something small idk I needed to get it out of my head
“I could kill you,” Michael snapped.
Adam wanted to back down. He knew that was the smart thing to do, that if Michael wanted he could be a torn-apart mess like Sam. But something hot was boiling in his chest like steam in a pot, and it was this hot, furious thing that took control of his mouth and said, “And?”
Michael froze. He was keeping the barrier between them up this time, but Adam could see the surprise on his face. Something else in Adam’s head, something quiet and small that did nothing but sit and watch, whispered, He didn’t use to do anything with his face, before. It used to be just like a mask, but now he makes expressions.
Michael tilted his head. “What do you mean, “and”?”
Adam swallowed. That bright, knife-sharp core of fury was still there, but nervousness was tempering it, poking in from the sidelines. He was struck by the sudden knowledge that however he answered was important.
“I’m a human, there’s a lot that could kill me,” he said. He didn’t feel the urge to fidget, exactly, but it was like his mind thought he should. He forced the urge back down and continued to stare at the archangel. The worst thing you could do now is show any weakness at all, he thought. It was hard, while watching those strange, cold eyes, with the memory of ghouls’ teeth lurking around the back, but he forced himself to be still. “A bad storm could kill me, or a fall, or - a lot of stuff. It’s not exactly hard. If you wanted to waste your time beating on someone who couldn’t fight back, I couldn’t stop you.”
Michael drew back. It looked like something in that had struck some sort of nerve, although what that nerve was, Adam couldn’t say. “And you’re not frightened? All those things that could hurt you, and you aren’t scared at all, little human?” That last part felt distinctly tacked on, like it was said more because the speaker thought he should than anything else. Adam took a deep breath. There was no honest air to breathe here, but it still seemed to steady him.
“I don’t like to waste my time being scared,” he said honestly. “It’s not like it would do anything. I have stuff to do, I don’t have time to worry about every thing in the world that could hurt me.” Had stuff to do, had, in the sunlit world above before he’d been caught by this strange creature whose only talent was control - he breathed, and forced it down. He’d learned how to do this when he was young. Breathe. The boiling head of steam in his chest had cooled, but a last burst prompted him to say, “Why are you asking?”
Michael was looking at him, and his face was strange. Adam wondered how much he’d heard. He got the impression the archangel was thinking; he wondered how much he’d done that before. Then, all of a sudden, in the space between one heartbeat and the next, the archangel had vanished.
Adam sunk to his knees. He bit his lip, and stared up. When the howling inside of him had returned to manageable levels, he got up and walked away.