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Soap knows something’s wrong the second he wakes up. First of all, angels don’t need to sleep, so he’s immediately struck with fear deep in his being. Second, his very soul feels like it’s been set ablaze and cursed to the darkest parts of Hell. He stumbles away from the infinite light that feels painful rather than the usual peacefulness, intent on going somewhere that will soothe the ache he feels.
Lately, the only place where Soap has found comfort is on Earth, among the humans. Well, one human in particular.
Simon Riley is without a doubt one of the strangest beings Soap has had the pleasure of interacting with. He lives far from other humans and his pale body is littered with white scars. Soap has asked on more than a few occasions where the scars came from, but Simon brushes him off every single time. It’s a touchy subject, which Soap has learned during his time among the humans.
He’s picked up on turns of phrase and gotten firsthand experience on the changes that occurred since the last time he visited Earth, thousands of years prior. The other angels are too busy doing their own angelic duties to care what Soap is up to, but he doubts they’d think kindly about him if they knew. Not only has he started to spend most of his time on Earth, but he’s becoming infatuated with humanity. With Simon Riley.
That’s where Soap knows something must have gone wrong. He can’t go to the other angels about this, not when Heaven’s brightness is burning him from the inside out.
When he stumbles up to Simon’s door, the man is eager to greet him. His face barely changes as he takes in Soap’s wrecked form. Even though angels can appear in whatever form they wish, they can’t hide the scars they have. On any other day, it might make Soap feel a kinship with Simon. Today, though? He feels like he’s dying.
“All settled, yeah?” Simon asks after guiding Soap to lay down on the couch.
Soap’s human body is wracked with pain, shivering at the pain coursing through him. Simon is only able to see a portion of what’s happening. Soap feels grateful that he is the only witness to his pain. No one else should see him in this state.
“Fire,” Soap grits out. “‘m burnin’ up.”
Soap has heard tales of angels who abandoned their posts in Heaven. Wings burned for their crimes as they were thrown to Earth to become human with no recollection of their former angelic lives. Yet Soap doesn’t feel human. He’s in excruciating amounts of pain, but it’s not going away like it would if he were becoming mortal. No superior has come to tell him off for his sins.
“It’ll be over soon,” Simon soothes, caressing Soap’s face with his scarred hands.
No, it won’t, Soap wants to say, but it’s like his vocal chords have stopped working. If he showed his true form on Earth, he would create a supernova that would kill all life, leaving him trapped in his human form.
“Don’t worry, Johnny,” Simon rumbles lowly. The use of Soap’s true name creates a spark in his soul. Angels don’t give out their true names to anyone. Simon was just that special. “I’ve done this before. When it’s done, you’ll be beautiful. The way you were meant to be.”
Soap wants to pull away, but he’s heaving gasping breaths. What the fuck does he mean, ‘done this before?’ Soap feels less like a celestial being and more like a trapped little lamb. Simon won’t stop caressing his head, whispering soothing words that Soap can’t focus on. He needs to leave and get out of here, but his body isn’t moving like it’s supposed to.
He’s trapped with Simon.
“I can hear your thoughts racing, Johnny. Seems like when you can’t speak, your mind does the talking for you, hmm? I could explain what’s happening to you, but I don’t want to scare you. You could probably handle it, though,” Simon ponders. “What do you think?”
Soap thinks Ghost is off his fucking rocker. He tries to muster up a glare, but it only comes out as a weak roll of his eyes as his whole body shudders. Soap feels like he’s being torn apart from the inside out. Is this what dying feels like?
Simon, the fucker, laughs, actually laughs. “You’re not dying, Johnny. You’re being remade. In My image, not your Father’s. I didn’t mean to at first, you know, but you were just so…pure. Your angelic nature called out to me like a beacon the second you landed on Earth, and I…well, I had to have you, didn’t I?”
Soap wishes angels could sleep. He wishes they could dream, because it would mean he could wake from this nightmare. But they don’t, and he’s still burning up, skin hot to the touch. At this point, he might be able to supernova.
Still, Soap’s never heard Simon say this many words to him before. Even now, they’re a balm to his pain.
“I’ve done this before, corrupting you little angels, but you, you’re special, Johnny. I couldn’t let you be alone during this process. Are you excited? I know I am.” Simon smiles, but it’s not the soft, familiar smile that Soap’s come to know. It’s a smile filled with wickedly sharp teeth, more threatening than kind. And yet, still familiar. “It was so hard to keep this secret from you, but now, surprise, Johnny! You’re becoming a demon. Isn’t that wonderful?”
Simon sounds absolutely delighted. Soap feels horrified. It’s almost enough to mask the agony of his wings shooting out of his back, but he still screams anyway as they explode in a mass of feathers and sinewy flesh.
His very essence is changing from the inside out.
He should have seen it, but he was too blinded. Soap should have known that Simon was too beautiful for a regular human. That his honeyed words were nothing but lies and manipulations, meant to destroy Soap’s very being.
Soap sobs as he sees his beautiful brown feathers falling to the ground around him, turning black and shriveling before they even hit the floor. Pain lances down his spine, his wings, lurking just below his skin and threatening to burst.
He can’t stop himself from weeping, imagining how bare the skeleton of his wings must look, robbed of their beautiful plumage. He’s on fire, he’s dying, he can’t stop feeling every bit of what Simon’s done to him.
“It was much easier than I thought, you know?” Simon continues, seemingly oblivious to Soap’s condition. “I thought it would take millennia before you’d even consider doing what I asked of you, but you responded perfectly. That’s how I knew you were made for this. You were so afraid of sinning, of disobeying your Father, but you didn’t see what I saw. Your potential.”
“Wh–what are you going ta do to me?” Soap grits out.
He turns away as clump after clumps of feathers fall out, none of them even close to brown. Dark tendrils wrap their way around his body and his skin starts to shift from human-colored to a dark teal.
Soap wants to look away, but he can’t help but be intrigued. He tries to banish the thought before Simon hears, but by the grin on his face, Soap failed spectacularly.
“Nothing you don’t want,” Simon promises strangely. “Now stay quiet, you’re almost to my favorite part.”
Soap throws his head on the floor. When he looks up he doesn’t see Simon the human anymore. He sees a demon, the darkest of creatures.
In this form, Simon is even taller, skin of red magma instead of human flesh. His nails are long and black, dark as night and sharp enough to kill. Large black horns protrude from his forehead, large and curling like a ram’s and just barely brushing against the ceiling. A tail flicks back and forth behind him, leathery and crimson, and nearly dragging on the floor. He doesn’t have his typical brown eyes. Instead, his eyes are pure black, making it impossible to tell what he’s thinking. Soap’s eyes flick to Simon’s feet, cloven now and uncovered. With a roar, wings, leathered and scaly burst from his shoulder blades, taking up half the room.
For every feature that Soap takes in, he feels a change occurring within himself. It makes him sick to know that he’s being changed in this way.
“Like what you see, Johnny?” Simon asks, voice taking on a monstrous quality. A forked tongue with a split end snakes its way out of his mouth.
Soap opens his mouth to respond, only to feel his teeth growing. It’s not just his human visage that’s being changed, this feeling is reverberating through his entire self. His soul is being corrupted in an irreversible way.
In a way, he can’t help but think that maybe Simon was right. Soap has done twisted things during his eternity of existence, and Simon was just the final step. He always felt inadequate as an angel, never doing enough to be noticed and never enough to be reprimanded. That’s why he came to Earth in the first place; to be noticed.
Simon noticed.
“Perversion’s never looked so beautiful, Johnny,” Simon says reverently. “Some of the others died after the change took, but I knew you were special. You like this, don’t you? You know that I’m right about what you were meant to be.”
Soap nods pitifully. He can still feel the fire coursing through his veins, but the heat feels more like a comfort than a curse.
Simon towers above while Soap stays kneeling, the transformation not yet complete. The words are on the tip of his tongue.
“Are you a God?”
“I am if you want me to be,” Simon says. Soap focuses his eyes on the ground, not sure if he should look up or not.
When one talked to God in Heaven, looking Him in the eye was frowned upon. Taking His name in vain was sacrilegious and to be punished. He claimed to be a fair God, taking care of his flock of angels, his Heavenly host. Soap never wanted that. He wanted to be able to stand proudly by God’s side, reveling in His accomplishments, more than just another angel.
Freedom was denied at every turn, the fear of God’s wrath instilled in every angel from the moment they came into being. Angels were merely instruments for Him to use as he pleased and to be discarded when they no longer had any use.
“Johnny.” Simon reaches a clawed hand down and tips Soap’s face up so that they’re at eye-level. And he’s kneeling on one knee. Kneeling. “I never intended to be your God. I merely set out to set you free from His shackles, not force you into another prison.”
Soap had always been taught that demons were horrific creatures from Hell, fraught with peril and misery. No one ever told him that they were freer than angels ever were in Heaven.
If he looks, Soap thinks he can see galaxies swirling in the black depths of Simon’s eyes. He wants to dive in and explore, no restrictions or limits on who he’s meant to be. Living every day as if sin would ruin him is something he never wants to do again.
When he worships, it will be of his own accord, given freely to the one who deserves it.
“Thank you,” slips past Soap’s lips. His voice sounds the same, tinged with a foreign, Hellish quality.
Like it was meant to be.
Simon smiles. “Are you ready to see?” He asks. Soap doesn’t even have to ask to know what he means.
He lets Simon lead him in front of a full-length mirror. It stretches from the floor to the ceiling. In it, Soap can see Simon’s hulking figure behind him. But he also sees himself, remade in Simon’s visage.
His eyes are pure black, just like Simon’s, and he has the same leathery tail and wings, but his scales are teal, not black. The skin on his back has stretched to accommodate for the absence of feathers. It should be grotesque, but Soap finds it beautiful.
He flexes his claws, white instead of black, which he never thought a demon could have. On his head are ram’s horns that match the color of his claws. His magma skin sings in response to Simon’s touch on his shoulders and the weight feels like a comfort more than a curse.
Soap tries to grab onto his new tail as it flicks back and forth happily. It flickers out of the edge before he can catch it, but Simon just watches him in the mirror. If Soap didn’t know any better, he’d say the expression was pride.
Simon had given Soap something greater than his God ever gave him; his freedom.
“You’ll get used to it,” Simon reassures him.
“I want te ask something,” Soap says. The words feel clumsy in his mouth.
“Anything, Johnny,’’ Simon promises and it feels like worship.
“What’s your real name?”
Names are just as meaningful to demons as they are to angels. Giving it out to just anyone practically guarantees a lifetime of enslavement to whomever chooses to use it.
“I already gave you my name, the first time we met,” Simon says. “But the ones I meet usually call me Ghost.”
Soap meets Simon’s gaze in the mirror and turns around, still not used to the weight on his head. Simon catches him in his arms. His touch is gentle, like Soap is something precious that deserves to be held.
“Why’d you tell me? Didn’t you know what I could do with that?” Soap asks, feeling a little frantic.
“I keep telling you, and I’ll tell you as many times as I need to; you’re special. I always knew it,” Simon reminds him. “I never intended to be your new God. Your power is yours to do with as you please. Your chains are no more, and I require nothing of you.”
Soap licks his lips, feeling his own forked tongue brush against his newly sharpened teeth. “And if I never want to leave your side?”
“Then I will not ask you to go.”
“You are a greater God to me than He ever was,” Soap says with reverence. He slowly sinks back down to his knees, guiding Simon’s clawed hand to his throat, watching his magma skin sing. “I owe you everything I have.”
“And I, you,” Simon responds in kind. “You’ll never have to hide from me, Johnny. You have been remade as you were always meant to be.”
With the weight of Simon’s stare upon him, Soap feels more devout than he’s ever been. It doesn’t matter the visage Simon takes. He’s still beautiful. Still the man Soap knows and Ghost, the being who turned Soap into a believer.
He’ll happily spend the rest of existence by Simon’s side, no matter how Damned it makes him.