Damning and Dizzying In Equal Measure

When they pull Michael Shurley out of the back of the ambulance, Adam’s first thought is DOA. Then, when he sees the oxygen mask and the frantic techs holding his head together, he thinks, alright then, dead by morning. His third thought is, “This is so not what I signed up for.”

Michael’s got three broken ribs, water in his lungs, and a soft spot on the back of his head the size of the palm of Adam’s hand. Apparently, he’s flatlined twice in the ambulance, with three more reported stops from the guy who pulled him out of the water. He’s also soaking wet, of course, because he had somehow managed to take a header off the mill bridge in the middle of town. 

And there’s kids getting out of the squad car that followed them in. They’re crying. Shit. Adam glances over his shoulder and, with a nod from his superior, jogs over to where they’re huddled by the edge of the intake bay.

There’s three of them, all younger than Adam. The younger two can’t be far out of middle school. They’re all crying, and the oldest is wet and shivering, so he pages over to triage to prepare for an intake eval. 

“Hey, guys,” he calls as he approaches. “My name’s Adam, I’m a summer trainee. I’m going to take you all over to triage to get looked over and then I have some questions for you, is that okay?”

The oldest one bristles. “No, it’s not. We’re not hurt. Just let me back there.” He stares Adam down with a look that’s apparently supposed to be intimidating, but his eyes are red and exhausted and his bangs are dripping water down his face and he just looks kind of pathetic. “We don’t need triage and we don’t need questions.”

“Actually, unless you’re secretly over the age of eighteen, you don’t really have a choice. Think of the kids, man. You ever heard of shock?” Adam raises an eyebrow at the girl clinging to the kid’s waist and the boy staring up at them with wide eyes. “You’ve gotta take care of them and yourself before you can help Michael. He’s going to be in surgery for a while, anyway.”

“Yeah, surgery and then a body bag. I’m not fucking stupid, Adam. ” The younger boy starts sobbing again at the guy’s raised voice and Adam sighs, dropping down onto his heels and looking up at the kid.

“Hey, buddy, I know this is really stressful right now, but you’re going to be alright. Do you and your sister want to come inside with me and get some blankets and hot chocolate?” The kid’s probably twelve or thirteen, but everyone needs a little babying when they’ve just watched their… sibling? friend? guardian? get hurt.

The kid sniffs and looks at him, then up to the older boy. “Luce, can I-”

“No. You’re not going anywhere. We’re waiting here for Mike and Dad. Don’t listen to him,” he snaps. 

“Alright,” Adam sighs. “Listen, dude, if you’re going to be combative, don’t do it in front of the kids. They’ve been through enough tonight, they don’t need-”

Lucifer gets up in his face, hands raised like he might take a swing. “Fuck what you think they need! I’m not going to sit around in there and twiddle my thumbs while-”

“And that’s enough of that,” Adam says as he beckons to the officer that brought them in and the guy’s “gently persuaded” to come sit in a squad car for a little while. Adam throws his arms over the kids’ shoulders and takes them to Trish, who’s waiting with open arms and warm blankets.

“So, can you tell me what happened?” he asks the girl. Her name is Raphael, he’s learned. He’s also found out that the boy’s name is Gabriel and the guy he was talking to before is Lucifer. They’re Michael’s younger siblings, and they were horsing around on the bridge when Michael fell over the edge.

“We were, we were fake sword fighting, with sticks, you know? Me and Gabe.” She huffs a weak laugh. “Michael and Luce were watching, and then Luce started playing with us. Michael went to sit on the edge of the railing, and I guess… I guess he fell in. I don’t know, I didn’t see it.” She sniffs and buries her face in her hands. “I’m sorry,” she mumbles. “I’m just…”

“Hey, it’s alright. You have every reason to cry. Gabe?” He turns to the younger kid, who’s leaned against Raphael’s shoulder staring down at the floor. “Did you see what happened to your brother?”

“No,” he mutters miserably. “I was still playing with Raphael. Lucifer saw him fall, but he didn’t get there in time to grab him.”

Raphael cuts in. “Michael was probably in the water for a minute, maybe a minute and a half. Not long, but long enough, apparently.”

“You know something about medicine, don’t you?” he asks. Raphael’s been giving him the steadiest facts so far, describing everything she saw and heard about Michael’s injuries with shocking clarity for someone so young. It’s good, it gives Adam something to tell Doctor Roland and the police. Roland needs it for the treatment, to get a better picture of what happened, and the police need it to make sure nothing… suspicious happened, especially with Lucifer acting the way he is. 

Raphael picks her head up, rubbing her eyes. “I want to be a doctor.”

“Oh, yeah? What kind?”

“E.R.. I want to be there to save people’s lives.” Raphael shrugs like it’s nothing, but he can see the intensity in her eyes. “People shouldn’t have to die just because there’s no one there to help them.”

Adam sets a hand on her shoulder and squeezes gently. “That’s really cool. You know, I’m pre-med at the University of Wisconsin. I could talk to you about that later, if you’re still around.”

Raphael nods and gives him what might be the ghost of a smile, but then the door opens and Trish sticks her head in. 

“Raphael? Gabe? Your brother is looking for you. He wants you to go back home and get some sleep.”

“You know what?” Adam says. “That’s probably a good idea. I think I might do the same thing.” He gets up and walks with the kids to the door. Just as they’re about to leave, he stops and says, “Hey, guys? Good luck. I hope your brother’s okay.”

As soon as the door shuts, he wonders if the body will be gone by the time he shows up for tomorrow’s shift. 

The body is not gone. The body is lying in the post-surgery ICU wing, because Michael Shurley somehow survived getting his head pieced back together and didn’t even go into a coma. He’s asleep and hooked up to a million machines when Adam follows Roland in for a vitals check, and Lucifer is sitting in the chair next to him watching movies. 

“Hey,” he says as they walk in, looking much calmer than last night. Adam restrains himself from making a quip about bail money for the sake of his program position.

“Hello, Mr. Shurley. Are your parents here yet?” Dr. Roland inquires. Right. Adam had heard that from Rosie on the way in. Three kids and a sort-of-adult come into the E.R. and there’s been no parent to speak of for nearly ten hours.

“No, but Mike’s an adult, right? He doesn’t need any parents here.” Lucifer leans back in the chair and tries again to dish out the evil eye, but he’s obviously nervous.

“Michael doesn’t need an adult, but you might if you stay here for much longer. And I’d like to speak with a parent or guardian regarding future steps once Michael wakes up.”

Right. Future steps. Because if, by some miracle (which Michael seems to be good at), Michael ever comes off life support, he’s probably going to have some major issues. With a hit to the back of the head like that, they were talking motor impairment, visual issues (maybe blindness or even hallucinations), and speech and balance problems. Michael was not going to be a happy, healthy character. 

“Yeah, well, that’s in the future, isn’t it?”

“The future” turned out to be Wednesday afternoon, three and a half days after the accident. Adam’s working a pretty quiet desk shift when the call button for Michael’s room rings.

See, maybe if Adam were smarter, if he had a little more common sense, he would have stayed behind. He would have alerted Roland and kept doing his job and never thought of Michael Shurley again. But he wasn’t smarter, and he couldn’t stop thinking about Michael’s case.

It was fascinating, on both a medical and personal level. Adam loved neuroscience, wanted to specialize in it in med school, and the chance to observe an injury like Michael’s first-hand while still in undergrad was practically unheard-of. Adam had been busy that last few nights, taking copious notes on Michael’s injuries, scans, and physical recovery and sending them back to his advisor along with hypotheses and predictions. This would go a long way towards developing his senior thesis, even longer if Michael stayed awake for any period of time. 

To be honest, though, his interest isn’t strictly professional. Adam wants to know what had gone down that night. He wants to know why they’d been up there. He wants to know why Lucifer’s such a bitch and why there aren’t any parents involved. More than anything, he wants to know how a sober, athletic twenty-two year old managed to fall off a thick railing with absolutely no wind or outside interference. 

Turns out, he would get some of those answers starting today. Michael was indeed awake when Adam, Roland, and two nurses rushed into his room, but only in the barest sense of the word. Lucifer is bent over him, accompanied by both Raphael and Gabriel, and Michael’s watching them with hazy, half-lidded eyes, obviously panicked and confused. 

“Alright, everybody out. All three of you, go,” Roland orders. Children in hospital rooms were a hazard, especially emotional ones, and she doesn’t need the distraction. 

Adam tucks himself into a corner of the room and watches in fascination as Dr. Roland leans down to Michael’s level and the nurses begin checking his vitals. 

“Hello, Michael,” she says. “Are you with me?” No response. Michael’s brow twitches, but he doesn’t seem otherwise able to respond. “Alright, that’s okay. How about this: can you shake your head?” Michael stares at her for another moment before shaking his head clumsily back and forth, looking more like a dying fish than a person. Cerebellum injuries. Hate to see it, love to study it. “Good,” Dr. Roland encourages. “That was good, Michael! Now, I know your brain’s not totally mush in there,” she laughs.

So Michael can still understand and respond to spoken words. Simple commands, but still. Roland moves on to the next part of the exam. “Michael, I need you to try to talk for me. Can you do that?” 

Michael frowns, lips moving spastically and eyes rolling all over the place. That’s interesting, Adam’s never seen a real-life display of loss of ocular muscle control before. Finally, Michael manages to make a dry, helpless squeak that quickly turns into a harsh cough. 

“I’m really sorry, Michael, but I can’t give you any water until I know you won’t choke on it. Are you alright?”

“Uhhh….” Michael manages. “Uh… yuh.” 

“Yes?”

“Yuh.”

“Good. That’s good,” Roland reassures him. “It’s totally normal for someone who’s been hit as hard as you have to have trouble speaking and controlling your mouth right away. And you can understand me, right?” Michael nods. “What about the voice in your head? Can you hear what you want to say and it just won’t come out?” Michael frowns, confused. “Let me rephrase. Can you hear what you want to say in your head, but your mouth won’t move, or are things getting jumbled and you don’t know what to say?”

“Fffffff-” Michael breaks off in frustration. “Ffffffffff- fir’ one.” 

Adam makes a mental note to look back over what he knows about the parietal lobe. Slurred speech isn’t uncommon with parietal injuries, but that lobe doesn’t process language. Roland’s right, if Michael’s having trouble talking, it probably has more to do with fine motor control and general muscle weakness and less to do with mental disability, which is good. Speech can be retrained; thinking is harder. 

“Alright, Michael, I know you’re tired, so I just need you to do one more thing for me right now. I’m going to hold up my finger, and I need you to follow it with your eyes. Here we go.” Roland holds up her finger, but Michael doesn’t react at all. Roland frowns. “Michael? Can you see my finger?” Michael shakes his head. “Alright, what can you see?”

Michael makes a vague, noncommittal noise and coughs again, wincing. “D’know… d’sribe ‘t.” 

“You don’t know how to describe what you see?” Michael nods. “Okay. Visual distortion is also common following occipital lobe damage, but it should improve over the next few days. I’m going to leave you with Nurse Jay and Nurse Lenny now, but I’ll be back later today,” she says. She gestures to Adam to follow her and they head out into the hallway. 

Dr. Roland sighs and opens her computer, starting to document what they’d seen. “That wasn’t the first time he’s woken up, just the first time he’s been lucid enough to talk to me. I’m honestly shocked he was able to respond so comprehensively.”

Adam nods. “Do you think he’ll be alright?”

“Adam, I have no idea.”

Adam misses the epic shouting match that goes down when Lucifer and the other kids leave, and he can’t say he’s too upset about it. According to Rosie, they were given a choice: produce a parent, or leave. They chose to ditch Michael, who can’t talk clearly yet, let alone get up and walk out and take care of himself. Adam punches a wall on his behalf and decides, fuck it. He’s going to help this kid. 

“Doctor Roland?” Adam knocks on the doorframe of her office, peeking his head in.

“Come in. What’s the matter, Adam?” Roland looks up from her PC and over the top of her glasses to smile tiredly at him.

He takes a few steps in, but doesn’t sit. “I was wondering, could I spend some time working with Michael Shurley? Part of my senior thesis is traumatic brain injury recovery, specifically focused on the few weeks following the incident, and I think it might really be useful to get some notes from a real patient.”

Roland purses her lips, considering. “What exactly do you plan on doing to my patient, Adam?”

“Nothing, nothing bad, I promise. I just- you have him set up to work with a physical therapist, right?” Roland nods. “I was thinking I could do the exercises with him instead, maybe save him the medical bill. They can’t be too hard, right?” 

It’s not just about the exercises, Adam knows. He knows Roland knows, too. She knows without either of them saying a word that he hasn’t been able to get Michael Shurley’s story out of his head, not any of it. Not the desperate faces of his siblings, not the mystery of his accident, and certainly not the resigned hopelessness on his face when Adam had to tell him that his brothers and sister had left him there, that no one was coming to help him. God, they were practically the same age, and Adam just wants to help. Just wants to be there, as if that would make it any better. Or maybe he wants to satiate the morbid curiosity that tells him Michael lives a much more exciting life than Adam’s current routine of medical internships and lonely apartments and too much free time. 

Even so, Roland nods, and thus begins the longest, strangest week of Adam’s life so far.

At first, “physical therapy” isn’t quite the right word to describe what Adam does with Michael. Michael sleeps most of the day, and the parts that aren’t taken up by sleeping are filled with the endless struggle to eat, drink, and speak. Michael is gaining better control of his mouth and throat, but the depth perception issues and visual distortion are making it very hard for him to get food from container to mouth without creating a disaster.

“Okay, one more try, and then I promise, we’re done.”

Michael huffs in aggravation, but nonetheless grabs at the spoon as Adam hands it to him. After two misses, he gets a hold of it. From there, it’s a game of finding the opening at the top of the pudding can, which Adam holds steady for him. The pudding is in the spoon. It’s en route to Michael’s open mouth. It’s… on the side of Michael’s face. 

Michael drops the spoon and lets out a strangled scream. 

Adam sighs and picks the spoon up, wiping it off and trying to keep a smile on his face. “Hey, man, you were closer that time. That’s progress!”

Michael makes a sound Adam has learned to interpret as “yeah, right” and rolls his eyes.

Wait. 

Rolls his eyes?

“Michael! Dude, you rolled your eyes! That’s like, way better than yesterday.” Yesterday, by the time Adam had headed home, Michael had been too tired to even make eye contact and had mumbled something along the lines of “Everyone’s so big.” Now, according to him, things were closer to the right size, and he had just achieved Eye Roll. “I should get you a badge book. ‘Achievement unlocked! Roll Your Eyes in Homicidal Frustration!’”

Michael rolls them again, but laughs despite himself. Well, Adam knows it’s a laugh, even if it doesn’t quite sound like one. “Ree-ee suh’s, know tha’?” 

“Huh?”

“Th-t-this. Really. Suh’s, oo know tha-t?” This really sucks, you know that?

“Yeah, I bet it does,” Adam agrees. He wipes the pudding off the side of Michael’s face and scoops out another spoonful. “Do you want me to feed you this shit? That looks like a lot of work for some fucking chocolate pudding.” 

Michael shrugs, looking humiliated and exhausted, but nods. He opens his mouth, but looks away as Adam brings the spoon to him. Adam’s gathered over the last day or so that Michael must have been one proud son of a bitch, or at least very independent, and he hated not being able to do things. It’s not just the motor skills, Adam knows. It’s the fact that his memory doesn’t last more than an hour or two and he can’t keep things straight. He is, for the time being, helpless. He’s been making improvements, though, improvements of the sort that make Adam think it isn’t all over for Michael Shurley. He’s still in there. Trapped in his head, yes, but in there. In the whole grand scheme of brain recovery, a day awake was nothing, and Michael still has a long way to go and a long time to get there. 

In the meantime, though, Adam could make things a little less awkward. “Hey, Michael, do you go to college?” Michael looks back at him long enough to fix him with a withering look, then gestures to his face. “Oh, right. Sorry. No questions, then. That’s alright, I’ve been called talkative. Also annoying, but mostly talkative. Anyhow, I saw this documentary last night about the effects of the pharmaceutical drug industry on crime in America. You know, it really pisses me off that…”

“Adam?” 

Two days later, and Michael’s speech has improved so much, Adam hardly believes it. He would say it’s like talking to a whole new person, but it’s not. It’s more like… going back to pet the same rabid  dog, but this time, the muzzle’s off. “Yeah, Mike, what’s up?”

“Why ar-are you s’ill here?” 

Oh. Okay, they’re going there, then. “I don’t know, because it’s my job?” They’re watching Disney. This is so not his job.

“‘M no’chure damsel in dis’ress.” Michael frowns at him from over the top of the puzzle he’s doing. Roland thinks the key to unlocking more of his logic and memory skills is to exercise them with games, so that’s what they’ve been doing. And watching TV. And talking. And laughing, even though Michael won’t admit it. 

“I know. I’m not treating you like one. I’m treating you like a patient. Also like a peer because we’re the same age and, I don’t know, you seemed lonely.” 

“Not lonely.” Michael sets his puzzle down, throws his arm over his eyes, and pretends to sleep until Adam leaves. 

On the third day, Raphael comes back. At first, Adam doesn’t even realize it’s her. She blends well with the crowd, walking right up to the door while he and Michael are playing UNO and knocking before either of them know she’s there. 

Michael’s face goes even paler than before and Adam turns around to see what he’s looking at. Raphael’s watching them from just inside the door, not moving, just staring. Just like Michael did before he got to know Adam.

Know. As if it’s been three weeks instead of three days. Adam needs to take a step back. 

“Hey, Raphael,” Michael says, remarkably slur-free. It’s been one of the fastest things to go, faster than the lingering “bright lights” and shaking hands.

“Hello. Why are you still here?” she asks Adam, and he doesn’t know if she means still here from earlier in the week, or still here because he should give them privacy, so he shrugs. Whatever wack-ass shit is about to go down, he needs to be here as the only capable adult in the room. 

“He’s a friend.” Michael watches her walk up to the bed, lets her touch his arm. 

“How are you?”

“Getting better. How did you get here?” Michael squints up at her, trying to read something in her face. “Is-”

Raphael moves , and Adam’s not sure what it is, but it scares the shit out of him. He couldn’t even describe how she moves, because she doesn’t, not really, but it’s something. A tension. She doesn’t want Michael to finish that sentence, and he doesn’t. 

“I’m here alone. I took the bus from Aunt Jody’s house. I want to stay, but I have a school project due in the morning. Dad is home from his work trip; he’ll be here to pick you up in a few days.”

“Oh,” is all Michael says, and then, “I love you,” and Raphael repeats it, and then she’s gone. Later, Adam asks the desk girl which way she went, but she never saw her. 

“So, Michael,” Adam starts a few hours later. They haven’t mentioned the Raphael visit yet, and Michael probably deserves a bit of a break from trying to touch all his fingers to his thumb one by one. It’s harder than it looks when your sensory processing system is doing the Bashed In Skull Tango. “How come just Raphael came by earlier?”

“I dunno,” he says. There’s a pause, and then, “Wait, what did you ask? Sorry.”

“No problemo. Just was wondering why Raphael came over by herself earlier.” 

Michael shrugs, right shoulder much more in control than the left. Adam will have to tell Roland about that later. “I don’t know. She does what she wants.”

“Hmm.” Adam rolls that one over in his mind for a moment before deciding to soldier on with this line of questioning. “I have another question.”

“Shoot.”

“In the words of the proverbial weatherman vine, where’re your parents?”

Michael frowns. “I’m twenty-one.”

“Two. You’re twenty-two.”

“Either way, aren’t I allowed to live on my own?” Michael glances away, clearly trying to avoid the topic. 

“All of your siblings are minors,” Adam reminds him.

“I’m not.” 

Well, he’s not wrong. 

“Adam, what day is it?”

“It’s Thursday.”

“Adam, what day is it.”

“Thursday.”

“Adam, what day is it?”

“It’s Thursday, Michael.”

On Friday, it’s time to try walking. Michael’s been in bed for a week, not counting the several escape attempts that, rumor has it, ended with him flopping onto the floor and setting off nearly every alarm in his room. Bed, heart rate, IV attachment, everything. Adam had been off-duty all three times (he wonders if that had anything to do with it).

Now, though, it’s time for the real deal. The physical therapist will be doing most of the helping, but Adam’s there for emotional support, as well as emotional restraint. To keep Michael from throwing the walker out the window. 

Michael can hardly make his legs move of his own accord, at first. He spends an hour growing closer and closer to tears until Adam pulls him aside and they share a Twinky and a Gatorade and Adam reminds him that, four days ago, he could hardly talk, and he’s just finished cussing out every nurse in the place, so imagine what a little walking practice could do. 

It takes what seems like forever, but by four pm, Michael does a lap of the ICU with Adam’s arm under his shoulders. It takes them ten minutes, and Michael’s sweating and shaking by the end of it, but they make it. The doctors call it a miracle. Adam chalks it up to the desperate light that comes into Michael’s eyes whenever he thinks he might not be able to do something he used to anymore. 

Later that night, after dinner, Michael’s half-asleep and half-absorbed in an episode of Criminal Minds when he turns to Adam and says, “They’ll leave me here if I can’t do it, you know.” 

“What?” Adam’s blood runs cold. He prays to God Michael’s sleep-talking, but he turns his head and makes eye contact and Adam sees nothing but fear in his expression.

“My dad. Lucifer. They’ll leave me here if I can’t get better.” Michael frowns like he’s just realized he’s told Adam something horrible. “Don’t tell anyone,” he murmurs, and then he’s out. 

Bit by bit, Adam establishes a routine. Wake up, get to the hospital, get his mandatory chores done, then spend as much time as he can with Michael. In the time they’ve known each other, they’ve become something like friends. Adam knows Michael and Michael knows Adam. In Adam’s opinion, when you’ve seen bits of someone’s skull, it just brings you closer as people.

Michael’s come really far in the last week and a half. Yesterday, he was walking on his own, and, by Adam’s measurement, his short-term memory was up to almost thirteen hours, including a nap. There were still a lot of non-sequiturs in his conversations, and he clearly still had some trouble with keeping track of conversations and problems with multiple parts, but even his sight was clearing up. Adam was excited to go into work today. He had, for lack of a better term, a work friend. 

A work friend who was not in his bed when Adam came to wake him up.

Adam hurries to the front desk. “Rosie, where’s Michael?”

“Huh? Oh, Michael? He signed out last night, AMA. His dad picked him up. Sorry, Adam.”

Adam blinks. Well. That was the end of that, then. “It’s… It’s alright, Rose. Just wondering.”

Probably for the best he doesn’t get so attached to patients in the future. Michael was just another guy, and Adam’s never going to see him again. Might as well forget it.

And forget it, he does. For four whole months, he forgets about the weird guy he made friends with in the ICU. His program ends and he goes back to Wisconsin for the first semester of his senior year. His life continues to move forward without Michael Shurley in it. He even gets a new job as a lab assistant in the morgue.

“Adam, can you stay and lock up tonight? I have to get home and finish a paper for fucking Jones,” Karen calls across the morgue. 

“Sure, can do. ‘Night, Karen.” Adam closes his laptop and shoves it in his bag as he hears the door to the lab close. Karen had picked up all the stuff she was working on, and he hasn’t been using any of the equipment since maybe seven, so locking up and making sure everyone was signed out should take no time at all.

He and Karen had been working down here for the better part of a month, now, doing body intakes and busywork in exchange for access to the materials they needed for their theses. It’s kind of relaxing, actually, no one down here but the two of them, each in their own space, working quietly. It’s better than working at the library, at least, and that’s good enough for Adam. 

One of his favorite perks so far is the mountain of old research papers hiding in the depths of one of the closets. He and Karen spend a few minutes every day picking through them, looking for the best (or worst) ones to take home and dissect. Tonight’s find was an entire record of a 1976 symposium on developmental biology, which they’d split in half and agreed to look at overnight.

As Adam heads toward the front of the lab, locking things up as he goes, he pulls the papers out and starts browsing through them, letting himself get lost in transcripts of speeches given by people who were probably long-dead by now. One of them’s based on earlier methods of cladistics and lineage-tracing that must have fallen right before the phylogeny fight really started up. He might be able to spin this into something for his history project, actually. “The Origins of Scientific Schisms and the Societal Changes That Surround Them.” Yeah, that sounded nice.

He tucks the paper away again and heads for the front door, turning off the lights after double-checking that nothing had been left out of place on the lab tables. They’d had a group of freshmen come through earlier in the day, before Adam and Karen got here, and they tended to leave things in odd places. He doesn’t see anything, so he shuts the door and locks it behind him, dropping the keys into the slot at the security office on his way out. 

It’s late, later than they usually leave, which is probably why Karen was so desperate to go. Briefly, Adam wonders how they let time slip away from them like that. They’re typically more punctual, especially because Adam has an eight a.m. tomorrow morning. It’s already quarter past ten, and the campus grounds are empty.

Maybe that’s why the noise he hears moments later sends a chill down his spine.  It’s nothing super suspicious in and of itself, just a soft rustling from the alley next to him, but there’s no one around, and this part of the campus doesn’t usually have animals wandering through. Adam keeps walking, albeit a little quicker, staying in the street lights.

The rustle follows him. It’s still coming from his left, but it’s closer now, and he swears he hears a growl right after it. There’s the definite sense of being watched. Adam pulls his coat tighter around his shoulders.

Every little thing, every noise, every flicker of motion, startles him. He’s on edge now, heart pounding and palms sweating. Adam is not a paranoid man, but he’s also not a stupid man, and he knows that there’s been a series of rabid dog sightings on campus lately, usually accompanied by rumors of a weird old man. 

What does he have on him? Keys. Those could be useful between the fingers, but only close up. His phone- shit, his phone. He fumbles for it in his pocket, turning the flashlight on and shining it around. No use calling anyone yet, he can’t see anything. Maybe he’s just tired. 

Then, the shadow of the building next to him explodes. A huge dog, pitch-black and more teeth than fur, leaps out at him. Adam screams, dropping his phone and throwing himself towards the street. 

He lands hard, but the dog misses him. It scrambles to his feet just as he does, and Adam starts running for the nearest building, scooping his phone up along the way.

It’s no use. The thing’s so much faster than him, and the building’s probably looked anyway. Shit shit shit shit he’s going to die out here. The dog snarls and lunges again. This time, Adam’s not ready, and the thing knocks him over. 

He hits the ground back-first and the wind’s totally knocked out of him. He can’t yell, he can’t call for help, he can’t do anything but watch and fear as the thing pins him with its paws. It’s not a dog, Adam knows that for sure now. It’s got beady red eyes and dripping fangs and it’s looking at him with an intelligence that goes beyond the thrill of the hunt. 

Holy fuck, Adam is going to die.

The… the thing lowers its face towards Adam’s, snarling and drooling and breathing hot, stinking air out onto Adam’s face, and then there’s a shout from somewhere around them, and the thing is gone. Tackled off of Adam’s chest by something, some one moving with the force of a fucking train.

Adam rolls with the hit in time to see both dog and man go careening into the shadows, yelling and snarling, and he can’t tell which is which or who is who. 

“Run,” the guy screams at him. “Fucking run!”

Adam tries, he really does. But his legs won’t move and his chest is still paralyzed with the impact and the fear and he’s strangely mesmerized as the man scrambles to his feet and jumps at the dog. He’s got a knife, and for a moment, he thinks he’s going to stab it, but then, the dog just… disappears. Melts into thin air.

What the fuck. Adam’s hallucinating. That’s the only answer. He’s in shock and he’s hallucinating and now he’s hyperventilating and someone grabs his shoulders and shakes him hard.

“Come on, come on, we’ve got to go. Get up.” The guy with the knife takes his hands and yanks him to his feat. 

“Wait, wait, what’s… What was that? Who are you?” Adam demands, struggling against the man’s grip. He’s strong, much stronger than Adam, and he’s pulling him towards a running car on the other side of the street. “Hey, let go of me!”

“Come on,” the guy demands. “It’ll be back, and it won’t hesitate the second time. Hurry!”

Adam stumbles as the guy tugs him one last time, then looks over his shoulder and “Oh fuck, it’s back. Shit, it’s back.”

Then, they’re both running at a dead sprint for the car.

The guy jumps in the driver’s seat and doesn’t wait for Adam to close the passenger door before peeling away from the curb. There’s a thump and Adam screams as the dog thing hits the side of the car and jumps onto the hood.

“Fuck,” the guy curses. “Hold on!” He whips the car around the corner at breakneck speed, and the thing flies off. The tires squeal as he hits the gas and they’re off. Off campus, out onto the northway, away from the dog thing. “Is it gone?” he demands. “Look behind us, is it gone?” 

Adam turns, frantically checking the windows for any sign of the thing. “It’s gone. Holy shit, it’s gone.” The guy sighs in relief and slows down.

Adam’s heart rate starts to slow down. He looks across the car at his savior/kidnapper, and something clicks. Holy shit. No fucking way. “ Michael?” 

He’s not wrong. He knows he’s not, because even if he could mistake the voice and the hair and the eyes, there’s a surgical scar running up the back of his head with fresh, still-slightly-puffy stitch marks on either side. Holy shit.

“Yes,” Michael says, sounding resigned. “It’s me.”

“Wait, you knew I was going to be there when that thing attacked me? Are you stalking me, or something?” Adam’s mind is reeling. 

“I knew the dog would be there because I was following it. You were a coincidence.” Michael doesn’t take his eyes off the road, doesn’t hesitate or waver for even an instant as he speaks. “I recognized you when I picked you up off the ground.”

“Why were you following that thing? What was that thing? Why did you have a knife?” Adam’s rambling, unable to stop the questions once they start. He feels like he’s dreaming, or maybe he’s dead and this is the afterlife. 

Michael cuts him off. “I was following it because I was hunting it. It’s a black dog, a sort of mythological stand-in for any kind of harnessed spirit, usually ones tied to loyalty or honor, the upholding of a promise. I need more information before I can definitively say what sort of black dog it is, but I know it’s been hunting and killing people with a specific M.O., which means someone set it on you. Yes, it’s a monster, no, I’m not crazy.”

Adam blinks. “So… you’re saying that monsters are real and one is hunting me.”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t suddenly start hunting things after you fell of that bridge, did-”

“No, Adam,” Michael sighs, rolling his eyes. “I’m not experiencing delusions or hallucinations brought on by a brain injury. I’ve been doing this since I was a kid. I’m not crazy. Besides, you saw that thing, too.”

“I just had to check. I believe you.” And he does. For whatever reason, Adam is not that freaked out by this. Maybe it’s trusting his own senses. Maybe it’s trusting Michael. Maybe it’s the way monsters would so neatly explain everything he’s ever had questions about in his entire life. Whatever it is, Adam’s not actually afraid he’s in the car with a psycho. “Yeah, I believe you.” 

“Really? Just like that?” Michael glances over at him, eyebrows raised. “Wow, you’re lucky it’s me that picked you up and not some serial killer.”

“Hey! I’m not gullible. Like you said, I saw it, too. And, you know, it wouldn’t be the craziest thing ever, to be honest. Monsters being real, that is. There are stranger things in the world.” Suddenly, something occurs to Adam. “Wait, where are you taking me?”

“Back to my safehouse. You can’t go back home, they’ll be waiting for you. Like I said, whoever this is, they’re hunting you. If I had to guess, I’d say they think you committed some sort of sin against God, and they want to punish you. I let the last girl go home, and, well. The pieces of her that were left had definitely been chewed on by the same dog that got you.”

Bile rises in his throat and Adam gags. “Oh, God,” he says. “Yeah, alright, not going home tonight. Take me to your fucking safehouse or whatever.” 

As it turns out, Michael’s safehouse is actually a room at the Junebug Motel twenty minutes down the road from the campus. How it’s safer than his dorm escapes Adam until he walks in and sees the… well, the everything.

The room is covered in symbols, all written on the walls in what appears to be chalk. There’s salt across all the doors and windows, and, oh yeah, there’s a whole armory of weapons scattered around the room like they’re dirty clothes. Michael gestures around as if to say, “Make yourself comfortable.” Adam drops his bag by the door and starts wandering around, exploring the writing and the weaponry.

The symbols are diverse; some of them Adam recognizes as certain religions or languages, others, he’s unfamiliar with. There’s a laptop and a book titled Creatures of the North Country on the bed, and a journal of some sort next to them. Adam reaches out to touch the book and is stopped by Michael, who’s crept up behind him.

He grabs Adam’s wrist and pulls his hand away. “Don’t touch my stuff. Rule number one.”

Adam shrugs him off and walks over to the kitchenette, leaning against the counter and watching Michael clean his knife and put it in a bag with a few others. “Alright, what’s rule number two, don’t breathe?” 

“Rule number two,” Michael says, clearly aggravated, “is don’t go anywhere or do anything without asking me. Also, don’t be stupid and don’t talk to strangers.”

“You know, that’s a lot of tough-guy talk for someone I spoon fed pudding not half a year ago,” Adam quips.

Michael blinks at him, stunned. For a moment, Adam thinks he’s pushed too far, overestimated how much Michael remembers of their friendship, but he just shrugs and says, “That’s fair,” and as he turns away, Adam can hear the ghost of a smile in his voice.

“So,” Adam says, pulling out a chair at the table. “Monsters.”

“Monsters,” Michael agrees. “They’re bad.”

“‘Monsters. They’re bad.’ You know, that’s brilliant. Really insightful. Can I quote you on that?”

“Hey, watch it. I’m protecting you, you know that?” Michael scoffs, pulling another chair out and sitting down across from Adam. He smiles, and something in Adam’s chest does a little flip.

“Okay, okay,” he laughs. “Seriously, though, what’s up with all of this? The markings, the weapons, the disappearing dogs? How do you know all of this, and what do I have to do with it?”

Michael frowns, biting his lip and looking down thoughtfully. “Well, I told you monsters are real, and that’s a very broad statement. No one really knows how many made-up creatures are real, but in my experience, it’s most of them. The runes are protection, so are the guns. And knives. Also the sword. Anyway, as far as you go, you were hunted by a black-”

“A black dog, yeah I know. But why me? What’s so special about a college student?” Adam looks at his hands as if he expects to find the answer there, like something in him has changed since the last time he looked. 

“Unfortunately,” Michael says, “most of these attacks are random. Or, at least, to you they’re random.  Sometimes, people are targeted because they’ve somehow become involved in the supernatural, or they’ve done something wrong in their lives, but I’ve been tracking this particular dog across lower Wisconsin for a while now, and the nearest I can tell is you’ve caught the attention of a religious nutjob who’s managed to get his hands on a real spellbook.” Michael pulls another notebook out of his pocket and puts it on the counter, flipping through it and pushing it across to Adam once he reaches a certain page.

It’s two consecutive pages of handwritten notes on cases like Adam’s all across the area. People on their way home from work getting jumped by “rabid dogs,” but the coroners can give any solid evidence. There’s also some scribbling about names and addresses that mean nothing to Adam, along with a few symbols like the ones on the walls.

Michael clears his throat and starts to speak again. “Right there,” he says, pointing to a spot on the page with a list of names and occupations, “is the link between the victims. Every one of them holds a job that could be considered ‘sinful’ in the right eyes. Bartender, accountant, stripper, police officer, lawyer, all of them have jobs that Mr. Crazy decided were no good. And you, well, you’re working in a morgue. You’re desecrating bodies, disturbing God’s art.”

Adam frowns. “But if it’s related to the job, why just me?”

“Nighttime is the optimal striking time. You were out late tonight, an easy target. I’m sure you won’t be the only one. He’s just waiting for the right opportunity.” Michael shrugs, as if monster attacks are just another inconvenience to deal with, nothing special.

“Yeah, but Karen left just a few minutes before me. Why not her, too?” Adam remarks. Karen lives in an apartment just down the block from Adam’s dorm, she would have had to walk the same way.

Michael stills. “Who?”

“Karen. My lab partner.” 

Michael shoots to his feet, knocking the chair over in his haste. “You didn’t tell me there was someone else in the building.”

“What-”

“Come on. We might already be too late.”

When they pull up outside Karen’s building, they can’t find a place to park because it’s surrounded in police cars and ambulances, lights flashing and officers milling around. Someone’s roping the area off with yellow caution tape and there’s a cluster of vaguely familiar, lost-looking college kids out on the lawn. Adam is nauseous. 

“Wait here,” Michael says, and gets out of the car before Adam can say another word. He walks up to the nearest policeman and pulls out some sort of badge, Adam thinks. He can’t see it very well; Michael’s facing away from him. They exchange a few words, Michael nods, then shakes his head, then turns back to the car.

His face is grim and Adam knows even before he opens the door. “She’s dead,” he says as he starts the engine. “Torn to pieces. Roommate says it was a ‘huge black dog,’ bigger than she’s ever seen.”

“Holy shit,” Adam whispers. He’s tearing up, he can’t help it. Maybe he and Karen weren’t the best of friends, but she was someone he knew. He saw her almost every day. She’d shared her dinner with him tonight. 

That could have been him if Michael were a little later to the scene. 

He’s quiet for the rest of the ride back to the motel. 

Michael makes him go to sleep when they get back. He says he’ll need to be ready for the next morning, whatever that means. Adam doesn’t think he’ll be able to, but once he lays down, he’s shockingly worn out. He drifts off to the sound of Michael rustling through the pages of another book. 

He wakes up to Michael calling his name from across the room. He’s groggy and achy and the spot on his back where he hit the ground last night feels like it’s bruised. It’s light out, though, and a look at his phone tells him it’s seven thirty. 

He sits up, unsure of what to do next. Shockingly, he has no precedent to draw from for this particular social situation. It’s almost like a one-night stand with no sex. He’s never had one of those, anyway.

Michael’s standing at the foot of the bed now, staring at him, and Adam realizes Michael’s still wearing last night’s clothes. So is Adam, but that has a lot more to do with the fact that he doesn’t have anything to change into than anything else. 

“Did you sleep last night?” he croaks out.

“No. Get up.” Michael turns away once he sees that Adam’s moving, and returns to whatever he was doing in the kitchen. 

Adam groans his way through a few stretches and follows him to the counter, looking over his shoulder at the impressive array of papers Michael has laid out. There’s newspaper clippings, computer printouts, handwritten notes, and much more. 

“Hmm. Why not?”

Michael startles, looking over his shoulder and nearly headbutting Adam in the nose. “Why not what?”

“Why didn’t you sleep?” He doesn’t look all that tired, but then again, Adam’s default memory of his face is bruised and sick and exhausted, so what would he know?

Michael ignores him and pulls a box of cereal and two bowls down from the cupboard. “Here, I don’t have any milk.”

“Thanks.” Adam takes the bowl Michael hands to him, pouring some cereal in. “Got any spoons?”

“No.”

“Alright.”

They eat in silence for a few more minutes before Michael speaks. “I don’t sleep at night because it’s hard for me to wake up. Since I hit my head. Just so you know.” 

Oh. Yeah, that’s not surprising. Brain damage can make it hard to transition between waking and sleeping, and someone like Mike, who apparently fights monsters, probably wouldn’t like that very much. 

Oh, God, Michael fights monsters. A monster killed Karen last night. Adam’s awake enough now to have that little revelation all over again, and it’s like getting kicked in the stomach. He’s being hunted by monsters. A monster killed his friend. Monsters are real. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

Adam doesn’t wait for a response, just books it to the little en suite and shuts the door behind him. He throws the toilet open and bends over the lid, retching and collapsing to his knees. A sob comes out with the next one, and then he’s crying in earnest. He throws up again, and this time it comes out his nose, too. It burns and Adam is choking and the world is collapsing around him.

Nothing he thought was true is true. Monsters are real and could step into his life and wreck it at any moment, did step into his life and wreck it, when he least expected it. Just when he thought he was getting happy again. He coughs up more vomit and spits in the toilet, letting his head hang down until his cheek touches the seat and trying not to think about what germs might be on there.

He takes one deep breath and then another, letting images of black dogs and Michael with a knife and a headstone with Karen’s name on it fly behind his eyes. Michael is going to help him. He’s going to be okay. This is alright, he can deal with this. 

He sits up and wipes his mouth with a piece of scratchy toilet paper before moving to the sink and rinsing his face. He gargles a few mouthfuls of water and spits them out again before staring into the mirror and just… looking. Absorbing. Nothing about him has changed, even though it feels like the world turned inside out. He dealt with it last night, he can deal with it again today. Nothing has changed within himself, and he is the only thing he can control. He takes one last breath and walks back out of the bathroom.

“Okay, so what’s the plan?”

“Alright, so I’m going in there and packing up whatever I think I could need in the next week, right?” Adam looks out the window at his dorm, standing cheerful and familiar in the morning sun. 

“No.”

“Then what?” Adam asks.

“I’m coming in with you. I don’t want you on your own, even just to go in the building. Like you saw last night, physics doesn’t mean anything to these things, and I’d rather not have you get eaten before we can find the man who’s responsible for this.” Michael frowns out through the windshield, seemingly taking offense to something about the building. “You really live here?”

“Yes, where did you think I lived?” Adam opens the door and swings his legs out. 

“I don’t know. Not here.” Michael gets out and starts heading for the door. Adam jogs to catch up, putting his I.D. up to the lock to swipe them in.

“Alright,” he says to Michael. “My roommate might be home, so you have to be normal while we’re up there. No weird shit.”

Michael gives him a quizzical look. “When am I weird?”

Adam shakes his head, laughing. “Dude, when are you not weird? Come on, the elevator’s this way. I’m on the third floor.” 

Adam’s roommate is not, in fact, home, which is probably a good thing, because Michael walks into his room like one might walk into a funhouse, or maybe a museum time capsule display. He cranes his neck to look at the posters on the ceiling, then becomes mesmerized by Adam’s bookshelf. Everything that Adam considers normal is very obviously completely foreign to him. Not for the first time, Adam wonders what fucking planet he’s from. 

Finally, Michael’s eyes settle on the bi pride flag hanging over his bed. There’s a spark of recognition there, at least, and he turns to Adam and says, “Nice flag.”

“Thanks.” 

“I’m gay.”

“Okay.” Adam’s not sure what else to say. They both stand there for a moment, staring at the flag like idiots, before Adam thinks to move. “Alright, I’m going to grab my bag and pack some stuff up. Don’t… I don’t know, do anything dumb?”

Michael startles out of his daze, and Adam realizes he was staring at him, not the flag. “I don’t do dumb things.”

“Suuuuuuure. How did you fall off that bridge again?” Adam opens his closet and grabs his duffel bag, throwing his laptop and chargers in on the way to his dresser.

As he’s gathering toiletries, he hears Michael reply, “I was hunting zombies.”

Adam freezes. “Run that one by me again?” He doesn’t bother asking if Michael knows what a rhetorical question is, because he probably doesn’t want to know the answer. 

“I was hunting zombies. With my younger siblings. And one pushed me off the bridge.” Michael comes over to lean on the edge of the dresser. “I fell and hit my head, that part’s true. But I didn’t just fall for no reason.

“Ah, of course. Just your typical weekend zombie hunt with the fam.” Adam dumps a few shirts in his bag and walks over to his bed. “So, does that mean your siblings are monster hunters, too?”

Michael hums thoughtfully. “Yes. Ever since they were young. It’s… well, you might call it a family tradition.”

Adam grabs a few pairs of socks and his deodorant. “A family tradition? That sounds kind of fucked up. So you guys, what, save the world?”

Michael snorts. “Hah. No, definitely not. I’ve got a family, I can’t worry about saving the world. It’s hard enough trying to keep track of three kids.”

“What about your parents?” Adam asks, zipping his bag up and hiking it up on his shoulder.

Michael chews his lip for a moment before answering. “My mother died when I was four. My father is often busy with his own hunting endeavors. He relies on me to keep the family together. Other than that, he’s around to train me and the children. He’s… he’s a great man.”

“Hmm. Come on, I’m all done packing.” Adam decides not to comment on the dad situation. Not his place, not his business. He files it away for later, though, right next to the memory of the night when Michael had expressed his fears of being left behind. 

Michael walks next to him in his stiff, awkward way, glancing at him out of the corner of his eye until he finally decides to speak again. “What about your family? Are you close with them?” 

“Well, kind of like you, my dad was in and out for a while before he died a few years back. My mom died right after. Accident. I was already in college. Other than that, I don’t really have family, just friends.” He smiles, as he tries to do when remembering his mother. She wouldn’t want him bursting into tears at every mention of her name.

“Oh,” Michael says, obviously thrown by the candidness of the answer. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Adam says, and, to his surprise, it is. It is okay, because Michael gives him a soft, empathetic look and they walk on in silence the rest of the way to the elevator. 

“So, what’s next?” Adam asks as they pull out of the parking lot. 

Michael sighs. “Well, if you’re going to stick with me, which you are, we’re going to have to start hunting this thing down. I had planned to make a few rounds of the town today, try to feel out where this guy might be hiding.”

Adam nods. “Okay, I’ve watched some cop shows, I can do that.” Michael rolls his eyes. “Give me an idea of what we’re looking for, here.”

Michael reaches into his pocket and pulls the journal out, handing it to Adam. “That’s the condensed version of everything I know about this case. I’ve been after this thing for about a week, now, and I know it’s being summoned. No independent black dog could possibly target things with this much precision and control. It’s picking victims who are sinners, so we’re looking for a religious man, someone who wants the world purged of evil. You and Karen were the first targets in this town, but if the pattern continues, there’ll be more.”

Adam skims through the black dog related pages and notices something off. “Alright, so I get how the sinner thing fits, but how the hell did you come to that conclusion just by looking at the victims?”

Michael shrugs. “I didn’t. My dad told me. Sent me out here on this job to make sure I’m fit for duty after the bridge thing.” 

How would his dad have known, though? Yes, you could look at the list of occupations and say that they fit the theory, but how could someone look at that list and make the theory in the first place? How did his dad manage to predict some random psycho’s thought patterns. “But how do you know it’s right? What if he’s wrong?”

“He’s not.” Michael stares straight ahead at the road. 

“But what if-:”

“Leave it, Adam,” Michael snaps. 

“Okay, fine. Let’s say he is right. That leaves us with another problem. Everyone could conceivably be a sinner, so how are we supposed to predict the next attack?” Adam looks through the notes again, searching for a clue.

“We don’t. We just look for signs. We talk to people, listen for connections to the suspect, friends or family that have been targeted, that sort of thing. And then, at the end of the day, when it gets dark, we wait for the screams to start.” Michael’s mouth is set in a grim line, face stony as he navigates a crowded intersection. “You said there were rumors of an old guy hanging around at the same time the dogs were seen, right?”

“Yeah.” Some of his friends had been the ones to report the guy to campus police. “Kind of generic old white guy dressed like a professor.”

“That lines up with what I’ve been hearing. Based on the clothing choice and the victims, I’m assuming he’s a preacher or a professor of some sort of religious studies.” Michael chews his lip and flicks his turn signal on. 

“Are you sure?” Adam asks. “Wouldn’t it make more sense for him to be a loner? If he’s got radical ideologies, he probably won’t be in a group. He might have been part of a church or something once upon a time, but people would have sniffed him out eventually.” Adam thinks back to the times when his mom took him to church for the community aspect of it. Would he have been able to tag someone as a killer? He thinks so.

Michael blinks. “Oh. I guess that makes sense.” He’s quiet for a moment. “So where do we start, then?”

“Well, where were you taking us to begin with?” Adam hadn’t even thought to ask, he realizes. He’d just let Michael drive him wherever, no questions asked. He’s not a stranger, Adam reassures himself. He has every right to be comfortable around him.

“I was going to head to the biggest church in the town, the Protestant place on Main, but if you think we should go somewhere else-”

“No, the church should still be good. I say we start by asking around, try to tease out any weird stories about creepy old guys. Someone’s gotta have something.”

“Nothing. Fucking nothing,” Michael sighs as he drops into the car. They’d just done a circuit of every major church in town, interviewing any willing parties they found inside. In all that time, not one comment had stuck out as unusual enough to remark on, but then again, people might not be going out of the way to spill all their religious trauma to a couple of “independent researchers.”

Adam clips his seatbelt. “Well, there’s four hours of my life I’ll never get back. Do you want to go get lunch or something?” He’s starving, and he assumes Michael is, too. Grilling priests and choir kids is surprisingly hard work when your alibi is paper-thin and you’re trying to keep the world’s most blunt conversationalist in check. Michael has all the subtlety of a hammer, and he’d almost blown their cover several times. 

Michael twists his mouth like he hadn’t thought of it. “I suppose,” he mutters. “Do you know anywhere good close by?” 

“Uh, yeah, actually. There’s a burger place a few blocks from here. Luke and Sons’.”

“So,” Adam mumbles around a mouthful of burger. “What now?”

Michael doesn’t glance up from the pile of new papers and notes he’s started on the table in between them. He’s barely touched his salad, but he’s been making good headway on the chocolate shake, so Adam doesn’t say anything. “Usually, this is where I start reevaluating. Looking back on the evidence I already have to see what I’ve missed.” 

“Does that typically work?”

“No,” he admits, sighing. “I’m… I was never very good at this, and it’s only gotten worse since the bridge. I can’t keep everything straight in my head anymore.” He’s frowning now, mouth turned down and eyes boring a hole into the table beneath him. 

“Hey.” Adam reaches across the table and nudges his arm, forcing Michael to look at him. “I’m here with you this time. Twice the brains, twice the power, right? We’ll figure this out.” Michael’s expression doesn’t clear, but he looks deep into Adam’s eyes the way he used to when they were stuck in the hospital together late at night, in that way that makes Adam feel like he’s being dismantled and put back together at the core, and nods. A chill runs up Adam’s spine. He blinks and pulls his hand back. Michael shakes his head, and the moment passes. “Okay, so, if we’re going back and revisiting things, I think we should start with who’s being targeted. That gives us the best chance of stopping tonight’s attacks. What do we know about the victims?”

Michael shuffles a few papers around until he finds one with a list of names and descriptions and pushes it across the Adam, stealing one of his french fries as he does it. Adam raises an eyebrow and Michael smirks. “All of the victims could be defined as sinners when looked at from a biblical point of view, which we’ve already been over. Usually, radicalized religious thought like that originates on the Catholic side of things. From there, though, the trail goes dead. The victims did not previously know each other, nor did their jobs or families share anything in common, to my knowledge. They’re completely unrelated in any meaningful way.”

Adam’s brain catches on the word Catholic, and a moment from an earlier conversation comes into his head. “Hang on- what you said about Catholics turning radical. One of the priests I was talking to earlier mentioned ‘lost children.’ When I asked what he meant, he made some allusion to a school group or something like that, apparently somewhere where people who’d previously gone to church but didn’t anymore met up.”

Michael gasped. “It’s a religious trauma recovery group! I saw- I saw a sign for it outside one of the churches, stapled to a lamp post. But what does that have to do with the victims?”

Adam pulls out his phone. “Hang on…. I think.... Yes! Almost every one of the previous victims from this area attended the same religious trauma group therapy sessions, and the ones that weren’t seem to have been in the way, like collateral damage. Including… oh, including Karen. Oh, I never knew.” Adam sets his phone down, feeling an odd buzzing in his fingertips and behind his eyes. Grief, he knows. Grief and shock and guilt. Michael is quiet, but Adam can feel him watching from across the table. Adam sighs, regrouping his thoughts and trying to focus on the matter at hand. “Okay, it meets at three this afternoon in the community center basement.”

“Perfect. I have a plan.” 

“So, everyone, we have two new members today! Everyone, say hello to Michael and Adam!” Scattered greetings fill the room before Adam interrupts.

“Um, actually, I’m just here for moral support.” He pats Michael on the shoulder awkwardly, earning him a confused eyebrow quirk. “I’ve only actually ever been to church like three times. Thanks, though.”

The group leader, a kind-looking young woman with long red hair, nods and smiles. “That’s perfectly fine, Adam. I’m glad you’re here to help your friend. Religious groups often work to isolate us, as many people here can attest to, and having positive connections is good.” A few people nod pensively, giving Adam knowing looks. Adam shifts uncomfortably and takes a moment to hate the way Michael doesn’t seem to mind this at all. He’s the one acting, Adam’s just sitting here. Shouldn’t pretending to have religious trauma be harder than sitting here trying to suss out possible victims? “Alright, that being said, my name is Kathy. Would you like to introduce yourself, Michael?”

Michael shakes his head minutely. “I’m good, thanks. Just my name is fine.”

Kathy nods. “That’s alright. So, Michael, the way this group works is very loose and conversation-oriented. The goal is to get talking about what happened to us and how to move on from it, and sharing and opening up really helps with that healing process. The people here are in a variety of stages of recovery, from just realizing what they’ve been through all the way to living with the memories. You can feel free to jump in whenever you’d like, but you can also just sit and listen. It’s totally up to you.” She turns to the rest of the group, a circle of about fifteen people sitting in plastic school room chairs. There’s all ages here, from a girl who might be fifteen to a man who looks to be in his seventies. Any one of them could be the next target. They need to narrow it down. “So, today, we’re going to begin with the topic of identity. Specifically, I want to hear about how your identities were influenced by the church and your faith, and how you’ve grown into yourself, or want to grow into yourself, since then. Who would like to start? Jamie? Go ahead.”

Jamie is a slight, grey-haired man in his forties wearing a sweater vest and loafers. “Well, as most of you know, I was a Mormon until age twenty four. When I was in the Church, that was all I had. My friends were Mormon, my family was Mormon, everything and everyone around me was Mormon, Mormon, Mormon. I was as God willed it, and I still believe that. But the difference is, now, when I say I am as God willed it, I mean that I believe in an intelligent creator, not that I’m controlled by some mysterious force beyond my knowledge. My religion is still part of my identity, and reclaiming it was a huge step in my recovery.” He folds his hands in his lap and turns to the next speaker, a kid who’d raised her hand at the end of his speech.

Adam makes a mental note to erase Jamie from the victim list. He’s still a believer, which makes him less of a target. There are more likely candidates, like the girl who’s just beginning to speak. 

“I don’t think I’ll ever believe in a higher power again,” she says. She’s probably about Adam and Michael’s age, with piercing blue eyes and a ring in her nose. “It’s like… how could I possibly be my own person if something else exists out there? Whenever I think of bigger things, I think of them breathing down my neck, telling me what to do every second of every day. If there’s a God, I don’t give two shits about him, pardon my language.”

Kathy nods slowly, considerately. “That’s good, Hannah. Catharsis isn’t always gentle, and you have no obligation to make room in your life for people and ideas that have hurt you.”

Hannah’s not done. “As far as identity, leaving the Catholic church felt like being able to breathe for the first time. All these things that I had known about myself suddenly became real. It was like I was turning into a real person. 

“I mean, I’ve known I was gay since I was twelve, but knowing and accepting are totally different things, and it was only once I got away that I felt like that weight had been taken from me. It was like my own sexuality, something I couldn’t change about myself even if I tried, and God, did I try, was weaponized against me. It was a secret, and secrets kept me quiet. I couldn’t disagree with any of it, because I knew, deep down, that I was wrong.” People snap like they do at those slam poetry things as Hannah finishes, and Adam feels his throat tighten. He can’t imagine what he would have done if his mom hadn’t accepted his sexuality.

To Adam’s surprise, he feels Michael tense next to him, sees his head lift and his mouth open. Is he going to voluntarily share? He glances over, trying to make eye contact, but Michael is deliberately looking at everyone but Adam.

“It’s a weapon even if they don’t tell you it’s wrong. My f- my church, they never told me that I was a sinner for being gay, just for everything else.” He laughs bitterly. “Being gay was like this side note, like, ‘Come on, Michael, you fuck everything else up, coudln’t you have gotten this one thing right?’ And so, even though I never had to hide it, there was always this underlying shame.”

Adam thinks back to the spur-of-the-moment confession in his dorm room that morning. That hadn’t seemed ashamed to him, hadn’t seemed like anything but awkward. He wasn’t sure how much of this Michael was just pulling out of his ass, but he felt honored, in a weird way, that Michael had felt comfortable enough to tell him.

He looks at Michael again, who’s staring at his hands now, twisting his fingers around each other and worrying at a hangnail. Adam nudges him with his foot, and Michael looks up and locks eyes with him. Just like in the diner, there’s no smile, just a deeply thoughtful stare. 

Adam manages to get with the program again just in time to hear Hannah say, “Oh my God, it’s funny you say it like that, use the word ‘sinner,’ because I had this crazy old Bible School teacher who used to scream that I was a sinner, that I was going to Hell, that Jesus would make me repent, every time I did something wrong. Actually, I think Greg had that class with me, but I haven’t seen him in a few sessions.”

Adam freezes. That was it. It had to be. Hannah was the next target. He looks at Michael, who’s already wide-eyed and tense. What now?

The group broke nearly an hour later, but everyone seemed to be hanging around for a few minutes, drinking the coffee they’d been provided and chatting, so Adam and Michael take the opportunity to discuss what to do next.

“It’s definitely her,” Michael says, glancing around the room from his spot in the corner.

“I know,” Adam murmurs, leaning against the wall next to him. “So how do we stop the attack?”

“Well, we know they happen at night, so we’re in the clear until then. We have to follow her somehow, make sure we know where she’s going to be when the attack happens. I also want to talk to her now, to see what we can learn about this guy.” Michael keeps picking at the hangnail he’d started on during the session. Adam can see blood, so he swipes at Michael’s hands until he gets the message and stops.

“How do you usually follow people like this?” Adam watches as Hannah chats with Kathy across the room. 

“We need to find out what she’s doing tonight. If we know that, we can be ready for the ambush.”

“Well, just ask her to hang out,” Adam says.

“What? No, that’s weird.” Michael shakes his head. “I can’t do that.”

“Why not? Why is that weird?” Adam asks in confusion.

“I don’t know, it just is. I can’t ask her to hang out, I’ve just met her.” Michael frowns and starts picking at his hand again. 

“ Stop with the nail thing! Alright, I’ll ask her, then.” Michael deflates in relief. “Wait, how did you find out where I was going to be?”

Michael’s eyes dart away. “Right place, right time.”

“You’re lying to me.” Adam steps out so he’s standing in front of Michael, looking him full in the face. “How did you really know?”

“I didn’t,” he confesses, hunching his shoulders in defeat. He’s blushing, Adam realizes. “I knew there were going to be attacks in the area and I knew you worked in the morgue, which was similar to past targets, and I didn’t want you to get hurt,” he chokes out. 

Adam is speechless. Michael found out where he worked. To be fair, that wouldn’t be so hard, seeing as Michael had already known what college he went to, but still. Michael remembered him. Michael went out of his way to keep Adam safe. Adam opens his mouth to say something, something like “Thank you,” or maybe “That’s kind of creepy,” but Michael beats him to it.

“She’s leaving. Hannah’s getting ready to leave,” he warns, stepping around Adam and toward the door. Head and heart still reeling, Adam follows.

“Hannah. Wait, Hannah!” Michael jogs out the door after her and stops when she turns around, giving him a skeptical look.

“What?”

Adam doesn’t even have a chance to catch up before Michael’s talking. “I just… um, I was wondering if you were busy tonight, because I was going to go hang out at the bar, and I was wondering if you wanted to come with.”

Hannah stares at him for a moment, taking in his frantic look and the nervous tension strung through every inch of his body, and then replies, “Uh, thanks, but I’m kind of busy later. I have work, you know?”

Michael doesn’t give up, though, and Adam kind of feels like he’s watching a train wreck in slow motion. “I could come see you at work,” he says, and Adam cringes. “Where do you work, by the way, just out of curiosity?” His voice picks up in pitch and pace as he rambles on, digging his hole deeper and deeper. “I just, you know, want to hang out with you. You seem- you seem cool.”

Hannah gives him a thoroughly weirded-out look and Adam finally intervenes, reaching out and grabbing Michael’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” he says to Hannah. “My friend doesn’t mean to come across as weird; he’s new in town and he’s trying to make some friends.” He smiles apologetically, turning on the good old fashioned Milligan charm, and Hannah softens.

“That’s alright,” she says. “I’m just not big on meeting with strangers, you know? And I really do have to work. See you next time, though?” she asks Michael. 

Michael nods dumbly and Hannah gets in the car, smiling at Adam as she pulls out of the driveway. 

Michael’s dead silent as they walk to the car, which makes it harder for Adam to hold in the laughter. As soon as the door closes, though, he turns to Adam and demands, “What did I do wrong?”

Adam, shaking with repressed laughter, replies, “You came on way too strong, man. You freaked her out.”

“But how?” he despairs.

Adam can’t hold in the giggles this time, and Michael glares at him as he manages to stutter out, “Because you hold yourself like you’re about to get fucking jumped, and people find that weird. You were like,” and here, Adam does his best imitation of Michael’s intense, oddly paced speaking, “‘ Hannah, I want to see where you work. I want to see you again, Hannah. Don’t leave, Hannah, I haven’t put your body in the trunk yet.’” 

Adam bursts out laughing at the horrified look on Michael’s face. “I do not sound like that!”

“You kind of do, dude.” Adam leans across the seat and rests his head on Michael’s shoulder as he laughs. “You’re very intense. It’s like being interrogated.”

“Then why do you like me?”

Adam sobers a bit at that, hearing genuine distress creeping into Michael’s voice. “Did you forget about the whole hospital experience? I’ve seen you laugh until you cried at an episode of Seinfeld. I’ve seen you fall flat on your back trying to re-learn how to walk up stairs. I’ve literally wiped vomit off your face, which is not an experience I’m eager to relive, by the way.” Adam sighs. “I know you. You’re not scary. You’re not vicious. You just do a really good job of acting like it.”  

Michael’s quiet then, and for a moment, the only sound in the car is the two of them breathing. Then, he says very quietly, “I’m afraid of hurting you. I’m afraid because you can’t seem to see what’s wrong with me. Please be careful.”

Adam sits up and looks Michael in the eyes. “Mike, I need you to understand me right now. The fact that you just admitted that to me means you’re not a monster. Doing what you have to do does not make you dangerous, it just makes you a survivor. Do you get that?”

Michael bites his lip, eyes darting nervously around the car, anywhere but Adam’s face, but he nods. “I do.”

Adam looks at him a moment longer, then claps his hands, startling Michael out of his daze. “Alright, then, I guess the next order of business is finding out where Hannah works!”

Hannah, it turns out, is not a difficult person to track down, or maybe it’s just that Michael’s really good at his job. Adam’s not sure, honestly. All he knows is Michael takes them to a Starbucks for WiFi, and before Adam can finish his frappuccino, he’s got the name of a bar where she sang a few weeks ago in a talent show. The show pamphlet also lists her as a bartender of the same place. 

“Hannah Velmont - talented singer, devout agnostic, and no friend of Michael Shurley’s,” Michael muses as he stirs his coffee. “An interesting woman.”

“And one who we can hopefully prevent from getting eaten by a huge dog,” Adam adds. He’s still a bit hung up on that. He knows it was less than twenty-four hours ago that he was attacked, but it feels like a lifetime. How Michael does this every day, he’ll never know. The weight of an innocent life is heavy when all the medical knowledge in the world can’t save it. All Adam can do is watch and pray Michael’s right.

“She’ll be okay, Adam. We found her in time. We can stop the dog.” Michael leans down to catch his eye as he speaks, voice low and calm. The voice of an older brother.

“What if we’re wrong? And how are we supposed to stop it, follow her all the way home?” Adam taps his fingers on the table, unable to let go of the litany of what-ifs and question marks running through his mind. “How can we make sure this works?”

Michael purses his lips. “Honestly, we can’t. All we can do is take our best guess. We’re going to go to the bar tonight and leave right as she leaves. We’ll follow her home and stay near her until the attack happens. I’ll jump in and defend her, and then we’ll deal with the aftermath. I plan on sending her to stay with a friend; this guy only strikes when people are alone.” He nudges Adam’s arm with his own. “Don’t forget, I’ve been doing this a long time. Everything will be alright.”

Adam takes Michael’s hand as he pulls it back, and Michael lets him, intertwining their fingers on top of the table. “I know it will. I trust you.”

“And I you.”

Being with Michael at a bar is… not as weird as Adam thought it would be. He’s had worse drinking partners, honestly. Like that guy from freshman year who turned out to be a rather aggressive furry. Very aggressive. Adam never wants to get barked at by a human being again.

Furry bar experiences aside, this is actually kind of nice. Sure, there’s guns and knives and spellbooks in the back of the car and they’re here to keep someone from being killed by an evil dog, but right now it’s just him and Michael and some nice lighting and two cocktails and peace. 

Michael really does look gorgeous in this light. Adam’s letting himself think that now because, fuck it, he’s caught feelings. He caught feelings all the way back at the hospital, and they never really went away. There’s no use in fighting it, not when Michael’s hair looks black in the neon and his eyes reflect all the colors back out, making them swirl pink and purple and blue.

Ultimately, Adam thinks, it comes down to the nose and the cheekbones. Something about the way Michael’s nose dips down and then comes to a rounded point, the way his cheeks are full but somehow, he still has cheekbones. The little freckles. It makes Adam want to take his face in his hands and feel it, just run his hands and lips over it until he knows every line.

No, wait, the eyes are better. Adam’s never really seen someone with grey eyes up close before, only light blue ones. Michael’s don’t have a single fleck of blue in them, just pure, smooth grey. They’re nicely shaped, too, and surrounded by thick, dark lashes. 

Then, Michael’s lips start moving, and oh, Adam forgot about the lips. He was so focused on the top half of his face, but how could he forget the lips? Wait-

“-Adam? Are you alright?”

“Huh?” Michael’s voice finally makes it through to him, and he blinks. “What did you say?”

Michael frowns. “I asked if you were alright. You were staring at me.”

Oh yeah, he kind of was. Maybe he’s a little more tipsy than he thought. “Sorry. Yeah, I’m fine. Do you want anything? I’m about to go up for another round.”

Michael shakes his head. “I’m alright, thank you. Look for Hannah while you’re up there. See if you can find out when she gets off.”

“Yup, will do.” They’d showed up a little ways into Hannah’s shift, if her harried look and busy hands were anything to go by. Now, though, it was a little past ten, and things were calming down a little bit. When he went up to the bar, she spotted him and did a double-take.

“Adam?” She finishes wiping down a glass and comes over to where he is. 

“Oh, hi, Hannah!” He does his best to fake surprise, and he’s pretty sure she buys it.

“What are you doing here?” she asks.

“Uh, it’s a bar. What else do you do at one of those?” he jokes, making her laugh. “Seriously, though, I’m here with Mike. We’re over there.” He gestures to their corner table, where he can see Michael messing with his phone. “He’s a little tense after today’s meeting, if I’m being honest.”

Hannah nods knowingly. “Yeah, I could tell. He was a little keyed up earlier.”

“Sorry about that,” Adam says. “He really does mean well. He’s been having a rough time of it lately.” Adam might be lying in general, but that doesn’t mean everything he says has to be false. Talking about Michael, someone she can relate to, will hopefully get her to let her guard down a bit.

“I get that. Just kind of a spazz, huh?”

Adam laughs. “You can say that again.” Hannah’s easy to talk to, especially after a few rounds. Speaking of, he should probably stop now, actually. Get ready for the monster-fighting part of the night. “Hey, can you grab us two glasses of Coke?”

“Sure.” She moves to get them, and Adam keeps talking, being sure to keep his voice casual and light.

“So when are you trapped here ‘til? I remember when I worked nights at the restaurant, they kept me until almost one a.m. a couple times.” He groans, recalling late nights counting cash at the register and cleaning up after weird tourists. The morgue was so much better. 

“Eh, not too bad tonight. I’m off at eleven thirty.”She sets the glasses down in front of him. Down the bar, a customer waves to her. “Shit, I’ve got to go. Nice talking to you, Adam.”

“You, too. See you around.” He grabs the glasses and weaves back through the crowd to Michael.

“So? Anything?” Michael takes the Coke as Adam sets it down. “Thank you.”

“She’s off at eleven thirty,” Adam relays, scooting his chair back in place. “So, what, leave at eleven and wait in the car?”

“That’s what I’m thinking, yeah.” Michael takes a sip of his Coke. “And until then?”

“I don’t know, don’t you ever just go out drinking with a friend?” Michael opens his mouth just as Adam realizes his mistake. “Actually, don’t answer that. We can start tonight, even if we can’t really get drunk. ”

Michael gives him a confused smile. “Alright, Adam Milligan. Teach me how to have a night out.”

An hour later, they’re stumbling to the car, giggling and drunk on the kind of happiness Adam hasn’t felt in a long time. Michael’s cheeks are flushed and Adam’s sure his are, too, and he’s not really sure whose fault it is when Adam trips and ends up with his hands on Michael’s shoulders, pressing him up against the car. 

For a moment, they just stand there, and it’s like time’s suspended. Michael’s face is so close to his that he can feel every breath, every move he makes. Michael’s looking at him with this expression like Adam is the only thing in the world that matters, and it’s making him a little dizzy. Michael reaches up and puts his hands on Adam’s chest, just touching him, not moving or pressing or urging. Just touching. Adam can feel every one of his fingers. Michael starts to smile, just a little bit, and then-

And then there’s a horrific bang from somewhere across the parking lot, and Michael flinches so hard he pushes Adam off him, craning his head to look for the source of the noise. Just a backfiring car. Adam catches his breath and Michael catches his balance, reeling from the emotion and the sound and the closeness.

The moment’s over, though, and they get in the car. 

Michael puts his hands on the steering wheel, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, eyes closing and body relaxing. Adam does the same, letting some of the manic joy slip away and leave content happiness in its place. He’s happy. Yeah, he’s happy. So happy he could almost forget about the purpose of tonight’s little excursion, at least until Michael says, “We’ll wait here for her and then we’ll follow her at a distance. With the nature of the attacks so far, I’d be willing to bet she’ll walk home.”

Adam makes a thoughtful noise. “Yeah, probably. If she’s walking, should we be on foot?”

“No, two males tailing her on foot will be much more off-putting than a car that just happens to pull out of the driveway behind her. We don’t want to scare her or make her do anything that would throw off her normal routine.”

Adam pauses. “So, we want her to get attacked, because we want to be able to save her. How does that make more sense than just telling her what’s going on? Even if she thinks we’re crazy, she’ll be thrown off her rhythm. It might make the dog reconsider attacking her tonight.”

Michael shakes his head. “You don’t understand. If it’s not tonight, it’ll be some other night. Tonight, we know it’s her. If she gets attacked and we stop it, she’ll believe us and go to stay with someone else until we catch him and this whole thing blows over. If not, she’s a loose end. I don’t know about you, but I don’t do loose ends.” Michael turns the key in the ignition and Adam decides to drop it. Something about the way Michael does this whole thing doesn’t sit right with him, but then again, he’s not Michael. He doesn’t know Michael’s life. Besides, a tiny part of him that knows how people work is telling him that Michael is not the untrustworthy person in this situation, even if Adam can’t see who that might be. Not for the first time, he wishes he could meet Chuck Shurley.

Michael’s head snaps up and Adam thinks of a dog’s ears pricking. “There she is,” he says. 

Adam follows his gaze and sees Hannah heading out the back door of the bar, bag in hand, walking toward the sidewalk. Michael pulls the car out and around to a spot just behind her, then waits.

The next few minutes are the most elaborate game of cat-and-mouse Adam’s ever been involved in. He sits with bated breath, silent even in the shelter of the car, as Michael maneuvers the car slowly around corners and through lights, keeping his distance while keeping Hannah in his sights.

They pass Main Street and go straight through Seventh and Grand, following Hannah out to the apartment complexes on the edge of town. The area he’s guessing she lives in is filled with college students, bound to be out at night, which must mean-

“Michael, there,” he hisses pointing to a deformed, moving shadow tucked in an alley.

Michael looks where he’s pointing, to what Adam can now tell is the silhouette of the same dog that attacked him. It’s crouched behind a dumpster, presumably watching Hannah. Michael pulls the car to the side of the road and unbuckles his seatbelt. 

“Stay here,” he orders, stepping out of the car and pulling a knife out of his pocket. Up the street, Adam sees Hannah glance back to where they are, but it’s too dark for her to recognize them. Or see the dog.

“Michael, no, I’m not going to-”

“Adam, this isn’t a debate. Stay in the car.” Michael closes the door and starts walking towards the mouth of the alley.

Adam curses under his breath. Of course Michael wasn’t planning on letting him come with. Logically, Adam knows he’d be a detriment in a fight, but it’s still hard to watch Michael goo out there on his own, with just a knife and some luck against the scariest fucking thing Adam’s ever seen. It’ll be alright. It’s Michael. He knows what he’s doing. 

Adam’s attention is drawn back outside the car when Michael abruptly turns to look at the alley. This time, Hannah turns, too. The dog must have made a noise. 

They both relax after a moment, going back to their seemingly calm walk up the street. Then, there’s movement from the alley and Adam can’t help but cry out in shock and fear as the dog leaps out, tackling Hannah to the ground.

Michael surges forward, grabbing the dog by the scruff of its neck and throwing it away. Hannah crawls to the steps of the building next to them as Michael sprints to engage the creature again. In the dark, all Adam can see is outlines and the occasional flash of silver metal or red eyes as Michael and the dog circle each other, both looking for an opening. 

He hears Hannah scream as Michael lunges for the dog, jabbing the knife towards its throat. The thing turns, avoiding the killshot, but the blade sinks deep into its side. The howl of pain Adam hears then makes his blood run cold, makes the hair on his arms stand up, makes every one of his primal fight-or-flight instincts turn to high alert. 

The thing swings wildly at Michael, who seems to catch a paw to the face before withdrawing the knife and striking again. This time, the dog seems to get with the program, because it darts away from him and melts into the night. Michael watches it go, then runs to Hannah. Adam doesn’t bother seeing what he does next, because he’s too busy jumping out of the car and sprinting to the scene of the fight. 

“Michael, are you alright? Is Hannah alright?” he pants as he reaches them. Michael’s pulling a shaken Hannah to her feet.

“We’re fine,” he says. “The thing’s gone. For now.”

“What the fuck was that?” Hannah demands. “What was that? Who are you guys? Were you following me?” She pushes Michael away from her and staggers over to brace herself against the building. “Someone tell me what’s happening, or I’m calling the police.”

Michael opens his mouth, but Adam beats him to it. “Hannah, you were just attacked by a black dog. Michael and I were following it, and you, because we knew it was targeting people from your old church group. Yes, you did just see it disappear, yes, it’s a monster, yes, monsters are real, no, you’re not going crazy.” He extends a comforting hand to her, not to touch, but just to offer some support. 

Her breathing’s picking up, and it takes her a moment of frantic confusion and fear to work up the coherence to answer. “What? Are you saying that I was attacked by a- a monster?”

“I am,” he confirms. “It’s alright, take your time. Believe it or not, almost the same thing happened to me last night.”

Hannah’s face crumples as she looks up, taking in her surroundings. Her eyes dart from Michael’s scratched, bloody arms, to the knife in his hand, to Adam’s outstretched arm, and out to the vacant street before she speaks. “I… I believe you.”

“You do?” Michael asks. 

“I do. This isn’t… I knew there was something wrong with that group, with him. You said that’s what this is about, right? Him?” Hannah frowns, contemplative.

“If by ‘him,’ you mean the leader of the religious group you used to belong to, then yes, him,” Michael says. “Who is he? How did you know he was involved in the supernatural? We need to know everything you know about this man if we’re going to stop him.” Michael gestures back to the car. “I want to get you off the street first, though. Is there anyone you can stay with? If you’re alone, he won’t come for you.” 

Hannah thinks for a moment, then says, “My ex lives a few blocks from here. We’re on good enough terms that I should be able to drop by, even this late.”

“Perfect. We can talk in the car. Is there anything you need from your apartment?” Michael slips his knife back into his pocket. Hannah shakes her head, and they start off for the car. 

“So, when did you guys start doing stuff like this? Were you just in group the other day to see what I was up to?” She’s shockingly calm in a way that makes Adam wonder just what she’d seen in that church group. Adam had seen some weird shit in his time, but nothing that had even remotely prepared him for the black dog. If she had been a follower of their perpetrator, though, who knows what she’d been through? 

“Well, I’ve only been doing this since last night,” Adam admits. “Michael and I had a reunion of sorts centered around me getting mauled by a ghost dog.” Michael and Hannah laugh. “But Michael’s been at this a while. He was the one that suggested we do some light stalking to see who the next victim might be.”

“Ah, so that’s why you’re the weird one. I understand now,” Hannah laughs. “In all seriousness, though, this is kind of crazy. I want you to know that I’m only trusting you because I saw that dog disappear with my own two eyes, and I heard Carl talk about a dog like that back in the day.”

“Carl?” Michael asks. “Is that his name?” He opens the door for Hannah as Adam gets in the front seat, and once they’re all situated, Hannah answers.

“Yes. Carl Jones. Really crazy, really devout. Thinks we’re all sinners, hellbound just for existing, you know?” She sighs. “But I got out. And now he just tried to kill me.” She falls silent as Michael starts the car, then asks, “Is that what happened to the others? Is he coming after all of us? Are they dead?”

Adam glances at her in the mirror, and as soon as their eyes meet, he knows that she knows. “I’m sorry,” he says. Hannah looks down and he looks away to give her at least a modicum of privacy. “But we didn’t know then what we know now, and we’re going to find him.”

“Where does your ex live, Hannah?” Michael cuts in. Hannah gives him the address and Michael nods, pulling away from the curb. “Do you have any idea where we might find Carl Jones?”

“If I had to guess, I’d say he’s still out in that old house just outside town. When I got out, it was part of a larger raid. Someone called the police and they cleared the whole place out, took everything, but I’m sure he went back.” Hannah reaches into her bag and fishes around for something as she continues, “I can write the address down for you. It’s one of the only houses out there, can’t miss it. Careful, though, it’s real broken down now.” She scribbles something on a piece of paper and passes it up to Adam. He tucks it in the glove compartment. 

“Does he work or live with anyone else?” Michael starts chewing his lip again as he concentrates. It’s kind of cute. 

“No. It was always just him and a few older kids, but the kids are out now. He’s alone.” Hannah thunks her head against the back of the seat. “I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t- It doesn’t feel real. I wish I could say I’m surprised he’s killing people; I wish I could say I’m surprised that the supernatural is real, but I’m just not.”

Adam knows the feeling. 

The drive to Hannah’s ex girlfriend’s is short, and Adam and Michael walk her to the door with no problem, waiting to make sure she gets buzzed in before turning to leave.

“You did great out there,” Michael remarks as they drive back to the hotel.

“What do you mean? I didn’t do anything. You did all the fighting.” It’s true. Watching Michael fight was incredible, like nothing Adam had ever seen. He was all fluid movement and power and grace and a thousand things Adam had never even heard of outside of a book or movie. Michael was deadly, and Adam loved it. 

“I mean the way you talked to Hannah. You kept her calm in a way that most people can’t. What happened there, that’s not how a scene like that would normally go down.” Michael pulls into the parking lot and starts looking for a space.

“I think it might be because we’re both ordinary people, me and Hannah. You know, you’re just so far removed, so otherworldly that you might as well be one of them to a girl like Hannah. I’m her kind. I speak her language.” He looks at Michael and sees the hurt on his face and realizes he’s made a mistake. “I don’t mean that you’re a monster, or that I see you as one,” he backtracks quickly, “I just mean you’re so incredible that it’s hard to see you as human.” Michael raises a skeptical eyebrow and Adam continues. “I mean, look at you, Michael, you’re gorgeous.”

“Adam, you are anything but ordinary,” Michael cuts in, and it’s so low and intense and powerful that something in Adam stops moving and starts sparking. He realizes that the car has stopped moving, that Michael is looking him right in the eye. “You are… unique, in every sense of the word. Our meeting again was not a chance. You are special in a way that most of the universe could only dream of being.”

Adam grabs Michael by the collar of the shirt and pulls him across the car into a kiss.

Michael fumbles to pull the door key out of his pocket and unlock the door, which is probably made infinitely harder by the fact that neither of them have found a way to separate themselves yet. The door opens behind them and they fall through, limbs tangled and hearts pounding. 

The door slams and Adam flips Michael around to press him against it, kissing him deeper as hands run up and down his back and in his hair. Michael’s obviously inexperienced, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s fucking Michael who kisses like it’s a war and bites Adam’s lip and tugs at his hair and fuck, is he dreaming?

Michael takes his turn to grab the front of Adam’s shirt, lifting him onto his toes to get a better angle. Michael’s taller than him, not by much, but just enough for Michael to press his forehead against Adam’s and look down into his eyes with burning intensity.

“You’re beautiful,” he whispers like it’s a prayer, like it’s something secret, and before Adam can think of a way to respond, Michael grabs him by the thighs and carries him to the bed.

Michael kisses him breathless and keeps going, desperate in a way that makes Adam’s heart and teeth and ribs ache with the sweetness and sadness of it all. Adam loses himself for a while, loses his judgement and mind in the haze of having someone who cares about him more than life itself, someone who’s breathing that love into him like it’s a resuscitation instead of a kiss. 

Someone who’s losing himself in this, in his own mind, as much as Adam is or more.

Adam runs a hand slowly, soothingly, up Michael’s side and back down, lifting the hem to rub a thumb against his hip. He murmurs comfort against Michael’s lips and slows their pace down to something a bit less breakneck and a bit more soothing. 

Michael pulls back, looking down at Adam with his knees bracketing his hips and his hands on either side of Adam’s head. He smiles and Adam thinks this is it, he’s seeing Heaven. This must be Heaven, because what else in the world is there but this.

He doesn’t say that, though. Instead, he says, “Hi,” all breathy and amazed like a teenage girl at her first party. 

“Hi,” Michael answers. “You’re incredible.”

“You’re not so bad yourself, Mister Monster Man.” Adam laughs and reaches up to pull Michael back down into a kiss.

Michael’s gotten the message now, and he takes it sweeter and slower, pressing his nose to Adam’s cheek and running his hand through his hair. Adam puts his hand back under Michael’s shirt and starts rubbing slow, lazy circles. Michael hums and presses closer, relaxing against Adam until they’re both just lying there, touching and talking and being close. Michael settles down on top of him, head resting on Adam’s chest, and it’s so comfortable and natural that Adam doesn’t even remember falling asleep. 

“Adam. Adam, wake up. Adam.” 

Michael’s voice jars Adam awake. There’s a hand on his wrist and Michael’s terrified, confused voice in his ear and they must have rolled apart at some point during the night, because Michael is flat on his back next to Adam, hand clinging to his wrist and eyes darting wildly around the room.

Something is very wrong. 

“Adam. Adam, help.” The pleas continue, and Adam scrambles to sit up, tangling himself in the covers in his haste to get to Michael. 

“Mike? Michael, what’s wrong?” He grabs Michael’s hand and tries to get him to look at him. “Michael?”

“Adam, I can’t see. I can’t see anything.” 

Adam goes cold. “What do you mean? You’re blind?” There’s not much ambiguity to what Michael’s saying, but he has to be sure.

Michael nods, quick breaths beginning to take a turn into the area of hyperventilation. Adam takes him by the arms and helps him sit up, holding him at arms’ length and searching his face for anything, any clue as to what might be going on. “Has this happened before?” he asks. “Is it because of your head?” That’s the only thing Adam can think of. Michael had had vision problems, but blindness? That would be new.

“It happened once, right after I got out of the hospital. Like I said, I have trouble waking up,” he says, sounding utterly miserable. 

“Okay, did it go away then?” Adam brings a hand to Michael’s face and cups his cheek. Michael leans into it, eyes slipping closed. His breathing’s still fast for Adam’s liking, but it’s slowing down.

“It did, it only lasted like an hour. But, Adam, what if it doesn’t go away? I can’t see, oh, my God-”

“Okay, do you have a headache? What exactly are you seeing?” Adam pushes Michael’s hair off his forehead in an attempt to calm him.

“I- My head hurts, I guess. I woke up with a headache, and then… there’s just nothing, Adam. Nothing.” A tear streaks down his face and Adam’s heart breaks. 

“Okay, it’s alright, Michael. We can wait this out.” He pulls him close, tucking Michael’s face into the crook of his neck. He feels Michael sigh and takes that as a cue to lower them back down until they’re lying against the headboard. “Just keep breathing. We’ll give it an hour, and then I’m taking you to the E.R..” 

“Adam,” he murmurs. “Adam, we have to get to that house today. We have to stop him. Carl Jones-”

“Will be there all day, Michael. This is more important. And what do you plan on doing, anyway?  Waving your arms around at him?” Michael huffs a weak laugh and Adam lets himself join in. He hugs Michael a bit tighter and starts rocking them slowly back and forth. Michael relaxes a bit more, and Adam wonders briefly if it would be better or worse if he fell back to sleep.

Probably worse, he decides, and stops rocking. When Michael makes a soft, confused noise, Adam pulls back and says, “I’m going to grab us some water and breakfast, alright? I’ll be right here. I’ll keep talking to you.”

“Alright.” Michael lets go of him, albeit reluctantly, and Adam gets up. He’s sure to make an unnecessary amount of noise as he pours two glasses of water, drinking one and bringing the other to Michael, who sips at it slowly.

Adam returns to the kitchenette, rifling through the cabinets in search of food. Dry cereal, some power bars, an orange, a book, some teeth… wait.

“Michael?”

“Hmm?”

“Are there…. are there teeth in the cabinet?” Adam turns around slowly, taking in Michael’s hunched shoulders and guilty face.

“They’re not human,” he says, like that makes it any better. 

“Okay, great, but why do you have them?” 

Michael shrugs. “I thought the dogs might have been spectral manifestations of a certain kind that’s weak to ground up animal teeth. I would have mixed them with water to make a paste for rune drawing,” he explains. 

Okay, well, that actually made sense, in a fucked-up, Michael sort of way. “Fair enough,” he concedes. “So it looks like our only options for breakfast are dry cereal or power bars. I mean, there’s an orange in here, too, but it looks kind of sketchy.”

Michael wrinkles his nose. “Not hungry.”

“Michael, you look like a ghost. You’re pale, your hands are shaking, and oh, yeah, you’re blind! You’re eating something, so choose. Cereal or power bar?” Adam demands. Michael really does look awful. Adam figures he probably hadn’t slept in a while before last night, and he didn’t eat much yesterday, either. 

Michael scowls, but quickly capitulates. “Power bar.”

Adam chucks a bar over to him without thinking, and hurries out an apologetic warning as it flies through the air. “Michael, oh God, sorry-”

It smacks him in the middle of the forehead, but the face he makes is so fucking priceless that Adam nearly falls over laughing, grabbing the counter for support. “I’m so- I’m so- holy shit, I’m so sorry, Mike!”

“I’m glad my anguish is amusing to you,” he grouses, and the formal language sends Adam right over the edge again. Michael smiles, chokes back a laugh, and finally gives in, flopping back onto the bed as he dissolves into hysterics. 

“H-h-h-holy shit you should have seen the look on your face,” Adam laughs. “You were like-” Adam does his best Michael pout, imitating a little sad puppy noise, and Michael snorts. 

Finally, they manage to calm down, and Michael fumbles around trying to find his power bar as Adam peels the mystery orange. When in Rome, right? 

“How is it? Any better?” he asks once they’re done eating.

“I think so. My head doesn’t hurt so bad anymore.” Michael rubs at his temples, blinking like it might clear up whatever’s going on behind his eyes. 

Adam comes back to the bed and sits next to Michael, leaning his head on his shoulder. “Hmm. It’s only been maybe twenty minutes, we still have time.”

Michael doesn’t answer. 

“Mike?” Nothing. Adam sits back up and looks at Michael, who’s frowning at the comforter and running his finger over the same spot over and over. “You alright, dude?”

“I- I think it’s coming back. Wait-” His hands fly to his head and he doubles over, groaning. 

Adam grabs his shoulders. “Michael. Michael! Come on, don’t make me call 9-1-1.”

After a moment, Michael sits back up and looks Adam right in the eye. “It’s back. I can see again.”

Adam’s speechless. “What, just like that? Can you see well? ”

“Like it never happened. I don’t know if that’s good or not.” Michael chews his lip and glances around the room. “Yeah, I can see fine.” 

“Alright, well, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, I guess?”

Michael nods. “That means we’re back on for Jones. I want to get to his place before noon. What time is it?”

Adam glances at his phone. “Eight thirty. Plenty of time.”

“Good, because I need a shower.”

“Are you ready?” Michael asks as they pull into the dirt driveway.

‘I don’t even know what I should be getting ready for,” Adam admits. It’s true. He has nothing to compare this to. They’re about to break into an old man’s house and what? Try to stop him from murdering more people? Kill him? “Are you even going to let me come in with you?”

Michael purses his lips and glances across the car. “Yes. He’s just a human man. If I can’t protect you from a human, I’m not exactly doing my job, am I?”

And what is that, Adam wants to ask. There’s something bad curling in the pit of his stomach, and he wants to turn around. At the same time, though, the man in that building killed Karen and who knows how many others, ruined so many lives. He deserves whatever he gets, doesn’t he? Adam was angry enough to think so, for now, at least.

The woods they’d been driving through open up into a dry, grassy field. A tall metal gate stands across the road, the only entrance point in a fence that stretches all the way to where the woods begin again. Past it, Adam can see the house. 

It was more like a mansion, really, looming tall and decrepit and gray in the weak sunlight. A portion of the roof had collapsed in on itself, and the wide front porch looked as though it was hanging by its last nail.

Michael pulls the car off the road and into the grass, opening the door and getting out. Adam follows him around to the back of the car, where he’s got the trunk open, considering the neatly stacked weapons there within.

After a moment, he picks up a long hunting knife and hands it Adam hilt-first. “If anything happens, this is silver. It’ll dispel the dog and it’ll sure as hell kill any humans we come across. Are you comfortable using this?”

“Uh, yeah, it’s just a knife. How hard can it be to just-” he makes a slashing motion through the air between them.

Michael tilts his head, raising an eyebrow, then turns back to the car and grabs a handgun. It’s semiautomatic, all black plastic and blunt, brutal lines. Not the kind of thing they teach you to expect in horror movies. No, this is more like something from James Bond. He tucks it in the waistband of his jeans and grabs a flashlight. “Alright, we’re heading in,” he says.

He starts off toward the fence and Adam jogs behind, slowing down as he pulls up even with him. Michael won’t look at him straight, hasn’t since they got in the car.The feeling of wrongness sweeps through Adam once more, but once again, he dispels it. 

“So, what’s going to happen?” Adam asks as they climb over the fence. Michael makes quick work of it and waits for Adam on the other side, smirking when he gets caught on a spike at the top.

“We’re going to go in the front door and search the house for him. When we find him, we’ll take care of him. If he summons the dog or tries to fight back, then we fight, but I don’t think he will. He’s too old to take us, and I don’t think the dog is linked directly to him, more like he’s telling where to go. He’s the middleman, not the master.” Michael takes his hand and helps him down from the top of the fence. “Just follow my lead; it’ll be fine.”

They walk carefully across the porch, flinching at every creak of the floorboards. Michael looks back and motions for Adam to get behind him as they approach the door. Adam does, flattening himself against the wall as Michael puts a hand on the doorknob. 

He eases the door open and peers quickly around the corner. He must like whatever he sees, because he disappears into the house, beckoning Adam in after him.

The inside turns out to be just as creepy as the out. They’ve stepped into the main hall; it’s got high ceilings and a sweeping staircase and bloodstains speckling the dark wood floors. Adam muffles a cough into his sleeve when their steps stir up musty-smelling dust. Michael shines his flashlight around, checking each doorway before pointing to the rightmost one. 

They creep into what turns out to be the kitchen, a much more modest room with tile floors and ancient cast-iron appliances. There’s no one there, and it turns out there’s no one in the library or the study, either. Time to head upstairs. 

The steps groan under Michael’s weight, and they both still, listening for any sign that they’ve been detected before continuing on up. Adam wonders if they might be alone after all. Maybe Hannah gave them bad info. 

Michael leads the way down a plush-carpeted hallway lined with slightly disturbing paintings, mostly of the fall of Lucifer at the hands of Michael (the archangel, not the one shining his flashlight into the bedroom off to Adam’s left). 

“Does this place have a basement, you think?” Adam asks when the tour of the upstairs turns up nothing.

Michael shakes his head. “No, not one that they’d use. I looked up the report of the raid on this place; the basement’s basically a dirt hole. But I think maybe,” he tips his head back and looks at the ceiling. “Yup. We’re going for a trip upstairs.” Michael points over Adam’s head, and Adam looks up to see the outline of a trap door in the plaster above him. 

“Wonderful.”

Michael is heavier than he looks, it turns out. Adam has to discover that the hard way, with Michael’s boots on his shoulders and plaster dust falling in his face as Michael tries to pry the door open. “Are you done up there yet?”

“Almost… gotcha,” Michael mutters, and there’s a bang and then the pressure on Adam’s shoulders is gone. He steps back in time to appreciate the view from behind as Michael pulls himself up into the attic. Talk about upper body strength, Jesus Christ. There’s some shuffling, and then Michael’s torso emerges, arms outstretched to take Adam by the hands and pull him up. 

Adam flops gracelessly onto his belly next to Michael, scrambling to his feet as quickly as he can in the dark. By Michael’s flashlight, he can tell that they’re in some sort of small chamber, tall and narrow. This explains why the house looked three stories tall from the outside, at least. 

Michael puts a finger to his lips in a shushing motion and sweeps the flashlight around the room. It lands on a door, as tall as any but a little bit narrower, and Adam’s breath catches. This must be it. Adam is about to come face to face with a real killer. He pulls out his knife, for all the good it’ll do him.

Michael reaches out and tries the knob, but it’s locked. Adam opens his mouth to suggest a solution, but Michael picks his foot up and just kicks it down. 

Adam’s world explodes into light and sound and heat. The door splinters and crashes down, light streaming through. A man’s voice starts yelling, but all Adam can hear is Michael hollering, “Carl Jones! Get on the floor, now!”

Adam falls back against the wall behind him as Michael pushes into the room, gun up and flashlight forgotten. They’ve kicked their way into a room that must be the size of the whole floor plan of the house, just this big, open studio filled with taxidermy and books and chairs and things that Adam doesn’t want to know the name of, but most importantly, an old man with a shock of white hair and a grey sweater vest cowering on the floor under Michael’s boot.

“What- who are you? How did you get in my house?” he pleads, and Adam realizes that this is not what he thought evil would look like.

“Are you Carl Jones?” Michael demands.

“Yes, I am, but who- who are you? Please don’t hurt me.” Adam steps into the room and sees the man’s eyes flick to him. They’re desperate, afraid, but not surprised. He holds the knife a little higher. 

“Did you or did you not sic a black dog on at least fifteen of your old religious followers?” Michael spits. His voice has dropped, and it’s got a cold edge to it that makes Adam’s spine tingle in a way he doesn’t want to think is good. “Answer me!”

“I- no, what are you talking about? What black dog? I’ve been doing the work of God!” Carl’s voice cracks on the last syllable. Adam can see at least three copies of the Bible from where he’s standing. 

“Adam,” Michael says without taking his eyes or gun off Carl Jones. “Search the room for a book written in Latin. It should have an image of a dog on the front, and it should be near a metal bowl with burnt things in it.”

Adam runs over to the nearest table, scanning for anything matching the description. Nothing. He looks up and sees a bowl and a stack of books sitting at an old roll-top desk on the other side of Michael and Carl. He runs over and looks in, immediately regretting it when he’s met with the sight of what looks like an entire burned… chipmunk? He gags.

“What is it? What do you see?”

“There’s a burnt… thing in here, like a small animal,” Adam calls. “Also, yeah there’s a book with Latin shit on the front. And a dog.”

Michael swears and Carl whimpers. “I know you did it, Carl,” he growls. “Now tell me how to stop it and if you set it on anyone else.”

“I did, I did,” Carl concedes. “I had to. It was the will of God. Those sinners I’ve cleansed, they should be grateful.” 

Michael steps harder on his neck and Carl chokes. “Strike one. How do we call off the dog?”

“You can’t call off the will of God,” Carl cries, and something clicks in Adam’s head.

“Michael, he’s delusional,” Adam says. “He doesn’t know what’s happening.

“Oh, I know what’s happening,” Carl insists. “There are sinners in this world. You two are Devils come to do the work of Satan! God will punish y- ahh!” Michael steps off him and grabs him by the collar, yanking him to his feet. 

“Tell me how to stop it or I swear to your God I will blow your brains out right this instant.”

“Michael, he’s sick,” Adam yells, running back to the center of the room. “He needs help.”

Carl whimpers again. “What he needs is a bullet to the head,” Michael responds.

“I can’t call it off,” Carl says. “God will punish the sinners. Repent! Hannah escaped last night, but she cannot avoid her fate forever. She will burn,” he insists, voice desperate and fearful and so clearly not there that Adam felt a pang in his chest. 

“Michael, he needs help. He’s sick, look at him,” he tries. Michael’s not even hearing Adam now, too lost in his own world of vindictive rage and Adam has never seen him like this before, just so completely checked out. He might as well be Carl Jones.

This is the wrong he felt. This is why they should have turned around. Carl’s just an old man. A confused, sick old man. 

Michael cocks his gun.

“No, please, I’ll tell you how to stop it! You just empty the bowl, I promise, you just empty the bowl,” Carl begs. 

“Adam, the bowl,” Michael barks. “Pour it out on the ground.”

Adam does as he’s told and comes immediately back to Michael, approaching him from the side, hands up and placating. “Michael, put him down. It’s over now. You can put him down.”

“No. I have to finish the job. It’s not done yet.” Michael’s voice is cold and his motions robotic as he raises the gun to point right between Jones’s eyes.

“ No,” Adam screams, but it’s lost in the bang and the spray of warm blood and something chunkier that covers them both as Carl’s body slumps to the ground. 

Michael lets go of him and looks Adam in the eye for the first time since leaving the motel. “It’s done,” he says, and a chunk of something bloody and white slips down his forehead and drops to the floor.

Adam vomits all over Carl’s corpse. 

“Adam, you don’t understand, I had to-”

“Get away from me!” Adam stumbles out the door and over the porch, collapsing in the grass just outside the house. “I don’t want to talk to you right now.”

Michael kneels down next to him. “Adam, please-”

“No.”

“Fine. I have to make a call. I’ll be right over there.” Michael walks away, stopping midway between the house and the fence. Adam sits back and takes a deep breath, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. 

Michael had just killed an old, mentally ill man who had already given up, and he didn’t even care. His blood and brains were on Michael’s face, Adam’s face, and he didn’t care. Adam felt tainted, somehow, like bearing witness to an execution marked him as every bit the sinner Carl Jones had said he was.

And wasn’t that just the kicker. Carl had killed people. Sure, he was old and crazy, but he’d killed a lot of people, even admitted to it. Was Michael right? Was a job not done until the danger had been eliminated forever? How do you make a call like that? 

Maybe, he thinks, using the front of his shirt to wipe the vomit and sweat and tears and blood off his face, he’d been too harsh. Maybe he’d been overwhelmed. Could he really call Michael a monster for dispatching a killer? After all, Carl Jones had just died for his judgement of others.

His mom had always taught him that people are given roles by the universe, tasks that they alone can fulfill. He was a healer like his mother, he’d known that for a long time. And Michael? God help them all, Michael was a killer. An executioner, a cleanser of evil the way Carl Jones had only dreamed of being. The world needs killers, needs people like Michael to protect people like Hannah and Adam. Michael was far from the worst thing out there, and to pass judgement on the man who stands between you and the darkness is unfair. Just because Michael had a job, an essential one that he was capable of doing, did not make him evil.

Adam, right then and there, makes the conscious decision to justify murder. He forces himself to look in the metaphorical mirror and face the fact that he knew Michael had been right. Adam had seen a murder, and he was alright with it. Horrified? Yes. Nauseated? God, yes. But angry? Judgmental? Unforgiving? No. Michael had done his job.

Fuck.

“-No, sir, I took care of him. He’s dead.”

Michael’s still on the phone with someone Adam assumes is his father when Adam makes his way over. Michael glances at him and then, almost comically, does a double take, looking at Adam like he’s a ghost. Like he thought Adam would never speak to him again.

“Alright. Yes, everything went according to plan,” he says into the phone, then rattles off a set of numbers Adam assumes are coordinates. “I’ll be here. Yes. Goodbye.” He hangs up.

“You’re leaving?”

“My father is coming to get me.” Michael pauses, stepping towards him and taking a breath. “Adam, what you saw in there- I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have had to watch that.”

Adam meets him halfway and takes Michael’s hands in his own. “I’m sorry, too. I was overwhelmed, and, yeah, I was scared. You scared me.” Michael cringes. “But it’s alright. You did what you had to do. You’re you, Michael, and if I didn’t know that, I wouldn’t be here.”

Michael kisses him, painfully gentle, and Adam reaches up to cup his face in his hands. Michael leans into Adam and wraps his arms around him, letting the kiss break off into a hug. 

Adam pulls away, only to come right back and push his forehead against Michael’s. “You have to go, don’t you?” he whispers.

Michael closes his eyes and a tear drips down his cheek. “I do.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

Adam swallows against the lump in his throat, forcing himself to breath through the coming tears. “Take me back to my dorm? One more time?”

“Of course.”

Adam’s building has never looked more lonely than now, facing it from just in front of Michael’s car, duffle bag in hand, door closed, but unable to move forward. He can feel Michael’s eyes on him. He takes a step forward, then another. 

“Adam, wait!” He turns to see Michael leaning out the open window. “Can I have your number?” he asks, and it’s shy, it’s soft, it’s like they haven’t just been through… whatever they’ve just been through.

Adam walks back and takes Michael’s phone, adding a little heart next to his name in the contact because something about this has him feeling like a teenager again. He hands it back to Michael. “Call me. You have to call me.” 

And then he walks away.

[UNKNOWN NUMBER]: Adam?

[UNKNOWN NUMBER]: It’s Michael.