Chapter Text
The clock struck noon. Somewhere in Kansas the bells of a small church were ringing loudly. Wedding today, wedding today, they seemed to say. In a small side room Michael smoothed down his tuxedo coat for the millionth time, his nervous hands needing something to do. He looked in the mirror and could see that he was visibly shaking. Beside him Adam took his hand which was messing with one of his shirt buttons.
“Do I look ok?”
Adam turned and adjusted Michael’s bow tie in his own nervousness.
“You look fine. Amazing actually.” he sighed, “Are you sure this is what you want to do?”
Michael wanted to tell him no. No, he was not sure. He was scared and some part of him was convinced he was making the wrong choice. But instead what came out was
“Yes I’m sure.”
“Oh” Adam tried to fake a smile but his heart wasn’t in it.
“I think it’s time.” He reached for the door.
“Michael wait” Adam grabbed him by the lapels and kissed him, smoothing down the area where his hands had grasped when he was done, “That was for luck.”
-----
Six months previous
“Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cakehole. My car, my music.” said Dean as he managed to change the CD while still following the moving truck.
Sometimes Michael found the quirky things Dean said endearing, but right now it was just annoying. They had been in the car for hours and thank god they had just passed the Welcome to Lawrence! sign. Last time they were in Lawrence it had been when they met and he had been moving his younger brother Castiel into an apartment. While Castiel was unpacking boxes Michael ran to the store for supplies. Dean had bumped into him, knocking some of his groceries out of his hands. He apologized, picked up the items dropped, and helped carry them to his car.
When Michael went back to college he expected he would never see the man again and was surprised when he saw Dean around campus. He had introduced himself and they decided to get to know each other. Michael didn’t know when it had become a relationship. He just knew that at some point he had started sharing kisses and more with the man he had bumped into at the supermarket.
Now they were moving into a house together and Michael would get to meet Dean’s family for the first time. Dean had told him about his father, his younger brother Sam, his stepmom Kate, and occasionally an Adam, but meeting them would be a whole different story. His father, Dean had said, was a piece of work and had insisted on taking off work to help them move in. Sure enough waiting in the driveway was the man Michael recognized from his boyfriend’s pictures from home. Sam who was home from Stanford for spring break and Kate stood beside him. Dean hugged the three of them and pulled Michael forward.
“Dad, Sam, Kate, I’d like you to meet my fiance, Michael.”
Mr. Winchester and Sam shook his hand while Kate hugged him.
“It’s so nice to finally meet you.” said Kate, “Dean has told us so much about you.”
Michael liked the Winchesters and he was glad to find that they liked him as well. They were very different from his own family. Not that there was anything wrong with his family. It was just that while each member of his large family went off and did their own thing, the Winchesters seemed to be very tight knit. With their help everything was unpacked in no time. About halfway through Castiel arrived to help. He and Dean got along well which made Michael sigh with relief as he had been sure they would hate each other.
“So his pants were around his ankles and there was pudding everywhere. I know I should have been a good father and told off the kid who did it, but I couldn’t stop laughing.”
“Dad, I think that’s enough. He looks like his head is going to explode.” said Sam gesturing towards Dean whose face had been continuously getting redder.
After they finished unpacking the six of them had made their way to the Winchester’s house. Kate went off to make dinner while the men sat in the living room having a couple of beers and talking. Quickly the conversation had dissolved into telling embarrassing childhood stories about Dean. It made Michael smile that his boyfriend’s family still covered their meeting the boyfriend basics. Mr. Winchester had even given him the shotgun speech usually reserved for daughter’s boyfriend’s and smiled to show him he was mostly joking. The laughter from the last story was cut short by the front door opening and a voice calling out.
“Mom! Dad! I’m home.”
The owner of the voice was a young man with blond hair. He looked over at Michael for a moment as he walked through the living room and down the hall. They only made brief eye contact, but that was all he needed to notice the very blue eyes. Michael couldn’t help, but watch him as he disappeared into one of the rooms. He wracked his brain trying to remember if Dean had ever mentioned him and who he was. Just before he turned to ask the man came back and stopped in front of him.
“You must be Michael. Dean has told me about you.” He extended a hand, “I’m Adam, Dean’s younger brother.”
Michael took Adam’s hand and shook it, bringing his other hand up to rub the back of his neck, “I thought Dean only had one little brother.”
“Somehow I’m not surprised he hasn’t mentioned me.” said Adam, crossing his arms over his chest and glaring at Dean.
“Hey! It’s not my fault you never came up in conversation." said Dean, defensively.
"And Sam did?"
“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Adam.” Michael said trying to redirect the conversation before it became a full blown argument.
“Right back at you.”
-----
The sanctuary was classically split by family, Dean’s side to the right when entering and Michael’s to the left. Adam left Michael at the door and made his way to Dean’s side, a few pews behind his parents. They looked back at him, motioning for him to come join them. He shook his head and stayed where he was. Maybe he should have sat in the back; he didn’t want anyone making a connection between the wedding and his own unhappiness, especially his parents. Instead he watched as the guests filtered in, to one side or the other. Michael’s side was already nearly full with his huge family.
Not long after he watched Castiel enter and sit down next to one of the “angel” cousins as the Winchester clan had taken to calling them. The normal straight faced man sighed and didn’t seem to pleased to be there. For a moment their eyes met and Castiel just nodded as though he completely understood. It puzzled him because he could understand his own discomfort, but Cas? What could possibly be wrong with him?
Adam had hoped against hope that Michael would say yes, that he would take his last chance to back out of all this. But now it was too late. Michael would marry Dean and where would that leave him? The secret lover to a man who never should have gotten married in the first place? He didn’t think he could do that. Their relationship before had already been too much. Who cared that he had been the one to suggest it. It had all seemed so simple back then when they had just met and they felt like they could take on the world.
-----
A couple of months had passed and everything had been boringly normal in Lawrence. Thankfully Dean had been able to put his mechanical engineering degree to work to find a job. It had only been a few weeks, but Michael was already glad his boyfriend had a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Already he had upgraded the parts in his car three times. They had moved to Lawrence because Michael had been given a job offer he didn’t feel he could refuse. That it had been in Dean’s home town had been a perk.
Every morning Michael would wake up, get dressed, kiss Dean, who didn’t have to get ready for work until later that lucky bastard, and shoved off to work. There was a small, local coffee shop he would stop by for breakfast that he could have sworn he had seen Adam come out of more than a few times. Their coffee was pretty good and their made fresh that morning scones were heavenly. Today’s flavor had been pumpkin spice, the recipe for which he was sure Gabriel would kill for if he had the chance.
Large, grey clouds were rolling in and by the time he got to work it was pouring rain. Of course he knew exactly where his umbrella was and that place was on a rack next to the door to the garage. His clothes were soaked when he entered his office and he was dripping all over the floor. As he began starting up his computer lightning struck, the lights went out, and his screen went blank. The whole building had gone dark and when after nearly an hour and with no backup generators the power still hadn’t come back on many of the employees, including Michael were told they could go home. He tried calling Dean to see if he was in a similar situation and would like to get lunch, but he got his voicemail so he suspected he was not.
Jay Bird’s Diner was on his way home from work and Michael just wanted a place to stay out of the rain. It was getting to the point where his windshield wipers couldn’t move fast enough to keep the water away. He pulled his car into a nearby parking lot and made a mad dash for the door. Inside it was warm and smelled pleasantly of greasy diner food. There were quite a few patrons sitting about the place, all in varying states of soaked like him. Pulling up a chair he took a seat at the counter and ordered a coffee. It wasn’t quite lunch time yet and the pumpkin spice scone he had eaten for breakfast still sat in his stomach.
Three cups of coffee, the local newspaper, his work email, and an hour later it was still coming down in sheets. Dean still hadn’t called him back meaning he was probably at work and Michael didn’t want to go home if he was going to be there alone. He had dried off considerably since arriving at the diner and he was quite happy to just continue sitting where he was. To his right the bell on the door jingled and someone in a tan jacket and a hoodie with the hood pulled up walked inside. The person pulled back the hood to reveal damp blond hair plastered to his forehead, his blue eyes scanning the restaurant. Michael immediately recognized the youngest Winchester brother.
“Hey, what are you doing here?” asked Adam, spotting Michael and walking over to him.
“Power’s out at work. They sent me home.” he replied
“Then why aren’t you at home?” He plopped down in the seat next to Michael.
“Well, presumably Dean is at work and I didn’t want to go home to an empty house.” he admitted, “What about you?”
“My classes are over for the day. I was on the bus when it started to get really bad so I’ve been running from shop to shop trying to find a good place to wait out the rain ever since the bus dropped me off.” The blond motioned to the waitress to bring him a cup of coffee, “Have you eaten yet?”
“No”
“Want to move this over to a table and get some lunch?”
“Sure”
Adam flashed a smile at the waitress as he took his coffee and asked for two menus to be brought to one of the empty tables. The waitress smiled back with a bit of pink to her cheeks and Michael could see why. The young man was certainly handsome, with a face like his father’s (Dean had it too) and he could tell Adam had the patented Winchester charm that he had found so alluring about Dean.
“So what would you have you been doing at work if the power hadn’t cut out?” he asked after the same waitress took their order.
“Nothing too exciting. I had a list of clients I needed to call, but that can wait another day.” He took a sip of coffee, “What about you and school? How has that been going?”
“I’m getting into my upper level classes this semester. And I thought anatomy was frustrating…” he trailed off, “I just can’t wait until I’m done with pre-med and start med school. I know it’s going to be a lot of work, well that’s an understatement, but this is something I really want, you know?”
“Yeah, I think I do.”
There was a glint of something in his eyes that Michael couldn’t quite pinpoint at first. Something that he found himself wanting to see again because it seemed expand from his eyes to fill his whole face. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt that way about something. It made him feel like Adam had shown a secret part of himself, like he knew him such that he didn’t before. They didn’t notice the time slip away as they talked about before they knew it the rain had stopped and the sun was hanging low in the sky.
“I should probably get going before Mom starts wondering where I am.” said Adam, checking the time on his phone, “I don’t want her to worry.”
“I should go as well. Dean should be home soon.” Michael slid out of the booth and left a few dollars on the table, “I really enjoyed talking to you.”
“Me too. Maybe we could do this again some time?” he suggested.
“I’d like that.”
All the way home and the rest of the day he had a smile on his face and even as he curled around Dean in bed that night he couldn’t deny that it was Adam who had put it there.