Ominis is usually the type who wouldn’t get too affectionate in public, but I think it would be absolutely adorable if, when he’s sleepy, his judgement gets a little dull and he accidentally ends up snuggling up to his lover anyway.
the scene where moriarty makes his first kill... how dónal manages to make it look like he's having a panic attack while also having some kind of violent awakening is beyond me. absolutely nailed the 'oh god what have i done wait i kinda like it' expression. what a guy.
✦ general warnings — violence, blood, injury, emotional distress, grief, trauma, religious and moral conflict, strong language and swearing (canon level), mentions of death, war, and loss, slow-burn romance, tension, and angst, as well as occasional suggestive themes.
✦ blurb — Adam died during the battle against Hell, and you never believed it could happen to him. He was your commander, your closest ally, and someone you loved in silence. While you grieve, Heaven begins to crumble after Sir Pentious arrives, proving that sinners can change. Angels turn on each other, lost and angry. Meanwhile, Adam wakes up in Hell, alive but fallen, hiding among those he once hated. When you learn the truth, everything you believe is shaken. Adam is alive… and he is a sinner. Will love change how you see Hell, redemption, and him?
He dragged in a deep, ragged breath, the motion tearing through him as if his body had forgotten how to function properly. The air that filled his lungs tasted wrong—thick, ashen, laced with something acrid that burned on the way down. His chest arched violently, muscles straining as though each inhale had to be forced past an invisible barrier, the sensation scraping along his throat and settling hot and sharp in his lungs.
For a moment, it felt easier not to breathe at all.
A rough, uneven exhale left him, and he staggered where he stood before his strength failed entirely. The ground met him hard as he collapsed back onto it, palms scraping against cracked earth that was far from Heaven’s polished marble. He lay there, struggling to steady his breathing, each breath shallow and uncooperative, his heart pounding erratically against his ribs.
His vision swam, edges blurring into darkness and red haze. The sky above him—if it could be called a sky—shifted and distorted, unfamiliar and hostile. His mind reached for clarity and found nothing.
Memory came in fragments.
A searing pain in his back. Not a cut, but something deeper. Something that had pierced straight through him, a violent rupture that stole the air from his lungs and the strength from his limbs. He could almost feel it again, the unbearable heat of steel driven between his shoulders, the pressure splitting him open from spine to chest.
And then—
Your voice. Sharp and desperate. Breaking as it tore through the chaos.
You were screaming his name. That was the last thing he remembered before everything went dark.
For a long moment, he remained on the ground, staring up at a sky that felt wrong in a way he could not immediately name. It wasn’t Heaven’s endless blue, radiant and untouched. It wasn’t the battlefield either, torn apart by divine light and infernal fire. This sky was darker, stained in deep shades of crimson and violet, choked by slow-moving clouds that did not drift so much as linger.
Adam inhaled carefully, testing his lungs. The air scraped on the way down, thick and sour, carrying the unmistakable scent of rot and smoke. It settled heavily in his chest, unfamiliar and unwelcome.
“What the hell…” he muttered under his breath, the words rough and hoarse.
He pushed himself up slowly, bracing one hand against the pavement. The surface beneath him was uneven and grimy, small fragments of glass biting into his palm. He rose to his knees first, steadying himself against a brick wall slick with something damp, then forced himself upright.
His legs wobbled under his weight.
For a second, the world tilted dangerously, and he had to grab onto a rusted fire escape to keep from collapsing again. His jaw tightened in irritation.
“Get a grip,” he hissed at himself, as though his body were a disobedient soldier.
Memory came in flashes. Lucifer’s smirk. The impact of the ground splitting beneath him. The blade.
God, the blade.
He reached back instinctively, fingers brushing over his spine where steel had torn through him. There was soreness there, a deep and unpleasant ache, but no open wound. No blood soaking through fabric. No divine glow knitting flesh back together.
And then your voice. Clearer now. You had screamed his name. Not an order. Not a command. A scream. Raw. Desperate.
His brow furrowed deeply.
He finally lifted his head and truly looked around him.
The alley stretched out on both sides, narrow and suffocating, brick walls rising high and blocking out most of the sky. Trash bags were piled haphazardly near overflowing bins, the smell of spoiled food and stale alcohol thick in the stagnant air. A flickering neon sign buzzed at the far end, casting sickly pink light over cracked pavement and scattered bottles.
Somewhere in the distance, someone laughed.
It wasn’t a normal laugh. It was sharp. Twisted. Wrong.
Adam’s lips curled in disgust.
“Pentagram City,” he muttered, more to himself than anyone else.
Of course. The battle must have pushed deeper into the city. He must have taken that hit and blacked out. That was it. He’d been knocked unconscious and dumped here while the extermination continued elsewhere.
Yes. That made sense.
He straightened slowly, rolling his shoulders with deliberate control, trying to ignore the lingering weakness in his limbs.
“Lute?” he called out, his voice echoing faintly down the alley. “Form up.”
Silence answered him.
No beating of wings. No armored footsteps. No sharp acknowledgment.
He frowned.
“Enough screwing around,” he snapped, louder now. “Report.”
Still nothing.
Only distant music drifting from somewhere beyond the alley. The clink of glass. The murmur of voices that sounded distorted, layered with undertones that didn’t belong to anything holy.
His chest tightened, but not with fear—with something colder.
Where was his army?
Where were you?
He stepped toward the mouth of the alley, boots crunching over broken glass. As he reached the edge, two figures stumbled past the entrance—tall, twisted silhouettes with glowing eyes and jagged grins, their movements loose and careless.
One of them paused when he noticed Adam standing there.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” the creature drawled, voice warped and amused. “Look what crawled outta the gutter.”
The other squinted at him, head tilting. “Nice cosplay, buddy. Exorcist convention in town?”
Adam’s expression darkened instantly.
“Watch your tone,” he said coldly, straightening to his full height, the authority in his voice instinctive and sharp. “You’re speaking to—”
He stopped.
The demon was laughing. Actually laughing at him.
“Oh, this one thinks he’s important,” the first one snickered. “That’s adorable.”
Adam stared at them, something shifting uncomfortably beneath his sternum.
They weren’t afraid.
The demons moved on, their laughter loud and unrestrained as they continued down the street, their voices echoing and then fading into the distance as if nothing about that exchange had been worth remembering. Adam let out a low, irritated growl, his breathing uneven, sharp with something that felt dangerously close to anger—but not quite the kind he was used to.
“What the fuck is this shit?” he snapped, the words tearing out of him as he pushed forward out of the alley, boots crunching over glass and debris, intent on following them, on correcting that mistake, on reminding them exactly who they had just spoken to.
But the moment he stepped out of the shadows, a flickering neon light from a nearby storefront washed over him in a sickly glow, casting warped colors across his form—and he stopped abruptly.
Something was wrong.
His gaze dropped instantly to his body, and for a second his mind refused to process what he was seeing. His robes—his armor, his immaculate white uniform that had always marked him as Heaven’s chosen blade—were no longer white.
They were black.
Not stained. Not dirtied. Changed.
The fabric itself had shifted, dark and unfamiliar, swallowing the light instead of reflecting it, the once-golden details now glowing in a deep, unnatural red that seemed to pulse faintly beneath the surface.
A cold, creeping unease began to crawl up his spine.
Slowly, almost unwillingly, Adam lifted his head and turned toward the nearest reflective surface—the grimy glass of a storefront window, plastered with obscene posters that he barely registered as his focus locked onto his own reflection.
For a moment, he didn’t recognize what he was looking at.
Everything was wrong.
The silhouette was still his—broad, imposing, unmistakably him—but the colors had shifted into something darker, something corrupted. The sharp lines of his armor remained, but they no longer carried the same divine authority. The red accents burned where gold once gleamed, and the eyes of his helmet—
They glowed.
Bright. Violent. Crimson.
“Fuck…” he muttered under his breath, the word quieter this time, less anger and more disbelief bleeding into it.
His thoughts stumbled over themselves, trying to make sense of it, trying to force it into something logical, something that didn’t immediately shatter everything he knew.
Why was he alone in Hell? Where was his army? Where were you? And why the hell did he look like this?
Something cold and insidious began to settle in his chest then, slipping between his ribs and tightening slowly, steadily, like a hand closing around his lungs.
“No…”
The word came out quieter, strained, as if saying it too loudly might make it real.
He needed proof, needed to fix this.
Adam reached up sharply, grabbing his helmet with both hands, fingers digging into the edges with sudden urgency as he yanked upward, expecting the familiar give, the simple motion of removing it like he had done countless times before.
It didn’t move. His grip tightened instantly. He pulled harder.
Nothing.
A flicker of panic sparked low in his chest.
He braced himself and yanked again, harder this time, muscles straining, teeth grinding together as he forced the motion with everything he had—but instead of the helmet coming free, a sharp, searing pain shot through his head, like trying to rip something that was no longer separate from him.
“—fuck—!”
He stumbled back a step, breath catching, but he didn’t stop.
“No, no, no—!”
His voice broke into something rougher, less controlled, as he grabbed at it again, fingers slipping slightly against the surface as he pulled with more force, desperation bleeding into the movement now, the pain intensifying with every attempt.
“This isn’t possible!”
His pulse roared in his ears, vision flickering at the edges as the realization pressed harder, heavier, suffocating in its implications.
It wasn’t coming off. It wasn’t something he was wearing anymore.
It was part of him.
“I…” he murmured, the word barely forming as his hands slowly dropped away, fingers trembling slightly as the pain faded into a dull, lingering throb.
He stared at his reflection, and for the first time since waking up, something in him gave way. His shoulders sank—not in weakness, not quite—but in something heavier. Something closer to resignation pressing down on him before he could stop it.
“I can’t be…” he tried again, breath uneven, the words dragging painfully out of him as the realization forced its way in, piece by piece, no matter how much he resisted it.
But there was no twisting this into something else. No reframing it into a tactical error, a temporary setback, a situation he could command his way out of.
Reality stood there in front of him, reflected back in red and black.
“I’m a fucking sinner.”
The words hung in the air, heavy, final, and for a second the entire world seemed to go quiet around him, as if Hell itself had paused just long enough to let that sink in.
Then the noise came rushing back.
Laughter in the distance. Music pounding from somewhere deeper in the street. Voices overlapping, arguing, flirting, shouting. The city moved on, alive and chaotic and utterly indifferent to the fact that Heaven’s former executioner had just fallen into its streets.
Adam didn’t move.
His gaze stayed locked on his reflection, as if staring long enough might force it to change back, might snap something into place and undo whatever cosmic mistake had just been made.
It didn’t.
A sharp, humorless laugh escaped him, sudden and jagged.
“Yeah,” he muttered, dragging a hand down over the front of his helmet as if that would help somehow. “That’s— that’s funny. Real funny.”
His jaw tightened.
“No,” he went on, shaking his head once, more forcefully now, trying to push back against the thought before it could settle. “No, that’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.”
His voice rose slightly, gaining edge, slipping back into something more familiar—authority, certainty, even if it was forced.
“Angels don’t just—” he gestured vaguely around him, frustration snapping through the movement, “—end up here after dying. That’s the whole fucking point.”
His chest rose sharply with another breath, the air still burning on the way in.
He turned abruptly away from the glass, like looking at himself any longer would make it worse, pacing a few steps before stopping again, agitation building under his skin with nowhere to go.
“This is a mistake,” he said, more firmly now. “Some kind of glitch. Cosmic bullshit. Whatever.”
That had to be it.
Because the alternative—
His thoughts cut off abruptly.
Because the alternative meant everything he had ever believed in was wrong.
And that—
No.
Adam clenched his fists tightly at his sides, grounding himself in the familiar tension of it, forcing his breathing to steady through sheer will.
“Alright,” he muttered, tone shifting again, sharper now, more controlled. “Fine. Doesn’t matter.”
If this was Hell, then there were rules. Even if they were twisted, even if they were wrong, there were still rules.
And he could work with rules.
His head lifted slightly, eyes narrowing behind the glowing visor as he scanned the street more carefully this time, actually taking in what was around him instead of just reacting to it. Demons passed by in loose clusters, some glancing at him with mild curiosity, others not even bothering. Neon lights flickered overhead, casting everything in shifting colors, signs buzzing and crackling, music spilling out from open doors.
No one saluted.
No one moved aside.
No one cared.
His lip curled faintly.
“Yeah,” he muttered under his breath. “That’s gonna change.”
If he was stuck here—temporarily—then he wasn’t going to stand around having an existential crisis in the middle of some shitty alleyway.
He needed information.
He needed to understand what the hell had happened.
And then he was going to fix it.
But as quickly as that instinct rose, something colder followed, sharper, more controlled, the kind of awareness that had kept him alive through centuries of exterminations. Adam stilled, his gaze sweeping the street again, this time not with arrogance, but with calculation. He had slaughtered demons for ages, cut through them without hesitation, without mercy, and if even a fraction of them recognized him—if word spread—this wouldn’t be confusion or mockery anymore. It would be a hunt.
His jaw tightened.
“Right,” he muttered more quietly, the edge in his voice lowering into something more deliberate, “maybe don’t announce yourself to the entire fucking city.”
He forced himself to relax his posture, just slightly, enough to dull the immediate authority he usually carried without thinking, enough to blend—if that was even possible looking like this. The red glow of his visor dimmed faintly as he tilted his head down, angling it away from the brighter lights, instinctively seeking shadow rather than dominance.
Observe first. Act later.
It felt wrong. It felt like stepping backward instead of forward, like yielding ground he had never once considered giving. But this wasn’t Heaven, and he wasn’t at the head of an army anymore.
The thought hit harder than he expected.
He wasn’t at the head of anything.
A flicker of irritation flared in his chest, quick and sharp, and with it came another realization, quieter but far more bitter. No one had come for him. No recall, no retrieval, no divine intervention ripping him out of Hell the second he fell. Nothing. Just… silence.
Adam scoffed under his breath, the sound dry and humorless.
“Figures.”
Of course they hadn’t planned for this. Of course Heaven hadn’t even considered the possibility that something could go wrong. To them, the exterminations were routine, controlled, inevitable. Adam went down, Adam came back, rinse and repeat, an eternal cycle they didn’t have to think about because he handled it for them.
And now?
Now he was here.
And they weren’t.
Something darker settled beneath his irritation, something heavier, edged with resentment he hadn’t expected to feel, not toward them. Not toward Heaven.
“They didn’t even think about it,” he muttered, quieter now, more to himself than anything else, his gaze unfocused for a brief second. “Didn’t even consider I might not walk back through that portal.”
Not one of them had prepared for failure. Not one of them had planned for what happened if their weapon broke.
His fingers curled slowly at his sides.
Then, unbidden, your face surfaced in his mind.
You.
His second-in-command. His most trusted soldier. The only one who could keep up with him without being told twice, the only one who didn’t hesitate when he pushed harder, demanded more, expected perfection and got it. You had always been there—at his side, just behind his shoulder, moving when he moved, thinking the same way, anticipating the same outcomes.
His… friend.
The word felt strange, unfamiliar in a way that made something in his chest tighten slightly.
Adam exhaled slowly, dragging a hand over the back of his neck before letting it fall again.
“You made it back,” he muttered under his breath, more certain of that than anything else. You were too good not to. Too fast, too sharp, too stubborn to go down that easily. If anyone had survived that mess, it was you.
The question wasn’t if you had lived.
It was what you were doing now.
His brow furrowed slightly.
You had seen it. Him going down. That blade. You had been there at the end.
How had you reacted?
The image tried to form—your expression, your voice—but it slipped just out of reach, replaced instead by that last memory, your scream cutting through the chaos, raw and desperate in a way he had never heard from you before.
His jaw tightened again.
“Yeah,” he muttered, quieter now. “You wouldn’t just let that go.”
No. You weren’t the type to accept it, to bow your head and move on like the rest of them probably would. You were loyal to a fault, relentless when it mattered.
You’d want answers.
You’d want blood.
A faint, sharp smile tugged at the corner of his mouth despite everything.
“Good,” he said under his breath.
Because if you were angry—if you were pissed enough—you wouldn’t stay in Heaven. You’d come back down. You’d tear through Hell looking for whoever did it, looking for Lucifer, for anyone involved.
And if you did…
His gaze lifted slightly, something more focused settling behind the red glow of his visor.
Then he wouldn’t be alone for long.
“Just gotta not get killed again before that happens,” he added dryly, rolling his shoulders as he pushed himself fully into motion, steps slower now, more measured as he merged into the flow of the street, keeping his head down just enough to avoid drawing too much attention while his eyes tracked everything around him, exits, groups, behaviors, patterns.
Information first.
Survive long enough to use it.
Then fix the rest.
ʜᴇʟʟᴀᴠᴇʀsᴇ (you're tagged in everything Hazbin Hotel & Helluva Boss)
