Work Text:
There's another demon, after their first encounter with Lilith. Not sent by God, but just one that Adam so happened to come across. He's on his way to his new job as a cashier at an organic produce store, which was the first place he'd found that was hiring in the random town he and Michael had dropped into. They're somewhere on the eastern side of Michigan. It's not exactly where he thought he would end up when he was plowing his way through college, but it's a start, and he'll take almost anything over the Cage. He's even started eyeing the RN program at the nearby community college, though whether he'll actually go through with it is something that's still pretty up in the air.
He's bouncing the idea off of Michael when he finds his path suddenly blocked by a middle-aged man wearing a Nirvana shirt and a pair of jeans that have really weird stains on them—it's not even blood, it's green, the fuck? But when the man cocks his head to the side and gives a mocking little smile and says "This is where you've been hiding, Michael?" Adam is slammed out of the driver's seat so fast that if he were an actual, physical body, the wind would've been knocked out of him. Just like with Lilith.
Normally, when they trade back and forth, it's a simple process that reminds Adam of pulling a car over to the side of the road and walking around the car to trade seats. When it comes to meeting other supernatural beings, however, Michael has the tendency to just leap right onto the wheel and magic Adam into either the passenger's seat or the back seat, depending on the strength of the enemy and how overprotective concerned Michael is at the time. As it is, he's been yeeted (he learned that word from his new phone, which is still super fucking cool to him because before he'd died he'd had a tiny flip phone and he's still playing catch-up on the last ten years of humanity) into the passenger's seat, so Adam doesn't think he's in any massive amounts of danger.
"Vermin," Michael snarls, lip curling in disgust. "What business do you have with me?"
"Truthfully? Nothing. I was just in the area, and look who I found! Living up to the whole stick-up-the-ass hype, I see."
Adam snorts. Partly because the demon's got a bit of a point, but also partly because he's seen Michael too many times without the stick up his ass and, sometimes, it can be hard to connect the Michael who was so entirely confused over the concept of a piggy bank that he spent an hour googling the history behind it with the Michael who's Heaven's most powerful soldier. Occasionally, some little part of him that’s still a ten-year-old fanboy is a little awed that he’s the one who gets to interact with an archangel of Michael’s status on a daily basis. It was a bit different when they were in the Cage—they were stuck in there together, and it wasn’t like they had a vast array of options when it came to company; it was either they talked to each other or they spent eternity giving each other the cold shoulder. But here, out of the Cage, they have a choice. And Michael chose to stay with Adam.
Adam knows that, if he were to have to make a choice, he’d choose him, too.
Michael is less than amused by the demon’s jabs. "'Truthfully,' as if demons such as you are even capable of speaking anything but lies. Get out of my sight."
Perhaps it's the crackle of power in the air that indicates Michael's readiness to smite a bitch, but the demon frowns and takes a step back before exiting the body of the man in a stream of black smoke.
Wow, Adam speaks up from behind Michael's grace. I'm surprised you didn't actually smite him. Something up?
"You wanted to stay off the radar," Michael pointed out, "and a pathetically weak demon like him wasn't worth my time or effort. A smiting would've given away our position."
That’s fair. Then, Adam remembers. Fuck! I'm supposed to be going to work! If that jackass made me late, I'll be the one doing the smiting, wacky angel powers or no.
"Your shift starts at nine. It's eight forty-nine right now. Do you want me to fly you there?"
Yeah, thanks. So much for taking the long route.
They're behind the buildings of the small shopping center in an instant, and Michael hands Adam the wheel back in a much more gentle manner.
And then Adam is just uncomfortable, because his entire body is as straight as an iron rod and it feels like he's unclenching his muscles for the first time in five days, not five minutes.
"Holy shit, Michael, how tense are you?"
Michael appears next to him, frowning. "What?"
"You're ridiculously tensed up every time you're outside. Have you, uh, ever heard of relaxing? This isn't a battlefield, dude." Adam thinks fuck it and starts stretching right in the middle of the sidewalk. If people didn't judge those weird health freaks that jogged at ass-o'clock in the morning, then they shouldn't judge him either. He rolls his neck and starts popping his fingers, because even his fingers feel like they've been rigid for a week. "Maybe we should get you to a masseur or something."
Michael, who has an aversion to interacting with any human that isn't Adam, immediately draws back.
"Absolutely not." He says it with such conviction that Adam has to internally applaud him for being such a stubborn hermit. Seeing Heaven's top dog pull a face at the thought of social interaction never ceases to be funny as fucking hell.
"Okay, okay. So you've just gotta learn how to relax, then, because feeling like I've just been electrocuted sucks ass." And without waiting for Michael to respond, he takes off and jogs around to the front of the building so he doesn't accidentally make himself late even after taking Archangel Airlines to get there.
By the end of the day, Adam barely even remembers the encounter, except when his mind flashes back to think what the fuck was on those jeans. It’s late, now, and he’s plowing his way through all the new Marvel movies he can find because the last one he saw was Iron Man when it first came out and yeah, maybe he’s seen the true form of an archangel before but special effects have gotten so much better and the Hulk’s a badass, so he has to ask:
“Can your true form do that?”
Michael, who’s watching The Avengers with him, turns his head to look at him. He’s got this what-the-fuck-am-I-looking-at sort of expression on his face that makes Adam want to laugh until he cries. “Do what?”
“That,” Adam nods at the screen, where Bruce Banner is currently erupting into a gigantic green monster. “I don’t mean the, uh, turning green part. But can you, I don’t know, change forms? Can you make yourself look different?”
He’s seen Michael’s true form before. Way back when he was in that locked room, when Michael first possessed him, he’d turned to look and was met with a face chock full of archangel. He’d seen it in the Cage, too, and Michael had explained to him that he was a part of a minority on Earth who could see true forms and not get their eyes burned out of their head. Which was, y’know, pretty neat.
He doesn’t think that there’s a single English word out there that can even begin to describe Michael’s true form.
There’s plenty of Enochian words, though.
Conversations in Enochian were always fun, but Adam’s mainly reverted back to English in order to explain a lot of human concepts that don’t exactly have a translation. Unfamiliar English words could be “translated,” but it was less of a translation and more of a bastardized rewriting of said word into Enochian, and Michael always got huffy when Enochian was bastardized in any way, shape or form. So, yeah. English.
“Well…” Michael begins, eyebrows furrowing into a thoughtful frown. It was always fun to watch him form facial expressions, seeing as it was an entirely human thing to do and Adam was certain that Michael had picked it up from being around him so long. “Yes. Our true forms are really only our essences assembled a certain way, by—” He falters for a moment, and then continues. Adam pretends not to notice; God is still a sore subject. “Our grace is what makes up and holds our true forms together. So long as our grace is intact, it can be...rearranged, if you will, to look like whatever we please.”
Adam nods. It’s a heavily simplified explanation, probably way too heavily simplified, but he’s feeling too lazy to try and sort through long scientific explanations on angel anatomy right now. “So you could, theoretically, look like the Hulk. Awesome.”
Michael cracks a grin. “Theoretically, I suppose I could. It’d be interesting to see the...Hulk command a garrison of angels.”
Adam suddenly gets the mental image of Michael going “MICHAEL SMITE!” in lieu of “HULK SMASH!” and begins laughing until his sides hurt. He’s aware of Michael watching him fondly the entire time.
Adam doesn’t need to sleep, just like how he doesn’t need to eat or drink or take showers or even breathe. It’s just something else that helps him feel a little more human. A little more free. It’s a reminder that his new apartment isn’t the Cage, that all his toiletries and snacks are real and not images in his mind conjured by painful nostalgia.
He doesn’t need to sleep, but he does it anyway. And, normally, he either dreams about happy memories with his mother (which he thinks is Michael’s doing) or he doesn’t dream at all. So, when his first nightmare hits him, he’s caught entirely off-guard.
Adam is eleven, and his mother is making chocolate cake as he stretches up on his tiptoes to get a good view over the counter top. Half of his attention is on the batter, because he’s eleven—of course it is. But the other half is on his mother. Her hair is pulled back away from her face, and she’s wearing a faded blue apron that he remembers being a gift from her coworker Beatrice. She glances down at him with a smile. She looks tired, like she always is after working long shifts at the hospital, but her smile is no less genuine because of it.
“Do you want to stir the batter, Adam?” Kate asks, already handing him the whisk. Adam grins and nods, reaching for the bowl and already devising a plan to eat some when Kate’s not looking. She always catches him, but that’s okay.
The memory shifts. He’s older, fifteen, and they’re playing Scrabble on the dining room table. Kate Milligan is many things, but she’s never been the type to let him win just because he’s younger. He’s got to work for his victory, because then it’ll be a memory that lasts and he won’t take it for granted. That’s what Kate says, anyways. Adam just thinks that she’s playing her advantage—she’s a nurse and works around a bunch of stuff that has a bunch of long, complicated names. Cheater.
He’s just finished setting down his last tile when he glances up at his mom, and she’s grinning at him. It’s not her normal grin, though. It’s eerie, blank in a way that his mother never was. He’s immediately put on edge, uneasiness rushing through him like a river.
“Good choice, Adam. But not good enough.”
Something grabs him from behind, covering his mouth with its hand. The ghouls, he has time to think, before the thing that looks like his mother smirks and leans forward.
“I win.”
There’s a piercing pain in his right shoulder, the ripping of flesh, and his mother is leaping across the table, teeth bared. He can’t move, he can’t breathe, can’t think. He registers chunks being torn from his arm, his stomach, his neck. Everything’s dark, and his body pulses with a temperature that he can’t feel. Are they hot flashes? Cold flashes? Is he even alive? He can’t breathe, can’t can’t can’t—
Something warm latches onto him, and, without thinking, he turns and clings onto it as best as he can. He can feel pure power thrumming under his fingertips, reminding him of a thunderstorm that passed over Windom when he was nine. The thunder had been so strong that it rattled the house when it boomed across the sky, and Adam had been as genuinely worried for the structural integrity of the house as a nine-year-old could be.
“Adam,” the light says. Adam’s not sure where the voice comes from, It reverberates around him, everywhere all at once, and it’s both loud and quiet, commanding and gentle.
“Adam,” it says, again, and Adam jolts awake.
There’s still panic coursing through his system, fear and adrenaline making his breath stutter in his throat. Adam sits up, running a hand through his hair to try and soothe his frazzled nerves, swallowing back a sob. He doesn’t think he’s ever had a nightmare that’s affected him this badly in his life, which sucks major ass.
“Kid?” Michael’s sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at him. If it were anyone but him, Adam would be mortified, but Michael’s seen him break down enough in the Cage. This is hardly any different.
“I’m—here. I’m here. Just need a minute.” Adam looks up at Michael, meeting his worried gaze with a weak attempt at a grin. “Ghouls fucking suck.”
He can feel Michael’s grace curling tentatively around his soul. The tightness in his chest begins to slowly loosen up, his breathing becoming deeper and less choppy as the familiar feeling of Michael washes over him. It almost reminds him of a weighted blanket.
Adam sighs and rubs at his face. “Shit. I don’t—it’s never hit me that bad, before. Remembering how I died, I mean.”
Michael’s quiet, for a minute, and then he says, “There was never any time to let it hit you at all.”
Adam frowns. “Well, I mean—” He tries to think of a moment in time where he really, properly allowed the weight of his own death and his mother’s death to fully rest on his shoulders, and Michael’s right. There isn’t one. He died, and then he was resurrected, and before he knew it he was playing vessel to an archangel and when he woke up, he was in the Cage. And he’d thought about their deaths in the Cage—of course he did, there wasn’t exactly much else to do down there—but thinking about it then had always seemed as if he were looking through a veil, almost, thanks to Michael keeping him hidden away from Lucifer in the deepest corners of his own mind for so many years. He’d accepted it, but he’d never truly dealt with it. And now, he was awake. And dealing with it. Wonderful.
Michael could hear his thoughts, he knew; it wasn’t like Adam was making any attempt to hide them. His eyes were searching, looking straight through his body and directly at his soul. It was almost enough to take Adam’s breath away. Almost.
“You’re strong, Adam,” he states, finally, and Adam knows that that’s a hell of a compliment coming from an archangel who once commanded an army of thousands of angels. Michael has never been much for words, which is alright. Adam can feel what he really means through their connection.
There’s Enochian chiming softly in the back of his mind.
I have faith in you.
Adam takes a breath. Holds it. Releases it, and nods.
It's a start.
You blow on it and make a wish.
“Why?”
Not sure. I know the custom’s been around for a while, but I have no idea where it came from. We can look it up when we get home.
“I see.” By the tone of his voice, Michael most definitely does not see, and Adam laughs in the back of their mindscape. The dandelion that he’s holding somewhat awkwardly between his fingers sways gently in the breeze, and a speck of white fluff dismantles from the head and flies off with the wind.
Make a wish, Michael.
“You are aware that these plants have no wish-granting properties?”
Adam huffs. Yeah, I’m aware. People just do it because it’s fun.
“And because it gives them hope.”
That too. Come on, don’t be a killjoy! Join the fun, halo.
Michael’s both amused and indulgent when he finally blows on the dandelion, sending the seeds scattering through the air. Adam gives a mock cheer, wondering only for a moment what Michael's wish had been.
“You know,” Michael begins, twirling the stem, “if anyone would’ve asked me, even fifty years ago, where I would be in the future, this—” he gestures at the meadow where they’ve been standing, “wouldn’t have been my answer.”
Maybe not, but you’re here now. Things changing is just a part of life.
“Angels don’t live, Adam. We simply are. ”
Some of them would beg to differ. They’re living as we speak. He pushes a mental picture of Castiel towards Michael, and laughs when Michael’s face curls up like he’s just tasted sour milk.
“Don’t compare me to someone like him. ”
Okay, okay. But just because you’re an archangel doesn’t mean that you can’t live. It’s just taking a step out of ‘existing for a single purpose’ and starting to do things for yourself. Because you like it, or because you think it’s a good thing to do.
“Is that so..”
Yep! And so, that raises the question: what do you wanna do?
Michael’s silent for a very long time. His thoughts are raging, wild, but Adam keeps out of them to give him privacy. It’s an entirely new concept to him, after all.
When he speaks, it’s with a hesitant tone that Adam has only heard from him on rare occasions. “There’s...when we were watching Him create this universe, I was sent to arrange a cluster of stars, far away from here. I remember feeling...proud of how I’d done it. I’d like to see it again.”
We’re going to space?! Hell yeah!
Michael smiles at Adam’s enthusiasm, and they both fly off.
The star cluster turns out—no surprise—to be beautiful. They stay for a long time, Michael gazing at his arrangement with wide eyes that flicker with memories of a time billions of years ago. If Adam had been in control, his mouth would be wide open in gaping wonder. Trillions of stars glitter brightly at them from all angles.
Michael, this is…
“Living?” Michael’s eyes are still wide, staring at the cluster like he’s trying to decipher something.
Adam doesn’t feel it at first, too busy trying to turn every which way to see all he could, knowing that he was most likely the first human to even lay eyes upon this particular stretch of the universe. It’s just a trickle, leaking over from Michael’s suddenly-buzzing grace, which is what draws Adam’s attention. It’s not anything he’s ever felt from Michael before; rather, it’s some sort of combination of fear and anxiety and anticipation and exhilaration.
After a few seconds of pondering, the Enochian word for freedom jumps into his mind. It seems more fitting than English.
Michael’s newfound sense of freedom is muted, a mere fraction of what it could be, what Adam can feel Michael is hoping it could be. Both of them know now that with God still a major player, absolute freedom most likely didn't exist. But he—they—have this. They have this, whatever this is. They have each other.
Slowly, gently, Adam pushes to the forefront of his mind and regains control of his left arm. He flexes his fingers, once, twice, and then reaches for the hand that Michael is still in possession of. Michael looks down in some surprise when he feels the contact, and then he laughs. It’s breathy and less audible than a chuckle, but it’s there.
It’s a start.
It’s their start.