Like Flies to Lilies

An angel and a demon rendezvous in a motel room.

Content warnings: explicit sexual content, implied dubcon, blood, cannibalism; references to violence, gore, murder, and the end of existence.

Pink flare from a motel sign scatters across the dark asphalt, and Gabriel watches from the window, the sun’s final glow stubbornly clinging to clouds.

What if he doesn’t show this time? he asks himself, tapping rose quartz nails on his thigh. Even though — despite centuries of secret meetings, some in places far less discreet than a shitty motel room — this appointment has never been skipped.

But there is always the chance their routine of trysts has been discovered by either side, even though Gabriel is certain, at this point, he would hear Heaven’s war horns before anyone so much as considered casting him out.

Still — after centuries — they have gotten very good at keeping a low profile.

He steps away from the window, deciding his visitor will never arrive if he doesn’t busy himself elsewhere. He stops in front of the vanity, cracked counter and scuffed mirror, and runs his hands up the sides of his dress. He’d seen the design in a fashion magazine, summoning no less than a major miracle to craft every stitch and thread himself, tailoring nothingness to the curves he’d manifested for his corporeal form. Knowing the garment will likely end up torn, shredded even, by the end of the night — that makes his reflection smile.

He paws through the handful of television channels, then digs through the drawers, tracing his fingers over the cheap Bible he finds. He recalls Gideon, the stories that came after — a man who turned away from power in favor of the Lord’s blessing. These days, anyone sent on a mission from God, to conquer and kill in the name of righteous vengeance, would want something in return. Probably a lake house, or a yacht, or —

“Reminiscing on old times?”

The voice fills the room like black fog. Gabriel slams the drawer on the cheap Bible, whirling around on his visitor with the soft, distant flutter of feathers.

He beholds Him, who enters rooms without sound unless He wills it; He who commands legions of the damned yet has somehow never missed an appointment with a traitorous angel.

“Something like that,” Gabriel says, affixing an easy smile as he crosses the room.

Dressed like a relic, Baal leans one shoulder against the stained door. A leather jacket half covers a plain white shirt tucked into dark jeans. A ram’s head buckle sits snug against his strong, stout belly, bleach blond hair slicked off a side part. He’s kept the scars, though — one slash over his left eye, a gouge along his jaw.

“What took you so long?” Gabriel breathes, resisting the urge to reach out, to be the first to place his hands upon flesh made real.

“I am precisely on time,” Baal says, tilting his head down. “As always.”

“Early is on time,” Gabriel corrects.

Baal pushes off the door, crowding Gabriel’s space. “Already so eager to be put on your knees,” he sneers softly.

Since sunrise, Gabriel thinks, smiling up at Baal. “Do you like my outfit?” he asks, as if he isn’t staring down one of Hell’s high-ranking commanders.

Baal’s mouth pinches, eyes sliding down Gabriel’s form. His frown turns into a smirk, as if he can see right through the glamoured dress; as if Gabriel wears nothing at all. “It’s… cute,” Baal says, still not touching even though his mouth is inches away from Gabriel’s face. “But I’m much more interested in what’s underneath.”

Gabriel’s breath stutters, his lips dry enough to wet them with his tongue. “Take it off, then.”

Baal curls a finger — clawed and dipped in black smoke — and the bodice of Gabriel’s dress parts like teeth on a zipper. With a flick of that same finger, a strap flutters down his right shoulder.

“Interesting,” Baal muses as the dress peels apart, blooming like a flower around Gabriel’s torso, revealing two small mounds of fat capped with wide areolas. “Not your usual choice.”

“I thought a change might be nice,” Gabriel murmurs, folding his arms behind his back, pushing his chest out. “Do you like it?”

Baal retracts his claws, answering with touch instead of words. Gabriel expects the dark tips of Baal’s fingers to leave sooty prints as he traces the hollow of his throat, down his sternum and between his breasts.

“‘For I am fearfully and wonderfully made,’” Baal recites, his eyes hook-sharp as he pinches a nipple, teasing it to hardness. Gabriel’s eyes roll back, neck arching like a swan. Hearing scripture on Baal’s tongue threads an electric warmth between his legs, adrenaline born from sacrilege as he remembers once warming Baal’s cock while the demon read aloud from a motel Bible.

“And this,” Baal says, a wide hand skirting around Gabriel’s waist to cup his supple backside. “You know too well what I like.”

“It seems to go both ways,” Gabriel says, raising his hands to Baal’s chest, fingers fanning like palm leaves over the softened muscle. “If memory serves, you have first pick.”

It makes no difference to angel or demon who chooses first; both always reach satisfaction by dawn’s light. Still, Baal’s lips stretch into a low, pleased snarl, scooping Gabriel up by his ass and guiding his legs around his waist.

A second passes before Gabriel’s back meets the wall, pressing flat where wings should be. Something hard and thick nudges the space between his legs, and even though they control their own arousal, Gabriel shivers at how much Baal’s desire physically reveals itself.

“Have you heard the whispers?” Baal speaks low into his ear, rutting between Gabriel’s legs with clear restraint.

Gabriel pushes through the fog of lust and shakes his head. “War?” he murmurs.

Baal hums, low and long. “Perhaps,” he says, drawing in a breath against the crook of Gabriel’s neck. “But I suppose there are always rumors.”

Many times they’d argued over which of their kind were bigger gossips, but truthfully Gabriel has heard not even a mention of conflict between Heaven and Hell. “If not war, then what?” he asks.

Baal tilts his head back to catch Gabriel’s eye. “They speak of the Rapture.”

Gabriel huffs softly. “Don’t they always?”

“I sense a sincerity about it this time,” Baal says. “One I haven’t felt before.”

“Did you just come here to worry?” Gabriel quips. “Our time is short as it is.”

Baal’s eyes harden, mouth dropping into a scowl as his hips slow. “Do my concerns make you uncomfortable, angel?”

Uncomfortable isn’t the word; not really, not if Gabriel gives it any lasting thought. Which Baal seems intent on forcing him to do now that he’s altogether stilled. Gabriel lowers one leg, then the other, from their circle around Baal’s waist, searching the demon’s expression before cupping his grizzled jaw. “What is this about?”

Baal’s expression melts against Gabriel’s caress, the battle in the demon’s mind evident across his handsome features, and patiently, Gabriel waits until Baal’s lips tremble with a sigh. “Do you think it would be so bad?”

It’s a question born from immeasurable exhaustion; a question that Gabriel understands with an answer he can scarcely fathom. Eternity is the promise, after all; for a life lived repentant of sin, as much as a life lived in the throes of it.

“The End, you mean?” Gabriel asks, his words a warble as if thrust underwater. He swallows against a tight, itchy throat, but keeps his palm pressed against Baal’s warm skin.

“Silence. Darkness. As eternal as our existence now.” Heavy eyelids droop over swollen black pupils. “Wouldn’t it be nice to rest?”

“Rest implies you get back up, at some point,” Gabriel says. “Either on this plane, or another.”

Baal leans forward until their foreheads touch, where Gabriel swears he can feel the phantom drag of horns, hiding in the crevice between physical and not. As an angel, he isn’t supposed to feel anything but the love of creation, let alone what he feels for Baal. Lust, devotion, a sense of responsibility — forbidden emotions that greet him with the force of a typhoon.

“Would you find me?” he whispers. As if keeping his voice low would matter if anything worth fearing could hear them. “At the End, would you come to me?”

They are both dutiful, sworn to their opposing sides; it has been the understanding since everything began. Since this began. And yet, without hesitation, Baal replies, “Yes.” His voice is cracked, thin like a membrane, but the certainty lodged in that single word is resolute.

Like a fine gloss, relief pours over the other emotions settled in Gabriel’s gut — and he finds himself smiling, pushing aside all thoughts of dark and endless and nothing, his lips seeking Baal’s like the point of a compass.

Baal’s desire renews at the press of their lips, letting loose a hungry growl as he surges forward, claws extended to shred the rest of Gabriel’s dress. Gabriel savors the burn of fresh gashes in his rented flesh, once more pinned against the wall with Baal’s hot breath coursing across his cheeks.

“What if this was the last time?” Gabriel forces himself to ask, holding still until he captures Baal’s fiery irises. “What would you do to me?”

Baal’s upper lip curls, his tongue snaking across sharpened, inhuman teeth. “All the things I have not let myself do to you.”

Fear and lust coil around Gabriel’s taut spine. Neither can kill the other, beyond the promise of mutually assured destruction. What reason would Baal ever have to hold back?

“Show me,” Gabriel says.

Only a blink of consideration passes before Baal lurches forward, sinking his fangs into the side of Gabriel’s neck. Hellfire spills into his veins like hot poison, splitting flesh and tendon as Baal bites down. Gabriel hears the crunch, blood splitting its path down his clavicle and shoulders.

Baal groans as he laps at the wound, rutting his cock against Gabriel’s stomach. “More,” Gabriel murmurs, tilting his head aside, baring more of his throat, but Baal just chuckles as he tongues the gash.

“Patience,” he says, dragging his bloody lips across Gabriel’s cheek. “We still have the night, don’t we?”

“What if we didn’t?”

Baal hums, closing his clawed fingers around Gabriel’s torn throat, the skin already weaving itself back together. “I would enjoy rending your flesh and feasting on your heart,” he says, squeezing beneath Gabriel’s jaw. “Just as much as I’ll enjoy fucking the breath from your lungs.”

He kisses Gabriel, mouth slick with saccharine copper, as he gropes between them to push buttons and fabric out of the way. Baal’s thick cock nudges Gabriel’s thigh seconds later, plunging between the crevice of his legs.

“I want your angelic little cunt impaled on my cock,” Baal hisses, nipping Gabriel’s bottom lip with his sharp teeth. “Just as much as I want to suck the marrow from your bones.”

Despite himself, Gabriel whines, arching as he clenches his thighs around Baal’s girth. It takes so little for the demon to stoke the infant flames of his neediness. His worries, his fears, fall to the floor as Baal easily carries him to the motel room’s single bed.

Baal doesn’t employ finesse, nor does Gabriel want it. He ends up on his back, hips caged against Baal’s forearm. Clawed fingertips split him apart for momentary observation, before Baal purses his lips and spits on Gabriel’s spread pussy. “Filthy creature,” Baal coos, cruelly twisting Gabriel’s clit, spanking it until the angel cries out. “I thought you wanted it to hurt.”

It doesn’t hurt enough, Gabriel thinks, but Baal drops his lower half to the bed, shoving him up the mattress, spreading his legs by wedging his massive body between. Gabriel’s eyes land on Baal’s cock, always a different, terrifying thing in appearance. Bent, reddened spines circle the length in a spiral, the bulbous tip weeping like toxic fungus; something designed to ward off anyone or anything with an instinct for survival.

Baal’s knees sink into the bed, the rock of his hips guiding his cock across Gabriel’s stomach. He reaches down, slaps one of Gabriel’s tits, and sneers, “Play with them.”

The pain sets Gabriel’s nerve endings alight, but he obeys, cupping both breasts as Baal arranges himself in position. He pinches his tender nipples, squeezing, pushing them together, only pausing when the dripping head of Baal’s cock prods the opening of his cunt.

“Don’t — ” Gabriel bites out. Again, Baal’s eyes find his. “Don’t hold back.”

“And what if I want the night to last?” Baal asks, teasing the tip of his cock with his claws, tugging it up to let it slap down against Gabriel’s pussy. “I’m beginning to wonder if you’re just trying to get out of our bargain early.”

“No,” Gabriel says, wildly shaking his head at even the suggestion he’d steal their time. “I just — I don’t want you to hold back anymore.”

Baal snarls as he shoves forward, palms slamming into the bed on either side of Gabriel’s torso as his cock punches its way inside Gabriel’s body. Gabriel sucks in a breath as the thick head penetrates him, as every spine passes through the opening of his cunt. Withstanding the pressure and pain would be intolerable for a human, and he barely holds onto his flesh-based disguise as Baal enters him fully.

Those claws return to his throat, squeezing hard enough to cinch Garbiel’s windpipe like a garden hose. “I’ll have you however I wish,” Baal says, his other clawed fingers raking down Gabriel’s arm, from shoulder to elbow. “Don’t forget that, angel.”

Gabriel lets out an undignified squeak as Baal thrusts, those ridges along his cock spearing into the soft, wet flesh inside him. He isn’t sure what makes him struggle — panic, certainly, even though Baal has given him no true justification for fear — but his squirms turn to thrashing, legs kicking as if he truly means to push Baal off.

Baal laughs deep in his chest, loosening his grip around Gabriel’s neck as he bends down. “Yes,” he rasps, licking Gabriel’s cheek. “Fight me.”

An exhale punches through Gabriel’s lungs on Baal’s next thrust, but after, he bucks. Twists his head as if it’ll free him from Baal’s grasp on his throat; when it doesn’t, he circles Baal’s wrist with his smaller hands, tearing at hardened flesh with gritted teeth.

“Is this what you want?” Baal asks, his voice soft; too gentle for the violence threading every working limb of his body. “Do you want to hate me, angel?”

Maybe Gabriel should; everything would certainly be easier to bear — the unending war, or the mere suggestion it could end with no victors. But Gabriel doesn’t hate Baal, nor does he want to.

He only responds with a throttled snarl, baring his straight, white teeth. Baal laughs again, a long, loud rumble from his stout belly, and drives hard and fast into Gabriel’s speared cunt. Impaled, Gabriel thinks, stars flashing across his vision as Baal’s fingers tighten around his neck again. Gruesome visions flash through his mind — celestial battlefields, ruined and strewn with gore; cracked horns, scaled skin and forked tongues; the heat of the sun on his face, surrounded by his dead brethren, as the last flame of life dwindles.

A slap to Gabriel’s cheek yanks him back to the present, Baal’s fingers now squeezing his jaw instead of his throat. “No,” the demon says, hints of true rage in his voice. “You’re here, Gabriel. With me.”

Baal’s vicious gaze locks him in place as Gabriel takes stock of here — Baal’s human silhouette looming over him, his cock seated deep but unmoving, points of his body sharp and aching. The room’s A/C unit kicks on in the corner, shuddering and grinding beneath its metal casing.

“Keep going,” Gabriel whispers, as loud as he can manage.

“We can stop — ”

“Keep going.”

Baal slaps him again, this time circling both his massive hands around Gabriel’s waist, manipulating his body like a toy as the barbs of his cock grow sharper, dig deeper. Gabriel tugs on his nipples, biting back a cry as Baal mercilessly fucks him, their heavy breathing and sounds wielding pitch and volume like weapons.

Gabriel doesn’t fight; he doesn’t want to fight. He only wants to succumb. He wants to know when the last candle is snuffed on the altar. He wants to know when this will all end.

When Baal lifts himself higher, he brings Gabriel with him, one hand on his back, the other on his hip; Gabriel’s legs tighten around Baal’s waist, arms around his shoulders. Baal fucks him like that, bouncing him, spearing Gabriel on his cock, growling in his ear like a hungry beast.

“No one is taking you from me,” Baal says against Gabriel’s cheek. “Not in this life, or the next.”

Gabriel breaks, sobbing as he slumps against Baal’s chest, fingers digging into the meat of his wide shoulders. It shouldn’t be what he wants. It shouldn’t make everything dissolve like sugar in hot coffee. That he is Baal’s — that he belongs to Baal — as much as Baal belongs to him.

Baal doesn’t finish inside him, but his pace eventually slows, more rocking than fucking. The motel room, the hum of the A/C, the din of the outside world — everything fades to darkness until only the demon holding an angel is left.

If he had his wits about him, Gabriel would be embarrassed. Even if eternity is still promised, their time together will remain limited, and Gabriel doesn’t want it wasted on all these feelings he isn’t supposed to have nor knows what to do with. Baal says nothing of it, of course, smoothing his palm up and down Gabriel’s back in the dark.

When the silence becomes a burden, Gabriel asks, “What now?” without lifting his head from Baal’s chest.

“It’s your turn to choose,” Baal says, chuckling as his clawless fingers tangle in Gabriel’s hair.

Gabriel lifts his head with monumental effort, bracing his hands against Baal’s collarbones. The dark brings him a strange comfort; no eyes or ears upon them.

“I want to see it,” he says.

Baal’s brow furrows. “‘It’?”

Gabriel swallows. “Where you would keep me if I ever…”

Left. Defected. Fell.

Baal’s mouth gapes before he remembers to shut it. “You want to… see Hell?” he asks. “You want me to take you to Hell?”

Gabriel shrugs, playing off the ridiculous request. “Why not?”

“You know damn well why not.” Baal narrows his eyes. “Unless this is your way of telling me that your business upstairs is concluded?”

“No,” Gabriel says. “Not necessarily.”

“It’s a one way trip, angel.”

“Says who?” Gabriel asks with a wry smirk. “God?”

“Everyone.”

“Are we everyone, Baal?”

The confusion on Baal’s face is almost satisfying. The demon rarely conducts himself without the upper hand in play, but Gabriel’s gut is twisted into too tight of a knot to truly relish knocking Baal off his high horse.

“Let’s go back to the room,” Baal says, his expression shifting to resolution.

“You asked me if it would be nice to rest,” Gabriel says firmly. “If it would be so bad if everything… stopped.”

“I was talking about the End,” Baal snaps. “There’s a difference between accepting inevitability and bringing it about faster.”

“Sneaking an angel into Hell won’t bring about the Rapture,” Gabriel says.

“I don’t need that sort of attention, Gabriel.”

Gabriel knows a ‘no’ when he hears it, so he relents. Because Baal is right — if there is to be an End, there is no glory in hastening its arrival.

But if he could — if he had any say when the time came — he’d keep those moments they’d stolen together: Baal reading him scripture on a ratty motel bed. Baal stroking his wings, marveling at their lustrous shimmer. Baal on his knees with his head between Gabriel’s thighs.

“What I want,” Gabriel says softly, bumping his nose against Baal’s chin, “is to rest. And to be with you when all is unmade; when everything stops.”

“I said I would find you,” Baal whispers weakly, cupping the back of Gabriel’s head, “And I meant it.”

“It could be tomorrow,” Gabriel says. “It could be the second the sun rises.”

“And it could be a thousand years from now.”

“But wouldn’t you rather know when?”

Baal pauses to consider, then clicks his tongue. “You’re worried it’ll happen too quickly for me to find you.”

“It’s quite possible.”

“Angel,” Baal says, more of a sigh than a word. He cups Gabriel’s jaw, tilting his head up, forcing their eyes to lock. “I always find you, don’t I? And I always — always — give you what you need.”

“What if you’re too late?”

Baal huffs, but in the span of seconds, the motel room re-materializes around them. Gabriel finds himself still seated in Baal’s lap, but facing away, Baal’s strong arms surrounding him from behind.

“Is that why you asked me what I’d do if this were the last time?” Baal says, lips teasing Gabriel’s ear.

“Obviously,” Gabriel mumbles.

Baal chuckles, but his voice has returned to that dark rumble, the tone that implies he knows more than anyone in Heaven and Hell combined. “Is that what you want for your turn?”

Gabriel straightens his posture, but Baal’s arms don’t drop from their embrace. “And if it was?”

“Yes or no, angel.”

Gabriel briefly scans the threadbare motel room around them, then answers, “Yes.”

He hears the ceramic crack of bone before he feels it, before his gaze steers straight down to his chest, where Baal’s hand is buried to the wrist. He feels the clench on his pulse, Baal’s fingers vising around his heart as blood gushes from the hole between his breasts. A gasp is all that leaves him before Baal tears the throbbing organ from his ribcage, veins and arteries snapping like power lines.

He won’t die, but oh God — oh God, it hurts. Knives of light pierce the cracks between his flesh, his skin peeling away from his fingernails and splitting down his wrists like an invisible thread caught on a nail. Gabriel opens his mouth to scream.

Shh, comes Baal’s voice — in his ear, in his mind, all around him — as blood pools in Gabriel’s lap. He tracks the path of his heart to Baal’s mouth, the flash of his sharp teeth as they snap apart. As they sink into bloody viscera and chew.

This is how I’ll always find you, Baal speaks as he devours Gabriel’s heart. This is how I’ll keep you.

On the precipice of pain, of returning to Heaven as his true self, Gabriel manages to ask, And what of me?

Oh, angel. Baal draws the back of his palm across his bloodied mouth, his smile netted in black and red. You already took mine from me long, long ago.

Magnus Thorne writes dark queer erotica. He currently skulks around twitter, instantgramps, and has a carrd full of his works.