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World Series 1960

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The last few days of Adam's memories are more than a little confusing.

He'd rushed home from college after a hysterical summons from him mom, who, when he got there, had promptly made a solid attempt at eating him alive. It blurs for a bit there, into an endless prom night which had actually grown rather tedious by the time the angels had arrived to propose their mission. Then he'd woken up in South Dakota, with Sam and Dean (who didn't seem erotically co-dependent - but what did he know) and their angel and some guy in a wheelchair all trying to convince him not to follow the angels' plans. But Zachariah had been more convincing, at least until he'd admitted to being a liar, at which point Adam had gotten caught up in the fact he'd been spewing blood and not really paid attention to much until he was feeling better. Which had lasted all of a minute before Michael... happened.

But this, this took the cake.

As far as he could tell, he was at the final of the World Series. And it was the year 1960.

At this point he suspected things couldn't get much weirder. Still, it was a hell of a match to wind up at although snacks of some sort might make it better.

As if on cue, he found himself with a box of popcorn in his lap and an open can of coke balanced precariously on his knee. He reached one hand out to steady the can on instinct, before his mind caught up with him and pointed out that snacks didn't normally appear out of thin air just because he was thinking about them and that his mother had taught him not to eat things if he didn't know where they came from. God only knew what they could be contaminated with.

"Salt, butter, processed corn and good old all-American Coca-Cola, and with sugar not that corn-syrup crap either."

Adam jumped, his gaze falling away from the game and onto the man in the seat next to him. A seat he could have sworn had been occupied by a moustachioed man in a faintly ridiculous hat, not the guy in a jacket that didn't seem at all like it belonged in the 60s who was now grinning over at him.

"Right... and you are?"

Adam lifted the box out of his lap to rest on the ground, ignoring the way that kernels spilled over the sides and bounced across his shoes.

The man rolled his eyes. "That's what you ask? All of the things in this situation that would have most people running screaming from the building and you wanna make small talk?"

Adam shrugged. "The game's getting good, unless you're about to whip out a knife and start stabbing I'm not really interested."

The man snorted. "Oh yeah, you've got your priorities in order. Seriously, of all the people for old-Mikey to wind up in..."

Adam tensed, instinctive fear spiking through his veins. "Michael? You know Michael? What the hell! I already said yes, what else-"

"You remember Michael?" the man said, with a faint note of surprise.

Adam glared. "Oh let’s see, I got dragged back from the dead, had some dick-angel Zachariah turn me practically inside out for no real reason except to get Dean to say 'yes' to the guy; and then when Dean and Sam bailed I got to deal with him ram-raiding his way into my head so he could ride around in my body only to get me blown up by Dean's pet angel and then let Sam drag me into a huge fucking hole in the universe. Yeah, I'd say I remember him."

"Hmmmm... well that's not what I meant to happen..."

Adam pushed his way out of the seat. He wasn't sure yet how he might go about getting away from here, given the crowds and the stairs and the fact that it appeared to be 1960, but he curled his hands into fists and eyed the guy up, trying to guess what sort of chance he stood in a fight.

"Whoa... hey, I... Oh no, you've got it all wrong kid. Me and Michael? Haven't talked in years. Half the reason I dragged your ass out of the cage was just for the fun of knowing how pissy he gets when other people play with his toys. Well, that and the fact that having human souls hanging about down there was fucking with the causality of the place."

Adam blinked, not quite relaxing but retaking his seat. "You aren't with Michael? But you... you aren't human."

"A lot of things aren't human and most of them wouldn't willingly go within a thousand miles of Michael - you haven't narrowed much down there."

Adam closed his eyes and shook his head, taking a few deep breaths to try and avoid working himself into a panic unnecessarily. "What am I doing here?"

The man looked exasperated. "Did you miss the part about the fact your presence was fucking up the cage? Or do I need to explain the whole 'apocalypse equals bad' thing to you, 'cos I'd have thought your brothers would have made sure you'd that part down."

"You know my br- Sam and Dean?" Adam asked, not entirely sure what answer he wanted to hear.

The man pulled a face, a strange mix of exasperation, amusement and disgust settling on his face. "We've met."

"Did they hunt you?"

The man snorted. "I'm a little more than what they know how to handle. They tried, once or twice, but they never even came close. And then there was the time I saved 'em from half a dozen pagan gods that were out to kill them and went toe to toe with Lucifer so they could get away."

Adam didn't miss the way the man's grin faded at the mention of pagan gods and then dropped entirely when Lucifer was brought up, but he ignored it in favour of trying to draw conclusions from what the guy had said. Adam didn't know much about pagan gods, but Lucifer was a household name and Adam knew that it would take someone or something seriously powerful to go up against the devil and live, let alone stand a chance at winning. Michael had believed that no-one other than himself could.

"Did you wi-" Adam stopped and backtracked with a small shake of his head. "The apocalypse - is it still going on? I don't..."

The man pulled a face. "The one you're thinking of is over..."

Adam raised his eyebrows. "But...?"

"But between your dumb brothers and my crazy ones the planet is already sliding down into another one."

"You're an angel," Adam blurted, then shook his head. "No, you're an archangel aren't you? Like Michael and Lucifer? What you said about brothers... and there aren’t many things powerful enough to take on the devil."

"A god would be powerful enough."

Adam pulled a face, trusting his instincts. "You're not a god."

The man looked him up and down. "You're the first person in a while to get that right."

"Which one are you?" Adam asked; trying to remember what little religious education he'd absorbed growing up. "Not Michael or Lucifer... so... Gabriel or... or... fuck what's the fourth one, Uriel? No... uh..."

The man smirked. "Gabriel. And Raphael's the name of the one people always forget."

"Right," Adam said, wondering if it would ever be possible for him to think that particular angelic name without his mind automatically associating it with the renaissance artist, or worse, the ninja turtle.

"Wait, if you're the archangel Gabriel, what are you doing here?" As far as he could remember the bible had depicted Gabriel as being the angelic equivalent of the notices section in the paper. He announced pregnancies, births, freak weather systems and possibly, if Adam was remembering correctly, would fight a sea monster at the end of the universe. Even taking into account that the three angels he'd had previous dealings with weren't exactly what he'd expected the angel Gabriel watching a baseball game seemed a bit odd.

Gabriel shrugged. "What can I say; scaring shepherds out of their tea towels gets old. Thought I'd kick back, watch the match. Hadn't been counting of a game of twenty questions."

Adam considered this for a moment. Sitting next to an archangel at a baseball game that had been played long before he was born wasn't really all that much weirder than anything else that had happened to him lately but it was considerably less painful. His mother had taught him never to look a gift horse in the mouth. He picked the popcorn box back up of the ground, snagging a handful before offering it to Gabriel who apparently took this a signal to relieve him of the entire box.

"So there's no baseball in heaven?"

Gabriel shrugged. "It's mot wrike..." he swallowed his mouthful of popcorn. “...a historical re-enactment up there. It's not the same. On the right lines, yeah, but human memories are pathetic, they get all the details wrong."

"So what, you're just taking an afternoon off to watch the game after a long week of angelic duty."

Gabriel smirked, "I've been on indefinite vacation that best part of the last millennium. Next I'm thinking we go see the 2024 Olympic final match. I know just where we can sit to catch a foul ball."

"Twenty-twen-... that hasn't happened yet!" Adam objected.

Gabriel smirked, pointing at himself. "Helloooo - archangel."