Libraries had stringent rules. Sam was still rather ticked over it all as he shifted in the too small chair that dug into his back with a savage kind of glee. Apparently, there had been a rash of book thefts or something while they were on their hell tour. It wasn't like they were homeless. Well, at least the library had no reason to think that. Yet they needed a card to use the computers and a card seemed to require three forms of ID, two references and a parental note. Probably his first born or left kidney later on but they hadn't made it that far.
The notebook in front of them was almost too bright as it loaded up its setup screen, low blue gloom as the noise around them swallowed the welcome tones like a quick snack.
"Something cheap," he had said, after looking over their small pile of money this morning that was both a lot and nothing at all. Something that would just let them look up things and type. Cheap but workable was a thing and he was fully impressed they could get something without resorting to one of Dean's favored personal discounts. Those ones consisting of five fingers, quick tongues and, when he was little, fast feet.
Michael's hand was on his wrist as it laid on the table, thumb still keeping time and Sam was half tempted to ask if that was the beat of heaven. He could just hear Dean's verdict over just where they were, some coffee house that catered to people in business attire with cells glued to their palms. It was close and they could siphon free internet. People glanced at them, not that it bothered him. It barely registered, in fact, that perhaps people thought there was a whole other situation going on than just waiting on the notebook to do its thing.
What was bothering him, however, was the noise. That terrible, constant clatter of dishes and coffee makers and chairs scraping on the stylishly unfinished floor. All the voices melting into one continuous noise and damn, even colors now astounded him The angel had been amused earlier when he had seen a bouquet that seemed to consist of the most brilliant flowers in existence and had gotten caught up in trying to take them all in.
No, colors or touching or eating or even the need for pissing were welcomed and marvelous additions to his life right now, overwhelming but still wondrous. But all that sound, Christ, it wasn't even that busy here.
Sometimes he was terrified it was all a trick, that nothing was really here.
"Sam." Michael was to his left and closer now. "Just focus on me and what we are doing."
Blinking, he ran his free hand down his face, letting the world slide back to a distant tinny buzz. He found the notebook patiently waiting for him to input something, curser flashing. How longer was he just sitting here staring as though the ceiling was fascinating?
This, this he could do this.
"Sorry," he muttered, typing in what the thing wanted. Michael's exasperation levels he guessed were rising by how much quicker the angel kept time against his skin.
"Stop apologizing. Now then, are we getting somewhere or will this infernal contraption want a full family history?"
And, he was not the only one who remembered the library. Sam snorted.
"Yeah, see, just need to setup the WiFi so it sees this and –" he watched the connection form, the little symbol showing all was good to go. "It's not secure here but it's enough for what we need."
Michael was overly attentive to his typing, hand on his shoulder now and Sam was thankful it hadn't left. That strange need to be always close and nothing was ever enough. He was certain that they could be fused together and he'd still demand more and it had to be the angel thing between them. Some weird bonding that he was sure humans weren't supposed to be running around doing but he did anyways because he was a Winchester.
At least it was something to focus on that wasn't all the strangers having their noisy lives nearby. Or from obsessively looking at the phone by his cup. The one just bought along with the laptop that he stared at with hopeful dread that it would ring once Dean dragged his ass up and checked his messages this morning.
Nothing was ever that easy.
The first link that came up was something he had been dreading. Bobby had long been established in terms of having a home, of people in one place knowing him, even if it was just as the town drunk. It made sense for there to be something written; for some mention of a taxpaying person dying in relative obscurity as few knew he had been out there trying to save the world to keep being able to pay taxes.
"I am sorry, Sam," Michael was saying as he scanned the obit which was normal until it wasn't.
"Wait, we are actually back on earth, earth, right?" he asked, feeling the angel peer at him to see if some other little piece of Sam had fallen loose. "I mean no zombie uprising, no big mass resurrections or –"
"Nothing of that nature. Such things would leave an echo," Michael said and Sam did not want to think that a zombie uprising could actually be a thing. "A single resurrection is something I would not be able to sense in my current state."
"Here," Sam pointed at the screen. "I mean, the peaceful passing in his sleep part is a hoot but the date. Look at the date. It's only a few weeks ago and I watched him –" he curled his hands in his lap unable to find the words to say what Lucifer had done. "Is there anything by us? I mean, bad supernatural type things."
"Nothing near us that I can sense or smell."
He flipped to their account for some of the phones, grateful Dean hadn't changed the password recently or the billing. The location of Dean's main phone – he sucked his breath through his teeth.
"Guess that's where we're going," he said trying to grasp the final tatters of faith he still dared to have.
XX
Even with the windows rolled down for the last three hours, the combined smell of nachos and feet lingered stubbornly on. Having a scent diversity that went beyond burning flesh and soul had its downsides, but he'd still take 'nacheet' over nothing.
The truck they had wandered off with looked like it would be at home in Bobby's scrapyard. While someone had tolerated it enough to keep it running smoothly the truck bed was a peppered with dry rot, red paint peeling showing small primer patches, faded maroon seat fabric was threatened at any moment by unruly springs, and the whole cab had an air of being lost in time. A musty scent under the nacheet lingered, as if it too didn't belong in the world anymore.
Everything was still flat, the landscape a rolling sea of brown with clusters of trees still barren as they roared down back highways. All of it smearing and blurring in sameness until it centered on that yellow line that he followed and nothing felt quite seated. There were brief, random moments that he expected gravity to refuse its work, to watch the dirt and them lift off and fly into the sky before he woke. What he would find when that happened he didn't know, he didn't know what Lucifer had done and he glanced over.
The angel was leaned back on his portion of the bench seat, unbuttoned collar flipping in the wind tunnel caused by open windows. That blue soft cloth that made his eyes put clear skies to shame, as though he had snatched some part of heaven on his way out of hell. His legs stretched out, dark hair flipped at odd angles with hands clasped in his lap patiently waiting for the slow human travel portion to be over.
Sam blanked his mind to traitorous thoughts that angels shouldn't be striped of things they were shaped with.
"Should I ask why you're smiling?" since he was fairly sure that's what the little pull at the angel's mouth was.
"I was thinking of what Gabriel would say about my assisting you in your car theft."
"He would mock you endlessly," Sam said, no hesitation.
It helped not to think of the gaps Michael had filled in. Of finding his baby brother dead, wings burned in a silent effigy in that God forsaken hotel. Of how that was the final hammer against the nail that made Michael know he could not walk away.
Think of a naked man before a starving lion, Sam, the angel had whispered in hell. That was the power difference between them, only Lucifer did not need to strike.
Shifting, Michael said something so quiet that Sam almost didn't catch, not that hearing helped. It was in that language of theirs, all husky and always an octave below angry. He didn't want to press, not something he knew was still open and bleeding, and relished the comforting rhythm of the wind flowing around them.
"So, want to fill me in on not just hot lining it up to heaven?" he finally asked when another hour has pushed past.
"I cannot hear heaven and Raphael is," Michael paused and Sam felt this was a terrible sign. "It would be unwise to contact him in our current situation."
Sam nodded since that was all there was to do.
"In fact," the archangel continued, "for a long time I felt he preferred Lucifer's vision, of humanity scrubbed out. My indifference allowed such a thing to fester in my want for the final command to be finished."
The way he said it, so final in that verdict as if there wasn't another way ever and he killed the words he wanted to say. He risked another glance over instead. Not much had changed and he wondered if Michael could hold one position for centuries without an urge to move. There was a want to press, to ask how the angel really was but he figured all he would get would be some form of 'functional'.
Sam wondered how many eons had dragged past with the angel just barely this side of operational.
"Things feel less, uh, floaty," he offered as the radio was broken and the silence was too great now. Like he couldn't hit a happy medium on sound tolerance and yeah, that was probably a broken Sam thing.
"Good, it will improve."
Silence again and he knew he was fidgeting. Fingers drumming, free foot thumping against the floor as if tempting it to fail as the bed had. Michael had been present for the creation of pretty much everything, was sitting here with him, and he had so many questions about just that. His inner geek, as Dean would bemoan, longed to know how the stars were created, where the moon came from. Or maybe just the base question of how the hell this bond thing worked and what exactly Michael had done, outside of soul spackle, since answers over that were vague.
Vague was such a bad thing in his world. Vague was what got them into trouble, him and Dean. It was the hint of enough to draw them to trouble but not offer anything of value on how to scrabble back out. And vague was what he got when he knew it went far beyond ripping little angelic pieces off to save a pesky human intent on flaming out.
Yet, just seeing the angel so damn solemn and unmoving made the questions die in his throat.
Most of what he knew of Michael, of what he had experienced, where the worst moments in this creature's existence peppered with brief flares of joy. There had to be more, there had to be a greater number than just some bare minimum of happy times. Christ, him and Dean had screwed up childhoods but he thought they managed more joy than that. At least up to the last couple of years when everything went so wrong so fast.
Maybe he had been wrong about that too.
He blinked a few times, pushing away that blurring of his vision and that need to touch. The deep ache of how they had been in hell and Christ, he was missing something from hell. When it felt more threatening, like everything was about to spill out the angel shifted. An arm across the back of the seat, hand loose on his shoulder. He caught his sigh just before it found freedom.
XX
"You should rest."
A flat statement and he wanted to protest, point out just how fine he was. They hadn't crashed, the truck was on the road nice and straight. It wasn't even that late and they had hundreds of miles to cross and it wasn't going to get done if he stopped.
But he knew, oh he knew it was coming back. The world feeling decidedly more ethereal, finicky in how much it desired to exist for him. He was starting to jump at shadows he thought were caught in the headlights but weren't actually there. It didn't take fabulous angel powers to know he needed a break.
"Can you drive? Do angels drive?" Not that he wasn't sure Michael couldn't master vehicle mechanics after having to herd heaven into not self-destructing. "Stupid question. I mean you can figure it out."
"You need actual rest –"
"I can sleep here," and he didn't mean to sound so defensive, for the words to have that much bite. "Used to it, I mean. Sleeping in cars."
"Sam, it would be ideal –"
"I can't, we have to get there –"
"Samuel, listen to me," and he was instantly reminded of John with that tone. The one that said 'you will do this because I know best' and it bristled inside him. "It will restore your sense of reality faster. Whatever has happened, it has been a few weeks. A few more hours is not going to make a difference."
"Yeah, well, I guess you say that 'cause it's not your brother."
He instantly regretted those words, grateful he couldn't see the angel's face in the low light of the dash dials. There was a volatile mixture of anger and grief sloshing freely in him, waiting to mix to the right equation to just explode. He hated that the angel was right. He hated that he got to rest while Dean could be suffering.
Michael didn't offer anything else but when a sign came up proclaiming a decent place he eased them off onto the exit. At least he had managed to make some form of ID for them they could stay at a place that didn't have a weekly murder rate. Well, if they had more of a choice then a spot on the side of the road and he inwardly sighed.
"Sam," the angel said, catching his sleeve as he made to get out. It had started pouring again, the sound loud and tinny, drowning out his ragged breath. "You are my priority now."
"Yeah," and he choked in the strange bitterness that was blooming sharp, that all of this was too little, too late. "I get it. Got to protect the broken, freak human. The weak link you've been saddled with."
He was opening the door, shirt almost free of those fingers when Michael curled them firmly around.
"Stupid child. Why must you always push?"
"Because I'm stupid," Sam said dully, feeling the exhaustion all at once as rain found its way in through the partially opened door. All driving and cold that soaked in deeper than it should have.
Michael released him, turning his focus back to the blue stucco wall they were parked in front of, as if daring it to vex him too.
XX
At least waking up this time around was going better. One he had clothes on. And two, while he was not alone, Michael was sitting on top of the covers leaned back against the headboard with the notebook balanced on his lap.
He could have done without waking up with his face smooshed against the archangel's hip, however.
"You are fine, Sam," Michael told him, tone not as dull as it had been the night before. "If I minded you touching me, you wouldn't be."
Not that the subtle threat of violence did much to help him feel endeared and Sam worked on getting himself less horizontal and more joined with the waking world. Some secret holed up compartment of his brain gave him the image of his sleeping self constantly chasing Michael around the bed until said angel just gave up the fight. As if there weren't a selection of other, perfectly viable seating options in the room beginning with the other bed and not ending with the chairs.
"What?" Michael was saying and Sam was so glad that mind reading wasn't currently a thing.
"Nothing. Weird dreams."
He left off the other questions, such as why. Last night had been an endurance of silence and cold stares, of clipped words and little else. Sam had been far more convinced he would wake up alone, Michael having left to go start walking to where ever he felt instead of staying. Yet here he was, looking comfortable as always, hair smoothed into its slick sheen with clothes all neat and proper.
Sam tried not to contemplate what archangels without wings did while their human charges slept. Some things were better off left to the void.
"Guessing you're researching," he ventured, getting himself unwound from a layer of sheets and the cheap comforter that felt like sandpaper against bare arms. At least he could trust Michael not to sit in bed with him while surfing for dubious things, like porn. Unlike Dean, who had no natural boundaries of good taste. Sam secretly thought his embarrassment was the real entertainment for his brother. It was something he tried to classify as an annoying, enduring and disturbing older brother thing.
"For omens."
Sam rubbed at his face, trying to push away the 'just came too' feeling, knowing he should be grateful for the free internet and it providing distraction to the sleepless being currently bound to him. At least he hadn't woken up to Michael's focus entirely on him. A handful of Cas experiences in that regard had taught him Dean's complaints of creepiness were well founded on that front.
"Anything interesting?"
"Actually, yes." Michael was already turning the overly luminescent screen towards him and he flipped on the beside lamp to lessen glare. A room of nondescript browns, both intended and earned with age, swam up into his blurry vision and he squinted. "An unprecedented storm about a month ago."
The headline stood out in its black bold face, "Falls Under Siege From Mother Nature" with photos of mauled trees and shattered glass. A caption informed him of record breaking winds and hail stones, among other affronts to the locals.
"Demons?"
"Angels," Michael said quietly. "The article states that some residents reported shrill, siren like sounds and earth movements. Of course, the scientists'," and Sam smiled at the air quotes, "claim it was from the unparalleled storm."
"So a heavenly brawl?" His brain was finally slipping itself into drive. They were going to the right place, just not towards anything bearing good news. "Some sort of spat that was angry, but not to a city destroying level?"
"I believe that is the situation," Michael said, snapping the notebook shut. "Sam, we need weapons."
"Something like guns we'd have a hard time getting currently." He tried to think about what they could actually use. Wasn't like they had easy access to holy oil and not a whole lot else worked on heaven's rodents outside of actually getting one of their swords or banishing them. Which would probably banish Michael too. He so did not want a phone call from a grumpy archangel sort-of spouse stuck somewhere, like Australia.
"Knives?"
"Those are easier. Plus, we need to pick up supplies and make holy water. Don't know exactly what's floating around out there at this point. With all of this."
"I will need something to engrave with," Michael stated with a look that clearly expected this to happen within the next hour or so.
"Yeah, okay," Sam finally stood, trying to stretch that weariness that seemed deep this morning. To loosen up joints that still felt stiff from not being lived in. "I can be ready in a few."
As he ambled to the bathroom he made himself not think about the possibility that Dean had been caught up in an angelic free for all, or Bobby for that matter. As though his brain ever obeyed him and he couldn't abandon it or the sudden cut of grief, deep and black, that he had lost Bobby all over again.
XX
He held in a curse as the truck hit another small hole and glanced at the angel living dangerously across from him. Michael was completely unphased, knife still balanced against his thigh as he carved into the blade. Of course he had gotten the lecture that it wouldn't hurt him, that he still retained his healing powers for his vessel.
What he really hadn't needed was the live demonstration of the archangel stabbing himself to drive that point him, literally. Nope, hadn't needed that in his life at all or the ideas of Michael testing his limitations in bloody fashion while he slept.
So the last couple of hours where him silently sweating in fear and Michael probably laughing at him without showing a trace of it. He'd like to point out that he could worry however much he wanted, and about whom he wanted, thank you very much when a flash interrupted his ruminations. Michael was inspecting the blade in the light before sliding it into its sheath. He was fairly certain that was the second, which was good as they were closing in on Bobby's old place.
"Sam," Michael said, tone with that same odd flatness. Sam made a noise that he was listening. "Pull over."
Some wild thought rattled loose, one proclaiming that the angel was just going to stab him and leave him out here for being annoying. Drive off in their stolen truck while laughing and damn, his mind was gone. Not that he couldn't get those thoughts to stop boiling over but he did as asked, the shoulder wide enough. It hadn't occurred to him in his unfounded fear to turn off the truck until Michael reached over and did it for him.
Engulfing silence and he was suffocating from that alone.
"I do not know what you want from me," Michael finally stated and Sam looked over. The angel was rigid, more than usual, hands on his knees as he took in the road stretched before them, every part of him was tensed to the point of snapping. "I do not know what you want me to say, or what to say that would make you understand I want to be here with you."
"Because it's better than hell?" He hadn't meant to say that, to sound so trite. With a lack of anything to do with himself he leaned an elbow on the door, paint flaking off in small dusty clouds of white from the friction. He couldn't look back over, eyes on the fields outside trying to come out of winter and be green. "I'm the reason you got stuck down there –"
"Stop!" and Michael was right there. There hadn't been a sound, no movement of the springs, no warning creak from shifting weight. The angel so close he could feel his breath on him. "You have to stop this."
"It's true," Sam offered because it was. "Even if you're the reason I exist to be a meat puppet, that doesn't mean I didn't do all the other stuff."
"I refuse to pity you, Samuel Winchester. And I will not listen to you drowning in it for yourself."
Sam surprised himself when his response was a laugh, coarse and harsh against the absurdity of all of this. "And what am I then? Cause I'm pretty sure I'm the boy that almost ended the world because he thought he knew better. That everything I touch is always doomed to break."
"Foolish child," and Michael was somehow closer, hand in his hair and that heat a cloying blanket moving in layers over him. "Look at me."
Those eyes, they scared him as though they were in the process of dissecting and judging his soul. He wished he could channel his brother, have some smartass thing to tell off all of this. Yet, that attempt was flat and he just stared back, asking, "How can you stand to even touch me after what I've done?"
That hand tightened in his hair, and he made himself not show that it was a beat from pain.
"You think you have a specialty on sin, Sam, knowing mine?" That voice was commanding, as if mere moments from liberating his head from his shoulders and he shivered under its weight. "Why must you continually wear it like your shame is a mark of pride?"
Sam didn't have an answer to that. He opened and closed his mouth like a beached guppy unable to grasp the whole breathing idea until Michael blessedly continued.
"Redemption, Sam, is not wallowing in the pain of the past." His hair was released, fingers rubbing along his scalp. It was something he would never have, a strange twisted peace that it was always beyond him. "You have to forgive yourself, not idealize or rationalize it."
"Have you? Forgiven yourself, I mean?"
The words stumble free as the cab was suddenly much too constricting without the free flowing air from vents and windows. Even this early in the year it was too warm in the sun, a glare across the windshield from its harsh hands and he wanted to open the door. Get himself into clear air that was a luxury. Just feel and know it was real.
Michael drew away and Sam looked, seeing that carefully crafted blank face that didn't reach those eyes. Something was pressed into his hands and he saw it was one of the knives in its sheath. He slid it out a bit, looking at the marks, brilliant and true against the steel. Deep enough to stay but light to not advertise what it was until the last moment.
"That one is yours," the angel said. "I do not regret being with you."
Swallowing, Sam pinned the blade between his thigh and the seat before turning the keys. Engine roaring as Michael rearranged himself on the passenger side. For one brief shining moment he almost let it slip that he was afraid. Afraid that Lucifer had them and that this was a trick to break them more. To watch them grow close only to rip it away by the reality of hell.
He couldn't and he pulled the truck back onto the road, not wanting to know if Michael might feel the same.