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“The body ought to pray as well as the soul.”
C.S. Lewis
Even if he hadn’t heard the buzzing of thousands of flies, Gabriel would have felt their presence as they filled the room around him. Their demonic Presence encased his kneeling body, but he didn’t dare let his Light push back despite the slow suffocation. Then, though he couldn’t see them from behind his blindfold, Gabriel sensed their Corporation solidifying before him into the familiar Beelzebub he had come to… see? Was that the right word? They often did a good deal more than “seeing” each other, and, at any rate, he wasn’t doing a whole lot of seeing at the moment.
“Lord Beelzebub,” he said, by way of greeting.
Their reaction was swift – a slap across the face and a clipped,” What have I zzaid about speaking out of turn?”
“Tsk, tsk,” Gabriel scolded himself with a grin, “I doubt I’ll ever learn.”
“Gluttony is your sin today, I zzzee,” Beelzebub said, and before Gabriel could argue, they added, “And faking Pride to get it. That’s not what we’re doing today, Gabriel.”
Gabriel shivered at the sound of his name, even if it was the silly humanized version. Beelzebub called him “Archangel”, “Bird Brain”, “Pigeon”, and all manner of insults, but he was hardly ever “Gabriel”. He felt their hands sweeping over his scalp and untying the blindfold.
“You knelt there for an hour, waiting.”
The fabric fell from his eyes, and he could see the black linen shirt Beelzebub wore, ruffled around the collar and casually open to show an almost obscene amount of the demon’s pale chest.
“You’ve learnt to obey,” they said, “not that most angels have trouble with that.”
They circled him once, considering, then began to untie the knots binding his wrists.
“But have you learnt to pray?”
He flexed his freed arms and laid his hands in his lap. Of course he knew how to pray. The angels had learned to pray long before humans had even been a twinkle –
“Don’t think zzzo hard. You’ll give yourself wrinklezz,” Beelzebub said. They took a seat in their throne, several feet away.
“Can I actually do that?” Gabriel asked, touching his face gingerly.
“If we wanted to, we could give our Corporations eight legzzz,” Beelzebub said. “They are our templezz, not like those prisons humans go about in.”
“I mean, mine might be a temple, but yours –”
“Izz the one you’ll worship at tonight.”
“I… what I mean to say is worshipping false gods is not something I, as an angel, can do.” Gabriel laughed loudly and uncomfortably.
“You’ve done many things angelzz cannot do, Gabriel. You have obeyed me, allowed me to uzze your Corporation as I please, called me ‘lord’…”
“That’s your title. It’s –”
“Different?” Beelzebub kicked their legs forward and slid gracefully off the throne. They paced in front of Gabriel, gazing at him steadily as they walked. “You allow me to… you dezzzire me to brutalizzze your Corporation. You juzztify it by pretending it’zz a punishment. This hideouzz body is only capable of giving pleazzure in the form of pain.”
They stopped abruptly in front of Gabriel, widened their stance, crossed their arms.
“It’s not –,” Gabriel began.
“DON’T INTERRUPT.”
Gabriel sucked in a breath and held it. Beelzebub seemed to ripple with the same electricity Gabriel harnessed to travel between offices. Caught off guard by Beelzebub’s self-deprecation, Gabriel had almost complimented their body. In the 6000 years since they’d Fallen, he had begun to see them, without realizing, not as a monster and not even as a corrupted angel, but as beautifully grotesque in the way they wanted to be seen.
“Our Corporations can do more,” Beelzebub said. “They were made for more than pain and zzzex. What were they made for, Gabriel?”
His first instinct was his usual response to difficult questions – playing dumb. He could loudly blurt that angels were given Corporations so they could deliver messages to humans or something equally plain, but Beelzebub’s gaze seemed to pierce right through the veil of idiocy he wore as armor.
“To worship,” he said in an uncharacteristically soft tone.
“Then worship in my temple, Gabriel.” Beelzebub’s face softened but lost none of its power.
Gabriel closed his eyes, blocking his view of the demon he knew he could never love but was on the verge of adoring. Beelzebub had tempted him, imprisoned him, flogged and degraded him, and even though he had relished every moment, he could tell himself that these things were being done to him. Gabriel himself obviously had no part in this debasement, and any enjoyment was purely incidental. To worship, though, was to risk the fate of their priests and prophets of old – to be struck down himself, perhaps by the sword of an angel or perhaps, more humiliatingly, by an ox bone.
He felt a hand in his hair, warm despite the cool dampness of Hell. “You can start simply,” Beelzebub’s voice said, warmer and more intimate than he’d ever heard it. “Tell me why you come here. Don’t lie. I’ll know if you lie, Gabriel. Angels are so bad at hiding it.”
Gabriel breathed deeply, allowing his Corporation to smell the mold and sulfur that permeated the room. He opened his eyes and met Beelzebub’s.
“I come here… well, I come here for…” Pain? Penance? Punishment? Those all reduced Beelzebub to a machine, nothing better than a guillotine, really. “I come here to feel… your hands on my throat.”
“What about my handzz?” Beelzebub held one of their small, pale hands out to him.
“They look and feel delicate,” he said, taking the hand into his palm and running his thumb along each finger, “until they close around my hair or until you dig your nails into my back.”
Gabriel lifted the hand to his lips and brushed his bottom lip across Beelzebub’s knuckles. “Then they are like steel.” He pressed Beelzebub’s forefinger to his lips and kissed the tip. “They’re calloused from holding a sword. Here,” Gabriel said as he moved his lips to the hard skin between Beelzebub’s forefinger and thumb. “And here.” He opened Beelzebub’s palm and kissed the calloused skin in the center.
Lightly, he ran his bottom teeth over the tip of Beelzebub’s thumb. When they shivered, he bit down gently. Then he moved to the forefinger, the middle finger, and on before lowering Beelzebub’s hand to their side and taking the other hand to repeat his movements. When he started to let go of their other hand, they closed it around his wrist.
“Tell me about the rezzzt of my body, Gabriel,” they said, leading him up from his knees and over to their throne.
They took their place on the iron seat, legs spread and toes barely brushing the floor. They placed their hand on Gabriel’s head and eased him to the floor again. When Gabriel was level with their knees, they kept pressing his head down until he was looking at their shoes. The black leather needed replaced, and Gabriel might have told them he knew a world-class cobbler in London if he hadn’t suddenly come to understand that the wear was a part of them. They curated dust and grime and untidiness because it went contrary to the order and cleanliness of Heaven. He didn’t come here to see perfectly polished shoes. He wanted to be kicked with steel toes that were threatening to burst from their leather casings. He lowered his head further to kiss the threadbare points of the shoes and slipped a hand beneath one. He untied the rotting laces and slid it off of Beelzebub’s foot. He kissed the tips of their toes one-by-one through the fishnet before letting go and taking up their other shoe in his enormous palms. He removed the second shoe and held their foot in his hands, naked but the crisscross of fishnet. They had painted their toenails black to match their fingernails, and he wondered aloud if they used the little brushes he’d seen humans use.
“It’s relaxing,” they said, almost a confession.
After he’d kissed each toe, he moved up their ankles, tickling his lips on the prickly hairs that grew on their legs. When he reached the bottom of their trousers, he slipped his hands up their legs and began to pull at the button at their waist. Beelzebub grasped his chin firmly in one hand and lifted it so that he was looking at them.
“Wait on that. Zztart with my face.”
Gabriel moved his hands to cup Beelzebub’s face. Despite the strength he could have used, he held them gently as if they were a fragile, precious artifact. He combed one hand through their messy hair, disturbing a few flies that had made a nest there. The coarse hair stayed wherever his fingers left it as if stiffened with pomade. He gently tugged his fingers through the tangles, not trying to straighten their hair entirely but enjoying the sensation of it on his skin. They tilted their head into his palm and let out a hissing breath between their teeth. With his other hand, Gabriel stroked the side of their face. He ran his fingertips over the smooth skin at their temple and massaged the little ridge of bone that formed their eye socket. They closed their eyes, and he felt the collection of wrinkles at the edge of their eye gather under his thumb.
“We didn’t get these wrinkles the way humans do,” he said. “Not with age but how we chose to look, when she gave us the option of Corporations.”
“She should have told uzz when we chose them that she was giving humans the same modelzz,” Beelzebub said with disdain.
“It does make finding raiments for them a lot easier.”
Beelzebub answered with a single, staccato laugh.
Gabriel moved his fingers up and traced their thick eyebrows. He’d heard that humans wax and pluck eyebrows like that into fine lines that made them appear perpetually startled, but when he saw them on Beelzebub, worn proudly in their natural state, he wondered why humans wouldn’t leave them as they were. Between their eyes, his hand brushed over the patch of swelling pustules that adorned their forehead. These, too, they made no effort to conceal or diminish.
“Do they hurt?” Gabriel asked, something he’d never thought to bring up before.
Beelzebub lifted their head out of his other hand and looked at him almost… pityingly.
“Everything hurtzzz,” they answered.
Gabriel pulled his hand away, afraid he might have hurt them. They took hold of his hand and placed it back on their face, this time on the rash that covered their left cheek.
“Remember, Gabriel, I’m a demon. Whatever pride I might take in that fact, we all still zzzuffer. But I would rather zzzuffer here than zzzerve Her.”
Gabriel knew that, demon or not, Beelzebub could hide the marks of their suffering if they wanted, at least from him. Instead they let their skin bubble and crust until seeing them without it, like he had at the airbase, seemed strange. He cupped their chin and brought their lips to his. He expected them to push him away as they always did when he tried to kiss them, but he was surprised when their chapped lips parted and yielded to the kiss. He drew their bottom lip between his, savoring how this skin felt so different from anywhere else on their body. He felt their tongue brush his top lip as they leaned down toward him and took his head in their hands. They kissed deeply and comfortably, as if this were not the first time they’d been this gentle with one another.
Beelzebub broke away first but not with force like they usually did. They leaned back into their throne and beckoned Gabriel closer with one of the delicate fingers he had kissed only minutes earlier. He followed their lead and placed one of his large hands on the side of their neck, not threateningly but just to feel the way their muscles moved as they flexed it back. He placed a thumb on their throat and traced its curve down to the hollow at its base where he met his other hand and ran them over Beelzebub’s collarbones to part their shirt. They lifted their arms over their head and allowed Gabriel to lift the shirt up. Underneath, they wore nothing to cover their breasts or hide the scars that crisscrossed their chest. He had seen these before, but they had always felt like a warning – “Beelzebub is not afraid to get hurt,” they told him. Now he understood them as badges Beelzebub wore, like their medals, of battles past. Their history was mapped out on their body.
Gabriel encircled their shoulders in one muscular arm and got fully to his feet so that he could crouch over them. If he hadn’t immediately rested his chin on their chest and gazed at them with hazy devotion in his purple eyes, the movement might have seemed domineering. Beelzebub lifted one hand to his forehead and eased it into his hairline. They gave his hair a light tug and smiled when his eyes widened. Immediately, Gabriel responded by planting kisses along their clavicles, not skipping the patch of boils that interrupted the flow of soft skin. He opened his hand against their upper back to support them and moved his lips to their nipples. He circled them with the tip of his tongue and appreciated the wrinkles and bumps that formed naturally in the dark areolas around them. He also appreciated the way their body pressed back into his hand and how they buzzed deep in their chest. Their fingernails grazed his scalp as they flexed their hand with his movements. Gabriel switched sides and admired with his tongue how one of their scars cut across just below that nipple. It left a raised, white streak through the areola like a cloud crossing the moon. They held his head there a moment, their stomach rippling with rapid, open-mouthed breaths as Gabriel made his own little moans against their skin. Then, just as their hips began to tilt against his chest, they pulled his mouth away and moved his lips to their shoulder.
“Did I do something wrong?” Gabriel asked.
“I’m not ready yet,” Beelzebub hissed, not unkindly but slightly out of breath. “Finish your prayerzzz first.”
“Yes, of course,” Gabriel said. He adjusted his grip on their back and lowered his lips to their shoulder again. He planted kisses down to their elbow. Gently, he let their back fall against the throne as he brought his hands up to caress their arms. Wiry black hairs sprouted from their lower arm, trapping the damp and smoky smells of Hell within their forest – a particular perfume Beelzebub had chosen not to disguise. Gabriel had doused himself in rosewater before coming to meet them, despite angels’ inability to generate a body odor.
“What are you admiring now?” Beelzebub asked.
“Your hair,” Gabriel said.
“Humans shave it off, sometimezz.”
“They shouldn’t.”
Gabriel turned their palm upward, kissed it, and began to stroke their other arm. Their skin raised little goose-pimples around the hairs. The same hairs grew in a line down the little paunch of their stomach to the top of their trousers, which remained firmly buttoned. Gabriel pinched the fabric around the buttonhole and started to slip the button through before Beelzebub grasped his hair and yanked his head back.
“Did you azzzk first?”
“Er…,” Gabriel replied, wincing. “Prince Beelzebub, may I re –?”
“When you worship me, you call me ‘lord’.”
They looked down their rounded nose at him with narrowed, steely blue eyes.
“May I, lord,” Gabriel said, except that he didn’t say it in the sense he might call them “Lord Beelzebub”. He said it in the small caps way humans typed it in their Bibles… and he meant it. Beelzebub shuddered delightedly at the sound, and Gabriel felt his Effort twitched at the thought of this blasphemy.
“Yezzzz,” they sighed.
Gabriel unbuttoned their trousers and slid them down their dangling legs, stopping short for a moment when he realized they had not bothered to wear underwear. He saw the pink folds of their Effort in a tangle of curly hair before him and started toward it. Then he thought better of the move. He dropped to his knees again and placed one stubbly cheek against the calloused knob of their ankle. They swung their other leg up onto his back and dragged a toe down his spine.
“You’re wearing too much,” they said. “Take off your zzshirt, Gabriel.”
Gabriel began to loosen his tie, but Beelzebub smacked their foot against his head to stop him.
“Juzzzt the shirt will do.”
He removed the shirt as quickly as he could.
“Trouzzers now.”
Gabriel sat up to unzip them, but Beelzebub wrapped their feet around his neck and pressed his head down again. After a short struggle, he had them pulled down to his knees. With Beelzebub’s feet on his head, he wriggled one leg out at a time, trying his hardest to remain kneeling. When he had finally tossed them aside, Beelzebub let him go and leaned down to entwine their hand in his tie.
In his underwear on the floor, with only a tie besides, he knew he looked, in Beelzebub’s words, “rather zzztupid,” but Beelzebub only looked at him with a fondness he’d never seen before. Their head cocked to the side as they lifted his chin by his tie. His legs trembled, and his Effort ached. They let his tie drop back to his chest and sat back in their throne with their legs crossed. They placed a hand on each iron arm and raised themself to their full height.
Instinctively, Gabriel shuffled backward until he could take in the totality of their naked body, a Corporation created by Her but perfected by their own choices. Their skin was dazzling against the darkness around them. The hair on their arms and legs grew dark and fly-like. Scars sketched their way across their chest and thighs, and boils as well as the ghostly pockmarks left behind mottled their skin from head to toe. A cloud of flies formed a halo around their unholy visage. They were a deity in an ancient temple, basking in the worship of their devotees, though today the only devotee was Gabriel, and, he realized, that he was the one devotee they truly wanted. He shone the Light on them that they had refused to shine on Her. Yet in their presence, he felt unworthy himself. He had spent the past 6000 years fluttering around Heaven and giving orders that weren’t truly his own while Beelzebub was Creating themself. Yet they had chosen to speak to him. They had made themselves vulnerable to him.
He dropped down onto his hands, prostrating himself on the grimy floor of Hell.
“Did you bring a zzacrifice to burn for me?” Beelzbub asked.
Gabriel shook his head against the floor.
“Then will you come be my zzacrifice?”
He nodded and lifted his head then crawled back to Beelzebub’s feet.
“Will you burn with adoration for me?” they said, opening their legs wide. “Worzzhip me with your entire body.”
They pulled Gabriel’s tie loose but still kept it looped around his neck. They stepped off of their throne and motioned for him to stand. He towered over them, but they pushed him easily into the throne. Manifesting claws momentarily, they tore his underwear away and straddled him.
“No god has ever rezzeived a gift like you,” they said.
They twisted his tie taught around his neck until he could hardly draw a breath. Then they eased themself onto his cock, a self-indulgently large Effort that they usually found a moment to ridicule. Today they simply moaned as they sank onto it. Their hips rolled forward slowly then back as they let out another long breath.
“Uzze the rezzzzzt of your body, Gabriel,” they murmured. “Your handzzzzz. Your tongue.”
He reached one hand around their waist to grab the scarred flesh of their ass and another up their back to run his fingers down their spine. He dipped his tongue to their neck and teased it up their throat even as they tightened the tie around his throat. Gabriel choked and gasped but kept stroking them with his hand and tongue. They rocked him back into the throne smoothly, leisurely. With each undulation of their muscles, his Corporation struggled to breathe. His cheeks flushed with trapped blood, and his head swam. He could stop it at any point by interrupting his Corporation’s biological processes, but he didn’t. Beelzebub wanted a sacrifice, and his face would burn for them if they wanted it.
Beelzebub buzzed words he didn’t understand in his ear, syllables strung together but never quite forming anything coherent. They fucked him harder and faster, and he felt an aching fullness as if the Light in his body were about to blast him into a million fragments. His vision was yellowing, growing dark at the edges. Shaggy black hair scratched his face. One thought filled Gabriel’s mind – that he would gladly cease existence if this were his last thing he experienced.
He shattered. Or maybe existence itself shattered. Or maybe he had Discorporated. He saw only glaring white for a moment before his mind cleared and he saw Beelzebub standing over him with his tie dangling loosely from their hand.
They leaned down and swept the sweaty hair from his forehead, which was, to his surprise, still in one piece.
Quietly, they said, “Your devotion has been rewarded.”