Face of an Angel: HAZBIN HOTEL Adam x Male reader

Chapter Four: Mind Palace

It's so warm and cozy... where am I right now...? Augh, don't open eyes... light hurts...

You lay there on the carpeted floor, cocooning yourself in a blanket. You revel in the feeling of warmth and comfort. At the same time your groggy mind tries to remember the events that led to you being asleep on what did not feel like your bed.

Matt. Adam.

The night before runs through your mind again. You feel your heart skip a beat as you remember having a slightly steamy but technically platonic conversation with your unlikely friend. You replay your favorite bits in your head, noting with a twinge of shame that Matt was there for the whole thing. You just lay there, still sleepy, reflecting on it all.

You're not sure exactly, but your internal clock tells you it's late morning, maybe around 9. You don't have the energy to check your phone and make sure. Given the time you went to bed and how tired you feel, you can tell you haven't slept enough. You're accepting the fact that you'll fall right back asleep again, but you feel calm, just listening to your two friends breath deeply in sleep.

You open your eyes just a peek, squinting across the room. They feel heavy and slightly crusty, and for a moment all you can see is streaking light and color. The light gray of the carpet takes up most of your vision, and a sliver of a window that's visible from behind a couch blinds you with the heavenly sun. The shapes slowly become clear.

Adam is still laying down just a few feet from you. He now faces you, his head lolled over the edge of his pillow. His mouth is slightly open in sleep, a puddle of spit soaking the corner of the pillowcase. His brown hair is messy, sticking up at wild angles. For a long minute you just stare at him.

You had seen his face before in older photographs, but it was actually pretty hard to find. All the pictures readily available of him online are of him in the mask. You had to specifically search for it to find pictures of his real face. Before you had seen it and you were just starting to get a crush, you worried that he was secretly ugly underneath and it would kill your feelings, but you were quite pleased with what you found. Seeing him like this in person felt weird. Seeing him in person at all still felt weird, but this was especially strange. It was like a secret you were learning by accident. It seemed like he was trying to keep his appearance a secret from the rest of Heaven, although you didn't know why, and had never found it appropriate to bring it up to anyone. Adam was a kind of celebrity, although you didn't really see him that way. He was just someone strange who lived in your city. (Adam was more... known than he was liked. Everyone knew the first man and his reputation. Most people knew he had a band too, but it truthfully didn't have a lot of fans. His albums weren't selling out stadiums, they were humble local concerts with small venues, just with a lead singer who seems to think he's Meat Loaf or something.)

Oh yeah.

He was also the captain of the exorcists. A league created to defend heaven from outside threats, but most people saw that as a consolation prize to Adam. Heaven had no threats after all. It had been years since Hell ever tried to rise up, and that was reportedly brought to an end very quickly by sending the exorcists down for a quick scare. If Heaven would ever need defense, Adam would likely be of no help and it would be his soldiers who would do all the fighting anyway.

Or whatever...

Your internal monologue starts to trail off, feeling disjointed. Your eyes automatically close tighter, Adam's face becoming surrounded by a halo of blurry lights. You imagine that you're seeing him from the same bed, waking up next to him as his husband. You imagine you have to freedom to shimmy closer to him, put a hand around his body, and kiss his sweet parted lips, nuzzling into his face and just enjoying his body and his warmth touching you. You just imagine as your fantasies sing you back to sleep.