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“For my eyes have seen your salvation.” - Luke 2:30
He no longer sleeps at night.
Every time he hesitantly closes his eyes, hazy images of the cathedral burial grounds plague him in flashes; the crumbling grey stone, the reflection of shattered stained glass windows, followed by the Abbess finding him unconscious in the graveyard. Sometimes his memory tricks him with quick flashes of something almost human climbing out of a coffin, bony fingers curling over the edge of the wooden box. The events of the night that he does not thoroughly recall, they plague him.
He rolls to the other side of his uncomfortable bed, stiff and restricting. The cotton sheets scratch at his arms like sand paper, like the claws of cats trying to escape from under his skin. He tries to close his eyes again and pray, but of course, it fails. The silver moonlight shines through the window opposing his bed, unfortunately reminding him of the glare of the sun behind his eyelids when he awoke after that fateful night.
The graveyard.
Without thinking, he finds himself wandering to the window to stare out at it, without knowing.
A pale fog has settled across the field of graves, omitting any writing on the grey stones. Not that he could ever read from this far, from his chamber of old stone.
In the distance he can barely make out the convent, silent and lightless at this time of night. Despite its ominous aura, the nuns residing in it have been nothing but kind, almost sympathetic, towards him since his odd occurrence. One nun in particular, whose face looked strangely familiar and spoke with an overly sweet voice, chalked the whole thing up to simply the nerves of being a newly ordained priest in a new location. That’s now all he hopes it continues to be.
However, as the fog over the graveyard begins to shift, a shadow of doubt replaces the hope she had given him.
Something is wrong. Something has been wrong for some time now.
He’s spent his entire life shoving that feeling down, the feeling of oddity, of otherness. He pushed it aside, into the depths of his soul. Instead, he turned to the church and found solace in its routine. The rhythm of vocal hymns and monotony of recited texts filled his Sunday mornings as a young adult, and soon his everyday life when he approached his mid thirties. When he announced he was training as a friar, his grandmother had gifted him her silver rosary. He recalls her final painful moments on her deathbed; she whispered of blurry visions and God’s light, begging him to guide her to rest. Philip prayed by her bedside.
He still often found himself clutching the rosary, like it would guide him to sleep.
Up until he lost it.
He hasn’t seen the rosary since he awoke in the graveyard. He knows he fell asleep while holding it, he always did, but it was nowhere to be found among the dewy grass and cracking stones of the cemetery the next morning. He and a few of the nuns had briefly searched for it, across the yard, in his room, along the entrance steps of the old cathedral, but nothing was found.
It was gone.
He had innocently proposed the idea of checking inside the cathedral, but the Abbess had politely forbidden him from it. She explained that no one is allowed inside due to the crumbling infrastructure. He abided by her words, and walked away from its splintering large wooden doors. As much as he wished to repossess his grandmother’s rosary, he knows his safety is more important. He’s already covered in enough bruises from that fateful night, one more could truly be the difference between an ice pack and a broken bone.
The thought of bruises remind him of their presence, spread along his arms and knees. He gently drags his finger up his arm, along his elbow, pressing subtly. Like a spattering of faded yellow and green paint, they litter his flesh with tinges of pain.
The ones on his knees and shins, currently covered by his sleep pants, are accompanied by tough scrapes. Three thin marks on each thigh, drawing blood that had dried by the time he awoke that morning. They have not caused him any pain.
He doesn’t know how the scratches got there, but he knows they will heal. All injuries heal eventually, no matter how they came about. God blessed humanity with that trait.
The fog has moved to the right, obscuring his view of the convent completely. It brings the old cathedral into his sight, standing tall and dark upon the hill. He couldn’t see the architecture of the nunnery, but somehow he could observe the intricacies of the cathedral's architecture in the foggy night. A shiver travels down his spine, just as he subconsciously presses on another bruise.
He jumps back from the window, hissing in pain.
He takes a deep breath, and gently lets go of his arm. The wind begins to pick up outside. A cold gust blows through the field, crumpled autumn leaves rising in the air along with the occasional thin twig. The wind casts them aside like nothing, like disposable junk. He slowly walks back to the window sill, and watches intently as a single pine cone rolls to the edge of the cathedral’s first step. It taps against the stone step, unable to climb higher without the help of a stronger force. If it were meant to go higher, God would have allowed it so.
As the wind roars again, the pinecone is pushed away from the cathedral, and rolls off into the low fog without any resistance. He doesn’t bother studying it for any longer.
His eyes stay put on the steps of the cathedral, where a different movement catches his eye.
It’s only a brief glimpse, barely a shadow, but it captures his attention either way. He only sees a tall figure, obscured by the black night, with something shiny hanging across what must be its chest. It captivates his curiosity, but also fills him with strong fear.
He convinces himself it’s merely his mind playing tricks on him, similar to the coffin. He forces himself back into his bed, however uncomfortable it is. He closes his eyes, dread filling his stomach, a familiar but antagonizing feeling.
Sleep does not come to him.
Early next morning, he prays alone in the confession booth. The sunlight has begun to shine through the stained glass windows of the church, casting a myriad of colors across the large empty room. There is no service for the village today. He still resides in the pulpit throughout the day in case somebody comes in to confess. It is his holy duty.
His eyes flutter closed as he silently prays, fighting the force of sleep creeping its way into his body. The lack of rest from the past few days has begun to catch up to him. He feels it in his muscles, in the bags under his eyes, through the thick cloudy fog in his brain.
As much as he wishes to finally fall asleep, he knows what waits for him in the dream world, on the other side.
Just the reminder of the graveyard causes his mind to instill a sudden vision in front of him; the glare of his silver rosary slipping from his hand, into the dark of what must be an old coffin. He doesn’t remember that. It’s the first thing he’s recalled from that night beyond what happened in the graveyard. He finds it difficult to believe he would just drop his grandmother’s precious rosary into a place of eternal rest, but there’s nothing else to go off of.
Perhaps he should make another search across the graveyard, for a specific coffin.
The idea of searching for the coffin increases the pit of foreboding dread in his stomach.
The wooden door on the other side of the confession booth creaks, causing his eyes to shoot open in shock. He had nearly forgotten where he was, and that he was supposed to be praying.
From the other side he hears a solemn voice, “Bless me, father, for I’ve sinned.”
He can’t help but think that the voice sounds strikingly familiar, belonging to a memory he buried long ago, but he continues his typical routine and offers his blessing. He asks about the confessor’s sin.
The confessor says to him, eerily deadpanned, “You’ve run from your greatest sin, Philip.”
He feels that dreadful wrong feeling travel down his spine with a shiver, raising on his skin in the form of goosebumps. Every muscle in his body tightens. No man here should know his name, nor his alleged sins. Only one person in the world would ever know a secret as terrible, as sinful, as that one. Only one person, only the boy he left behind ages ago. Abandoned in his past, forcefully forgotten alongside much of Philip’s youthful years; much of his regrets.
He relaxes his clenched fists, composing himself. There’s simply no possible way it could be him. He hasn’t seen or heard his voice in decades, for good reason, for a holy purpose.
“Daniel?”
He waits with baited breath, but no confirmation arrives. Only painful silence.
It’s a truly terrible silence, poignant and unreliable. As if it could be broken any moment by a weary confession, or perhaps by a sad kiss. The silence builds the fearful tension and the dread in his heart, but also feeds his God-given human sense of curiosity.
He does what any ordinary person would do, and carefully climbs out his side of the booth. The pulpit is empty of people, and he can see through the colorful windows that the sun has already begun to set. He must have been praying for far longer than he intended.
He cautiously rounds the other side of the booth, preparing to find a person, possibly someone familiar. He peaks his head around the edge of the dark wooden frame, discovering that the door to the booth has been left wide open.
Nobody.
The seat is empty, no trace of whoever had just spoken to him. He turns around and scans the entire room for movement, but only he remains, alone. The feeling of wrong grows more powerful. He reaches to his neck to clutch his rosary for comfort, only to realize it is still missing. Perhaps he’s so tired, so sleep deprived, he has begun hallucinating the presence of other people. Perhaps he has begun dreaming in broad daylight.
He just needs to sleep.
He exits the sanctuary of the church and stumbles into the graveyard to search for his rosary just one last time. A part of him believes that if he finds it, he will finally be able to rest at night. His memory of the coffin has grown clearer, though he’s still unsure exactly where it lies. As he walks the path, somewhere in the distance he hears the Abbess call after him from the steps of the convent. He regretfully pretends not to hear her. He just knows he needs to find his rosary before the memory of the coffin fades completely.
The sun sets swiftly upon the horizon, as winter approaches. The sky no longer streaks with gold as it did when it shone through the glass windows earlier. The pretty gold has descended beyond his sight, replaced by soft pinks and dark purples. These colors eventually turn into a dark blue, sprinkled with white stars the higher he looks. Most of the remaining light from the sun has been blocked out by the dark oak trees surrounding the church and graveyard property. The spindly dying branches reach blindly into the tall sky, as if reaching for God, or perhaps for salvation.
The lantern feels heavy in his hands, guiding his way through the darkening field. The gravel path crunches beneath his feet, putting him on edge. If any wild animal were out here, his presence would be made known to them. In his short time living here, all he’s seen are ravens and the occasional rabbit. Wolves have been extinct in this area for decades now. He tells himself that any sane creature would have the common sense to avoid a tall sacred figure carrying what is presumably a small fire in the cold black of night.
The dry gravel quickly transforms into damp grass as he walks past the rusted iron cemetery gates and into the domain of the dead. He hoists the lantern out in front of him, using it to avoid stepping on the grave plots. The farther he goes, the older the graves date back to. Some writing appears to be scrubbed off entirely, though that may just be the fog of the night fooling his tired eyes. He scours the area for an empty plot or the outline of a wooden coffin, but to no avail.
When he reaches what must be the edge of the graveyard, the rotting leaves and thorned branches become too thick for him to travel through. He makes the logical assumption that if he can’t get to that part of the graveyard now, then he likely couldn't the other night. Despite the scratches on his thighs, he tells himself that he highly doubts his rosary is over there.
With it nowhere in sight, he supposes another sleepless night is afoot.
He exhales a disappointed sigh, and then turns around with the intention to retrace his steps through the dark cemetery. A twig snaps in the distance, and his whole body turns towards the cathedral. The sudden movement thrusts the lantern against the wind, swiftly extinguishing the guiding light. Philip feels a great terror instilled into his heart yet again.
The cathedral stands where it always is, a looming and eerie presence, residing over the graveyard as it has for centuries.
Except now, something has changed. Philip knows this because he sees a flash of light from within the empty cathedral. A spike of bright silver, the moonlight cast through the large shattered window, has found itself a shiny surface to reflect from. Something has shifted within the cathedral. A new presence that Philip does not recall from the other night.
Perhaps it’s just his curious nature he often fails to ignore, but this new presence beckons him towards the creaky front doors. In just a brief couple minutes, he stumbles his way through the darkness, guided only by the white moon. Philip has placed himself on the base of the stone cathedral steps once again, truly accepting yet another night of no sleep.
He leaves the lightless lantern right outside the doorstep, for it serves no use to him now. He pushes the heavy wooden doors open, the hinges hissing from a lack of use. He winces, but moves through the entrance of the door confidently. He’s going to find his rosary—
“Do you trust that your god is with you now?” Philip’s soul almost leaves his body.
Philip regretfully recognizes Daniel’s voice, the voice of the boy he thought he left in his guilty past. He glances into Daniel’s deep brown eyes, as they stand parallel from each other across the dusty cathedral floor. The boy Philip left behind decades ago is now a man, tall and dressed in all black, standing next to the coffin from his vision. Philip thinks to flee, but cannot move.
“You were always running.” Daniel states, the silver rosary dangling from his tan hands. Philip hates that he’s right, but at least he always knew what he was—he just kept it a secret. Daniel, however, could never accept their shared mistakes, their shared sins.
“You were always scared.” Philip bites back, defensive. He knows he really should leave; he feels his God telling him to escape now.
Daniel rolls his eyes, almost the same pretty brown that Philip remembers. “I was young,” He takes a step closer, “but I stopped being scared years ago.” Philip watched the rosary sway from Daniel’s hand, reflecting in the pale moonlight. “You’re still running.” He continues, “you joined the church.”
Philip’s eyebrows furrow in frustration, “I didn’t just join the church, I found God. I became a priest.” He found dedication, truth, and salvation in his faith, in the Lord.
“Oh, I noticed.” Daniel smirks, “You’ve grown. You look good.”
Philip flushes, that familiarly odd feeling in his gut, the one he had when he and Daniel first met, decades ago, when they would secretly share fleeting moments of passion—
He needs to take a deep breath. He needs to focus. He needs to leave.
“What are you doing here?” Daniel steps back at Philip’s stern tone. He slowly walks away from the coffin, then around the large open room of the abandoned cathedral, like a predator circling its prey. He plays with the rosary like it’s a toy, as if he isn’t aware of how much it means to Philip. But he knows.
“I suppose…” he moves to the old statue of an angel, overlooking the pulpit as it casts a shadow over him. If Philip squints, he could almost imagine Daniel’s face on the breaking stone. “We have unfinished business.”
Daniel’s free hand delicately traces the angel’s crumbling stone face. The paint is mostly chipped away, only a smoky grey remains of the once beautiful structure. A familiar irony.
Philip finds himself confused, and a little curious. Daniel always had that effect on him.
“You should leave.”
“Do you think I’m going to hell, Father Philip?”
Philip is made uncomfortable by Daniel’s use of the formal title; it simply feels wrong. The years they spent together, young and immature and wanting, does not constitute a need for the formality. They do not have the relationship of a loyal follower to God and his priest, they were so far from that. Even now, there is no God between them. Philip struggles, knowing there never will be.
They maintain eye contact, intense and intimate. Philip finally realizes those same brown eyes he was so familiar with decades ago, have changed. They are no longer full of youth, and wonder, and the beauty he was so fond of. There is something else in Daniel’s memorable eyes, something Philip has only read about in scripture and ancient tomes.
Something supernatural, something other worldly.
Daniel steps closer once again, swinging the rosary in front of his face like a pendulum. The moonlight continues to shine through the shattered cathedral window, casting an eerie pale, unearthly glow onto Daniel’s skin.
For just a fleeting moment, Philip finds himself lost in the man’s timeless beauty—his dreamy charm. The rosary swings side to side, hypnotizing just like Daniel himself.
Philip knows they are both too old for games like this now. Yet a part of him is aware that if his constitution and faith were any weaker, he’d give in to Daniel’s every command. He hates that Daniel knows this.
Philip reaches up and clasps Daniel’s hand, stopping the repetitive swinging motion of the rosary. Daniel’s eyes flash silver once more, just for a split second, but Philip pulls himself together.
“I know wherever I go, you will follow.” Daniel looks thrown off by his response for a brief moment, but maintains his composure.
He keeps his grip on the rosary, no longer swinging in the moonlight, and moves his hand onto Philip’s shoulder. Philip freezes as Daniel’s hand falls from his shoulder and traces down his clothed arm, a light and gentle touch. Then he expertly locates one of Philip’s many bruises still littering his arm from the night he got lost in the graveyard, and Philip questions how he knew they were there. Daniel presses down through the black fabric, unrelenting. Philip grimaces, and pulls his arm away. He loosens his grip on Daniel’s hand, as he unceremoniously drops the rosary to the dusty floor beneath them.
Philip does not reach for it.
Instead, he remains still and stares into Daniel’s eyes. The pressure on his arm ceases as Daniel’s hand travels from his side up to Philip’s face. The touch remains light and gentle, caressing his cheek. It is as if the world around them fades, disappearing into eternity. Daniel’s face is unreadable as he tilts Philip’s head to the side.
“Now would be the time to run.”
Philip subtly shakes his head. “I’m done running,” his voice goes quieter, like he’s scared to admit it aloud, “I’m done shoving you down.”
Philip begins whispering prayer under his breath. He closes his eyes, painfully aware of Daniel’s bold stare on him. He hopes this is a dream, that perhaps he has finally been granted with sleep, dreaming of his darkest desires. The priest asks for protection in his prayer, for guidance, for safety from the temptation in front of him.
He also begs for forgiveness; of his mockery, his sin.
Daniel speaks, low and harsh, “There is no god or devil here.” Philip stops praying.
Despite his closed eyes, he feels Daniel lean in, stepping closer. He hears the crunch of the metal rosary beneath his foot, on the ground that no longer feels real.
“Just me.” Daniel whispers as Philip feels the hand on his cheek fall to his lips, hoping his kind Lord will have mercy on him. “Open your eyes for me, Philip.”
He hears the Rosary break into tiny little pieces of silver under the pressure of Daniel’s strength.
Philip opens his eyes as his voice echoes in his ear, enchanted by the vague halo of glowing moonlight encircling Daniel's head.
Daniel leans in, their lips just an inch apart.
As the world around them appears to fall away, Philip wonders if this isn’t so bad, that maybe this is okay—right, even.
Perhaps the flashes in his eyes he observed earlier were not demonic at all, but instead—angelic.
“Heaven is right in front of you, Philip.”
In a sudden brutal ray of light, the halo-like reflection travels around Daniel’s body. It blinds Philip briefly, but he swiftly forgets about it once the light thankfully subsides.
Daniel—Dan as he called him when they were young—is no longer wearing just plain black. In place of his previously mundane clothes is a rather revealing costume of some sort.
Dan stands confidently in front of him, moonlight still glowing from behind him as he smirks. He is wearing a skimpy black dress lined with white and gold, a crude parody of what the devoted sisters of the church typically wear. The skirt cuts off at his upper thigh, giving way to black fishnets with sewn-in upside down crosses made into the fabric. Underneath those practically see-through tights is his bare skin, matching the revealed skin of his strong chest. Naturally, Philip’s eyes drift from the cutout in the chest of the dress to the elbow-high black gloves that cover Dan’s lower arms. The tips of his fingers are left bare, nails painted an inky polished black.
Philip is astonished by both the mockery it makes of his God, and the aroused rise in his heart rate.
He starts to wonder if he is hallucinating, if his mind that he has worked so hard to purify has somehow managed to conjure up such a… sinful image. He can’t understand how someone could have the ability to only imagine this. It must be real.
He wants it to be real.
Dan slowly leans in closer. Philip notices how his eyes are now lined with what appears to be coal, matching the black of the veil cradling his curly brown hair.
He reaches down to the ground with elegance, grasping the broken rosary in his hands. It glows with silver moonlight, as Philip watches in fascination as it mends itself in Daniel’s gloved hands. Philip stays still in shock as Daniel gently places it over Philip’s neck. He lets his hand fall to the cross hanging from the silver beads. He tugs harshly, forcing Philip’s face near to his own.
Dan’s hot breath grazes Philip’s lips as he whispers, “How do you want me, Father?”
Philip gasps softly as the sting of the metal digs into his neck, “The—The altar.” The priest struggles to say, distracted by the strain on his throat. He ignores the holy voice in the crevice of his mind, screaming for some common sense and reason. He didn’t know he still maintained the ability to do such a thing—to ignore his God.
Dan, with steps as light as an angel’s feather, guides him to the altar using the rosary wrapped around his neck. He is pulled past the empty pulpit, up the cracked stone steps and is thrown to his knees beside the altar.
Philip can see that there were once beautiful engravings and perhaps gold details decorating it, but since the cathedral has fallen into disrepair, the altar is nothing but a forgotten slab. If Phil squints, he can see what must be an engraved recreation of an angel, falling from the sky.
“I’ll ask one final time, Phil.” It's rude to call a priest by his lone first name, and a mockery to use a shortened version of it. Dan lets go of the rosary, resting it upon Phil’s collarbone.
Dan, in his skimpy sacrilegious garb, sits upon the flat surface of the grey altar, hiding the engraving with his fishnet-covered legs. Phil’s eyes are forced to take in the visual of the beautiful skin, a level of nudity he hasn’t seen since before he started training as a friar.
Dan slowly spreads his legs open, “How do you want me?”
It is then he realizes, with a strange mixture of panic and arousal, he is defensively kneeling between the legs of some sort of divine entity—a twisted and perhaps unholy version of the loving Daniel he once knew.
Or perhaps, Philip wonders, this version of Daniel is holy—divine and blessed and guiding in ways that a new Priest such as Phil would struggle to understand. Maybe this is simply a right of passage, a reward from his God for his rigorous devotion.
He shall let his God do as he sees fit.
“Do not be afraid.” Dan tilts his head, a sweet yet mocking tone in his voice.
His single dangling hoop earring reflects in the moonlight, like a little halo. It’s a detail that Phil had forgotten about—which only proves that this Daniel is not a figment of his imagination. The halo-like earring is proof that God has watched his life for a long time now. “No holy words?”
Phil had lost himself in his thoughts, forgetting to respond to Dan. How rude of him, to not speak to a potential angel, a vision of God, when spoken too.
“Then I will do as I see fit.”
Dan reaches forward and grabs the priest by his collar, flipping their positions with ease. With the strength of an angel, Phil tells himself. He handles him with no care, and Phil thinks it may bruise him further. He doesn’t care—he doesn’t feel it.
Now Phil is bent over the altar at his waist, face pressed into the cold concrete. He feels Dan’s hard crotch press against the curve of his behind, a feeling both familiar and foreign. His breathing begins to labor with nervous anticipation.
“Please…” Phil begs, softly. For what, he isn’t exactly sure. Understanding, peace, salvation, friction—it doesn’t matter, for they are all the same to him now.
He feels Daniel whisper, hot in his ear, “What do you desire?”
He feels gloved hands grasp the bottom of his cassock, and hike it up past his hips. In a matter of mere seconds, Phil feels sharp claws rip his black pants and shove them off of his legs with minimal effort. He gasps at the cold night air grazing his skin, but is swiftly distracted by Dan tugging his head up by his white hair.
“Look at him,” Daniel rasps harshly into his ear, “what do you want that he won’t let you have?”
Phil’s head is forced to look up at the large stained glass window that faces the altar, moonlight shining through its unique colors and cascading across the indoors of the abandoned cathedral. The stained glass forms an abstract image of Jesus, with rays of golden sunlight shining from behind his pointed form. The face on the glass is simple yet kind, eyes staring into Phil’s own. He almost gets lost in them, if not for yet another harsh tug on his scalp. It reminds him of how achingly hard he is—and how he has been crudely put on display. His cock twitches with want.
“Answer me!” Dan exclaims as a shiver of want travels up Phil's spine. He feels fingers press against his fluttering hole.
Phil stares into the sweet eyes of the holy glass face, shining with gentle moonlight. He sighs with a breathy “I want you.”
It is as if something breaks, the last thin wire holding Philip’s sanity and sense of self together. It rips apart completely as Dan flips Phil onto his back, forcing the sinning priest to gaze directly into his dark eyes. He crawls on top of Phil, like a starving predator about to descend upon its innocent prey.
Except, Phil is not innocent. He hasn’t been for quite sometime now.
“Please,” he begs yet again, “take me.” He arches into Daniel, who seems taken aback by his sudden willingness. However, he does not complain.
Daniel smirks, teeth sharp and voice low as he lifts up his short skirt, “so easily convinced to disobey your lord—just for a taste of heaven.”
Daniel uses his sharp black claws and tears the fishnets that loosely trapped his now bare cock. It stands tall, pink at the tip. Philip has to fight the urge to drool—its just how he remembers it. How could he forget? He had seen it in his dreams so frequently that he began not sleeping due to guilt, running away from his forbidden desires.
He no longer needs to run from those desires, “Taste of heaven…” Philip mindlessly repeats, and opens his lips wide. He notices with pride how Daniel delicately leaks at the tip from the action.
“So willing,” Daniel appears to glide closer, knees placed next to each side of Phil’s head. “Just how I like it.” A drop of precum lands in Phil’s open mouth, and though it's almost nothing, he swallows it greedily.
After that, Dan stops stalling. With a deep groan, he slides his aching cock into Phil’s warm and wet mouth. Phil tries to close his eyes, but Dan bucks his hips suddenly in an attempt to shock Phil’s eyes back open. It works.
“Look at me,” Dan starts to thrust in and out of Phil’s mouth, “Look at what you're so desperate for.”
Phil looks. He stares, intently, even as tears begin to gather at the edges of his eyelids from the rough pace that Dan sets. He doesn’t care that his jaw begins to hurt. He likes it—he adores every part of this, no matter how bizarre it may be. Phil internally reasons that the crazier he feels, the more his God wants this for him.
They keep intense eye contact as Phil feels Dan’s hands travel to his hole, pushing and plying him open. Instinctually, he spread his legs farther apart for Dan’s access. He sighs through his nose, due to his mouth being otherwise occupied. At some point, Dan must have gathered the drool from Phil’s mouth and spread it on his hands to finger Phil open.
Dan stretches his hole open with little resistance, like God willed for Phil to be relaxed in this very moment. He arches and moans into the touch, desperate for more, for Dan.
Precum and saliva smears across Phil’s lips as Dan eventually glides out of his mouth. He drags the wet tip of his cock down Phil’s chin and across his cassock covered chest. Dan lets out a soft gasp as he grazes the metal chain of the rosary, leaving a bead of precum on the silver cross. Phil nearly moans aloud at the unholy sight.
Eventually, Dan ruts his cock against Phil’s own, neglected and needy. Phil gasps, hands reaching to clutch the part of Dan’s mocking dress that has a simple cutout across his toned chest. His fingers curl onto the inside of what he supposes is a breast window. They then travel under Dan’s thin garment. Dan appears to be losing his composure as Phil’s fingers fidget with his nipples. He is just as desperate as Phil.
Dan drags his cock to Phil’s slick hole, lips almost touching Phil’s own, “What would you do for Heaven, Father Philip?”
Phil sighs deeply, hot breath touching Dan's angelic lips, “anything.”
It is then that Dan finally pushes his cock inside of Phil. They both moan in unison. The sensation, this entire situation, feels both very real and thoroughly impossible at the same time. Daniel begins to thrust in and out, deep and tender.
With every inch of him that buries deep inside of him, Phil feels what must be heaven and hell converging, bleeding into each other's raw edges.
Phil’s shaking hands travel from Dan’s chest to under his arms and onto his back. He scrapes and scratches Dan’s skin under the loose fabric as the thrusts grow stronger and increasingly messier. The fabric of his forgotten skirt consistently dances across Phil’s neglected cock, causing him to arch into the gentle contact. He wants more, more friction and contact; so he begs for it.
“H-Harder, please—!” He struggles to think of something that would shatter any hesitance Dan may still have, “Sanctify me!”
Like a mournful prayer, Dan answers his pleas.
Everything around them is sharp and hot and distant. Like reality itself has begun to shun the logic of its creator in an attempt to accommodate for the impossibly delicious feelings Philip is experiencing at this very moment. The closest he has ever felt to this was the last time he had given himself over to Dan, to absolute pleasure.
Years of secrecy and shame has led him to believe he would never experience something like this ever again, no less at the hands of the lover he tried so desperately to pray away. Hundreds of sleepless nights have allowed this to happen. A part of Phil thinks that this is what he was truly meant for—what God had put him on this sacred Earth to do. A holy and civic duty to obey and let his Lord take what he wants—to do what he sees fit for such a loyal disciple.
Dan’s thrusts become erratic. He yanks Phil closer to his face by the rosary around his neck, “Is this what you prayed for?” Phil nods, unable to find his words. He can’t form them, and instead lets out a series of pathetic moans and whines. Dan grins, sharp teeth on display.
Phil feels what must be blood flow slowly due to his scratching, but Dan has no reaction to what should be terrible pain. Instead he shoves Phil back down onto the altar, his head hanging off of it. He feels a deep heat grow in his abdomen. His vision grows spotty, eyes struggling to pick between maintaining eye contact with Dan, or to stare at the upside down holy figure trapped in glass staring at him from above. The image of Jesus above him does not judge his current state—no, it feels more like a protective gaze. His God, in his many forms, watching over him in return for his decades of worship and unwaning dedication.
His limbs begin to tingle as Dan grows louder and rougher. The other yet again yanks Phil’s face close to his via the rosary, teasing their lips against each other.
“Cum for me,” Dan demands, “Come for your God.”
Their lips finally press together in utter ecstasy, as the relentless tension inside of Phil releases. He feels blissed out with pleasure and intense devotion. Everything goes hot and blindingly bright, unlike anything Phil has experienced before. Dan grunts and shoves his tongue into his mouth as he fills Philip up, deep and heavy inside of his body. The sensation of being filled up is what truly pushes Phil over the edge, his flushed cock squirting cum across his black cassock and onto the rosary.
Dan must see this too, because Phil feels his dick twitch inside of him. Phil groans loudly, scratching deeper across Dan’s back. Dan revels in the pain, for Phil’s nails feel like feathered wings being sewn into his broken skin.
The world around them still spins, blurry and bright as Phil tries to regain his composure. He thinks he can vaguely feel Dan slide out of him, blasphemous dress also stained with cum and torn around the chest cutout. Phil’s hands flop to his sides, fingernails caked with fresh blood. Phil briefly glances to the side and across the room—the angel statue is gone.
Daniel, his Dan, rises above Phil who remains on the cold altar. What must be moonlight glows from all around them, multicolored due to the stained glass windows. It is disorienting, and Phil struggles to understand what is happening. The exhaustion from limited sleep claws at his eyelids, at his tired limbs. He fights it.
He watches with confusion as Dan licks what must be cum off of his fingertips, the only part of his hands that aren't gloved in black.
What appears to be sharp rigid horns begin to protrude from just beneath his curly brown hair, as his veil flutters to the ground. Phil wonders if the orgasm was so good that he has begun to hallucinate—because Dan’s coal-smudged eyes glow with an ominous purple as black shadows emerge from behind his floating body. His veins pulsate from under his skin, the same deep purple as his enchanting eyes. He floats above Phil’s exposed and debauched body, covered in colorful bruises and sticky with cum. Dan's release continues to drip out of him.
As the shining moonlight forms a halo behind Dan’s horned head, he realizes with grave disbelief that those growing abysses of black behind his back are indeed not shadows—they are wings.
Dan’s powerful voice echoes all around him, “Heaven and hell have merged.”
Dan, ever so angelic and demonic, eyes him like prey. He licks his lips, teeth sharp and veins bulging purple across his moonlit skin. He fills Phil with both fear and hope, as his God always does. Anything for his God, Phil recites to himself like prayer.
The priest feels that he has no choice, nowhere to run anymore. He relaxes and lays flat against the altar with no self preservation remaining. He is now fully naked, with only the rosary on his neck. His bruised arms hang off of the raised platform, unmoving just like his spread legs. The scratches on his thighs begin to glow purple, but he doesn’t care—he doesn’t feel any pain. Only pleasure, only completion.
He reminds himself that this is what he is made for, the task he must fulfill in order to reach salvation. Maybe this is a fever dream he will awake from in a matter of seconds— or perchance, this is simply his divine purpose.
Heaven is right in front of him.