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Sam had not missed this aspect of his powers. He woke up with a scream, trying hard to sit up but held in place by strong bars. It made him thrash, until he calmed down enough to realize what those bars were. Being held in place by Michael and Castiel’s warm arms was so much different than what he’d feared when he first couldn’t sit up.
There was a kiss on each temple, and the pain cleared away immediately. “Thank you,” Sam breathed. There was always time for gratitude before getting to business. “Not sure why I’m having visions again, that was supposed to be an Azazel thing, but…”
“Your powers are your own, Sam,” Michael said. “The pain, that may be. I can check it out, if you’d like. See if there’s a way to prevent it.”
Sam shook his head. “Maybe later, but for now, my visions always either come true quickly or are already coming true. There was… are cupids a thing?”
“They are. Cherubs, third class, tasked with arranging marriages that Heaven finds desirable.” There was a hesitation in Michael’s voice, which Sam fully intended to come back to later, but for now, there was work to do.
“So in my vision, there was this cherub. The thing was, it was crashing a wedding, and I watched it shoot the groom.”
Castiel frowned. “That seems a bit… either counterproductive, or gratuitous. If they found each other without the help of the cupid, its intervention would be unnecessary, and if one was about to marry the wrong person…”
“That’s exactly what was going on. And, considering he ended up marrying his best woman instead of the bride, I refuse to believe that it was simply a matter of that’s when the two people were in the same place at the same time.” He looked between his angels. “I hate to ask, but… could one of you go check on this? See if…?”
Michael disappeared, returning quickly with a massive scowl. “There are times when I question whether allowing angels to pursue romance is the right call. I won’t rescind it, because I’d have to give up my own romance, but not all of our brethren are deserving.”
“Uhoh.” Sam pulled Michael back down into the bed beside him, and Castiel moved to his other side. “What happened?”
“The cupid had been called upon by an angel. In the past couple of years, since I started allowing angels to walk the Earth and interact with humans so long as they did so with respect, she had found a human lover. When she revealed the truth of her nature to him, he broke up with her. While his comment about not wanting to fuck something with wings was perhaps not the best behavior, he deserved better than what she had planned as revenge.” Michael brought his wings out, and all six curled around Sam and Castiel, as if seeking comfort that they wouldn’t reject them. Sam made a point of reaching out to pet the wing closest to each of his hands, nuzzling the third wing on his side with his face. “She planned to have the Cupid interrupt his wedding with a shot, to force him to fall in love with her again. Then she would reject him, breaking his heart as cruelly as he broke hers. When I told her of your vision, she admitted that she might change her mind and go through with the wedding anyway.”
“Ugh, that’s horrible,” Castiel grumbled. “A cupid’s power is not to be used lightly or for reasons so spiteful.”
Michael turned toward Sam. “I should probably tell you. I stopped it by taking the arrow myself.”
“Wait… you’re… is it ineffective against angels, or…?” Sam pressed in tighter against Michael, hating the thought of losing his angel’s love. Even if it wouldn’t affect Castiel, the three of them fit together so perfectly that he couldn’t bear the thought of breaking that up. Opposite him, Castiel was equally distressed.
Michael kissed each of their foreheads in turn. “It is effective against archangels, but I was forewarned, my loves.” He smiled at them. “The arrow causes you to fall in love with the first person you see. I simply closed my eyes and didn’t open them again until I was back here. I don’t need a cupid to love the two of you.”
“So now you’re magically in love with us?” Sam said. “What happens if… I’m not…”
“The magic isn’t permanent. Once the goal has been achieved, people can and do fall out of love if the time together hasn’t replaced the compelled love with earned love,” Michael said. “Your parents, for example. After you were born, and we had the vessels for the Apocalypse, they started having trouble. There was quite a bit of speculation as to whether they would end up working things out or not.”
“Wait.” Sam’s eyes widened as he stared at Michael. “My parents were brought together by the work of a cupid?”
“Yes, because we needed you and Dean… although not for the reasons we thought we did,” Michael said. “Much of your bloodline has been the work of cupids, because of whose bloodlines you and your brother carry.” Sam’s dismay must have shown, because Michael kissed his forehead and added, “You needn’t worry about it, not unless a cupid goes rogue. I can’t imagine anyone in Heaven is eager to cross me by sending a cupid after one I claim as a mate.”
“That’s… not actually my concern about cupids,” Sam forced himself to say. “It’s more that if I’m the carrier of Lucifer’s bloodline, and this wasn’t the Apocalypse, what happens if I don’t have kids? But the three of us are kind of…”
Michael’s eyes narrowed as he stared at Sam. “You don’t remember? Second year at Stanford?”
Sam thought back. There were a lot of things that happened that year – meeting Jess, falling out with Brady, his absolute favorite class that had put him on the path to law school, his absolute least favorite class that had convinced him social work wasn’t for him. “I remember my second year at Stanford, but nothing that would explain what the heck you’re talking about. I never even got blackout drunk, so if you’re about to tell me I have a kid I don’t know about from then, I’m going to be shocked.”
“You don’t remember going with your friend Tyson to donate sperm to raise some money for an unexpected fee hike?” Castiel said. “There were four children born from those donations, of your blood though not yours in any way that would matter to you. One of those four is a son, and we fully expect the bloodline will pass through him.”
Sam stared between his angels, eyes wide. “No. I don’t remember that. I don’t remember those trips at all. I wouldn’t have agreed to them – even before I knew I was Lucifer’s vessel, I didn’t want biological children! I always felt unclean, like there was something in my blood, so I didn’t want to pass that down.”
“Huh.” Michael pressed a kiss into Sam’s hair. “I had always assumed that Tyson’s influence on you was simply that of a friend, but perhaps the demon inside had other ways of getting you to do things. Jessica’s infertility, we could have worked around, but sperm donation is easier and less invasive, all things considered.”
Now Sam sat straight up. “Tyson Brady was a demon?!”
“Sam.” Castiel gently pulled him down between the two of them, where they could both wrap him in a wing and play with his hair. “You know he changed a bit. Thanksgiving of your sophomore year, wasn’t it? He went home for the holiday, and came back… different.”
“That fucking demon introduced me to Jess! He’s responsible for her death! She’d be alive and well if he hadn’t introduced her, and while I never blamed Brady for that, the demon inside would’ve known exactly what he was doing to her!” Sam struggled a bit, looking for something he could hit because the demon wasn’t available, and hitting the people he loved was never an option. Michael and Castiel kept a tight hold of him. “Was… was there a reason why her, other than being someone I’d find hot and compatible?”
“I don’t know, Sam,” Michael said. “She would never have been on the angels’ radar, because a cupid can make you fall in love with anyone, no matter how against your type they are. As we would have been planning for your child, I find it unlikely that the cupid would have chosen an infertile woman. As for what the demon inside your friend was thinking… I can’t say.”
Sam took a couple of deep breaths before letting himself relax back into his lovers’ arms and wings. “I don’t like cupids. I’m sorry, I’m sure you can argue necessity all you want, but you’ll never convince me.”
“No, I don’t suppose we will,” Castiel agreed. “I’ve often questioned them myself, as they take away free will among humans.”
“In their defense, there are many humans who pray to be struck by a cupid’s arrow,” Michael said. “I suspect this will have to be one case where we simply have to accept that angels and humans see things differently, and as most matches end in love that lasts a lifetime, I believe the benefits outweigh the few cases where things end poorly. Your parents’ match and your mother’s death… I am sorry about that one.”
“How is Mom’s death related to the cupid?”
Castiel frowned, peering at Sam. “Dean never told you? Your mother’s death at the hands of Azazel…”
“She was trying to save me. He’d have left her alive if she hadn’t tried to interfere,” Sam interrupted.
“But she made the deal that gave him permission to be there in the first place, or he couldn’t have come in, and she made that deal after John was killed. Azazel would bring John back, in exchange for permission to take something she would never even miss, ten years later. Without the cupid’s arrow causing them to fall for each other, John wouldn’t have died that night, and Mary…”
Sam squeezed his eyes closed. “Would have made the deal for something else, because Azazel needed Mom to have a kid he could bleed into. Even if it wasn’t Dad’s, if I weren’t Dean’s brother, Lucifer’s bloodline would still have to continue, and that would mean through Mom. It’s not like Jess.”
“No.” Michael cuddled Sam. “Does that mean you forgive us?”
Sam looked up at him, and then to Castiel. “Of course. On one condition.” Both of them raised an eyebrow. “Marry me?”
“Of course, but may I ask how we got there from cupids?” Michael asked. “It’s enough that I claim you as a mate for you to be safe.”
“It’s not the cupids. I needed to work through the implications a bit, especially given that my family history is so tied up with them, but this isn’t about them.” He smiled. “It’s about the love. The complete lack of hesitation to take a cupid’s arrow, because you can handle things with your eyes closed and come back and fall in love with us.” He paused. “Out of curiosity, was it me or Cas you saw?”
“Both of you, so I got magic love for both of you,” Michael said. “Honestly, I didn’t plan that, I just had faith that my love for whichever of you didn’t get magically enhanced would be strong enough to stick around, but I’m just as glad not to have to test that.”
“And then we’re not complete without Castiel, and we know it.” Sam tangled his fingers in Castiel’s feathers, watching the wing shiver with delight. “So. Marry me?”
“One condition myself,” Castiel said. “Promise me you’ll always touch my wings like this.”
"As if that was a question," Sam said, burying his fingers deeper and grinning as Castiel moaned. "Michael?"
"No conditions here. I may have been foolish enough to nearly let the Apocalypse happen, but there is no way I'm letting go of this when you're asking for it."