Chapter Text
Adam can’t look away. The room is shaking as Michael descends and Adam is terrified, but he can’t look away. He’s frozen to the spot, eyes sliding easily past the blinding light to catch a glimpse of the thing that’s pushing through the walls. He can hear…he can hear-
“Move, Adam! Go, get out now.”
Dean’s got Sam’s arm flung over his shoulder, half carrying him as he physically herds Adam out the door. Adam still can’t pull his eyes away, but he lets Dean push him, stumbles backwards with his gaze glued to the ceiling.
He trips as they cross the threshold, lands hard on his wrist, scraping his hands on the concrete where he catches himself, and it’s like a spell has been broken. He’s scrambling back in terror as he watches Dean kick the door closed with his foot, as if that will stop Michael coming after them. As if a flimsy bit of wood could stop an archangel.
The door shakes, rattles violently in its frame, and Adam swears he can hear Michael’s voice in his head, calling his name, reaching for him, and he’s torn. He wants to run. Wants to hide and hope this hurricane passes over him. Wants to get up and open the door and let Michael-
“Adam. Adam Milligan.”
And then it stops. The door stills, the air around them stills, and Adam knows, with strange certainty, that Michael is gone.
He turns to look at Dean, and finds him staring back at him, the same look plastered on his face that Adam guesses is on his. Horror, relief, and something else neither of them will name or admit to.
Sam groans, and they both immediately divert their attention to him. Adam eases himself to his feet as Dean starts fussing over his brother. Sam has blood on his chin, and leaking from his ears, but he’s awake and aware, and he pushes Dean’s hands away.
“I’m fine,” he says. Dean snorts, but Sam just grabs his arm. “I’m fine. Are you okay?” Sam looks concerned, and something passes between them that Adam doesn’t understand.
Dean sighs. “Yeah, Sammy. I’m good.”
Sam stares at him for a long moment before nodding. He then turns to look at Adam, concern still clear on his face.
“You okay, Adam?”
Adam looks between him and the door, with no clue how to answer that, tasting blood when he idly licks his lip.
Sam and Dean had wanted to get moving immediately. There had been no sign of their angel, and they had clearly been worried, but it was decided it was too risky to stay and wait for him.
“Cas will find us, or we’ll find him,” Dean had said as he was throwing their stuff in the trunk of the car. “But right now, I want to put as much distance between us and this warehouse as I can.”
“You fine to drive?”
Dean had waved off Sam’s concern. “I’m not the one who was coughing up his insides twenty minutes ago.”
“Dean-”
“I’m fine, Sam. Let’s just get moving.”
Sam had frowned, but he hadn’t argued, and soon enough, they’d been off. Adam had curled up in the back seat, head resting against the window. He'd washed the blood off his face and rinsed his mouth and his grazed hands before they'd left, but the taste of it lingered. Every time he closed his eyes he saw Sam bloody and groaning in pain, saw Zachariah's body lying on the floor, his wings scorched into the walls, saw Michael, and that last seemed like it was burnt onto the backs of his eyelids, the only thing Adam could see even when he blinked. Which is why instead of sleeping, which his body was crying out for him to do, he spent the following hours stubbornly awake, alternating between staring at the grazes on his palms, staring at the landscape outside as it rushed past, and staring at the back of his brothers’ heads.
Fuck. Brothers. He has no clue what to do with that now. It had been easier before, easier when he could be angry at them. At their selfishness for not taking the whole Lucifer thing seriously. For not listening. For acting like Adam owed them anything, acting like they knew a damn thing about him.
But that had been before. Before he’d found out just how badly he’d been lied to. Before his brothers had come back for him.
(The angel who told him had almost looked annoyed at the interruption, and they were quick to list all the reasons why Sam and Dean Winchester were bad people, why they were putting the world at risk, why he couldn’t trust them, but for a moment, nothing else mattered.
“I’ve got brothers?”)
They drive for hours without stopping, and by the time it’s gotten dark Adam thinks that he should probably be hungry. The last time he’d eaten had been in that room, but while it was certainly his imagination, his mouth tastes like ash, and the very thought of swallowing something else right now, even water, makes him feel sick.
So, he doesn’t bring it up.
Every now and again he catches either Sam or Dean looking back at him. Once or twice, they ask him outright if he’s okay, or rather, with openly forced cheerfulness, if he’s “still alive back there?”, to which he answers with a vague, mumbled “yeah”. Mostly though, they talk between themselves, softly, so that even if Adam wasn’t deliberately tuning them out, he’d have a hard time catching anything.
Eventually, despite his best efforts, he finds himself nodding off, lulled into rest by the rocking of the car and the low murmur of Sam and Dean’s voices.
When he opens his eyes it’s to sunlight and he thinks for a moment that he must have slept through the night. He very quickly realises though that he’s not in the car, he’s on a bench. In a playground. In a very specific playground.
The park is empty, eerily so. There’s someone sitting next to him, and he turns, expecting to see Zachariah, only instead it’s…him?
“Hello, Adam.”
Adam blinks in confusion, staring at his own face. He…it…just smiles.
“You ran off before we had a chance to talk. Or to even properly introduce ourselves.”
Adam’s blood turns cold, and he’s on his feet, ready to bolt before he can even think about it.
“Michael?”
“Nice to meet you, Adam Milligan. And please, sit back down. There’s no need to be afraid, I’m not here to hurt you. I don’t even know where you are.”
Adam takes a step away, even as Michael leans easily back against the bench. “What does that mean?”
“Those sigils carved into your ribs do their job frustratingly well.”
Adam’s hand subconsciously moves to press against his chest, remembering the sharp, burning pain along his bones that had pulled him back into consciousness.
Michael watches him do so, and perhaps reads his wariness because he explains further. “You’re hidden from all angels, even me. I won’t know where you are unless you tell me.” He pauses, mouth turning up at the corner. “I don’t suppose you want to tell me where you are?”
“No, I don’t.”
Michael shrugs. “We’ll see.”
The confidence sends a shiver down Adam’s spine. He tries to ignore it, instead looking around at the park, careful to keep half an eye on Michael, who himself appears to also be taking in their surroundings.
“I’m dreaming, aren’t I?”
The park looks exactly the same as it had last time, though it was never this empty or this quiet in real life.
“Yes.” Michael says, looking back at him. “I wanted the chance to speak with you myself. Alone.”
“Why would I listen to a word you say?” he snaps before he can think better of it. “You lied to me, tortured me. Your pal Zachariah had me coughing up blood, just so he could lure Dean into a trap. On your orders.”
Michael sighs, and he doesn’t look awkward or ashamed, which Adam would like but hardly expects, but nor does he look angry, or even particularly annoyed, which he would have thought far more likely. Instead, he seems calm, composed, and he looks Adam right in the eye as he replies.
“I knew what would be needed to get your brother where we wanted him. I knew what buttons would need to be pressed, and I gave Zachariah leave to press them however he saw fit. I knew what he would do, yes, but at the time, it was deemed a necessary evil.”
“A necessary-? Oh, fuck you.” It slips out with the burning anger that rushes through him, but all Michael does is smile that same slightly condescending smile in response, like Adam genuinely amuses him, like he expected the response, and it’s far more unnerving than it is comforting.
“We are at war, and war often requires sacrifices. The making of hard choices. I don’t enjoy it, but it needs to be done.”
“And now what? Your plan didn’t work. Dean didn’t say yes and he’s not going to say yes.” He’d been a little out of it at the time, and he doesn’t know how genuine Dean’s attempt at surrender had been, but somehow, he knows this for sure. Dean isn’t going to say yes to Michael. He’s just not.
“I agree we have reached that point, yes. But I do still need a vessel, and you’ll notice that I’m not talking to Dean right now, am I?
“No,” Adam says, shaking his head, letting his fear of Michael overwhelm the small flare of something else inside of him that immediately wants to agree. The part of him that earlier had wanted to walk right back into that beautiful room and give Michael the answer he wanted. “Not happening. I’m not going to say yes. No way.”
And it is easy to let the fear take over. He remembers the pain, the taste of blood, the sight of Michael in all his horrific, awesome glory. It’s easy for Adam to be afraid. Michael moves his hand, and Adam flinches on instinct, waiting for more pain, waiting to be tossed against a tree, but all Michael does is raise it, gesturing for him to wait.
“All I want right now, at this moment, is for you to think, Adam.” He stands, and though they’re of a height Adam feels like he’s looking up. He reaches out, casually brushing something off Adam’s shoulder, and Adam eyes the hand, looking back at Michael’s face when it lingers.
“I want you to think about each of the reasons you were ready to say yes before,” Michael continues. “And why those reasons still make sense.”
Adam stares at him in confusion, but all Michael does is squeeze his shoulder and Adam can’t help but distantly note how warm his hand is, how nice the touch itself feels. He tries to remember the last time he’d been touched like that.
It would definitely have been before he died.
And this isn’t even real, technically.
“Just think about it.”
And then Adam’s being gently shaken awake. His eyes snap open to see Sam leaning over the front seat, hand on his arm, just below where Michael’s had been.
“Hey,” he says. “Sorry to wake you. We’ll be stopping at a motel in about fifteen.”
It takes a moment for Adam to understand what he’s saying, but he gives Sam a nod when the words eventually sink in. He blinks and rubs at his eyes, trying to get his bearings as his heart begins to slow, and trying to ignore the way he can still feel the ghost of Michael’s touch. It’s still dark outside so he has no idea how long he slept, but soon enough they’re pulling into the car park of a motel.
Dean jumps out first and heads straight to reception, while Sam throws him an awkward smile in the rear-view mirror before climbing out too and circling back to the trunk. Adam listens to him rummage around for a while before he forces himself to get out, legs shaking, feeling strangely disconnected from his body. He leans against the side of the car, shivering as the wind brushes past him, and watches Sam close the trunk, a large duffle bag hanging from one shoulder, and another in his hand.
They wait in silence until Dean comes back with the keys, and then he follows his brothers into the room.
“Sammy, you’re near the door, I’ll take the couch, and Adam, you’re in the other bed.”
It’s an average motel room, and it does, in fact, have only two beds. Adam has no clue if it is because it was just cheaper, not to mention safer, to get them a single double room, or because Dean momentarily forgot that it’s not just him and Sam anymore. He can’t quite find it in himself to be mad if it is the latter though, because he gets why Dean might, and because he’s ended up with a bed regardless. It might also be because his brain is stuck on the fact that his dreams could be invaded by angels at any time. He’d known that, of course, but he now also knows that they’re still interested in doing so. That Michael himself is interested in doing so.
“Just think about it.”
Adam tries to give up the bed anyway - he’s slept on worse before – but Dean waves him off, and it feels awkward to keep pushing. Still feeling off, and with nothing else to do, he sits on the edge to watch Sam and Dean unpack. They lock and bolt the door, which seems normal enough, but then they start pulling chalk and containers of salt out of their bags, and Adam’s a bit more confused.
“What are you doing?” he asks Sam, who has started pouring a line of salt in front of the door.
Sam freezes for a moment, looking between Adam and the salt in his hand, before understanding crosses his face.
“It’s, uh, a salt line, for protection. Ghosts, demons, things like that, they can’t cross it. Put a line of salt across every door and window, and they can’t get in.”
“And those?” Adam nods at where Dean is drawing on the wall.
“Same kind of thing,” Sam says. “Protection sigils.”
“Demons, spirits, even angels,” adds Dean as he finishes off one symbol and starts the next. “Can’t hear us, can’t find us, can’t get in.”
Adam finds himself, once again, briefly pressing a hand to his chest. “Like the ones on my ribs?”
Dean, back to him, flinches almost unnoticeably, and there’s tension clear in his shoulders when he answers. “Yeah. Cas did those. They’ll hide you from the angels.”
“We’ve got them too.”
“And they’re still working?” He needs to know. He’d be an idiot to take Michael at his word. Who’s to say he isn’t laying another trap.
If it was actually Michael at all, and not just something his mind conjured up. Given everything that’s happened, weird dreams would be expected.
(Adam’s luck has never been that good, and frankly, lately, it’s been even worse than usual.)
“They should be,” Sam says, reading his worry, if not the precise reasoning behind it. “Believe me, we’d know if they weren’t.”
Adam unclenches the fists he hadn’t noticed he’d been making, wincing at the sting of his still-grazed palms. He misses the look Sam and Dean share over his head, and barely notices when Sam leaves the room to salt the windows in the bathroom. He tells himself that Sam’s making sense. If the angels knew where they were, they’d have dragged them off already. Michael still needed a vessel, he’d said so himself, and the other side needed Sam, so whatever their strategy was now, it wouldn’t make much sense to let them run free if they could do anything about it. The fact that a gang of angels or even Michael himself haven’t swooped down strongly suggests that they can’t, so maybe, just maybe, for the moment at least, they really are safe.
Adam lets himself relax, just a little, and sits quietly to watch Dean finish tracing the chalk sigils across the door and walls. He draws them with a steady, confident hand, like he’s done it enough times to know them by heart, and the curious part of Adam wants to ask, wants to know what each one means, what they do, how they work with each other. But he finds he doesn’t have the energy to ask, or to listen to the reply, so he just sits there, zoning out until Dean’s done and Sam’s come back.
As Dean tosses the chalk back into his bag and claims the first shower, it occurs to Adam that he should probably tell them about the dream, about Michael. He intends to, goes as far as opening his mouth, but something stops him . He doesn’t quite choke on the words, but they just won’t come out, and then Dean’s closing the bathroom door behind him and Sam’s saying that he has to duck back out to the car real quick and the moment’s gone.
It might have just been a normal dream anyway, is what he reasons as he lays in bed an hour later in another borrowed shirt, half dreading going to sleep and testing that very hypothesis. And even if it wasn’t, he has a feeling that there isn’t much his brothers could do to keep Michael out. Why bother them with a problem they can’t fix?
He doesn’t dream about Michael. He dreams about dying.
He dreams about teeth and screams and fingers peeling back his skin to get at his insides. He sees his mum’s face on the thing that killed her, that’s killing him, and he can’t breathe, can’t shout for help through the blood bubbling up his throat. The blood and the dirt that’s pressing down on him, choking him, keeping him trapped, and he can’t get out. He can’t get out, he can’t get-
Adam wakes in the dark, tangled in his sheets and gasping for air. He’s shaking and he doesn’t know if he’d been screaming, or crying out, but there’s no sound, no obvious movement from the couch or from the other bed, so he guesses not. His throat aches when he swallows, but getting out of bed for a glass of water is the last thing he wants to do. A single sob slips out before he can bite his lip to hold it back as he rolls onto his side instead, pulling the sheets and blanket tight around him, curling in on himself. He tries to remain silent as the pillow beneath his cheek grows damp, breath catching repeatedly in his chest as he works to stifle the sound.
Eyes open or closed, all he can see is the crypt, the monsters, the smothering dirt of his grave.