Fantasy short. An anxious angel reluctantly gets an STI test.
8.7k, rated M. The angel Beau reluctantly gets an STI test; Aoife and Colleen go to a local brothel to do tests. Beauregard Horvasse, Aoife Harkin, and Colleen Pike in this one.
References to sexual violence and trauma throughout.
The Caer Afon Magical Hospital was somewhat better laid out than the London Royal — it hadn’t been built on and built on and expanded and expanded, not to the same extent that the Royal had. Beau was disappointed when first he stepped into its corridors and began making his way up and down them, finding that they weren’t as twisting or labyrinthine as either those in the London Royal or those in the Bayett Inn hotel’s cellar corridors.
He had been warned by Mr Franke, who had processed his application and brought him onto the staff, of the challenging nature of the corridors, but there was no such challenge here. He had never worked in another hospital but this one, Beau didn’t think. He had no basis of comparison.
The cellar corridors of the hospital, which ran primarily between the mortuary, the incinerator, and the laundry, were cooler and darker than those above ground, and Beau appreciated that, even if they weren’t as twisting and arcane as he might like. It was more comfortable in his layers of clothing, less oppressive — and of course, less crowded, too.
The mortuary at the Caer Afon was much smaller than that at the Royal, with fewer separate rooms, but it was better laid out, too, and the files were kept more neatly.
Carol Stine, the mortuary assistant, was a calm and collected woman, utterly unshakeable, according to Mr Franke; Beau’s observations of her in his week’s experience at Caer Afon supported the description, although Franke had also described Stine as cold, and Beau hadn’t found her so. She was not particularly warm in the performance of her duties, but Beau saw no reason that she ought be — she was warm with grieving visitors, and that was where warmth was most called for within the mortuary.
It was late in the evening, and Stine had departed for the day, leaving Beau to finish up tidying the mortuary before he went home. After a few weeks in the role, he would be taking on a role as night porter, and he would primarily take on the after-hours mortuary assistance work, transporting bodies, samples, and equipment either to and from the mortuary, or at the behest of the pathologists.
He didn’t expect someone to be in the corridor when he exited through the side door, and he shocked, gripping his bag tighter to his chest and stepping back against the doors.
The man before him was tall and broad, wearing dark blue trousers and a linen shirt, a tie, a cardigan —
Another angel.
Beau breathed slowly in, forcing his body to relax, and he looked up at him, watching the angel step back and spread his broad hands in a gesture of peace.
“My apologies,” he said, his voice accented — Eastern European, but musical, a slight hoarseness to his resonant voice that was somewhat pleasant to the ear. “You are Beauregard Horvasse, yes? My name is Doctor Ephraim Margolis — I work in obstetrics, I wanted to say hello to you, say welcome. Angela mentioned you transferred from the Bayett Inn this week, that you were a porter at another hospital before, yes?”
“You’re a Jew,” said Beau.
It wasn’t what he meant to say, because he hadn’t meant to say anything at all: the words came out of his mouth unbidden at the same time he recognised Margolis’ accent, the Yiddish inflections on top of it, Polish, Beau guessed.
Margolis looked down at him, his expression changing from very obviously friendly to something slightly more distant, slightly more guarded.
“Sorry,” said Beau.
“I am a Jew,” he confirmed. “Angela mentioned you to me after temple services, in fact.”
“That’s nice,” said Beau, staring at the other man’s chest because he couldn’t bear to look up at his face, to meet his gaze. “I’ve often found myself jealous of you.”
“Jealous of the chosen people, hm?”
“No, not jealous of that,” said Beau. “To be chosen is to suffer — especially by God. But, um, the… community. I know it comes from something horrible, that there’s so few of you, and that there’s grief, but when you find each other, you do seem to find it easy to connect to one another.”
Margolis quietly exhaled, clasping his hands in front of his belly.
He looked to be an older man, balding on top, with a neat black and grey beard, and the little hair on his head the same colours, and he was plump not just around the middle, but around his shoulders and his arms, too, had a roundness to his cheeks.
“Angela mentioned that you are not such a social one,” Margolis said. He employed the sort of soft, gentle voice people often did with Beau at first, when they had patience for him, and thought him little better than a stupid or skittish animal. “She did not mention that you were a bigot, which she would have, if you were. I am very old, young man, and not so easily offended at a misstep or a stumble of the mouth as you might worry.”
“But it hurts you,” said Beau to the buttons on Margolis’ shirt. “You don’t know until I make it clear if it’s a stumble or a, an attack. And that hurts you. The energy it takes to know, to figure it out, to always be thinking about it.”
“Not hurts me,” Margolis said, shrugging his shoulders and making a movement of one hand, as if to communicate that he was ceding to Beau’s point somehow. “Strains me a little, perhaps. But you said it yourself, did you not? To be chosen is to suffer — strain is a little step on the road to suffering, but it doesn’t go the whole way there.”
“I’m still sorry,” Beau said.
“Your apology is accepted, your outburst forgiven. It’s nice to meet you.”
“You too.”
“Funny you talk about Jews and community,” Margolis said, turning slowly on his heel, and Beau obediently fell into step beside him, walking onward. “You think angels, we don’t have that?”
Beau didn’t know what to say to him immediately, his tongue still on the floor of his mouth. It was six months since he’d first moved to Bristol, and in the time he’d come here, he hadn’t socialised with other angels pretty much at all, had avoided doing so as best as he could — his only real friend in the city was a vampire called Germain at a local brothel, who groomed his wings for him because Beau couldn’t stand to do it himself.
Germain had been telling him of recent that honesty was important, that part of the way you made connections with others was by telling them things about yourself, about the ways you saw the world, and letting them share the same with you.
“You seem to find it somewhat easy with me,” Germain had murmured. “But you don’t speak so easily with others. Why is that, do you think? The physical intimacy you pay for? The environment?”
“You’re trained in a lot of therapeutic techniques,” Beau had retorted. “And you ask… keen questions.”
“Yes, but you answer them. I hardly believe no one else asks you leading questions.”
Beau looked sideways at Margolis, meeting his gaze, and then said, “I Fell into the Thames, when I came down. It was 1946.”
The significance of the date would have been lost on Germain, a vampire, no matter that he worked alongside angels here and there and that he was friends with the likes of Beau: Margolis’ expression immediately showed his recognition of the date, his eyebrows furrowing slightly, his lips drawing into a slight frown. Wrinkles appeared on his brow, and his shoulders came forward slightly.
“Ah,” he said, his voice lowering, becoming more grave. “I’m very sorry.”
“S’not your fault,” Beau said. “It’s not like you knew when I was going to Fall, and where.”
Margolis exhaled, touching his fingers to his lips and looking forward. Beau liked his face, liked how he wore it.
He knew he was not expressive by his nature — he got more so when he was in more pain, when he was sleeping worse, but he still didn’t show his expressions in the way that people liked. He simply got… twitchy. Nervous.
Beau asked, “You’re old?”
“About eight centuries, thereabouts.”
“You know him well? Asmodeus?”
There was no hesitation before Margolis answered the question, or at least, no sign of nerves or shame. “I do,” he said seriously.
Asmodeus — Asbat Nur-Badr, many of the humans knew him as, and Beau expected he’d collected a good many other names besides, in his millennia on Earth — was one of the very first angels, and he had greeted nearly every single angel to hit the ground, or the water, or some other place, since the beginning of time.
Beau had heard about him — that he was tall and handsome, that he was powerful, eloquent. That he seemed sad, at times, which Beau supposed was to be expected.
Not every angel, upon their Fall, landed somewhere safe — some, like Beau, landed into water, landed in dangerous territory. Asmodeus, knowing when and where angels were going to Fall a little while in advance, was ordinarily there to pull them out, to greet them, to soothe their pain at having Fallen.
He hadn’t come for Beau — for a few years in the 40s, he hadn’t attended to any newly Fallen angels at all.
Edmund hadn’t seemed all that surprised, when he’d taken Beau in, when he’d soothed him, cared for him — he didn’t like to speak ill of Asmodeus, Beau didn’t think, much as he seemed to disagree with him on a wide variety of subjects, but on this topic, he’d never been able to hide his disgust.
Beau asked the question that Edmund had never been able to answer, and that Margolis seemed better poised to: “Did he mean to do it? To — Did he do it on purpose? Out of spite?”
Margolis’ thick brows furrowed further, knitting almost together. “Have you been told he did it out of spite?”
Beau thought of Edmund’s expression, cold and distant and tightly guarded when questioned on the topic, thought of overheard, heated discussions between Edmund and his companion, Thursday — thought of phrases like “neglect of duty” and “utter irresponsibility” and “reckless fixation on lost causes”.
“Not exactly,” said Beau.
“No. No, Asmodeus is not a spiteful one. It was not some abandonment of you, or others, what he did — he was unwell at that time, and caring for another.”
Beau nodded his head, looking forward. That matched up with the facts of what Edmund had conveyed, if not his disapproval. “Good,” he said tonelessly. “I’m glad it wasn’t on purpose.”
“How long were you Fallen before you met another angel?”
“Not that long,” Beau said. “A few days, only. The hospital I was in, they knew Edmund Horvasse, so they called him to come and meet me, and he took me in. Do you know him?”
“I know Sir Edmund, yes,” Margolis said, his tone careful, as though he were walking on uncertain ground — a minefield, perhaps. Beau was well-acquainted with that tone, and sometimes he longed for the days when he didn’t understand why it was being employed. “I’m familiar with his work.”
“I don’t speak to him any longer,” Beau said. His voice sounded sad, he thought, although not very obviously so — instead of looking at Margolis, he was looking at the tiled floors beneath their feet. “I used to work with him, for him, until the university let him go. I don’t do very well with being touched, or being talked to, so I was sheltered, and I didn’t know that it was…” He trailed off, not knowing what to say, how to say it. Shame gripped him like it was a physical hand in which he was fully grasped, the fingers tight around him, slightly damp. “I didn’t really talk to anybody but him and his companion, until I left.”
“You haven’t met Asmodeus, I take it?”
“No, sir.”
“And other angels?”
Beau hesitated, chewing on the inside of his lip. The shame burned hotter in him, less dread cold and more of a fizzling bubble, making him feel a little nauseated, his skin hot underneath his turtleneck and his long-sleeved uniform shirt. He’d requested it specially at his interview, that he be given long sleeves instead of the short-sleeved ones.
“You might get hot,” Franke had said. “The heat tends to build up in the hospital, and the cooling enchantments aren’t always as effective as one would hope.”
“I need long sleeves,” Beau had maintained. “The heat is immaterial.”
“I know Bird,” Beau said. “And Angela. I live at the Bayett, so there are other angels about.”
“Not angels that you talk to though, hm?” Margolis prompted him.
“Did Angela tell you to talk to me?”
“She didn’t tell me to, no. She actually mentioned you when you first came to Bristol, said you seemed a little insular by your nature, but after a few weeks in the city, you seemed to be going out and socialising here and there, so she left you be.”
“She’s not tried to talk to me.”
“Angela is undoubtedly insular by her nature,” Margolis said.
“But not you,” Beau said.
“I’m a rabbi, I don’t get to be insular,” Margolis said with a modest shrug of his shoulders. “It is the price one pays for one’s education, I would say, although I suppose that is not a universal price paid.”
He held the door to the stairwell open for Beau, and Beau stepped very carefully through, making sure he neither touched the sides of the door or made contact with Margolis himself. The other man let him walk ahead on the stairs, taking care to hold back slightly, and Beau wondered if it was in aid of his desire not to be touched.
“I didn’t know you could be a rabbi and a doctor,” Beau said.
“To be ordained within the rabbinate, it’s not exactly the same as Christian priests,” Margolis said. “To be a rabbi is to be a teacher and a scholar, but it need not be a profession. A long time ago, I taught more, studied more. But they were times of plague, and I studied as a healer. A doctor, later. A midwife, an obstetrician, a surgeon.”
“Eight centuries,” Beau said. “The Black Death?”
“Yes,” Margolis said. “They were hard times — sickness itself, but more than that, the pogroms.”
“You were blamed? The Jews? For the plague?”
“Of course. Who else could be blamed but us?”
On the landing, Beau stepped toward the corner, his arms crossing over his chest to keep from touching anything else, to keep from touching Margolis, and he looked back at him as the other angel came to the top of the stairs and took his identity card on its lanyard, tapping it against the sensor and pulling the door into the staff corridor open.
“Why did you come to speak to me, Doctor Margolis?”
“Ephraim, please,” Margolis said quietly. “I thought to invite you to dinner — I regularly invite guests to dinner at my home, coworkers, friends. Tonight, it would be just us, though — I know you are not comfortable in crowds.”
“You would accept no for an answer, if I gave it to you,” Beau said. “You wouldn’t pressure me, even — you’re a very respectful man. You care a lot for people’s boundaries: it’s what makes you such a good midwife. A good rabbi too, I guess, although I do not know what goes into it.”
Margolis, holding the door open, was quiet a moment, studying Beau very keenly, his gaze flitting over Beau’s face, over his chest, down his body. It hovered behind Beau’s shoulders, his gaze on the invisible shadow of Beau’s wings, folded away, before coming back to his face again.
“Not telepathy,” Margolis said softly.
“It’s psychometry,” Beau said.
“Is that why you don’t like to be touched?”
“No,” Beau said. “Our, um, whatever you’d want to call them, our auras, personal bubbles, they’re touching. That’s enough. They thought I was dead, when they pulled me out of the Thames, and even once they warmed me, my heart did not beat — they defibrillated me, trying to resuscitate me. It made me very sensitive. Electrocuted, forced into consciousness all at once, magic burned through me, everything… Everything, um… hurts. Being touched, it hurts. Air hurts, actually, but being touched is worse.”
Margolis’ voice was weighed down with compassion as he said, “I’m sorry.”
“Yes,” said Beau. “My instincts tell me to say no. Um, to dinner with you. But, um, my friend, Germain, he says that some of my instincts are from trauma. That my first instinct isn’t always the right one.”
“I don’t think it is important whether the instinct is right or wrong,” said Margolis. “It is your comfort that matters.”
“Sometimes it’s more comfortable when we have a healing wound to hold ourselves stiffly, so that we don’t pull at it,” Beau said. “But that’s a mistake, isn’t it? If we don’t exercise, the flesh heals tight, and stays stiff. Scars stiff.”
“We can have dinner together another night,” said Margolis reasonably. “When you know me better.”
“I would — I think it would be nice to know you better… now,” said Beau. “If that’s, um… Is that okay?”
Margolis’ smile was full of paternal warmth, and Beau thought of Edmund and his chest panged, and then the shame bubbled hotter and thicker inside him, and his eyes burned too, but he didn’t actually tear up.
“You’re a very brave young man, aren’t you?” Margolis asked.
“No, sir,” Beau said. “I’ve been a coward for many years, actually.”
Margolis’ smile faded slightly, became sadder, softer. “I don’t believe that,” he murmured, and gestured for Beau to go ahead of him into the staff corridor before he followed behind.
* * *
It was raining outside, and Aoife didn’t really think about it as she put up a magical umbrella over her head, spreading it out over the top of her so that the thick drops of water hit the invisible shield over her head and dripped off the edges instead of hitting her on the top of her head or her shoulders.
“Room under there for two?” asked a hoarse, rather cold voice behind her, and Aoife turned her head and smiled. Colleen Pike had a very resonant, somewhat deep voice for a woman, husky, and Aoife liked it a lot.
“Yes,” said Aoife. “I’m walking into town, towards the city centre.”
“You live on the grounds of the Bayett, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Convenient. Nice and close.”
“Close enough,” Aoife said. “Don’t you normally get the bus?”
“Home, yes. Therapy is a walk away,” said Colleen, and she looked above them as Aoife strengthened and widened the magical umbrella, spreading it outward in a neat rectangle above the both of their heads. “God, that’s fucking something,” she murmured — when she smiled, Aoife could see the pricks of her canine teeth touching her lower lip, indenting the flesh.
Aoife wasn’t sure how old she actually was, but she looked to be in her forties or her fifties. She was pale, with purple undertones of fae skin pigment showing through, and there were some pale purple streaks through her grey-blond hair, too. She had wrinkles around her mouth, lines from frowning, and she had wrinkles around her eyes, too. Thin lips, large eyes, grey with flecks of red in them.
“You don’t know any magic?” Aoife asked.
“Not really,” Colleen said. “What I got taught in school, basic enchantment, but I was never that good at any of it. My mum was never any kind of magic-user, and my father isn’t either. You’ve been this way since you were a child?”
“Yes,” Aoife said. “Powerful.”
There was silence between them for a few seconds, and Aoife wondered if Colleen wasn’t sure what to say, but when she looked at the other woman, her expression was thoughtful, considering.
“You go to church?”
“No,” said Aoife. “You?”
“No,” said Colleen. “I had to go to a girls’ school when I was a kid, and they made us go to services, to confession, all of it — my stepdad was keen on the whole thing. When I left and went to live with my dad, instead, everything felt sinful for a while. Not just going to a non-Catholic school or not going to church, but fucking everything — reading, writing, walking. Thinking. Breathing.”
“Yes,” said Aoife.
“You feel guilty much?”
“No,” said Aoife. “I don’t tend to feel guilty about anything, even when I hurt people. They’re not sure if it’s autism or because of brain damage. Maybe a little of both.”
Colleen grinned at her, and Aoife knew that it wasn’t because she thought Aoife was joking, or because she didn’t believe her even before she asked, in cheery tones, “Who knew that brain damage might be the vaccine for Catholicism?”
“You are a freak, Colleen,” said Aoife.
“That’s why I’m so at home sharing an umbrella with you,” said Colleen, waggling thin, purple tinged eyebrows, and Aoife felt a faint heat rise in her cheeks, huffing out a quiet sound of amusement. “I like how easily you say things, that’s all. We could all do with more frank speaking.”
“Most people don’t agree.”
“Fuck most people,” said Colleen. “Most people are bastards.”
“I don’t think I agree,” said Aoife. “I think most people want to be good, or kind, or at least, they think of themselves as wanting to be — but they are stupid, which holds them back.”
Colleen laughed, and she reached out her hand, hesitating before she actually made contact with Aoife’s body until Aoife met her gaze and slightly inclined her head. The older woman smacked her on the back, twice, two firm thumps, and then she drew her hand back and looked forward again.
Aoife felt the ghost of it, Colleen’s smack against her shoulders, felt the percussive echo in her breast, and it felt warm and comforting, more so than a hug would have been.
“D’you miss Ireland?”
“Sometimes,” Aoife said. “Not enough to go back. Do you miss Yorkshire?”
“Sometimes,” Colleen echoed. “But I couldn’t go back if I wanted to. Have you been?”
“To Manchester,” Aoife said. “And Camelot, when I was a little girl.”
“Holiday?”
“Neurological assessment, making sure my magic wasn’t damaging my brain further.”
“Was it?”
“No.”
“Good. You ever go to Lashton?”
“No. My aunt says Lashton is full of criminals.”
“She’s right,” Colleen said, and laughed her barking laugh, all jagged edges. “You should steer well clear of it.”
“Colleen,” Aoife said.
“Aoife?”
“Do you hate Doctor Whipp?”
“Oh,” said Colleen, and wrinkled her nose, screwing up her face and curling her lip. Aoife could see how sharp her teeth were, and wondered how easily they punctured flesh, what it felt like, when they bit. She’d never been bitten by a vampire before, but she’d heard about it. “Fucking Ollie. He been giving you shit?”
“No,” said Aoife. “He’s been a bit calmer with me the past few weeks. I think he learned a new breathing exercise, or something. You can see his lips moving when he counts.”
“Yeah, I taught him that,” muttered Colleen, and Aoife chuckled. “Doesn’t do fuck all for me, but it seems to be helping him a bit. No, I don’t hate him, and I’m sure he’ll be a perfectly adequate doctor, if he can ever get over himself. He’s an annoying little prick, but that’s all.”
“I don’t understand why he’s so frightened of everything,” Aoife said.
“Well, he’s a man, he’s sensitive,” said Colleen derisively. “And weak.”
“Ephraim is a man.”
“Perhaps,” Colleen allowed, albeit reluctantly. “But he’s not the same as Ollie is. Ephraim, he knows what suffering is — Ollie, he doesn’t. He thinks the worst and scariest thing in the world is if someone thinks he’s a fucking idiot, and so he puffs himself up like a stupid little house cat, growls and scratches and tries to bite if someone so much as looks at him funny.”
“And you think it’s because he’s a man?”
“Of course,” said Colleen immediately. “If he was a woman, he’d be scared of being raped or having his arse slapped, or just not being listened to as a professional. All my life, people’ve treated me as little, hysterical, ignored what I say automatically, immediately, have tried to show me what’s best, like I’ve got no expertise at all — I know why they do that. I’m a woman, and the things that make my father scary, same traits we’ve got, the hair, the skin, the teeth always visible — they make him scary. He’s a big man: me, I’m a little woman. What makes him frightening makes me a fucking cartoon.
“And Ollie, the way he sees it, however unconsciously, he fucking thinks, hey. It’s not right to treat him like that. He’s not a fucking girl. He’s smart and he’s fast and he’s young and he’s an up-and-comer, so why the fuck isn’t everyone treating him as seriously as he wants to be treated? Men’s pride — it’s as dangerous as it is pathetic.”
Aoife nodded her head, but she felt her brow furrow as they kept on walking together, shifting her grip on her bag where it was slung over her shoulder.
“What, that confuses you?”
“Maybe not confuses me,” Aoife said. “I guess I just don’t know how you know how people perceive you, how people perceive him. Everyone finds you scary, because you’re kind of cold, flat, hoarse, and you’re strong. People don’t find me scary — they just think I’m small, stupid. Because I don’t talk much, because I don’t make expressions.”
“People find me scary now,” Colleen corrected her. “You, the other nurses, maybe some of the younger doctors like Ollie — not the others, not some of the older cunts. Patients, sometimes — in obstetrics, not the mothers, not anybody actually pushing out a fucking baby, but relatives, the big masculine ones. Dads, grandfathers, interfering relatives. None of them find me scary, not at first — they shove me out of the way, call me names, tell me to fuck off. I’m frightening by virtue of my reputation, not my appearance.”
“Do you think I can build a frightening reputation?”
“Depends,” Colleen said. “Want to punch a patient?”
“Sometimes,” Aoife said. “I’m told it’s not best practice.”
Colleen’s laugh was a savage thing, all teeth and chatter like a hyena, and her eyes flashed.
“Maybe not,” said Colleen. “But sometimes, needs must. What are you doing with your evening?”
“Going home,” said Aoife. “Going to read for a bit, study. Maybe work in the hotel garden.”
“Have fun, kiddo,” Colleen said, and Aoife opened her mouth to protest at being called that, because it was somehow very different to being called Aoifele by Ephraim, but she was already striding off in the direction of a tall office building, and Aoife set her jaw and kept on walking home.
* * *
“You should stay after breakfast and get — ”
“I know,” Beau interrupted Germain. “You told me already, I’ll stay, okay?”
Germain exhaled, laying his beautiful hands on beautiful knees before shaking out his beautiful hair, over his shoulders. It was breakfast time in Toothsome Delights, and Beau had shown up to cook breakfast for some of the workers. It was his day off, and he and Germain were going to go to an art gallery in the afternoon.
Beau liked Toothsome Delights.
Of the brothels he had been to in his life, varied as they were, this was the one that most felt like a home — it had a large kitchen combined with a dining room, and it was here that meetings happened, and where everyone ate meals together, if they had them.
Germain had come to sit at one of the stools on the kitchen island, because some of the others were packing up the big dining table and folding it away, setting it against the wall with its legs removed, as Bird stacked up most of the dining chairs and put them in the corner, leaving a few out in rows.
In London, most of the brothels he’d gone to had left workers to go about getting tests or seeing clinics on their own mileage — there was a requirement that they see professionals on a monthly basis, but so long as they went and got their tests and got their all-clears, they were fine.
This was something that the magical GUM clinics in Bristol had established with the brothels — one day a week, each of them dispatched a team to one of the brothels to get their tests done. They could still head to the GUM clinic on their own, if they preferred, but Beau had noticed that most of the workers came into Delights even if they hadn’t worked the night before.
“May I have pancakes?” Germain asked, and Beau nodded his head, picking up the batter and whisking it quickly to make sure it hadn’t thickened up before he poured it over a hot, buttered pan, listening to it sizzle. “Have you eaten anything?”
“I got here at five, I didn’t realise how early it was,” Beau said. He hadn’t slept well last night, had kept tossing and turning in his bed, overheating, sweat on his skin. “Mr Burlac made me eat from the fruit platter while he ate the breakfast I made for him. I thought he’d kick me out when I realised how early it was.”
“He likes you, Mr Burlac,” Germain said.
Mr Burlac had made conversation with him — he’d asked him questions, mostly, asked how long he’d been in Bristol, what he did. When Beau had said he’d only just started working at the Caer Afon, Mr Burlac had talked at length, had talked about how the hospital had changed over the years, when the GUM clinic was built, about having to get an operation there a few years back.
“Was that hard?” Beau had asked. “Being a vampire, getting a surgery?”
“It’s difficult, far more involved than getting a surgery as a human,” Burlac had said seriously. “Prying open ribs harder than stone, through harder flesh, and the unfortunate reality of cancer in a vampire’s body is that it has the malfunctioning cells have the same strength and aggression as the rest of a vampire’s flesh, their blood.”
“They got it out though?” Bird asked. “The cancer?”
“Oh, yes, completely,” Mr Burlac had told him with a small smile. “They’re specialists in attending to vampiric health concerns at the Caer Afon — I always know I’m in good hands there.”
When they’d both finished eating, Burlac had turned and given Beau a modest smile, and inclined his head toward him before saying, “You’re a very good boy, Mr Horvasse.”
It had reminded Beau of Edmund, and that had made him feel a bit miserable, in all honesty — his chest had panged, and it was still panging now as he flipped over the pancakes and looked at Germain over the island between them.
“Is it normal? Being friends with clients?”
“More normal than you’d think, especially in smaller communities,” Germain said, reaching up and delicately hiding his yawn behind his hand. “Especially client relationships like our own — ones that are borne less of particular sexual or romantic desire, but are more clinical in their basis.”
Beau nodded, and then asked, “Long night?”
“Tuesday nights are always slow,” Germain said. “Dull, monotonous — it tends to get busier deeper into the evening, but these nights tend to drag in ways the busy ones don’t.”
“When are they getting here?” Beau asked as he flipped off the three pancakes from the big, broad pan and stacked them up, drizzling them with a strawberry syrup that Edmund had taught him to make from scratch, one of the first things he’d ever shown him.
Edmund Horvasse wasn’t much of a cook — he and Thursday had staff for that — but making syrups had been about cultivating patience, about studying the precise moment to take the syrup off the heat, how much fruit to add, how much sugar. They’d never used a recipe or a scale: Edmund had wanted him to learn how to do it by eye and by feel.
“Nine,” Germain said, glancing at the clock on the wall and quickly cutting up his pancakes. “Colleen Pike always brings them out, so they’ll be on time — on the dot, I wouldn’t doubt.”
“Ephraim mentioned her, Colleen. Apparently she’s pretty tough.”
“Yes, she is,” Germain said, reaching up and tying up his hair with a ribbon before beginning to eat. “Have you spoken to him much?”
“I saw him last night,” Beau said, inclining his head.
Ephraim had been waiting for the bus alongside one of the older nurses, and when Ephraim had waved to him, Beau had bitten down the urge to walk hurriedly past and had approached, remaining safely huddled in his coat but still maintaining a certain distance from Ephraim and the nurse both.
“He was cooking risotto yesterday,” Beau said. “Which means arancini for lunch today.”
“A passionate cook, that man,” Germain remarked, and Beau smiled at him faintly. He was right, of course — most of his conversations with Ephraim involved cooking or baking, at their core.
“He has a keen instinct for other people’s comfort, I think,” he said in quiet tones, wiping down the counter tops. “I think he’s waiting for me to broach other topics when I feel comfortable.”
“He seems a patient man,” Germain said. “More patient than me.”
“I don’t know that that’s true, you’re very patient,” Beau said. “Maybe not with boredom, but with clients, or with students — you’re a good teacher.”
“Kind of you to say,” Germain said, and groaned quietly around the sweetness of the strawberry syrup his piece of pancake was doused in, and Beau smiled in satisfaction. “Are you planning to broach any further topics soon?”
“I’m trying,” Beau said. “Have you ever got… I don’t know. You never find there’s stuff you can’t say, even though you want to? Subjects you can’t bring up, words you can’t force your mouth to make?”
Germain considered the question as he kept slicing through the pancakes on his plate, and then he chewed another piece slowly, carefully, swallowed.
“When I was a child, I think,” he said in slow, meditative tones. “Certain topics made me very anxious — death, grief. Butchery, even, or the deaths of pests, vermin. I couldn’t so much as speak the name of a dead relative — a dead pet — without my eyes tearing up and threatening to overflow.”
Beau leaned forward, resting his chin on the back of his hands, and he watched as Germain ate a few more mouthfuls, studying the handsome planes of his face.
“And what, you just… that just passed, one day?”
“Not passed, exactly,” Germain said. “As I entered puberty, my moods became a little more unstable, but my feelings didn’t feel quite so overwhelming — grief was always so large an emotion, and I suppose my body was too small to contain it. As my body grew, I had more space inside me for it. Hallucinogens helped, as well.”
“Hallucinogens?” Beau repeated, not able to keep the snark out of his voice, and not particularly bothering to try.
“Mushrooms did me the world of good,” Germain said. “Do you think that…?”
“No,” said Beau, and Germain laughed — Beau shook his head as he laughed himself, running the tap to wash up the pan and Germain’s plate.
“Are you good with needles, Beau?”
“No,” said Beau honestly, dread bubbling in his belly. “Or the rest of it.”
Germain made a sympathetic noise, his brow furrowing as he stood to his feet. “You want me to bite you for this?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe,” said Germain, and inclined his head.
* * *
Aoife carried the supplies bag as they walked up into the hall of Toothsome Delights, and she immediately felt relief wash over her. She’d been bracing herself for the overwhelming, thick perfumes that both of the brothels she’d been to so far had been, full of bowls of potpourri and scented candles and incense and all that sort of stuff.
Anything, Colleen had commented dryly when Aoife complained about it in the car, to dampen the scent of sex.
“Vampire establishment,” Colleen said over her shoulder, giving Aoife a sharp grin. “We’ve got strong noses, Aoife — we don’t go in for strong chemical or floral odours.”
“Ms Pike,” rumbled a large, strong-bodied man with a thick, dark moustache, and Colleen turned to meet his gaze.
“Mr Burlac,” she said, shaking his hand. Her hand, strong and scarred, looked ridiculously small in his plump one. “Avram Burlac, this is Aoife Harkin, she’s one of our new hires.”
“Always good to see some new blood,” said Burlac, and when Aoife screwed up her nose, he laughed a handsome, wine-rich laugh. “Not one for jokes, this one?”
“Funny ones only, Mr Burlac,” said Aoife.
“And sharp as a knife,” said Burlac, not without evident and obvious approval, and he stepped aside, extending his hands for the two of them to walk ahead of him and into the big house. A large staircase led up to a series of bedrooms, each of the doors with golden plaques naming them, and after they moved past a reception desk and through the main entrance hall, they walked into a dining room with a kitchen to one corner.
A large dining table was leaning up against the wall, and wooden chairs had been set in neat rows, small nesting tables set alongside each one, each with a small plate resting on it with a few biscuits.
“Efficient,” said Aoife approvingly, easing the bag off her shoulder and beginning to take out sets of swabs. “Are we testing many people today?”
“About eighteen or twenty, depending on who shows up. And we have a civilian who’s going to be tested here as well, if that’s alright with you.”
“Civilian?” Aoife repeated.
“That’s fine,” said Colleen. “They scared of hospitals?”
“Not scared,” said a very petite, pale young man in the doorway, a taller man with rich dark hair standing behind him. “I work at the Caer Afon. But I am touch averse. I will need a pap smear, also, if that’s possible.”
“It’s possible,” Colleen said. “Aoife will take you aside — okay to use one of the bedrooms?”
“Come,” said the taller man, and Aoife picked up a smaller bag from inside the big go-bag and left Colleen to finish up with set-up. “My name is Germain, I work here. Beau here is a friend and client of mine.”
“Beau Horvasse,” said the petite one when Aoife looked at him. “I’m a porter for the mortuary.”
“You don’t look like a demon,” said Aoife.
“I’m an angel,” said Beau.
“Oh, I thought everyone in the mortuary was a demon,” said Aoife, and Beau looked at her impassively as they kept ascending the stairs.
Doctor Plummer had said nearly everyone who worked in the basements was demonic — most of the pathologists, the workers in the laundry. It was standard in most magical hospitals, Aoife knew, although it had been a little different at the Royal in London. All the demons there had worked on another campus, had been distinctly removed from everyone else.
Demons, who mostly more resembled giant insects than fae or humans, had very different immune systems — they were likely to be immune to virtually any disease that might come through the Caer Afon.
The same, though, could be said of angels — angels mostly looked humanoid, but they had very different organic structures than humans and fae did.
“Mostly,” Beau said finally. “But not me.”
“I’m Aoife Harkin,” she said. “I haven’t worked in the hospital long.”
“Nor I.”
“You’re not from Bristol?”
“I’m from London,” said Beau. “I worked at the Bayett Inn for the past few months, but then a position opened downstairs at the Caer Afon. I was a hospital porter before, but as I said, I’m averse to touch. I don’t do well in the crowded corridors.”
“I live on the Bayett campus,” Aoife said. “What hospital in London?”
“The Magical Royal Infirmary.”
“Oh, I did my internship at the Royal, I was there two years. Were you there long?”
Beau looked at her thoughtfully as they entered the bedroom marked with Germain’s name on one of the brass plaques, and he toed off his slippers as Aoife set her bag on a table.
“Quite a few years,” Beau said. “I left six months ago. Evidently, our paths did not cross.”
“A lot of coincidences, though,” Aoife said. “My friend, he would say that after so many close misses, to finally meet, that it is kismet.”
“What is this? Kismet?”
“Fate,” said Aoife. “Destiny.”
Beau looked at her very seriously, his gaze piercing, focused. He had a handsome face — his hair was a mousy brown colour not dissimilar to Aoife’s own, hanging limply around his head with a gentle wave to it, and he had brown skin, brown eyes.
“Do you believe in fate?” he asked.
Aoife considered the question, and then said, “I don’t know. Do you?”
“Probably,” said Beau, with a certain measure of reluctance, and as Aoife began to unpack her things, he undressed from the waist downward and settled himself on the bed.
“Do you want to do the swabs yourself?” Aoife asked.
“The one for my mouth, yes,” said Beau. “The others, I won’t be able to.”
“Would you rather I do them, or Germain?”
“It doesn’t matter to me.”
“I’ll do them then,” said Aoife, handing Beau the packet with the oral swab. Germain spelled his hands clean before he drew out the swab and slid it into his mouth, carefully swabbing far back in his throat before he slipped the head of the swab into a container and snapped it off, sealing it in fluid. “Is it a psychological or physiological aversion?”
“Both,” said Beau. “Although the former is likely as a result of the latter.”
“Ye gods, it’s like there’s two of you,” Germain muttered, and when Aoife looked at him askance, he exhaled and leaned back, his hands on his hips. “With all due respect, nurse. Merely that you’re each quite…”
“Wooden?” Aoife offered. “Flat? Autistic?”
“Reserved is probably closer to the word he was looking for,” Beau said when Germain stared at her, apparently too taken aback to immediately respond. “Although traumatised is probably close to the mark.”
“Yes,” said Aoife.
“Have you ever been electrocuted, Miss Harkin?” Beau asked.
“Yes,” said Aoife. It occurred to her, even as she was answering, that someone else might have brushed off the question, or ignored it, but she didn’t much see the point in that. “I was struck by lightning once — I got overstimulated during a power cut and walked outside, into the rain.”
“That was ill-advised,” said Beau.
“Yes,” Aoife agreed. “It hurt, although it didn’t harm me as it might someone with less magic — it didn’t badly affect my heart or anything, and I was alright within a day or two. Apparently my hair looked surprisingly good in the aftermath.”
Beau laughed, and he seemed quite surprised at it himself, his brown eyes bright, his lips curling up and into the expression. He had dimples when he smiled, when he laughed, and they were nice, Aoife thought.
“Laughter is good,” said Aoife. “Helps the muscles relax. Do you experience vaginismus?”
“No,” said Beau. “I was defibrillated soon after my Fall — my magic responded to the defibrillator as I regained consciousness. They weren’t mundies, but they weren’t familiar with angels — I command ice, as an element, and they were concerned that my body wasn’t warming sufficiently, thought to jumpstart my heart. I experienced both electrocution and magical overcharge in one instant.”
“That was unpleasant, I take it,” said Aoife.
Germain hid his mouth behind his hand, turning away, but Beau did not seem offended by either the question or his friend’s amusement at it — he smiled thinly at her.
“Very,” he said. “But the result is… overstimulation. At everything. Even the mildest touch is so intense as to be an agony.”
“Would you like me to ask Colleen to knock you out for this?” Aoife asked.
“No,” Beau said quickly. “No, that’s — ” His body was stiff, and Aoife nodded her head as she watched him take in slow, even breaths, the same way she’d seen Ollie try to count his breaths of recent, and relax his body. “No. Thank you.”
“Alright,” Aoife said, coming forward and taking a seat on the stool in front of the bed, which Germain had pulled forward to her, and she pulled on her gloves. “I’ll do the anal swab first, and then when I do your pap, I can do the vaginal swab at the same time.”
“I’m going to kill myself,” Beau told the ceiling.
“Don’t do that now, darling,” said Germain. “You’re doing so well.”
* * *
Beau in the aftermath was covered in a thin layer of sweat, and he was shaking bodily. As Aoife washed her hands again, Germain wrapped him tightly in a heavy fleece blanket, careful not to touch him with his hands.
“You did well,” said Aoife quietly when she came out of the bathroom, drying off her hands.
“Thank you,” said Beau, and he initially flinched when Germain curled his fingers into his hair, but then managed to make his body relax into the touch, focusing his concentration on the pleasurable sensation of Germain’s fingertips rubbing and gently scratching against his scalp, willing the rest of his body to calm itself, trying to work the painful buzz of overstimulation out from under his skin.
“I need to ask some questions about your sexual history,” Aoife said. “Would you prefer Germain go or stay present for them?”
“He can stay,” Beau murmured, watching as Aoife fully sealed the sample swabs and put them into a clear envelope, writing Beau’s name on it, his species, the date of his Fall, in neat, square handwriting, writ very small. Beau’s blood sample, separated from his body and reconstituting in the plastic vial, shone like mercury.
“Are you in any relationships at the moment, intimate or sexual, that feel pressured in any way, that feel non-consensual or violent, or like they might become violent?”
“No.”
“Have you been in such relationships in the past?”
“Yes.”
Aoife nodded her head. “I noticed some scarring around the inside of your vagina. Did you have that examined and treated at the time? Angels ordinarily have a significantly advanced healing factor — that sort of scarring indicates repeated rough treatment.”
Beau was silent for a few moments, his fingers gripping tightly at the corners of the heavy blanket around his shoulders — he didn’t need to draw his head away from Germain’s hand, as Germain drew it away himself, and busied himself bringing over Beau’s clothes, which he’d neatly folded, for him to put back on.
“Yes,” said Beau.
Germain’s expression was unreadable, which was generally an indication that he was feeling significant emotion that he felt was inappropriate to display openly.
“You currently feel safe and under no danger or coercion?”
“No, I feel fine now.”
“Would you like a referral for counselling or legal support?”
“No.”
“I understand,” said Aoife. “Is there anything else you’d like to ask me, anything I can help you with?”
“Would you like to, at some point, purchase a coffee together and engage with one another socially?”
“Yes, I would like that,” said Aoife firmly, and her mouth shifted into the faintest of smiles. “In any case, I’ll no doubt see you at Ephraim’s for dinner some evening.”
“Mm,” Beau said.
“Will you be alright?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
Aoife nodded to him, neatly stepping out of the room and closing the door behind her, and Beau turned his head slowly to look at Germain, whose expression still had that guarded neutrality to it.
“You must have suspected,” said Beau.
“I did,” Germain murmured, and he showed some of the grief he felt now, his lips twisted, and he looked down at Beau with no small amount of compassion writ in his features. Beau wished he could accept it physically, wished he could crawl into Germain’s lap and feel some comfort in the coolness of his body, the silken fabric of the pyjamas he wore, in the grip of his hands. “I’ll go speak to Mr Burlac about giving you a drive home.”
“I can walk.”
“You’re sure?”
“Mm.”
“I’ll leave you for now — we’ll walk that way together once I’ve taken my due of needles and swabs?”
“Yeah.”
Beau laid on his side on the bed after Germain had left the room, and he very slowly reached for his phone. It wasn’t a smart phone — he hated the glare of the screens — and Germain had laughingly teased him about its big buttons and its brick-like physical appearance.
He remembered the number by heart, and he dialled in the area code, the number, pressed call.
“Horvasse residence,” answered a rich voice which buzzed with weight on the other end of the phone.
“Hullo, Bexxen,” said Beau.
There was a startled, quiet vibration on the other end of the line, the chattering of a very inhuman and unangelic mouth, and then in a much quieter voice, Bexxen asked, “Mr Horvasse?”
“Yes. Is Edmund home?”
“Er, I, erm, no, no, sir, he, uh… No, sir, he and Captain Carmicheal are in Oxford — they’ll be back tomorrow. May I take a — ”
Beau hung up the phone, stood up from bed, and began to put on his clothes.
* * *
On the walk back to the hospital, Colleen asked, “How was the angel, the one upstairs?”
“Beauregard. He was alright, I didn’t see any signs of infection or similar. I think it was just a precaution — apparently he’s been the victim of sexual violence in the past, I think his friend nudged him to get the exams.”
“Germain will have, yeah,” Colleen said. “He’s pretty up on a lot of good practice — he’s a good man.”
“He seemed attentive.”
“He and the lad are friends, I think. They do their needlework together, or whatever the fuck.”
Aoife’s lips twitched, and she adjusted the satchel over her arm. “He asked me out for a drink.”
“Germain?”
“Beau.”
Colleen’s thin eyebrows raised very high on her face. “Really?” she asked, and looked forward. “Gosh.”
“Shut up.”
“Oh, I have nothing to say about this at all. Don’t let on to Ollie.”
“Fuck’s sake,” Aoife muttered. “Are Danny and Sophia right about that?”
“Probably,” Colleen said.
“I don’t think it’s necessarily romantic. We’re just… similar.”
“You’re not a rape victim too, are you?”
“I haven’t ticked that particular trauma off yet, actually.”
“You got vampire bite checked off?”
“No.”
“Would you like to?”
Aoife glanced sideways at the older woman, who was smirking at her, her teeth showing very white and very sharp, and then she laughed without exactly meaning to, feeling heat rise in her cheeks and on the back of her neck.
“You’re awful.”
“Oh, darling, beg to differ. I’m very good.”
“Hello, Aoifele, Colleen,” said Ephraim. “How are the happy whores of Toothless Delights?”
“Mildly less happy with a few more puncture wounds between them,” said Colleen, “but hale and hearty. The new angel here in the hospital, Beau. He a good boy?”
“He’s good,” Ephraim said. “A little on the shy side, but good. You actually saw him above ground?”
“On the walk over,” said Aoife. “He’s pretty.”
Ephraim blinked down at her, opening his mouth, closing it. Aoife rarely saw him flustered, and she smiled slightly at the sight of it, his cheeks turning a little redder, his eyes wide. “Ah,” he finally said faintly.
“Now who’s awful?” Colleen asked dryly, looping her arm through Aoife’s, and they both laughed as they headed back down toward the GUM clinic.
Colleen’s arm was very muscular, and Aoife couldn’t help thinking about what it must look like under her clothes, about what her regular hours in the gym did for her body.
She kept thinking about it even after they broke apart to get back to work.
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