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Michael, as Adam knows completely and entirely well, is a formidable warrior. Adam had seen it for himself, in the way he and Lucifer had thrown attack after attack at each other in the early years of the Cage, tearing each other down to shreds, only hanging onto consciousness by their own stubbornness. Michael is powerful, one of the most powerful beings in the entire universe, and that can't even begin to cover how unbelievably ancient he is. He’s untamable, chaotic, wild; there are entire galaxies in the body of his true form, condensed into sharpened points to represent the fighter he is. Adam knows these things about Michael, the archangel, and Michael may be the ex-soldier of God but he is still a soldier all the same—still proud, still mighty, still sanctified in the way that no other being ever has been or ever will be.
But Adam also knows Michael—just Michael. He knows that Michael, after slowly being introduced to the concept of favoring things (other than weapons), has a preference for the color green (which explained the new jacket that Adam had woken up in Hell with). He knows that Michael’s sense of humor is something characterized by wry comments and hints of sarcasm, as well as the wordplay he’d picked up from Adam’s shitty jokes in the Cage. He knows that Michael loves to fly and that it took him a week to learn how to use a TV remote. He knows how Michael looks when he’s nervous, when he’s proud, when he’s being too stubborn to think straight, when he’s listening, when he’s feeling on a level that he hadn’t thought that he could, before. He knows these things, too, and the archangel part of him is cool and all but these were the parts that he loved the most. He loves Michael not because he was an archangel, but because he knows him, understands him more than anyone in thousands of years had probably even tried to.
And even when Adam doesn’t understand him, he still loves Michael and those parts that he can’t quite wrap his mind around because it’s him.
Adam knows a lot of things about Michael; a thousand little details that make up who he is, at his core, beyond the whole “soldier of Heaven” mask.
What he wasn’t aware of, however, was that Michael had been consuming various forms of human media behind his back. As in, he was probably watching the TV while he’d been asleep. So when he gets back from providing assistance to Heaven’s previously-meager attempts at reparation, one day, and just stands off to the side while Adam continues to wash the dishes that have piled up in the sink, Adam isn’t sure what to expect.
Until, of course, Michael finally speaks: “I’m waiting,” and the tone he’s using, his old holier-than-thou tone that had them bristling at each other so many times in the early years of the Cage, makes Adam set the plate he’d been holding down and turn to stare at the archangel, who’s leaning against the door frame with his arms crossed across his chest. Michael’s lucky Adam knows that he’s joking, judging by the lighthearted expression on his face and the way the sunlight from the window catches his sparkling eyes just so, because Michael knows damn well at this point that Adam severely dislikes that tone being directed at him and has no misgivings about making it known.
He quirks an eyebrow, equally playful, at the archangel standing to his right. “For?”
“My ‘welcome home kiss?’ I was led to believe that this was a custom among human partners. Am I incorrect?” By the looks of him, Adam can tell that he knows he’s not incorrect, the smug ass. Michael looks entirely too happy to be home, which makes him think that Heaven must be in a worse state than he previously thought. He doesn’t say this out loud, though; knows that it’ll most likely come up later, when Michael will be gazing at the wall with a faraway look in his eyes, thinking of the memories of Heaven in its prime and of everything he could’ve done better to keep it from reducing to its present state. It’s a guilt that Adam thinks Michael will carry with him for a long time, the guilt of choosing God over everything else when God would never choose him back.
Instead, though, Adam laughs, turning off the water to walk over and wrap his arms around him, burying his face in the crook of Michael’s apparition’s neck as he feels Michael’s arms lift up to do the same and allowing a silent whisper of I’m here to pass through their bond, and he can feel Michael’s grace inside of him flicker in response, a nonverbal I know. Then, he lifts his head and grins at him, leaning over to give the archangel a quick peck on the lips before teasingly pulling away to walk back over to the unfinished dishes.
“You might be right,” Adam says, unable to keep the mirth out of his voice, because there’s a time and place for serious conversation and the dappled light of a kitchen filled with the sound of running water just isn’t the time, nor the place. “But, then again, you’re not exactly human. What kind of shows have you been ruining my TV with while I’ve been sleeping, halo?”
Michael hums, and Adam doesn’t know how he makes it convey amusement, acknowledgement and mock affront all at once—the last one, probably because Adam had denied him of a longer kiss—but he does, and it makes him think that Michael just purposefully screws with his own vocal cords to make specific sounds, sometimes.
And then Michael just fucking teleports himself directly to Adam’s side, slightly behind him, and it’s a testament to how used to this he is that he does not, in fact, drop and shatter the cup he’s holding. “I wonder,” he comments, and then says nothing more, and Adam gets the urge to swat at him with the dishtowel hanging off to his side. He doesn’t, of course, because he likes to think he has more restraint than that, and also because he’d immediately lose any play-fight he started with a fighter as good as Michael’s competitive ass, so there’s no point in even trying.
“Hey, you can’t always believe the things you see on TV, man,” Adam smiles, still staring straight down, but he’s turned the water off by now and the sink is empty, scrubbed clean. “it could give you wrong impressions, for one thing.”
“Oh?” Michael’s arm comes up to wrap around his middle, his hand pressing against his lower stomach, mouth tilting forward to rest against the side of his throat; a series of actions that still makes Adam's heart flutter wildly, makes his breath catch, and he shudders as the thrill of anticipation finds itself racing up his spine. “And what sort of wrong impressions are those?”
Adam flips himself around in a flash so he’s pressed in-between the counter and Michael, and he smirks, letting his still-damp hand find its way to the collar of Michael’s shirt. He traces a line with his thumb on the skin just above it, half-absentmindedly and half-intentionally, marveling. At what, he's not quite sure. “There’s more than one way to welcome somebody home, for starters.”
Remember what he said about thinking that he had any degree of restraint? Yeah, fuck that.
Michael smirks right back, something positively devilish on the holiest of angels imprinting itself on his features, and as their lips crash together once more—with intensity, this time, so much of it that Adam can barely think straight—he can’t help but wonder what it would be like to carry that smirk—no, that archangel, with him for the rest of his life, provided they stop God when the time comes.
He'd like to keep him for eternity, actually, if that's alright with him.