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Chapter Text

“I’m sorry.”

Adam startles, gaze snapping upwards from the stick he’d been playing with, rolling it between his fingers and snapping it into little pieces. “For what?”

Michael’s been...quiet. Constantly lost in thought, constantly gazing off at something that isn’t there, constantly...gone. It’s like something in him has been killed and left for the dogs, a carcass where there was once life, and Adam doesn’t know what to do about it. It’s the first time Michael’s offered more than a word in response or a non-committal grunt in days, maybe even weeks. He’s lost track of time; they’ve been bouncing around too much, the threat of God on their asses enough to keep them both wary. It almost reminds him of keeping an eye out for Lucifer, in the Cage—like father, like son, he guesses.

He keeps that thought far away from Michael’s senses.

“For not listening to you,” the archangel mutters, and even now he sounds hollow, like if Adam were to knock on him like wood there wouldn’t be anything inside. “You were right.”

The last few words have a bitter taste to them now, sharp and biting and strangled. It makes Adam lower his eyes back down to the stick, balancing it precariously in one of the holes that litter the metal picnic table they’re sitting at. The wood still feels odd against his fingers, unused to earthly sensations as they are—it’s dry and coarse and all the things he’d forgotten how to feel, and something about it sets him on edge as much as the thought of God destroying everything does.

Yeah, well, look where being right got us, he wants to say, but doesn’t. He bites it back like he does everything else, all the parts of him that want to scream at himself for being so nervous in front of Sam and Dean, for thinking that they should go there in the first place, for—

Anyway.

He sighs, twirling the stick between his thumb and middle finger, and nods. “It’s fine. You don’t have to apologize.”

Michael says nothing more, simply goes back to his far-off staring, and Adam starts to stick his fingers in-between the holes in lieu of snapping the stick into tiny pieces. If he starts, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to stop. Instead, he focuses on the coolness of the metal, the warmth of the sun on his neck, the distant sounds of rushing cars from a highway somewhere, the rustle of leaves in the wind.

He hates himself for thinking it, but he almost— almost —misses the Cage.

It’s a sickening thought, to want to go back to something that had nearly driven him out of his mind, that had caused Michael so much agony for so many years, but he finds that he really and truly can’t help it—at least back there, back then, Michael wasn’t so lifeless. At least back then, he could reach across and take Michael’s hand without feeling so much hesitancy, so much goddamn tension. It had been easier, back then. He knew how things worked in the Cage. He knew the ins and outs of them, in the Cage.

Now? Michael is distant, even if Adam can still feel his grace curled around him like a scarf. Earth feels new and good and wrong at the same time. He’s still excited for it but he finds that it still scares him a little, too, and he wonders how much of that is knowing that God might wreck it at any moment and how much of that is his own uneasiness with the new environment around him.

He wants to explore and hide all at once. He still wants to scream. More than anything, though, he wants to reach out across the table and take Michael’s hand in his, to bridge the gap between them like they’d done so many times before. He wants to see the curve of Michael’s smile as if they were still hanging upside-down on their imaginary couch. He wants them to be safe. For once, for once, he wants them to be happy.

Instead, he digs his hand into the table, flexes his hand and watches the bones ripple and shift under his skin. They look so small, so fragile, like he’d thought the people in the diner must be.

God probably sees them the same way.

Adam holds his tongue, and turns away.

He’s standing with his feet in salty water, dusk painting the sky in swirls of orange and gold, the clouds wafting about in wisps and lines. It’s enough to steal his breath away; he doesn’t need to breathe, but if he did, he thinks he would’ve turned blue by now.

Right. Turning blue. That’s something he’d forgotten about, too, until he’d opened a book for the first time in centuries and started reading, fascinated enough by the words written on paper that he’d never gotten to see in the Cage that it hadn’t even mattered what he was reading about. And humans could turn blue, if they didn’t breathe. He remembers that.

Vaguely.

At least, he thinks there was a point where he once knew it.

God still hasn’t destroyed everything. Adam isn’t quite sure what to do with that, but the sky is beautiful, and Michael is here, so he’ll do with that what he can.

Speaking of Michael…

This is your first time seeing the ocean, the archangel muses, and the voice shocks him so badly he would jump if he wasn’t so used to it. The statement itself is nothing the both of them didn’t already know, but it’s the first thing said between them in a while that isn’t Adam’s tentative prods for even the smallest bit of conversation, so he’ll take it. It hadn’t been that long, not when he compared it to the eternity of the Cage, but the silence between them was unsettling. He wasn’t used to it.

“Yeah,” Adam says, trying not to let the overpowering relief he feels in the core of his chest trickle into his voice, mind, or anything otherwise. “Yeah, uh—it’s. It’s something else, huh? I mean, it’s no star, but…”

Way to go, Milligan.

But Michael only hums his agreement and lets his apparition take shape beside him, and Adam tears his eyes away from the setting sun to stare at him.

The light doesn’t reflect off of the archangel’s seemingly-corporeal body, he realizes. It should be more off-putting than it is—Michael’s body looks out of place, almost, against the tangerine hue of the beach. It isn’t, though.

Instead, Adam just reaches slightly for his hand.

Despite Michael’s grace flickering endlessly around his heart, despite the thrum of power that weaves around his ribcage, he’s almost expecting him to pull away, to retreat. It’s been a rough few…however long it’s been, and Michael’s unresponsiveness only worsened as it went on.

But Adam's knuckles brush against the archangel's, gently, a silent question of is this okay? passing between them; instead of answering, Michael only glances down at it for a moment before tangling their fingers together himself. Something about it makes something in his chest stutter, if only for a moment. It's a bit of a stupid reaction, he thinks.

He’s not going to ask if Michael himself is okay. He obviously isn’t. But—

“You hanging in there, halo?”

Michael’s answering huff would be derisive if Adam didn’t know him any better. But he does, and so it isn’t. Instead, it’s just there—not one way or the other.

“There’s nothing that can be done,” Michael says, after a minute, and Adam is quiet even as he feels something stir within his own chest, an emotion brimming under the surface that he doesn’t quite think he manages to keep under wraps, if Michael’s glance towards him is any indicator.

“Probably not,” Adam agrees, glancing back out at the sky once more before returning his gaze to the archangel. It’s dimmer than it was a few moments ago, and something about it takes him aback. Even now, the evidence of the passage of time startled him. “You gave them the spell. If that’s all you can do, then that’s it.”

Michael sighs, meeting his eyes. “So there’s no point in moping around any longer.”

Adam snorts, and tries for a smile that he doesn’t think quite fits on his face. “That’s one way to put it, but…” he fumbles, then, trying and failing to think of what to say, and Michael only waits for him to sort it out instead of saying anything else. Adam sends a twinge of appreciation his way in return as he takes a breath and lets it out, tasting salt on his tongue and relishing in the sensation.

“He’s still your dad, and he was still—y’know, an ass. You can be upset about it.”

Michael chuckles then, but the humor behind it is rough, and it almost sounds more like a grunt. “Oh, I am. But if the Winchesters and that blasted Castiel fail, then my f—God will just end up bringing the universe to its knees regardless.”

Adam can’t really argue with that.

“And I still want you to be my guide.”

That again. That guide thing again. What was that even supposed to mean? Adam hadn’t even ever been to a beach before now, and he’d lived longer in the Cage than he ever had on Earth—what kind of guide was he supposed to be, if he couldn’t even be a good one?

“You’re better than you think,” Michael says, and Adam hadn’t realized that he was broadcasting those thoughts until he hears it.

He looks away, instead letting his eyes rove over the few stars that have already appeared on the horizon. It only makes him think of the star, the one he’d seen come to life, and something about that makes his eyes flutter down to the water below him instead.

“I haven’t even done anything,” he mutters, because really—he hadn’t. All he’d done lately was try to talk to Michael with less-than-stellar results and tried new things wherever they bounced around to when he was sure it wouldn’t overwhelm him, like reading or watching an episode of reality TV that had been quietly broadcasting in another diner they’d stopped in. He’d finally managed to make small talk with a man at some bus stop in New Jersey—which had been all kinds of stilted and awkward, but he did it —but other than that, he’d only been readjusting to things as best as he could. Not much guiding involved there, he thinks.

“Well,” Adam sees Michael look pointedly down at their respective pairs of feet before looking back up at him. “I can definitely say that I’ve never stood in the ocean before, and now I have. Not a bad start.”

“...You sure cheered up fast,” Adam grumbles, even though he knows for a fact that Michael is not, in fact, cheered up whatsoever.

“I realized that I’m wasting my time,” Michael replies, and it’s so simple that Adam has to look back up at him. “There’s better things I could be doing.”

“Like watching me screw up my order three times in a row?” Yes, it had happened. Adam was bound and determined never to set foot in that particular fast food joint ever again. He’s pretty sure the guy in line behind him had been snickering at him, and honestly, he couldn’t blame him.

Michael’s mouth quirks at the edges. “Among other things.”

“The hell is that supposed to—oh, sure, yeah, I bet my suffering is so funny to you,” Adam gives a mock-sigh of annoyance as the archangel lets out a very quiet, very undignified-sounding laugh; he does his best to quell the sudden jolt of feeling under his skin that that noise had brought about, and stretches his toes out a little to feel the sand under them. His shoes are heavy and light all at once in his right hand. “Is there anything you want to do? Before the world goes kaput?”

Michael lifts a shoulder in an eh sort of way. “It’s up to you. I know we’ve been flying pretty much nonstop—” and, at that, his grace nudges at him, a muted apology ringing clear against Adam’s mind. Adam shakes his head, waving it off. He didn’t mind, not after the mess that was their meeting with the Winchesters. “Is there anything you want to do?”

And Adam thinks about it. Really thinks about it, because Michael is asking and the world’s going to end and they still, at the end of it all, only have each other.

“Can you,” he starts, and fumbles again. He takes another breath and lets it out, the motion odd and soothing at the same time. “Can you take me to my old house?”

There’s quiet between them, for all of a second, only punctuated by the gentle rush of waves around their feet. The archangel’s eyes draw him in like a moth to a flame, grace sparking and twisting and alighting with something Adam can’t quite put a name to. Is absolutely sure he can’t put a name to, because there’s something within his own self that vibrates on the same frequency, and it feels greater than words; greater than his body, greater than Michael’s body, greater than anything he’s ever felt. He can’t put a name to it, because there’s no name to give it, and it’s become habit to bite his mental tongue every time he tries.

So he doesn’t. Because the world is going to end and he’ll have no time to deal with it, because maybe the world isn’t going to end and he’ll have all the time in the world to say it, because—

“Yeah, kid,” Michael says, voice as warm as his grace, buzzing with all the things that Adam can’t say. “Are you ready?”

One more breath. The sky’s gone dark, even more stars dotting its twilight canvas, and the wind ruffles his hair as if to say, welcome back.

“Let’s go.”