clichecodename | tfln overflow 2

That last part is a joke.

Mostly.

Good. I'm glad it's a joke. Some of the people I hang around with lately, I swear...

Yah, extra security's probably a good thing right now. Maybe getting a second opinion might not be a bad thing? In case it WAS one of the security guys?

This is a stupid question I'm pretty sure, but have you thought about calling the police?

I feel REALLY bad for that taco now.

What kind of people are those? Should I be concerned about getting involved with you? That wasn't even something I'd considered. Switch security systems entirely. Calling the police isn't entirely an option. You can make up for it by bringing tacos around.

My brothers are...kind of weird.

[Understatement of the year.]

As long as you're not secretly a demon or a ghost or a werewolf, you should be fine.

Might be a thought, anyway. At least getting somebody to go over the system.

And...yeah, I kind of got that impression. No offense.

Done.

Leo skips the text message and just dials Adam's number. Because demons and ghosts and werewolves are not things he wants to ask about via text. As soon as Adam answers, Leo dives in with the serious questions.

"Demons? Ghosts? What?"

Adam's honestly a little surprised when his phone starts ringing--he doesn't think Leo's ever tried calling him before.

"Uh, hi?" He takes a second to get with the change of tracks here, blinking a few times, before breathing out a laugh and answering. "Yeah, they do exist, and since you're taking it serious and not just assuming it's my brothers being crazy or a joke I'm not telling right...I'm guessing you already kind of knewthat, even if you didn't know you know that. If you know what I mean."

There's a long moment where Leo is silent, so silent that it would almost seem like he's hung up. And then there's a release of breath.

"Actually, I had no idea. I just tend to have an open mind." There's a beat. "I'm actually more put off that I've been incredibly careful about making sure you don't find out about the horrors that are my life as a contract assassin and you live in a world of monsters. Actual monsters."

Adam bursts out into uncontrollable laughter at that. "Sorry! Sorry! It's not that I'm laughing, I just...wow. Thank you for thinking I needed protecting? I mean, I probably do, I'm not...I just..."

He swallows. And tries to get his babbling back under control. "So, yeah, monsters exist. Lots of them. I have family who hunt them. I don't. It's an awful long story, and I don't think you want me to go into my entire family history. And...you're...not exactly not kind of shady. No offense. But I kind of knew something was up. Do you want to talk about that?

Leo let's him laugh because it's funny in the grand scheme of things. Hiding this aspect of his life from outsiders has become a common enough thing that it's almost natural to make sure he doesn't tell anyone. There are, however, some cases where he makes a conscious effort to keep the details separate.

"At least the getting stabbed thing makes more sense. And you probably do? Mostly because the people I tend to piss off don't discriminate." There's another beat and the rattling of glass where Leo pours himself a glass of scotch. "I'm still not taking 'crazy' off the list of possibilities for your brothers. Most people wouldn't go looking for the monsters.

"You wanna talk about my career murdering people? For money? Pretty sure your story is more interesting."

He takes a deep breath and lets it out. "Probably. To be honest with myself. Although my boyfriend might get to anyone who hurt me before you could."

Adam gets up off the floor where he was studying and starts pacing around the room a little bit. "I wouldn't take them off the crazy list either, to be honest. I don't know them that well, and they seem it, at least to me. My story? Basically, I was a happy, normal kid who went home for the summer my first year in college and found out about all this shit the hard way when the bad guys decided to kill me and my mom in revenge for something the dad I barely knew did that I never knew about. And then I basically get rescued by somebody else and used as leverage against said brothers, that I also never knew about. And then got literally touched by an angel, who jumped into literal hell where we got trapped in a cage with Lucifer himself for over 600 years (but only six years up here) until me and Michael--that's the angel--managed to claw our way out and back to humanity, which is where I am now." He takes another breath!

"It's...not my favorite subject."

"Well, if he ever needs back-up, you have my number."

Leo listens to the story, second glass of scotch in his hand as he moves to sit down on the couch, feet kicked up onto the coffee table in front of him. He's in the one room on the lower floor that was unaffected by the group of people that broke into his house the night before. "I can understand why it's a topic you don't like to speak about."

There's a moment of quiet when Leo takes a sip. "Wait. Did you say Michael the angel? As in the Archangel Michael? And Lucifer, as in the fallen angel that was cast out of heaven damned to an eternity in hell?" And he thought his life was insane.

"Yes, I did." In the sort of sardonically cheery voice that means he can't even figure out how he got here. "As in the world basically almost ended until my brothers came and pushed him into the fire." He pushes his hair back. "So, I guess, any time things look bad...hey, you already survived the literal biblical apocalypse and didn't even know it."

"The taco in my dishwasher and shattered cabinet seems a whole lot less important in the grand scheme of things." Leo finishes his glass and gets up to refill it. "Definitely not a werewolf. Or demon. Pretty sure I'm not a ghost but the jury is still out on that. Maybe I died one of the times I was shot and I just didn't know it. Do ghosts know they're dead?"

"I think sometimes they do." He's still pacing, and leaves the bedroom almost without even realizing it. "But I'm pretty sure it's not a problem unless you start killing people. Er." He stops, and glances upwards, like he's contemplating a mark on the ceiling. "Killing people as a ghost, I mean."

"Bit late for that." He smirks even though Adam can't see it through the phone. "However, if I start feeling dead along with the homicidal tendencies, I'll let you know. Maybe you can send your monster hunting brothers over and they can also break through my security system and trash my house. Only this time it'll be in an attempt to kill me -can you be killed if your already dead?- and not to through a party in some random rich guys house."

There's a long pause. "We still having tacos?"

"Yeah." Adam still moves through the house. He may not be a hunter, but he's learned how to protect himself, up to a point. "You have to, um, find their body, throw salt on it, and burn it. There's exceptions, though. I don't know so well about those.

"I'd honestly be more worried about demons, if I were you." He picks a little statuette up and randomly turns it over. "They like to possess people and torture and kill everyone around them, just for fun. But as long as you're wearing an anti-possession symbol..."

He blinks. "Oh! Yeah! Sure. You got a favorite place?"

"Because that doesn't sound complicated at all. I think if I was dead, it'd be hard to find my body. I don't know where I'd have gotten killed." He shrugs, pouring another drink and returning to the couch. "An anti-possession symbol? What the hell is that?"

Leo takes another sip of his drink and sparks up a cigarette. "No. You're the taco pro."

"Well, you usually can't go far, I don't think. You'd have to ask one of the others, exactly. But, yeah, it's complicated. Which is why they specialize." He puts the phone down for a second so he can put on his jacket easier, then picks it back up. "Yeah, anti-possession symbol. I actually have it tattooed on my arm now." He took a page from his brothers' book at that! "I'll show you when I get there. It's...like a pentacle surrounded in flames, so, I mean, it makes a pretty cool tattoo."

He pauses on his way out the door. "Your housekeeper's not going to get mad at me for bringing more tacos over, is he?"

"Buffy makes demon hunting look so easy. Yes, I have seen Buffy." Purely because he could; there was genuinely no other reason for it. "Yeah, might sound less early 2000's emo kid if I see it in person."

It's Leo's turn to laugh then. "I've traipsed blood across white carpet that Gabriel has had to clean up. With the amount of money he gets paid to clean up this house, he gets mad about nothing." A beat. "I'm also pretty sure that my house keeper isn't an archangel. Just named after one. I could be wrong."

"I liked Buffy." He sets off walking. And then he has to laugh again about the tattoo thing. "You're probably not that far off," he says, glancing at his covered arm, "but, I mean, that's pretty much me in the early 2000s anyway, so I might as well own it."

He...makes a noncommittal noise. The Gabriel in his universe is dead...well...'dead'...but he's met a few around here in the multiverse. "I mean...probably not. It sounds kind of like a Gabriel thing to do, but probably not." He leans against the shelter of the bus stop, thinking. "He wouldn't, by any chance, be kind of small, with really expressive eyebrows, light browh hair and eyes, and may or may not have a huge, fake-looking mustache?"

"Buffy was a great show, as long as you ignored that it was super corny and that her guy friend was an asshat." Snorting a laugh, Leo kicks his shoes off and returns his feet once more to his coffee table. "Alright. I definitely wanna see this tattoo. And maybe some photos of you in your emo stage."

Leo's quiet for a long moment. "Wait, you've met him too? Wow. But no, he doesn't look anything like that. You'll probably meet him soon enough."

The guy Adam's sitting next to on the bus can't seem to stop hacking, so he edges a little closer to the edge of his seat. He'll...try to be careful who he sits next to when he's finally got the tacos. "You're ruining my memories, man," he protests while he shakes his head, laughing, "and you'll have to ask my grandma for those. I think she's got the only pictures left." He looks off and thinks for a minute. "Besides...it was small-town Minnesota in the early 2000s." He's grinning again. "If there are any, they're probably pictures of me basically wearing guyliner with my jeans and flannel."

He scratches his nose for a second. "Yeah. You might like him, actually. Really strong, twisted sense of humor. Has a thing about seeing people get what they deserve. Likes candy."

Leo grunts a non-committal noise in place of an apology because he isn't actually sorry. Buffy's friend had been a douche; if anyone was going to see it immediately, it'd be Leo. "Or you could ask her and then I can show you mine." He shrugs, even though Adam can't see it. "Well, I could show you my mugshot. I never had an emo phase." Or any phase that wasn't 'violent and bloody'. "Oh Jesus. Call it eyeliner. 'Guyliner' is ridiculous."

Snorting again, Leo nods. "Not much of a candy eater myself but he sounds like my kinda guy."

Adam's silent for most of that...and then bursts out laughing on the bus for the eyeliner bit. He kind of needs that. "Noted. And...okay, yeah, when I get there, it's your turn for storytime, you know that, right? Any requests for tacos?"

Leo's laughing too because honestly, it's funny, even if he does stand by his comment about 'guyliner' being ridiculous. It's right up there with the whole 'man bun' bullshit. It's a hair style, why does it need a gender in front of it?

"Yeah, I suppose I can accommodate. You can ask whatever you want. Word of caution, you might not always like the answer." There's a moment of quiet while Leo things. "Meat. Cheese. Whatever. I'll eat most things."

2/2

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*...Randomly distracted by Daniel Craig's complete lack of armpit hair...*

best. thing. lol this made my day

Poor James Bond. Routinely captured, tortured, tied up AND dealing with itchy pit stubble.

He probably has a pretty lady that shaves it for him though so there's a perk

True! XD

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SPN's Gabriel is incredible, jsyk. One of my favorites. :)

I was watching it on Netflix. I think I got as far as S10? Gabriel is one of my faves

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...Randomly distracted by Daniel Craig's complete lack of armpit hair...