Their shared past slotted in like pieces of a puzzle, but Adam’s world remained shattered. He didn’t have all his childhood memories, and the last ten years of his life were a collection of glimmers, but he knew he’d left, because no matter how badly his mother had tried to turn him into a monster for the sake of her misguided beliefs, he’d been just a child. And so instead of standing up to her, or the others, he’d run.
“I h-hated her so much… those bones in my room… she made me kill those animals, so I was ready to receive… Abaddon in my body,” Adam whimpered as tears rolled down his face in a continuous stream of heat.
Gabriel was so frail next to him, yet right now, he felt steadier than iron. His grip was strong, and he led Adam to the couch, as if he noticed his legs shaking.
“I didn’t know. That’s horrific… Adam.” Gabriel leaned in and pushed some hair off Adam’s face so they could look into each other’s eyes.
After so many days of seeing himself as Gabriel’s rock, Adam was crumbling, and he needed his boy to keep him together. With a breathy sob, he tucked his face in Gabriel’s soft, fragrant neck and only relaxed when the slender arms that somehow still smelled of vanilla closed around him.
“She… they… they wanted to make me the perfect vessel. I needed to be corrupted. So they made me watch all this h-horrible stuff, and do bad things too. She would beat me if I refused. I didn’t know what to do.”
"You were just a boy. You had the right to be scared,” Gabriel said, his hands soft as some of the cats whose necks Adam had ended up breaking. After a while, Gabriel straddled Adam’s lap to hold him close, and while his arms were slim, the gentle embrace provided safety that went beyond physical protection.
With him there, it didn’t matter that piranhas were consuming Adam’s mother. She was no longer here anyway, perhaps already falling into the deepest pit, where the real Abaddon awaited her.
“I’m so sorry… I just ran instead of helping you. I was such a waste of space,” Adam whimpered, rubbing tears and snot off with his sleeve.
Gabriel stroked Adam’s hair as if he wasn’t dealing with a cowardly piece of shit. “You were very young. By running away, you did stop the ritual. You saved both me and Harry.”
His lovely face was blurred by Adam’s tears, and in that moment, with his mind finally acknowledging some of the painful past, Adam felt unworthy of this boy’s love. “I was fifteen. I could have done more… and this—” He pulled the little cross from under his T-shirt. “I found it at the bus stop when I ran. But—I don’t know what happened after that. My mind is empty.”
Anxiety curled around his insides like a venomous serpent ready to strike at any moment with truths even worse than those he’d already accepted. “Who the fuck am I?”
Gabriel stared at him for a prolonged moment, but his face expressed concern, not loathing. “Oh no… Adam, I thought you lied. That you came up with the angel story so that you don’t have to get rid of a witness. You actually don’t remember?”
“I told you I wasn’t lying,” Adam grumbled, but shook his head right after, because he had no right to be angry. Gabriel had been lied to half his life, so of course he’d be suspicious. “I know bits, but I must have had some kind of life in the past ten years, right? I got these tattoos, I’m good at climbing, and I pick locks as if they’re puzzles. It wasn’t like I’ve slept through a decade in the woods—” He stalled, meeting Gabriel’s gaze. “Wait… if I’m not an angel, what the hell was I doing in the ground?”
Gabriel leaned down to kiss his lips. “You had bruises when we met, Adam. Someone hurt you.”
And had buried him for good measure.
God, he’d been buried alive.
“Did I? Was I bruised?” Adam asked, and when Gabriel nodded, he could barely wrap his head around the deception his mind had undertaken to hide such obvious things from him.
Would he ever get all of his memory back, or would his life forever remain this fragmented reality?
“I’m… so confused,” he whispered, remembering that he’d been nauseous on that first day, and his head hurt—both symptoms of a concussion, which could have technically caused the selective memory loss.
Gabriel kissed him again, soothing some of the anxiety inside. He was now the single stable part of Adam’s life. “It’s okay. We’ll find out what happened. I’ll be there for you.”
With the classical music streaming through the air like a caress to their ears, this moment could have been romantic if it wasn’t for the woman becoming fish food in the aquarium.