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Aziraphale has been waiting to be summoned for hours, gently thumbing his rosary as he works on reshelving books in the small room at the back of the church, one he'd been using as a temporary library. Gabriel is in the vestry talking with Michael and Uriel, their low voices carrying enough for him to hear the murmur of conversation but not its content.
He'd normally protest that he would never eavesdrop. But the truth is—the truth is these are extraordinary circumstances.
There is something wrong with the church.
Gabriel had dismissed the idea, of course, and it had been easy to dismiss, at first. It had started as simple things, things that could be explained away as an overactive imagination, or a little too much small town superstition. Strange noises at night. Unpleasant smells that came and went seemingly at random. Doors that opened and shut by themselves. Voices in empty parts of the church. Unsettling things to be sure, but Aziraphale had tried to impress upon the congregation that it was an old building. After so many years, it was bound to have its quirks, not to mention the new housing development being built in the area, it was entirely possible that the shifting ground had—
But he's making excuses again, more through fear than willful ignorance. That had only been the beginning of the trouble. The darkness that lingered had started to grow, and then spread outwards. Almost as if whatever malignant force that had taken root here was choosing to take a stretch, testing the village around it and its inhabitants.
Whatever it had found only seemed to encourage it. No one in the village had slept well for more than a week now. There had been talk—more serious every day—of tearing the whole building down.
Shadwell would no longer clean the place at night, citing disturbing sounds and an unwelcoming air. Livestock had been found dead in the graveyard. A week ago, Father Tyler had keeled over in the middle of a service, coughing helplessly as flies swarmed from his mouth. A sight that had left most of the village too afraid to come back to the church at all.
Father Tyler was still in the hospital. Though he seems to be recovering.
There is something wrong with the church, and Gabriel had finally admitted it. Or at the very least, bowed to pressure from his superiors. He'd sent a group of people into the church overnight, paranormal experts by all accounts, for an investigation. Though it was clear he didn't believe the answer was supernatural. He was convinced that a human was to blame. Though Aziraphale had pointed out how impossible it was for a human—or even several people acting together—to accomplish some of the things that they'd experienced over the last few miserable and frightening weeks.
He'd come to the church early for morning prayers, to find an ambulance and police car already there. A grey-faced Gabriel giving a statement while Michael sat conversing with a man and a woman that Aziraphale didn't recognise. People from outside the village. They'd all headed into the vestry once the police had left.
Aziraphale had not been invited to the meeting, left to go about his business for the day. But the church feels different, it's bitterly cold, and none of the candles will stay lit, though there's no draft he can discern. He thinks perhaps something terrible happened overnight. Something that requires a bishop and two priests to spend hours away from the world, leaving a taut and unsettling silence to the day, no matter how deeply he wishes someone would share with him, to soothe his fears that the church is not cursed.
Aziraphale is a priest. He's not supposed to believe in curses.
He hadn't believed either, not at first. He'd tried to play it down, blaming the reports on overactive imagination, chemical leakage, or badly done repair work, only to find himself standing outside the old oak doors one night, trembling and breathing desperately in the fresh air. Sick at the thought of going back inside to face whispers and shadows and touches from unseen fingers. He's long past trying to convince himself that the atmosphere inside at night isn't somehow malignant. There's a thickness to the air, a constant and undeniable pressure that leaves you feeling as if something is trying to worm its way inside you.
He'd spent long enough inside the church now to be in no doubt.
Something has invaded a house of God.
Whatever had happened last night seems to have finally left Gabriel with no choice but to believe it too. Aziraphale understands that he's not important enough to be a part of the meeting going on now. But the not knowing is very difficult. Is the place even safe to be in? It feels like blasphemy to think it, but that doesn't mean it isn't also the truth.
Even the midday sun coming through the windows seems less of a comfort than usual. As if the church has given up on its veneer of harmlessness in daylight hours. He's staring out the back window, telling himself that the graves haven't moved, that their shapes must be familiar, it's just a trick of the light, or a fault in his memory. He's not sure he has convinced himself, even as the door to the vestry finally creaks open, and he's summoned inside.
The table is quiet, Michael and Uriel sitting back in their chairs, though there's no relaxation in their posture, no calm appraisal of him as he enters the room. Gabriel's expression is fixed into a careful mask, something that he probably hopes is reassuring. But instead it feels stiff and alien on his face.
"Aziraphale," he says simply. Then he gestures for him to sit in the one remaining chair, left empty on the other side of the wide oak table. It's far enough away from them that he still feels separate. There's a grey cloth covering something in the centre of the table, the shape beneath it impossible to make out.
Michael can't take her eyes away from it. Uriel seems to be pretending very hard that it doesn't exist.
"You're aware that an investigation was carried out here last night," Gabriel starts, posture stiff in his chair. "Into the events that have been plaguing us for months now. To acquire evidence and then move forward with reconsecrating the church?"
Aziraphale nods. It had been difficult not to know about it; in the end Gabriel had been faced with every one of the priests in the area telling him that not doing something was tantamount to allowing evil free reign in the county.
"Unfortunately, there was a death during the investigation—"
"One of the ghost hunters was impaled on a candlestick," Michael says flatly, as if she'd had enough of talking around the issue.
Aziraphale thinks he's misheard for a moment, it's so ridiculous in its gruesomeness. There have been occurrences, yes, unpleasant and unwanted but never violent—though even as he thinks it he can't help but wonder, what are flies streaming from the mouth of a man but a sort of bodily violence?
Gabriel's sound of annoyance is enough to leave her mouth narrowing, but she's clearly too unsettled—no, too frightened, to be silent for long.
"The longer we drag this out, the worse it will be."
"We agreed that we'd tread gently here."
"This isn't a change in ecclesiastical policy we're reviewing. A man was gutted inside the church."
Aziraphale squeezes one hand with the other. Far too much of the horror is present in Michael's voice and Aziraphale thinks she must have seen, she must have arrived here with Gabriel when it happened, when—Aziraphale has been inside the church all day, he'd walked the pews, set out hymn books with a numb sort of routine. How had he not noticed that a candlestick was missing? How had he not felt somehow that a man had died in the church last night? But the very worst part, how could they have left him here without telling him?
He has so many questions, but there's no time to ask any of them before Gabriel pulls the cloth from the table, Michael flinching at the movement, before her mouth thins into a hard line. The candlestick is beneath, the black iron twisted in the middle, the candle holders dented and bent to one side. Rusty red-brown stains are visible, even on the dark metal, streaks and drags, as if it was pulled—he swallows hard.
Michael's hand twitches for the table. "Gabriel—"
"Let him look," Gabriel insists, his tone harsh.
Aziraphale looks. For a moment, he's not sure what else he's expected to see, what more he could possibly find on such a gruesome piece. But then he does see. The middle of the candlestick is squeezed and melted, as if by extreme heat. Above it, in a row of four, are smooth depressions that strongly suggest the thing was gripped and held by fingers. Though they would have to have been impossibly hot to melt the iron.
"Ghosts don't attack people with holy objects. This is demonic work. Father Sandalphon witnessed the whole thing. Though he is, unfortunately, not in a fit state to tell us what happened."
A demon?
No, that's impossible.
Ridiculous.
The candlestick stares at him from the table, twisted and melted on the white tablecloth.
"Show him the rest." Uriel's impatient voice breaks in, drawing Aziraphale's attention.
Gabriel leans back in his chair, the wood creaking sharply under him. "I was working up to that." He doesn't sound happy about Uriel rushing them ahead. Which suggests that whatever it is, it's worse than what they've shown him already.
"The rest?" Aziraphale asks. He can't imagine what could be worse than this.
Gabriel sighs and reaches out for the pile of folders stacked to one side, and the small old-fashioned dictaphone resting on top.
Aziraphale finds himself squeezing sharply at his own fingers, hoping desperately that he won't be given any photographs to look at. He'd rather not be made to look at—he doesn't want to see what happened here, it's surely not necessary. The poor man is dead and ensuring that Aziraphale dreams about exactly how will serve no purpose. But Gabriel doesn't open the file, instead he lifts the dictaphone and turns it in his hand, large fingers squeezing the casing until it creaks.
"The investigation also recorded something. The second voice you'll hear in this does not belong to anyone who was here last night." He sets the small recorder down in the middle of the table and hits play.
The first noise is the low buzz of static, followed by a crackle of something being moved.
"What are you? What do you want here?
The questions are hurried together, more quiet panic than calm curiosity. Was this after one of their number had already been murdered? Why hadn't they left already? Had they been somehow prevented from leaving—his thoughts are cut off abruptly when the dictaphone crackles, the edges breaking for a rumbling noise, cutting into the static. It sounds like laughter, but it sets all the hair on the back of Aziraphale's neck prickling.
"What do I want?" The second voice is low, all edges, it has the tape barking and spitting as if there are parts to the audio it can't translate into sound. The rational part of Aziraphale's brain wants to say it comes from a person, the rest of him wants to never hear it again. "What do I want?" More laughter, something mocking in it this time. "I want a gift."
"A gift, what do you—what sort of gift?"
"Dan, for fuck's sake, stop talking to it," a third voice chimes in, hushed and frantic. "You saw what it did, Father Sandalphon says if we encourage it, we're inviting things in."
"Someone already invited it in, and it's not going to let us out until we listen!"
"A gift… something sweet… something new, something—" the tape gives a guttural screech in place of a word. "Lay it on the altar. Let me be its ruin." There's more laughter—and then nothing but static.
Gabriel reaches out and clicks off the tape. "As you can see, it's now powerful enough to not only make its presence known in this plane, but to do actual physical harm."
Aziraphale has to struggle three times to make his throat moist enough to talk. "If the church has been deconsecrated by its presence, surely if we attempt to reconsecrate—"
"Father Tyler already tried," Gabriel says. "As did Father Sandalphon. It's too strong now."
"An exorcism then?"
"Also already attempted. The results were…unfortunate."
Aziraphale would dearly like Gabriel to elaborate on that, but he's already hurrying on.
"There have been instances in the past where… an unwanted presence that resisted methods to evict it has been successfully appeased with some sort of tribute." He says the word with clear distaste but none of the absolute horror that Aziraphale is currently experiencing.
He hopes, desperately, fervently, that he had misheard. He looks between all three of them, searching for some indication that they know this is madness.
"I'm sorry, are you suggesting human sacrifice?"
Gabriel grimaces. "No, of course not, spilling blood inside a church is out of the question."
Aziraphale can't help but look at the bloody candlestick still resting on the table.
"Out of the question for a man of God," Gabriel corrects.
"But you still think our best course of action is to give in to its demands and—and offer someone up to this demon?" Aziraphale can't believe what he's hearing, and looking between Michael and Uriel doesn't help. They're both grim-faced but make no protest. Has everyone gone mad? He can't even imagine what this thing would do to them once it has them on the altar. With no one to stop it from taking what it desires, violence or sexual perversions, or some horrible mixture of both. "We couldn't—I wouldn't force that choice upon someone." He struggles desperately for another option, something that isn't… isn't that. They would be risking far more than their mortal body. "Perhaps if we closed the church for a while. Brought in help—"
Gabriel sighs and folds his hands. "It's your church now, Aziraphale, the decision is ultimately up to you. But please remember that its influence is spreading. It won't be long before the people in the village start turning on each other. Before this sort of extreme violence spreads." He gestures pointedly at the mangled iron between them. "Do you really want to be partly responsible if that happens?"
Aziraphale has difficulty speaking for a moment. For Gabriel to suggest that he will be in any way at fault if something terrible should happen.
"I don't want that," he says, with far too much feeling. He'd seen firsthand what people could do when they gave in to their worst impulses. He knows the people here, he cares for them, he couldn't do that to them. "I don't—if it's necessary—if you think it's the only way."
Gabriel grimaces. "I'll contact the head office. See if there's anyone who would be willing—"
"No," Aziraphale says, horrified. "No, I refuse to make someone else…" He can't say the words, he can't even think them. How could he possibly go through with something so horrible? "I won't make someone else do that. It's my church, it's my responsibility." He can feel the slow tremble in his hands, the way everything in his chest slowly falls away, leaving a hollow space behind. "I'll be the sacrifice."
Gabriel's eyes widen, he stares at him for a long moment. Michael's chair gives a long creak when she leans back, exhaling hard. The quiet drags on so long that the urge to snatch back the words becomes almost unbearable.
"Aziraphale, you understand that this is a demonic entity."
"I do."
"The experience may be more than you can cope with."
"He means that you may not be the same afterwards, assuming you can live with yourself," Michael says bluntly.
Aziraphale opens his mouth to agree, to say he understands that it's something you can't prepare yourself for. This conversation all feels very surreal and he's suddenly compelled to get through it as quickly as possible.
"When would be the best time—"
"Sooner rather than later." Gabriel at least has the decency to look apologetic for the interruption. "But, after a sacrificial offering, the church can be cleansed and reconsecrated, and our troubles will be behind us."
Our troubles will be behind us. Aziraphale imagines himself left on the altar, a shadow of what he was before.
***
Aziraphale goes home, he takes off his cassock and wraps himself instead in the warmth of soft corduroy trousers and a pale blue jumper. He makes himself a cup of tea and settles into an armchair. It's already late in the day and he knows his nerves are far too rattled to do anything until he's thought this through. But there's no time to settle himself, to wash, to breathe, and work himself into a state of mind that sees this as a necessary sacrifice, rather than some horrific punishment he has somehow brought upon himself. By not catching the infestation at the beginning, before it was too strong to be exorcised. For not keeping his congregation safe. For not being enough.
What if he's not enough again. What if he's a disappointment to this dark presence? Making his sacrifice useless in the end.
It seems madness to punish himself for a failure that is yet to pass. A failure he can't possibly be at fault for when he's contemplating something which is grossly inhumane. He can't even… to offer himself up for use to a thing not of this world. To be the sacrifice that sends it away for good. It's so easy to make words of when the reality of it is him, on an altar, stripped of clothes and perhaps of some of his flesh, his body violated for a demon's pleasure.
Gabriel had said the thing would be weakened on holy ground, that it couldn't kill a man of God. But it had already killed a man just as worthy as him, and how holy was the church now, really? Who knew what it was capable of in a building it had corrupted and stained with its presence. It's safe to say he won't be the one reconsecrating it. He's not sure they will think him capable of such duties for a while… or ever again.
Aziraphale forces himself not to think, to go into the kitchen and make himself a pot of tea. It's the most comfort his stomach is going to get on this night. He can't face anything else. He feels half sick with fear already. He does little but stare into the cup once he returns to the chair, taking numb sips that taste of nothing and barely warm his mouth.
Before morning he will be naked for some unseen creature. He will be naked and vulnerable and ripe for any abuses it sees fit to commit. His body has been a quiet, secret thing for long years now, attended to by himself and no other. There had been a few kisses in his youth, but nothing further, no one had ever known him like that. All his love had belonged to God and later… when some of that original fervour had waned, he'd been… comfortable. He'd felt as though he belonged to the church, and he'd been content. But tonight he was expected to be something grand enough to appease a monster, to sate whatever lust—be it carnal or blood—that it desired.
He doesn't know how to do this. He doesn't know how to be what Gabriel wants him to be and he is deeply afraid that there will be no way back from whatever happens. That afterwards he will be different, something new, something less than he was before, something corrupt and unwanted.
The cup is half empty but the tea inside is long cold. He sets it down on the table beside him and shakily gets to his feet.
Any other man would perhaps enjoy the last hours he might have. But Aziraphale's entire life revolves around his congregation and his church. There's nothing else, nothing but his books and his occasional glass of wine and the odd evening of music. But the thought of putting anything on leaves him more upset than he knows what to do with, and he worries that if he opens a bottle of wine he won't be able to stop at one. Nice as it might be to be entirely numb for the experience, he also fears his inability to know what's happening to him, and of what he might agree to in an inebriated state. There is more to fear than the loss of his virtue, he knows that much.
A strange word for a man who's already seen fifty, but there's no other word that comes to mind, none that he doesn't automatically shy away from.
The hours are ticking on. It's almost ten.
It doesn't have to happen tonight, he knows. But there is a fear that the longer he thinks on it, the more he will find himself unable to accept the task. That he will flee into the night and leave some other poor soul to be drafted in his place. Perhaps one of the young priests that still ring with the warmth of new faith.
No.
No, the thought horrifies him.
It has to be him, doesn't it? It's his responsibility. He pushes himself to his feet, takes the cup into the kitchen and rinses it in the sink, trying not to think about what he's put into motion. He turns it and leaves it on the drainer, doesn't think about what might have happened to him before he comes back and sees it there, of who he might be then?
Aziraphale knows his cassock is what he must wear, that he cannot shy from his position and all demonstration of it tonight; so that the demon might know his sacrifice. He wonders if he should bathe first. It's such an instinctive thought, and he's aware of how very silly it is. Should he return, he is certain to require a bath after. Would there be any point when his purpose tonight is to be defiled?
But the thought of going to his fate smelling of fear-sweat and misery fills him with despair.
Perhaps it's more than that, perhaps he simply cannot bear to change his routine so thoroughly. To accept the fact that his life will never be the same. That he might not be a person who bathes, who drinks tea, or who can bear to remove his clothes at all.
No.
No, the only way he will keep a hold of himself is by keeping hold of all the pieces as tightly as he can, so that no matter what happens inside the church, there is enough of him to slowly piece back together again. That is the least he can hope for. Should he survive. Should he survive. He can't think like that. The demon, by Gabriel's own admission, cannot kill him. He can only make you wish you were dead, Aziraphale.
He refuses to think it, knows that it will only terrify him as he prepares for what he must do. He pushes himself to his feet, leaves the comfortable chair beside his shelf of books. He gathers his bathrobe and a spare towel, and heads for the bathroom. He concedes that he probably doesn't have time for a full bath, fears that once he is cocooned in the warmth of the water that he will not rise again until it goes cold around him.
He turns on the shower instead, undresses with as much care as he can. He has the water as hot as he can stand and scrubs mechanically at his skin. He finds the absent words of a cleansing prayer drifting out as he soaps himself. He's certain it will not help. He is going to this willingly, is he not? How can one plead to be saved when the choice is your own? Still he finds it a comfort, the words a balm for his brain which feels inclined to fight him on every matter.
Until he's stepping pink and wet onto the mat, his body as clean as he can make it.
Aziraphale doesn't stay in the robe long, drying himself quickly and putting his simple black shirt and trousers on, with his cassock over the top. His collar he fixes carefully, because he is still a priest and if this is to be his test, then he goes willingly. That should be a comfort, shouldn't it? That no one is forcing him into this? No one is going to drag him to the church and tie him to the altar and leave him there to be—
It should help.
This being his choice should help.
He wishes that it did.
He's probably in no state to drive but he does anyway. The thought of seeing his small car parked outside the church gives him a strange comfort. He's uncertain that he'll be in any state to drive afterwards, but, if necessary, he can crawl into the back and drown out the world until he feels safe again.
***
There's no one outside the church.
For some reason he'd thought that Father Gabriel would be here, to… he's not sure what. That he'd be here to make sure he saw it through, to offer comfort, to grant him forgiveness after. But there's no one. There are only the large church doors, with their flat old keyhole, unchanged for seven hundred years. He draws the keys from his pocket and ventures close.
For all that the church has had a miserable air of late, Aziraphale feels none of it tonight. The building simply sits, a stretch of old stone and stained glass windows that should have been cleaned years ago. Once he's close, he realises that Gabriel has not left him entirely to his fate. Around the handle of the old door, there is a rosary, the crucifix shining silver, the beads glossy. He draws it free, wrapping it around his wrist and squeezing the cold material, trying to draw some strength from the fact that someone's wishes go with him.
He turns the key and pushes in the old, heavy door. It opens soundlessly, revealing the long stretch of the church, the unlit candles, the stone font and polished pews.
Aziraphale says one last prayer and then ventures inside, locking the door behind him.
He has matches tucked into the pocket of his cassock, and he slips them free and lights the candles inside the door. He needs that moment to calm his racing heartbeat, to settle his poor nerves. He's here now, he's here and there is no turning back. All he can do is go through his routine when night falls inside the church and… make an offering of himself, then live with whatever happens.
Yes.
Hopefully he will get to live with whatever happens.
If demons are real, that means God is real as well. That confirmation should bring joy to his heart. But he's had no time to simply sit with the revelation, to let it grow inside him. For now he is left only with the reality that demons also exist as well, and with them, no doubt, the very real concept of hell. Aziraphale watches his shaking fingers lift to the candles again and again, carrying a flame to ward off the darkness.
The inside of the church feels very dark indeed, and there are only so many candles. But he persists, walking the pews and lighting them, knowing that the windows from outside will show that light. A bedevilled church still holding light and warmth and hope. Though no one else will come inside tonight, and what's going to happen within is anything but holy.
The altar is cold beneath his hand when he reaches it, when he sinks to his knees before it—something stops him before he prays though. How can he seek protection when he's the one taking this burden upon himself? When he is choosing to make himself a sacrifice. Instead he prays for forgiveness, and with every verse that passes his lips, the candles on the altar go out.
The lights from the stands still flicker behind him but the altar is soon simply an angular shape in the dark, draped in cloth.
"Amen."
"You're praying into the void, priest."
All the breath lodges in his throat at the whispering hiss of a voice. It's so much closer when not heard through a tape, as if the speaker is right behind him, curled over him and treading where no demon should be allowed to tread.
"My faith brought me here, you will not shake it." His voice is so quiet, as if he's afraid to be heard, which might be the honest truth.
"Your desire to protect the village brought you here," the demon corrects. "I can taste a lie."
"My faith keeps me here." Aziraphale's hands are clasped so tightly he can see the white of his knuckles in the dark.
The slow hum behind him seems to find this close enough to the truth.
"You came here to me and you locked the door. Am I to consider you a gift?"
"I am an offering," Aziraphale says, the cold of the church and his own fear leaving a shake in his voice. "That you might go from this place after and never return."
"After…" There's a laugh like water over hot coals. "After I have spread you open and filled every greedy hole in your flesh, found satisfaction in the depths of you, heard every flavour of your screams and cries and sobs. When I have left no part of you holy… and every part of you mine?"
Aziraphale tries very hard to hold the shake through his muscles. To have it spoken aloud, the certainty of his fate. For a long moment he cannot speak and the demon simply leaves him in the silence, a satisfaction to the emptiness of it.
"Yes," he says at last, just to break it.
"Undress then, offering, let me see what the church would barter for this decrepit pit of sanctimony."
Aziraphale leaves his rosary on the church floor, shaking hands lifting to the buttons of his cassock, they seem suddenly smaller, his fingers numb with cold. An act he's performed a thousand times made suddenly clumsy by impossible, terrible circumstances. Though he eventually finds himself drawing the collar open and apart so he can gather the skirts and raise them. He has never undressed for anyone else, though he knows it's not supposed to fill the cold depths of him with so much fear.
"Such a shy thing, has no one else stripped you and held you and left their marks on your flesh?" The words are indulgent, the air thick with them and he hovers in uncertain stillness for a moment, his fingers tangled in dark cloth.
"You know that they haven't," Aziraphale says as he finally lifts the black material over his head, folding it carefully and settling it before the altar. Where he might put it on again before he leaves… if he's not too badly injured. If he's capable.
Will he be allowed to dress again? Perhaps the demon will desire that he expose himself until dawn, leave him in his nakedness and ruin, revealing everything that had happened to him in what had been the sanctity of his church.
The very thought of laying himself down on the altar, across the altar cloth, is such a terrible blasphemy. A sacrifice that has no place in the religion he has belonged to his whole life.
"Fearful little thing, you have chosen and bargained for your fate. You are here until you please me, delaying the inevitable will only make it harder for you and sweeter for me." The sickly purr of the demon's voice moves around the altar, as if indulging in the way Aziraphale slowly undresses, and in the awful decision he cannot force himself to make.
What the demon says is true though, trying to hold back the moment he offers himself up, lays himself on the cloth for such an obviously unholy purpose. It feels like not only an act that will render him lost to God forever but steal a portion of his humanity too. To let yourself not only stand before such evil but to invite it in.
To invite it in, dear god he's shaking and he can't stop.
He unbuttons his shirt and strips it free before he can tell himself to do otherwise, moves to the buttons and fly of his trousers while he toes off his comfortable shoes. It's harder to push everything down, to be naked in a church. It is the most terrible form of consent to be stripped bare before eyes he cannot see, for an act he does not want, that terrifies him.
How can someone be so horrified and so unwilling and yet unable to do anything else?
It feels monstrous.
He could leave here, he could dress himself and leave the church, get back in his car and keep driving until the village was long behind him and never look back. He has consented to nothing yet.
His unsteady, shaky breaths are too close to sobs to discern the difference. But he makes his way up the steps, lays his hands upon the altar cloth, feeling the material ripple and fold beneath his fingers—he already feels as if he is ruining something. How could he possibly go through with this? How could he?
How could he?
His hands are pressing down, feeling the hard stone beneath, the cold seeping through as he turns and seats himself upon the stretch of green, seeing his bare legs, shockingly pale against the wood of the stand and the hanging fabric.
A naked priest where there should only be sermons and words of comfort and hope, body soft with years of comfort, genitals exposed as he leans back and lays himself down, offers himself up.
The whole of the church goes dark, the candles he'd lit dimming to nothing, until every eave and pew and hallowed vault of the ceiling is drowning in darkness. The cold creeps in and Aziraphale shuts his eyes, shuts everything out and wills it to be over quickly.
The thrumming purr of laughter is so close he barely holds a wretched cry, but he does no such thing when a hand slithers hot around his ankle and grips tightly. The frightened jerk is instinctive but he quickly realises there's no hope of pulling free, and the laugh shudders its way through him as something not of this earth emerges from the dark.
All Aziraphale sees at first are yellow eyes, pupils tearing down through them like splinters of darkness. Above him there is a scatter of folded limbs, too thin and too long, painted with an ugly mixture of skin and scales that are cracked and ooze red. The demon is so much larger than him, filling the space above him at impossible angles, smoke threading down where it touches the wood of the altar, and the beams overhead, and the floor.
It's clear enough that the church may have been corrupted but it still affects the beast in some way, damaging its demonic form, though Aziraphale is unsure how this is supposed to help him.
If he was afraid before he's now terrified. The demon truly is like nothing alive. A mess of angles that do not fit, the subtle sounds it makes like cracks in the world. The unholy and the divine, bursting together, and there is nothing but a cold terror as it reaches for him.
"Please don't, please don't. I don't want this, please—"
"Hush." The demon sinks, the high beams above creaking as new, charred handholds are made on the wood. "You're already mine, you've already served yourself up to me, you've already made yourself an offering, I've already accepted your bargain. There is no escape for you now."
The hand on his ankle is joined by another, a streak of hot fingers that grip tight. Another hand catches hold of his other leg and a fourth his wrist. He loses count when he's touched by more hands than he could count. They spread across his body, too hot on his suddenly chilled flesh, grasping and squeezing and scratching wherever he is soft and exposed, which is everywhere. Everywhere all at once, until a long sound of shaky protest exits his throat in bursts.
"Please don't do this."
A hum is his only reply, clawed hands with too many fingers gripping tight enough that he can feel it to the bone. His thighs are dragged open and, no matter how much he begs his body to aid him, there is no stopping that determination. He is spread apart and exposed and utterly helpless as it judges him from above, fire spitting in its eyes.
But instead of attempting to violate him, there is breath against his face, a grip of hard nails and a kiss that feels like blasphemy. The demon's mouth is hot, its tongue too long, too demanding, and he coughs a sob as it ventures deep, tasting of fire and tin. Something in Aziraphale's head is screaming and he can't make it stop. The crackling roar of something burning has never been so loud. He feels it when the bottom drops out of the world, caves in beneath him leaving a pit of darkness.
He feels it when he starts falling.
"What a soft thing you are," the voice hums out in a slow, indulgent rhythm, somehow audible over the fire and the screaming and the endless, harrowing fall. "What a glory of His creation. You have so many places to lay my teeth."
Aziraphale wants to protest, wants to beg for help when there is no one left to turn to. But there is such a devastation in what used to be his mind that he can't focus. You agreed to this. You submitted to the demon's bargain. You consented. You consented.
A mouth travels down his neck, leaving a burning trail of heat, and then teeth, deep enough to ache, sharp enough to bleed. It continues and doesn't stop, the round of his shoulder, the straining stretch of his bicep, his upper chest, the soft round of his breast—again and again—until he's giving quiet, wounded cries. The bites relent for a laugh against wet skin and then there's the sensation of his nipple being drawn into a hot mouth and then pulled repeatedly in obscene wet sucks.
Stop.
Please stop.
In his mind all he can see is darkness, though he knows the darkness is old, the darkness is a living thing, the inside of some terrible and awful beast. The hot sting of flesh that can touch no surface without pain, that can bear no sensation within or without. An existence scraped open and raw in a way that he knows is muffled and indistinct because he has not the soul to bear it. It begs in a ragged voice that speaks nothing he could ever understand.
Why. Why. Why. Why.
He's screaming into the dark, and out of it too, the mouth trailing fire down his belly and across his thighs.
"You know why," the demon says. "You know why."
It hurts and, when the demon takes his sex into his mouth, he knows a blind and awful terror.
Please.
Please no.
He will not feel it, he will not feel it.
There is nothing to feel here.
He crashes upon the rocks, and there is no pain, only the memory of it, but it feels as if his very mind splinters apart, scattering the pieces of him like beads from a necklace. Something precious and perfect and whole turned into shards. He can hear nothing but his own breathing, can feel nothing but the constant wet press of tongue and teeth to his flesh. The untouched nakedness of his sex, his spread thighs. The vulnerable space between his buttocks, spread roughly by too many hands until something thick and wet is coring relentlessly into him, teeth and tongue and the hot dig of nails where his body is soft.
He wants to say stop.
He wants…
Please.
He sees the depths of everything, the remains of all glorious purpose, a wasteland of creation, the burning centre of an ever-spinning wheel. The very bottom. Where there is no further to fall.
He's weeping when his body is invaded, and he has no ability to resist when he's still shaking from an experience so terrifying his mind cannot process it. But still the demon burrows its tongue into him, the spear and curl and thrum of unearthly laughter pouring through him as he sobs into the altar and tries to remind himself that he is human, that he's human and whatever terrifying visions he is shown, they are not real.
Not real to him.
Not real for him.
But he knows that they are truth… truth left to rot, truth torn open and spilled upon rocks. The first touch of a material world. There are no words for the betrayal of it. Regret is too soft of a word for a promise of eternity taken.
The demon spreads him open a final time, nails sharp on his plush thighs and then it rises between them, presses scaled and hot to his stomach and chest, and Aziraphale is so terrified that it will kiss him again—show him things he cannot reason—that he's halfway to begging for anything else.
"Say my name, priest," the demon says quietly. "Call me Crowley as I claim you for myself. Open your pious mouth and shape my name on your holy altar."
Aziraphale can barely shape his own name, so lost is he, a shudder working its way through him in awful ripples. He feels as if he's been dashed to pieces. But a clawed hand reaches up for his jaw, nails digging in and forcing him to turn his head and look.
"Say my name and perhaps I will be gentle with you, perhaps I won't roll you sobbing over this altar and fuck you until morning, leaving your poor virgin hole torn raw and overflowing with the burning seed of the damned."
The demon's voice is liquid darkness, and Aziraphale has no doubt that the promise is real, that he will suffer and suffer again if he doesn't do as he's told. But he can barely make his mouth work. He can still hear screaming faintly in the distance, aeons of it, and he's not entirely sure he isn't screaming too. A part of him torn loose and left in that harrowing fall forever.
There is no gentleness from a demon, there is nothing but his desires and Aziraphale's ability to sate them. Nothing matters but his destruction, his fear, his horror. Nothing he does will change that, he knows, he knows—God help him—the demon's will is all that matters here. But he's still human and he doesn't want to be hurt, he doesn't want to be brutalised in an endless series of violent encounters.
He doesn't want that. He wants to do as he's told, he wants to be good, he wants to be good, he wants to be forgiven, he wants to serve. He simply doesn't know what that means anymore. He doesn't know what that means. How is anyone supposed to be good when faced with the worst of hell?
"Ah," he manages, a frantic clawing reach for words, a desperation to speak his will into existence. It feels like he's drowning. How is he supposed to form words when he's fighting for air?
"That's it." The demon's hands spread him wider, the vast, ancient weight of it impossible to bear, the hot glide of scales against the skin of his inner thighs. "That's it, beg me, priest, beg me with pretty words to bury myself. Beg for everything I will give you."
He cannot, he cannot ask for this.
The demon, Crowley, is determined to be named and Aziraphale wonders if there is power in that. If it somehow draws him more fully into this world, makes his will that much stronger. If that's true then he should resist at all costs. He should refuse at all costs—
There are teeth to his throat, a grinding, stabbing ache of pain that leaves him crying out.
"Say my name, or this church will be our wedding bed, priest, and I will have you until Armageddon itself."
A sob wrenches from his throat. "Crowley," he pants, a breath full of fear and guilt he can taste.
The demon hums and presses its face into his neck. "There we are, just as sweet as I imagined." It rises between his legs, mouth stained red, eyes a furious over-ripe yellow that seems aflame. "A promise is a promise."
Aziraphale's buttocks are held apart, and something large and wet presses unstoppably to his anus. A braver man would clench and fight, would resist, but Aziraphale simply sobs through the rough push that stretches him open. It's a fierce and unending intrusion into his body, more painful than the awful slide of tongue. The demon is large, and the unyielding shape is unlike a normal human. It seems to widen as it fills him, though the slick length of it is unstoppable. Until he is unbearably full, stretched raw and sensitive, panting desperate breaths.
"I fill you very nicely," Crowley tells him, something far more than satisfaction in the words. "It's like your body was made for me."
"No," Aziraphale breathes, only for that hard length to draw free and push in again, the stretched rim protesting the impatience. "Please."
"The way you say please makes me think you wanted this, that you were begging to be spread out here all along. A lost little virgin waiting to be ruined."
The world wavers in and out as Aziraphale's body jolts on the altar, the burn of penetration fading only for the ache of being roughly entered again, and again, by such a solid weight. The demon does not fit, it does not belong, not human enough to be anything but a discomfort, a horror, a tainted wrongness inside him, and Aziraphale feels so helpless he can't bear it.
It goes on forever.
He cramps and cries out and struggles only to be pinned down and taken harder, a solid thumping stretch of misery. Hands tangle in his hair and drag his head back, a mouth working its way back across his chest to leave teeth prints in his arms and breast again. He is kissed, unstoppably, while he cries, while the demon buries himself deep enough to burn and sighs an awful stillness.
Aziraphale can feel the steady, wet rush of fluid into him.
The altar underneath him falls away. Human beings weren't meant to be this close to the unholy, they weren't meant to suffer the attention of demonic beings. They were not strong enough. This thing that was made in heaven and then rejected by God and cast into the pit. Aziraphale had felt it. Aziraphale had been offered just a glimpse of his fall from grace and he was not sure he could bear it.
He can hear faint laughter as the demon draws free of him, its cruel fingers pressing in where he'd left him sopping with something that burns and wets his thighs and buttocks. The fingers spread him open, plunging deep as if to revel in the mess of him. He doesn't have air to tell it no. All he can do is sob as it demonstrates how easily his body opens now. Aziraphale no longer cares what noises he makes, too afraid to close his legs as Crowley leaves three fingers working inside him, where he's soft and sore. He tries to shut out the whispers laid across his chest, and throat, and the quivering bend of his mouth. But there's no sound that will cover the delight, the breathy laughter, the threads of lust still clinging to the demon's scales.
"Look how sweetly you took it, you're a natural. I might keep you, priest. I might drag you into the depths with me and have you service me, set you before the seat of my power in chains, your pretty curls a handle for my fist as I fuck your mouth open. I would like to hear you pray then."
The last words are growled, but Aziraphale hadn't even noticed that he'd been begging for help. Not much of a prayer but the frantic reach for something, or someone, to help him.
He's crying when he's rolled on the altar, his legs sore and stiff. He's pressed belly down, his arms dragged behind him and bound at the wrists by what feels like the corded belt of his cassock. He squirms, but there's barely a pause to breathe before the demon spreads his buttocks with long, sharp-nailed hands and sinks his inhuman sex back in where Aziraphale is stretched and wet and burning. The plunge is impossibly deep, and even so recently violated he wails in shocked refusal at the intrusion. There's a greedy violence to the way the demon takes him, an impatient possessive need to have him. He resists, twisting his bound wrists until the pain forces him to stop. Then it's just the rough jolting of his body over the altar, his bare toes barely touching the floor every time he's hauled backwards, buttocks slapping firmly into the demon's strange and ever-changing hips.
He coughs a second prayer, only to feel a hard bite on his shoulder, the pace picking up until all he can manage are rough bursts of air and the occasional cry from the terrible friction on his abused anus.
"You delight in tormenting me, don't you, sweet little angel of a priest. As you sing your stinging prayers. But your body is a bounty and you saw fit to give it to me, like a fool. He will not save you now."
Aziraphale can't answer, all he can do is feel it, the increasingly cruel shape of the demon's desire. The way he spreads Aziraphale open to watch, the way he slows when he fills him with his seed a second time and then pulls out laughing, only to press the hard beads of the rosary inside in his place. Aziraphale flinches and begs a refusal, struggles, but it's useless and he's clenching helplessly, weakly, around the mass of it.
He can hear the quiet hissing and realises that Crowley is still holding the crucifix, the shape of it burning hot on his skin.
"You look so pretty like this. Tell me, do you feel closer to God?" There's a mocking laugh, the rattle of it overlaid by the sound of the demon burning.
Aziraphale tries to pull away again, but all it gets him is the sharp push of fingers, the smell of burning flesh, and the drag of beads from his body.
Aziraphale thinks for one terrifying moment that he will be forced to endure this forever. That he's stuck in some endless repeating loop of corruption and pain and violation. That the demon will meet him in the church and force him to ask for this, and they will do this over and over. What if there is no morning for him? No morning ever again, there is only this, and that feels like nothing less than hell itself.
But eventually the sun rises.
He's on his back on the altar, staring up into the eaves, his brain a fuzz of sharp points and noise. The noise eventually pulls into something he recognises, birdsong in the damp morning air. He's alone and he's honestly not sure when that happened. There are long stretches of the night he doesn't remember. But there are longer stretches that he does. He's not sure which ones scare him more.
Aziraphale knows he has many hurts that he will need to see to, but moving feels impossible. He resigns himself to remain where he is, he knows that when the fuzz in his brain clears the events of the night will hit him anew. And he knows well enough that seeing them in his memory will be little better than experiencing them himself. So lie here he will.
Only.
He realises all at once that eventually someone will come here… someone will probably come here, to find him, to usher him back to the real world. Does he even truly belong in the real world anymore? He has been a demon's plaything. He has seen the entirety of hell, not a state for those who have fallen from grace but a living machine, a necessity, a powerhouse for the corruption and destruction and malice of the world. He knows now that there are some sins that cannot be forgiven. Many of them he doesn't even understand, he's too small and too human to hold the full weight of them.
He's crying and he doesn't know how long he's been crying for.
The world and all its kindness is teetering on an edge of horror that has existed for longer than he can imagine. The demons have been gnashing their teeth at God for longer than humanity has existed. What could Aziraphale possibly— his mind turns fuzzy again for a while.
When he comes back to himself, he's still crying. He's not sure how much later it is. The demon is gone. He got what he wanted. The church belongs to them again.
It certainly does not belong to God.
It takes another bout of sobbing before Aziraphale wonders if anyone will come for him after all. He can't imagine Gabriel wants to set foot in here, him of all people. He knows him better now, sees things that he had never wanted to. Knows him to be pious on the outside but everything rough and unholy and burnt within.
It hurts to climb off the altar. He is covered in aching bites and scratches, his legs are sore, his anus burning, stomach shaken and squeezed to bruising. His cassock is unwearable, torn to pieces sometime in the night. He would imagine using the altar cloth is blasphemy but wrapping himself in it feels considerably better than sitting naked and stained in the small anteroom.
There is a sink and he washes as best as he can, though he doubts there is any washing himself enough to remove whatever the sin of lying with a demon is. He agreed to it all, after all, he agreed to it to save a village because he has always wanted to be a good person. Which he realises now, is all that matters in the world.
He cries again, though this time in the quiet. The birdsong has stopped and he can hear traffic now.
Aziraphale wants to go home.
He wants more than anything to go home.
***
It's a slow journey. Sitting to drive is excruciating and he drives too slowly and too carefully for the patience of his fellow drivers. But he knows he is in no real state to be operating any sort of vehicle. No one is waiting at his small cottage, no one is there for him. He's starting to wonder if anyone will check on him at all.
Every step is awkward and slow, painful. He would very much like to bathe, but the thought of stripping naked and having to look at his body again, with its bruises and its stains and its fluids that he has been carefully not thinking about since he came back to life in the church—he didn't die, at least he didn't think that he died, but that seems to fit so much better than 'sleeping.' He was never asleep, he just chose to be somewhere else for a while, somewhere where it didn't matter what had happened to him. He feels bruised, inside and out, all the way through to whatever intrinsic part of him was Aziraphale.
He leaves his keys by the door and he's so intent on his own thoughts—and on avoiding his own thoughts at all cost—that at first he doesn't realise that there's someone in his house.
Aziraphale is surprised at first that the realisation doesn't bring any fear. What happened to him last night seems to have knocked the fear out of him. He knows too much and he has seen too much for the thought of human robbery to matter. It occurs to him that it could be Gabriel, but he dismisses the thought. Gabriel is not the type to wait for anyone. Though he can hear the slow sound of someone idly moving his things. There is no one they would have called, even if they had expected him back.
He pushes the door to the living room open.
A tall, thin stranger in dark clothing is kneeling by his records, gently fingering his way through them.
"Who are you?" Aziraphale says simply. He's really not in any fit state for company. If they are a burglar, he's happy for them to take what they would like and go.
The man looks in his direction, and for the first time Aziraphale sees his eyes. The static yellow of honey on fire, of a wound left to fester in the dark. The pupils are not right, somewhere between round and slitted, garish and wrong. He goes very still and the world narrows to a point.
"I don't know." The stranger seems annoyed about it. "Wish I did. Wish I knew anything. It's infuriating but it's like I can't catch hold of anything."
Aziraphale stares for a long time, long enough for the stranger to put the record back and get to his feet, limbs briefly made of strange angles in the low light. He's reminded suddenly of proverbs 10:7: "The memory of the righteous is a blessing, but the name of the wicked will rot."
It had always seemed to be a hierarchy, with God at the top and his angels, humanity, and then the demons. But what if, instead, it was a circle. Passing from one to the next. A wheel turning through all the states of grace and horror. An endless cycle, just like the world.
What then is Aziraphale?
What is Aziraphale?
"What are you doing here?" he manages. "Why did you come?"
The stranger with serpent eyes looks at him.
"A man left me here," he says. The words are sharp as if he doesn't entirely trust them. Aziraphale remembers the shape of his teeth. "He said you would help me, one way or the other."
One way or the other.