Chapter Text
“As for that pipsqueak… I’ll call her a six on a good day.”
“Pfft, are you kidding me? That titless bitch can barely even pull a four.”
Lute tilted her head back, the movement sending her softly curled hair cascading down her back in glimmering silver waves, and rolled her eyes. “She’s average, Adam.”
“She’s fucking boring!” Adam exclaimed, gesturing down at the winner in question. An assless, flat-chested, plain-faced, dull-winged woman with her hair styled into the most bland bob haircut imaginable, she wasn’t actually doing anything wrong. By all accounts, she was just going to get some new loafers or whatever the fuck it was chicks like that did with their time.
Which was great, because Adam and Lute weren’t doing anything wrong either! There was no way that she could hear them from their place on top of the courthouse. It was unlikely that she had noticed that they were there at all. If she did, all that she would see was two hotties minding their own business. What a boring bitch didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.
In this case, what she didn’t know was that all of Heaven could see that she didn’t exactly fit in with the celestial scenery.
Or maybe she did. She’d have to be pretty damn stupid if she didn’t realize that she wasn’t much to look at. Fortunately, it wasn’t Adam’s problem either way.
What was his problem was that Lute had apparently lowered her standards.
Shifting around to face his lieutenant, Adam arched a challenging eyebrow and asked, “Are you seriously saying you’d smash that cunt?”
Lute’s pristine pink lips pulled down in a frown of distaste. “Of course not,” she huffed. “I have standards, Adam.”
“Then why the fuck are you rating her as anything above a five?”
“Because we need to maintain a standard. If we start rating average people below a five, then we’re going to be scrambling when we reach the real trolls.”
Adam grinned sharply. “We could always start dipping into the negatives. Some of these dough-faces are lucky that they were let into Heaven in the first place, at least we can be honest about it.”
Once again, Lute rolled her eyes. The exasperation in the gesture was dulled by the way that she was visibly losing the fight not to grin. Already radiant when she was frowning, her smiles turned her perfect features into something more gorgeous than the best of Heaven’s treasures. Even her silver halo seemed to glow more brightly at those times, casting a mesmerizing shimmer on her similarly-hued wings as her feathers fluffed up in her attempts to hold back her laughter.
“Oh, you suffer so much, surrounded by such hideous people,” she teased.
“Damn right. But, you know…” Adam slid his hand over to rest on Lute’s thigh. “At least I’ve got the hottest piece of ass in Heaven to make up for it.”
Lute paused. Her gaze dropped down to his hand, watching as it crept farther and farther up her perfectly toned thigh. When it reached the very top of her leg, she looked back up, lips twisted into a glorious wicked grin.
“You’re touching my dress, sir,” she purred.
“Sure am.” Adam leaned in closer. “That a problem, Dangertits?”
“It’s not my dress that you should be touching.”
Adam didn’t need any more of an invitation than that. He pushed his hand under Lute’s skirt and shoved it up to her stomach, allowing his nails to drag across the flimsy white fabric of her stockings so hard that they threatened to tear. They would, soon. First, however, he was going to have a little fun. He pried Lute’s legs apart and pressed two fingers against her panties, rubbing up and down the indentation of her slit.
She was holding back a groan within moments. He found himself holding back one of his own at the sight of her perfect breasts starting to heave ever so slightly as her breathing grew more rapid. Soon, he knew, the tips of her pristine silver feathers would be quivering. Not long after that, he’d have those godly tits in his hands while he pressed his cock up against her.
He couldn’t fucking wait.
Unless, of course, it was to tease his perfect ten.
Adam shifted his fingers so that his nails were dragging along her panties. He would never go as far as to call his nails anything as demonic as claws, but they were certainly sharp enough to have a similar effect if he really tried. Just a little force in the right place and–
“Wait,” Lute gasped, grabbing his wrist before he could tear through the fabric.
“What?” he asked with a frown. “Babe, you know that I know what I’m doing.”
He would gladly tear through fabric, yes, but he’d never scratched an actual pussy.
…Well, except for that one time, but that had been before he’d found something better, anyway.
“Adam, we’re in public,” Lute hissed, squeezing his wrist as emphasis. Her grip was tight enough that it almost hurt.
He hoped she knew that she was the only bitch in the universe who could get away with almost hurting him, especially when it was for the sake of spewing some bullshit.
Honestly, it was kind of hot, but so was pretty much everything she did.
“Uh, so? We’ve fucked in front of people plenty of times before. They should be happy they’re getting a show.” Adam grinned lasciviously, allowing his eyes to rake up and down his lieutenant’s blessed form. “I should pin you up against the church bell sometime, really show them–”
“Do you remember what Gabriel said last week?” Lute interrupted.
Adam paused. “Why? Did that windbag finally say something worth remembering?”
“Adam.” Lute pulled his hand back from her pussy. The firm set of her lips, the faintest glint of worry in her light gold eyes, drove him to allow it. “He said that there will be consequences if we keep it up.”
Oh. Right. That.
“Damn, Lute, have more faith in yourself.” Adam pulled his hand free to rest it on her shoulder and gently push her back. “Getting to screw you is worth the worst lecture that fucker can think of.”
“Adam.” Cold and ice and sharp as a whip, the way Lute hissed his name froze every nerve in his body while sending all of his blood straight to his dick. She was the only person in existence who could get away with pushing him around, and as she grabbed him by the arm and hauled him to his feet, she did it with such ease that he might as well have been a puppet. He only started moving again when she gave a sharp push to his back, sending him stumbling forward a step.
“Hey!” he barked, barely managing to catch himself in time to avoid stumbling. “Are we–”
“Get your ass inside and you’ll find out what we’re doing.”
Needless to say, Adam got his ass inside. He could cut back on the exhibitionism a bit if it meant that Lute was going to play it like that.
Besides, he didn’t exactly need all of Heaven to see him get dominated by a chick.
A hypocritical chick, it was worth noting. For all of her bitching about privacy, they only made it a few steps down the hall before Lute was shoving him inside the first closet she found. She had him pinned against the wall before he had a chance to say anything about it.
The moment he saw the heat building in her expression, he thought of something far better to say.
“I was right, you know,” he purred, raising one hand to brush against Lute’s cheek. “That chick back there? A total four. The only reason you don’t agree is because you don’t get to look at yourself all day.”
“Oh yeah?” Lute breathed, pressing closer to him. Adam had to bite back a groan at the feeling of the generous swell of her tits against his chest. “I don’t recall her being particularly ugly. What makes her so repulsive… compared to me?”
“Not being ugly doesn’t make a cunt worth looking at.” Adam dragged a finger along the edge of Lute’s dress, dragging his nail along the seams. A few seconds later, the faint sound of tearing fabric filled the air as those seams began to rip. He dragged his hand higher, pulling the tears along with it, before tugging at the top of her sleeve.
Lute shrugged her shoulder to make it easier to pull it off.
“She couldn’t have been more than an A-cup, for one thing.” Once one arm was free, it became easier to tug Lute’s pristine white dress off. He had to use both hands, but it promptly collapsed in a pile on the floor, giving him a full view of— “You have the most perfect rack in Heaven and Hell.”
God, he fucking loved it when she went without a bra.
Truly, he had never gone as far as to say it directly, but Lute could put Lilith to shame. Adam cupped one of those divine breasts, brushing his thumb over the nipple, and marveled at how only a portion of it could fit in his hand, its heft, its shape.
“You already called her titless,” Lute reminded him. While one of her hands continued to pin his shoulder against the wall, the other roamed down to rub at the bulge that had grown enough to be visible through his robes. “You’ll need to do better if you want me to reward you for bullying some poor, innocent girl.”
“Bitch didn’t have an ass, either.” Adam dropped a hand down to squeeze Lute’s voluptuous behind, grinning victoriously at the surprised squeal that it earned him. “I could ride yours until the fucking sky falls.”
“You could ride me, hm?” So quickly that he could barely follow it, Lute shoved his robes up, pushed his boxers down, and gave his dick a tight squeeze.
Adam’s breath hitched into a noise that would have been humiliating as fuck if there were anyone else around to see. He pulled Lute closer instinctively, one hand hooked around her waist and the other still tight on her ass, while struggling to find the word to choke out, “Let me–”
“No.” Lute let go of Adam’s dick to grab his shoulders with both hands once more, this time pulling up fistfuls of fabric in the process. “I’ll take care of that. You keep going.”
“She was flat. Fucking– everywhere,” he choked out. While Lute’s hands worked on the slow, agonizing process of pulling his robe up and off, her knee had come forward to grind against his dick. “No shape, no curves, you might as well be fucking a stick.”
“Repeating yourself already?” Lute pulled Adam’s robe off and tossed it aside with a flourish. He didn’t give a damn when she was looking at him the way she was; disappointed, and hungry enough to take a bite out of him if she was let down again. “Maybe you’re into boring sticks after all.”
“Watch your f–ucking mouth,” Adam gasped, barely able to keep himself intelligible as Lute reached down to run her fingers up and down his shaft. Her pelvis pressed against his as she rubbed, a promise kept just out of reach. “She was short, too.”
“Everyone’s short compared to you,” Lute pointed out, shifting her hand to idly rub a finger over the head of his cock.
“Not you,” Adam retorted. “I don’t have to crane my fucking neck to look you in the eyes.”
There were scant few souls in existence who came anywhere close to Adam’s height, and it was one of the universe’s greatest gifts that Lute was one of them. Honestly, it was a fucking miracle.
She accepted it with a faint smirk and a simple, “I’m special.”
“Damn right you are.”
Adam released Lute’s ass to wrap one arm around her neck and the other around her waist, pulling her as close as possible. She responded by hooking one of her legs around his waist and guiding his cock toward her entrance. His skin tingled when she leaned forward to kiss his cheek. Kissing turned into something fiercer as she shifted to nibble at his ear.
“One more,” she breathed. “What about her face?”
Adam scoffed. “Her face isn’t worth looking at when the rest of her is such a shitshow.” He paused to nip at Lute’s jawline before whispering, “Her wings weren’t even silver.”
“I’m the only one with silver wings other than the seraphim, Adam.”
“That’s because you’re the only one who’s good enough for me.”
Adam knew for a goddamn fact that this wasn’t the relationship that the seraphim had in mind when they made a lieutenant for him. He couldn’t give less of a shit if he tried. Lute was the most perfect being in all creation and he was going to take everything that she was willing to give him.
As she pulled him inside her with a ferocious growl, he knew that she returned the sentiment.
Lute was a ferocious, unhinged bitch in every conceivable way. This time, she showed it by taking him without any preparation. Adam only realized what had happened when a ragged gasp tore past her lips.
“Fuck, bitch!” Adam exclaimed. “Are you–”
“Fragile?” Lute gasped. She rolled her head to grin at him sharply, the faintest hint of pain on her features largely drowned out by ruthless desire. “Don’t insult me, sir.” She shoved him back the few inches he had leaned forward, pinning him against the wall once again. “I know what I’m doing.”
Lute proceeded to wrap herself around his waist and set a ferocious pace. Adam was all too happy to accommodate, pounding into her as she raked her claws down his back and let out screams of pleasure. The world blurred into something sharp and vague and glorious as he got lost inside of her. Her walls clenching around his cock, her nails threatening to draw blood, her teeth digging into his shoulder as she approached climax; she was all he needed, and she was all his.
She came before him, but her cry of pleasure was still ringing in the air when he spilled inside of her.
“Fuck, bitch,” he gasped as she pulled off of him. “Trying to out-scream all of Hell?”
“How else would I let you know that you’re doing a good job?” Lute asked, bending down to pick up her fallen dress.
“Are you fucking kidding? I’m always incredible,” Adam huffed.
“If you’re so confident, then I won’t make a damn sound next time,” Lute hummed. She straightened back up with her dress clutched in her hands. A frown touched her lisp as she examined the rips on the sides, only to turn into a cheeky grin when she glanced up to see Adam’s narrow-eyed glower. “Touched a nerve, sir?”
“Fucking cunt,” he grumbled. “You’re lucky you’re hot.”
“You’re lucky to have me,” Lute shot back.
Adam pointed a finger at her and waved it up and down. “Lucky. You’re. Hot.”
A dismissive laugh was all the response he got before Lute was pulling her dress back on. Adam watched until her body was concealed once more before moving to pull his own robes back on. Lute was already moving to open the door by the time he was dressed.
They stepped out of the closet to find Gabriel standing in front of them with his arms crossed and a thunderous scowl on his face.
Lute went as stiff as a board.
Adam, meanwhile, just grinned. He knew exactly what the stuck-up fucker was seeing. Lute, with perfect hair all messed up and tears in the sides of her rumpled dress. Him, equally disheveled with a glaring bite mark pressed into his neck. If he knew to be waiting for them, the buzzkill had probably heard them too. Fuck, the entire courthouse had probably heard them.
Adam knew exactly how this looked. He just didn’t care. What the fuck was he going to do? The seraphim could lecture him as much as they wanted, but at the end of the day, he was the Head Exorcist, the first fucking man. Irreplaceable. Untouchable.
It was honestly kind of funny how the jackass looked like he was actually going to do something. With the coldness of his molten silver eyes, Adam could almost believe it.
Almost.
“‘Sup, Gabe,” Adam said.
“Adam,” came Gabriel’s frigid response. “You were warned–”
“Yeah, and look at us, being all obedient and shit! Better in the closet than on the roof, right?” He reached out to pat the seraphim’s shoulder, letting out a bark of laughter when he stiffened up and pulled back. “Shit, alright! Hope you get well soon, dude, that stick up your ass must chafe like a bitch.”
With that, he grabbed Lute’s hand and pulled her down the hall after him. “Come on, babe. I’ve got some more fun in mind.”
*
Lute shared his bed that night, as she so often did. She stayed in his apartment until around noon, when she got a call and left for one thing or another. It was probably more workaholic crap, leaving to hover over some default exorcist who was struggling with a basic exercise. They were supposed to be taking the day off, but that bitch wouldn’t know how to relax if God himself suddenly manifested and demanded it.
Adam didn’t see or hear from her for the rest of the day.
He didn’t think to worry until the next afternoon.
Sera called him to her office soon after.
Adam flopped into the chair across from Sera’s desk with a grin and a casual, “‘Sup, boss lady. Have you seen Lute?”
Sera perked up a little. “So you’ve noticed her absence.”
“Uh, yeah, no shit.” He rolled his eyes. “I’m a guy with needs, you know. If Lute’s not around, how the fuck am I supposed to—”
Sera silenced him with a raised hand. Normally, that wouldn’t do shit to make him shut up, but when it was his boss… Adam liked to get his way, but he wasn’t a fucking moron. Even if she was interrupting him for no good reason.
“I think I’ve heard enough,” Sera firmly said. She lowered her hand to fold it over the other on top of the desk. With that, she proceeded to stare at Adam in that heavy, searching, ancient way of hers. She wasn’t doing that freaky-ass eldritch eye thing, so she wasn’t mad. Yet there was something about the way she was staring at him, the subtle mixture of sadness and disappointment without so much as a hint of surprise, that left a bad taste in his mouth and made him squirm in his seat.
“What?” he asked on the off chance that it would make her fucking stop. “Did you call me in to tell me you don’t like the way I speak? ‘Cause I dunno how to tell you, Sera, but if you think you’ve been subtle about that shit—”
“Adam, you know that your lieutenant isn’t a sex toy, right?” Sera interrupted.
She was still looking at him the same way, but now there was a new element to it. Scolding. Frustrated. Regretful.
It was enough to make him forget that she was one of the most powerful beings in creation and glare back at her. Defensive. Annoyed. Confused, and pissed that she’d brought him into her office to say confusing things.
“Uh, no fucking duh,” he said. “I’ve never used Lute as a toy, Sera. I’m not into that sort of shit. We fuck because we both like it. I don’t see how that’s any business of yours.”
“Your repeated misbehavior has made it all of Heaven’s business.”
“Oh for the love of—” Adam threw his arms in the air with a groan of frustration. “Is this about the fucking sex pest thing!? Like, if Gabriel’s so fucking worked up about it, we’ll dial it back a bit. Dangertits is already stressing out about it. I’ll just chill when she tells me and—”
“Adam, it’s too late for that,” Sera interrupted, soft in a way that she was never supposed to be soft when talking about Lute.
Regretful. Apologetic.
A chill ran down Adam’s spine. “What do you mean?”
“You have ignored all of our warnings. We were left with no choice but to take action, and we thought that the best course of action may be…” She paused to stare at him for a moment longer before looking away. “We have been forced to consider that we may have made an error when designing your lieutenant. There was no reason to visibly set her apart from the other exorcists. Her uniqueness had proven to be nothing more than a harmful distraction.”
Adam could hear his heart thundering in his ears. It made him feel like he should be strong enough to tear down heaven itself if need be, yet all that he could muster was a low, furious rasp as he asked, “What the fuck did you do to Lute?”
Sera looked him in the eyes once again. She had schooled her expression into something unapologetic, unreadable save for one glaring message: This is your fault. “We haven’t hurt her in any way,” she said. “Her body has been altered to sufficiently remedy our problem, but she remains the same person in every way that matters.”
Adam shoved his chair back and staggered to his feet. “Where the fuck is she?” he snarled. “If you fuckers are keeping her from me, I swear—”
“Adam! Your lieutenant has not been harmed!” Sera snapped, the first hints of her many divine eyes manifesting on her person. “She was released from custody as soon as the alterations were complete. We adjusted her memory to avoid any unnecessary trauma. As far as she is concerned, she has always been as she is now.”
That was all that he needed to hear. Adam raced for the door without a single goddamn thought in his mind apart from finding Lute and seeing what the fuck had been done to her.
He was stopped from flinging himself out the door by a sharp, “Adam!”
For all of the fury and desperation racing through his veins, there was enough power in that word, a level of divinity that he couldn’t even hope to touch, that he froze with his hand on the doorknob.
He did not turn around. There wasn’t a single goddamn thing that Sera could do to make him turn around.
“As far as she knows, she has always been the way she is now,” Sera said.
Adam’s grip on the doorknob tightened until he could swear that his knuckles were going to tear through his gloves. “I heard you the first time,” he growled.
“She isn’t going to know what she did wrong. I know you aren’t happy about this, but try to be kind.”
Adam slammed the door open and sped out without another word.
*
The smart thing to do at that point would have been to call Lute. It took Adam about a minute of searching his pockets in an increasing panic to realize that he had left his phone at his apartment. Doubling back to get it would have taken a long fucking time. Thus, he decided to do the second smartest thing and scour all of Heaven for his lieutenant with his own goddamn wings.
He spent four hours searching with no progress to speak of before he realized that the second smartest course of action might actually be going back to his apartment, getting his phone, and then calling her. Adam may have forgotten his phone, but god knew that Lute would never make a mistake like that. She’d never reject a call from him, either. If he did that, he’d have her on the line faster than he could blink.
If Sera was such an untrustworthy bitch that he believed Lute was in any present danger, something that he could prevent before it happened, he would have doubled back immediately. But she wasn’t, so…
He didn’t.
Not for any particular reason. His insides started to feel a little weird the longer Sera’s words were allowed to stew in his head, but that was… that shit was unimportant. The tightness in his chest was just heaven spontaneously developing allergies or some other celestial bullshit. The little pulsating ball of cold and dread in the back of his mind that had less to do with Lute and everything to do with him was just another limb of the many-legged animal that was his anger with Sera. He wasn’t—
Adam was fine. Pissed off and eager to make sure that his girl was okay, but fine. He was already out looking for her; turning around and going back to his apartment would be damn close to giving up. It made sense for him to search for a little while longer. Fuck, Lute would want him to keep going if she was there. Something about diligence and hard work or something like that.
By the time hour six passed by, Adam was caught in a weird state between exhausted and manic. His body was raring to go, of course. One of the benefits of being the Head Exorcist: he could fight off a fucking army without feeling a hint of exhaustion. His mind was another matter. He was starting to feel tired in a way that was stronger and entirely separate from his body. At the same time, he could feel the haze that had overtaken him when Sera first told him what the seraphim had done falling over him once more, successfully eclipsing all the other stupid, irrelevant shit churning about within him.
It had been too long since he had seen Lute. Almost two days. That was longer than he had gone without talking to her in… fuck, he didn’t know how long. Fuck everything else, he needed to see her now, to make sure that she was okay with his own two eyes.
Adam would never curse himself. That would imply that he had made a mistake. If there was one thing that Adam never did, it was make mistakes. However, as he pumped his wings in an effort to cross the massive distance back to his apartment in as short a time as possible, he was willing to admit that he may not have made the best choices in this case. He had a good fucking excuse though; anyone would be a little wigged after having a seraphim sit them down to spew deranged shit.
He did manage to make an hour-long flight in half an hour though. Even wigged as shit, he was fucking awesome.
Awesome enough not to look like he was having a total breakdown as he started down the hall of his apartment.
He hoped.
Not just anyone was allowed to live in the same building as the first man. All of his neighbors were people who he had specially approved to reside there. That meant that all of his neighbors were exorcists. None of them actually had much to do with him, of course. They were his girls and thus given the gift of being allowed to exist in his general proximity, but the unfortunate truth was that most of his girls honestly weren’t anything that special.
Lute was special. The exorcist lieutenant, she had been designed with exquisite love and care, an angel so brilliant that she might as well have been carved out of the same fabric as the universe itself. She was worthy of Adam’s attention. The rest of them were uniform soldiers who might as well have come off of a conveyor belt. Sure, they weren’t actually identical, but that didn’t mean that it was worth looking. Sure, Adam cared about them, but that didn’t mean that he wanted to spend time with them outside of work. He gave them orders that they followed him without question, they looked at him with the devotion that he deserved, but at the end of the day, they weren’t worth investing his personal time and energy on.
The exorcist in the hallway wasn’t worth paying any attention to. Adam caught a glimpse of her out of the corner of his eye as he rushed toward his apartment. Generic uniform, bland black and white wings, silver hair cut into a boring bob; it was the same-old seen-it. He didn’t care, wouldn’t give a damn if he was paid, had bigger issues to attend to.
He didn’t expect the boring-ass no-name exorcist to call out to him with an eager, “Sir!”
Adam didn’t stop, of course. He didn’t know what the chick wanted, but whatever it was, it could fucking wait. Or she could file a complaint or request to Lute or some shit. He didn’t know where she got the nerve to just randomly call out to her commander like that, but that was more shit that he could deal with later. Right now he had to find—
A familiar grumble sounded from behind him, a mixture of grumbles, curses, and fond irritation.
A chill of dread sent goosebumps over Adam’s skin. It was followed by his stomach dropping down to his feet as that same voice called out, “Adam, would you fucking wait!”
He froze.
Adam would know that voice everywhere. He had heard it almost several day for the past thousand years. It was the only one that ever appeared in his dreams, the good ones, at least. Cut off from that body, there was no way to mistake it.
No matter how much he suddenly wished that he would.
A hand reached out to grab his elbow. His elbow, not his shoulder. She was grabbing him way too low. The hand itself was far too small. The pressure behind it was the same, firm enough to hold him tight but not tight enough to cause any pain, but it wasn’t enough to make it feel any less wrong.
“Where have you been?” Lute asked. “I tried calling you, but you wouldn’t pick up your fucking phone.”
Adam was the first man. He was the first human soul to make it to heaven. He was the only one of the three who had once resided in Eden who hadn’t been damned. Yet as he turned around, his feet were so heavy that he could have sworn that he was being pulled down to hell anyway.
The woman staring up at him was short. That was the first thing that stood out to him. Where his Lute was only a few inches shorter than he was, the angel before him was a solid two feet shorter than him, if not more. Even with her looking up, he had to tilt his head downward to meet her gaze. Her eyes themselves were more or less the same, but the thick black lashes that once framed them had become thin and pale. The panes of her face, lines of her cheekbones, and shape of her nose were the same, but her lips were thin and colorless.
That was just her face. The more he took her in, the more he could see how her body had been savaged. Where her hair should have flowed down to her back in a wavy curtain of molten silver, it was now a sheet of gray that ended above her shoulders in an effortlessly efficient bob. Below that, her chest was fucking flat. Sure, he could see the faint outline of breasts, but they were small enough to be nonexistent. His body refused to move when he tried to look behind her, but he knew, he knew, that her ass hadn’t fared any better.
It didn’t end there. The more he looked, the more he realized that it never ended. Her shining silver halo had been replaced with basic exorcist black. The great silver wings that once sprang from her back had been replaced with the same dull, white-striped black that he could find on any girl in his army. The form-fitting dress that she usually wore was nowhere to be seen, the regulation uniform in its place. Her very fucking essence, the ethereal glow that was impossible to describe but always there, had been stripped away to leave behind someone who was just…
A six on a good day.
…nothing special.
It took him a while to realize that she was speaking. It took longer still for him to realize, for the second time that day, that her voice was still the same. Reality only really set back in, however, when a small, calloused hand reached out to caress his cheek.
Adam flinched back and out of her grasp, only belatedly realizing that her touch had been gentle. “What?” he blurted out.
Lute frowned up at him. It was the soft, worried frown that only he ever got to see, and only on occasion. He recognized that frown, he knew it, he’d seen it a hundred times before. Except he hadn’t, had he? The look was the same, but the face it was set in wasn’t. When Lute frowned at him, it was supposed to be fucking perfect. She was supposed to be the only other being in the universe that came anywhere close to being on his level. What he was looking at now was…
She was just another fucking exorcist.
An exorcist who was urgently saying something. He could make out some of the words, sorta. However, when he tried to string them together to get some sort of meaning, all he got was a jumbled mess.
This was the part where he was supposed to turn around and walk away. When one of the exorcists was trying to talk to him but he wasn’t in the mood, he turned around and walked the fuck away, no matter what she was seeing. Unless it was Lute, but Lute…
Lute was special.
The person in front of him didn’t look like Lute. She didn’t look like anyone who could be worth his time.
She sounded like her, though. The way she looked at him was the same. Her hands were all fucking wrong, yet when she reached out again to take his wrist, there was an undeniable familiarity to the protective firmness of her grasp.
“Adam, what’s wrong?” she asked. Where there should have been anger in her tone, he found only the first whispers of panic. It probably wasn’t the first time she had asked, then. Under different circumstances, if everything was right and normal and she was still the way that she was supposed to be, he probably would have felt at least a little guilty, just because it was her.
Right now, he just felt dizzy.
If he had played it safe and brought Lute back to his apartment the other day, he would be grinning hungrily at a familiar face and pulling her into his bedroom.
Because he hadn’t, he found himself pulling away from her once again.
Something flickered across Lute’s face. He looked away before he could get a good read on it, but it looked like it was something kinda painful. It sucked, but right then, he didn’t give a shit. He couldn’t, not when it felt like the world was tilting and falling away beneath him. He couldn’t…
He couldn’t fucking look at her.
She wasn’t going to back off though, not without him saying something. Not when she was worried about him, like he was the one with something wrong with him when she was the one who had been warped in the worst possible way.
“Adam, talk to me,” she insisted.
He couldn’t. She was acting like she was okay because she thought she was okay. She didn’t know how much better she had been, how much she had lost, how she had gone from a fucking goddess to just—
Adam shook his head, chasing the thoughts out of his head just enough to mutter, “I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine,” Lute argued.
Of fucking course he wasn’t fine. The most important person in his life had been turned into a shadow of her former self and he couldn’t tell her without running the risk of hurting her even worse.
“I am,” Adam insisted. “It’s not—” It was important. It was the most important thing in the goddamn universe. “I just need some sleep.”
That much, at least, he could be honest about.
“…Okay,” Lute said after a moment. “Come on, let’s get you to your apartment.”
Adam stepped back before she could touch him again. He allowed his gaze to settle on a space above her head, the place where her eyes were supposed to be, and said, “Nah. I appreciate the offer, babe, but I need some space.”
Lute’s breath caught in her voice, casting a lingering strain as she said, “We don’t have to—”
“For real. Go home, Lute.”
Adam turned to stagger back to his apartment.
He made it all of three steps before an odd jerk in his stomach had him turning back around. His eyes locked onto the space above Lute's head, the halo that had lost all its shine, yet he could feel her gaze boring into him as he said, “...Hey. You aren't hurt or anything, right?”
“Of course not, sir,” Lute said, her befuddlement not quite strong enough to hide her anxiety. “Why are you asking?”
Adam forced a shrug. “Fuck if I know. It's been two days, shit happens.”
“I–”
“Anyway, night.”
It was all too easy to walk away after that.
*
Adam hoped that maybe sleep would make everything better.
Come midnight, he was still staring at the ceiling.
At two in the morning, he realized that that was the first time he had refused to let Lute in his apartment in over a thousand years. The ache that came with it died off as soon as it had come.
At three in the morning, he finally fell asleep.
He woke up at noon feeling even worse.
Lute had sent him three texts.
He didn’t bother reading them.