FIC: Before Your Time Has Run Astray 2/2
Adam has to pitch a mildly emasculating fit to get Sam to finally pull over.
Sam's stomach has been rumbling like a bear for the last two hundred miles, but the guy is determined to race the sun. He can tell his brother is frustrated with the inadequate horsepower of the beat-up sedan, but Adam feels no sympathy, only uses this realization to point out there may be better cars begging for a little grand theft at the next exit. He points it out loudly, repeatedly, and with much flailing when his anger reaches that chest-tightening point that demands instant physical release.
The sky's a clouded, indigo haze when the tires crunch across the gravel lot. Adam launches himself from the car before it can come to a full stop, slams the door and practically sprints into the IHOP.
God, he cannot wait to find Dean and drop Sam off on his doorstep, all duct-taped and bundled in a few dozen Hefty bags. Maybe some comical Sharpie sketches on his face and clown postage stamp on his forehead for that extra flair. Sam just... he's bringing out all the bitchiness Adam thought he'd lucked out on not experiencing to any humiliating degree as a teenager, and it's completely unfair.
What the fuck does the guy think he's gonna fend off if he starves himself anyway? He's already lost a few pounds, which may not be noticeable on most people, but Sam's hulking frame seems to broadcast its malnourished woes more starkly.
The hostess/waitress is a matronly type: frazzled, graying hair springing loose from its ponytail and a tired but genuine smile as she greets him. Adam manages to scrape up his own tired grin and asks her for a booth, please. A recently sprung Hell inmate he may be, but he's still his mother's child and manners were drilled into him before he even graduated from speaking gibberish.
He gets that dull ache in his chest that threatens to detonate his inner dam, pushes those thoughts aside as he follows the lady to a window seat. It's a pancake house on a weeknight, so the place is nearly deserted. He thanks her for the menu, glances out at the lot to see Sam making a production of checking beneath the Honda's hood.
Adam knows he's really scoping out the few other vehicles in the lot, weighing the options, and he feels uneasy, just like every other time Sam's stolen something. Adam would help with that stuff, except... well, he's not good at it, for one thing. He didn't get any criminal training as a kid and besides that, he can still picture the disappointed look on his mom's face when he stole a few school supplies at the age of twelve because he didn't want her to worry about the already strained budget.
Goddammit. Why the hell can't he stop thinking about depressing shit?
Adam orders a Dr. Pepper for himself, a coffee (decaf-what Sam doesn't know won't hurt him) and a glass of juice to cram a few extra calories into his idiot brother.
Sam is visibly dragging ass as he shuffles inside, insomniac raccoon eyes severe against his pale cheeks, shoulders sloped more sharply than usual. He falls into the booth with a sigh of relief, goes straight for the coffee when the waitress returns to drop it off.
"You boys need a minute?" She plucks a pen from behind her ear like she already knows the answer.
Sam shakes his head to decline the entire process, and Adam scoops up the menus and hands them off. "Country-fried steak and eggs, extra gravy, double stack of pancakes." He scowls pointedly at Sam. "He'll have the same, and keep the juice coming too, please."
She nods, aims another approving smile at Adam, disappears into the back.
"M'not hungry," Sam mumbles, can't even manage the bluster to protest Adam's presumptuousness very effectively.
"Your stomach's calling you a liar."
There's a low gurgle from beneath the table to prove this point. Betrayed by his own body, Sam shuts up about it.
"We're low on cash," he says instead, cracking his jaw on a wide yawn. "Gonna have to camp or somethin' tonight."
Adam grumbles, regretting his stunt with the Chinese food now, and not just because it's affecting him personally. It was kind of a bratty thing to do, and he resolves not to act out in ways that jeopardize Sam's already lousy ability to sustain himself from now on. Camping probably means some bug-infested middle-of-nowhere too, and the prospect of hitchhiking his way north in the middle of the night isn't looking too promising.
He got over halfway through the B cities while he was studying, with no reaction from Sam, but that still leaves quite a few dots on the map. It's a flimsy plan, but he's decided to use Sam's uncanny tracking abilities to lead him back to Indiana. He has to hit the jackpot eventually.
Sam slumps down into the booth, managing to look all of twelve with his hair sticking up every which way and his faded hoodie bunched up at the shoulders. He squints up at the ceiling as if offended by the harsh lighting, and Adam's content to keep his mouth shut as he goes all glassy-eyed and thoughtful. If Sam passes out, it'll be a bitch to carry him out to the car, but at least Adam will get to drive, which also means picking their campground.
"We met Cas' vessel once," Sam says out of nowhere, catapulting Adam's scheming thoughts right off their tracks. "Jimmy. He said being possessed by an angel was, uh, like riding a comet?"
Adam scoffs softly, thinks if there's anything close to an accurate description it's more like being swallowed by the sun just before it explodes. He doesn't say this aloud, though, doesn't want to encourage this topic in the least.
"It felt... worse than that, I think," Sam goes on, oblivious to the deathgrip Adam has on his soda glass, or maybe just not caring. "But he wasn't an archangel, just a regular one."
"You really think you're doing the right thing?" Adam blurts, desperate to change the subject and all for throwing people around with radical segues, if that's how Sam wants to play.
The only evidence that Sam is thrown, however, is a slight rigidity to his jaw. He doesn't stop staring at the ceiling, his answer immediate and resolute. "Yes."
"Maybe that should clue you in to how stupidly fucking wrong you are."
Sam does look at him then, the first hint of uncertainty. Adam knows things he wishes he didn't, and it's not all been gleaned from Sam's drunken babble sessions. Angels know a lot about the world they're trying to destroy, about the puppets they're using to do it. Adam knows Sam's determination is not always an admirable trait, that it's part of how they played him like a damn harp. Hell, anyone who thinks they're unequivocally correct in anything is usually quite the opposite.
"He went to Hell for you," Adam pushes, nostrils flaring when Sam seems to think he can just drop the conversation like a boulder. "On purpose."
"Yeah, now we're even." Sam looks away, clearly doesn't believe what's coming out of his own mouth, but the part of him born of a bull refuses to give in so easily.
For once, Adam's glad he came from the same bull. "The world wasn't on the line. Not that he knew of, anyway. He did it for you. Just for you. I mean, Jesus, are you really this dense? Can you really not picture what kinda royal fucking mess he has to be right now?"
"He looked fine to me."
"Bullshit." Adam's not buying it for a second. "And look at you."
Sam does look, glancing down at himself in puzzlement. "What?"
"You and me?" Adam gestures wildly between them, checks his tone when it draws a glare from the two other customers in the joint. "This road trip to nowhere? I'm not him!" he hisses, feels his cheeks going hot as he gains steam and can't make himself stop. "I'm not a Winchester! This?" He smacks a hand on the table. "All of this is not me! I don't know how to shoot a gun, or tackle giant screeching zombie-whatevers. I hate cramped cars that smell like old fries, I hate hooker motels, and I really really hate the outdoors! Okay? This is your life, not mine. My idea of saving people involves a pair of scrubs and a scalpel, not gore and violence! I'm not a fighter and I'm not Dean! So either learn to accept Adam Milligan, or fuck off like I told you a billion times already!"
The lights flicker, and Adam hauls in a breath and holds it, wills himself to chill the fuck out. He and Sam seem to have some leftover angel-incompatibility with electricity when they get too emotional, and that's just one more thing he doesn't want to think about.
Sam looks a little shell-shocked, like this whole Dean stand-in thing is news to him. And that's when Adam realizes with a humbling sort of awe that yes, Sam really is that dense. When it comes to Dean, Sam is utterly blind, deaf and dumb, fumbling around in the dark and yanked too easily in the wrong direction by his heartstrings, and all evidence declares it works both ways.
Adam drops his face in his hands. "God, I am so screwed."
"You don't know how right you are, hon," the waitress' voice cuts into his misery.
Adam snaps his head up to see she does not come bearing food, and all the diner's occupants are hovering at her back, inauspicious stares focused too intently on him and Sam. There are two guys in dirty aprons, and the two customers, one of them a grizzly, flannel-wearing type and the other a regular 9-to-5 Joe in his off-hour jeans and t-shirt.
When their eyes all flash black, Adam has time to lament how much he really hates it when Sam is right, and then the useless oh shit! mantra takes over.
The glass tubes above explode and rain down on them, plunging the whole place in shadow. Sam moves while Adam stays frozen, smoothly draws a silver flask from his pocket as he lunges upward and slams his fist into the waitress' throat. There's an audible crack as she gags and spews blood, and his other hand is already a blurring spray of water that has the other demons hissing and smoking.
"Adam!" Sam yanks a rosary from his pocket and chucks it across the table. "Kitchen! Go!"
The demons are quick to recover, piling on top of Sam as one and dismissing Adam as a complete non-threat. It makes him feel vindicated and pissed off at the same time-he told Sam he wasn't a Winchester but fuck those demons-and he snatches up the beads, leaps to his feet and over the wrestling pile of limbs.
There's a long row of metal sinks filled with suds and dirty dishes. Adam clangs and clatters through the debris to get to the water, his inner Chicken Little screeching at a floppy, hysterical run about the falling sky as the dining area echoes with the sounds of total demolition, desperately tries to bring the image of the pages to the forefront of his mind.
"The ritual, the ritual, c'mon! Fuck!" He smacks himself in the head, and it shakes loose. He haltingly spews the Latin, hopes he's getting the pronunciation right, has to start over a few times because he's pretty sure the intermittent curses are ruining the intent.
Nothing happens. He doesn't know what he expects, maybe a divine flash or some bubbling, but he gets none of that. The water just sits there. Another crash, and he just has to hope (not pray, fuck that noise so hard) it's good to go. Yanking up pans, he fills them and splashes water all over the floor, spots a mop bucket and hauls it over.
Adam barrels back through the swinging doors with his yellow bucket in tow and flings it at the first sign of movement. The trucker-demon screeches and claws at its eyes. Adam kicks it in the knees for good measure and is quick to move on, rounding the corner to the smoking section. There's blood and broken glass and splintered wood all over the fucking place, and the cold knife of fear slashing its way into his gut is unwelcome.
Sam is sprawled out in the aisle, colorfully swollen head lolling dazedly as the four demons gloat over him. And suddenly Adam doesn't think this new, eye-opening level of terror-rage is unreasonable at all. It's necessary, otherwise he wouldn't have the courage to shove his bucket ahead with an inhuman battle cry, knocking the demons apart like bowling pins. The remaining water sloshes up and out, and they're all reduced steaming, writhing lumps of outrage.
He drops to his knees and gets stuck there for a second, hands floating uncertainly over Sam. The thick, shining puddle of crimson spreading across the carpet is downright unnerving. Even more-so when he confirms the source of the hemorrhage is not from any damage done to demons, but from the brother he never wanted.
"What was that about you not being a fighter?" Sam rasps, then chokes. Blood burbles up from his mouth, and Adam tries to remain calm, but it's kind of fucking hard.
"Bite me, Godzilla," Adam says shakily, gently turns the ground meat that used to be Sam's face toward him, and blanches. "Shit."
He knows first aid. He was pre-med for chrissake, but he'd barely started before he got eaten alive, and this is something that requires expert medical attention. He doesn't even want to think about what Sam's clothes are hiding, an involuntary list of probable afflictions already scrolling across his mind-broken ribs, a leg at a very wrong angle, fractured cheekbone, rapid blood loss, punctured lung.
"Sam, this is... this is bad."
Sam shakes his head, and something heavy and smooth is suddenly being pressed into Adam's palm. "We should, uh..." Sam gasps and more blood flies from his lips. "Gotta get outta here. No magic knife."
Adam looks at the gun in his hand, trying to remember what it is and what it does. A furious snarl reminds him there's still a small demon problem to contend with, and he whirls around without thought, squeezes the trigger. His aim is sloppy as hell and the startle of the discharge knocks him on his ass, but it was pretty close range. The demon's going to have a hard time putting up much of a fight with its face missing.
Hastily straightening, he cracks off more shots until the clip is empty. Most of the bullets hit plaster but by the end the demons are back to screeching on the floor.
"Consecrated iron. Slow 'em down for a minute," Sam explains at his puzzled look, and then he really starts to choke, a gush of red that pools in his mouth, and Adam's heart is going to kick free of his chest any time now.
He hesitates for a second, but the first priority is to evacuate enemy territory. They're both dead if he sticks around to fuss over Sam. He has to risk aggravating his injuries. Muttering a brief apology, Adam hops up and starts to drag Sam out by his arms, clenches his jaw as if that can block out the sound of his brother's agony. He thinks to head for the kitchen, the closest haven, but quickly changes his mind. The holy dishwater won't hold out forever, and Sam needs help rightthehellnow.
If asked previously, Adam would confidently tell you that no, he is not capable of speed-hauling a giant through a parking lot with any hope of a successful getaway before the really angry demons come running to bite his face off. But apparently he is. He's the new heavyweight champion of heaving Sam into the backseat and peeling away in a haze of flying gravel.
"Sam!" Adam tosses worried glances over his shoulder and tries to keep the car on the road. "Sam, you gotta talk to me, man! Tell me what hurts!"
All he gets in response is another desperate, gurgling hurk for air.
Fuck, fuck, fuck! FUCK! Adam knows he has to pull over yesterday, get the first aid kit, finagle a tube into Sam's chest and release the air from his chest cavity. Sam needs oxygen, needs doctors, but shit. The demons will come to finish the job if he stops and what in goddamn hell was he thinking running off and leaving Sam to fight them alone?
"Son of a bitch!" Adam punches the steering wheel, stomps the gas harder, reminds himself to breathe. Sympathy suffocation will do Sam no good.
This is fucked. This is all so completely fucked. He doesn't get this. Not at all. When he lets himself think about it in those fleeting little bursts, he gets drowned in whys. He doesn't know why he didn't get sent back to Heaven, why they all didn't. He doesn't know why he had to be born into such an ill-fated bloodline. He doesn't understand why Sam and Dean are never allowed a second of peace. And now? Now he can't figure out why they're not finished. It should be done, most of the family's literally been to Hell and back, trials over, and this is the biggest, steaming pile of horseshit in the history of ever.
Adam tears across cornfield country and loses his mind a little bit, loses track of real time until he very abruptly can't take it any more. By the time he careens to a fish-tailing stop, his cheeks are wet and his eyes are blurring and he doesn't know how that happened. Sam's stopped making any noises.
The stars are rudely brilliant, the air muggy and bursting with cricket song as he stumbles out onto all fours and scrapes his palms on the asphalt. He keeps moving even as he throws up, staggers toward the trunk and ferrets around for anything and everything. He gets Sam laid out next to the ditch and starts the crudest surgery he's ever fathomed, a dulled switchblade, a condom, and a Bic pen as his primary life-saving tools.
Hacking at Sam's slack, broken form isn't ripping his guts out and strewing them across the road, not one bit. It's self-preservation, is what it is. Adam's thinking about Dean, what Zachariah said and what Michael knew. Losing Adam was like a drop in the bucket but Sam? Sam is the whole bucket and the universe it sits in. Dean will kill him in the most painful way imaginable if he lets Sam die before he gets a chance to appreciate his... not deadness.
His hands are slick with blood and shaking badly but he finally gets it, crooked chest tube jutting up at the sky like an accusatory finger, which he feels is appropriate. Sam's renewed breathing is ragged but it's breathing, so Adam tries not to freak out about other stuff, like all the jarring movement and possible spine injuries. Sometimes knowing too much sucks.
The part of Sam's skin that isn't rainbow-colored has become an alarming shade of gray, and Adam strips him out of his clothes to improve blood flow, can't stop and think about what's next when he's in the middle of nothing, that he's just delaying the inevitable. It's too crazy-making.
When the cell phone clatters to the pavement, Adam gapes at it for a minute, this nonsensical device just popping out in the middle of his trauma without fanfare.
A quick scroll through the contact list reveals Dean's number, Bobby's, and even Castiel's. It's everything he could have ever wished for in this particular moment and he kind of can't believe it.
Did Sam's phone survive Hell? That seems a little weird. Or maybe he had the numbers memorized and bought a new one. Either way, Adam manages to be pretty pissed that the answers have been skulking in Sam's pocket all along, and he's going to be writing a very heated letter of complaint about this later.
For now, he coaxes his trembling finger into stabbing the appropriate buttons, and summons help.
-:-
The hospital wait is interminable.
Adam is learning intimately the meaning of batshit insane as he paces the waiting room and watches the light slowly bleed into the morning sky beyond the sliding glass doors. There are a lot of machine-dispensed cups of battery acid someone brazenly dubbed safe for human consumption, too many jumbled thought processes jitter-bugging through his head, veins steadily being lined with lead as his body demands a real recharge, and he's pretty sure if he hears one more falsely-chipper, "The doctor should be out to tell you something soon," he's going to get rabid.
The ambulance was shrill, sweet music, but the rest has been bullshit. Sam was immediately assaulted by a flurry of nurses before they rolled him off to some secret chamber to work on him, and Adam swears there's some kind of abyss back there, sucking up doctors and forcing them to claw their way back to the this reality so they can reassure fretting family members. There was probably a whole course on portal battle in med school, only he never got that far.
It's 8:16 AM when someone in a white coat finally emerges from the mysterious Back There and calls his name.
Adam pounces. "How is he? Can I see him? I need to see him," he blurts in the man's face.
The doctor wipes spittle from his cheek and smiles as genially as he can under the circumstances. "He's stable for now," is all Adam really hears before the guy launches into some blah-bitty-blah about how lucky Sam was and minor surgery, and then: "... some complications. I'm afraid we had to sedate him."
"What? Why?"
The man raises his brows, but doesn't lose the smile, obviously used to being tuned out. "His sleep seems... less than restful. We had to ensure he didn't hurt himself any more."
Oh. Adam takes a deep breath, nods. "He has, um. Sometimes there are nightmares." He's not even going to try to explain the cause of those because, yeah, that would go over well. "I wanna see him. He kind of has a thing about hospitals. Someone he knows needs to be with him so he won't freak out."
It's a damn dirty lie, but whatever. He needs to smooth at least one part of his frazzled psyche over. Besides, he knows there's a risk that Sam's not exactly kosher with law enforcement, and there were a lot of awkward questions about who beat the living hell out of him that Adam's not sure he answered all that coherently. Surely someone with a badge will be here to press the issue soon, and Adam needs to be close by for daring escape number two, just in case.
Truth or fantastical fairy tale, Adam's tenacious panic and boyish charm grants him access to Back There, relief whooshing out of him and taking some of his frantic energy with it. Collapse is imminent, but he holds out a little while longer as he follows the doctor to the ICU.
As soon as all medical staff is safely on the other side of the curtain, Adam sneaks a peek at Sam's chart for himself. No spinal trauma detected, so Adam didn't paralyze him for life or anything, and from what he can decipher, Sam really is going to be okay.
He doesn't look all that great, of course. An endotracheal tube is crammed down his throat, half of him swallowed up in casts thanks to all the broken bones, his face looks even more mutilated than before, and he's still alarmingly pale. But his chest is rising and falling, and the heart monitor's blinking at a steady rate.
Adam's knees wobble, and he has to steady himself on the edge of the bed for a moment. It's hitting him hard. Everything. Christ, where does he even begin?
The unshapely bulge in his back pocket seems to answer that question for him. He pulls out the rolled notebook and sets to work.
When he's done, the space is heavily warded against every supernatural foe Sam has scrawled a trap or repellent for. It's as subtle as he can get it, and he just has to hope no one takes a sudden interest in the ceiling, or needs to check underneath Sam's bed for any reason.
He finally allows himself to fall down, ass colliding with the unfriendly waiting chair, takes to rolling Sam's cell phone in one hand. He tried calling Castiel, figured the angel would immediately recognize that he wasn't some evil thing in an Adam-suit and could take the terrifying task of spreading the news to other pertinent parties out of Adam's hands. No such luck, though. Castiel didn't answer and hasn't responded.
He considers just shooting off a couple of text messages, but that seems a little coldly impersonal. He has no more idea what to text than he does what to say with his mouth, anyway.
Hey, guys! Sam's totally not dead anymore. He's just maimed and unconscious in the ICU. Bring flowers!
He rolls his eyes at himself, glares at Sam for a little while, willing him to wake up so he can yell at him for being such a jackass about everything.
His plan to drop Sam off with Dean in a convenient bondage package was so much better than this. Dean would have to believe what he was seeing, and he'd be less likely to stab Sam through the heart right away without making absolutely sure he needed it first. Adam's not so sure he'd be given the same courtesy.
He drops his head back and lets his eyes drift shut. There's still the cold trickle of confirmation that demons are out to get him, though they seemed way more interested in Sam. (One more thing Adam needs to kick his ass for, hindsight giving him the peskily late awareness that sending him off to the kitchen to fetch a pail of water was his macho way of trying to protect him.) There is still that god-awful cleansing fire waiting to be addressed in his subconscious, still a mother not properly mourned, and still a pair of dumbass half-brothers he refuses to be some warped buffer or unfit replacement for. There's still his uncertain role in the world.
Yeah, there's still a lot, and sleep is not going to come easily, no matter how much his eyeballs hurt.
One thing at a time, he supposes, glancing at the blank screen in his hand again. They've got a good thing going, and Adam really would hate to ruin it.
Smirking, he makes his decision and hits the call button.
-:-
When Sam comes to under the blanket-fog of heavy-duty painkillers, he immediately thinks it's another dream, or maybe a hallucination.
A disturbingly familiar bellow is booming down the hall in the midst of other, shriller protests, threatening to eviscerate anyone and everyone if they don't get the fuck outta the way, but it can't be who it sounds like.
He grunts around the uncomfortable sensation of a tube stuffed down his throat and tries to sit up, but the drugs have piled a cumbersome layer of bricks on his chest. He really needs to get out of the damn hospital, is his first proactive thought as he tries to reconcile the bits and pieces of how he wound up here. Dream or no dream, it's an unpleasant location all around.
Sliding his hands over himself to assess the damage, his finger snags on a scrap of paper that's been pinned to his blanket.
STOLE YOUR NOTEBOOK. TRY NOT TO HIT ANY MORE DEMONS WITH YOUR FACE.
-ADAM
P.S. DEAN'S ON HIS WAY. YOU'RE WELCOME.
Oh. Shit.
Sam's eyes blow wide, slowly cranking up to the gap in the curtain.
Right on cue, Dean hurtles through and nearly rips the whole thing down, all frantic-eyed and heaving chest, an impossible but commanding presence as a flood of security personnel dangles from his shirttails. Sam thinks a million and one things in that moment, not the least of which is how much trouble he is in right now, judging by the storm system gathering around his brother's head.
There's relief and guilt and relief and dread and relief and bracing for a fist in the mouth and, under all that, he thinks, You can run but you can't hide, you little shit.
He is going to throttle his bitchy little brother next time he gets hold of him. So hard.
-END-