Archive of Our Own

He had always thought turning in his badge would have been a more dramatic scene. In reality, Gabriel came in on the Monday morning following his visit from Beelzebub and requested a meeting with the department chief. That Tuesday afternoon, he sat across from his colleague and announced he would leave his position in two weeks. He was offered a leave of absence—six months, a year—but Gabriel Bote was certain. There was no other choice. He had to cut all ties. To stay would be to spend all his energy trying to keep himself from splitting in two. It would be no time at all until he shook apart.

He transferred his files over to other detectives, knowing his departure would put the unit years behind on any forgery cases to which Beelzebub was connected. The knowledge he had couldn’t be written down. None of them would know what to look for; none of them would be able to stay lockstep with Prince.

Maybe this had been Beelzebub’s goal all along—to remove him from his post. Without him on their tail, they could do whatever they liked, execute schemes they had never before thought possible. 

He was out of the way now. He wondered if they’d be pleased.

In spite of knowing that in only two brief encounters Beelzebub had derailed the entire course of his career and his life, they filled his waking hours. Not with rage, not with a visceral disgust at what they had reduced him to, but with a bone-deep ache that stank suspiciously of the love which they had accused him of holding for them.

He saw them everywhere. Signs of them were revealed in every person’s face that he laid eyes on. The curve of a mouth or the arch of a brow. Inhales and exhales. His ear was always peeled for their sardonic, lilting tones. He imagined hearing it at frequent turns, found himself stopping abruptly on the sidewalk and checking over his shoulder, convinced that they must be nearby. He realized, after it kept happening, that it was because he couldn’t stop looking for them.

It was just that he so badly wanted to hear them call his name again, with that pleading edge that had spilled from their lips as they took him inside of them. He wanted to hear it so badly it became a ringing in his ears, a cruel tinnitus. He wanted to feel their cool palm smoothing over his forehead. He wondered, not for the first time since Beelzebub had first come to him, if he were going mad.

He found them in every corner of his apartment, all his furniture and furnishings transformed into a mise en scene for each moment with them. They had touched the kitchen countertop, the hallway wall, his bedsheets, and made them foreign objects. They had touched him, and his body no longer felt like his own.

Lying in bed during his final two weeks under the title of Detective , Gabriel silently rewrote the ending of their last encounter. Beelzebub would kiss him and he would take his treacherous hands and place them on their body. The kiss would deepen and he would take the opportunity to know the lines and strokes of them, the weight and angles. He would draw back and look into those glacier blue eyes and tell them the truth that they had told him first—that he was in love with them, and that anything they wanted would be theirs. 

Then what? He never got past the confession. There was nothing that could come after that wouldn’t end in disaster. There was nothing that didn’t offend his foundational tenets. Even in spun fantasies, woven in the quiet moments over his morning coffee, or in the space before he fell asleep each night, he couldn’t see how he could possibly live a life alongside Beelzebub Prince. 

He’d miss his job. He’d miss the purpose that it gave him, the sense of righteousness and reason. He had tried to protect something precious. He believed in the art and its value to the world around him, in the artists, in the history and the mission. Over the years he’d swallowed down his opinions regarding the way contemporary collectors treated canvasses like real estate as he tried to protect their prizes. There was something perverse the way they spouted off gains and trades with no understanding of the precious thing they held. But the art, the job let him believe in the sanctity of the art.

But he was compromised. To stay would be to play a waiting game until Beelzebub Prince destroyed him. They had everything they needed to dismantle him piece by piece. He had to go.

The southwest coast was not an inexpensive place to relocate to, but the sea air and farmer’s fields were a welcome reprieve from how claustrophobic the city had become to him. He rented a small flat off the high street in a pretty little town that looked like it should be on a tin of biscuits. Then he leased a stable house in a row of stable houses that belonged to local artisans and put up a sign that declared he was in the business of art restoration.

He had, after getting his Masters, apprenticed as a restorer in the States. Though it had been years since that time he still knew the rules, had kept up to date on the methods and processes. He hoped that he could leverage those connections he’d made at the auction houses and galleries, the museums who had come to trust him. He’d never get the London work, he would be too foreign to them, too outside the inner circle. But he could work for local galleries, or parish churches, for those families with country homes where every wall was adorned with portraits of patriarchs and hunting parties. He would have to charge a little less, especially at first, but choosing Bote Restorations would give people the option of keeping their paintings close to home. He thought he could make a go of it.

His studio had windows that opened out onto a pasture that faced west, bringing in the afternoon light which fell soft across his worktop. It was small but he could stretch out his limbs, roll his neck. He wasn’t hemmed in by the pressures of the city, pressed in on all sides by strangers. He hadn’t disliked London, but he couldn’t deny the effect the distance from the city had on him. He felt, just a little bit, lighter.

He would’ve liked to say that scrapping his old life and starting anew would’ve cleansed him of thoughts of Beelzebub. But it would take more than a change of address to set him free of them when they already held residence in all his thoughts, their presence undeniable, and insistent.

Something happened in those first few months, as he waited for commissions and put out feelers for clients. The wounds Beelzebub had carved into him began to hurt less. He still wanted them, in an electrifying way that made his hair stand on end, but it did not cause him the pain that it had. He could look at himself in the mirror again, even if what confronted him wasn’t a man he wanted to be. When he was being uncharitable, he thought that perhaps he’d simply gotten used to it. 

His ruin was his own now. His fervent desire would not compromise an investigation, it would harm no one but himself. And since he wasn’t a detective anymore, Beelzebub had no reason to seek him out to torture him. There would be no surprise rendezvous to stoke the flames that burned inside his traitorous heart. While his desire showed no sign of abating, he hoped, with time, there was the chance that it would.

On a cold January evening, he brought home a piece of plywood and paints from the studio. He made a makeshift easel on his kitchen table and switched on all the lights. Without really making a decision about it at all, he mixed some colours. A wan white with blue undertones, a bruised aubergine, a greyish pink. With delicate brush strokes, he began to paint with no real goal for the first time in years. It was not at all like riding a bike, he was disappointed to discover. He felt impossibly stiff. After a series of unsuccessful shapes that should’ve connected into a whole, but instead appeared to him as separate continents, he painted over it and went to bed.

The next night the board stared at him from its place at the table, and he found himself returning, mixing the same colours, starting in the very same place he had 24 hours earlier. The cohesion he had searched for the night before remained out of reach, but it was in his peripheral vision. As the clock on the wall above the table ticked closer to midnight, he painted over his progress again.

On the seventh night, after he had spent the day crouched over an 18th century portrait of the Virgin that belonged to a local monastery, rubbing off the yellowed haze of cheap varnish, he returned to the board again. It had endured six attempts, six erasures. He couldn’t put his finger on what was different about this night than all the nights that had come before it. He couldn’t say why the colours came to him differently, how the image he wanted so badly to capture coalesced in front of him.

Gabriel painted for hours without rising from his chair, without making himself a cup of tea or using the washroom. Thousands of tight, short strokes came together to form a whole. Just as the sun crested in the Eastern sky he looked on the face of his forbidden beloved. Slightly upturned nose, lips parted in a way he had seen only once. Their eyes looked not at him but off to the side, at some unanticipated interruption. There was something unsettling about what he had made. He wondered if he should paint over it, destroy the evidence, but he couldn’t. This was what he had been searching for, to see them the way they lived inside him. His eyes were gritty from lack of sleep and he was shocked by the tears that threatened to escape. He left the painting in the stand, and went to bed. He did not go into the studio that day. 

When he woke up he returned to the painting, considered it. He could not tell if it was any good. He was blind to his own skill, knew better than to try to judge the quality, and that wasn’t at all the point. What he knew when he looked at it was that he didn’t unspool. It did not rip a hole in his chest, it did not reduce him to a sobbing mess. It gave him hope that one day, what lived inside his body could live instead on canvas. Beelzebub would leave him as a piece of work. A static image, incapable of harm. 

As he wrapped the board in fabric to protect it from dust, and slid it underneath his bed, he knew it would not be the last time he would paint them. He wondered what scene he would try to capture next. Their dismissive glare from the courtroom? Their perfunctory strip tease in front of the flickering television? It would come to him. He would not have the luxury of choosing it.

Someday, when he had painted them out of his body he would destroy the paintings and put his obsession to bed. Someday, he would get rid of the knife. He would not hold it in his hand, the inevitable ritual he performed each and every day since they’d left it behind for him. He would destroy the knife, his last physical connection to Beelzebub, so he would not embrace it, or let the weight of it create impressions on his skin.

Maybe then he would not dream of them, would not feel the shiver up his spine where he remembered their face turned up in ecstasy. For now he would, but at least it didn’t hurt. He could breathe.

He really thought he could make a go of it, had hoped it would just take time, effort. Gabriel knew that starting a new business, a niche type of business that catered to a rarefied group, most of whom resided in and around the city he had run from, was a gamble. He had tried to leverage his connections, finding them polite and encouraging, assuring him that they’d keep him in mind. But as weeks passed with little interest, he knew he had to expand his network. He cold called museums and gallery curators located in the south west, explained his bonafides and degrees, how he was happy to provide quotes in advance. They told him they’d keep him in mind.

He made some inroads at some local churches, a monastery. They were always impressed with his credentials, his particular interest in and knowledge about religious art and iconography. He’d gotten a little work from them. A stained glass piece, a small series of paintings depicting the Stations of the Cross. It wasn’t enough to break even, though he hadn’t expected he would for some time. No one went into art restoration for the money. He had enough to live for a while, and he tried not to think too hard about what would happen after.

He felt his luck had changed when an older man walked in with something wrapped in a flowered sheet tucked under his arm. Gabriel was fully prepared to tell him that he wasn’t a framer, as he’d done nearly once a day to someone wandering in, redirecting them to the framing shop in town. But, the man was not in the wrong place.

Without preamble, he said, “I got your information from the vicar at St. Edmund’s. I was hoping perhaps you could give me a hand with this.” The man held the package out to Gabriel, who accepted it with care, and with hope.

Laying it down on his work top, he took the sheet off of it, and his eyes widened. “This is a Sutherland,” he said as he took in the broad, heavy brush strokes, the figure of the crucified Christ on an emerald green background. 

“Yes. It was my father’s. Recently passed down to me. You can see that, well...” The man sighed. “It needs a little help.”

“More than a little,” Gabriel said sharply, before taking a deep breath and contorting his mouth into a smile. If he could properly restore the painting in front of him, absolutely filthy with grime, it would be his most notable project to date. “Can you tell me how it got in this condition?”

“I believe it may have been exposed to cigar smoke.”

Gabriel turned back to the painting, shaking his head. He couldn’t help it. It looked as if someone had stood in front of it and blown smoke on it every day for a decade. It was a mess.

He was no fan of Sutherland. He found the artist’s religious work and portraits crude and lacking feeling, his sketches unsophisticated. The exception to Gabriel’s preference was Sutherland’s Devastation series, which he found to have a startling depth. But his personal opinions on the quality of Sutherland’s work weren’t important. The painting was by a valued artist, and it was a valued piece of art. To have it in his portfolio would surely open doors to more elaborate, exclusive jobs. The painting had the potential to be the start of a solution to his dwindling bank account.

He gave the man a quote and timeline, anticipating some negotiation, but encountering none. The man confirmed he would return in ten days, and left Gabriel to it.

Gabriel carefully removed the picture from its frame. He’d clean that too, in time, but it wasn’t the priority. The painting was. After inspection, he found the canvas in good shape, in spite of the surface grime. He’d know for sure when he started cleaning, but he suspected the damage was entirely superficial. The job would take time, some patience, but little skill.

On the following day, Gabriel diligently assembled over a hundred muslin cotton swabs as he waited for his spot test to show whether or not he could use the solvent he’d chosen for the job. He laid them all out next to each other on his work top, like soldiers in a row. At moments like these, with a painting in front of him and tools he had carefully crafted with his own hands laid out to his right, he remembered himself as a careful man, assiduous and patient, with incredibly high standards. He was a good restorer for the same reasons he’d been a good detective.

As he began to remove the first layer of filth from the painting, uncovering the pained face of Christ and revealing the true colours that lay underneath, the depth of the contrast that had been dulled and masked by lack of care, he remembered that this job could be just as fulfilling as the one that had him chasing forgers across continents in search of answers. More satisfying, even, and no painting could come for his throat the way one very specific forger had done.

Later, he would wonder if his thoughts of them had been a sort of incantation, because what else could’ve explained what happened next, how the door of his studio creaked open behind him, the light footsteps that entered. 

“Just a minute,” he called, not lifting his eyes from the painting. He nearly had all of Christ's body uncovered now, bright and beaming and unsullied, like Sutherland had intended. Gabriel straightened his spine and rolled his shoulders. He hoped whoever walked in hadn’t mistaken him for the framing shop, and was quietly grateful that they would be able to see his work in action.

And then he turned.

Beelzebub stood there, in a tailored black wool coat that went to their knees and a blood red scarf. They pulled off a dark knit cap, dusted with snow. The tip of their nose was pink from the cold.

He was off his stool in a second. His heart beat wildly in his chest, angry and scared and a little bit thrilled. The wounds which he had coaxed into submission began to throb and his stomach dropped. He screwed up his face, tried to suck back air, tried to steady himself. He needed stillness. He wanted to be still, to look halfway in control of himself. 

“What are you doing here?” he asked, and it was an accusation as well, though it lacked any weight. His voice had emerged thin and hoarse, as if he had been shouting. Absurd, as these days he spoke to hardly anyone at all. 

“It’s nice to see you too, Detective.” The light teasing in their voice set off a flare in his belly, but he didn’t know if it was rage or relief. Near them, he could never sort out what he actually wanted, didn't know what he was feeling.

Beelzebub cast their gaze around his small studio with a neutral expression on their face. Not impressed, not by a stretch, but not pitying. Their bright eyes danced back to his ashen face and it looked as if they were trying to hold back a smile. “I’m well, thank you. How kind of you to ask.”

The nerve of them. His mind grasped wildly for some coherent train of thought but each one crumbled into sand, slipped through his fingers. Every half-prepared sentence aborted to why why why . He had left the Met. He was no threat to them now (if he had ever been), and yet here they were. 

At least this time, he was awake.

“How did you find me?” It wasn’t why , but it was a start.

Beelzebub’s straight black eyebrow cocked up and they smirked, like they thought he was cute. “If you didn’t want to be found, you should’ve chosen a different name for this spot. Bote Restorations . Bit conspicuous.” They let out a soft chuckle, and shoved their cap in the pocket of their jacket. “Do you know a lot of Botes who specialize in art restoration?”

When they looked back at him, their head cocked to the side and their brows knit together, but the quirk of their lips stayed. “Don’t look so scared, Detective. I used a simple  Google search. Nothing nefarious.”

He wondered if that was supposed to reassure him. When he looked down at his hands, they were shaking, and he put the used cotton swab he’d been working with down on his work table. He pressed his twitching fingers down next to it, tried to channel the solidity of the wooden work table, to centre himself. His thoughts wandered back through the years between them, to all the time spent questioning them in ratty studios, sitting across from them in interrogation rooms. He had been a professional, had been nothing less than poised and self possessed.. 

But that had been before he had known, before he had been able to put a name to what lived inside him. Or before Beelzebub had named it, and fled.

“Why are you here?” he asked, finally landing on the question he wanted to ask. He looked down at his hand, and took one deep breath. Two.

“You know how it goes. Dropped by an estate sale. Picked up a piece from some dead grandmother’s attic. Looks like a Van Gogh. Wanted a second opinion.”

He looked up to them, his jaw clenching. They were making fun of him. The teasing lilt of their words made every muscle in his body tense and the storm inside of him built into rage. When he opened his mouth, it spilled out, loud and sharp and furious. “I’m not a detective anymore. I quit.”

Beelzebub took a small step back, nonplussed. “Yeah, I know—”

They clearly meant to say more, but he barreled forward and his voice rose. “I left. You got what you wanted. You drove me out. What else is there? Do you want me out of the country?”

“No.”

“Or dead?” The more he talked, the more a wretched waver infiltrated his words, but he couldn’t stop himself. The depth of his rage dredged up his anxiety, grabbed hold of his darkest thoughts. His hand came up and clutched at the front of his work apron. He looked away from them, his eyes casting around him, trying to find one thing, anything, to ground him just a little. “It wasn’t enough to humiliate me, you want me to fucking off myself! Blow my brains out or—”

“Gabriel!” 

The reproach in their voice was enough to steal his words from his mouth. He sputtered to a stop and looked at them. Any hint of a smile had disappeared from their face, their eyes gone dark and serious, their teasing demeanor abandoned.

For several tense seconds, they stared at one another. He waited for them to continue, but their searching glare was not accompanied by anything else: not reprimand nor joke. Nothing.

“Why are you here?” he asked again, in a voice that sounded wholly broken.

There was a pause while they looked up to the ceiling, considering their answer. “I was worried about you.”

“Oh, fuck you.” A wave of nausea rushed over him and he covered his mouth with the hand that had been wringing his shirt, then turned away from them. What were they playing at? What were they trying to do to him? They apparently didn’t like when he speculated as to their motives, but to say they were worried about him was an obvious jest, had to be just another way for them to pick apart the threads he had only so recently used to stitch himself together.

“I was. You left without saying goodbye.” Beelzebub sounded sincere, which only served to confuse him more.

Gabriel huffed a bitter chuckle into his own palm. “What was I supposed to do, ring you up?” He laughed, and it tasted like acid. “Or wait for you to let yourself into my apartment with that key? When did you even… no, nevermind. I don’t want to know. Don’t tell me.”

He could hear them approaching him, coming around the counter at the front where he kept business cards and his portfolio for potential clients, his laptop. 

“You’re mad about that, then?”

He’d never heard their voice that small, that sad.

“Mad about…? Jesus Christ.” They were a few steps closer when he turned around, and they’d unbuttoned their jacket and tucked the scarf into their other pocket, as if they meant to stay. “You…you broke into my apartment. You were in my apartment .” He was pleading with them, but he didn’t know for what.

They sighed, their upturned face awash with the sunlight coming in from the windows in the back. “You didn’t seem so angry about it at the time, if I recall. Do you remember, Gabriel?”

Of course he remembered. He could never forget: their small form materializing on top of him during the night, their demand that he look at them, their body as they took him inside them, the dull thunk of his deadbolt in the door as they left. He hadn’t fought them. He’d chosen not to fight them. And more, he’d loved it. 

They approached, sensing something had shifted inside him. But when they reached him, standing mere inches away, they leaned around his body to study the painting on the easel. Beelzebub’s eyes narrowed and he followed their gaze.

“Sutherland? I’m impressed. I wouldn’t trust just anyone with a Sutherland.” The quiet collegiality of their tone was a balm. They spoke to him like a friend. More than a friend. “God, look at that damage. Is that all from smoking?”

The proximity of them, the intimacy of their voice. He could feel whatever tattered shield he had left slip away. He cleared his throat. “I was told cigar smoke,” he said, more calmly than he felt.

Beelzebub tutted in disapproval, eyes raking the painting. He wondered if he should be worried, if they would exploit his vulnerability to them and pluck the painting off the easel and walk out with it. But instinctively, he knew that’s not why they were here, and Beelzebub wasn’t one to let themself get distracted. One of the world’s most prolific art criminals was in arms length of a painting almost certainly worth somewhere north of £100,000 and he wasn’t concerned about the Sutherland at all.

“Cigar smoke,” Beelzebub muttered, almost to themself. “What were they thinking?”

“No idea,” Gabriel said quietly. He wanted to touch their hair, the place where it was still damp from the snowflakes that had settled on it.

“Not that I’m especially keen on Sutherland,” said Beelzebub, drawing themself back up to standing straight, away from the painting. “Not much for the religious stuff.”

“I know,” he said, before he could stop himself. In all his time following them, they’d never been linked to a case where the art in question featured a religious image. 

Beelzebub paused, but then continued as if Gabriel hadn’t spoken at all. “And his portraits don’t do anything for me. That said, his… what were they called…Destruction? The Blitz pieces.”

“Devastation,” Gabriel supplied, his heart thumping away in his chest.

“That’s it. Devastation. Those I like. Something about them.” They waved their hand in the air, as if trying to snatch the word they were looking for from the ether. “They’re evocative. There’s something visceral about them. They get me, right here.” Beelzebub tapped their stomach with a small closed fist and looked up to him.

“I don’t want to be soothed by art, Gabriel. I want to feel destroyed when I look at it, you know?”

He looked down at them, and he knew.

Gabriel reached out, and hooked his fingers in the lapels of their jacket so gently the fabric barely moved. Beelzebub’s lips quirked in recognition.

“Do you like it?” they murmured, and he understood they were no longer talking about the painting before them. Their chin tilted up minutely. “Feeling destroyed?” 

How naive a man he’d been, to think that time and distance could have ever freed him from their grasp.

He bent his neck down and pressed his lips to theirs. They welcomed him without hesitation, their fingers winding into his hair, their spine arching to press into his body. He moaned into Beelzebub’s mouth as his hands pushed under their coat and found their waist. The shirt they were wearing was wonderfully soft, an exquisite contrast to the harsh lines they were made of. His broad hands slid around their back and he held them to him.

For the first time he touched them knowing that he wanted it, and knowing they wanted it too. The awareness of it made him moan, and then whimper. He hadn’t been living in this new life, hadn’t been finding his way to peace. He had been starving. He wondered if they could tell how hungry he was.

Beelzebub withdrew from the kiss, brushed his cheek with their knuckles, touched the tip of their nose to his. “There you are,” they whispered, their warm breath caressing his lips. 

They met with him again, with more fervour than before. Each press of their mouth made the hot weight of desire grow deep inside of him, his breath catch, his heart sing. Each careful placement of their hands, every stroke of their fingertips at the skin on the back of his neck made him trust his knees less. He felt, knew somehow, that no one in the world could ever know him like Beelzebub could. A ridiculous notion, an article of faith, absent reason. He could not explain it, could never justify it in words.

With his hands tight on their waist, he lifted Beelzebub and set them down on his worktop, caring not for the meticulously laid out cotton swabs he had assembled over many hours, nor the fate of any of his other tools. Beelzebub gasped into his mouth and he swallowed it down. If he had thought that anything they had done had been intoxicating before, this thing they were doing right now, in the bright light of day, was more, was greater in every sense. He was on fire.

Gabriel pushed their jacket off their shoulders and began to work at the buttons of their shirt. Bright white and immaculately pressed, as if they had come from court. 

By the time he reached their belt, they were tugging at his work apron. “Take this off,” they told him, voice soft and coaxing. He did as they told immediately, dropping it unceremoniously on the floor and returning his hands to their trousers. As he undid their belt, they efficiently unbuttoned his shirt, exchanging kisses all the while. They bit his lower lip as they trailed their hands over the skin that had been revealed.

Beelzebub parted his shirt and dipped their head to look at his chest, ran their hand over the hair there, down to his stomach. It was a more tentative gesture than he’d felt from them before, like this was the first time they’d seen him like this, as if the last two times he hadn’t been almost entirely naked. There was something shy in their undressing of him, if anything about Beelzebub could be called shy. 

They began to undo his belt and he leaned in to capture their lips again. Something hot and heavy rose in him. They were choosing this time, the both of them, choosing with each button and clasp and zipper.

Before Beelzebub could undo his fly, Gabriel gently parted their hands and reached for Beelzebub’s zipper. They broke the kiss and they both looked down, breathing hard and foreheads pressed together. The scratch of their zipper made him feel like he was falling, echoed back to that moment in his hallway when he had touched the heat of them for the first time. 

With one hand on Gabriel’s shoulder and the other pressed into the table, Beelzebub lifted themself up so he could pull their trousers and underwear down off their hips. He stepped back, resisting that elastic pull he felt towards them, to undo their shoes. The quiet, focused action of undoing their laces gave him a moment to collect himself. Find his breath. This was a choice. He was making a choice. 

He pulled their shoes off and placed them on the floor beside the desk, side by side. The polished oxfords were startlingly small, especially next to his own feet. Beelzebub watched him, eyes wide and entirely disheveled. They shook their head a little and finished shucking off their pants, letting them fall to the floor with less grace than Gabriel had demonstrated. Hooking a foot behind his waist, Beelzebub drew him back to them.

They brought their hands under his shirt to push it off his shoulders, and then slid down his biceps. He hadn't been keeping in shape, not since leaving the Met, but Beelzebub didn't seem to register this. They regarded him with an open desire, so cracked open it looked as if it hurt. 

He would keep that expression always. He could never forget the first time he let himself believe that they needed this like he did, that they needed him too. 

As he removed their shirt, he studied the lines of their body in the daylight. Their skin was so pale he could see their veins underneath, except for those places where red rashes crawled around their limbs and across their stomach. He wondered if at one time he would have been disgusted. Now, with his hand cupping their elbow, caressing the raised, rough skin, he could not imagine their body without it. He needed all of them.

In his touching, his exploration of the textures and planes of their body, he found there was something frail about Beelzebub, something delicate in the way their joints came together. It was incongruous with the strength of their demeanor, their tenacity. It did not line up with who they had convinced him they were. But nothing made sense about this. 

Then it seemed Beelzebub was ready to move on. They began, with some urgency, to undo his trousers. At the same time, they wrapped their small fingers around the span of his wrist and pressed his hand to the heat between their legs.

“Fuck,” he murmured, as he discovered how wet they were. His fingers teased at their seam, slick with want, and he dropped his forehead to theirs. 

“S’been like that since this morning,” Beelzebub said, breathless. They finished with his fly and rucked his pants down around his hips. “Thinking about you.”

Their hand wrapped around his length and gave a gentle tug. Gabriel moaned both at the sensation and at the idea of them driving towards him in their car, their cunt growing wetter with thoughts of him. The hand that wasn’t slowly circling their clit dug into their hip. Beelzebub began to stroke him, working as they braced themself on his arm.

His breath was coming more quickly as they increased their pace, escaping him in groans and almost words. Whenever a moan would slip into a whimper Beelzebub encouraged him, murmuring “Yes, yes,” with the smallest twist of their wrist.

His hips thrust into their grip, and he was losing what little control he had left. As if they had sensed this, they slowed their ministrations, which instead of bringing Gabriel back to himself, had the opposite effect. Without the steady, quickening movement of their hand on him, he felt as if he were coming apart.

“Please,” he muttered into their skin as his head dropped to their shoulder. He was hoarse, his mouth dry. “Please.”

Beelzebub held still, only turning their face to respond to him. Their warm breath crawled across the back of his neck. “Gabriel,” they said, their delight and desire plain. “Are you asking ? Are you asking to fuck me ?”

Giving in to an impulse he did not understand, he pressed his teeth into the tendon that joined their neck and shoulder and they released a low and satisfied gasp.

“Perfect,” they whispered so quietly he didn’t think they meant to say it out loud. Before he could consider it further, their heels pressed into the backs of his thighs and they were pulling him closer to them. 

“Fuck me,” they demanded. They draped one arm around his broad shoulders. Then, again, more desperate, “Fuck me.”

With frantic energy, he pulled their hips to the edge of the table, and positioned the head of his cock at their slit. His thoughts came to an abrupt halt as he pushed into the heat of them, his mind going blank as he filled them. Again.

He moved slowly at first, Beelzebub moaning openly into his neck, tilting their hips to encourage him deeper. Their fingernails dug into him, they whispered things in his ear he could barely comprehend, and as time fell away from them, he picked up his pace.

As he increased his efforts, Beelzebub let go of his shoulders and leaned back, bracing themself with both arms on the worktop. Their moans morphed into wails. Their eyes never left him. 

Gabriel could feel himself swallow hard as he watched the way their body moved while he fucked them. Their arms taut, their stomach tensing, the flash of those startling eyes and the curve of their small mouth. 

You’re in love with me , they had said. He had known it before, but being with them, being inside them was a brutal reminder. When he opened his mouth, the sound that left it was a sob.

Beelzebub’s moans shifted to a joyful cry and they clung to him, anchoring their fingers in his hair. “Yes, Gabriel,” they said, breathless. “You’ve been dreaming of it, haven’t you? I know what you need, Detective.” They moaned and cursed as one of his thrusts found a place inside them that made all the muscles in their body constrict under his hands.

When they came back to him their arms were a vice around his neck, their thighs tight on his hips. “I want to feel how you need me,” they hissed into his ear. “Give it to me.”

If it was surrender they demanded, he was already too far gone to hold it back.He wrapped his arms around their back as he came with a shout. He could feel their legs encircling his waist, their hand fisting in his hair. He soared through it, anything that had tethered him, grounded him, suddenly gone and all he had left was them .

The quiet in the moments that followed was palpable. He kept his eyes closed, his face pressed into their hair. Coming down, he knew he was only minutes away from startling regret, but as long as he held them, as long as they wrapped themself around him, he could pretend the false safety of this moment could last.

How many minutes would he get? How long did he get to see himself as just a man, and Beelzebub as just a person with whom he’d fallen in love? How many seconds remained where he could refuse to see how perverse and sick this was, how with each time he touched them he betrayed everything he thought he’d stood for?.

Beelzebub kissed him, then leaned back to look into his eyes, their small hands coming around to cup his face. Their gaze was searching and he felt held by it. He willed them to kiss him again, but they didn’t.

There was a crunch of gravel outside. Someone had pulled into the lot.

“Shit,” he hissed, the energy in the room shifting immediately. He pulled back from them and pulled up his boxers and pants. He did up his fly as he craned his neck to look at the door.

“It’s locked,” said Beelzebub, with stony calm. “I locked it when I came in.”

Of course you did, the more level-headed part of Gabriel thought, searching for his shirt. He listened to the sounds outside and heard whoever had pulled into the lot walk into the potter’s studio next door. He let out a sigh of relief that dissipated as soon as he turned back to his work table. Beelzebub was hopping down, their shirt half buttoned.

“They’re not coming in here,” he said, gesturing vaguely towards the door.

“Yeah,” replied Beelzebub. “Figured that was the case when you didn’t try to shove me into a closet or something.” They chuckled darkly, but Gabriel could find no humour at all.

His heart was still racing as Beelzebub dressed, and he fought the feeling of loss that welled up in him as their skin disappeared under clothing. His desire for them still felt like betrayal.

“How’s business?”

The casual inquiry shook him off balance. He looked at them, their eyes all innocence and curiosity, both false. He knew their masks.

He looked around at the sparse studio, the single work on the easel. It was clear how business was. He grimaced. “Why do I feel like you already know the answer to that?”

Beelzebub ignored the accusation and picked up his shirt from the floor, held it out to him. “It’s hard starting out. Starting from scratch.”

Gabriel’s stomach churned as he accepted the shirt. “I’m not starting from scratch,” he muttered, trying to fix his collar as he pulled the shirt on.

“New business in a new town that you have no history in? In a country you’ve been in three years?” Beelzebub smirked. “That’s scratch.

“People don’t trust just anyone with their art. You know that.” They gathered their coat in their arms, but leaned against the work top, showing no intention to leave. It was strange, their lingering. The churning in his gut started licking at his chest and his limbs itched with restlessness.

“I’m not just anyone ,” he muttered with absolutely no confidence. “I’m trustworthy.”

“Of course you are, Detective.” Beelzebub’s mouth curled into a mocking pout. It was the kind of expression that once would have had him swallowing his anger across an interrogation table, would have made him clench his fists in a courtroom. Now it was as if its sole purpose was to cause him deep and precise injury. 

They schooled their face into a more neutral expression and continued. “I could help you, if you let me.”

His throat tightened. They couldn’t possibly be suggesting that he… 

“I know a lot of collectors, dealers. Plenty of runners. I could send a few your way?”

Dry mouthed, he began, “Are you suggesting—”

They cut him off, essentially finishing his thought. “Or, you could work for me?”

“No,” he said, but not as a refusal of their offer, but as a rejection of the exchange altogether. So, that was it. That was what this had been all along. It hadn’t been just about messing with him for a lark or to make him quit to get them off their back. Beelzebub had been running the sickest kind of recruitment strategy. A game, from the criminal who couldn’t resist leaving an insect as a calling card. It had been a game.

His shoulders began to heave. He reached up to loosen a tie he wasn’t wearing and his hand hovered uselessly in the air.

“All this was to get me to work for you?” he said, voice strangled and an octave higher than it should have been. He ran a shaking hand through his hair.

“All this…? No. No, of course not. I’d never be so crass.”

Their voice, so offended, sounded far away, barely audible over the sound of his own heartbeat in his ears. Blood rushed to his face and then left it as quickly as it had come, leaving him clammy and cold. The world was collapsing in on him. He tried to curse, but nothing came out. He braced himself against the front counter with one hand, then gasped as Beelzebub materialized beside him, their hands stroking his chest, his arms.

“Gabriel, breathe,” Beez directed as they tried to sooth him.

He did not pull away from them, though he knew he should. He let them draw his head down to their shoulder, stroke his neck as he released shuddering breaths into their silk shirt. They were the enemy, yet they calmed his heart, eased his panic like it was nothing.

“You’re alright,” they murmured. “I’m here.”

The obscenity of it. They were here. They shouldn’t be. He knew he should shove them away, but when his hands found their waist he held them in place.

“I can’t…” he started. “This isn’t happening to me. I don’t know why you’re doing this to me.”

“Don’t.” Their rebuke was quick, sharp, but they did not release him. “Don’t do that. I can’t stand a why me routine.” They sighed, and tightened their grip on the back of his neck. “This isn’t happening to you. This is not out of your control. You’re pretending it is to make yourself feel better. You want this, Detective. You want me.”

“I don’t,” he lied into their shoulder.

“Don’t you?” Their voice was fierce, bigger than their body. “You took it that first time. Couldn’t resist taking it. Did I do that to you?”

Gabriel whimpered.

“Then you willed me to come back to you, and I did as you willed. If you didn’t want it then, you could have fooled me.

“Now. I came here in the daylight. Walked through an open door. You asked me why I was here and I told you. Did you notice that you never asked me to leave?”

He hadn’t asked. He hadn’t noticed.

Beelzebub continued. “Not once. And now, after you've been inside me, after you've finished you still haven't told me to go.” Their voice wavered. “Tell me to go."

It was a challenge. He opened his mouth, but he could not meet it.

"Gabriel,” they whispered. “Tell me to go."

He didn’t, and they held him. He could not tell if he hated it, or loved it, but he could not bring himself to let them go.

When they left a half hour later, they lingered by the door, doing up their jacket and putting on their hat, adjusting it in their reflection in the small front window.

“I’ll be in touch,” they said, glancing back over their shoulder, something like hope in their expression.

He nodded.

“Good luck with the Sutherland.”

Then they were gone.

When Gabriel’s client came to pick up the painting, he was pleased. He held it in his hands, angling it for a close examination. “Isn’t that remarkable. Like a new painting.” Gabriel accepted the compliment, though the cleaning itself had been relatively uncomplicated. He was thankful for that, given that his mind could not do anything more complex, preoccupied as he was with Beelzebub Prince.

All the careful stitching he had done since leaving London was perilously close to falling out entirely, leaving him a man in pieces. One wrong pull of the string, and he would be done.

“As we agreed,” the man had said, placing an envelope into Gabriel’s hands before walking out of the studio, the Sutherland in tow.

The envelope, to Gabriel’s surprise, contained cash: several banknotes of differing value that added up just a bit more than the agreed upon sum. The cash stirred his already anxious mind. What reason could a man have for not using a cheque, or a credit card? People who used cash for a transaction of this size were almost certainly trying to avoid a record. Gabriel had his name, and number, but he hadn’t checked the man’s identification. It would have been ridiculous. 

He held the notes in his hand, but when he looked back in the envelope, his heart stopped.

A single dead housefly. Their calling card. Their staking claim.

He put down the envelope and the cash deliberately on the counter, trying to keep his hands from shaking, and took out his cellphone. He dialed. His client’s phone number was no longer in service.

“Or, you could work for me?”

Had anything he’d achieved in the last four months been on his own merit alone, or was he entirely indebted to them? Was anything in his life his alone?

In the rapidly fading late afternoon sun, long shadows cast over him by the flare on the horizon, Gabriel unraveled.