Archive of Our Own

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This Little Light of Mine

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Michael wakes with his arms wrapped around Adam’s waist, his chin tucked against the crook of Adam’s neck. Faint beams of sunlight flicker through their venetian blinds, alighting on the galaxy of freckles that take up residence on Adam’s pale cheeks.

Michael wants to kiss them, wants to taste every last one, but Adam’s eyes are screwed too tightly shut for him to be genuinely asleep, and he lays tense in Michael’s grasp, his long fingers bunched in their blankets. 

“What’s wrong?” asks Michael, untangling himself enough to balance on an elbow.                                                    

Adam’s lashes flutter. His eyes twitch below closed lids, then open wide, the morning sun making them look very, very blue. Voice hoarse and low, he murmurs, “Nothing. Nothing’s wrong.”

Michael shifts to drop a kiss on the bare expanse of Adam’s shoulders, but pauses when Adam’s grip on the blankets clinches, his knuckles blanching white. A frown tugs at the corner of Michael’s lips. Adam stands, and Michael doesn’t move to stop him. 

“I’m fine, Mikey,” Adam tosses over his shoulder, quirking him a small smile. “A little achy, though, so you’ll excuse me if I’m not in the mood for round two.”

Michael flirts with the notion of saying, “Oh, I’m sure we’re way past two by now.” Last night, Adam had come home from the hospital, wild-eyed and overeager, grabbing Michael by the face to draw him into a searing, desperate kiss, settling his weight onto Michael’s lap and refusing to budge – not that Michael would have wanted him to. Now, rather than the smug alpha male smirk Dean might have entertained, Michael stares after Adam, forlorn. “I could heal–-?”

“No!” exclaims Adam. Michael freezes, dark brows knitting together. He watches Adam’s gaze skirt across their plush carpet, embarrassment lurking in his blush. More softly, Adam says, “No, I…kinda like it. You know, it's sort of kinky. Uh, sort of sexy. I’ve…gotta get ready for work, and you need to get up to Heaven, boss-man.”

He slams the bathroom door behind him before Michael can react, leaving him to twist his vessel’s handsome face into a gape. He does have to leave, however; the situation in Heaven, after Metatron had gotten through with it, is worse than ever, and that’s saying something. Michael’s brothers and sisters are desperate for his leadership. He can't let them down again.

As he prepares to fly off and join them, he thinks he hears the muffled echo of someone vomiting, but the other angels catch sight of him, swarm around him with all of the issues that had accumulated since his brief departure, before he can swoop back to Adam’s side. They’ll have to talk about it later.

He returns home to find Adam already sleeping – or feigning sleep again – and Michael doesn’t want to disturb him when he’s in such a bemusing mood, so he merely enfolds him in his arms and closes his own eyes. 

The next morning, Adam wakes him with a chaste kiss on his lips, a rigid smile, and the news, “Sam asked me to come on a hunt with them. I said yes. See you in a day or two.”

“What?” Michael asks, barely processing what he’s heard.

Adam shrugs. “I asked for a few days off work. Needed a break. This’ll help me clear my head, I think.”

“But you don’t even like them,” Michael says, frowning.

“That’s not true,” answers Adam, but he refuses to look at Michael, too busy readying an overnight bag.

Michael gets off the bed and seizes him by the wrist. The gesture is temperate, a mere pinch of Michael’s inhuman strength, but prevents him from packing his favorite pair of sweats nonetheless. Adam glowers and tries to shake off his hold, but can’t.

“They make you uncomfortable,” Michael says, because Adam had been aloof the only other time the Winchesters had stopped by to visit them at their new place, and he’d melted into Michael’s arms as soon as they’d left, heaving relieved breaths against his throat. “They didn’t save you from the Cage, didn’t take care of you when you were ill, and they still don’t approve of us being together.”

Adam grits his teeth, but his only response is a clipped, “I need a break, Michael. I need to get away.”

The words are loaded. Michael meets his eyes, sees what Adam really means within their fluid depths, and frees his wrist, immediately backing away. Adam needs a break, needs to get away, from him.

“I see,” he says, and escapes to Heaven on swift wings.

The hunt was supposed to be a simple one. Adam had only been called in to offer medical insight and to get the Winchesters into the appropriate hospital ward with his fast talking.

Instead, he’s flushed and feverish as Sam carries him into their latest motel room, delirium brightening his eyes to a promethium blue, blood and muscle apparent in the gaping wound on his forearm, which he clutches to his stomach.

“I can’t die,” he whispers. It had been his mantra since the creature clawed him. “I can’t die. I can’t die.”

Sam deposits him on one of the room’s twin beds and cards a large hand through his sweaty blond hair. Very firmly, he says, “You won’t die, Adam. I swear you’ll be fine.”

Dean, meanwhile, kicks the bathroom door open to find the first aid kit they’d stashed inside it. All the while, he calls for Castiel, hoping their meager supply of bandages won't be necessary. Somewhere in the back of his ailing mind, Adam wants Michael there, and he thinks he must have requested his presence, but he can’t be sure if the Winchesters willfully ignored him because he only feels capable of saying, “I can’t die.”

He can’t, he just can’t, or–-

Castiel and Michael join them simultaneously. Both mean to rush to his side, but Dean and Sam grab Michael by either of his vessel’s arms, and it’s Castiel who kneels next to Adam while Michael scowls. Distantly, Adam knows he avoids making a fuss, avoids destroying them all, for his sake.

He attempts a smile, and the healing, the wash of Castiel’s heated grace against his arm, sapping out the poison, makes it easier. That is, until he notices Castiel stiffening in his peripheral vision, and asks in a panic, “Is something wrong?”

“May I speak to Michael and Adam privately?” Castiel says by way of answer.

When Dean seems ready to protest, Castiel shoots him a quelling look. They stare at one another for an intense, protracted moment, until Sam sighs and drags his brother into the parking lot kicking and screaming.

Michael hurries to Adam’s bedside in an instant and snatches up his uninjured hand. “What’s wrong, brother?”

Castiel grimaces, looking conflicted, but settles on a politic, “Nothing. Is wrong, I should clarify. Er, Adam is…”

“Is?” probes Adam.

“With child.” Meaningfully, Castiel glances between the two of them. His eyebrows arch. “With nephilim.”

The square jaw of Michael’s vessel falls open, but it’s Adam who asks, in an anxious gust, “So it’s okay? The monster didn’t hurt it?”

“You knew?” inquires Michael.

Castiel quickly flees from the room. At any other time, Adam would have laughed at his cowardice, at the lack of his typical blunt aplomb, but tears are burning behind his eyelids, threatening to fall. He nods, glad that Michael hasn’t released his hand yet.

He’s known for two days now, though the growing stirrings of the life within him had been evident for about as many months. Just a couple of nights ago, he’d confirmed it by himself in an empty room of the hospital, after which he’d Googled the – what had Castiel called them? – the nephilim.

Angels hate nephilim.

“I’m sorry,” he says, when Michael plummets to his knees by his bedside, still holding his hand in one of his own, while the other relocates to stroke his clothed belly. Adam’s words waver on a sob. He didn’t used to cry this much before John Winchester drove into his life. “What are you going to do to us?”

Michael meets his tearful gaze with surprise. Hurt lancing through his otherwise steady voice, he says, “Take care of you – both of you. What else would I do?”

Adam doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He ends up unable to do either, because Michael crawls onto the bed, over him, and traps his lips in a tender kiss. The phantom tickle of his wings brushes down Adam’s sides.

“Love you,” Adam whispers on a breath.

He feels Michael smile against his mouth, feels his silent reply, but Dean chooses that moment to stalk back in and exclaim, “Ewww, gross!”

Adam throws a pillow at him without extricating himself from Michael. Dean and Sam will just have to deal with it, because this man, this angel, is the father of his child now, and if they have any hope of traumatizing their baby like a normal kid, the way Adam never was, there has to be a lot more PDA in their future.

Dean grunts, but shuts the door, resigned. Neither of them notices.