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Street lights start to light up in the darkening parking lot.
”I could walk you at your door,” Michael suggests between the kisses.
“Not going to happen,” Adam buries his cold fingers into Michael’s jacket pockets.
“Why not? I don’t think your neighbors would mind.”
“I don’t care about them, although some of them are creepers. It’s my brothers I’m worried about. And Dean especially. Because Sam might be the one in the law school, but you sure as hell don’t want to end up being cross-examined by Dean, believe me. I have experienced it.”
“I think I could take it.”
Adam shook his head. “You don’t even know what you are walking into. He probably has already dag up your whole life story and family history. He has his ways to do that. And you haven’t introduced me to your family either.” He puts a finger at Michael’s mouth to stop him from arguing. “And no, those couple of kids who surprised us a few weeks ago doesn’t count. You told them I was a ‘friend’.”
Michael kisses the finger softly. “It’s for your own protection. Some of them would quite probably want you to have some kind of crazy rite of passage until they would approve you in. But it’s only temporary. I promise to introduce you properly immediately after I find a way to prevent some their most deranged ideas.”
“See? Both of us have our reasons to keep our siblings away from each other.” He pecks Michael the last time before detangling himself and turning to go inside. “See you tomorrow.”
“When do I get to meet your brothers?” Michael calls after him.
“Never, if I can help the matter,” he grins over his shoulder. “I appreciate you with all your limps intact.”
The phone starts to play far too loudly in the darkness. After a moment of groggy fumbling, Adam finds the damn device. Unknown number. Groaning he cuts the call off and slumps back against his pillow. It’s just 1.25. Still five more hours to sleep.
After a couple of minutes, the phone starts to ring again. The same number. This time he buries the thing deep under his pillow to muffle the noise.
When the melody starts to play for the third time, he’s ready to throw the phone to the wall. “I’m sorry,” he says trying to keep polite as he answers it. “But I think you have a wrong‒”
“I know you, Adam Milligan,” a young male voice in the other end of the line interrupts him.
“Excuse me?” He sits up.
“I know all about you. I know about your studies in the premed and how you live with your brothers. I even know what happened you mother.”
“If this a some kind of sick joke‒”
“And I know what you are doing with that pretty boy of yours.”
A cold threat sinks into his guts. “You leave Michael alone or I swear I’ll‒”
“I’m not interested in him right now,” the voice says lazily. “Although I know where he lives too. But at the moment I’m more fascinated of how you have managed to wrap him around your finger.” There’s a slight rustle, possible paper. “’You are definitely the best thing that has ever come out from a drunken college party’. ‘I could find you some time between the lectures if you want’,” the voice sounds to read sarcastically and Adam’s blood turns ice. Those we are both Michael’s messages for him from about a week ago.
“And, aww, ‘I already miss you’,” the voice continues mockingly. “This stuff is so mushy it makes me almost puke.”
“What do you want?” Adam asks doing his best to hide the shiver in his voice.
“Right now, all I want is that you know that I know. And please, let not get anyone else drag anyone else into this. Because I will know if you tell someone.” The stranger cut off the call.
Adam can’t prevent the chills running down his back as he sits in a darkness gripping the phone.
Something starts to vibrate and hum beside Michael’s pillow. Disorientedly he grabs the phone that’s screen is flashing at the time of the silent ring tone. “Yes?” he croaks.
“Hi, Michael. Sorry if I woke you up.”
“No, no, it’s OK, Adam,” Michael props himself better against his elbows. “What is it? I thought you have an early morning.”
“I… I just wanted to check that you get home safely.”
Michael frowns. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“For no reason… I just wanted to check on you.”
“Did something happen?”
“No. Everything’s fine. I just‒”
“Adam,” he interrupts. “Having to raise one’s siblings has a certain perks. I can for example tell if someone is lying, even via phone.”
There’s a long silence and then Adam sounds to let a designated sigh. “I just got a phone call…”
“What kind of?” Michael wrestles himself to a sitting position.
“It’s not that bad. He just woke me up and I’m really overreacting. I should let you go back to sleep.”
“Adam, what kind of phone call was it?”
Michael can almost see how Adam’s shoulders slump. “There was just this stranger who knew things about me,” he said quietly.
Michael’s grip of the phone tightened. “What kind of things?”
“He knew where I lived and studied. And he knew about us.”
“Did he threaten you?”
“No. He said that all he wanted right now was me to know that he knows.”
“Did you already call the police?”
“Not yet. I wanted to check on you first. And he really knows about us. He read some of your text messages aloud.”
Michael freezes. If he had their personal messages, the man had to have an access to either one of their phones. “What did he say? Exactly?”
Adam takes a deep breath trying to calm himself enough to concentrate. “He rang twice before I picked up. I started to say he had a wrong number, but he interrupted me and said he knew all about me. And then he told how he knew I was in a premed and lived with my brothers and even about how my mom died. And he said he knew what I was doing with that pretty boy of mine and when I threatened him to leave you alone, he‒”
“’Pretty boy’? Are you sure he said ‘pretty boy’?” Michael interrupts him.
“Yes… Does it matter something?”
Michael grits his teeth. “I know he it was.”
“What? How‒?”
“Don’t worry, OK? It’s nothing serious. I’ll call you back soon.” He hangs up and gets out of the bed. He’s going to kill that bastard.
“What’s going on?” Lucifer peeks from the living room as he marches pass.
“You know full well what’s going on,” he hisses spinning around.
Lucifer only cocks an eyebrow, unfazed.
“You called him a threat call!”
“Oh, he told you about it?”
“Of course he would check on me after something like that! You can’t just go around threatening people‒!”
“Michael, what the hell is going on? You are going to wake the whole house,” Raphael asked coming from her own room.
“Mike has a boyfriend,” Lucifer quips before Michael get to say anything.
“He has what?” Gabriel reels from his room on his chair.
“You have no right to threaten people, regardless of what their relationship to‒!”
“He doesn’t deny it,” Gabriel notes squinting a bit. “I thought he was unable to form any kind of relationship with anyone outside the family.”
“Well, there was Kathleen, but that was in the kindergarten and she seemed to be the one wearing the pants in the relationship. For all the two days it lasted,” Lucifer shrugs.
“How do you even know he has a boyfriend?” Raphael asks looking between her brothers.
A grin spreads on Lucifer’s face. “Samandriel is quite smart boy for his age. He happened to tell me that two weeks ago, when he got back from school, he found out that Mike had a visitor, ‘a friend that made him really happy’. And when I asked him to specify, ‘really happy’ seems to equal ‘holding hands, hugs and kisses on the drive way –happy’.”
Michael buries his face into his hand. Of course it had been pointless to dream that the kid hadn’t seen it all.
“Wait, wait, wait. Wasn’t two weeks ago the charity event of your faculty you conveniently forgot to tell me about?”
“Really, Gabriel. If you so badly want to flirt with Kali, you should find some other place to do it, which wasn’t full of people I know,” Michael scowls at his brother.
“But you were on a date date before you introduced him to us? I’m deeply hurt. How long have this been going on behind our backs.”
“I met Adam six weeks ago and I didn’t tell you because I knew someone of you would get some idiotic idea, like making him a threat call.” He looks pointedly at Lucifer.
“Michael has someone?” a voice asks behind them.
“Balthazar, go back to your room, this doesn’t concern you,” Raphael orders before turning back to Lucifer. “You really threatened someone? Are you insane?”
“Not really. I just let the kid to know that I know. And it was for Mike,” he wraps an arm around Michael’s shoulder looking solemn. “He has fallen so head over heels that he has forgotten all his safety nets and procedures he himself taught us. So is my duty as his brother to look after him and make sure he doesn’t get hurt.”
“You wouldn’t even know if I’m head over heels or not since your own head is‒”
“Becky Rosen has a surprisingly good night camera.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Gabriel dashes into his room and soon returns into a hallway browsing through his phone. Suddenly he stops to look at something. “Well, who would have thought…”
Raphael peeks over his shoulder but quickly turns away. Lucifer’s grin doesn’t promise anything good.
Michael grabs the phone from Gabriel. It’s open from Becky Rosen’s Facebook’s photo gallery and he can recognize himself and Adam kissing on the fence at the beach. He hadn’t had an idea that they had photographed. He browse through the few other pictures tagged by their names and the last one Adam’s already sitting in his lap, his hands roaming under his shirt. He tries to suppress the rising heat on his face.
“I never knew you had such a wild side, Mike,” Gabriel snickers. “Now, do I get my phone back?”
“I need to ask her to take these down,” Michael mutters not caring about him and turning to go to his room.
“You know, I’m impressed that his first worry was your safety even though I didn’t even threaten anyone properly,” Lucifer called after him. “You have my blessing to proceed.”