Fic: The Ghost and His Keeper [Michael/Adam, Gabriel, Raphael] Part I
PART I
There is a story, and it goes like this:
Once upon a time there was a boy and a ghost.
They were cursed and they were in love.
There was no happy ending.
It was, needless to say, a recipe for tragedy.
But then, that would be oversimplifying things, wouldn't it?
-x-x-x-
Adam wakes up and he's not in Hell any more.
It's been weeks, possibly nearing months now, but the fact still hasn't set in. The novelty has yet to wear off. He thinks it won't wear off for a long time, and honestly no one can blame him for it. He'd been in hell for how long? Stuck in there, watching as Sam left while he was destined to stay with two furious archangels. Part of him still expects to find himself back there, whenever he opens his eyes.
Back in the Cage, with no escape, and no future.
He still doesn't know how he got out. One moment he was there, and the next here. There had been no one to tell him why, nothing. Just the photographs of John, Kate, and him above the fire-place of his old house in Windom, the familiar faded walls and wooden floor to greet him.
Adam wakes up and he's not in Hell any more. He's home.
And fuck if he knows how he got there, but he isn't asking questions.
~*~
Being home is easy and it isn't. Adam didn't think he'd have mixed feelings about the whole thing, but he does. Sure he isn't in Hell any more, and he is always going to celebrate that, but the house itself has memories too many dark memories of his first last moments. It's odd and not right, and yet at the same time it is.
There are good days - not the sunshine and roses kind because Adam's never had that kind of life, and he knows after what he's been through he'll never have that kind of life. No, the good days are the days when nothing happens, and he loves it. He gets some restoration work done on the house, makes a significant dent in it and feels the comforting ache of overused muscles of after a long day. He naps in the sunlight coming through a broken window he's not yet fixed and later on through the new open ones, in the afternoon. He has too much coffee, smokes fewer cigarettes, even reads, and ends his days when Nanny from across the street comes over with dinner. And later when he gets a laptop, she brings DVDs of old movies for them to watch together.
There are neutral days, when something does happen, this and that, things he can sometimes ignore and sometimes cannot. When Hell seems just a little closer to the surface. Or the ghouls seem to be inching towards the present rather than the past where they belong. Where something in the house, feels undeniably off and he can't put his finger on what it exactly is. When if he isn't bogged down by paranormal worries, it's the mundane ones. Like having to deal with cashing in Mom's insurance, breaking his college fund, and still needing money to restore the house. About worrying how he'll pay the bills, and how he'll manage working three jobs instead of two. About how he's never going to college again and achieving his mom's and his dream of becoming a doctor. But they're still manageable.
At the end of the day, he can deal with it. He has Nanny, Kristin's grandmother and the closest thing he has to family left from across the street. She grounds him. And when she's not enough, he has other ways. He's old enough to buy alcohol and cigarettes now, and even if he wasn't he could pester Nanny to bring some from her stash. (The only problem with that would be, she'd regulate him and not let him get drunk, and she doesn't like it when he smokes, but that's okay too, because it makes him feel like he's eight when he thought everything would work out fine when he grew up.)
But then there are the bad days. Days when that off kilter feeling creeps through his bones and deeper than the marrow until it's fitting its talons into the cracks along his soul, and make it hard to just be. Days when he hallucinates. Days when the house feels too sinister, and dark and he can see blood on the wallpaper and scratches on the floor, despite the fact that he's fixed those up. Days when he feels like too much light and air, and not in control of his body to even do anything about it. Days when he feels like he's not alone in the house with only his memories, but something else. These are the days when Hell and the ghouls lurk right behind his eyes, where he feels wrong and alien in his skin. That's there's something inside him that's trying to claw it's way out. These are the days, he can't stand his own shadow or reflection because he doesn't feel human any more, and he doesn't want to look and see proof of it.
These are the days when Nanny being Nanny and made of everything nice and good in this world, uses her “mom” senses (which are thousand times better than Spidey senses) and bakes him something.
The bad days unfortunately, outnumber the good and even neutral days far too often.
But if Adam is anything, he's a stubborn ass who will fucking fight tooth and nail for something he wants. He doesn't want to go back to how he was before his life went to shit. He knows that can't happen any more, he won't fool himself into thinking it will. But, he doesn't just want to be, either. He wants to live again, not normal but something close to as he can manage it. Being is the first step to that. And even if he has to the one step forward three steps back dance, he'll keep doing it and reverse the thing through the sheer force of his will.
Hey he managed to keep himself from crumbling to dust in Hell. This is relatively easier.
~*~
Adam doesn't count the passing of time. It's not that he does this on purpose, it's just can't keep track of time well any longer. It's a side effect from his stay in Hell. Time blurs, and ebbs and moves through him and he feels stagnant.
It's getting a little better these days, but not a lot.
He counts the days thanks to Nanny. Nanny who tells him when to pay what bill, when to go do his bank work, when he has to go to work, because he's even bad at that. Nanny who comes over early in the morning on his birthday and spends the whole day filling up the house with the smell of the birthday banquet she's cooking for him. Nanny who's on the last years of life herself, and probably tries to make every grain of sand left in the hourglass of her life count. Nanny who is like Mom and lives instead of being, and makes him believe that he can too.
~*~
There's something off about the house since he came back. It's not to do with the memories of the ghouls. It's not his mind playing tricks on him, even though he initially thought it was. It's something to do with the house itself. Adam doesn't know how he knows, but he knows. So does Nanny. So does the rest of the town come to think of it, seeing as he's heard quite a few murmurs about it, when people think he's not listening.
The townspeople rarely come over, even the delivery people.
Nanny (whose middle name might as well be Awesome McFearless) comes over more often when he mentions the feeling.
Adam for the most part of it, ignores it, until the feeling goes away, or fades enough to not bother him. It should worry him, but the thing is: this is his house.
This is his home.
If anything is going away, it's the paranoia and bad feelings, not Adam.
Besides, he feels safe here.
-x-x-x-
When it happens, when it finally comes out, it goes like this:
Nanny is over again, having made him dinner. She's retelling him the story of her old holiday with Kate, when they went to a beach resort. It's one of Adam's favourite anecdotes. His mother always grumbled about it good naturedly, whenever she found out that Nanny had retold the story, and it'd always made him laugh, even though back then he hadn't understood all of the jokes. Though once he was old enough that he did, it did become a whole deal funnier. Mom even threatened to ground him once when he'd teased her a little too much about it.
It's just as Nanny's narrating the incident with the cocktails, hands gesturing animatedly, when she goes stock still, her eyes widen, staring just to the right off the stove. Adam worriedly turns around just to see what it is, before he feels like molten lava has run down his spine. There's an outline of a man there, tall and lanky, glaring at them with the most piercing grey-blue eyes Adam has ever seen while holding something. What it is, Adam doesn't know, but it must be dangerous or something to worry about because Nanny's strong grip closes around his wrist and she urgently tugs him outside before he can react. It's probably a good thing because by the time they are out in the fresh air, Adam can feel something like a panic attack coming on.
“That's it boy, you're not staying there tonight,” Nanny says and goes on about other things, like how she's been suspicious about this for a while and tonight it's been confirmed. About how they'll go to a priest in the morning to do something about it. About how he's staying with her until whatever it is that's in his house in out. But Adam ends up tuning her out while struggling to breathe. The memory of those eyes glaring at him are burned into his brain, and seem to keep staring at him from inside his own head, while the rest of his mind seems to be on auto-repeat.
There's something in his house. In his own fucking home. And it's fucking been there all this time.
~*~
Adam spends the night panicking and mentally repeating the mantra of: There's something in my house.
Nanny spends the night calming his down, until the sheer mental exhaustion catches up with him and ends up falling asleep on her lap.
They go to a church the very next morning, and Adam bites his nails down to stubs hoping beyond hope that the priest can do something, because well he should know right? The priest, however, doesn't believe him, thinks Adam is seeing things and Nanny is senile. Adam spends the ride back alternating between wanting to go right back and punch the man, and shaking in the passenger seat of his old car while Nanny drives and hums Sinatra in an effort to calm him down.
Then she forces him to stay over until they do something about whatever the fuck it is, in his house. Adam agrees until cold dread spreads through him at the stray thought of the thing following him to her house and harming her. But when he tries to bolt, she pulls something right out of his mom's play book and threatens to brain him with a spatula.
~*~
Adam debates calling Hunters, before dismissing that thought, because yeah, no. Hunters mean Sam and Dean and that is not a grave he wishes to dig up. Never. Ever.
So he turns to the internet. And libraries.
Neither of them are any help at all.
It's primarily and laughably suspect information when he doesn't stumble onto a Twilight, Paranormal romance fantasy, Harry Potter, or 'witchcraft' - which seems more like the new housewives version or knitting or something - site. (Seriously, how many are there? ) He's not sure how rock-salt would work, or any kind of herbs or seasoning. They're for fucking cooking. What is he trying to get rid of a ghost, or do some weird exotic cooking? Is he supposed to be wooing it or maybe get rid of the thing by bribing it with food? Maybe it's food that tastes horrible. The eternal way to get something out of horror movies and stories out of your life is through it's abnormal tummy.
Seriously, salt and herbs and seasoning. It's the most stupidest thing he's ever heard off.
He's all for the iron horseshoe theory though. He remembers Sam mentioning something about iron, so it probably has some merit. (And this might be the only time he'll ever be grateful for even thinking of his asshole older half brother Sam.) When he mentions it Nanny says she might have one, tells him not to ask why - which means that when this is over and things are back to normal, she'll get out the good wine and tell him a story he's never heard and they'll laugh for hours over it, and it will be fantastic - and starts ransacking her attic for it.
Then there's those weird Ghostbusters rip off web series Nanny finds. It only catches his attention because they mention Winchesters. Dean and Sam to be specific, and how weird a coincidence is that? He's still a little doubtful about some of the things, but considering the names mentioned, it's worth a shot. It's probably the closest he'll get to having the efficiency of a Hunter without having to actually involve the fuckers and hence draw a nice red bullseye at himself.
~*~
He chooses a day when he knows Nanny will be out for her monthly tests and hospital check up, and not able to follow him.
He barely makes it two steps in before the front door closes with a slam, and he's thrown against the far wall. His head snaps back against it with a sickening crack, and Adam feels woozy, and faint. He just hopes he isn't bleeding he thinks as his vision begins to blur and fade. He's suddenly very glad he didn't bring Nanny.
So much for all the herbs and seasoning. They did jack squat.
The last thing he sees before he passes out are those piercing grey-blue eyes close up, finding them familiar.
-x-x-x-
Part II