Chapter Text
Sam had to go to Hell with Lucifer for a week. Well, a week up here. Down there, it is considerably longer, Michael admits quietly to himself.
And yet he is still vaguely aware of the fact that he is taking the change poorly.
“Brooding,” as his younger brother, Castiel said.
“Pouting,” as Dean put it.
Michael glares at a dusty clump of grass and ignores the slightly human urge to kick it.
Lucifer was going down there to talk to the demonic assembly.
Michael had revealed himself as their true benefactor (sort of) while he’d been in the pit, and they hadn’t taken the news so well; after all, he wasn’t their dad. He was their uncle.
(As Dean ‘helpfully’ pointed out, every angel was a demon’s uncle, much to his own and Castiel’s annoyance.)
Lucifer finally agreed to go down, and seeing how miserable he was, Sam was quick to offer his own company. After all, he had been the supposed ‘boy king’, the general of Hell and all it’s inhabitants.
Michael hadn’t realized how… unpleasant it would be without Sam. Dean was, most of the time, bearable, although he had none of the drawing charm of Sam (for Michael at least - he knew Castiel felt differently about the hunter, as their relations would suggest). Also, he was far too prone to immaturity. And he is not as tall. Nor comforting.
Perhaps Michael is biased.
It has only been two hours, and Michael feels it wearing away at him. They are not ‘joined at the hip’ as Dean unflatteringly put it, but knowing that he has to be at least another 597600 seconds (the blink of a blink to an archangel) without Sam makes him fidgety.
An annoyingly human trait.
After the Pit, after so long, waiting, Michael has discovered a surprisingly strong aversion to the idea of waiting. Anything that requires patience (a virtue - ha!) makes him anxious down to the pit of his grace.
It doesn’t show - an archangel feeling the strange warmth of humanity in his motions and habits can still choose whether to let them manifest, like the fidgeting - but he feels it, small and warm and liquid inside his marble chest.
He would do better if he hadn’t known when Sam was coming back - an hour or a month or a year. Then he doesn’t have to wait for it so much as exist as himself until then.
Why does he care so much, in any case?
He is an archangel. He should be able to choose what he wants to feel or not. But this, this he has no control over. Just as before, when his grace was incomplete.
The angel version of being soulless.
The version of him that Sam was quick to forgive, but not forget, to love just as he loves Michael now.
The kind of love he deserves and Michael would fight to convey, to show him.
Soulless. Sam had mentioned something about being soulless for an amount of time.
An idea, the kind that should be cast away, because it is weak and flimsy and grasping for devotion it doesn’t deserve, squirms into his mind.
He has nothing better to do for a week.
Why not see this soulless Sam? Why not test whether Michael is as pardoning as this human he loves so much?