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The first time it happened, nobody was really expecting it.
One minute, they had all been sitting around playing Scrabble- though, since there were seven of them, they ended up in three teams of two with one scorekeeper, and no one was allowed to partner with someone they slept with, creating a small manner of chaos before Sam and Adam had teamed up, Gabriel and Lucifer began plotting what languages they would write things in, and Castiel had very warily joined Michael's team, leaving Dean to keep score (a horrible idea, really, but no one really wanted his limited vocabulary weighing them down, either, other than Castiel, who was off-limits to the hunter for the time being.) A few rounds into it, Gabriel and Lucifer were being accused of cheating, Sam threatening to make the younger archangel sleep on the couch if he didn't play fair. With a sigh, the Trickster waved his hand over the pieces they had conjured up, making them disappear and replacing them with letters they actually had that spelled something in another language.
"Happy now, my big snuggly moose? Michael, this one goes out to your little human friend," He piped up with a cheeky grin, watching the way Lucifer snickered, Castiel tried to lean across the board to cover Dean's eyes, and Michael bristled with anger, literally growling at his little brother.
"Gabriel! Adam is not a- a- that!" The oldest archangel snapped, barely able to keep himself from throttling Gabriel for his insolence. Not that he would actually kill him, of course, just teach him a lesson about what happened to people who called his human a 'cockslut' in extinct languages.
"Adam is not a what?" The human in question asked cautiously, glancing between the three most powerful beings in the room, one of which was biting on his knuckles to keep from howling with laughter. "Seriously, guys, what did you just call me?" In a rather defensive action, he reached for his and Michael's bunny, which had been named Lulu by Adam purely to spite Lucifer for trying to kill her on more than one occasion.
Lucifer took a deep, shuddering breath and managed to tone down his grin to a more serious expression, shaking his head and pointing a finger at Gabriel as if to scold him. "Little brother! You and I both know that isn't true! If anything, Michael is one for Adam!" This only produced more laughter from the pair and an uneasiness in everyone else but Michael, who was stoic, tensing as he stared at a blank spot on the wall. Suddenly, and without any sort of warning whatsoever, there was a rush of air that sent Scrabble tiles flying and pinned everyone but Gabriel and Lucifer, who were strong enough to withstand the gale and had been on the receiving end of it many times when they were younger, to the walls.
To say that the image of Michael's wings- many of them, many more than any of the humans in the room could count because of how roughly they were flapping- was a shock would be the understatement of the century. It was difficult to really discern any detail about them, but the immense size made the usually massive room seem like a closet in comparison, and the fact that they were actually a steely gray rather than the stereotypical white was rather hard to miss. Then, as suddenly as the wings had appeared, they vanished, along with their owner.
"What the fuck, guys?! Do you torment him just for the hell of it, or is it like a sport to you?" Adam shouted rhetorically, thrusting Lulu into a rather stunned Sam's arms and taking off for his and Michael's shared room, figuring that, well, it wasn't like the archangel had anywhere else to really go. Sure enough, when Adam opened the door, he found the celestial being sitting on the edge of the bed, shoulders drooped as he stared at his lap.
Michael didn't even look up as he heard the door open, having sensed Adam's presence but chosen not to acknowledge it for another moment or so. "I used to be pure, you know," he mumbled dejectedly, rolling his shoulders back and exposing the now much calmer wings to his mate. "I was pure and holy and filled with righteousness. I was a good son. And now look at me- Lucifer and Gabriel think I'm a- a common whore." He spat the word out with a venom, the feathers on his wings bristling halfheartedly.
"That's what they spelled out during Scrabble?" The human asked incredulously, leaning against the door frame and shaking his head with a slightly bemused expression. "Mike, they're just messing with you, man. You gotta loosen up." Carefully, he moved to sit beside Michael, a hand rubbing at his shoulder comfortingly, though he made sure not to accidentally brush a wing by mistake for fear of what might happen.
"It was actually far more vulgar than that..." Michael protested weakly, even as he wrapped three of his six wings around Adam to draw him closer. "You don't think I'm a whore, do you, Adam?"
"Yeah, but you're my whore, so it's okay."
******
The second time it happened, it wasn't quite in a moment of anger.
"Oh, Sam- Sam, yes! Oh my Dad, that's- yes!"
"Keep it down in there, would you?" Lucifer shouted through the wall, which was made of concrete and still wasn't blocking out his little brother's- erm- happy noises. Of course, he'd been repeatedly told to just move to a different room, that they had plenty, however his had the most direct access to the observatory, and he refused to relinquish that small victory to the sex-maniacs next door.
"We're not even banging, Luce! Chill!" Gabriel shouted back in response, punctuated by a particularly loud groan. Now this actually intrigued the Devil, because if they weren't engaging in intercourse, why was Gabriel making such a racket. Promptly, he vanished from his own room and reappeared in Sam and Gabriel's, at which point he was promptly swatted with a huge swath of golden feathers.
"Hey! That hurt!" Gabriel whined from where he was sprawled out upon his bed, shirtless and laying on his stomach, with Sam straddling his back, digging the heels of his palms into the archangel's back. "Luci, you can't just pop in unannounced during massage time!"
"Massage-" Lucifer began to question, though he bit off whatever he was going to say when he saw Sam, blushing furiously and trying to find a suitable place to sit that wasn't basically on top of Gabriel's ass. "You let a human defile your wings?"
Sam scoffed and tossed out a bitchface while Gabriel just sat up and rolled his eyes. "Oh come on, Luce, like it's such a big deal. Michael's been getting wingjobs from his human ever since the Scrabble incident, and Cassie-boy might not admit it, but he's got sexfeathers as bad as his hair almost constantly. You're the only one around here stuck-up enough to keep 'em tucked away all the time. Lighten up a little, man!"
Lucifer pulled an absolutely disgusted face and disappeared again, this time to a nearby 7-11 station to purchase a pair of earplugs. When he returned to his room to go back to his reading, it proved to be a good investment, given that he could quiet clearly hear the pair next door doing... whatever it was they were doing.
******
The third time it happened, it was an intervention.
"Michael! Gabriel! This isn't funny!" Lucifer shouted at ear-splitting decibels, dust falling from the ceiling and settling over the floor like a fine layer of snow.
Except, of course, for where the ring of Holy Fire burned it up first.
Michael shook his head calmly and brushed away a bit of dust from his shoulder, watching his younger brother carefully, though Gabriel was too busy faking dramatic sneezes for such seriousness. "You're right, brother, it isn't. You have neglected yourself horribly, and we are going to make certain that the matter is attended to."
When Lucifer raised a brow at his brother's indecipherable statement, Gabriel at least had the decency to clarify. "The Winchesters are out with Cassie-bear and won't be back for a few hours, so we're going to clean your wings whether you like it or not, even if I have to sit on you to make you be still. And if you bite me, I will brutally tickle you until you beg for mercy."
And so Lucifer complied.
Unfortunately, no one really thought ahead to the part where three archangels have to figure out a way to get one of them out of Holy Fire, and after a bit of head scratching, Gabriel finally came up with a fire extinguisher. Odds are, there were more effective- and less messy- ways to get the job done, but getting one's older brother covered in foam was always a bonus.
So that was how they ended up the way they were, with Lucifer sitting cross-legged on the floor in the main room, since there was the most room there and he wouldn't brush the huge appendages against anything accidentally. Michael and Gabriel each tended to a side, expertly combing the soot and the dirt and the dead feathers away from what used to be blindingly bright, opalescent wings, now tainted with centuries in Hell. They soon have a rather substantial pile on each side of the table of the general gunk of wings, what should only be a handful of feathers and a touch of grime so very, very much more.
"Well, big brother? Proud of your handiwork?" Lucifer spat at one point when Michael looked at the discard pile forlornly, thinking Lucifer hadn't been looking when he'd done it. The younger archangel had seen, though, and the newly-cleaned feathers bristled as he glared at Michael.
"You think I wanted this?!" Michael growled right back, jaw setting tightly as he took in deep breaths of air, trying to keep himself calm. "I never wanted this for you! You made your choice, Lucifer, and your actions had consequences! I was following Father's orders!"
"Father's orders were bullshit! You-"
"Please, stop it, both of you!" Gabriel all but wailed from behind one of Lucifer's wings, peering over it fearfully. "Don't- don't start fighting, guys... Please..." Both of the older angels blinked in surprise and turned to look, Lucifer raising his wing up to expose his little brother from where he'd been hiding, all but sniffling now. "Don't- don't fight, Micha, Luci. I love you. I don't want you to fight..."
The squabble, it seemed, was less important than their littlest archangel brother's happiness this time, as both Michael and Lucifer soon wrapped the blond up in a hug, all six of Lucifer's wings wrapping around them as well.
And if Michael's had emerged to do the same, gently holding his little brothers, well, it wasn't like anyone had to know that the Viceroy of Heaven had gone soft in his old age.