day 1: [T]he act of imagination is bound up with memory. You know, they straightened out the Mississippi River in places, to make room for houses and livable acreage. Occasionally the river floods these places. ‘Floods’ is the word they use, but in fact it is not flooding; it is remembering. Remembering where it used to be. All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.

—Toni Morrison

day 2:

"Somebody," said Jacques, "your father or mine, should have told us that not many people have ever died of love. But multitudes have perished, and are perishing every hour - and in the oddest places! - for the lack of it."

—James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

day 3:

You know what? I don't want to express myself. I don't want to sit in a room full of people and say... the P-word. I like being repressed. I am totally comfortable being uncomfortable with my sexuality. And maybe, just maybe, if everyone were a little bit more like me, we wouldn't have to have an STD fair!

— Annie Edison, Community (NBC)

day 4:

I had this habit for a long time: I used to get in my car, and I would drive back to my old neighborhood, the old town I grew up in. And I’d always drive past, like, the old houses that I used to live in. And I’d do it, sometimes late at night, if I was — when I used to be up at nights. [laughs] And I got so I would do it really regularly, for — two, three, four times a week — for years. And I eventually got to wonderin’, what the hell am I doing?

And so I went to see this psychiatrist — this is true! — and I sat down, and I said, you know, “Doc, for years, I’ve been gettin’ in my car, and I drive back to my town, and I pass my houses late at night, and, you know…what am I doing?”

And he said, “I want you to tell me what you think you’re doing.”

[crowd laughs]

So I go, “That’s what I’m paying you for!”

So he says, “Well, what you’re doing is, there’s something bad happened. And you’re going back thinking that you can make it right. Something went wrong, and you keep going back to see if you can fix it, or somehow make it right.”

And I sat there, and I said, “That is what I’m doing.”

And he said, “Well, you can’t.”

— Bruce Springsteen, introing a song apparently

day 5:

What is a ghost? Something dead that seems to be

alive. Something dead that doesn’t know it’s dead.

— Richard Siken, “Landscape with Fruit Rot and Millipede”

day 6:

But, really, it's the most basic definition of "uncanny”—"unhomely”—that matters. The haunted house is precisely that which should be homey, should be welcoming—the place one lives inside--but which has somehow become emptied out of its true function. It is terrifying because it has lost its purpose yet stubbornly persists. Neither alive nor dead but undead, the haunted house is the thing in between. —Colin Dickey, Ghostland

day 7:

You’re old enough to understand that your father didn’t love you without being ridiculous about it.

The hand feels human, but it’s smooth and unmarred where Adam demanded that Michael replace the scars of a careless childhood, lost over the many reconstructions of his body. “Ghoul” looks like Adam, and unless he has a healthy sense of irony, that tells a story about what he’s doing to Adam, what Adam is letting him do. Sam tries not to shudder.

He tries and fails to sound sincere when he says, “Nice to meet you.”

Ghoul grins, and Sam knows it’s his imagination making his teeth look sharp and sharklike. “Oh, we’ve met. I’m surprised you don’t remember me. I don’t look all that different.”

A cold sense of dread coils in Sam’s stomach. His time in Windom really wasn’t that traumatic, all things considered. Yes, thinking he’d been bonding with his little brother only to nearly be ritually consumed by a monster in his skin was—well, it was bad. At the time it was maybe even a top twenty trauma, but the scale has changed since then. And Adam was already dead and had never really existed for Sam except for about thirty-six hours that had been more about him bitterly craving a sense of agency than getting to know his kid brother. So it wasn’t that big a deal, really. But Adam died screaming. He knows Adam died screaming, and the last thing he saw was this creature, and now here it is, grinning in Sam’s face and still holding his hand.

Sam pulls away and resists the urge to wipe his palm on his jeans. Adam will take it personally, and things will blow up, and Thanksgiving-lite will be ruined, Thanksgiving-lite being the October holiday they made up so that Adam can spend Thanksgiving prime either with his mother in Heaven or mourning his mother—the specifics haven’t been made clear to Sam, and he didn’t press because Adam said it was a holiday for family, then seemed to feel guilty but didn’t take it back. Sam doesn’t mind. He grew up on the road with an absentee father; his memories of holidays mostly involve cold cuts and, when he got a little older, pilfered beers. It’s not important to him when he sees Adam, just that he does at least some of the time.

“Adam,” he says, still carefully polite, “Can we speak in private?”

“Nope!” Ghoul says cheerily. Sam doesn’t think he’s imagining the way his smile cracks at the edges. “Michael’s always following him around, the little creep. You can only talk without me.”

“Well. Then I would like to speak to Adam without you.”

Adam sighs. He looks at Ghoul, finally, exasperated but fond in a way Sam has never merited. “I told you to let me do the talking.”

“You were taking too long!” Ghoul says. “We were going to be standing out here staring at each other all day!”

Adam rolls his eyes, kisses Ghoul on the cheek, then, taking in Michael’s vaguely mutinous expression, kisses him as well before pushing past Sam into the bunker. Michael’s projection stays outside, which means exactly nothing.

Sam leads Adam aways from the door and into the library, gesturing to a chair that he ignores. He’s glaring, his arms crossed. He looks like a child, Sam thinks, his heart aching. Despite his time in the Cage, he’s physically identical to the pouty teenager Castiel pulled out of a grave all those years ago.

“I don’t wanna hear it,” Adam says.

“But that is—”

“The Ghoul who killed me, yeah. Well, one of them. His sister’s back too, but we don’t really see her much. I guess they got enough of each other growing up in the cemetery.”

Sam isn’t sure what question to ask first, but finally lands on, “But how are they back?” Which isn’t the most important question—the most important question is, “How can you stand to touch him?”—but he’ll be able to focus better with some basic context. And Adam might give away something for him to latch onto, some detail that makes it all come together.

Adam shrugs. “We think it was supposed to be for some storyline Chuck ended up dropping. Maybe you were supposed to run into Ghoul instead of the real me. I don’t know, but when I went back to Windom, he was squatting in the attic. So.” He gestures as if to communicate that things progressed naturally from there.

“So now you’re dating him.”

“I get that it probably seems crazy.”

“It seems like a cry for help.” This is, of course, the wrong thing to say, and Sam knows it from all the other times he’s said it, but he rushes on, “I know you’ve been through a lot, Adam. And people haven’t— You haven’t been— We didn’t treat you like you had value. The world didn’t treat you like you had value. I can’t imagine how much that messed with your head. But you don’t have to—“ He hesitates. He’s had a lot of time to think about this over the last few months, to reflect on failed conversations and script what he would say if he had another chance. “It matters that they hurt you. It’s serious. Do you know that?”

Adam rolls his eyes with teenaged aplomb. “Of course I know that. I’m fine, Sam.”

“Are you sure? Because one monster boyfriend who traumatized you is a coincidence; two is a pattern.”

Adam winces, which Sam thinks first is a reaction to the use of the word traumatized, but he stays quiet, his gaze turned inward, which Sam knows means he’s talking to Michael, probably fielding objections about the “monster” descriptor.

Sam waits them out, tense and jumpy. This is longer than Adam has ever let him talk about it, and he wonders if he ought to be pushing harder, seizing this opportunity before it slips through his fingers.

“Maybe I’m just a narcissist,” Adam says finally, wearing a grin that Sam can’t help but read as sincere. “Ever think of that?”

It seems easy for him to laugh about this, to joke around, but Sam knows from experience that being able to laugh about something and being okay with it are two very different things. It’s his job to take this seriously even—especially—if Adam won’t, but before he can say so, Adam speaks again, no longer smiling.

“But no, really. I know what I’m doing here. And I get that it’s weird, but you of all people should know that weird and bad aren’t synonyms. We’ve talked about it. Me and Michael, and me and Ghoul, and me and Michael and Ghoul. I can see why you’re worried, and I actually—“ He looks away. “I mean, it’s not bad knowing you have my back. This time. But it’s not necessary, either. You’re probably right that if I hadn’t been in the Cage, my standards for ‘forgivable’ would be pretty different. But I was, and I’m not going to pretend stuff bothers me more than it does. Or.” He pauses, then says carefully, “In ways that it doesn’t. And I’m not going to stand here and run through every thought I’ve ever had about my ‘trauma’ to make you feel better about your baggage. I don’t owe you that.”

The clarification feels honest in a way he usually isn’t with Sam, the concession that he is bothered, but maybe not exactly how Sam thinks he ought to be. It’s enough to make some of the tension flow out of his shoulders. He knows he isn’t the best person to be giving lectures about keeping your distance from people who have hurt you, but that’s exactly why he feels like he has to try. But Adam is smart, and about as emotionally competent as anyone could possibly be under the circumstances, and he’s right, anyway, that he doesn’t owe Sam more insight than he wants to share.

“Okay,” Sam concedes. “I’ll let it go, at least for now. But you know if you ever need to talk—“

Another expansive eyeroll, like Adam’s luxuriating in it. “I know, Sam. Now can my monster boyfriends come inside? We’ve left them alone way too long already, and I don’t feel like breaking up a fight on Thanksgiving.”

Sam’s concern hasn’t faded, but he has to concede that Adam doesn’t seem to actively be in crisis, or arguably has been in crisis since escaping the Cage but in a fairly static, non-emergent way. Anyway, if he is in need of a rescue, it maybe isn’t a sound strategic decision to try to initiate one while what he needs rescuing from is just on the other side of the door. He nods, trying to ignore the feeling that he’s letting Adam down again.

“Okay and also,” Adam starts, looking truly nervous for the first time. “I know it’s a lot to ask because he tried to kill you and all. But can you be nice to Ghoul? He had kind of a lonely childhood and you were sort of his first friend who wasn’t his sister or like. An actual dead corpse.”

Sam, already turning away, freezes in place. “I’m sorry?”

“I mean, you don’t have to make a big deal out of it. I’m not saying like, hug him and give him a noogie or whatever. Just, he has a lot of fond memories of the time he spent with you.”

“When he was pretending to be you,” Sam says slowly, so that there can be no miscommunication. “After killing you. So that he could kill me. Those are the fond memories he has.”

“Yeah, well.” Adam’s face is bright red, but he doesn’t seem to be newly traumatized by the discussion. “Why don’t you just be glad someone thinks you’re a good big brother?” He frowns after the words are out. “Sorry, that was harsh. Just. Family’s complicated for him, you know?”

Sam can’t help laughing at that. “Yeah, I think I get that.”

“So you’ll be nice?”

This is the first thing Adam has really asked Sam for, not counting help getting Michael out of the Empty, which was so huge that Sam doesn’t feel right counting it. He gives the request careful thought. “He can come inside. He can eat. And I won’t try to take his head off.”

“Or lock him up or exorcise him or whatever.”

“Or lock him up or exorcise him or whatever,” Sam parrots dutifully, not bothering to point out that exorcisms have no effect on ghouls. Adam probably knows that, and if he doesn’t, he’ll find a way to take the correction personally.

Adam watches him for a moment, arms crossed, face inscrutable, before nodding. “Yeah, okay.” He reaches out, kind of like he’s going for a hug, but falters at the last second and pats Sam’s shoulder instead. “Thanks.” Then, like it pains him, “I actually have been looking forward to today.”

This is easily the kindest thing Adam has ever said to Sam, and he has to focus to keep from tearing up. “So have I,” he says, and because he thinks he can do it without getting an elbow to the gut, he pulls Adam into a hug, ignoring his grumbled protests.

When Sam opens the door, Michael and Ghoul aren’t fighting, but only because they’re standing with their backs to each other, arms crossed in identical displays of displeasure.

Michael. Once upon a time, he was just an archangel that Kate’s mom made her pray to at Sunday service. He was nothing but a sculpture outside a church or a warrior in a painting or a character in a story.

Now he’s her son’s boyfriend. The boyfriend that got him stuck in hell for a thousand goddamn years.

“Why would he make my house?” Kate asks.

Adam is leaning in the doorway, catching his breath. “It’s familiar to all of us,” he explains. “It’s where he and I hung out the most in—and Ghoul obviously—you know.”

And there’s the other problem.

Kate doesn’t remember dying that well. It was quick for her, in the end. Sure, she remembers being hunted in her own house; remembers the scratching in the walls and the thumping from the vents; remembers something grabbing at her ankle and pulling from under her bed. But after that, it’s pretty much nothingness. For her, being eaten alive was quick and messy. According at Adam, at least; he never saw the crime scene, he says, but he does have a first person account from the thing that ate her. Because he’s dating that thing too.

Ghoul didn’t give Adam the same courtesy of a quick death; his was long and violent, because he was John’s blood and not just a one night stand from almost twenty years before. And yet somehow, somehow, Adam doesn’t hold the hours of screaming and bleeding against him.

Is it her fault? Did she neglect him so much during his childhood that he resorted to latching on to monsters who hurt him? If she spends more time with him now, can she get him to see that he doesn’t need to be with them just because they have some sort of twisted connection?

Does she even have the right to speak against them, now that Adam is older than her by hundreds of years?

Who knows. All Kate knows is that she, for some reason, agreed to meet them. To have dinner with them.

She’s probably going to regret this.

“I got him to make our house. Like, on earth. So you can see what life is like for us!” Adam beams at her, and it’s hard to pretend to match his enthusiasm.

“I’m excited to see your house, baby,” she tells him, only sort of lying.

“Michael and Ghoul are super excited to meet you too.”

“Are they?”

Adam laughs. “Not really. They’re nervous I think. I mean, Ghoul didn’t get to know his dad until recently so he’s pretty sure he’s gonna mess this up, and you know Michael’s dad killed him so. Parents are weird for him.”

Ah, yes. The Ghoul that John killed is also in Heaven. And Michael’s dad is God. Like, The God. Well, not anymore. These days, The God is the devil’s kid. Apparently.

“Well,” she says. “We’ll see how they do.”

“Don’t get your hopes up.”

Oh, she won’t. Her hopes are all the way in hell at this point.

Because this is Heaven and spatial physics are nothing to literal angels like the one Adam is dating, Adam only has to lead her a few paces down the driveway before she spots a house across the road that wasn’t there before. It’s small, smaller than her house, but it seems—homey, at least.

“We live in Maryland for my school,” Adam says as they cross the road. “Michael actually created this house for us there too ‘cause we wanted something kinda further from town. Ghoul and I had an apartment in Minnesota while Michael was dead but it wasn’t big enough for three people anyway.”

He says it so casually. While Michael was dead. Like it’s normal to come back from the dead.

But after everything he’s told her about his life, maybe it is normal. He’s done it twice, so what does Kate know?

At the door, Adam stops. Turns. Shuffles his feet.

“What is it?” Kate asks immediately. Is he having doubts about dinner? Is he having doubts about his relationship?

“Michael and Ghoul are really important to me,” he starts.

Damn.

“I’m honestly not expecting this to go well at all because neither of them make a good first impression but... maybe keep an open mind?”

“My mind is already wide open, Adam,” Kate deadpans.

“That’s fair.” He huffs a laugh. “Okay, yeah. We should probably—if I take too long Michael will think I’ve run off with Gabriel again.”

Gabriel, also an archangel. Because Adam is friends with other angels, too.

The inside of Adam’s house—or its heaven recreation—is nothing like she’d expect from him. They weren’t minimalists when Kate was alive by any means, but there are a lot of trinkets and paintings and little things scattered about. None of the walls have any clear space, the couch in the living room is little more than a heap of blankets and pillows, and beside a window decorated with hanging bits of stained glass in the shape of a butterfly is whole bookshelf filled with everything except books.  

One shelf is just little angel figurines, which maybe they think is funny? One is just rocks in shapes and colors she’s never seen on earth or in Heaven before which actually checks out with what Adam told her about Michael’s proclivity for showing off the planets he helped create. One shelf has a dozen framed photographs crammed together so tightly that she can’t even see them all, but the ones she can all feature at least one Adam.

On the other side of the window, there’s also a bookshelf being used for its intended purpose and overflowing with books, some small and some massive and very few that Kate recognizes. Those on the top shelf all have thick, weathered spines gilded in gold lettering that maybe isn’t actually lettering. Since she died, Adam’s become quite the linguist; he says he’s fluent in the language of angels now. Which is not something she’d ever expected for him, or anyone really.

It’s the house of a well traveled family, which makes her happy, but then she sees two real-life Adams who are not her son and the happiness fades.

“Hey guys,” Adam says. He stays by Kate’s side instead of joining either of them, for which she’s grateful. “This is my mom. Mom, this is Michael—“ He points to one with a flat sort of frown. “—and Ghoul.” The other one is grinning in a way that perfectly mirrors Adam’s, which Kate does not like.

They’re all wearing different clothes, but Kate immediately forgets who is who. “How do you tell them apart?” she asks, before cringing at the realization that she sounds like she’s talking about two cats that look the same instead of two potentially very dangerous beings.

“Everyone always asks that,” Adam laughs. “I know we have the same face, but I really think we look nothing alike.”

Kate thinks if Adam and—Ghoul?—swapped places enough times she wouldn’t know who was her son and who was the creature. They really are all identical.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Milligan,” the one she thinks is Michael says. “Was the journey okay?”

Kate blinks. It was like, five feet from her front door. Of course the journey was okay.

“It was like, five feet from her front door.” Adam says, exasperated but smiling. “Of course it was okay.”

“I’m just trying to be polite,” Michael grumbles. “You’re the one who told me not to be rude.”

“And I really appreciate it,” Adam says. At that, Michael’s frown melts into a little smile that takes a decade or maybe an eternity off his face; he looks young in a way a primordial being should not.

“You can call me Kate,” she tells him, because she can be polite too. And there’s something not right about an archangel calling her Miss anything.

“Kate,” Michael echoes. He turns the soft smile onto her and she doesn’t know how Adam handles it. There’s too much in his eyes.

Then the other one steps forward. “Great to see you again Kate,” Ghoul says. “Big fan of your work. Sorry about the—“ He mimes grabbing and pulling and biting. “You know how revenge is.”

Actually, she doesn’t, but she might soon.

“If it’s any consolation, your liver was exquisite. Best I’ve ever had; you really took care of your body!”

Adam rolls his eyes fondly—fondly!—and says, “I told you not to bring that up.”

Ghoul shrugs. “Just thought I’d mention the elephant in the room before it got any bigger.”

Kate can’t do much but try to smile back awkwardly. This is weird. Too weird. She almost wants to pinch herself to make sure it’s not some weird fever dream, but what is Heaven if not the biggest fever dream? Anyway, she’s already pinched herself plenty of times since Adam first broached the subject of his love life. It’s all too real.

“Should we eat?” she suggests. The sooner they eat, the sooner she can leave.

As Adam leads them all into the kitchen, Kate catches sight of a—a few bones and a skull? just sitting on a small table at the end of the hallway. They vanish a split second after she sees them, and when she turns her gaze it’s to the sight of Michael averting his.

It turns out that Adam made baked ziti, the one real meal she’d taught him when he was a teenager. It warms her up a little to think of him sharing her recipe with his family.

Except Michael doesn’t take a plate because “angels don’t eat,” which he explains almost sheepishly, and Ghoul has his own bowl of—something. Something that Kate does not want to look at too closely.

So it’s horribly awkward as they eat. Adam compliments his own cooking, because of course he does, and Kate also compliments his cooking, because of course she does. Michael at least comments that it looks good, and Ghoul holds his (full!) mouth open until Adam feeds him a bite.

“It’s fine,” he says, chewing thoughtfully, “but my stuff is better.”

Kate shoves a massive forkful into her mouth to stop herself from asking about what his stuff really is.

Conversation doesn’t really flow either, which is maybe due in part to the fact that Kate never has an empty mouth for more than a few seconds at a time, but what is she supposed to say?


With Kristin, they’d talked about college and careers and school stuff. Little things that Kate could relate to. How can she relate to anything about the lives of two monsters?

There are customs for meeting your kid’s partners, right? The shovel talk, or whatever. She never had to give Kristin the shovel talk because Kristin was kind and funny and like, sixteen years old.

Something in Kate’s gut tells her it’s maybe not a good idea to threaten an archangel and a thing that already killed her, plus the whole ‘hurt him and I’ll hurt you’ thing is a moot point by now, so she avoids that conversation. But she can still ask, “What are your intentions with my son?” so she swallows her mouthful and does just that.

With lightning fast reflexes, Adam reaches out to clamp a hand over Ghoul’s mouth that was just beginning to open.

Kate does not want to know.

“My intentions?” Michael asks, the picture of grave seriousness. “All I want is to love and cherish him as I have done for many centuries now. Your son saved me, Kate, so I will do everything within my abilities to make him happy.”

Cute sentiment, really, and Kate does enjoy the way Adam’s face burns a bright red, but Michael kinda ruined it by bringing up the centuries and the saving. Her baby shouldn’t have to save anyone except in a hospital setting. And he definitely shouldn’t have been alive for centuries. A century, maybe, but that’s it. 
“And how do you plan on doing that?” she asks.

“I will do whatever he asks of me,” Michael answers. “I even let him keep the Ghoul.”

Kate opens her mouth to say something along the lines of, “I don’t think that’s a good thing,” but Adam cuts her off.

“Michael helped with all my paperwork,” he says, wrenching his hand off of Ghoul’s mouth and wiping it on his pants. The motion leaves behind a smear of blood, but his skin is unbroken. Kate tries even harder to avoid eye contact with Ghoul’s bowl. “We were both declared missing and then I missed a decade, so he’s the reason I even got into school again.”

It’s like he can’t even hear himself. “And why were we missing, Adam?” she asks, unable to help it. “Why did you miss a decade?”

Everyone shifts uncomfortably.

“I mean—“ Adam starts, but he doesn’t finish his thought. It’s his turn to take a too-big bite of ziti.

“I assure you, I will spend the rest of my life making up for what I did to him,” Michael says.

“Right.” Kate wipes her mouth. “What about you, Ghoul? You never got to answer my question.”

“My intentions?” Ghoul giggles, strained and high pitched. “Um, same as Michael. Love and cherish him or whatever. Make up for killing him. Rock his—“

“Okay!” Adam interrupts. “See, mom? They feel bad. So. We’re all good here.”

Sure. They feel bad.

“And don’t you think they’re cute?” Adam continues, which.

Yeah, they are cute, but only surface-level cute and only because Adam is cute.

“Wait, I know how to win her over,” Ghoul smirks. “Remember when you were a kid and got her to buy you candy?”

And then he pulls the exact same face—puppy-dog eyes and all. It is incredibly cute, but again, less so with the knowledge that he only knows how to do that because he has Adam’s memories. Which he got from eating him.

But Adam laughs at Ghoul, and even Michael twitches with an amused smile.

“He still makes that face,” Michael tells Kate hesitantly. “As if he needs to beg for anything.”

“No, come on, you can be stubborn!” Adam’s grinning again. “Just the other day I wanted to stop at that diner and you said no!”

“Because you should eat better,” Michael says. He sounds like he’s scolding Adam, and Kate doesn’t know what to think of that. “You’re going to be a doctor, you know. You really should eat a vegetable sometimes.”

“He took us anyway,” Adam whispers, winking at Kate. “I guess the face does come in handy.”

Ghoul chimes in after that with his own rowdy anecdote of a time when they had to beg Michael for something. In this story, it’s taking them back in time to see a certain concert. Apparently, Michael didn’t want to upset Jack—the devil’s son, now God, also his nephew—but still caved.

Kate lets them tell their little stories. The smile doesn’t fall from Adam’s face for the rest of the dinner.

She has to hand it to him; her son knows how to move on. When John first entered their lives and did not act the way a father should, she’d seen it in Adam—the inability to forgive. And as the years went by, she saw that inability grow into resentment and then into something like hate.

The hate is still there, even, especially when he talks about Sam and Dean, John’s other kids that Kate knew nothing about until she was dead.

For human slights, like with John, it seems that Adam has no interest in forgiving. Sam and Dean did more than just skip the holidays with him, she knows that, but even Adam’s hatred for them is something very human. It’s why his relationship still has her so perplexed; he can’t forgive blood, but he can choose these two guys?

But the way he laughs. The way he lights up.

Kate can’t forgive Michael or Ghoul. Most likely, she’ll never get over what they did to her baby.

Adam is stronger than her. She’ll let him have his happiness as long as possible, and when it crumbles—because there’s no way it can’t, like when a kid thinks a feral cat can be his friend but it still ends up swiping at him—she’ll be there to pick up the pieces. Just as she disinfected the scratches and pressed superhero band-aids and kisses over his wounds back then, she’ll keep him safe as he pulls himself back together for what will likely be the hundredth time.

Until then, though—he can play happy.

Once the food is gone and plates are cleared, the three of them seem to just fall into each other. Ghoul leans against Adam who leans against Michael and they’re all a bit hesitant, still, but it’s obvious they’re just going off of muscle memory and Kate can’t stick around and keep watching. She can’t.

“What did you think?” Adam asks as he walks her home.

Instead of answering with words, Kate offers a grimacing little smile that he seems to understand.

“Okay, yeah, I thought so.” The enthusiasm he exuded for a minute there has faded into resignation. “You’ll just have to come see us more,” he says, more confidently. “We can keep the house up.”

“You’re sure these are the guys for you? I’ve met some very nice men and women here and I’m sure there are plenty more who are still alive—“

“Mom.”

“This just isn’t what I wanted for you,” she sighs. “It’s not normal, baby. They hurt you. They killed you. I don’t understand how…”

“They also love me.” His voice softens. “And I love them, and they’re right for me. You’ll get it someday.”

Probably not. Probably, she won’t even try, because someone has to see reason.

“Maybe,” she says, and they both know she’s lying.

Her house is dark. It’s never seemed so empty; Heaven brings life to even the lifeless. But now there’s no Adam making her breakfast in the mid-afternoon morning and all the pictures are a thousand years old for him and—something she’s never considered before—they’re probably weird to him, knowing that it’s only ever him.

They bid each other goodnight, Kate holding on to Adam maybe too tightly and for too long as they hug, and then he’s off into the night, heading back to the monsters she has no way to protect him from. 

He didn't think it was fun for them, really, as much as it was almost an inevitability. Michael and Ghoul were in the same room together. They argued, threatening each other bodily harm in increasingly graphic detail. At some point, they got tired of it, or Adam managed to get them into different rooms, respectively into bed.

Rinse and repeat.

“FOR THE LAST TIME, MY POWERS AREN'T THE SAME AS THE FORCE AND I'M NOT-”

Not this time.

“Enough,” Adam said. Not yelled. Adam didn't yell. But if he slightly raised his voice to even be heard over the other two's shouting, well, he could hardly be blamed.

Immediately, Michael's projection turned to him, while Ghoul glared at Michael for a moment longer. Adam was pretty sure that he hadn't let any emotions slip to Michael through their bond – difficult when you were sharing the same body, but there were ways, and Adam had a lot of practice.

“I am sick,” Adam started, talking very calmly, “of your bullshit. And no, Michael I don't just mean Ghoul.”

Michael, who had opened his mouth, closed it again, disgruntled.

“Anyway, you two have fun, I'm taking a break.” With satisfaction, Adam noticed Michael and Ghoul throwing each other confused looks. “Have a good one.”

Then Adam checked out of his body's driver's seat.

There was a long silence after Adam's body slumped further into the couch, looking boneless. Almost like he was dead.

That couldn't be, though. Michael would have noticed if Adam was dead, or dying, and would have saved him. Right?

“What happened?” Ghoul eventually asked into the quiet.

“Adam ceded control of the ves- body,” Michael said, correcting himself at the last minute. Honestly, Ghoul didn't care about his choice of words, and he didn't think Adam cared much either. He'd used 'vessel' for his own body plenty of times at this point.

In any other situation, Ghoul would have made fun of Michael for using 'cede', though. But not today. “Ceded control to who?”

“Whom,” Michael said, because he was a little shit. More silence, then: “Oh, right.”

His projection vanished in the same moment that Adam (well, Michael) opened his eyes, the blue glow in them looking literally otherworldly.

Ghoul shivered. Sometimes – not often, mind you, but sometimes – it was easy to forget that this guy was an archangel, one of the first and most powerful guys to ever exist. And while Ghoul usually used that fact to make fun of him, it was also kind of frightening. And, well, more than a little hot.

“So where did he go?” Ghoul asked as Michael sat up on the couch.

Michael pursed his lips. “Into his own mind.”

“... Right....” Ghoul had no idea how any of that stuff worked. Did this mean Adam was asleep? Daydreaming? “Can you pull him back out?”

A dark expression passed over Michael's face. “No.”

“Okay.”

Michael huffed. “I mean, of course I could. But he doesn't want that. He put up a wall.”

“A wall?” Ghoul asked, amused. “And here I thought he was a Democrat.”

Michael glared at him. “It's a mental wall.”

“You sure it's not a fence?”

Without moving his body, Michael threw a couch cushion at him, his eyes glowing blue in an extremely smug way. Ghoul threw it right back, of course – but missed by a mile.

Damn. Well, they'd never been very good at sports. Not much practice in terms of ball sports to be had when you grow up in a graveyard. And their dad had usually forbidden them from playing with the skulls.

There was another silence that lasted for several minutes. The TV was still playing the show Ghoul had chosen, a silly program about things that could be cake. The contestants had to guess which of the things were cake and which were actually the real thing. Normally, human food was totally uninteresting to Ghoul, but sometimes it was fun watching the humans react to stuff.

And the idea of food looking like something else wasn't all that alien to Ghoul. Technically, every person looked like food to him. And sometimes, food looked like (and was) his boyfriend.

Ghoul wasn't even sure what Michael's earlier objections to the show were (maybe only that Ghoul had chosen it), but they seemed to be forgotten now, as Michael stared unseeing at the TV screen.

“So what now?” Ghoul finally asked, breaking the silence. “Is date night still on?”

Sure, date night wasn't all that special. They couldn't exactly go out like humans did, not when they all looked the same and wouldn't be able to cuddle and kiss without getting weird looks. Going out to eat also wasn't an option, since Michael didn't eat at all and Ghoul only ate raw meat. (And usually human meat, which shockingly, human-run restaurant tended not to have on the menu.)

So, watching movies and shows it was. The only difference to normal evenings was that Michael and Ghoul both stayed in the same room without complaining.

Well, at least without complaining much.

“Adam isn't here,” Michael said simply, still watching the screen with a completely blank expression.

“So?”

That made Michael look at him, frowning. “It can't be date night without Adam. We're both dating him.” He huffed, looking away again. “Of course that's a very understated word for the kind of bond I have with Adam, and probably an overstatement for you two, but you know he likes the word.”

Ghoul rolled his eyes. “Sure, chicken wings. You two are soooo in love and I'm just the side treat he snacks on sometimes.” Huffing, he sat down in a nearby armchair, and hugged his knees to his chest.

Michael was silent for several seconds. “Well,” he then said.

“Oh, fuck you.” Ghoul wanted Adam to come back. Or to get the fluffy plushy from the foot of the bed to cuddle, but he wouldn't give Michael the satisfaction.

“I suppose he does care for you,” Michael eventually said, not looking very happy. “Which I don't understand, because you killed him.”

“Yeah, and you landed him in hell.”

“Not on purpose!”

“Yeah, well.” Ghoul had eaten Adam on purpose. But it hadn't been personal. “I didn't even really know him back them.”

“And that makes it better?”

“Oh, like you haven't killed random people before!”

Michael fell quiet again.

Confidence boosted by the abnormally unaggressive behaviour, Ghoul added: “I bet you don't even feel bad about it.”

Michael did that thing where he almost smiled, not in the way where people pull their mouths up but it doesn't reach their eyes, but the other way. Michael's smiles showed mostly in his eyes (which was maybe understandable because apparently his true form had a bazillion of them). His mouth barely moved.

Damn, he really had no business looking so hot when he did that.

“Why would I feel bad about it?” Michael asked, almost challengingly.

Ghoul shrugged. “Adam gets sad when people die, right?”

Michael weighed his head. “It depends.”

“He specifically told me not to eat anyone alive because it would make him very upset!”

“Yeah, because he wants to live among the humans, and they usually get a little huffy when you kill one of them.” Michael shrugged. “I don't think he cares much about individual humans at this point. They'll go to Heaven, anyway. Or even if they go to Hell, nowadays that's not exactly a 'torture for eternity' sentence anymore.”

“Yeah. When even monsters get second chances, right.” Ghoul shifted so their feet hung off the couch. “Isn't it a bit boring? I mean, there used to be consequences. Now it's just a rainbow and unicorns afterlife.”

“Would you want to go back to Purgatory? The way it was before?” Again with that almost-smile, except there was a hint of curiosity in it. A modicum of interest. The kind of attention Ghoul usually only got from him by shouting or biting someone.

So Ghoul thought about it. Purgatory had been easy, not nearly as complicated as living in this mess of a world. In Purgatory, it was every monster for themselves. You either killed (well, hurt, it wasn't like anyone could die there) or were killed. Eat or be eaten. Which was gruesome, of course, and incredibly tiring. Always being on the lookout for predators and prey, always alert, ready to fight...

“Purgatory was... something else. But I wouldn't go there anymore anyway, right?”

Michael nodded. They'd pretty much abolished Purgatory, save for the rehabilitation centre, where the people that were still there were processed to hopefully gain entry into Heaven. They were doing the same in Hell, Ghoul had heard. Of course in both places there were some people who were too far gone to pass on, or at least no one had managed to reform them since the whole afterlife remodelling.

But that had been expected, at least by Michael. He hadn't been very enthusiastic about the ideas of the new God, but had played along. Not, as he said, for God's sake, but to make sure that there was some order kept in the universe.

Ghoul suspected he was really helping for the sake of his siblings, or at least for his relationship with them. He seemed to have fallen out with that Gabriel guy a long time ago, and things with his other sibling Raphael were kind of frosty too. So he helped, every now and then, even if he wasn't particularly invested in it all.

“Are you still going to the Empty when – if – you die?” Ghoul asked tentatively, looking up at the ceiling. The thought of Michael dying was... uncomfortable, somehow.

“Probably,” Michael said, which meant he had no idea.

Didn't ask the new God about it then. Well. “You could just... not die, I guess. Pretty sure Adam would prefer for you not to die. You know. Again.”

Michael huffed, and threw him another half-amused, half-interested look.

Adam didn't know how long it had been, exactly, since he'd retreated into his own mind and had basically posted a mental 'do not disturb' sign. But it must have been a few hours, at least, so he should probably check in on Michael and Ghoul.

Hopefully, they hadn't killed each other yet.

As he surged back to the surface, he steeled himself for what he would find, fully prepared to fall right back into the same argument Ghoul and Michael had been having before. Except the closer he got to consciousness, the more confused he became. Michael was calm. Extremely calm. Like-

Michael? Adam asked as he settled in just beneath the threshold of taking over their body. What happened?

Hello Adam. What do you mean?

Michael was still so freaking calm. What was going on? And why did it feel like there was a weight on their chest?

Since I, uh, left. What happened since then?

Not much.

It felt like Michael was running the fingers of one hand through someone's hair. But not their own – there wasn't a corresponding feeling on their head.

Michael, what are we doing? In this position, Adam only felt and saw what Michael was letting him feel and see. And right now, all their eyes were apparently fixed on was the ceiling, still visible in more detail than human eyes could have seen, even though it was dark in the room.

Michael gave a mental shrug. Lying in bed.

Is that Ghoul on our chest?

A hint of embarrassment. They're asleep.

Are you two cuddling?? In bed?? Oh my God, you're both naked, too!

A few seconds of silence, filled with apprehension. I didn't think you'd mind.

Wha- no, I don't mind. Michael, I'm just confused. When I left, you two were about to bash each other's head in. What happened?

We... Michael faltered, in the way that only emotional insecurity could make him falter. I don't want to say that we came to an agreement, but...

Oh my GOD!

Jack has nothing to do with this.

Michael, this is great! So you two finally worked past your issues with each other! This is the first step to a healthy and loving relationshi-

Oh no, we're not in a relationship, Michael said, still calm, but determined.

… What?

See, the agreement we came to is that we're... boyfriends-in-law, as Ghoul called it, and that means we won't get rid of each other any time soon, so we might as well have sex occasionally. But-

Woah, okay, wait up. Adam would have pinched the bridge of his nose if he'd been in control of the body. So you're gonna keep having sex, but you don't like each other?

Essentially.

Dude. Adam sighed mentally and Michael squirmed a little.

Ghoul, still nestled on their chest, grumbled and hugged them tighter. “Stop wigglin',” he slurred, before his breathing evened out again.

Michael stilled. I suppose we tolerate each other now, he said eventually.

Michael, you're literally cuddling him. After you two had sex.

The cuddling was an accident.

Adam threw him the vibe of an unimpressed look. You're still cuddling him.

… It's still an accident.

Scoffing, Adam decided this really wasn't worth his time. If Ghoul and Michael wanted to keep pretending like they didn't care for each other, fine.

Adam knew better, anyway.

Well, I'm low-key jealous, he said, making sure to radiate calmness so that Michael wouldn't do something impulsive like throw Ghoul through the room. Grace hug?

Instead of a verbal answer, Michael moved so a good part of his grace was wrapped around Adam's soul. They were always close, but this was even more intimate, even more snug than usual.

After a few minutes of just basking in each other's presence and the feeling of Ghoul's skin against theirs, Adam said: So... boyfriends-in-law, huh.

That was just what Ghoul came up with. Probably on the spot. I think technically the term is metamour.

Huh. Seemed like Michael had done some research. So do people usually fuck their metamours?

Michael heaved a long-suffering sigh. It doesn't have to mean anything.

Ghoul shifted to press their face into Michael's neck.