Chapter Text
He’s tending to the church before he turns in for the night, when the Angel comes to him.
He hadn’t prayed for it to come. He’s been, if he’s honest, dwelling on the day, as he sweeps out the pews and makes sure the Bibles are turned the right way in their nooks. There’s a little more to do, with more parishioners at Mass for their ashes - even if it isn’t as many as it could be yet.
There’s always been a quiet peace in this work, but it feels so right, being back here after his long journey. In time for the Easter festival, too, which he does love, as Riley Flynn unknowingly assessed.
The Crock Pot Luck brought a welcome levity to the start of Lent. It’s difficult, if not downright impossible, to dwell on death in the face of his community - and their assorted pies and six different offerings of macaroni salad.
This year, especially, when he knew what great works were still to come.
The matter of Joe Collie’s dog stung him, of course. To see the man’s grief laid bare in front of a crowd. He likes to think that John Pruitt would have stepped forward - after things had settled down, perhaps. No matter how Joe had wandered away from his flock, he had still baptized the man, after all.
But Father Paul Hill is still a relative stranger, and perhaps some things are best left to God. He has to hope that the work he’s already doing will be enough. That Joe Collie’s pain would be washed away, drained away, along with the pain of everyone else.
He sighs, content for now, and slips into the back to return the broom and ensure that he hadn’t left anything out of place.
There’s a presence at the door.
John goes still, as it creaks open of its own accord, the candles flickering at the sudden presence of early spring air. No matter how many times now that he's been in the Angel's presence, his heart pounds just the same. Fear, and awe, and fear again. He swallows it down, as the creature stoops to enter the narrow room.
Why should he fear an angel, inside the house of God?
"Ah. I wasn't… expecting..." He murmurs, a breathy, nervous laugh escaping him before he can think to stop it. What is he saying, as if this is Bev, or Nancy McGree, or any of the parish arriving on his doorstep with questions or a casserole dish?
But the Angel is silent at his remark, impassive as it’s been since he first stumbled upon it - except for the low hum of its true voice, flickering over him as it surveys the room. He can’t always hear it clearly, just a series of impressions, a feeling at the back of his skull when it’s near.
It’s still more than he’s ever been given of God.
(And how thankful he is, to be heard at last over the roaring.)
The blood, though, the blood makes it clearer. It draws him closer, he thinks, to the divine. He discovered that on the way back to Crockett, when he prayed for the Angel to find him again, prayed for its safe passage through the circuitous route he’d haggled and lied to slip it through. Because he’d felt so sick at times, so lost, in the long thread of a week he’d gone without its gift.
He sinks, now, to his knees, and St. Patrick’s old floorboards groan under his weight. The Angel doesn’t move closer, simply watches him press his palms together in patient supplication, its dark eyes flickering gold and white with the swaying flames of the candles.
“Riley Flynn saw you, you know - um, of course you know.” He tells it, softly, as he spoke to God in the confessional. “It’s, it’s funny, I didn’t consider that they might think you were me.”
It isn’t wearing his old coat tonight, but its wings are still folded back to accommodate the space. It does move closer, finally, and a clawed hand finds his jaw.
(Warm. It’s warmer than he remembers.)
“It’s already started, though.” He continues as it presses his head up, enough that he’s lifted up off his heels, staring into its eyes. He feels as though he’s being judged, weighed up somehow in how it tilts his head. He hopes he’s found worthy, though they’ve barely begun. “There were more than ever at Mass today, and if they listen--”
The Angel’s hold on him loosens, and there’s an almost gentle sound - the wet slip of claw into skin. Blood beads against his lips from its thumb, and he hears himself gasp at the sensation, as if his spirit is listening from some far-off place. His hands fly up to hold it to him, Sacrament flooding his senses, the digit slipping against his tongue. It isn’t much, a mouthful of blood, but it fills him with heat and light and clarity.
Soon. The Angel’s ticking pulse says, its other hand coming to cradle the back of his head as he drinks. Soon. Soon.
And when he doesn’t relinquish his grip, tongue probing for the remnants of an already closed wound, its fingers go tight in his hair and yank him back.
“Ah--!”
His head spins, vision full of gold candlelight and dancing red spots, until the Angel’s wings sweep around to encircle him. All he can see in their shadow is its aquiline face and dark, glittering eyes.
He’s aware, then, that he’s painfully hard. That, too, isn’t new, with the Angel’s blood coursing through him undiluted - he’s come to consider it a cost of his renewed youth, a test of his discipline and his adherence to his vows.
(The Lord knew, of course, how he’d strayed before.)
There’s a wash of shame, though, that it would happen here. Even with Millie, he’d been able to pretend, shut away in the warm quiet of her home and her marriage bed, to be only the man, John Michael Pruitt.
Now, panting in the shadow of his Angel in the back of his church, he has nowhere to hide.
And it doesn’t relinquish him as it has in the past, to ball his fists in his trousers and offer penance until his heart slows down. It watches him until he starts to squirm at the aching sting of its grip against his scalp, and how his knees start to protest his weight against the wooden floor. Humiliation claws at him.
Perhaps he’s being tested.
Perhaps he’s being punished, he thinks, with a newly hysteric tinge of disbelief - for all the guilt he’s never brought himself to feel before.
But there’s pain then, a bright point against his forehead. He shuts his eyes against it, a little noise of discomfort escaping him as the Angel’s nail breaks his skin - there and gone, but he can feel the heat of blood rising to it from all the shallow veins in his face.
Rising against the smudge of ash, of death, that was certainly little more than a faded gray smear, now.
A giddy, uncertain laugh rises up from his throat. Of course. Of course. He’s already been given a blessing beyond any he could dream of, pray for.
The Angel’s hand moves to his throat, and he sags as it pulls him up to his feet, his legs made of static. He has to cling to its arm to hold himself up as its tongue presses against his brow, hunting for the thin lines of blood that have slid down the bridge of his nose, the corner of his mouth. He whimpers, soothed by how humbled he is in the face of this power, by the stinging cut that will be gone by morning.
No more dust, he feels it must be saying. No more death.
Not even today.