#(they dont know abt us 1d. in case u were wondering. its a really funny midamoul song)

[paradisecas]

just to find a love that feels this right

midamoul week day 1: family (? kinda)

Kate used to tell Adam that all she ever wanted was for him to find his person and never ever pick someone like John. She never said it outright, but her life was meant to be a warning. An omen. Adam should avoid people who could fuck him up like John did her, even if he didn’t mean to at first.

A decade and a thousand years later, Adam has ignored that warning and decided that his people are the two beings that have hurt him the most.

It’s fucked up. He knows it’s fucked up, in some tiny crevice in the back of his mind—Ghoul is a monster and Michael is technically the oldest being in all of creation after Chuck and Amara and Death all died or were transferred. Nothing about them cries relationship material.

It’s so fucked up that he hasn’t gone to see Kate yet; he knows what she’d say, and it’s the same thing she told him a hundred times growing up.

Make sure they’re right for you. Don’t stay because you feel like there’s no other choice. Don’t ask for something normal from someone who can’t provide it.

He doesn’t think he’ll be able to look her in the eye when he’s ignoring everything she taught him.

They’re probably not right for him. He doesn’t have any other choice. And they’re so painfully abnormal that it hurts sometimes.

But—they try. They really try.

“We’re out of eggs,” Michael tells him, standing in front of the open fridge. “I wanted to make breakfast for you tomorrow.”

“There’s no bacon either,” Ghoul adds, peering over Michael’s shoulder a safe distance away.

“That’s because you ate it all,” Michael gripes. “Adam, would you like me to do the shopping for us?”

Technically, Michael could probably snap his fingers and their fridge and pantry would be stocked with everything they need for a week. Technically, Michael could do a lot of things with his powers, but Adam quickly realized that letting him felt like using him and the ease of it all meant he’d never leave the house, which wasn’t good for anyone’s cage-or-graveyard themed trauma.

Adam also quickly learned that sending Michael to the grocery store, even with a list, would end up with him buying the most ridiculous ingredients, like four dozen eggs that he can’t eat before they expire because he doesn’t even eat eggs that much and Michael can preserve them but that feels wrong because some things are just meant to go bad, or a whole box of bruised beets because they’re healthy and Adam should eat better even though beets are actually disgusting, or a live lobster that he felt bad for, or carb free bread that’s unsettling and crunchy because of all the seeds? wheat? in it. The bill ends up being hundreds of dollars that he doesn’t pay and he usually has to wipe a memory or two in the process which fills Adam with an indescribable guilt and the horrible thought that Michael can be so similar to Chuck, which he has to tuck into the darkest recesses of his mind lest Michael see and have a crisis of biblical proportions.

Ghoul can’t do the shopping either. He’ll come back with nothing but raw meat that technically Adam can eat too and a live lobster as well because that’s the one thing those two can agree on and, one notable time, looking like someone else because he quote, saw this total smokeshow and thought it might be a nice surprise for Adam so he snuck a bite in the middle of Aldi and definitely didn’t get kicked out before he could even buy the groceries.

They also can’t go together because they’ll end up with yet another live lobster—Adam is not immune to feeling bad for them when Michael and Ghoul are in his ears talking about the poor things being trapped for entertainment and bought for the slaughter—and he’s tired of telling Michael to take it back to the ocean and he just knows that they’re gearing up to ask for a tank to keep them all in that he won’t be able to say no to because they’ll be on the same team for once, and Michael will brandish his beets and multi colored carrots with bright eyes and Ghoul will point at people he thinks are attractive and say that Michael’s here so there’s no risk and Adam will come back home with nothing he went there for. 

Kate would call it weaponized incompetence. They do such a bad job so he has to step in and do it for them, but she wouldn’t understand. 

They’re not John. They’re not being ridiculous on purpose. This is them trying, really earnestly trying because they want to make Adam’s life easier, and they do! Michael makes him breakfast and Ghoul never forgets to thaw the chicken and going to release another lobster is like a mini vacation sometimes and people watching has turned into a game of Who Should Ghoul Eat Next, which would horrify Kate and should horrify Adam but the reality is, people are just so young and so small after all his time locked away with the biggest being in the universe. 

Everything that happened to him at the hands of Michael and Ghoul set him on the outside of the world; he can’t live the normal life she wanted for him anymore. Maybe this is why so many people stay hunters; it’s easier to keep to the outskirts rather than integrate with people who don’t know anything.

At least they’re on the outside with him.

That’s what Kate wouldn’t understand, so he doesn’t go see her. He doesn’t ask Michael to take him and he doesn’t ask Ghoul to stay behind because this is his life, for better or for worse. 

“I’ll go,” he says, “but you can help me make a list.”