"And I you."

"You are just preposterously cute. But - like, alts are one thing, putting Jokers in a room together is apparently like putting magnets in close proximity - but other people?"

"There was that time with Phebe... that was a problem," murmurs Angela.

He presses his face into her shoulder and sighs unhappily.

"Phebe is another angel at the Eyrie who doesn't like me," Angela explains to Aurora, settling her wing more snugly around Micaiah. "She interpreted Micaiah's - availability - as an opportunity to hurt me. And for political reasons I can't just announce to everyone that it isn't. Angels are often inconstant, but associated mortals, not so much. She believes that I forgave him for a betrayal, and her too, and I managed to present this in a way that so far doesn't have her telling the tale far and wide."

"My question is more about why it isn't a betrayal. I mean, maybe he never promised not to, that takes care of the technical sense of betrayal, but - you guys are married, you're going to have a baby, and you're not - keeping yourselves to yourselves. I don't completely get it."

"As it happens I do keep myself to ourselves," says Angela lightly. "Several of us do. I don't think Rose has looked outside her marriage for company, and I have no certain information either way about several of our other alts."

"Cam fucked all of us a while back," Micaiah offers. "He's fun, I like him."

"Are there any Bells you don't like?"

"Nah, don't think so," he says. "But some of them I haven't talked to much, so I don't have an opinion about them one way or another."

"Fair enough. I guess that's all I'm getting on my quest for information here, huh?"

"I'm sorry I can't be more helpful."

"It's all right. I'm not sure I ought to even bother with Aegis, I know she and Sue grew up together and that's the mother of all special circumstances, but maybe Stella will have something to say. Or either of the ones with Sherlocks."

"Stella and Alice met when she was your age and I don't think they began with any special circumstances at all," agrees Angela.

Micaiah hugs his angel and grins.

Angela wraps him up in arms and feathers and beams.

Aurora goes and looks for Stella.

[Mmkay,] says Alice, and appears almost instantly. As is starting to be a pattern, the first thing he does is cuddle his Bell.

"But I don't know how much help I'll be," says Stella, snuggling her Alice back.

"Because you have some kind of special circumstance?"

"No, because I was not quite secure enough for my liking and my reaction involved turning Alice into a vampire. I mean, there were other reasons, but that one was in there."

Alice sighs.

"...Oh."

Stella kisses Alice's cheek. "Sorry," she says, and it's not clear which of them she's addressing. "You'd think being able to read his mind would've done it, and it did, mostly, it jollied me along for months, I probably could've done with nothing but if I'd had to."