Before Your Time Has Run Astray

He doesn't know how it happened.

It wasn't that long ago that he was just a kid, wrapped up in college and frantic over his new workload and living arrangements, everything so different from high school, had barely started to crush on his lab partner, worried about his mom and hoped she was adjusting to the quiet house okay.

He was just a guy whose biggest source of lament was an absentee father and a short childhood that ended the second he got his first fake ID so he could work to help pay the bills. Not anyone's dream life but, on the whole, not so bad either. Not in comparison to theirs, at least.

They're the ones who did this to him. A bloodline extending back into something dark and glorious and terrifying. A life stamped with monsters and silent war and unhealthy attachments and not much else, and he was fine never knowing about it. A little bitter, but ultimately much better off in hindsight.

But then his own blood betrayed him, that poisonous part of his makeup attracting something terrible, and it's been like a really bad cosmic soap opera ever since. On the Syfy channel. Except more horrific.

A bloody death—so, so bloody and gross and fucking painful—his second life swept up into their Heaven-and-Hell epic, a second death and eternal torment.

Only not so eternal because hey... third life.

Living is beginning to annoy him, because this is all there is. Confusion and not belonging and being smothered by a spiteful hand meant for someone else. Their life is not his life. It's irritating as fuck that they won't see that. That no one will see that.

The angels wouldn't. God won't.

Sam won't.

Sam is just as disoriented and confused as he is, but it doesn't stop him. Sam keeps trying to drag him back into it. Flailing, biting, screaming—Sam doesn't seem to care as long as he gets what he wants.

He remembers being scalded white, screams rendered blank, and only the barest awareness of what his body was doing. He remembers falling, terror, fire, constricted lungs and fighting that lasted for years. The angels. Two starving lions trapped in close quarters and taking it out on each other's hides, only they weren't their hides because one of the hides was him, and it was agony, agony, agony without pause, endless stores of rage and hatred and hunger for freedom that was never coming.

Except it did, at least for their vessels, and he's still not sure how it happened. Or why.

Doesn't matter, though. Not really. He just wants to get the hell away. It would go much better if he knew exactly where away is, because Sam won't go there, much less let him go there. Sam is the pit bull and he is the bone. It doesn't matter how far or deep he buries himself, his brother always sniffs him out.

It's only been a few weeks, but he's been lost and found twelve times already. The knock on the door tells him lucky number thirteen has just completed its cycle.

"I told you to leave me alone." His tone is flat, and he leaves the door swung wide, because it won't do any good to close it and get chased out by the manager after Sam smashes it off its frame.

Sam just looms in the doorway for a minute, and Adam turns his back on those puppy eyes that flood over him like searchlights, all concern and know-it-all big brother-ness, but mostly desperation. I'm worried about you. You can't hide from me. You're all I have.

Adam doesn't have anything, either, but you don't see him clinging to people who clearly want him to fuck off.

He flops back onto the lopsided bed, turns up the volume on the television in hopes of filling the empty space so Sam won't be able to use it. He doesn't want to talk about Hell, or Dean, or hear Sam's stupid voice at all.

He wants to forget. He wants Sam's persistent presence to stop fucking up his half-constructed delusions before he can get them off the ground. He's not officially dead on paper. It was all just some hazing prank and he's on vacation, taking time away from the daily grind of books and lectures. His mom's sunning it up in Florida or California, somewhere with a beach, and he doesn't even know his father's name and doesn't care to. The closest he's come to religion is the sidewalk bypassing the church outside his old high school. He has no brothers.

Sam heaves a sigh and steps inside, clicks the door shut. Hovers and fidgets.

Adam isn't looking at him. Sam is goddamn huge and uses up way too much oxygen, so it's a little difficult, but he manages to wipe his giant of a half-brother from the room with his lack of acknowledgement.

Sam huffs. A scrape of wood against carpet precedes the plop of his giant ass into a chair. "Have you eaten?"

Adam's thumb stabs at the remote. There's a rerun of Shark Week on the Discovery channel, and it's freaking riveting. Sharks are awesome.

Giant palms rub over denim. "How long are we gonna do this?"

Adam can't believe people get paid to do this shit. There's not enough money in the world that would inspire him to dive into the open ocean armed with nothing more than a camera and a poky stick.

"C'mon, man."

There's blatant misery in Sam's voice, and Adam's bastard eyes flick over long enough to see the stream of sunlight catch the grains of dust in Sam's crazed hippie hair. He's been running his hands through it again, neurotic brooder that he is, and seriously, what the hell is up with all the dirt? If Adam didn't know any better he'd say Sam just got done rolling around in the middle of the road or something.

He actually doesn't know any better, but it's not important. A shark just tried to swallow the camera. Adam chuffs at all the churning bubbles and stream of panicked grunts from the startled diver. What a dumbass.

Sam is silent for about thirty more seconds, reaches the point in his impatience that commands him to bully the awkwardness out of the arena. He gets up and sheds his jacket before moving across the room to sprawl his giant frame across the unused portion of the not-made-for-giants mattress. Adam makes a grunting sound of irritation and scoots over, wonders if punching him in the face will actually work this time.

Probably not. His fist still hurts, anyway. Sam seems to have found a way to turn his facial muscles to brick in accordance with the rest of him.

Sam says, "I'm gonna order a pizza," rolls over and picks up the laminated list of nearby businesses provided by the motel.

Adam doesn't want pizza, rips the list away from Sam and picks up the phone off the nightstand to order Chinese instead. "You stink," he mutters, wrinkling his nose as he cradles the receiver in the crook of his shoulder, and Sam sniffs himself.

He shrugs and gets back up, disappears into the bathroom.

Adam rolls his eyes and requests one of everything on the menu, shuffles off the bed with an aggrieved sigh and goes outside to figure out which car is stolen. Sam will walk around in a damn towel all day if he doesn't grab his duffel. It's like the moron forgot how to do things for himself now that Dean's not around; fuck knows how he manages to track him down all the time. Adam should probably feel deeply shamed. Mostly he's just annoyed.

But hey, bright side? Even if his life isn't completely his right now, at least it was never theirs, and he's not so ridiculously co-dependent that he stutters like a rusted bicycle with missing pedals when he's on his own.

The Winchesters are a jacked-up brand of retarded, and Adam passionately hopes he never becomes one.

-:-

The food arrives cold, and the greasy delivery guy is rude and obnoxious. Adam makes Sam haul the absurdly high and precarious pile of white cartons inside and perks the guy right up with a fifty percent tip, courtesy of Sam's wallet.

They sit at the table and eat. Sam uses a plastic fork out of habit, because Dean was 'chopstick-challenged and it always felt like he was being a snob or something when Sam wielded them so expertly'. Adam thinks of skewering the back of Sam's huge hand with his own chopsticks, wonders how long he can pin him to the table that way. They'd probably break before they drew blood, so he considers Sam's eyeballs for a while.

Hell may have made him a little sadistic, but he's not thinking about that.

Adam is not as large as Dean, and especially not Sam, but he eats a lot. The ludicrous amount of starch on the table proves too much for him, however, and he has to wave his white flag after tearing through only half of the cartons.

Sam's taken a generous estimate of maybe three bites, and he won't stop staring.

"What?" Adam snaps, idly wishing he smoked so he could blow a cloud of noxious fumes in that stupid emo face.

Sam's fork stops mid-shuffle, eyes gaping wounded, drops his gaze back to his rice and shakes his head. "You're kind of a messy eater."

Adam glances at the food tidbits scattered across the laminate wood, the grease stains from where he wiped his hands down his shirt, scowls. "I'm nothing like either of you," he growls, shoves away from the table and drops face-first onto the bed, crams his head under the pillow.

He'll run away again as soon as Sam passes out.

-:-

Everything rattles, and it hurts. It's bright, so bright, too bright. He's nothing, voiceless, formless, snow on the television, and still he burns. Bleached, bloodless, immaculate fire. Thunderstorms and earthquakes in every pulsebeat. He can't get out.

Something heaves him to the surface and he snaps upright, sweat-sheened and trembling, huge, gagging gulps of stale air. There's a difference between black and white, aside from the obvious. The blindness of the former is cooler, easier to take, a firm divide between Here and There. It's blessedly dark, and the breathing gets a little easier after a few more seconds.

"Hey, it's okay. Just a dream, dude, we're good. Everything's good." Sam sounds shakier than Adam feels, and there's a heavy pressure on his shoulder.

"Don't," he grates, forcefully shrugs Sam's hand off. He feels like a bundle of live, jostling coals.

Sam sighs and the mattress shifts and creaks a little, but he doesn't go away, just lays there, unnaturally still and quiet. Adam likes it that way, easier to believe there's only himself, and he can push everything back down, underneath. His mind wasn't built to stare into this kind of wreckage for very long.

When Sam's stubborn streak has his knuckles grazing Adam's arm again, he ignores the way his pulse stops tripping over itself, the way his skin feels less like it's going to vibrate free of his bones. He doesn't push him off, because Sam's not even there.

Adam rolls over and burrows back into his blanket-cave, so preoccupied with pretending he's alone that he forgets to leave.

-:-

Here's the thing: Sam clearly feels obligated to take care of Adam. It's dumb, because Adam's never really needed taking care of and Sam, the clueless bastard, he's just not very good at it.

That first night, there was a lot of uncertainty—Is this real? Is this a new level of torture?—and on Sam's part, plenty of despair—DeanDeanDean, should I, could I? Adam purposefully felt very little, other than that potent desire for distance.

But there was still the uncertainty, inebriating enough to keep him at Sam's side until the stagger-steps of relearning himself, of reconciling the new/old world,wore off.

Adam asked, "How long were we gone?" and Sam snagged a paper to find out.

Couple of months. That was all. Not even a whole sixty days.

It wasn't right, lent credence to that sense of unreality. So Adam stuck around to complain about the dirt, spurring Sam to steal a week's worth of clothes for each of them from the first department store they stumbled across. None of them fit right, but not reeking of grave rot was more his concern than a few rolled sleeves and dragging cuffs.

Adam wanted a shower to wash the evidence away, a bed to bury himself in so he could begin the process of erasing his head. Sam led them to the nearest bus station, plenty of foot traffic, and picked pockets until he came up with enough cash for a motel.

Adam bitched about angels and monsters. Would they come for them again? Was it really over? It had better be fucking over. Sam ordered takeout and requested extra, extra, extra packets of salt, used a ballpoint pen and a little of his own blood to mark weird symbols all over the walls.

That first night, and the few following it, Sam didn't do anything useful unless Adam asked or complained, just shambled around like a zombie.

Then Adam made the mistake of asking about Dean.

Sam went stony and too quiet, and Adam woke up alone the next morning. It gave him room to breathe, room to realize. His life wasn't waiting for him to jump back in and fill his own space anymore, he had nowhere to go, and he certainly wasn't willing to shape himself into one of them. He was better off alone, working out his next steps for himself like he'd done since he learned how to forge his mother's signature when she was too bleary-eyed after three straight shifts to be bothered with permission slips and report cards.

But then Sam came back, even more sullen and dazed than before, and he said, "We should leave Dean alone."

So that's how it came to be that Dean got the solitude Adam so desperately wants, and Adam got stuck with the Sam-leach who can't even remember to wash his own clothes.

The motel's laundry room is small, rank with lingering body odor, and way too bright. Lemon-yellow sunlight slants across the black-streaked tile and glints off the chugging washing machine's battered metal, aggravating the shrapnel that's made itself at home between his eyes. He tries to ignore the slow simmer and the tickle of sweat, gazes blankly at the outdated article about... makeup?

He flips the magazine closed and tosses it, plastic chair cracking as he leans back and pinches the bridge of his nose, sniffles. It fucking stinks in here, and he's pretty sure whatever kind of trees they have planted along the ditch outside are irritating his allergies.

He can't figure out why he puts himself through this crap. It's early, Sam's still asleep, and he could just go.

Except his window of opportunity has long passed, he knows that. He's learned by now that he needs a good four hour head start if he hopes to have any kind of reprieve. Less than that, and Sam will catch up to him before he can even begin to make himself comfortable anywhere. That means he's tethered to the jackass for at least another day, and there's no way he's sitting in the car for hours choking on Sam's lack of hygiene.

There's a buzzing sound, and he opens his eyes. A bead of sweat slides down and blurs half of everything, but he still makes out the spastic bee ramming itself into the window just over his shoulder. It's getting pretty pissed that the invisible force field won't be buffeted into nonexistence, and he's not keen to have its grouchy attention turned on him. He's never been stung in his life (lives) and, while he doesn't think he's allergic, he's oddly proud of that little accomplishment.

It gets a quick death by Cosmopolitan, and he almost feels kind of bad about it after. Here's a bee going about its little bee life, suddenly trapped and unable to reach the light, and along comes a giant meanie to squash its entire honey-making future for no other reason than to preserve a completely pointless personal record.

Adam winces when the door opens and bangs itself closed again, a gunshot that slices straight through his temples. He looks over and Sam's standing there in the same rumpled tee and jeans he fell asleep in, a tray of coffee and a white sack crumpled in his fist.

He sighs and sits down, dumps the goods on the plastic table between them and fishes around in his pocket. Adam raises his brows at the huge palm that presents him with a packet of ibuprofen.

Sam shrugs. "You squint a lot after... a bad night."

It's true. Bad nights mean persistently bitchy headaches the day after. Adam takes the pills, drinks the coffee, and eats the McMuffin, but doesn't admit that maybe Sam sucks a little less at life with each new day.

-:-

Here's the other thing: Sam wants Dean. Adam is not Dean, thank fuck, and Adam can't emphasize enough how much he doesn't want either of them.

The solution to this seems simple enough, but he's come to realize their rollercoasters of denial and twisted protective streaks can warp the shit out of things until they're bloody, pathetic scraps of indecipherable emo fodder.

Sam thinks Dean is happy where he is, doesn't want to ruin it. Adam is still wondering how they ever got this far if Sam was the brains of their outfit.

He knew Dean for five whole minutes and even he knows Dean is likely drowning in a bottle to escape the gaping chasm where Sam should be. Probably to escape the burbs too, because Dean really struck him as the type who'd go slowly insane in a place like that, maybe even become the recluse neighbor that 'always seemed so nice', according to the interviewees on the six o'clock news after a garage full of mutilated bodies are discovered.

Yeah, Adam's pretty sure getting those two back together is not only crucial to his own sanity, it's a goddamn public service.

Easier said than done, though. Sam is one immovable pain in the ass.

"It doesn't matter, Adam, just drop it."

Adam's not going to drop it, Sam's dangerous tone of finality be fucked. "He's my brother, too. Why the hell don't I get to know? Maybe I wanna drop him a post card or something. 'Hey, thanks for letting me get damned and all. You wouldn't believe the weather Down Here.'"

The power lines zip their shadows across Sam's face as he slides a warning look over. "He didn't let you. There wasn't—" He swallows hard, returns his gaze to the monotonous gray forever winding toward an electric-bright horizon. "It was us or the world, okay?"

"It was you or the world," Adam corrects, not entirely sure that that's true (Michael was definitely the wrathful type, probably could've done a lot of damage on sheer spite alone; he'd felt that much) but the facts of that situation don't actually matter to him at the moment. He just wants Sam to give him a straight answer for once. The planning will go a lot better that way because, honestly, he's not relishing the idea of playing this screwed-up game of hide-and-seek across the lower forty-eight forever.

"Fine," Sam spits. "You wanna be pissed at someone, be pissed at me. I'm the one who pulled you in."

"I am pissed at you, but you don't seem to care all that much, so I'm moving on."

Sam works his jaw and refuses to engage him further, grips the wheel with both hands as if to keep himself from doing something more destructive with them.

Adam slumps back in his seat, rubs at his temple. The sunglasses Sam swiped from somewhere aren't helping all that much, but the lingering spikes in his skull have more to do with the violent rattle-knock of the crappy engine than the inappropriately sunny day. The air conditioner doesn't work, either, so he gets to bake in the obnoxious piece of shit as a bonus.

"He always tried," Sam says after several tense beats, low and shaky, and Adam looks over to see those rounded, broken eyes are back in full-force, though Sam is resolutely keeping them trained on the road. "He tried so hard, all the time. If there was a way to save us... from that. If there was a way he woulda found it."

Adam isn't really even mad at Dean. He's not all that pissed at Sam, either—at least not for the whole Hell debacle. Sam pisses him off for plenty of other reasons, but he knows all that craziness was just... inevitable. You don't live with an archangel in your head for any length of time without picking up a few things about cosmic schemes millenia in the making, fate and destiny, and the sheer fucked-luck of anyone caught up in the puppet strings.

"Yeah, I know," Adam relents, and the hard line of Sam's shoulders relaxes a little.

It's important to him, Adam knows, that no one view Dean as any kind of villain. Dean is the hero and Sam would probably take out a billboard to that effect if it wasn't guaranteed to blow his cover—which, fine, Adam's cool with that. He doesn't get it on a personal level, because he doesn't know Dean like Sam knows Dean, never will, but he gets it as best he can, saw it for himself that once. And yeah, Dean had tried. Really, really hard. But it's not the real issue, anyway.

Sam gets drunk sometimes, and he babbles. Information gathering has required little stealth on Adam's part, because all he's gotta do is be present when Sam hits the bottle, so he knows all about the dying wish, and a few other things. What he doesn't know, is where exactly Dean is supposed to be living this perfect life of his. Sam won't give it up, and Adam thinks more tequila may be in order tonight. If he could just get an address, or even a general zip code, he's pretty sure he could be rid of this final attachment to the part of his past he would rather forget, and get on with finding some echo of what he used to be.

"Where are we going?" Adam slouches again, thumping his head on the sun-baked glass.

"South."

"Man with a plan," he drawls facetiously. "It's my turn to drive."

Sam's mouth twitches a little. "No, it's not."

Adam huffs, puts all his lingering teenage moodiness into it. "We could just stop, ya know. Graduate from daily rent to monthly, learn people's full names."

Sam doesn't bother dignifying that with a response, and Adam might manage to get upset about it if he was actually serious. It's more about pointing out the yawning flaw in all this lack of foresight than wanting to settle down anywhere, especially with him. Sam's always ready to hit the road, gets fidgety when he stays in place too long, nervous glances over his shoulder, needs to get going, hurry up, like they've got any destination they could be late to.

"Georgia," Adam starts down his alphabetized list again, unconcerned with the reanimated vein at Sam's temple. "Hawaii. Idaho? Illinois. Indiana." The barest hitch of breath and Adam smirks his victory. "Indiana it is, then. Okay, let's see... Advance. Akron. Alamo—"

"Christ, how the hell do you know the cities of Indiana in alphabetical order?" Sam's taken time from his upset to give him the crazy eye.

Adam shrugs. "Photographic memory. I read an atlas once."

Sam huffs a little laugh, shaking his head. "Man, Dean would have a field day with—" He jolts like he's been hit by lightning, takes a deep breath and clears his throat. "That, uh, that book's still in the glove box if you wanna take a look."

"I don't." He turns to glare at the blur of the highway's fluttering green-gold borders.

"Well, you should."

"Says you."

"Says common fucking sense," Sam snaps, and Adam bristles.

"I don't want to read your stupid goddamn journal."

"S'not always about what you want, Adam. Sometimes you don't get a choice."

"Oh, fuck you." Adam's not in the mood for this self-pity trip. "Maybe that's how it went for you, but I don't have—"

"Dammit!" Sam slams a fist against the wheel, and the horn joins in his outrage. He's breathing choppy, too quickly, and Adam thinks about telling him to regulate that before the imbalance of oxygen and carbon dioxide has him passing out at seventy miles per hour, but readies himself to grab the wheel instead. Sam totally deserves to faint and, anyway, it'll give Adam a break.

"Do you really not get that demons, angels, and whatever-the-fuck else will come for whenever it feels like coming for you? It's not gonna back off and go 'sorry, wrong number' just because you don't wanna be part of this stuff! Jesus!" Sam's arm lobs itself across Adam's knees, a quick jab and the glove compartment falls open. He throws the spiral notebook he's been scribbling random shit in since their resurrection into Adam's lap. "Read it," he grinds out, visibly trying to calm himself. "Just... it's not gonna hurt anything. Maybe nothing will happen, but if it does, at least you'll know what to do." He angles a slightly mocking look over. "Unless you're just aching to be monster food again."

Adam stiffens. "You're a fucking dick, you know that?"

"I'm well aware." Sam doesn't sound like he's sorry about it at all. "Read the damn book."

Adam looks down at the creased green cover: 180 college-ruled pages complete with dividers, and behind his red haze of aggravation, there's grudging approval. Wide-ruled paper always hurt his brain for some reason, the gaps between his small writing grating against his aesthetic sensibilities. Somehow he just knows the anal organization that lies within these pages will get his inner geek all in a frenzy, which makes him really want to set the thing on fire.

No lighters or matches in sight, so he starts to crank the window down.

"If you throw that out, so help me, I will stuff you in the trunk and make you study by flashlight," Sam says, the eerie calm of his voice making the threat that much more believable.

Adam hurls him a dirty look, but rolls the window back up. "I hate you."

"You'll get over it."

Sometimes Adam can't even begin to properly articulate the scope of Sam's assholery. Especially when he gets like this. It's like he thinks he can stubborn all the round parts into edges when Adam won't quite fit into what's left of his freak show.

He averts his gaze when Adam kicks at the dash because the car is confining and too many hours have strung together with no breaks. He turns up the radio when Adam huffs too loudly and grumbles under his breath. He buys extra greasy burgers at almost every food stop, even though Adam has repeatedly expressed his disgust for such slop. When it's Adam's turn to drive and he stays at least two miles under the speed limit, a giant foot taps absently at the floorboard like Sam's trying to will the gas pedal down with mime powers. He keeps trying to make Adam carry a gun, tirades about never having fired one and never wanting to learn zipping straight through his ears, maybe rattling over his brain a little but never really sticking, like a bullet train through a tunnel.

It's all very frustrating. Even more frustrating is when Sam makes a good point. Knowledge is power and all that fun shit. Knowing won't hurt, but not knowing bites. Sometimes very literally.

He makes a mental note to make Sam's life as miserable as possible until he's free of him again, opens the notebook and immediately flips to the tab on angels.

-:-

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 could even speak coherently.

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. The waitress is in love with his polite mama's boy demeanor already, he can tell, practically has to force herself not to reach out and pat him on the head before she wanders off.

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, as if Sam's gut knows somebody rang its bell. Betrayed by his own body, Sam shuts up about it.

"We're low on cash," he says instead, cracks his jaw on a wide yawn. "Gonna hafta 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 had 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 velocity 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.

Jesus fucking Christ, what a hopeless train wreck.

Adam drops his face in his hands. "Ohmigod, 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 groin 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 icy javelin of fear that skewers him 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, floundering for a clue. A furious snarl reminds him there's still a small demon problem to contend with, and he whirls around without thinking, 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 for the imminent agony, 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 distress. 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 six-foot-four man 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's head is on a spastic swivel as he 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! Diagnostic report, dude, c'mon!"

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 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 proceeds to divest him of his clothes to improve blood flow, can't stop and think about what 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, he 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 he'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 violating 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 beneath 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, glances 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 familiar 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, 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-