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Adam has always loved parties.
It looked like “always” had come to an end.
It took Lute an unacceptably long time to realize he was missing. At first, she had assumed that he had gone to get something or someone and would be back shortly. After, she figured that he had gotten distracted talking to someone. Finally, after an entire fifteen minutes of searching for him, she realized that the bastard had taken off without her.
Lute wasn't worried about finding him. Worried about what was going through his head? Yes. Pissed that he had pulled this stunt without a word to her? Absolutely. But worried that she wouldn't be able to find him? No. “Always” may have come to an end, but she would never have trouble following his general train of thought.
She found him sprawled out on the couch of his apartment, staring dully at the ceiling. He'd forced a window open to get inside on account of having left his keys at her apartment. He'd left his keys at her apartment because he hadn't been back to his own in over a week. She'd foregone knocking and taking the risk of being ignored in favor of climbing in through that very same windows. If there was one thing that she'd learned from her time in hell, it was that morality could get fuzzy when you had something important to do.
Adam's eyes flicked her way at her approach. It was impossible to see the motion with their pupilless yellow, but she knew damn well that he looked.
The asshole kept his face turned toward the ceiling like she wasn't there at all.
As if she would let him off that easily.
Lute stopped at the head of the couch and flicked the tip of one of his silver-sheened horns. He acknowledged her existence through a vaguely irritated grumble and nothing more.
“Are you going to tell me why you're avoiding me?” she asked.
“M'not,” he grumbled.
“Fine.” She flicked his horn hard enough to make him jerk his head to the side. “Are you going to tell me why you're sulking like a little bitch?”
That got a reaction. He looked up at her with a scowl that wrinkled the black mask of his face and offered a glimpse of his razor sharp teeth. “I'm not sulking, you judgmental bitch. I got sick of rubbing shoulders with a bunch of dickbags and left early. Is that a crime?”
Lute blinked. “Dickbags?”
Adam looked away abruptly. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him pull his tail up onto the couch and wrap it around one of her legs.
“Adam, did someone say something to you?” she demanded.
“Nah. They were all just fucking…” One of his wings pulled in closer to his side. “Around me.”
“Around you?”
“Yeah. Living their holy lives with brains and functioning eyeballs.”
Oh.
Lute inched a step closer to Adam.
He didn't respond.
She climbed onto the couch and flopped down on top of him.
He responded too slowly to stop her. Her weight falling on his gut got a disgruntled huff and the beginnings of a grumbled complaint that trailed off before developing into words. Accepting the inevitable for what it was, he wrapped one of his silver-lined leathery wings around her and laid a clawed hand on the small of her back.
Lute nuzzled her face against his chest. He had taken his shirt off what she could only assume was the second he got home, giving her full access to the thick golden fur covering his person. The feeling of the plush softness pressing against her cheek elicited a small smile from her.
It faded when she looked back up at his face.
“We were in hell for over a hundred years, you know,” she said.
“Shit, really? You mean that wasn't a mass hallucination?”
“Maybe for you.” She pushed herself up on her forearms to look at him more easily. The motion got some more grumbling from him, but no actual complaints. “For me it was real, and lasted long enough that I don't picture the way you used to look when I think of you.”
Adam stiffened beneath her. Again, she knew he was looking her way despite his eyes giving no sign of it. She knew that he looked away with a huff of, “Don't blame me for your mistakes.”
Lute froze up as her heart twisted. Her mouth burned in turn, urging her to demand that he not talk about himself that way. It was a temptation that she had to ignore, for although it may make Adam shut up and feel fulfilling for a short while, it would solve no long-term problems, nor would getting overly sappy.
She could, however, risk getting somewhat sappy. Sappiness with deniable plausibility.
“It's not a mistake. I'm thinking about my own self-interests,” Lute haughtily said.
Adam lifted his head to squint at her in befuddlement. “Huh?”
She laid back down to run a hand over his fur. “It's far nicer to cuddle with you like this. I don't need as many blankets when it gets cold.”
Adam sputtered for a moment before saying, “I'm not a dog, you know!”
“No, but you have some of the better functionalities of one.”
He let out an indignant screech.
She cut it off before it could go any further by adding, “I enjoy the purring, too.” She rubbed her fingers against his chest in a way that, were he in a better mood,would have triggered said purring. “I think I'd struggle to fall asleep without it by this point.”
Especially since it made it so much easier to tell that he was happy. That he felt safe and comfortable and loved with her.
“Great,” Adam huffed. “So I'm a fucking an–”
“No.” Lute sat up and leaned forward to cup his cheeks. “You're the best version of yourself I've known. I like you looking like this because I have some of my best memories with you looking like this. It's a reminder that we aren't the people we were before.”
She stroked his cheek with his thumb, staring down at him with a loving intensity that demanded he listen.
The way that his muscles relaxed and he leaned into her touch told her he did.
It was a lie to say that Adam looked exactly how he did in hell. His pitch black fur had turned a rich golden brown and the red highlights on his horns and wings had been replaced with silver. But the rest?
“You knew that redeemed souls retain their sinner forms in heaven,” Lute softly said.
“No one knows what they looked like before. Who the fuck cares if some fresh blood comes rolling in looking like a freakshow? It's different when…”
“When a stubborn, avoidant asshole who never let anyone see underneath his mask doesn't look like another boring limp-dick winner?” Lute dropped her hands to rest them on his collarbone. “Anyone bothered by your appearance will need to grow up and get the fuck over it.” I did. “You shouldn't pay attention to those small-minded imbeciles anyway.”
He finally cracked a faint smile. “Lemme guess, I should only care about what you think?”
Lute laid back down with a contented, “Exactly.”