A/N: A'ight, so. This is a bit of a side project of mine for when I'm not in the mood to write my main project. As such, it will probably be shorter and not updated as often as you may like. If that bothers you, dear reader... My apologies.

Adam Milligan was just an average nineteen-year-old. He was enrolled in an average pre-med program at the University of Wisconsin. He attended average classes and came home to an average, rented "apartment" off-campus. He came from an average family, for the most part: a single mother who worked her ass off because his father was more of the love-'em-and-leave-'em-and-then-show-up-unwanted-12-years-later type.

Which is why, when he came home from school after a grueling but amazingly average day, Adam expected nothing out of the ordinary awaiting him at home.

He was wrong.

He didn't know that. Not at the time. What he did know was that he had a shit-ton of chemistry homework he was not looking forward to, an online quiz in biology due at ten p.m. that night that he'd studied for but still dreaded doing, and his gas light had been on for who knows how long which meant he had roughly two miles left before his little Hyundai just said fuck it.

Unfortunately, he had already passed the last gas station on his way home when he'd noticed the annoying light and said fuck it himself. The car could wait until the morning. He wanted to go home. Well, to his house. The place didn't quite feel like home. Start of the semester and he hadn't unpacked most of his shit, just left it boxed in the second bedroom he was never going to use.

He'd thought about turning it into a guest bedroom for his mother for when she came to visit, but, well, she worked all the time. Still. And he couldn't really expect her to drop her responsibilities to just check out his new crib. He didn't want her to. No, it'd be better for him to go visit her whenever he got the chance. It'd be easier on both of them.

When he finally pulled into his driveway, Adam spared hardly a glance at the small, two-story, old-as-hell, dull-grey house in front of him. He was more focused on putting the vehicle in park, turning it off, reaching behind him to grab his satchel full of heavy ass books, and climbing out of his car. It wouldn't seem like these actions would require much focus, but, apparently, they did. Or Adam would have noticed something was not quite right with his house.

He did not notice that something-not-quite-right the entire time it took him to walk the short distance from the Hyundai to the front door. Probably because he was fiddling with his keys. He did not notice the something-not-quite-right after he unlocked his door, walked into his house, walked through the small living room, only to place his satchel on the kitchen table that had come with the place. He did not notice it when he opened the refrigerator door, grabbed a bottle of Sprite, and started downing the liquid like he was a man dying of thirst.

No, it wasn't until he was staring at the dirty plate sitting in the sink that was staring accusingly at him while he contemplated if he should actually wash it before the food melded with the ceramic that he finally noticed something was not quite right. His hint was the thumping. The sound of thumping was coming from upstairs.

Adam's first instinct had been to freeze. His second instinct, which had happened at almost the same time as his first, had been to panic. The end result was that the young man stared like a deer in headlights at his kitchen sink while his brain provided him with a strobe light effect of images of everything that he had seen in a horror movie…ever.

Adam was a man. And, as a man, he had to be truthful with himself. He had to admit that he wanted nothing more than to run, shrieking like a young girl, from his own damn house. Unfortunately, he was a man. Which meant… He didn't really know what it meant. He was only nineteen-damn-years-old. He just got into college. How does one behave like a functioning adult other than paying the bills on time?

He took a deep breath, slowly placed his Sprite on the kitchen counter, and steeled his nerves. The thumping sounded again. Adam steeled his nerves further. Right. Okay. He psyched himself up. Other than being a burglar or a killer, what else could be upstairs in his house?

He had no fucking clue.

None of the people he knew at college had a key to his "apartment." The landlady that had given him permission to reside in the old house, for roughly the same amount of money a single apartment would have cost him on campus, did have a key. However, she couldn't possibly be upstairs. The poor old woman was in the hospital from a fall. His mother didn't have a key. His father and brothers sure as hell didn't have keys or even knew where he'd moved to. The chances of him liking whatever he found upstairs were slim to none.

Another thump followed by the muffled sound of a dying animal. That sound, believe it or not, gave Adam some semblance of hope. Animals. Animals he could deal with. Perhaps something had snuck its way in threw the quasi-attic and crawled its way out? The house was old. Even though the landlady, Mrs. Edwards, had done a fair amount of work on it before putting it on the market, touch-ups couldn't hide the age of the wood on the inside. Wasn't strange for some type of rodent to chew threw that stuff. Or, like, a raccoon.

With a newfound sense of courage, Adam decided to investigate the noise. But, first, to arm himself. His weapon of choice? The broom. He had thought of a knife but, well, he wanted a bit of distance between him and whatever the hell was upstairs. Play it smart, not necessarily lethal. Besides, he'd played baseball when he was younger. He knew how to swing away.

Adam walked around the kitchen table, grasped his blue, plastic broom that was sitting in the corner, and exited his kitchen with a glare. His knees may be trying to knock together, but he couldn't let his enemy know that. They had to be as afraid of him as he was of them. He walked back through the living room and up the stairs, almost stumbling when he head another pitiful whine.

Whatever was in his house sounded less and less like a raccoon the further he approached the bedrooms upstairs. That was not comforting in the least. All right. Well. He'd already made it to the top step, may as well keep going anyway, right?

As his ears led him towards the "guest" bedroom, Adam's grip on his weapon tightened. He briefly wondered how sturdy a cheap ass broom from Family Dollar was. Then, he briefly wondered how he was going to open the door.

Naturally, he was going to have to use his hands. But, that raised the problem of letting go of the sturdy grip he had on the broom. Which meant that, should whatever in the bedroom decide to attack him, he would be making himself vulnerable. It looked like everything would come down to just how fast Adam could move.

Let go of the broom with right hand. Grab the door knob. Creak open the door slowly. Peak into the crack. Hop back as fast as possible in a fighting stance. Hop back as fast as possible in a fighting stance. Hop-. Come on, legs, get with the program. What are you doing?

Turns out, Adam's legs were stuck to the floor and for good reason. What he found awaiting him in his "guest" bedroom sure as hell wasn't a raccoon. Or a burglar. Or Jason Voorhees.

He wasn't entirely sure what he was looking at. He knew what he was looking at but he didn't want to know what he was looking at. Because to admit to himself that there was an angel-with wings-sprawled out on his floor amidst a sea of boxes was to admit that angels were a thing. And that one was in his house. And it had knocked a hole in his roof, which had knocked a few support beams down, and-.

Adam stumbled not-so-graciously away from the bedroom door, that was still slowly opening because the house had settled, walked back towards the stairs, and just sort of collapsed onto the floor in shock. The broom lay, forgotten, beside him as he tried not to have an existential crisis.

An angel…was in his house. No. No, an angel could not be in his house because, for one thing, they weren't real. For another, he was just an average nineteen-year-old college student with an average life and there was absolutely nothing fucking average about messengers of God dropping through his fucking roof. No. This thing, this angel, had to go. His name may be Adam, but he wasn't about to start biting any apples and ushering a second Fall of Man. Fuck that.

Just as Adam was reaching for the broom, confident that he was going to shoo this creature out of his house like he would a bird, the angel let out a pitiful cry. That sort of cry that pulls at heartstrings and makes people wonder what's wrong. And, once again, Adam's curiosity got the better of him. Despite his better judgment, he turned his head to look through the open doorway and let his eyes fall to the crumpled angel.

The longer he looked, the more he took in, the harder his heart began to beat in his chest. Because, Adam realized, the angel was injured. Heavily injured. Its white wings looked bent, broken. Blood had splattered the askew feathers. It leaked from open wounds. A small puddle had formed on the floor, from what Adam could see between a broken beam and some boxes.

Adam moved before he even knew what he was doing.

"Hey!" He shouted, stumbling in his haste to get off the floor. "Hey!"

The sound of his voice must have spooked the angel. It jerked violently, jarring its injuries and causing it to cry out again.

"No, no," Adam told it, hopping over some boxes. He wound up falling on his knees beside the…young male? "Don't do that. Ssh. Don't-don't move. You're fine. You're gonna be fine. Just don't move."

Adam was lying out of his ass and he knew it. Now that he could actually see what he was dealing with, he knew he was out of his league. And not because his 'patient' was an angel. A very odd looking angel that appeared to be around his age with blond hair that was wearing a red-and-white Wiener Hut uniform. No, 'out of his league' meant the sheer amount of blood and injuries he was going to have to deal with.

The angel's wings weren't the only things covered in the precious bodily fluid. The red liquid was caked all in the young man's hair, thanks to the halo around his head. Not the gold, glowy sort of halo, but the medical device. Only, and Adam was only partly sure about this, that was definitely not how those were meant to be used. The blood appeared to be all over the front of his once pristine uniform, having oozed out of lacerations and stab wounds all over his torso. They were the reason for the mess on the floor. How long had the guy been lying here?

The angel was shivering, panting, his blue eyes unfocused. Could angels go into shock? Hell if Adam knew. But he wasn't taking any chances.

"Fuck," Adam swore under his breath. "Okay. Um. Shit. Uh. We're gonna have to. Um. Move you. Somehow. Get you on a bed or something. Hey. Hey! Can you see me?"

Adam waved his hand near the other's face. The angel responded with a jerk, but his eyes couldn't really follow the movement. That wasn't good.

Biting his bottom lip, Adam thought. Right, what did he have to do exactly? He knew he had to get the angel to his bedroom so he could fix him up properly, make him comfortable. But, the issue was how to get him there. His wings were broken in several places, from what Adam could tell, and they were lain out over so many boxes-uneven planes that could catch the delicate looking appendages. Any sort of movement to those wings would cause extreme pain. Adam knew that. But…he didn't have any other choice really, did he? He was just going to have to move extra slow when he pulled the angel up. If the guy would let him pull him up, anyway.

"Okay, look. I know you can hear me. I don't know if you can understand me, but I know you can hear me. So, I'm going to say this anyway. I'm going to have to pick you up, slowly, so I can lay you down somewhere else. Somewhere flat so that I can…help you. Or try to, anyway." Adam sighed. "Please, just… Don't freak out on me."

With a deep breath, Adam braced himself and touched the angel on the shoulder. The angel jerked once and whimpered. Adam froze. After a long second of nothing happening, he felt it was okay to keep going. He got on his hands and knees in front of the other man, gently placed his hands under the angel's armpits, and ever so slowly started to pull him up and towards him.

And that's when the angel decided to struggle.

It started with the wings. Broken though they were, the angel tried to use them anyway. For some damn reason. And, by doing so, he caused himself pain. Which made him tense up. Then, Adam, in all his infinite wisdom, tried to pull the angel up faster to get the wings off of the boxes and avoid further injury. Yet, that just made the angel panic…and struggle more…nudging one of his broken wings into a precariously angled box. Said box tipped over. Adam watched in horror, unable to do anything but wheeze, as it fell onto the wing.

The angel did the most reasonable thing given the circumstances. He screamed. Only, it wasn't a run-o'-the-mill scream. It was a piercing whine like a dog whistle. The sound nearly knocked Adam to his knees. The whole room felt like it was spinning around him. He closed his eyes, as if that would make it stop. Faintly, he heard the sound of glass shattering.

Then, the angel went limp. The sound ceased. Adam realized that, somehow, he'd kept a hold of him. Smushed him against his chest in a tight grip to keep from dropping him. Adam was the one shaking now. For a split second, he thought he'd killed the angel. But, then, he felt the other's chest move against his. The angel was still breathing. His heart was fluttering away against Adam's.

"Right," Adam said shakily.

He wasn't surprised that he could barely hear himself over the ringing in his ears. He was surprised to find that he could hear anything at all. Oh, and that the two windows in the room had been shattered. Perfect. That was going to come out of his gas money.

With the angel unconscious, it'd be easier to move him, at least. Adam was still going to have to be careful with him so as not to injure him more than he already had. But, there wouldn't be as much of a struggle. Small miracles. He was going to have to move the box off the angel's wing, however.

With a put-upon sigh, Adam gently lowered the angel back to the floor. He removed the box from the broken wing, flinching when he heard shards of glass tinkling against each other. He was pretty sure that whatever was in there hadn't been broken by the fall.

Adam didn't stop there. He moved every box towards the walls. He hurried, because the angel seriously needed to be attended to, but he had to do it. He had to make sure there would be no more mishaps. That his foot wouldn't trip over something and both he and the angel would go tumbling. If he threw a few boxes a bit too hard in his haste, well… Oops.

Done with that, Adam awkwardly picked up the angel as he had before, holding him chest-to-chest with his arms wrapped around the other's middle. Not the best way to carry someone, but he was carrying someone with wings. Wings he had to watch out for. This sort of drag-carry hold was the only way Adam could think to do both efficiently.

He almost laughed at the ridiculousness of his situation. He was dragging a half-dead angel across his upstairs hallway to his own bedroom to treat him. As if he were some sort of mythological creature doctor. Only, he wasn't even a doctor for humans, yet, so...he didn't really feel like laughing. Because what good was he going to be to an angel?

Sure, he'd been raised by a nurse and had watched enough medical shows to last him a life time. On a whole, he knew more than the average person. He knew he was going to have to clean wounds with antiseptics, bandage them, grab pain reliever, and possibly try to force feed the guy some fluids. He was going to have to remove the halo from around his head. He was going to have to bandage wings.

Too bad Adam had no idea how to use a halo. Too bad he had no idea how to bandage a bird's wings. Too bad the only form of pain reliever he had in his house was Extra Strength Tylenol for when he'd get headaches from squinting too hard while studying.

Adam's lamenting of his professional skills were put on the backburner as he reached his bedroom. The only furniture in the room so far was his bed, a nightstand, a lamp, and a dresser and chest-o'-drawers that came with the house. Most of his furniture was, thankfully, out of the way. All he had to do was shuffle the angel through the doorframe, past the edge of the dresser, just a bit to the left, and…

"Fuck," he breathed.

His room wasn't small. It wasn't. It was big enough to fit a queen-sized bed, the furniture, and leave some room to spare. It didn't have a closet, but, hey! For what he was paying Mrs. Edwards to rent the place? His room was amazingly big.

It just wasn't big enough for a fifteen-ish-foot wingspan. Not without moving something around.

"Um," Adam said to himself, looking around his room.

What could he move? Well, the obvious offenders were his bed and his dresser. His bed, however, was about as far as it was going to go against the wall without squishing the nightstand. So, the only real option for moveable furniture was the dresser near the door. It was heavy, but, at least Adam hadn't put much of anything in there. That was a plus.

However, to move the dresser so that he could place the angel down and spread his wings out diagonally across the floor…Adam would have to put the angel down. Without enough room. Which led to the possibility of injuring the wings again.

"I really didn't think this through, did I?" he asked no one in particular.

After a minute of awkwardly standing in his own bedroom, arms growing tired with the dead weight, Adam eventually decided to place the angel against his bed. In a sort of weird crouching position that had the angel's face a little too smushed into the mattress, his wings limply trailing back towards the door. Adam cringed at the sight, but it would have to do.

He carefully stepped over the feathered appendages, walked to the side of the dresser farthest from the door, grabbed under the lip, and got ready to pull.

Then someone knocked on his front door.

Adam, for a second, thought of just ignoring his visitor. He had more important things to attend to. Then he realized that who was at his front door was most likely a neighbor. After all, the angel's scream had been pretty loud and shattered windows. Someone had to have heard that. Or, maybe it was the giant hole in his roof that drew the attention? Whatever the case, it would probably be a good idea to go downstairs and tell whomever was at his door that all was well even if it wasn't.

He ran out of his room, took the stairs by twos, and stopped just shy of the door to compose himself. Plastering a big, completely false, grin on his face, Adam cracked open the door just enough to stick his head out of it. The grin almost faltered when he realized it was his neighbor to the left. Hell if he knew her name. She had that motherly look about her, though. Something you'd expect a soccer mom from a suburban area to look like. Her features were pulled down in a heavily concerned frown.

"Hi," Adam greeted in a tone of voice that clearly gave away that he wished she'd leave.

"Hello," she replied in a semi-judgmental voice. "Uh. I live next door? I heard…something. Earlier. I think it was your windows shattering. Is…everything okay in there?"

"Oh, yes, yes," Adam lied. "I was just. Uh. I kinda spilled my Sprite on this old stereo I had. And…it let out this frequency that just shattered my windows. Probably because they're so old, y'know? Just couldn't hold up to the vibrations, I guess!"

"You have a hole in your roof."

"Right. No. Yeah. The satellite guy. He came today to mount the dish on the roof. Turns out there was a bit of a decayed spot. It fell right through. I've called Mrs. Edwards about it. She knows."

"Oh. Okay." The woman trailed off uncertainly.

Then her eyes trailed down from his face to what little of his shoulder was showing through the door. Her eyes widened.

"Is that blood?" She breathed.

"What?" Adam asked.

He looked down. Sure enough, his shirt was covered in splotches of blood. Why the hell he hadn't thought to change his shirt before he came down he had no idea. Adam managed to catch the screech before it made it to his throat. Instead, he looked her straight in the eyes and went for lie number three.

"This? No! Well, it is, but it's fake. I'm a pre-med student at UW-Madison. They sometimes have little things where some of the students pretend to be patients and others have to figure out what's wrong with them. I was a patient. Car wreck!"

"Uh-huh… And… You're sure everything's all right?" His neighbor asked.

Adam could tell she was completely weirded out. He didn't blame her. He was right along with her on that one.

"Yes," Adam smiled. "Everything's fine. I've got some large trash bags I can use to cover up the windows and the hole. So… Thanks for asking, though! That was very kind of you. 'ppreciate it."

"Well, take care, then. I guess. And you're welcome!"

With a stiff nod, Adam dismissed his unwanted visitor, closed the door, and took a sigh of relief. If the cops showed up in a few minutes, he'd know his bluffs had failed. But, until then, he had an angel to take care of.

It didn't take him long to get the dresser pulled to the far wall, allowing him a few extra feet to work with. He even rotated the foot of his bed so that it lie diagonally across the floor. Positioning the angel wasn't as hard as he thought it'd be, either. He'd been extremely careful in straightening out the wing bones. One had poked through the skin on the angel's left wing, but it didn't look like it would be hard to set. Painful, but not difficult.

Adam couldn't focus on that yet, though. He had to work with what he knew how to do first. Well, he knew how to sterilize and bandage. So, he left the angel lying on his bedroom floor, retrieved his first aid kit from under the sink, and came back.

His trauma shears made quick work of…Alfie's?…shirt. Weird name. Adam encountered some difficulty when it came to cutting the shirt away from the wings, but he managed somehow.

He was relieved to see that the angel didn't actually have many wounds on his back. Probably stuff that happened when he crashed through Adam's roof. Nothing like the lacerations and stab wounds on his front. Certainly nothing that needed tending to.

The angel's injuries were worrying Adam. Not just because of their severity anymore, either. Their placement, the use of a halo, and the slight bruising along the angel's-Alfie's-wrists… If Adam didn't know any better, he'd swear some creepy ass torture-experimentation shit had gone down on the guy. Of course, Adam didn't know any better, he didn't know anything, and so the possibility and its implications were left, plain as day, for his brain to pick and gnaw at. They were left to worry him about what could possibly do this to a messenger of God that, until half an hour or more ago, Adam didn't even believe existed.

He cleaned Alfie's wounds the best he could. Alcohol and an irrigation syringe could only get him so far. He would have stitched the deeper gashes together but he didn't have the thread or the know-how to do that. Bandaging went easily enough. Nothing some gauze pads and vet wrap couldn't take care of.

When Adam finished with that task, he moved onto the halo problem. First of all, that was a gross pun by whomever had screwed the metal device into Alfie's brain. Second of all, Adam was one-hundred percent certain that he had no idea how to remove it without injuring the angel. But, it had to come off. It wasn't like he could cart Alfie to a brain surgeon all, "Fix him." No, Adam was going to have to do this himself, despite his ignorance. Luckily, he was good at critical thinking. Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey and all that.

Adam quickly learned that removing a halo was in no way like unscrewing something from a wall. Though, in hindsight, that shoulda been a given. He also discovered that this halo was nothing like a normal one. It wasn't screwed into the skull. The device itself more of hovered on and around Alfie's head. What kept it from simply being knocked off or jarred around were the three pins skewered into the angel's forehead. That was just sick. The twisted, deranged sort of sick.

He slowly pulled the pins from Alfie's head. Adam could easily say that the feeling of metal sliding out of bone was one of the grossest things he'd ever felt and, for a second, he wondered why the hell he thought being a doctor was a good idea. Removing the left and right pins went without incident, but, when he went to remove the center pin, Alfie started to wake up. That was not a good thing.

It was very difficult to both hastily and carefully pull a long, thin piece of metal out of the angel's brain before he moved in such a way that would hurt him. But, amazingly, Adam pulled it off. He then reached to pull the halo off.

And Alfie's blue eyes flew open to stare at him.

And Adam nearly screamed.

The angel's right hand struck out at his left arm as Alfie yelped. Adam flinched at the contact. It'd felt like he'd been hit by a baseball bat. The quick movement must have jarred Alfie's wings because he hissed and arched off the floor a bit.

"Nope. No," Adam cautioned.

He tried pushing Alfie gently back down by his shoulders, but the angel was still weakly trying to fight him off. He was clawing at Adam and kicking, which was only serving to cause him more pain. But, Adam knew, Alfie was merely trying to fend off what he perceived was an attacker. Which…didn't mean anything good regarding how he wound up with his injuries in the first place.

Adam flailed with the angel in some sort of childish looking slap fight until, finally, he managed to get a firm grasp on Alfie's hands.

"Hey!" Adam shouted in the most commanding voice he could manage.

Alfie stilled, staring up at him with a look that was a cross between anger, fear, and pain. Adam had to hand it to the guy, even when looking like something the cat dragged in, he could pull off a glare worthy of respect.

"I'm not trying to hurt you," Adam stressed, making sure to speak clearly. "You fell through my roof."

The angel's features twitched, his glare giving way to a look of confusion. Alfie looked around Adam's room. He'd almost started hyperventilating when he'd first seen Adam. A combination of panic and pain, most likely. But, the more he took in of his surroundings, the more his breathing started to even out. That was a good sign.

"I don't know how you got there," Adam continued, "but I brought you to my room and, now, I'm trying to help you. Okay? I'm trying to remove that thing from your head. Is that all right, Alfie?"

Alfie frowned, his eyes jerkily focusing back on Adam.

"'man-'mandriel." The angel mumbled.

"What?"

Alfie shook his head like he knew he'd made no sense just then.

"Sa-saman…"

"Sa…" Adam parroted awkwardly. "Samandriel? I don't. I don't know what that means."

"Name," the angel ground out, his head lolling back over to the side.

"Oh! Oh. Your name is Samandriel. …Your shirt said, 'Alfie.'"

The response he received was an aggravated whine and a grimace. Adam was confused as to why Samandriel had the wrong nametag on his shirt, but, he didn't particularly care either. Probably had something to do with the oddity that was the angel's true name. Couldn't really go around Wiener Hut all, "Hi, my name is Samandriel! How my I take your order?" and not expect a few questions.

Pushing that topic to the back of his mind, Adam let go of one of Samandriel's hands and moved to take the halo off. The angel flinched a little, but he remained still, so, Adam finished his task. He tossed the contraption over towards his chest-o'-drawers.

"There," he said. "I'm going to have to fix your wings. Somehow… Then we'll be done! I think."

"Heal," Samandriel mumbled.

The angel seemed to be drifting off again as he stared into the distance near Adam's bed.

"What?"

"'ll heal… Can heal."

Adam nodded slowly, frowning in concern. "I hate to tell you this, buddy, but you're not healing. Like, if you're waiting for some holy magic stuff to just vwoop and fix you? …It's not working."

Samandriel growled petulantly and, then, his hand went limp in Adam's. He was out. Again. Right. With a sigh, Adam gently placed the angel's hand on the floor beside him. He started gathering his things together and thought.

Well, he had nearly a whole roll of vet wrap left and some bed sheets shoved in a box somewhere. He could use those for making some wing slings. He'd have to research on how to do that, though. Google would probably be his best resource for that one. He didn't really have time to go running back to the campus library for better reading material.

He still had to patch up the giant hole in his "guest" bedroom ceiling and the two busted windows. That was going to be fun. At least it hadn't start raining yet. Yet.

He could find something to cover Samandriel up with so that the angel wouldn't get cold. If angels got cold. He could get him a pillow.

Adam was going to have to clean the blood off his stuff before it set too long and stained. 'd be a bit awkward for Mrs. Edwards to find a giant dark splotch in the carpet and floorboards later.

Oh. And he still had biology and chemistry to do. Because his average, college-student life didn't disappear simply because a messenger of God crashed into his house.

It was going to be a long evening.