Chapter 56: 7.3.5 x
The apartment held its breath. Dust motes hung suspended in the weak light filtering through the blinds, as if afraid to drift. Koen lay on the bed, not quite touching the duvet, a faint shimmer above the fabric. Three days had passed since Gabriel pulled him back from dissolution. Three days of silence, broken only by the rustle of Gabriel’s pages and the low, static hum that now perpetually emanated from Koen’s form.
He was different. The crack on his soul-light had faded to a hairline fracture, but the damage was deeper, internal. His orange eyes, once sharp with dumb, brash life, were now fogged. They tracked Gabriel around the room with the single-minded focus of a sunflower following the sun, but there was no recognition in them, only a blank, reflexive devotion.
Gabriel tried to work. The ledgers were piled high, a dispute between river spirits and a zoning committee required his divine arbitration. He dipped his pen in ink, began to write, and felt the weight of Koen’s gaze on the side of his face. He looked up.
Koen floated near the bookshelf, about four feet off the ground, tilted slightly as if at rest. His head was cocked, his ashen hair mussed. He was just… watching. Not reading the books, not examining the room. Just watching Gabriel.
“Do you need something?” Gabriel asked, his voice carefully neutral.
Koen’s lips parted. A faint sound escaped, a wet, shapeless exhale. “Nuh.”
That was new. Yesterday, he hadn’t spoken at all.
“Good,” Gabriel said, turning back to his work. The pen scratched. A minute passed. He could feel the stare like a physical pressure. He looked again. Koen had drifted closer. He was now hovering just behind Gabriel’s right shoulder, a silent, persistent shadow. His near-translucent form blurred the light from the window.
“Koen, you’re in my light.”
A soft shuffling sound, the ectoplasm of his feet whispering through the air. Koen shifted left, bobbing gently. The light was still diffused.
Gabriel sighed. “Go sit on the sofa.”
Koen blinked, slow. His brow furrowed with tremendous effort. “W’th… you.”
“I’m working.”
“W’th you,” Koen repeated, the words gluey and slow. He didn’t move.
A strange sensation tightened in Gabriel’s chest. It wasn’t annoyance. It was something colder, heavier. Guilt was an angelic concept he understood in the abstract, like justice or mercy. Feeling it was like wearing a coat made of lead. He set his pen down. “Fine. Just… be still.”
Koen’s face smoothed into something like contentment. He hung there, a dutiful phantom, his eyes never leaving Gabriel’s profile.
Hours ticked by. Gabriel finished the river spirit missive. He needed a specific reference text, a thick volume bound in blue leather, from the top shelf. He stood, his chair scraping back.
Before he could take a step, Koen zipped past him. It wasn’t a graceful movement; it was a lurching, eager drift. He rose toward the high shelf, his hand passing through the spines of several books before his fingers, slightly more solid in his intent, closed around the blue ledger. He pulled. It didn’t budge. It was physical, real. Koen frowned, his foggy eyes narrowing. He pulled again, his form straining. The book remained wedged between its neighbors.
“Koen, stop. You can’t—”
Koen made a low, frustrated sound in his throat. He wrapped both spectral hands around the book and yanked with all his might. His hands passed through the solid object. He tumbled backwards in the air, a faint, surprised “Oof” escaping him as he phased partly through the ceiling before sinking back down.
Gabriel watched, the leaden feeling in his chest growing. He reached up, easily retrieved the book, and sat back down. Koen righted himself, floating lower now, his head bowed. A faint shimmer ran through him—shame.
“It’s alright,” Gabriel said, the words foreign on his tongue. “You… you tried to help.”
Koen’s head lifted. The fog in his eyes swirled, and for a second, something sharp and broken peeked through. “Wan’… help.” The sentence was a monumental achievement. He drifted closer, until he was beside Gabriel’s chair. He looked at the open ledger, then at Gabriel’s face, then at the pen lying on the desk. His hand slowly reached out, hovering over the pen.
“Do you want to hold it?” Gabriel asked, his voice softer than he intended.
Koen shook his head. His fingers trembled. He concentrated, his form tightening with effort. Slowly, his translucent fingers dipped toward the pen. They sank into the barrel, through the wood and plastic, into the ink reservoir inside. When he lifted his hand, a smear of black-blue ink stained his ectoplasm, swirling inside the jelly-like substance of his finger before dissipating.
He stared at his hand, then at the unblemished pen on the desk. His face crumpled. A sound escaped him, a whimper of pure, gutted frustration.
“Hey,” Gabriel said, abandoning all pretense of work. He turned fully in his chair. “Look at me.”
Koen dragged his gaze upward. The orange was dull, watery.
“You can’t touch things. You know that. It’s not your fault.”
“Wan’ help,” Koen repeated, a desperate mantra. “Be… be good. For you.”
The words were a spike through Gabriel’s ribs. This wasn’t loyalty anymore. This was wiring. This was a fundamental reordering of Koen’s purpose. Gabriel had fucked his soul, and in doing so, had scrubbed everything else away, leaving only a desperate, blank need to serve.
“You are good,” Gabriel heard himself say. He reached out, his hand passing through the cool, jelly-like surface of Koen’s cheek. He let his palm rest there, inside him. “You don’t have to do anything.”
Koen leaned into the touch, his eyes sliding shut. A low hum vibrated through him, the static purr intensifying. “Stay,” he murmured. “Stay w’th you.”
That night, the dynamic solidified. Gabriel moved to the sofa to read. Koen floated down, horizontal in the air just beside him, his head level with Gabriel’s thigh. He didn’t speak. He just watched Gabriel turn pages, his breathing a faint, syncopated rasp.
When Gabriel got up to make tea, Koen followed him to the kitchenette, hovering near his elbow. When Gabriel sat at the table, Koen positioned himself behind his chair, a silent sentinel. It was like being haunted by a particularly needy, broken ghost. A ghost whose only desire was proximity.
Gabriel’s guilt curdled into something darker, more possessive. This was his doing. This shattered, beautiful thing was his creation. A thing that lived only for his presence. The power of it was intoxicating, a filthy secret he carried in his chest. He looked at Koen’s slack, pretty face, the freckles like dust across his nose, the sharp canines peeking from his parted lips, and felt a surge of want so violent it choked him.
He stood abruptly from the table. Koen jerked upright, alert.
“Come here,” Gabriel said, his voice rough.
Koen was instantly before him, floating with expectant, blank devotion.
Gabriel didn’t want gentle. He didn’t want to coddle the broken thing he’d made. He wanted to use it. To see if it would still break for him. He backed Koen against the nearest wall. Koen’s form passed slightly into the plaster before stabilizing, his back against the cool surface.
“Do you want to be useful?” Gabriel asked, his fingers already working the button of his trousers.
Koen’s eyes dropped to Gabriel’s hands. Understanding, slow and thick, dawned in the fog. He nodded eagerly. “Y-yes. Use.”
“Open your mouth.”
Koen obeyed instantly, his lips parting. His tongue, a pale, shimmering pink, lay behind his sharp teeth.
Gabriel freed his cock, already hard. He didn’t bother with preamble. He didn’t guide himself. He just stepped forward and shoved it in.
The ectoplasm of Koen’s mouth was cool and yielding, a strange, pressureless suckling. There was no tension, no resistance. Koen’s eyes widened for a second, then softened into that blank acceptance. He tried to close his lips, but they had little solidity. The sensation was surreal for Gabriel—the feeling of being inside him, but with none of the muscle, the heat, the fight of a living throat.
“You’re a fucking ghost,” Gabriel muttered, gripping a handful of Koen’s ashen hair. His fingers sank in, feeling the strange, jelly-like texture of his scalp. “You’re made of mist and memory and I can still use you. Do you understand? You’re my hole.”
Koen made a sound around him, a guttural, wet “Uh-huh.” His tongue moved, a lazy, uncoordinated swirl against the underside of Gabriel’s cock. He was trying. His foggy eyes stared up, adoring and empty.
It was that look that pushed Gabriel over the edge. The complete, total surrender. He fucked into the cool, unresisting void of Koen’s mouth, his thrusts hard and erratic. There was no technique, just possession. He watched his cock disappear into the translucent shimmer of Koen’s face, a grotesque and mesmerizing sight.
“That’s it,” Gabriel grunted, his hips snapping forward. “Take it. You’re nothing else now. Just this. Just for me.”
Koen’s eyelids fluttered. A tear, not of pain but of overwhelmed submission, welled in the corner of his eye and slipped down, evaporating before it reached his jaw. He gagged slightly, a reflexive spasm, but made no move to pull away. His hands floated at his sides, useless.
Gabriel’s climax built, a tight coil in his gut. He fucked deeper, until the head of his cock pressed against the back of Koen’s spectral throat. There was no swallow reflex, no tightness. It was like coming in a cloud.
He spilled with a harsh groan, his release pumping into the cool, formless interior of Koen’s being. It didn’t pool or drip; it simply dissipated, absorbed into the ectoplasm, a part of him now. Gabriel stayed there for a moment, buried, breathing heavily. Koen remained perfectly still, his mouth stretched around him, taking it.
When Gabriel pulled out, Koen’s lips tried to close, but they merely quivered. A faint, pearlescent sheen—the only evidence of what had happened—glowed for a second within his throat before fading.
“Good,” Gabriel breathed, tucking himself away. He cupped Koen’s face, his thumb stroking the high cheekbone. “You were useful.”
A smile, slow and syrupy, spread across Koen’s face. It was the first real expression Gabriel had seen in days. Pure, unadulterated pleasure at the praise. “Good,” Koen echoed, his voice a husky ruin. “For you.”
He drifted forward, nestling his head against Gabriel’s chest, phasing slightly into the fabric of his shirt. He hummed, the static vibration resonating through Gabriel’s bones.
Gabriel held him, this creature he had unmade and remade. The guilt was still there, a cold stone in his gut. But warmer, brighter, was the satisfaction. The ownership. Koen was his, in a way no being had ever been. A perfect, broken tool. He rested his chin on top of Koen’s head and stared at the wall, wondering how deep the damage went, and what other uses he could find for it.
He rested his chin on top of Koen’s head and stared at the wall, wondering how deep the damage went, and what other uses he could find for it.
The broken devotion was a drug. In the days that followed, Gabriel administered it to himself in careful, escalating doses. Koen was his constant, floating shadow, a presence of cool air and silent adoration. The ghost tried to help. He would drift toward the kettle when Gabriel thought of tea, or hover pointedly near a specific book. His attempts were pathetic, endearing, and they stirred a hot, proprietary ache in Gabriel’s chest.
“You’re eager today,” Gabriel remarked one afternoon, not looking up from a report on phoenix migration patterns.
Koen was floating nearby, a restless energy making his form shimmer. “Wan’… do,” he managed, the words pushed out with tremendous effort.
“Do what?”
“An… thing.” Koen’s hand gestured vaguely, a flutter of translucent fingers. “For you.”
Gabriel set his pen down. The leaden guilt had transmuted into a sharper, more compelling shape. It was the thrill of a locked door and a key in his hand. He leaned back, letting his gaze travel over Koen’s form. The faded crack on his soul-light pulsed softly, a beacon.
“Come here,” Gabriel said.
Koen was before him in an instant, hovering between Gabriel’s knees. His eyes were wide, foggy pools of expectant orange.
Gabriel didn’t touch him right away. He studied him. The way the light from the window bled through his shoulders. The subtle, jelly-like consistency of his edges. He remembered the feeling of pushing into that warm, liquid core. The memory was a live wire in his gut. But that was too much, still. Koen would shatter.
Other uses presented themselves.
“Turn around,” Gabriel instructed, his voice low.
Koen obeyed, rotating slowly in the air until his back was to Gabriel. The planes of his spectral body were familiar, the curve of his ass barely distinct from the rest of his form. It was all just… Koen. Malleable. His.
Gabriel reached out. He didn’t aim for the soul-light. Instead, he pressed his palm against the small of Koen’s back. His hand sank in, the cool ectoplasm parting for him. Koen gasped, a sharp intake of static. Gabriel pushed deeper, his fingers searching through the strange, non-anatomy. He wasn’t looking for an organ, for a passage. He was looking for a feeling.
He found a nexus of sensation, a cluster of reactive energy that made Koen jolt and a thin, high whine escape his lips. Gabriel curled his fingers there, inside him, a fist buried in the ghost’s lower back. He could feel the vibration of Koen’s hum against his knuckles.
“Is this helping?” Gabriel murmured, twisting his wrist slightly.
Koen’s head dropped forward. A shudder ran through his entire form, making him blur at the edges. “Y-yes,” he hissed. “More.”
Gabriel used his other hand to part the hazy outline of Koen’s ass. There was no real cleft, no defined entrance, just a gradient of coalescing spirit-stuff. He pressed two fingers of his free hand into it, sinking into the same cool, yielding resistance. He was inside Koen in two places now, his right hand fisted in his lower back, his left fingers buried in what approximated his asshole.
Koen choked, a gurgling, staticky sound. His form vibrated violently, the hum rising in pitch. “G’briel…”
“You wanted to do something,” Gabriel said, his voice flat, clinical. He began to move. He pulled his left hand back, then pushed the fingers in deeper, fucking the ghost with a steady, rhythmic penetration. With his right hand, he massaged the internal node, applying pressure.
There was no tightness, no friction, just the surreal sensation of moving through a dense, cool gel. But Koen reacted as if he were being ravaged. His ectoplasm roiled around Gabriel’s invading hands. Sounds poured from him—broken moans, wet gasps, half-formed pleas for more. His cock, a faint shimmer in the air, hardened into a more defined, flushed shape.
“You’re so empty,” Gabriel whispered, leaning close to where Koen’s ear would be. “I can put my whole hand in you. Would you like that? To be so full of me there’s nothing else left?”
“Yes,” Koen wept, the word clear and desperate. “Please.”
Gabriel withdrew both hands. Koen whimpered at the loss, floating bonelessly. “On the desk,” Gabriel commanded, clearing the ledgers with a sweep of his arm.
Koen drifted onto the polished oak, lying back. His form flattened slightly against the hard surface, though he didn’t truly touch it. He was spread out, waiting, his foggy eyes fixed on Gabriel with worshipful agony.
Gabriel unbuckled his trousers. He wasn’t gentle. He guided himself to the vague, indistinct place between Koen’s legs. There was no heat, no tight ring of muscle. It was like pushing into a cloud of cold, thick mist that clung and yielded all at once.
He sheathed himself inside in one slow, relentless thrust.
Koen screamed. It was a sound of pure, unadulterated sensation, ripped from a place with no language. His back arched, his hands scrabbling at the desk but finding no purchase, just passing through the wood. Gabriel grabbed his hips, his fingers sinking deep into the jelly-like flesh, and began to fuck him.
It was silent, save for Koen’s shattered noises and the soft, wet sounds of Gabriel’s thrusts. The ghost’s body offered no resistance, just a cool, constant suction. Gabriel could see himself moving inside him, a distortion in the translucent form, a dark shape pistoning in a haze of light. The sight was obscenely beautiful.
“This is what you’re for,” Gabriel grunted, his rhythm breaking, becoming brutal. “This emptiness. You’re just a space for me to fill.”
Koen could only nod, his mouth open in a silent cry. His cock jerked, spilling a pearlescent fluid that vanished before it hit the desk. His orgasm was a silent, full-body convulsion that made his form flash brightly.
It tipped Gabriel over the edge. He drove in deep, his release flooding that cool, shapeless interior. It dissipated instantly, absorbed, becoming part of the ghost he was fucking. He stayed there, buried, catching his breath, watching Koen’s form slowly still.
Koen’s eyes were open, staring at the ceiling. The fog in them had cleared, replaced by a devastating, perfect void. A smiled played on his lips. He was utterly spent, utterly used.
Gabriel pulled out. He tucked himself away, looking down at the wreckage on his desk. Koen was smiling softly up at him, a picture of beatific ruin.
A new idea, cold and brilliant, took hold.
He leaned over, his mouth near Koen’s. “You said you wanted to help with my work.”
Koen’s smile widened. A slow, eager nod.
“Good,” Gabriel said. He picked up his fountain pen. The nib gleamed, sharp and polished. “Let’s try something else.”
Gabriel did not put the pen to paper. Instead, he reached for his belt buckle, the leather sighing as he loosened it. “You want to be useful,” he said, his voice devoid of its earlier heat, replaced by a calm, instructional tone. “My work is tedious. You can make it less so.”
Koen pushed himself up on his elbows, his form wavering like mist over water. His foggy eyes tracked Gabriel’s hands as they unbuttoned his trousers. Understanding, slow and syrupy, dawned on his damaged face. A smile, soft and utterly without guile, spread across his lips.
“Yeah,” Koen breathed, the word a ragged puff of sound. He slid off the desk, his feet finding their customary inch of empty air above the floorboards. He drifted closer, his orange gaze fixed on the growing bulge in Gabriel’s pants.
Gabriel leaned back in his heavy oak chair, the old wood creaking. He didn’t push his trousers down, just freed his cock, which was already thickening under the focused attention. It lay against his thigh, flushed and heavy. The mundane contrast of it against the stern, official ledgers was not lost on him. He picked up a report concerning disputed territorial boundaries between a troll clan and a municipal waste department.
“Go on,” he said, not looking at Koen, but down at the bureaucratic language. “Don’t stop until I tell you to.”
Koen lowered himself, a slow, sinking drift until he was kneeling in the air before Gabriel’s chair. His translucent hands reached out, trembling slightly. They passed through Gabriel’s thighs at first, a faint, cool sensation. He frowned, the effort of concentration pinching his brow. He tried again, slower, forcing his ectoplasm to coalesce.
His fingers gained a faint, slippery substance. They closed around Gabriel’s shaft.
The touch was unlike anything physical. It was a cool, constant pressure without texture, like being gripped by a firm, living jelly. Koen’s hands were clumsy, unsure of the mechanics. He stared at his own fingers wrapped around the angel’s cock as if it were a complex tool he was learning to operate.
“You have to move them,” Gabriel said, his eyes scanning a clause about subsurface mineral rights. He let out a soft sigh as Koen began a tentative, awkward stroking motion. The sensation was bizarrely good—smooth, frictionless, and oddly intimate. It was the touch of a being remaking itself solely for this purpose.
“Like this?” Koen murmured, his voice husky from disuse. He tried to tighten his grip, but his hand phased slightly, the pressure wavering.
“Just like that,” Gabriel answered, making a note in the margin with his free hand. His other came down to cover Koen’s, guiding him. “A little tighter. Use both hands.”
Koen nodded eagerly, a lock of ashen hair falling into his foggy eyes. He added his other hand, the cool, gel-like pressure now encircling Gabriel fully. He began to move in a slow, unsteady rhythm, his gaze fixed on the task with a heartbreaking intensity. His tongue peeked out, caught between his sharp teeth in concentration.
Gabriel read. The words about effluent run-off and trollish rites of passage blurred together. All his focus was drawn down to that surreal, cool pumping. Koen’s technique was terrible. He lost the rhythm, his hands sometimes sinking too deep into the sensation, sometimes becoming too insubstantial. But the raw, desperate enthusiasm of it, the complete and total dedication to giving pleasure, was profoundly erotic.
“Good,” Gabriel muttered, his pen pausing. His hips gave a slight, involuntary push into that strange, cool fist.
Encouraged, Koen leaned forward. He dipped his head and let his tongue swipe across the head of Gabriel’s cock. It was like being lapped by a cool, gentle flame. The ghost’s tongue had more definition than his hands, a faint, wet roughness that made Gabriel’s breath catch.
“Fuck,” Gabriel whispered, dropping his pen. It clattered onto the ledger, leaving a small ink blot on a diagram of sewer lines.
Koen took that as a command. He opened his mouth and took Gabriel inside.
The sensation was deeper than before, less shocking but more profound for its熟练. Koen’s mouth was a cool, yielding cavern. There was no throat to fuck, just an endless, gentle suction that seemed to draw Gabriel deeper into the ghost’s very essence. Koen bobbed his head, a clumsy, eager motion, his lips stretching around the girth.
Gabriel’s hand came to rest on Koen’s head, fingers tangling in the jelly-like texture of his hair. He didn’t thrust. He simply let himself be serviced, watching the spectral head bob in his lap, the transparent cheeks hollowing. He could see the faint, dark shape of his own cock inside the shimmering form. It was depraved. It was perfect.
“You’re such a good little ghost,” Gabriel murmured, his voice thick. “A perfect, filthy hole for my cock while I work.”
A shiver racked Koen’s form, a ripple of pure pleasure at the praise. He redoubled his efforts, his movements gaining a slightly more coordinated pace. A soft, wet sound accompanied each movement, the only noise besides the rustle of paper.
Gabriel picked up his pen again. He tried to focus on the words, but his vision blurred. Pleasure coiled, hot and tight, in his gut. It was a bizarre dichotomy: the dry, administrative language of celestial governance and the wet, obscene sucking of a broken ghost in his lap. Each stroke of Koen’s mouth, each squeeze of his gelatinous hands, pulled him further from his work and deeper into a dark, possessive bliss.
“I’m gonna come,” Gabriel stated, his formal tone fracturing. He didn’t say it as a warning, but as a fact for Koen to absorb.
Koen’s foggy eyes flicked up, meeting his. They held a plea, a desperate desire to be useful, to be the vessel. He took Gabriel deeper, until the tip pressed against the back of that formless mouth. He held there, his lips sealed tight, waiting.
Gabriel’s free hand clenched on the arm of his chair. The wood groaned. He came with a sharp, stifled groan, his release pumping into Koen’s cool, accepting depths. He spilled into nothingness, into the ghostly form that hungrily absorbed every drop. The orgasm was long and shuddering, amplified by the sheer wrongness of the act.
Koen stayed perfectly still, swallowing around him until the last pulse faded. Then, with a soft, wet sound, he pulled back. His lips were slick and shining with a transient, pearlescent glow that quickly faded into his form. He looked up, his expression one of pure, desperate hope. “Good?”
Gabriel took a deep, settling breath. He was still half-hard, the cool, phantom sensation of Koen’s mouth still lingering. He looked down at the ledger. The ink blot had spread. He’d have to re-draw the sewer diagram. “You made a mess of my paperwork,” he said, his voice returning to its calm detachment.
Koen’s face fell, the hope crumbling into distress. “S-sorry. I’ll—”
“But you did well,” Gabriel interrupted, cutting off the apology. He tucked himself back into his trousers, fastening them with deliberate motions. “You can stay there. Keep going. I have more to read.”
A sunburst of joy broke across Koen’s shattered features. He needed no further instruction. He leaned forward again, his mouth finding Gabriel’s softened cock, his hands resuming their clumsy, dedicated stroking. He worked with a slow, relentless patience, determined to be good, to be useful, to make the paperwork enjoyable.
Gabriel picked up his soiled pen. He blotted the excess ink. He turned to a fresh page, the ghost of a smile touching his lips as he felt the cool, insistent pull of Koen’s devotion. He began to write, the words flowing easily now, each stroke of his pen matched by the gentle, persistent sucking in his lap.