Jean-Pierre heard Colm release a wordless, irritable sound, and tell George they were going to the pub. Asmodeus lingered beside him even as the door slammed, his clipboard held loosely to his chest. “Okay?” he asked finally.

“Mm,” Jean-Pierre hummed noncommittally, unable to work past the abrupt, heavy pressure in his belly, and he picked up the tray.

Aimé had already turned the television on when Jean-Pierre came upstairs, and to Jean-Pierre’s delight, he had apparently made a selection himself – it was not Rome, but another period drama, and Jean-Pierre beamed, delighted.

“D’you mind?” he asked hoarsely.

“Not at all,” Jean-Pierre said warmly, feeling some of the coiled anxiety in his gut disperse, and when he released his wings again, curling them about his shoulders as he held Aimé’s head in his lap, Aimé relaxed so entirely one might have thought him a housecat instead of an alcoholic. He breathed very evenly, relaxing utterly under the gentle curl of Jean-Pierre’s fingers through his hair.

“You don’t have to,” Aimé mumbled later, sprawled on his belly, when Jean-Pierre sat on top of him, his fingers sliding up under the fabric of the blouse and pressing on the muscle of Aimé’s shoulders, dragging his fingers down either side of his spine. Aimé groaned from very low in his throat as Jean-Pierre searched for the knots and found them, pressing on them until they smoothed out beneath his touch, leaving Aimé liquid and easy.

Such wonderful sounds eked from his throat, hoarse and husky and full to the brim with pleasure, and Jean-Pierre wondered, in an idle way, what it might be like to fuck him, how much noise he’d make if Jean-Pierre opened him up, loosened his muscles, that way.

“I know I don’t have to,” Jean-Pierre said idly, dragging his fingernails down the centre of Aimé’s back, making him shudder. “But I like to very much. It is only natural to soothe a companion’s ills, when he is ailed by them, and wish to bring him relief. It bothers you?” He felt Aimé stiffen again, saw the slow, darkening flush on the back of his neck, and not for a moment did he let up in his attentions, still pressing on the taut muscles, still working out the tension in them and delighting in the jump and twitch of Aimé’s body before he slackened further.

“No,” Aimé muttered, scarcely even audible, and Jean-Pierre smiled. It was so very satisfying, to really introduce a man to pleasure.

“Such a delight,” Jean-Pierre said softly. “Such strong shoulders, such a fine waist, such beautiful skin.”

It was an experiment, and one that yielded curious results: Aimé released a tight, muffled sound, like a wheel made squeaky with rust, and shifted slightly away from Jean-Pierre’s hands, but as much as the praise wrought in him this small protest, his hips still shifted underneath Jean-Pierre’s waist as he rocked himself down against the bed beneath them.

Interesting.

Not to be explored tonight, no – but something to keep in mind.

Aimé’s shoulders were heavy beneath Jean-Pierre’s hands, thick and resistant to the anodyne pressure of his touch, but there was something satisfying in playing this instrument, in bringing it around to his own desires. He liked Aimé’s body – there was muscle on him you wouldn’t expect from the way he slouched, his steps more graceful than one might expect when he wasn’t too drunk, too, and yet he was plump enough to be warm and comfortable when Jean-Pierre chose him as a pillow.

“You are a boxer?” he asked softly.

In a sleepy, distracted mumble, Aimé said against the pillows, “You saw the trophies in my room?”

Jean-Pierre frowned slightly – he hadn’t, but then, he hadn’t looked very closely into Aimé’s bedroom, and it had been quite dark inside. “I noticed the way you move,” he said, “and you have very strong shoulders, good arms.”

“And a bashed-up face,” Aimé added.

“I like your face,” Jean-Pierre said honestly, and Aimé shivered under his hands.

“You like scars?”

“I have scars,” Jean-Pierre reminded him. “You think they make me less beautiful?”

“That’s different,” said Aimé. “You were beautiful to begin with. Your scars just emphasise it – mine do the same, but in the other direction. You must see how people look at me when we walk around.”

“I do not care what other people think of your face,” Jean-Pierre said primly. “I like it very much, and you are not to change it.”

There was a hesitation, and then a strange catch in Aimé’s voice as he asked, “No?”

“No.”

Aimé shifted underneath him, and Jean-Pierre raised himself up on his knees to let Aimé turn onto his back, looking up at Jean-Pierre. His crooked lips were shifted into that shy, crooked smile, and in the light from the lamp, the difference in the colours of his eyes was very clear, particularly as the green one’s pupil was as large as it ever was, and the hazel one was constricting as it ought.

“You studying anatomy in my face right now?” Aimé asked.

Jean-Pierre smiled, and gently touched two fingers to the side of Aimé’s left eye. “Mydriatic pupil,” he said softly, and put his fingers down on the other side, “Miotic pupil.”

“I don’t get you,” Aimé said lowly.

“Of course you do,” said Jean-Pierre. “You have me now.”

Aimé’s eyes closed as he released a small laugh, and Jean-Pierre stroked his face, tracing his fingers over the skin before moving his fingers lower, trailing over the bristles of his beard.

“You feel better?” he asked softly.

“Yeah,” Aimé mumbled. There was something disbelieving in his tone, even as he looked back up at Jean-Pierre, something disbelieving, uncertain, grateful. “Thanks to my doctor.”

Jean-Pierre trailed his thumb over the curve of Aimé’s lip, tracing where the lips were uneven, where before, they had been split, and scarred. “You do not box any longer?”

“I don’t really do anything anymore,” Aimé said dully.

“You paint,” Jean-Pierre reminded him. “You read philosophy.”

“Yeah,” Aimé said. “I guess.”

Jean-Pierre leaned in and kissed him, gently brushed their lips together, and the sigh Aimé released was so very sweet. There was nothing quite like the sigh of an atheist seeking benediction.

“We should sleep,” said Jean-Pierre quietly. “I must rise very early.”

“Yeah,” Aimé said, and stayed in his place beneath Jean as Jean leaned over him to turn out the light.

*     *     *

COLM

“Why are you angry?” George asked.

Some winged angels, Colm was aware, did drink alcohol, but the ones that did had an obscenely low tolerance for it, and according to Jean-Pierre, liver damage was inevitable and fairly swift in setting in.

George had taken one small sniff of lager a few days back, and had gagged on the strength of that alone, so he drank a glass of blackcurrant squash instead.

“Jean,” Colm said slowly, pressing his fingers against the table, “treats his boyfriends in a way that I don’t like.”

“How?”

“He’s possessive. And… controlling. He hurts them.”

George frowned, and Colm could feel his confusion as he thought this over, taking it in. “Why do they date him? If he does that?”

Colm opened his mouth, closed it, and then sighed. “You know how I told you, George, I wouldn’t always be able to give you the answers?”

“Yes.”

“This is one of those times.”

“Oh,” George said, and then he said, with a bright smile, “Oh, the pool table is open now, Colm.”

He caught it, this time. It was well-hidden, especially coming from someone who was new in his body, who was probably curating his own emotional expression through instinct alone, but Colm caught the slight chink in George’s armour. He caught the wave of anxiety underneath it, when George projected a sort of curious excitement.

The deception didn’t bother him, not really – it didn’t come from George wanting to harm anybody, probably came from wanting the opposite.  

“Will you show me?” George asked.

“Yeah,” Colm said, nodding, and he smiled slightly as he patted the other angel’s shoulder. “Let’s play.”

He did feel better, after a few pints and a few rounds of pool, and one particularly terrifying round of darts before Colm took the darts gently out of George’s hands, and suggested they play on a night the pub was empty.

That night, sprawled out on the sofa in Colm’s bedroom, underneath the blankets and looking at him sleepily, George asked, “Do you remember anything? Before the Fall?”

“No,” Colm said. “I remember the feeling of being in the Host, and there were tables of numbers, I think, or… or something. That’s all. Why, do you?”

“I measured things,” George said quietly. “I had a scales. And when I said— when I said… what they were… Someone wrote them down. Could that have been us?”

“Maybe,” Colm murmured. “Anything’s possible. You remember anything else?”

“No,” George said in a low, sad voice. “Do you think it matters?”

“I don’t know, George. I don’t think so.”

George nodded his head, and Colm fell into his own bed, sighing.

Sleep came easily.

The dreams weren’t so good.