Chapter Text
Life goes on. It always does.
Life goes on and Adam manages to push the Winchesters to the back of his mind, into a box that he kicks under a bed and swears never to look at. He doesn’t want to. The Cage is as imposing, as stifling, as cold as ever; but he talks to Michael and Michael talks to him and Adam finds, to what once might’ve caused him muted horror, that it’s what he’s grown truly comfortable with.
The realization had crept up on him out of nowhere, but he supposes that it’s no surprise that it doesn’t shock him—the human ability to adapt, and all that. Only took him a few centuries of Michael’s company, in the end. The false impression of the house, of the playground, of the world he’d been forced out of—that’s all they were, anymore.
Just false impressions.
The thought of Earth was like the thought of some faraway childhood home that he would’ve lived in briefly when he was very young, a fading sunburn on the back of his neck that he’d long since stopped feeling; the sentiment that he and Michael might be the only two people left in the universe never escaped him, and he sometimes even wondered if it would matter if they were.
He wonders what Michael thinks about it, sometimes. Whether his mind tricks him into believing the same; if the beckoning maw of senseless thought and fatuous ideas threatens to snap him up at any given moment like it does Adam. Maybe, one day, Adam would ask.
It wasn’t like anything could be done about it, either way.
There is no point in despairing anymore over fact, or over the inevitable. So Adam finally accepts these realizations with some defeated, quiet sense that’s reminiscent of an I told you so, and he lets his life go on.
He doesn't know anything about monsters.
Adam ponders this from where he and Michael sit, splayed out over the bed with both their backs resting against the headboard. Michael has his hands in his lap, legs stretched out and crossed like he was never the archangel who looked stiff when he first sat down in a chair, and Adam leans against his shoulder with his own head tilted back against the wall.
If he was a little more vain, a little more self-indulgent, he'd almost consider asking Michael to do what he'd done before—with his hand, he means. The...gentle thing. By the window.
The thought of putting a name to it made him shy away, but it's not out of embarrassment. He just...can't put words to it. He can't. Not here. Not in Hell.
And he didn't want to...overstep anything, either. In the end, Michael had no obligation to him and Adam doubted he could make him feel obligated to do anything if he tried. Assuming he even wanted to try.
He isn't God, after all.
But it's like a switch has been flipped in his mind now that he'd experienced the sensation of touch once more, and he compromises with it via the warmth of Michael's shoulder pressed against his own through the sleeves of their jacket. Michael seems to welcome it, as per their new normal, just like he'd easily welcomed Adam in his embrace. It’s an ephemeral action, one that leaves the core of his being quaking, the ground under his feet solidifying from slick mud to hard rock.
It's...
Anyway, he doesn't know anything about monsters. Which isn't surprising, considering he'd grown up never knowing a single thing about the supernatural, but still.
He turns to Michael, who’s been staring at him this whole time.
“You said I was killed by a ghoul, right?”
Michael nods, expression turning curious. Adam nods back in return, more thoughtful than anything. Without the constant prickle of insanity seeping into his mind from the pit of his stomach, and with the experience itself long past, he finds that he can think about it without flinching away too badly.
It still makes his skin crawl, though, if he thinks about it for too long. Enough to make him twitch. Michael’s gaze locks onto his as he notices, a question clearly written out in the reflection of his eyes, and Adam pokes his tongue into the side of his cheek and takes a minute to direct his memories away from that day before nodding again; an affirmative, this time.
“So...what can they do? Other than, y’know, uh—eating people alive.”
The archangel studies him for a few more seconds, his grace curling lightly in Adam’s chest. “There isn’t much to say about them,” he says, finally. “They’re monsters. They take the form of those they eat.”
Such a simple description for something so abominable.
Wait. “Take the form of? As in, there’s some asshole ghoul walking around wearing my face?” My mom’s face?! his sudden anger wants to shout. He shushes it, tries to swallow it back down.
But Michael shakes his head. “Your brothers killed the two ghouls that ate you and your mother.”
Well, at least they’d done that much for him. Even if it was inadvertently. “How do you know?”
“Minds are easy to read,” Michael says, and it strikes Adam out of the blue how much detail Michael can put into so few little words. Or maybe Adam’s just reading a little too much into it. “I met Dean in 1978 and read his. The experience was in his memories. It’s how I…” he pauses, for a moment. “It’s how I got the idea to revive you in order to make Dean my vessel.”
Adam presses his lips together in thought, a little hum of acknowledgement slipping past his throat.
Wait. Again. “1978? I wasn’t even born then!”
There had to be some sort of weird magic thing going on with that, right? Adam hopes he doesn’t sound like an idiot.
Michael’s answering quirk of the lips quells the thought. It’s more amused than are you stupid? like Adam briefly thought it might be. “Time travel.”
Adam raises his eyebrows and looks down at his knees, nodding slightly. “Time travel. Right. Uh...forgot about that.”
The archangel chuckles, soft and breathy, and Adam glances back up at him, letting his own sheepish smile creep its way onto his lips.
“So, who’d you wear? Your other vessel, I mean,” Adam clarifies. “Couldn’t have been me, right? There wasn’t any time.”
“Your father,” Michael replies, and Adam’s nose instinctively wrinkles.
“Ugh. You wore John? That sounds gross,” Adam could barely even stand to think about the man, but having to be inside him?
Sounds like his worst nightmare and a half.
Before they fall down the tumultuous road of family, though, he quickly brings the subject back around to monsters. “Anyway, what other things exist out there? Hang on—do vampires exist? Like in the movies?” Images of Dracula come to mind, and he snickers at the thought of it.
“They do,” Michael confirms, and the but I’m not sure who Dracula is rings in Adam’s ears like a bell despite the lack of words uttered between them, mental or otherwise. He can read the words like the pages of a book in the way Michael’s head falls back just the slightest bit, the ways his brows knit together with a sort of distant, muted curiosity—the question is all there, but Adam isn’t certain whether Michael’s actually interested in Hollywood or whether the interest is being derived from somewhere else.
Nonetheless, the question is there, so Adam launches—a little sheepishly at first, but growing more animated as he went on—into detail about silly-looking vampires with pearly-white fangs and long, dramatic capes, who could turn into bats at the drop of a hat.
Truth be told, the only reason he knew so much about it was because he'd dressed up as a vampire every Halloween when he was a kid, but he certainly wasn’t going to voice that aloud. If he was so curious, he could take a look through Adam’s mind to find it.
Despite the odd topic, Adam can feel Michael’s attention on him like the shock of a cattle prod. He wonders if Michael can feel the intensity of his own when he finally takes a turn speaking, spinning murmured tales of the Leviathans and the conquest to throw them into Purgatory. Adam isn’t sure why he’s so fascinated by it—history was never his best subject, he thinks he remembers—but he clings eagerly on to Michael’s every word, fully enraptured by the stories of victorious battles and atavistic losses.
And if they’d somehow managed to press just a bit closer, Adam’s leg resting gently against the archangel’s as he fires question after question about the biological makeup of Leviathans, why they had so many teeth and how they moved if they were just sentient puddles of black goo, well—no one had to mention it.
Adam certainly wasn’t going to.
This time, when Michael flinches out of nowhere, Adam reaches for him and places a delicate hand on his back, rubbing lightly.
It seems like the pain of the Cage had been getting to Michael more and more, lately—or, maybe, Michael was just letting him see the true extent of what it was doing to him.
Adam isn’t sure what to do with that kind of trust.
Michael stills, face turning to search Adam’s with something that he, for the life of him, couldn’t decipher. He wonders what the soft stroke of his hand must feel like in comparison, if it’s like running tenderhearted fingers across an area that's just been slammed into something hard at full speed—a sensation too gentle that clashes in an instant with the pain until it mixes into something else, something unrecognizable; or even if Michael feels the motion at all.
The archangel has his moments, sometimes, where his gaze will turn antediluvian, immemorial, the set of his shoulders and the squaring of his jaw so downright unearthly that Adam can’t help but study it with barely-muted fascination. It makes his own feeble little gestures seem exactly that—feeble, too small to be felt. But then he remembers when Michael’s grace had fluttered to a calm in his embrace, and he sees the way that the tension of Michael’s form slowly begins to seep away under Adam’s hand, now, and the gap between them lessens once more.
“How bad is it?” Adam tries, voice coming out softer than he’d been aiming for it to be. Michael blinks and cocks his head the smallest bit in thought.
“I’m not sure there’s a way to explain it to you,” he says, and it’s not quite apologetic but it has a certain air about it that makes it seem that way. The because you’re human is implied, but Adam doesn’t take offense.
“Enochian?” he tries instead, but Michael shakes his head.
“Is it because it’s affecting you?” When Michael sends him a puzzled furrowing of his brows, Adam elucidates. “As in, you you. What you really look like.”
The archangel raises his eyebrows and nods in an motion of acknowledgement, and the expression looks so ridiculously natural on him that it’s as if the times where Michael’s demeanor takes a turn for the preternatural never happen.
“Yes.” And that—that makes sense. Because Adam didn’t have a basis for the knowledge of how pain was inflicted on an archangel; how it was received or how it burned or twisted or shredded in comparison to pain inflicted on a human.
Adam doesn’t have time to think before the words are tumbling out of his mouth. “Can I see?”
“What?” That appears to take Michael off-guard, and it’s almost enough to make Adam blow out a hasty never mind and change the subject. Almost.
It’s just...He wants to see. He wants to understand what Michael can’t explain, wants to take it into his mind and turn it over and over until his vision properly perceives what his ears fail to pick apart.
He can’t do the bare minimum to help if he doesn’t know what he’s dealing with.
“Your—true form,” Adam says, and he’s distantly aware of the fact that he’s tapping his index finger against the tip of his thumb. He didn’t know that he still had those kinds of habits. “Can I see it?”
Michael’s gaze rakes over him, and Adam can feel his grace thrum with questions that he doesn’t know if he wants to answer. But, to his surprise, their mindscape slowly begins to dissipate around them, and he almost thinks that he’s about to return to his formless state before he realizes that his hands, legs, head are all still there.
It’s Michael who’s shifting and changing, body turning formless and surging upwards until all Adam can see is white light, shining enthrallingly above him. He’s almost struck by how familiar this is, of the room and the door slamming shut and the first whispers of Michael’s true voice in his ear. The white light begins to bend and twist and flicker, then, in ways that the sun’s rays could never dream of doing, and Michael’s form comes dazzling into shape—and Adam is transfixed.
He understands, now, why the memory of Michael’s body made him always want to do the mental equivalent of looking away; because there is no memory of his that could ever measure up to the real thing. Michael is endless, an empyreal cascade of blinding sanctity that makes Adam think—beautiful.
If there was anything, anything beautiful to ever be found in these dark, ruthless depths of Hell, it was Michael in his rightful glory, coruscating brightly with ethereal wonder that's almost enough to knock Adam off his feet.
He forces himself to focus, to try his best to kick his brain back into gear and actually focus on details— and, sure enough, a simple sweep of his eyes over Michael’s immense form and Adam can see it; the slight bend of his wings that screams pain, pain, pain, the way some of his many heads duck down almost imperceptibly and then straighten, roaring pride, pride, pride—if the archangel had been anyone, anyone lesser, Adam was sure that he would’ve curled in on himself by now.
But this was Michael. And he was practically the embodiment of pride.
Something sounds an alarm in the back of his mind, something that goes Then why would he let you see this? He knows you can read his true form like a book. He lives in your mind, after all. So why?
Adam doesn’t respond, because he doesn’t have an answer to give.
Instead, he races to think of something, anything, to say. What is there to say? I understand? Maybe he could say that, but it wouldn’t make any sense. He’d been through a fair amount of torture, sure; getting eaten alive while some cruel version of his mom’s face looked on, surviving Hell’s piercing atmosphere when he’d first fallen down here, being isolated in darkness and silence for hundreds of years and all that endless fun. But he has no idea what it must feel like to Michael—what Hell must feel like to someone who was so distant from the very concept; to an archangel, of all people.
He doesn’t want to sound pitying, either, because he’s never pitied Michael and he certainly isn’t about to start now.
But Adam wants to say something, and he squares his shoulders as his mind seems to suddenly clear itself, making room for three words out of nowhere that ring louder in his brain than they do his own false ears. He hopes they make sense.
“I see you.”
The Enochian is soft as it passes his lips, human vocal chords vibrating with the lilt and thrum of the hallowed vernacular, and Adam thanks the fact that the distance between them doesn’t matter in Adam’s mind—would it matter if they were on Earth? he almost wants to start wondering—because he watches as surprise, understanding, acceptance ripples across thousands of Michael’s features.
What are you understanding? his mind begs to know. What do you accept?
But he keeps the thoughts tucked away, trusting that Michael will not go looking for them. He’s never shown any indication that he invaded Adam’s privacy after he had requested for the archangel to ask first, and Adam trusts him.
He’s not sure how long they stay like that, simply staring at each other, and it should feel like they’re forever apart—Michael is astronomical, and Adam finds his eyes maundering over every inch, mile, light-year—but instead, it’s just another talk when they’re sitting across the room from each other. Just another companionable silence.
He doesn’t know how Michael can manage to look so much the same when his form is anything but human, yet he does.
Another piece of the jigsaw puzzle that he found himself pointedly avoiding, he supposes.
A rush of evanescent giddiness suddenly hits him—from where, Adam doesn't know. But it slams into him like a bus, and he's left with a racing mind of thoughts that vanish as soon as they come.
This is who you are, Adam thinks, and he gets the feeling that he'd be breathless if he had real lungs to be breathless with. Maybe he is, here, and he just doesn't realize it. This is who you are and this is who I am and this is who we are. Here, together, now. Us.
Not for the first time down here, curiosity sparks within him at the question of his thought process ever making sense again. He doubts it will, but that's alright.
The vertiginous feeling fades from him in the span of a single half-second and it makes something in his shoulders drop with a sudden respite, blinking silently up at the being above him. Neither of them have spoken.
Eventually, Michael slowly descends back downwards, making a movement that shifts himself towards Adam, one that folds and shrinks until it’s a human foot that hits the black ground barely two feet from him. His gaze is equal parts curious and appraising, and Adam nods; why, he doesn't know. He dimly wonders when his hands made their way into his pockets, and he flexes them lightly, almost like he can't believe they're real.
“I’d say that I wish you didn’t have to go through this,” Adam says, for lack of anything else to, “but I think it’s a little late for that, right?”
Something weary and wry skims across Michael’s body, from the set of his shoulders to the slope of his forehead, and he quirks an eyebrow in response. A huff of breath that could’ve perhaps once been a chuckle leaves his mouth, the emotion behind it a mere reflection made from the pool of his features. He says nothing, and Adam instantly realizes how human he must sound—how human he's always sounding, with all his little wishes and musings.
Even if he isn’t the best example of it anymore, it’s what he still is, right? Might as well live up to it.
“But I do,” he continues, purposefully observing the blond of Michael’s hairline instead of the blue of his eyes. “I wish you didn’t.”
Wishing is fruitless, here. Adam had learned that from the start, had entirely smothered the last of his hope after the Winchesters’ last visit. Wishes left nothing but hollow, jagged hurt that echoed through the corridors of his body like an empty hallway. Wishes were for the boy who came home from school to a mother who always had to leave for work soon after. They weren’t for him. Not anymore.
He thinks of Michael’s wings, though, and he thinks of the blackened feathers scattered throughout the tips and edges that stood out against the radiant, iridescent glimmer of the others—a spattering of discoloration that hadn’t been there when Adam had seen him in the white room—and he finds himself wishing.
Despite knowing that nothing would come of it, he wishes.
And he wonders what that says about him, to know with all his heart that what he wishes would never come to pass. That his old, half-hysterical pleas for freedom through song and snapped words were nothing but empty words to be swallowed up by the black of the past; that his new, fervent desire for Michael, of all people, to be free of the pain he was under would be lost to Hell’s eternal landscape, invisibly etched in the bars of the Cage where ancient sigils used to make their home and then...forgotten.
Like them both, he supposes.
He wonders what it says about him, to know that he still finds it in himself to make those wishes.
Michael shifts, just the slightest bit, and Adam sees the tilt of his head and the indecipherable altering of his expression out of his peripheral vision; and yet, he still finds himself intensely focused on his hairline, on the loose strand of hair that sticks a little too much in the air, anything but the parts of his face that would, perhaps, give away everything Adam would ever need to know about his potential response. He doesn’t try to read the myriad of emotions flooding across his grace, either, keeping his mind empty; blank.
Michael’s given Adam his privacy, even with them connected at the seams. It’s only fair that he gives him his, right?
That’s not why, his brain chides. That’s not why and you know it.
It’s out of boredom that Adam summons a bag of chips into existence, sudden curiosity overtaking him as he eyes the packaging with interest. Almost every word on it is blurred out or nonsensical—it wasn’t like he’d sat down and dutifully memorized each ingredient that went into sour cream and onion chips before he died—but he doesn’t really pay much attention to it. Instead, he opens the bag, looking interestedly inside at the false food.
“What are you doing?” Michael questions, and Adam glances up.
“I just realized,” he replies, reaching into the bag to pull out a chip. “I’ve never messed around with food in this place.”
The chip is light, and he isn’t sure if it’s supposed to be as paper-thin as it is or if it’s just a result of his faded memory. He squints, turning it from angle to angle, inspecting the look and the texture and the overall feeling of nostalgia it brings him—which, granted, isn’t very much. And neither is the look of it—it seems obscured, like there was supposed to be a texture to it but his mind isn’t sure what kind, which one. If he holds it under the light just right, it almost looks like it’s covered in peach fuzz.
“Well,” Adam remarks to the archangel, who’s got the barest hints of amused bemusement beginning to shine across his expression. “Here goes nothing.”
He shrugs and tosses it into his mouth.
On some level, he’s aware that chips are supposed to have a crunch. It feels like his mind has overcompensated, on some level, and, well—it feels like he’s grinding his teeth against glass. Glass that has a cardboard feel to it. It tastes like there’s supposed to be flavor behind it, but there isn’t any and all that’s left is some weird... thing, resting on his tongue, that makes his oh holy shit spit it out reflex kick in like a horse.
He feels his face screw up as his mind quickly works to banish the accursed object from existence, disappearing from his mouth like it was never there at all. Hearing a chuckle, he fixes the archangel with a mock glare, nose still scrunched up in disgust as he feels the memory of the pseudo-food leave its imprint on his brain.
The last thing he’d ever eaten was a burger. He remembers enjoying it, and he dimly muses over what it had tasted like before he shakes the thought from his head. No point in crying over spilt milk—or, in this case, the mournful loss of the taste of a hamburger.
“Remind me to never do that again, would you?”
Michael’s wearing the slightest inkling of a grin, white teeth poking through only slightly past his crooked lips, and Adam can practically feel it as his next words are swept away in the current of the roaring river that his mind has taken the form of.
The fact that his language skills have slipped right through his fingers while the rest of his brain seems to have enough capacity to notice—in precise detail—the way that the impression of light catches Michael’s teeth enough to make them gleam makes Adam almost want to track God down himself and smack him for making humans so ridiculously unable to function.
Seriously. There was no reason for this.
“If you say so, kid,” and Adam can hear the light, teasing mirth that floats throughout Michael’s low intonation more clearly than he thinks he’s ever heard anything before. It’s enough to make his wandering mind come falling back down into his skull, though, which is probably better than nothing.
It dawns on him, then, that a nickname by any other person would've resulted in, most likely, irrational annoyance. He's always hated being called a nickname, he remembers—he’s hated it ever since elementary school, but he was never sure why. Maybe because his name was already four letters, and something like "Ad" or "Dam" or "Addy" would've been either embarrassing or stupid.
“Cool your jets, corky.”
It still left the rancid taste of iron in his mouth whenever he thought about it.
But when Michael called him kid, Adam...never minded. Never even blinked.
The implications of that beg to be analyzed, beg for him to even acknowledge their existence. Instead, Adam disappears the terrible excuse for food and winks into life a deck of cards, watching as Michael’s eyes grow sharp with interest.
They hadn’t played since Adam had beaten him, after all.
“We’re doing this again, are we?” he comments, pushing off from the wall he’d been leaning on to come closer and take a seat across from Adam at the kitchen table. Adam raises his eyebrows and begins to arrange the cards into their proper setup, drawing a hand for himself and for Michael.
“If you’re…” he says, pausing for effect and pressing his lips together to try and keep his own grin down. It doesn’t work. It hadn't worked at all, lately. “Game.”
The archangel’s suddenly-unimpressed face is enough to pull a few snickers from the base of Adam’s throat. It was a weak one, he’ll admit, but Michael’s face always makes it more than worth it.
Michael’s smile slowly returns, small and easygoing, and the quiet scintillation of his eyes suddenly reminds Adam of stars. In particular, the cluster of stars that were always neatly arranged in the sky above the window of his bedroom in Windom—the ones he'd look up at when he was little, sometimes, when he couldn't sleep and the house was achingly empty.
It's familiar. Comfortable. Reposeful, in a way that makes something warm blossom in the middle of his chest, sending a soft flutter up his spine from the pit of his stomach to the back of his throat.
It takes him a moment to notice for him that his palm is lingering too long over the card pile in the middle of the table, much too close to where Michael’s own hands lay.
He wants to close the distance, to reach forward and entwine his fingers with Michael's. He wants to feel the gentle sensation of skin on skin, and he knows in his blood that it would be welcome. But he remembers the earlier implications; pulls his hand back and folds it neatly around his own cards, as if that was what he'd meant to do the whole time.
Another time, he'll bridge the gap. Not now. He doesn't think now would be good for anyone.
They had a game to play, after all, and Adam intends to win.