FIC: Before Your Time Has Run Astray 1/2

[dollarformyname]

Story Title: Before Your Time Has Run Astray
Author: dollarformyname
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Language.
Timeline/Spoilers: Post Swan Song.
Word Count: 9,715
Disclaimer: Supernatural belongs to Eric Kripke and other people who aren't me. Story title from the song Too Late by Journey.
Summary: The Winchesters are a jacked-up brand of retarded, and Adam passionately hopes he never becomes one.

A/N: So this isn't necessarily how I think it'll go, or even how I want it to go, but random thoughts had me wondering about a certain perspective, and I decided to work it out via fic. That's what it's for, anyway, right? If you want to pretend the third brother never existed, you should probably give this a miss.

Lovely story banners by longbca! Thanks, hon.

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 secret battles 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, then 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, his screams like a thousand car wrecks at once and still so far beneath notice, 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." Adam's tone is flat, and he leaves the door swung wide, because it won't do any good to slam it shut 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 acknowledgment.

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 convince 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 snorts 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, then finally 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 Sam in the face will actually work this time.

Probably not. Adam's 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, then 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 Adam 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 Sam 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 poison at that stupid emo face.

Sam's fork stops mid-shuffle, the briefest glitch before he 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. He scowls. "I'm nothing like either of you," he grates, shoves away from the table and drops face-first onto the bed, cramming his head under the nearest 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 as he struggles to pull in 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," Adam rasps, forcefully shrugging Sam's hand off. He feels like a bundle of live, jostling coals.

Sam sighs, the mattress shifting and creaking 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 this time, 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 kind 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 thrift store they stumbled across. None of them fit right, but not reeking of grave rot was more of a 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-leech 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 Adam's eyes. He tries to ignore the slow simmer and the tickle of sweat, gazing 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, sniffling. 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.'"

Sam's features are pinched against the daylight, shadows of power lines and foliage zipping across the lower half of his face, lending the dizzying illusion of a TV on the fritz. He slides a warning look over. "He didn't let you. There wasn't—" He swallows hard, returns his gaze to the monotonous gray road 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 relentlessly 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, 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 as an only child 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—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," Adam 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 planning 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." Adam 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."

"It'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—"

Sam slams a fist against the wheel, the horn blaring long and loud at the abuse. 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 flashes 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 (not because he actually hates it, but because it's proven dangerous to have even the smallest things in common with Dean). 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.

Adam consoles himself with mentally hashing little plots 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.


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