Sam wasn't the only one who was brought back, Adam was, too and Nick. Sam had been glad, of course, out of Hell, reunited with Dean, free of Lucifer.

Adam was thankful for the out of hell part but else he would have liked more to go to Heaven and be reunited with his mom, the only family he had left. Sure, going by blood Dean and Sam were his family, too but it hadn't felt that way and they never bothered to look if he had come back to life too or not.

Nick would have preferred to stay dead. Heaven or Hell didn't matter to him as long as he didn't have to live again but then no one up there had ever cared what Nick wanted, why should his death be different.

They met by chance or maybe by fate, Adam's and Nick's respective archangels would have had different opinions here but the result was the same:

They met.

And they recognised each other. The Fallen. The Forgotten. The Plan B. Cast into a world filled with angels and demons and other monsters. A world they didn't understand and a world they couldn't leave anymore unless they wanted to end up in the same place they had just escaped from and not even Nick wanted to go back to Hell voluntarily.

Once you see you cannot un-see. Once you know you cannot un-know.

But suddenly there was someone else who had lived through the same things, who knew.

It would have to be enough.

/

They tried to put the past behind them. Because neither of them had ever been there they moved to Sacramento and Adam went back to med school. On his first days he accidentally spilled water on a lot of people. He may not be Sam or Dean but he was not dumb either.

Nick worked in an adult literature shop. It was a lousy, badly paid job but the chances that he'd see any happy mother's with their babies here was practically zero. It wasn't something he could face yet.

Whenever they were seen together, and they spent a lot of time together, people inevitably commented on the age difference, but neither Adam nor Nick listened. 22 years meant nothing when you shared the experience of being an archangel's vessel.

Another reason why they chose Sacramento was its climate. Being possessed by an angel was like being chained to a comet and comets were essentially snowballs flying through space.

Comets were cold and so were Nick and Adam.

Things like that didn't bounce off but life did get easier with each passing day. About one thing people were always wrong, though: Nick and Adam didn't sleep with each other. They were simply together because there was no one else there.

Until the day Nick had come too late from work and when had come home Adam had first punched him and then hugged him while whispering "I can't lose you, I can't lose you." Over and over again.

Only because you were the only one left didn't mean that you couldn't make it work, one step at a time.