The motel room door opens with a bang and Raphael jumps, drawing a long line from the end of her sentence to the edge of her biology worksheet. Before she even has the chance to look up, Michael and Lucifer are yelling.
“-can’t believe we’re going through this again! You endangered civilians and you put everyone involved in the hunt at risk. You have to be more careful!” Michael’s furious, pacing back and forth in the tiny kitchenette and tugging at his hair.
“Yeah, well, they should have gotten out of the way. I got the job done, didn’t I?”
“No everything is about you!”
“It is when I’m getting things done! I saved them, and that’s all that matters, right?” Lucifer drops his bag with a clatter.
Raphael glances over at Gabriel. He’s sitting between the side of their bed and the door, sketchpad open but abandoned. He rolls his eyes and she shakes her head.
She turns back to the fight as Lucifer advances on Michael. “I thought Dad told us to save people. That’s the whole point, right? That’s why you drag us all over the country every other goddamn week? To follow his orders, right?”
“Don’t bring us into this,” she mutters. Neither of them act like they’ve heard.
“Don’t you dare imply-”
“Imply what?” Lucifer spits, leaning in. He’s got Michael backed up to the wall, a hand braced on one side of him. Michael doesn’t look nervous, even though Lucifer’s got three inches and twenty five pounds on him now. They all know who would win if Michael ever decided he really wanted to fight. “Imply that you don’t actually care about us? That we’re just soldiers in your little army, pawns for you to move around so that you can finally feel like Daddy loves you? Because I’ll tell you right now, Michael, he doesn’t. And he won’t, no matter what you do, no matter how much you bleed, no matter how far you push and run and fight and-”
Michael snarls and shoves Lucifer’s shoulder hard enough to send him reeling back. He steps forward and grabs Lucifer by the shirt collar. “Listen to me. You’re a brat and a child. You don’t know how the real world works, and I don’t expect you to. I expect you to at least try and think before you do things, and to listen to me when I tell you to stop. I-”
“Hey, do you think you could keep it down over there?” Gabriel pops up from behind the bed, hands held out in a mockery of a peace offering. “Some of us are trying to do homework. Not me of course, but I’m sure Raphael is. Right, Fae?”
She and Michael both turn to glare at him at the same time. She mouths “ stop it,” and he raises his eyebrows as if to say, “ make me.”
Michael breaths sharply, and for a moment, she thinks he might start yelling at Gabriel, but he catches himself. “ This does not- It’s fine, Gabriel. Just… give us a moment, alright?” He turns to Lucifer. “How about we go outside for a moment, if you want to continue this conversation.”
Lucifer huffs and rolls his eyes, but he nods and Raphael’s stomach twists as they head back out the door, arguing again even before it closes behind them. They would fight again, and Lucifer would leave, and she wouldn’t sleep tonight because she’d be busy listening to Gabriel cry and watching Michael sit on the couch and stare blankly at the wall.
The bed shifts and Gabriel crawls up next to her, dangling his feet over the edge and unwrapping a lollipop. He offers it to her, but she shakes her head. It’s cherry, which is disgusting, but he clearly doesn’t think so because he pops it in his mouth with no hesitation. She turns a little to watch him as he turns on the TV and starts to channel surf. He turned sixteen a few weeks ago, and his age is starting to show. He had a baby face for a long time, longer than other kids his age, but now he’s losing it quickly. He’s still short, probably always will be, but there’s no longer any mistaking him for a child. Maybe some of it is the fighting lately. It shows, she thinks, in the circles under his eyes, in the wrinkle in his forehead, in the fingernail-shaped crescents on his palms and the bite marks on his lip. He’s getting tired, and she can’t blame him. They can’t keep living like this. It’ll kill them.
Michael and Lucifer come back in almost an hour later. They’re dead silent as Lucifer gathers his things, and the only sound as he walks out is the slam of the door. Even Gabriel, who’d been giggling at an episode of Seinfeld a moment before, was silent.
Michael glances at them and whispers something that might be an apology before padding quietly over to his bed and sitting. He toes his shoes off like he doesn’t even have the energy to bend over. There are bloody scrapes on his knuckles and bruises on his face. None of that is out of the ordinary. What makes chills go up her spine are the purple and red finger marks ringing his neck like a sick sort of necklace. A choker, she thinks bitterly, and almost laughs. From the look on Gabe’s face, he sees them, too.
She has to say something, she thinks. She has to take control of this situation, because Michael won’t, and they have places to be and things to do in the morning and they need to move past this. “Michael, are you alright?” She keeps her voice soft and even, like she’s talking to a scared animal. Michael might as well be sometimes, with the things he’s done and seen. There’s something broken in him, and it shows in the way he spooks at loud noises and attacks first and fights to kill every time. It’s animalistic, there’s no other word for it.
“I’m okay,” he murmurs, and his voice is wrecked. She can taste the blood in her own mouth just hearing it.
Then, he does something that Michael never does, that he saves for near-death experiences and pitch-black rooms. He gets up, comes over to their bed, and wraps Raphael and Gabriel in a gentle, almost cautious hug. She stiffens, and feels Gabriel do the same beside her, but Michael doesn’t let go. He smells like sweat and gasoline and gunpowder, but he always does, and the familiarity makes her loosen up just a bit.
Michael squeezes them briefly and whispers into the space between them, “I love you both. I’m so sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. I love you.” Then, he releases them and walks over to the window, pulling his phone out.
She looks at Gabriel. He looks at her. They both look at Michael. Seinfeld switches over to an ad sequence, and then back to Seinfeld. No one talks for a long, long time.