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Blows that wound cleanse away evil; strokes make clean the innermost parts.
Proverbs 20:301
“So this is how your merciful God prefers you to punish yourself in Her name? I was unaware that Catholicism encouraged blood sacrifices,” the murmur echoes within the cavernous church gently, its low tones hanging in the air like a waft of languidly curling smoke, but it may as well have been shouted for all of its effect on Crowley and, subsequently, his body.
The dim apse ahead of him looms massive and still as he supports himself against the marble altar, his quaking left hand clawing around its edge to brace his weight as his right clutches the turned, worn smooth wooden handle of the flogger. He’s unbuttoned his cassock down to the waist and has let the top of it drape down over his hips, he’s naked from the waist up and shivering from a pungent combination of cold, pain, and barely contained carnal need that nothing seems to eradicate from him, no matter what he does.
Crowley had knelt and fervently prayed before getting to his feet earlier that evening despite feeling like a fraud— and he is one, he supposes— the admittedly profane anticipation of leather brutally kissing his back as corrupt as his other not-quite-so-buried desires, those swollen appetites that throb hot and heavy in his stomach like smoldering boulders of brimstone, but at least this one might serve some higher purpose. At least, that is what he’s been taught, and Crowley has continued to cling to that throughout the years just as he’s adamantly told himself the resulting ecstasy that flows through his body is that of a spiritual nature, is one of being cleansed and purified— not that of a deviant flagellant who comes from the exquisite suffering of being whipped.
Certainly not that.
Denial is one of Father Anthony Crowley’s talents, he’s come to know, and he may even be the patron saint of it when all is said and done.
“You might be surprised,” Crowley pants through gritted teeth, fighting the urge to roll his eyes at just how wildly far off Aziraphale is in his assessment. He’s also trying his hardest not to whimper as he refuses to look over his shoulder, and he’s very thankful that his long hair has come loose from its bun and hangs around his face in a heavy curtain, a shield wrought from silver shot copper, “although this is not a widely practiced— oh, nevermind. What are you doing here, and how— how long have you been lurking in the shadows?”
He’s relatively certain Aziraphale didn’t just walk in; he’s closer to the sanctuary than he would be if he’d only entered now, about halfway up the aisle if Crowley had to guess based on the volume of his voice. He’d been so wrapped up in the ritual of attempting to purge the very man from his mind and his heart that it is more than possible that Aziraphale simply slipped in quietly enough to escape Crowley’s blurred observation.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” Aziraphale’s slow steps reverberate up the nave, and Crowley stills even further the closer he comes, but his treacherous cock twitches in betrayal from that sensuous fucking voice wrapping around it, “and not very long, but long enough, I daresay.”
His deliberate footsteps stop only for a moment before beginning again, and the back of Crowley’s sweat slick neck prickles, the raised welts just below his nape sting.
Aziraphale is right; Crowley has been avoiding him. He’s been dodging his calls and all attempts to speak with him on the church grounds, and he knows it’s not at all fair to Aziraphale, he detests himself for causing him any pain and confusion, but he also knows now that he cannot bear it— the guilt, the fear, the pantomime of disgust simultaneously with himself for so easily breaking his vows like a cheap whore and for even having taken said vows in the first place.
He was laughably naive to think that simply removing a clerical collar and having the cross necklace torn from his neck would release him from the talons of this life, he was a fool to believe a night of explosive sex and the fierce adoration of a devastating man would change anything, but what is belief, anyway? Crowley doesn’t know the answer to that timeless question anymore; he can no longer say what he does know, so he has been running— he’s as much a coward as he is a practitioner of denial— but his pursuer has at last caught up with him, it would seem.
“So you took that as an invitation to barge into my church in the middle of the night?” Crowley eventually tries to snap in his very best impression of a sneer, but it wavers, it shakes, and it’s difficult to manage anything but a whine through the searing pain and boiling arousal that fuck him in tandem as he attempts to remain standing. The close proximity of the man he’s been doing his best to exorcise from his being is not helping his resolve, and neither is the fact that Aziraphale has been watching him flog himself, that he’s been standing in a silence so complete Crowley hadn’t known he was there, bearing witness to his flagellation. He’s having trouble comprehending the fact that Aziraphale beheld Crowley carrying out such an intensely ruthless exchange with himself for any amount of time.
It’s disconcertingly intimate.
It is also violently and unbearably erotic.
Crowley is deeply glad that it’s at least not possible for Aziraphale to see how hard he is from the gardener’s current perspective, he is absurdly grateful that the steady thread of shameful need streaming from his cock is shielded by his cassock and that Aziraphale cannot see the hot flush of his tear streaked cheeks, that he is not privy to how Crowley’s surely blown pupils swim in glossy, blissed out gold.
It’s the endorphins, Crowley tells himself in an echo of what his spiritual director had reassured him years ago, it’s simply the endorphins released from the pain, nothing more; keep going.
‘It’s not pleasure, it’s not masochism; this is a divine ecstasy, he’d been advised, you are one with Teresa of Ávila; you are elevated’.
Under the definition of ‘denial’ in the dictionary, there may as well be a portrait of Anthony J Crowley with the numerous annotations of all who have enabled him.
“Yes, and I’m rather glad I did,” Aziraphale replies as he stops a few meters behind Crowley; he can feel his eyes on his quivering back even more vividly than he felt the crack of leather tails, “I hadn’t the slightest idea that I would find you harming yourself in such a way.”
“Don’t— don’t be so dramatic,” Crowley breathes as a particularly sharp jolt of elated agony slithers through an abused expanse of his back where he layered some lashes right on top of each other, and that particular sequence of blows had him rutting against the altar before he realized what he was doing and reminded himself, not for the first time, that this is penance, a punishment; he is doing this to overcome bodily impulses, not give into them, “‘s nothing I’ve not done before, though it has been a while. And you shouldn’t— you shouldn’t be here.”
Please, Crowley silently begs, please, angel, you shouldn’t be here. Please turn your back, please leave me alone with my shame, please have mercy on me—
“I can tell this is certainly not your first time with that whip; you wield it rather well,” Aziraphale almost sounds impressed, “did they teach you that in seminary, Father? Did they instruct you on the most efficient way to beat yourself, on how best to draw blood as payment for imagined transgressions?”
There's a pause before his tone drops fathoms into something lascivious and lewd and slightly cutting, “did you practice on each other?”
Crowley’s back is no longer the only part of him offering up a crimson atonement as his lower lip falls victim to gnashing teeth in an effort to withhold a strangled whine, the blasphemous inference that’s as utterly debased as it is delicious rendering him speechless.
A shadowy, degenerate part of him wishes that had been the case, and so does his cock, apparently, which is throbbing so insistently now he’s forced to amplify the assault of his lip to keep from thrusting into marble again.
He might be beyond salvation at this point, far beyond.
There’s a thoughtful clucking from behind him then, a disapproving sound that’s followed by an almost wistfully whispered observation:
“Such a shame to mar such heavenly skin; a sin, some might even say—”
“Don’t mock me,” Crowley snarls, fast approaching his limit of what he can take physically and mentally, needing Aziraphale to get the fuck away from him as fast as humanly possible as his savaged lower lip trembles, “nothing about me is Heavenly—”
“—although, in the spirit of where we are, I feel I must also confess how staggeringly beautiful you are like this.”
The remaining breath in his heaving lungs flees in a huff at that, and the tingling electricity suspended between them is filled with countless phantom thoughts, it’s bursting with specters Crowley has done all he can to scourge from his mind by way of whim and whip, but still they remain, emblazoned on his brain and soul from the touches and murmurs of a man that seems to have taken control of Crowley’s very blood.
A trickle of that sanguinous vitality gradually slides down his back across a tangle of welts in time with a bead of precome languidly dripping down the length of his aching cock, an additional sort of essence that Aziraphale has complete command over.
“Such a cruel implement— that leather looks quite rigid— I’ve seen even the most seasoned impact bottoms collapse and beg for a reprieve from floggers similar to these…it’s a wonder you’ve not passed out. Your pain tolerance must be very high indeed, Father.”
That sliver of darkly glimmering depravity that had danced through Aziraphale’s previous words shimmers once more, and Crowley can almost see it in the air in front of him.
“One of the blessings of being a redhead,” Crowley whispers unbidden, and perhaps a bit too quickly, a bit too pleadingly. Aziraphale is flirting with yet another boundary of a dangerous territory far too closely for Crowley’s crumbling comfort, and his heart beats itself against the cage of his ribs far more desperately than it had been when leather had bitten into his skin moments earlier, the struggle of a poorly restrained desire now frantically chewing at the frayed, decaying fibers of its binds—
“Or— you like it.”
Aziraphale’s answer is as swift as Crowley’s was, but still it embodies that wondrously calm nature of him; it’s as if he’s talking about something as benign as the weather or the time, not (correctly) accusing Crowley of being a masochist that inadvertently gets off from flogging himself.
He finds himself at a loss for words, but his face burns as he still looks forward, as he pointedly doesn’t glance back at the man who continues on with a voice as gentle yet stirring as his hands had been on Crowley last week. He swears he can feel Aziraphale’s breath ghost over his spine, his words slipping into his lacerated skin like a lover just as he had slid home inside of Crowley last week over and over and over.
His painfully full cock jumps against black cotton and drips again.
“Is that what this is, dove? Gratification by way of flagellation?” Aziraphale ponders, and there’s no disgust in his voice, only something like curious awe, and Crowley gingerly shakes his head, trying to ignore the plush, gauzy warmth of that endearment as he immediately protests, “n-no, no, I’m— it’s penance, is what it is.”
His insistence sounds ridiculously feeble, even to him.
“If it’s a firm hand you’re in search of, darling, I am more than happy to provide you with that,” Aziraphale’s unfazed murmur is as warm and golden as a balmy summer breeze in that moment and just as seductive, blanketing his trembling back with the promise of more, and Crowley nearly turns around to fall on his knees at Aziraphale’s feet to beg yes, yes, please, I need that; call me darling while you flog me, ruin me as you praise me for how well I take it, “I happen to have some skill with a whip.”
He’s walking closer, and the air shivers, it moves towards Crowley along with the advancing footsteps.
When Aziraphale stops directly behind him, a frankly mad intrusive thought in the form of would Aziraphale come on his back like this, would he anoint the mortified flesh of him with the blessing of his sacrament and render him truly exultant, truly ecstatic burrows into his head, it makes itself a home there and Crowley is reeling with it, so much so he nearly forgets Aziraphale asked him a question as the scenario unhelpfully cements itself in the forefront of his perverted mind.
God help him, he is so unfathomably weak.
“N-no, that’s not—” Crowley does have trouble lying at the best of times, even if he doesn’t always realize that’s what he’s doing, which is really quite ironic, considering the life he’s locked himself in, “that’s not what—that’s not what this is about— please, stop. Please, Aziraphale,” he really cannot handle this; he’s not even sure what he’s begging for, and he can’t face that, either, but he prays Aziraphale will relent on at least this particular point if nothing else.
When Aziraphale next speaks after a few seconds of silence, his voice is softer than it has been yet tonight and so very close, a tender caress that joins the decadent suffering rippling over his back with every extension of Crowley’s ribcage, “very well, my dear; if it truly is to be discipline, and I am the cause of said intended punishment as I suspect I am, then at least let it be my hand that inflicts it. As I said,” Crowley jolts and hisses from the resulting pain as he sees a broad hand extend out of the corner of his eye to his right, palm outstretched and beckoning, “I do have some skill with such things.”
Fuck.
He shouldn’t.
He should not give into the seductive idea of allowing Aziraphale to flog him, he should not lay the handle of the implement into Aziraphale’s hand with shaking, freezing fingers, it rather defeats the intended purpose of this act—
— but it’s exactly what Crowley does.
He places the flogger into Aziraphale’s palm, and his fingers curl around it, his thumb grazing along the edge of Crowley’s little finger in the tiniest, most fleeting point of connection, but it draws a stuttered whimper from him nonetheless as Aziraphale steps back and stands behind him once again.
So weak willed.
Crowley’s not at all sure what he’s expecting to happen next, but it’s definitely not the delicate trailing of Aziraphale’s cool fingertips over the contours of his marked back, just the barest of touches, and the fractured, breathless gasp that tumbles from Crowley’s mouth as he violently shudders from the contact resonates around them in a pulse of unquestionable pleasure wrapped in anguish. The pain of his raised, wildly sensitive welts being carefully lavished with the sensual admiration of a meticulous devotee is too much, he’s getting so, so wet from it—
“How will I know when to stop?” Aziraphale murmurs, and his hand is still exploring, it’s mapping out the crosshatch of lashes so tenderly that the tears that have been threatening him finally spill over Crowley’s boiling cheeks, his breath hitching in his sandpaper throat as the wretched flesh of him is touched with what he swears could be something adjacent to reverence.
There is uncertainty in Aziraphale’s voice for the first time tonight, but it’s reassuring, it’s soothing, and Crowley he has learnt by now that consent and communication are deeply important to Aziraphale, he knows him enough to read between the lines of that question:
What is your limit, and how will I know when you reach it?
“Y-you’ll know,” Crowley whimpers between soft, thready sobs, unable to verbally divulge the information that he will drop to the floor once he has reached the threshold of what he can endure; it’s hard for him, being forthright with the most secret parts of himself after long years of hiding them— it’s usually not even possible— but still, he tries to imbue his answer with as much assurance as he can even if it remains unsaid:
I’ll make it clear for you, you will know; I’ll fall to my knees for you as soon as I cannot take anymore and not a second before, and you’ll know.
His turbulent shivering grows as the hand drifts up to caress the slope of each of his largely unblemished shoulders, glancing over knotted muscles before the concave space between Aziraphale’s thumb and forefinger settles at the nape of Crowley’s neck, holding him there with a delicious constriction that has him whimpering on every tremulous exhale and his thighs quivering erratically.
The casually inherent dominance in the gesture is dizzying; the roughened pad of a thumb stroking along the edge of his thundering carotid artery as if it owns the vessel and all that gushes within its walls, the thread of fingertips breaching the unfortified rampart of his hair— ‘he hath stretched out a line, he hath not withdrawn his hand from destroying: therefore he made the rampart and the wall to lament; they languished together’—2
He supposes nothing should be a shock to him anymore when it comes to Aziraphale and Crowley’s feelings towards him, but still he realizes with some awe that he trusts Aziraphale completely in this moment despite his steady dismantling of Crowley’s defenses. The shivers wracking his body soar higher and higher into a convulsing constant, but not from fear, from want, and there is not even a shadow of a doubt in him that Aziraphale will carry out this task with the utmost care, that he will cradle the decimated barriers of him with a consideration Crowley did not know to exist until it had been extended to him last week.
His tears are soundlessly voluminous as he valiantly holds an unmitigated breakdown at bay, and it menaces him from the darkness of the apse, but that curled grip melding into the top of his spine seems to be keeping it away, too, it’s stopping him from splintering apart into nothing.
Crowley is unsure how long they exist in that position, with Aziraphale standing so close behind him the heat of his body mingles with his own and the sound of his breath is easily heard even above the rush of blood pounding in his head, as he holds the back of Crowley’s neck with a strength that doesn’t falter; it could be two minutes, it could be two hours, and it’s all at once incredibly grounding and frenetically charged. His legs ache with the strain of standing and that lingering whisper of a longing to kneel for Aziraphale, the repentant cruelty smearing the surface of his back seeping beneath his skin and into him in the form of intricately woven bruising—
“Are you quite certain you want this, Father?”
The question permeates the ponderous quiet as Aziraphale pulls his hand away, and Crowley’s neck is frigid without the shelter of it, but that chill is tempered by his hair being smoothed and gathered, by the wayward strands that had found their way onto his back being carefully rearranged to drape back over the front of his shoulders; a barricade lovingly resurrected.
Crowley dips his chin as the ruinous tenderness further cracks something inside of him, “y-yes; I’m sure.”
He will beg for this if he needs to.
Aziraphale hums in acknowledgement before murmuring, the darkly thrumming embers of his voice glowing, “and do you want me to draw more blood, darling?”
Oh God, fuck, darling— yes, make me bleed for you, I already am— draw as much from me as you please, until you’re satisfied—
“Do what you will with me,” Crowley’s close to inaudible whisper is one of the most honest desires he’s ever allowed himself to express out loud, and he braces himself against the altar with renewed determination as he softly adds, “please.”
He grips the top of the altar with both hands now, his eyes tightly shut as he waits for the first blow bestowed upon him by a hand other than his own, and he tenses his thighs in an attempt to chase away the simmering climax that sits heavily in the pit of his stomach and base of his spine.
It doesn’t seem to be of much aid.
The anticipatory silence is suddenly broken by the whoosh of leather flying through the air, the snap of it colliding with Crowley’s skin, and his consequent keening cry from the blistering bite of it peals throughout the church. His legs quake as his hips subtly buck forward in an involuntary approval of the fiery kiss, and Crowley tries not to whimper in the aftermath, he tries not to beg for more.
Aziraphale says nothing, but Crowley thinks he hears him lick his lips and the click of a swallow just before another strike lands, and Crowley is helpless in avoiding making the connection that his answering yelps from being whipped by Aziraphale almost perfectly match those that tumble from his mouth when he’s being fucked by him both in pitch and neediness—
“Perhaps it is only right I take the opportunity to torment you like this,” Aziraphale murmurs just before he brings the flogger down again with such momentum Crowley pitches forward with a strangled scream, but fuck it feels so good, it’s so much better than when he does it alone and fuck, he can feel himself literally pouring precome, “since you have done nothing but torment me for the last week. Do you delight in that, Father?” Crowley flinches and gasps as the seven tails4 flick over his back and delicately drag through their crisscrossing signature of wheals almost sweetly, “do you delight in hurting me so?”
Crowley swallows thickly as he tries to form words, but he’s caught in such a bright haze, he’s dangling within a downburst of overwhelming endorphins and adrenaline and rapture, he’s intoxicated and so fucking high that he’s having trouble thinking—
“I did not anticipate you being so sadistic, towards me and yourself,” Aziraphale mutters almost to himself, and the hurt in his tone is a far worse thing to bear than the lash of any whip, “although I suppose that would make sense, since you serve the most violent sadist there is—” the next blow forces Crowley into a collapse against the altar, his chest meeting it as he yelps, the brush of his cassock over his slick cock meeting stone flaring his pleasure just like the pain does as he chokes out, “I— I’m not, I don’t, I— God, I don’t want to hurt you, I’m s-sorry, ‘m so sorry, I didn’t mean to—” he’s cut off by another strike from the opposite direction, and this time he does start to crumple to his knees as a broken, sharply keening wail claws free from his throat before it trails off into a wanton moan, his orgasm right there as his kneecaps smack against the stone flooring and his palms follow suit, fuck, he’s so close, it hurts so badly, it’s unbearable and it’s fucking Heaven as well as Hell, he knows he’ll come from the next strike, he just needs one more, just a little more agony to set off that coiled spring—
But there isn’t one.
There’s only his heaving breaths and stuttered cries amidst wetly choking sobs, and he can’t turn around, he can’t twist his ruined back enough to beseech Aziraphale to keep going, but he’s about to start pleading anyway when he hears the flogger clatter to the ground and two vices latch onto his waist to rip him back up onto his feet. He yelps from the rough treatment and jostling as Aziraphale slams him back up against the altar, as he lines Crowley’s hips against its marble edge before grinding against him and fuck, he’s so fucking hard as he snarls, his hand snaking around to grab Crowley’s weeping cock through black fabric, “I knew it, I fucking knew you were going to come from this, you lying, devious little painslut—”
“Fuck, please,” Crowley has lost it all, now; the denial, the lies, the insistence that he gains no pleasure from being beaten like a dog evaporates as soon as Aziraphale starts touching him, “please, I need more, Aziraphale, fuck, please don’t stop, please keep going, I’m sorry, ‘m sorry, please, I—” he screws his eyes shut as Aziraphale squeezes the base of his cock through fabric, effectively forcing his orgasm to retreat as Aziraphale ruts against him and growls, “oh no, my depraved little lamb— I cannot abide lying, no matter the cause, Father, and now you’ll take what I want to give you despite whatever feeble, weak protests you throw at me, because I know better; I know you.”
Aziraphale leans forward just enough that the drape of his linen shirt collides with Crowley’s surely bleeding back, and he shrieks from the serrated anguish that would push him over the precipice of it weren’t for that fist clenching him as he’s roughly pinned against the altar. Crowley wants to push back and argue that no, Aziraphale doesn’t know him, he knows nothing about him, but all he can do is mewl as his tongue refuses to concoct more lies and aches to instead be employed in the service of Aziraphale.
“Tell me no,” fuck, a growled repetition of last week when Aziraphale had Crowley up against a wall, that genuine concern and offered out in case Crowley truly wants this to end, “tell me no, my beauty. Tell me to stop unless you want this,” Crowley gasps as Aziraphale hikes up his cassock and his warm, wonderfully rough hands fondle his trembling thighs, as his calloused fingers curl around the jut of each of his hipbones and anchor into them, “stop me unless you want this with every fiber of your deprived, pointlessly denied being.”
But Crowley can’t say no, he can’t lie anymore, not right now; he wants this with every single cell of him, each of his nerves calls out for Aziraphale, and Crowley hopes that the widening spread of his thighs in conjunction with his, and there is no other way to put it, slutty moan, will be enough to confirm this. He unthinkingly arches his back, he tries to show Aziraphale how badly he needs him and cries out from the scorching pain of it, but apparently the sentiment is received, because Aziraphale kisses an unblemished stretch of Crowley’s shoulder before he nuzzles into the slope of his neck with a heavy, lingering sigh that shakes Crowley to his core. His shirt is still grazing Crowley’s welts, and he knows what he assumes to be snowy linen—- he’s not actually seen Aziraphale this evening save for his hand, but that’s what he most often wears— must be stained with his blood by now, but Aziraphale’s chest doesn’t connect with his back, it doesn’t meld into him like it did last week when he had taken Crowley in his bed even though it would be easy for him to do from this angle.
Crowley is tempted to tell him to stop extending any sort of care, that he wants more pain when Aziraphale’s whisper into his ear takes his last remaining breath away.
“That’s my lovely darling,” oh, how he’s missed this, the combination of adoring words and ardent touches from a man who shares them so readily and without hesitation, “oh, my marvelous dove, my needy little cardinal; fuck, how I’ve missed you, how I’ve ached for you—” he breaks off into a groan that weaves with Crowley’s whine as he slides one of his hands from Crowley’s hip to languorously stroke his cock from root to tip, smearing his precome over the length of him in expert movements that have Crowley stiffly bucking into Aziraphale’s fist as much as his back will allow while he begs, “o-oh, fuck, please, can I, I’m— I’m— s-so close—”
“And how I missed that filthy little mouth, too; but not yet, sweetheart,” Aziraphale murmurs as he kisses Crowley’s neck, his breath hot and his mouth an insistent plush heat that showers Crowley’s skin with its affections, dampening the blow of being denied, “I want you to come while I’m inside you like you did for me so sluttily last week, I want my whore priest to milk my cock again—”
Crowley whimpers pitifully as Aziraphale’s hands leave him, and he hears a rustle of fabric and labored breathing before the hot silk of Aziraphale’s cock slides over Crowley’s hips, as it slips between his thighs and then is slapped against his ass, the action and its sound absurdly arousing and obscene and so fucking good that Crowley is beside himself with need. It chimes through the church in the most lascivious resounding rhythm as he starts to beg, his voice breathy and thin and anxious with the fear of not being filled, “please, angel, please, I— I need you inside me, please, take me now, I can’t—” he breaks off into a sob as he fights through the pain of pushing his hips backwards in a blind desire to impale himself on that cock, “I c-can’t take being so empty any longer, Aziraphale, God I’m so empty, it hurts so much—”
“Shh, my sweet,” Aziraphale soothes as he ceases that lovely torment and his hands move to fondle Crowley instead, letting his cock rest between his upper thighs warm and hard and insistent as it rocks back and forth, his clever fingers dragging all over Crowley’s outer thighs and hips before they glide to spread him open, fuck, “I know, pet, I know you’ve been empty for so long, I know it hurts—”
Aziraphale swears softly before there’s a wet suckling sound, and Crowley tastes more blood from reopening the gash in his lip when a slick thumb slides over his entrance, as it teasingly probes but doesn’t breach him before it’s replaced with the velvety head of Aziraphale’s cock once more as he murmurs regretfully, “I don’t have anything to prepare you with, lovely.”
“I-I don’t need anything,” Crowley pants as he thrusts back against that glorious cock that has been haunting his every waking thought since he first tasted and took it days ago, “I’m fine, just— just do it, please, angel, please—” he sounds about as crazed as he feels; desperate is not an apt enough description for the need coursing through him, he’s panicking as he frantically pushes through the pain igniting over his back.
“If you think I’m going to fuck you with nothing to ease my way as another punishment, sweet thing, you can most certainly think again,” Aziraphale growls, but the consideration of the sentiment rings clearly amidst the gruffness as well as his correct ascertainment of some of Crowley’s reasoning, “I will not hurt you in this manner, not like this. You don’t deserve it, and I’ll not do it.”
Crowley snarls in frustration to hide his pathetic crying and to hold back his automatic retort of yes I do, I deserve it; instead, he bites down onto his torn lip and nods his head to the right towards the ornate, hanging silver box on the wall of the shadowy apse.
“There, in the ambry— silver box on the wall— olive oil,” he croaks, throat sore from crying out and a lack of cock forced down inside it, “any bottle will do, they’re all the same.”
A part of him is tempted to laugh hysterically at the current state of affairs that has him begging to be fucked with blessed oil while bent over the altar of his church; he never would have believed anyone if they’d told him this was how he would end up forsaking his vows, pleading for cock in this sanctum with such unholy vigor and the impious urgency of a seasoned, needy harlot.
Well— he mostly would not have believed them.
Aziraphale releases him and strides over to the ambry, throwing the lid open with a clang as he carelessly grabs one of the bottles within, the stagnant air of the sanctuary swirling with his rapid departure and icy on Crowley’s exposed, naked skin. His blatant disregard for handling the holy oils as anything other than a makeshift lubricant only serves to fuel the fiery, unmistakably sacrilegious aspect of the multifaceted passion overtaking Crowley, and Aziraphale wastes no time as he removes the glass stopper of the bottle and lets it drop onto the altar with a clink.
“There’s nothing wrong with craving pain, my deviant darling,” Aziraphale’s murmur is as warm as his oil slick touch, and he massages Crowley’s hole gently but with very clear intention, with carefully employed greediness, even, “I find it utterly intoxicating, and I adore that part of you; I see and recognize that desire as someone who enjoys doling it out, as you now know,” two thick, dripping fingers push their way inside past weakening resistance and curl downward as they search for Crowley’s prostate, his breath hitching and freezing as they find their target, “breathe, doll, breathe for me; that’s it, good boy, such a good boy— look at you, opening up for me so easily,” oh Jesus, Crowley doesn’t know how he’ll survive this, it’s already far too much and not nearly enough, and he tries to listen to Aziraphale as he forces himself to inhale through the biting sting of the pleasure filled stretch, “but I won’t be careless with you, Crowley; even as I flogged you, which almost made me come, by the way,” Crowley keens from that as well from fingertips insistently brushing that bundle of nerves he’s now addicted to having stimulated, fuck it makes him want to be open and filled all the time; he wonders if there’s another lifetime where that could actually be possible for him, “it was with the knowledge of how to carry it out in a way that wouldn’t seriously harm you. And don’t worry, I’ll make sure you’ll still feel this stretch; I know what a filthy masochist you really are, Father—”
A mournful cry leaves Crowley as as Aziraphale’s fingers leave him after the exquisite torment of their coaxing, and he’s already arching his back again and ignoring the ensuing pain, spreading his legs further and further as he starts begging artlessly, rendered nauseous from his need, terrified Aziraphale won’t actually give him his cock, but he’s soothed by promptly renewed contact.
“Fuck, such a tempting little tart, and so fucking impatient, too, arching your back like the slut you are, chasing it; you’re just gagging for it, aren’t you, love,” Aziraphale whispers as he repeats his earlier teasing of slapping the head of his cock over Crowley’s pulsing hole, but now it’s slick and oily, the smacking sound of it even more obscene than before, “and one day soon, I’ll take my time edging you, I’ll draw out torturing you for hours, but right now, I will delight in breaking you beyond your own misguided capabilities.”
Those are his last words as one of Aziraphale’s hands delves into Crowley’s waist with bruising strength, his other guides his cock where he wants it and he snaps his hips forward in one brutally forceful surge, burying himself to the hilt and sending Crowley into strangled, fractured screams that grow hoarse as Aziraphale grabs the juts of his hips and begins fucking him, giving Crowley no time at all to adjust to his size, sliding all the way out before shoving back inside, rough and ruthless and incredible, punching bursts of sobbing wails from Crowley’s lungs with each feral thrust.
“Oh, fuck,” what a beatific benediction, Aziraphale’s pleasure; Crowley wants to record it for safekeeping, and he wishes he could stop his own cries and sobs so he can better hear it, “fuck, sweetheart, are you alright, do you need—”
“Don’t s-stop, p-please don’t stop, fuck, fuck me, please fuck me,” Crowley keens through the ecstatic burn of being broken open, of being used, wildly grabbing onto the edge of the altar to steady himself and gritting his teeth so hard he thinks they may crack. He’s not certain that anything has ever felt so marvelous as this, so satisfying, so destined, and Aziraphale bends down to kiss the back of his neck, still refusing to lay on top of Crowley’s back, continuing to keep a distance he likely feels is needed to avoid hurting him, but one that Crowley hates and resents. Aziraphale is keeping his promise of making him feel it, and it’s right on the brink of too much, but still Crowley wants more, he needs so much more pain and sensation and more, more, more, he needs Aziraphale to flay all of him open—
“Oh, I’ll fuck you, my needy priest, don’t you worry about that; I haven’t been able to think of anything else but fucking you raw,” that confession causes Crowley’s palpitating heart to skip and stutter even more severely, “nothing but your body coming alive beneath mine, nothing but the chorus of your sobbing cries and impossibly pretty, breathless begging as I take you apart and worship you the way you’re intended to be— you are divine, my dove, not anything or anyone else—”
Crowley’s eyes roll back in his head from the drag of that thick cock over his prostate as it continues to open him up what feels like beyond the realm of what’s physically possible, yet his body acclimates to the intrusion as easily as anything despite the shock of it, it accommodates Aziraphale as if he’s ordained to be inside Crowley whenever he wants and however he wants. There is nothing so wonderful as this, Crowley now accepts; the combination of the raw, searing welts on his back and the lingering burn between his legs as Aziraphale rails him into oblivion is an elation he has never dared dream of, yet it’s happening, and it’s baptizing him in its amorous, exquisitely impure essence.
“Oh, look at you,” Aziraphale groans, filthy as anything Crowley’s ever heard save within his fantasies as a hand reaches up to thread into his hair, fisting in it and tugging just enough that it hurts, dazzling and lovely, “taking all of me so well, just like you were meant to, swallowing my cock like you’re starved for it,” Crowley can’t stop moaning like a wanton whore now while Aziraphale fucks him, and the inside of the front of his cassock is soaked from how heavily his cock has been leaking, has been gushing, “you were made for pleasure, little bird, not for the priesthood, not for any ephemeral higher power. This body,” Crowley yelps as a punishing thrust splits him apart even further, as the strength of it oscillates through the spidery lacerations adorning his back in a flurry of wondrous pain mingled with sublime pleasure, “this vessel was made to be savored, was made to be broken and put back together by hands that recognize the gravity of what they hold— something sacred, something immaculate—”
The praise is far too much, it is so much more agonizing than the wounds inflicted by his own hands and Aziraphale’s; Crowley sobs as he protests through the strokes Aziraphale gives to him in a perfectly brutal yet measured rhythm, long and hard, deep and deliberate as they reach inside him and claim the innermost parts of him, the automatic refusal a reflex in his throat, “‘m n-not, I’m not that, I’m— I’m n-nothing but s-sin and—”
Aziraphale’s hand releases his hair before it slams down onto the altar to curl around Crowley’s ebonized olive wood rosary that’s splayed over the ashy marble, the longer, more substantial one that hangs from his waist most days as of late; before he comprehends what’s happening, Aziraphale orders, low and dark, “open,” and Crowley cannot even think to deny him. His jaw drops, obeying the command as the doubled up strands of thick sable beads fill it, and Aziraphale pulls the twin lengths of the beaded cord backward behind each side of Crowley’s head to hold in his fist, effectively gagging him with the holy object, bridling him with what the priest already uses as a means of taming himself and his blasphemous mouth by way of prayer.
“None of that, my lovely lamb,” Aziraphale growls as he increases the tension on the garland of black roses, and Crowley whines around the beaded bit as his back arches severely backward, the movement sending shooting stars of pain down his spine that blossoms into more sparkling heat between his legs, as the makeshift gag pinches and stresses the corners of his mouth, “no more lies, not from that sweet whore mouth; it’s far better engaged in sucking my cock, not spinning falsehoods.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck—
“The only truly sinful thing about you, my pliant little priest— at least, sinful in the derogatory sense— is your cruel treatment of yourself, your persistent denial of that which makes this remarkable body bloom and of what feeds this delightful, impossibly sweet soul of yours,” he’s slamming into Crowley with what some would describe as no mercy, but he knows it to be exactly that, the brutal pace and depth of thrusts all he could ever truly pray for with the sincerity the act deserves, “the fact that such a delectably natural cockslut like you is not getting fucked at least once a day is truly tragic; it’s close to irredeemable, if you ask me—”
Crowley sobs brokenly as he bites down on his rosary while his back screams in persistently gorgeous agony, the words overwhelming in combination with this unrelenting rhythm, and every single word that falls from Aziraphale’s mouth spears Crowley as incessantly as his cock, expertly fucking all of his hidden desires and thoughts and wants like he’s got his own personal map of Crowley’s depraved, fucked up brain. He’s straining to maintain his exaggerated position, pushing the balls of his feet into the ground to the point of nearly being on his tiptoes in order to withstand the barrage of Aziraphale’s hips while holding himself in this perfectly whorish posture, sweat beginning to gather over his forehead and chest from the exertion.
“If She didn’t intend for you to be used like a cocksleeve, to be broken open and wrecked, then why on Earth did She make you so fuckable, hm?”
Oh holy fuck—
“I can’t— oh fuck, Father, you’re so tight— I can’t bear watching you destroy yourself,” Aziraphale continues, and he sounds so wounded, so despondent in that moment that a fresh deluge of tears springs to Crowley’s eyes and cascades down his cheeks and chin, “if you need to be ruined, if you need to be shattered— allow me to do it, let me do it with the devotion you deserve, Crowley, let me—”
He’s not going to last, and Crowley thinks the only reason he’s not come yet is because he needs this so terribly and his body is reacting accordingly, staving off orgasm as long as it possibly can while it’s broken and used and devoured, but he’ll not be able to hold off much longer; he’s crumbling.
“H-hnnnnng, f-fffuck, angellll,” Crowley’s muffled yet piercing cry around the beads of his rosary mellows into a languid, blissful slur as a scalding slick tongue glides along the slit of one of the bleeding welts and laps over the center of it, and the cock inside him throbs, he feels it grow impossibly thicker as Aziraphale licks his blood with the fervor of a starving sanguivore, and the brightly blazing, wet warmth of it is rapturous, it’s stunning, fuck— Crowley’s being consumed, his blood and his body now a heathen communion taken by a ravenous desecrator, and in that moment he knows he wants to offer his blood to no one but the gardener from now on, he doesn’t want anyone else to have it— ‘he that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him’—3
“I understand now, why She would insist you freely surrender your blood to Her,” holy fucking God in Heaven, Aziraphale’s rumbling growl cuts through the rhapsodic, misty haze of Crowley’s euphoria in a feral cloudburst of thunder, it’s unlike anything he has heard pass from Aziraphale’s lips as of yet and it’s going to make him come, the primal tone and the words combined with the intimately excruciating sensation of his split skin being licked are catapulting him towards his climax, fuck he’s going to come, “it’s so very sweet, and how She must hunger for that which sustains someone more glorious than She could ever presume to be—”
“Oh h-holy God,” Crowley mewls through his tears and the now slack rosary, the corners of his mouth deliciously sore from the cord cutting into them as it falls from his lips and tightens around his neck, gorgeously compressing, “‘m gonna come, angel, fffffuck, p-please, please—”
“You’re going to come for me, and not with Her name on your lips, but mine,” Aziraphale snarls as his thrusts hammer into Crowley as if propelled by an otherworldly force, “and you are done bleeding for a God who does not deserve such a staggeringly lovely sacrifice— this is the last time, slut, and if you ever want to spill your blood again it will be for me— you’re mine now—”
The remaining tension in the rosary disappears as Aziraphale drops it, it falls from Crowley’s neck to the floor with a clatter as his chin is grabbed and pulled backward while Aziraphale urgently implores, his voice as desperate as Crowley feels, “look at me, darling,” and fuck, he does as he’s told, his heart somersaulting as he finally looks at Aziraphale for the first time since he walked into the church, and God above, he is so immeasurably beautiful; Crowley thanks the moon for its splendid fullness tonight as it illuminates just enough of Aziraphale’s face through tall windows to see how the furrow of his brow frames the tumultuous oceans of his eyes, to watch how the light plays off the curve of his nose and the bloodied seam of his lips as he leans forward and kisses Crowley with an uncontrolled hunger, the blood he’s been licking returning to its maker as he draws more from the scrape of linen over whiplashes, its blushing metallic tang only enhancing the taste of the Aziraphale’s wicked mouth—
When Crowley comes, he thinks he wails, but he’s unsure, because all he can register is the resplendent torment that builds up to the penetrating, supernova ecstasy of his release, all he can hear is the slapping of Aziraphale fucking him into the altar and his groans peppered with the fevered praise of a zealot as he talks Crowley through the raging tempest of his orgasm, the glow of his curls backlit by the moon a pearly halo that sears into Crowley’s retinas.
“That’s it, my profane dove, let go, let yourself have what you want, what you need,” Aziraphale’s shaking, uneven murmur slips inside Crowley to pluck his heartstrings, a lovely litany so skillfully spoken despite it’s shakiness, “sink into it, sweet one, just like I’m sinking into you— so open, so welcoming, coaxing me deeper and deeper into the Heavenly inferno of you, your body begging for my come, wanting it just like a good, willing supplicant should— oh, ffffuck, good boy, such a good fucking boy for me—”
“Come inside m-me, fuck, p-please,” Crowley breathlessly pleads through his endless tears as Aziraphale pounds into him, the devastation that it’s almost over casting a gossamer veil of gloom over his afterglow as he slumps over the altar. Even though he’s beginning to shake all over from the overstimulation of Aziraphale’s thrusts cleaving him in half, he doesn’t want this to end; he aches to be overflowing with come, but it comes at a price of imminent emptiness.
He cannot dwell on that long however as Aziraphale freezes, his fingers sinking into Crowley’s chin and his waist, leaning in to bite his lower lip and moan into his mouth as he starts to fill him, cock pulsating and twitching inside him wildly as he comes, and Crowley tearfully thanks him for it, babbling wetly between choking, gasping sobs as warmth floods through him and soothes the terrible void of being without Aziraphale, his own cock still jumping weakly as the very last of his orgasm recedes, hands numb from gripping the edge of the altar, wrists shrieking from the their locked effort of keeping him aloft.
They remain there for a few blessed, peaceful minutes, and Crowley tries to be brave as Aziraphale again kisses a mangled shoulder and begins to slowly withdraw from him, gasping and hissing as he goes, his hands dropping to spread Crowley and growling as he presumably looks down at where they’re still joined, where Crowley has involuntarily tensed— his body doesn’t want to be without Aziraphale, it’s trying to suck him back in—
“Such a greedy thing you are, my lovely boy, fuck; look at this greedy hole, it doesn’t want to let me go—”
If he’d not just come, Crowley would’ve just then, from the filth of that statement and the plain truth behind it, and he starts to collapse, his knees finally give out again as soon as the softening cock at last slips from his slick, fuck ruined hole, but Aziraphale doesn’t allow him to fall.
Strong hands quickly lock onto Crowley’s quivering hips, and Aziraphale guides him to the floor along with him, he steadies him as Aziraphale leans his back against the altar, his legs stretching out, bootheels scuffing the ground in screeching that echoes around them, and Crowley kneels for only a second before he parts his liquid, fucked out legs, gracelessly straddles Aziraphale’s thighs and collapses into his torso without a care regarding his come soaked cassock, chest still lurching, tears still falling, back still screaming, hole still clenching and fluttering, heart still pounding—
— his wants and needs and cravings still ever present, even hungrier now, crying out for more of what he just had, what he’d been gifted, more of what he’s never allowed himself to freely receive—
— more of Aziraphale.
There is nothing but the mingled song of their strung out, struggling inhales and exhales for quite awhile, the harmony of them one that Crowley commits to his memory, squirreling away the notes just in case, just in case this is either A) a dream or hallucination or B) that he will never hear it again.
“Please— please, my darling Crowley— don’t shut me out again, unless it’s truly what you want,” Aziraphale’s sweet, thready plea permeates the spell of labored breath silence and Crowley’s tearful whimpers as the priest clings to him with clawing, seeking fingers, helpless, simply clinging to him like the cross, astride his shaking hips as warm come begins to seep out of him (a shame, a loss, a sin; he wishes for a plug as much as anything else right now, fucking desperate to hold onto the blessing of Aziraphale so mercifully bestowed upon him, that he had filled an undeserving sinner with), and he can sense Aziraphale is taking great care not to touch his ravaged back, his hands only traveling a careful road between tangling in his hair and caressing his neck, almost unbearably tender and featherlight, the whisper of a lover in the dead of night Crowley has never known save for the one occasion with the gardener the week prior, “I know it is no simple thing to start living a different life than the one you’ve pledged yourself to, and I— I’m truly sorry, if I pushed you into something you don’t want, forgive me—”
Crowley vehemently shakes his head as much as he’s able and whines in distress, unable to properly vocalize much more than that, voice stolen by his screams and quieted by satiation; all he knows for certain, with no doubt, is that he feels more held, once again, by this relative stranger clutching him to his chest on the steps of the sanctuary than he ever has by God, he feels more known, and he is seen, and that is all he’s ever truly wanted in his life, it is all he has ever ached for with every hushed desire and hidden facet of himself.
Aziraphale trails off as Crowley weeps into his neck, clumsily kissing the still pounding vein beneath his jaw with a gratefully sore mouth, marveling in the saline hint of his sweat as he nuzzles as close as he can, and finally, just before his eyes begin to give into exhaustion, as his body loses any and all trace of tension, his welted back inexplicably not causing him any discomfort in the slightest, he whispers, hoarse, “there is nothing to forgive; on the contrary, I thank whatever God there may be for you, angel.”
Crowley’s ambiguous phrasing is intentional, and though it feels foreign on his tongue, it doesn’t register as wrong, it does not carry the baseness of blasphemy in the least, and he knows that he will do what needs to be done tomorrow, he will begin the process of officially breaking away from his prison, but only then; for now, Crowley allows himself to rest in the arms of the avenging angel who did not turn his back on him, who mercifully brutalized and uplifted him to heights previously unknown, who saw his pain and instead of denying or ignoring it, embraced it, transfigured it into something emancipating and beautiful, and the last thing he hears before he slips away into sleep is Aziraphale’s soft, gentle murmur, “and if She does exist, I thank Her for you, too, my most precious dove. Sleep now, darling; rest.”