Fic: With Empty Hands Extended 2/5

[summergen-mod.livejournal.com]

Dean parks one street away from Adam’s house, lifting up the fake bottom in the trunk to reveal an arsenal of weapons. Guns, knives, something that looks oddly like a dream-catcher, boxes and boxes of ammo, bags and containers of salt and bottles of dried up plants and mutely-colored liquids.

It’s the ultimate traveling bag of a very experienced hunter Adam guesses. Or a serial killer.

The man hands him the keys to the Impala as he reaches into the stack of guns. Adam shakes his head in denial.

“I’m coming with you.”

“Um, no.” Dean says, loading a sawed off shotgun with some of the scariest bullets Adam’s ever seen. “Did you miss the part about these things liking human flesh? You’re going to sit in here with the doors locked and book it if things go south. Got it?”

Adam scowls. “How will I know if it gets you? Did you forget that these things can change form?”

“I promise I’ll scream if the ghouls start chewing on my insides.”

It’s not good enough. He wants to be in this, to get a piece of revenge on these fuckers. Some of the light goes out in Dean’s eyes as he catches on to his train of thought.

“Always about revenge,” He mumbles in disgust before plucking another shotgun out of the back of the impala and shoving the loaded one against Adam’s chest. “Follow my lead or I’ll shoot you somewhere painful but all around not lethal- ‘kay?”

He nods, flexing his hands on the smooth, worn handle. He wonders if this would be the time to tell Dean he’s never shot a gun before in his life.

Probably not.

Above all, do no harm. Adam wonders what Hippocrates would have to say about this little ethical dilemma. What the fuck, the Oath’s an outdated, sentimental bunch of words, besides he’s not killing a person.

Right?

“Stay behind me,” Dean orders angrily, “and if you do turn out to be a ghoul I’m going to tie you down and slowly cut your head off, alright?”

Adam nods, quietly thinking that Dean needs to work on his people skills. They suck.

They’re halfway across the yard when the screams reach them. Dean curses, cocking the shotgun. Adam commits the action to memory, doing the same to his own weapon as Dean sprints across the grass.

“Ghouls mean a headshot. It’s the only thing that’ll kill them. Ready?”

Adam huffs out a yes.

“If you see anyone insanely tall with annoying girly hair that’s Sam. Don’t shoot him.”

The door’s unlocked. Dean pushes it open so swiftly and silently, Adam almost wonders if it’s not just an illusion. It smells like a torture chamber in his home, the metallic scent of blood making him gag. Someone’s grunting and hissing in pain, yelling out as nasty, dark voices whisper about all the things they’re going to do to Adam and he just wants to escape.

The sound of a shotgun going off makes him jump, chasing away the memories of his time down in that crypt. Adam sees the unusually tall man with floppy hair tied down in his kitchen, steadily bleeding from his wrists into two deep bowls in the floor.

“Dean- they’re ghouls!” He shouts as Adam brings his shotgun up against himself.

“Shoot anyone who isn’t tied to a table!” Dean shouts off somewhere to his right. “And, me, don’t shoot me!”

It’s frightening to see, an alternate reality of what he might have looked like, with bloody lips and soulless eyes. He squeezes the trigger and nearly falls over from the recoil, missing his face-stealing captor’s head to lodge a whole lot of buckshot in its shoulder.

NotAdam howls in rage and shrinks away. Dean’s after his mother- or the thing that ate her, having used his ammo up already. Adam awkwardly cocks the shotgun again and this time his aim is true.

NotAdam’s head explodes in a cloud of reds, whites and grays. The ghoul’s stolen body flops over like a dead fish, twitching twice before lying still. He turns to find Dean untying his Sam, his face splattered in blood.

Sam’s cat-eyed gaze takes him in, full of blinks and confusion.

“Dean…” He begins but the other hunter shakes his head, wrapping Sam’s heavily bleeding wrists with shaking hands.

“Not now, Sammy. The two of you need to get to a hospital.”

Adam tosses the gun down, his first aid training kicking in at the sight of Sam’s pale, sweaty face. He’s probably going into shock.

“Keep him on his back until we’re ready to move him,” Adam says, putting his hand on Sam’s frighteningly hard chest, “or the shock will kill him before the blood loss does.”

“Jeez, aren’t we just a ray of freaking sunshine.” Dean snaps but there’s too much worry in his face for Adam to be upset about it. He’s proven right when he tries to apply pressure on Sam’s wounds and find something to elevate his feet with, nearly falling over as his vision grays.

“Jesus fucking- will the two of you just stay there while I go get the car? Just stay. If either one of you moves while I’m gone there’s going to be hell to pay.”

Adam feels his way up onto the table, holding Sam’s legs on his lap instead. He feels like nothing but dead weight now that the danger’s pass. He feels a hundred years old and just…tired.

“Yeah, okay.”

Sam doesn’t say a word- Adam assumes he nods or something, because Dean disappears out the door in a flurry of movement, scooping up the discarded shotgun on his way.

Sam’s feet twitch in his hold as the man clears his throat and says, “It’s okay now. You’re safe.”

Safe….his body registers the word’s meaning before his brain as Adam succumbs to the soft, sweet darkness of sleep.

&&&

Every summer, Adam takes the American Heart Association’s First Aid Course, scribbling his name at the top of the sign-up sheet posted on his school bulletin board. His mom rolls her eyes as she signs the permission forms, cracking jokes about how one day he’s going to be teaching that course.

Adam shrugs. He’s not Billy McKay, who’s father been signing him up for the last six years with fervent hope he’ll actually pass one year. Adam returns year after year because he wants to.

He likes the chapter on CPR the best. “Cardiopulmonary resuscitation,” the instructor says as he writes the words out on the whiteboard in red marker, “is used on a victim of cardiac, and in some cases, respiratory arrest.”

He looks at each face intently and Adam wants to roll his eyes. The instructors do this every year, staring down each trainee hoping to somehow drill this knowledge into their skulls by sheer willpower alone. “CPR is what will keep you alive until the professionals arrive. It is unlikely that using CPR on a cardiac arrest victim will restart their heart but as long as you keep blood and oxygen flowing to the heart and brain, the chance of survival increases.”

Adam’s already going over the steps in his head, watching as the instructor plays around with the torso of a test-dummy- a white plastic bag surrounding the ’heart’ in the middle of it’s chest to represent the lungs- explaining where to place your hands, how to lock your elbows and the damage using CPR on a healthy person can cause.

Adam counts the breaths and the compression over and over in his head.

“You’re going to get tired, you’re going to get winded but you have to make sure you keep count. You’re literally holding someone else’s life in your hands.”

The course is over before the summer truly begins. It’s never long enough for Adam, who wants to know more, wants to save people, but it’s more than enough when Mrs. Thompson’s grandson falls into her pool.

The nearest hospital is a town away and Jeremy isn’t breathing. Adam goes through the steps: Airway, Breathing, Circulation, tilt his head back, pinch his nostrils, his hands steady and calm and he knows this better than he knows his own name.

“There’s a pulse,” He tells his frantic neighbor before he starts CPR. He just needs to get him breathing again.

By the time the ambulance shows up- sirens piercing the air like it’s tissue paper, lights flashing red and blue in the scorching heat of the day- Jeremy’s awake and breathing on his own. Wide, frightened eyes blinking at all the fuss as he shivers under the blanket his grandmother wrapped him in when the pool water spewed from his lips with a glorious gagging cough.

The paramedics take him in anyway, precautionary measures that Adam wants to tag along to study, learn. Instead he shakes his head and rises up from the damp, wooden deck. His knees are soaked with the warm, slightly slimy water Jeremy had thrown up on his lap what feels like ages ago.

Mrs. Thompson pulls him close, whispering a breathlessly grateful “Thank you,” in his ear before scurrying off to ride in the back of the ambulance with her grandson and this, this is what Adam wants to do for the rest of his life.

&&&

“We’ve started you on a cocktail of broad-range antibiotics to combat any infection in the wounds on your arms,” the doctor says, his head down as he reads over Adam’s chart. “That’s our main concern right now. If it gets into the blood steam-”

“Yeah.”

The walls are too white, too bright and clean for him to bear. Standing against the wall, the doctor looks like a disembodied pair of hands and a head. Adam blinks away the image, wondering at concussions and the after effects of blood loss as he fingers the IV needles in the crooks of his arms: one for saline and anti-biotic, one for blood.


The bag of blood is dark and striking against the pristine shine of the walls. Adam flexes his hand remembering how Type O can only receive from O, and asks, “Where’d you get a batch of O Neg from so quickly?”

The doctor blinks up from the chart, forced to act like a functioning human being. “We had to perform an emergency blood transfusion. A willing donor on the spot was a match. Labs confirmed it. You were brought in with your family?”

“I’m an only child. Both of my parents are dead.” Adam replies abruptly and it hurts to say it out loud. It somehow makes everything that’s happened more real. He doesn’t want any of it to be real.

The doctor huffs in surprise. “Huh, the nursing staff assumed you had been brought in with your brothers. I’ll have the chart updated immediately.”

Brothers? Adam’s mind races, remembering how Dean wrapped his arms up and rescued him from the dark crypt and how Sam injured and bleeding out tried to comfort him.

“The police would like to speak with you,” the doctor says absently, messily signing his name on the bottom of the chart, “are you up to it?”

Adam shakes his head, “No. Tell them to come back later. I’m tired.”

The doctor nods and flips the chart closed, sliding it back into the slot on the wall. He leaves Adam alone with his thoughts, fingers tracing the lifeline of someone else’s blood.


&&&

Dean rubs the small bruise at the crook of his elbow with a frown. Damn nurses are like vampires, he thinks darkly, scanning the room numbers for 307.

He finds it, tucked in at the end of the corridor. He pauses at Adam’s sleeping body just two doors up, stealing himself against the urge to check up on the kid- to question the doctors until he knows everything those evil son of a bitches did to the kid.

Instead, he walks on by, his boots soundless against the tile floor.

Sam’s awake, stuffed into a pair of dull, blue scrubs, his feet hanging over the end of the bed like some kind of overgrown toddler.

His wrists are bandaged white, the strips of gauze bright and clean. The bandage over the bite mark on his left bicep is already spotted with blood. Sam’s tracing the red stains, licking his lips in distraction when Dean darts into his room, closing the door behind him.

“I burnt the bodies. Threw salt all over that crypt and the things went up like kindling. I spoke to the doc, he said you should be outta here by tomorrow morning.”

“Yeah,” Sam says his throat dry from dehydration. His fingers pick at the IV needle in the crook of his elbow. “Just blood loss. They want to make sure I don’t have any complications.”

“Well, you’re a complicated bitch.” Dean replies, winding up for the great reveal. He has a feeling Sam isn’t going to like what he has to say. “Bobby called. He says once your ready there’s a case over in Maine.”

Sam literally double takes, his exhaustion ringed eyes wide with surprise. “A case? Now?”

Dean shrugs, forced casual. “Why not? It’s not like evil stops for some family drama-“

“You- we’re just going to leave him here? No explanations, no names, nothing? Dean,no.”

“Sam,” Dean can hear the irritation in his voice, “What else can we do? He’s not a pet. We can’t stick him in the backseat and water him once a week and hope he lives. He’s got a life-”

“He’s got a name- Adam.” Sam’s looking at him like Dean just stole his prom date and killed his cactus all in one shot. Dean hates that look.

“Maybe you need to get your head back in the game. We’re not going to stop and play house now. Or can the apocalypse wait?”

“Maybe you need to stop punishing Adam for existing.” Sam says with that moody set of his jaw. He can tell Sam thinks Dean’s a dick again, by the way his shoulders are bunched up and tight. It reminds him of the smell of lemon laundry detergent and the horribly revealing way their life was splayed out across pages and pages of Times New Roman, Size Twelve font.

“I’m not punishing Adam for anything, Sam,” he bites out, swallowing down the sharp-edged words he wants to fling at his brother, one of his brothers. Goddamn it. “Don’t you try to tell me this doesn’t piss you off. Adam’s got the perfect life you’ve always dreamed of. Dad took him to ball games and let him drive my car-“

Sam scoffs, rolling his eyes in that familiar pissy expression but the hard, steely color of his eyes reminds Dean of John more than the kid sleeping just two doors down. “Dean, what happened to us, happened. We were set up for this kind of life before we were even born. Adam wasn’t. Dad, as much as me and the guy disagreed, I can understand where he was coming from, keep Adam away from this kind of life.”

“Because you’ve both had the normal, apple-pie dream right? Sorry for being the black sheep of the family.” Dean mutters bitterly. He never could understand what about normal seemed to be a siren’s song in his family. Their mother had wanted it, their dad had wanted it, and even Sammy had run off to find his perfect slice of life.

Adam’s normal little existence? - chaffed.

Sam’s shoulders drop slightly and fuck, when did his brother get so big? He fills out the narrow hospital bed easily, almost comically overflowing.

“Do we really need to have this conversation? Dad having another kid besides us doesn’t mean he loved mom any less. Hell, you had to get those Viking genes from someone. I’m surprised we haven’t had more than one baby scare in all the years you’ve been schmoozing bars and girls.”

“Oh shut up. You said it yourself, Sam- Adam’s not a hunter. Why are we still here?”

The permanent frown on his brother’s face fades away into a surprised ‘o’ as he stares back at Dean. It’s a shadow of the Sam he used to know, peeking out from behind whatever armor his brother picked up while Dean was in Hell.

“We’re here because his mother was kidnapped and eaten by ghouls. We’re staying because those ghouls tried to eat Adam. Our brother. I’m not saying Dad was completely right to try and hide this from them, but Adam knows now,he knows about our life. You want to just leave him here without any kind of way to defend himself?”

Dean doesn’t answer and Sam’s face blanks, like someone pulled the shutters and blocked out the light. He’s always so angry these days.

“He’s our blood, Dean. Our family. What ever happened to, ‘family’s all we have, Sam’?”

Dean doesn’t have an answer.

Sam sighs and makes to get out of the hospital bed, his skin too pale. Dean catches him on the way down, grunting with the effort of pushing his brother back into the bed.

“Hey! Where in the hell do you think you’re going? When I said let’s leave I didn’t mean tonight.”

“How’s Adam?” Sam asks, like Dean never said a freaking word. “Have you even checked up on his condition yet?” He hates the way understanding softens Sam’s face, like Dean’s someone to feel sorry for, someone to pity. “You don’t want to get attached to him. You want to leave without telling Adam he’s family.”

Dean explodes. “He doesn’t need us in his life, fucking everything up, Sam. He’s got med-school and a girlfriend-“

“And his mother was just murdered and eaten by ghouls, who also kidnapped him and kept him locked in a crypt for four days.” Sam really needs to stop repeating that. “He’s going to have questions, he’s going to want answers.” Sam interrupts sternly. “Hell, you drove us to the hospital in the car he learned to drive in. We can’t just bust into his life like this, rescue him from the monsters and drive off into the sunset like we do with every other person we meet on a case.”

“Why not?” Dean wants to know, needs to know why Sam sees Adam differently, accepts him so easily.

Sam’s lips quirk in the ghost of a smile. “Because he’s our brother.”

&&&

John Winchester makes it to Minnesota in less than a day.

The unfamiliar rumble of a car pulls Adam from his fitful sleep like a little kid waiting to hear the thump-thump of hooves on the roof on Christmas Eve. He sits up with baited breath and listens as his mom pads across the creaky kitchen floor to pull open the door.

“Where is he?”

“Sleeping, you moron. It’s almost four in the morning.”

Adam shuffles as quietly as he can to the top of the stairs and peeks out between the rails, watching the dark shadows dance on the floor from the light of the kitchen. There’s another quiet clump-clump, like someone’s wearing very heavy boots or a cane.

“Goddamnit Kate, why would you keep something like this from me?”

Adam wants to fly down the stairs but something curious holds him back. Fear maybe? Or, maybe he knows this is the only way either of them will get an explanation.

“I- John, you can’t be serious! I barely knew you. I still don’t know you. Was I really supposed to just call you up and dump this on you?”

“Yes.” John’s response is immediate and final and Adam gets the feeling he’s pissed and trying to hide it.

“You listen to me, John. Adam’s my son. I raised him alone for the last twelve years and I never once asked for a dime from you. Don’t you dare try to take him away from me!”

There’s a heavy, shocked silence following Kate’s tirade. She’s breathing hard, with fear Adam knows, because she’s always tucked him into bed and kissed his forehead, whispering the words, “I love you. You’re the most important thing in my life.”

Adam’s never knew how true that is until now.

“Kate….” John begins and he sounds so sad. “I’d never do that to you. I’m not- how- what in the hell would I do with the kid?”

“If you don’t know then maybe you should leave.” Kate says coldly and Adam’s heart nearly stops. He doesn’t want John to go, not without even seeing him.

John’s angry, “Katie…” is cut off as Adam flies down the stairs, his feet bumping so quickly against the hardwood floor it sounds like a jackhammer.

He nearly slides into the entrance of the kitchen, forgetting he’d accidentally worn his socks to bed.

Both adults turn to look at him in surprise.

The expression on the frighteningly big man’s face isn’t nice. The beard doesn’t help. Adam draws up short, unsure for the first time, if calling John Winchester had been the best idea. Everyone’s so angry over this.

The man’s expression drops like a brick and softens. He looks over Adam like maybe he’s found the key to some super secret important door before his big hands reach out across the kitchen. “Adam?”

He doesn’t remember running across the floor, just the hard, warm impact of his father’s body. John is big and tall and strong and despite everything his mom said up in his room, exactly what Adam wanted him to be.

&&&

Adam checks himself out, nearly a week after being rescued. He tells the police that he can’t remember who hit him, just waking up in that crypt with bloody arms. He doesn’t mention knowing Sam and Dean and the doctor backs him up, pointing out that the mind’s automatic protection instincts would have blocked out most of Adam’s memories of that time. Trauma being traumatic and all.

Adam wishes he were right.

His house isn’t covered in bright yellow and black police tape like he’s feared. It’s almost disappointing how everything, his mom and the crypt and Sam and Dean, can be swept away like dust and dirt.

The house is too silent, even though Adam’s had been used to being alone, waiting for his mom’s shift to end. It’s a creepy kind of quiet, like in all those lame scary movies, right before the monster jumps out to either scare the hell out of the audience or gruesomely kill a character.

Awesome, he thinks darkly, now I’m getting paranoid.

Adam puts down the bag of antibiotics on the kitchen counter and opens the door to the coat closet. The baseball bat his mother couldn’t seem to throw out, after his manic Red Sox Fan stage ended, is cool and worn under his hands.

Upstairs, the floor creeks just above his head. Adam pulls a face, his heart racing and goddamnit can’t he at least recover before something else tries to kill him?

His hands are sweaty and disgusting when the door slams open behind him and Adam doesn’t stop to think, just swings.

“I’ve got- HOLY SHIT!” Dean nearly falls down the porch stairs as he jumps away from the swing of the bat. Adam hit’s the tray of Starbucks coffee and what looks like donuts from the bakery up the street instead.

The coffee cups explode like miniature hand grenades while the donuts bounce off the kitchen cabinets, the doorjamb and Dean’s face.

Adam drops the bat in surprise, throwing his hands up in the air like a criminal surrendering, the whites of his bandaged wrists bright and clean.

Dean pulls himself upright, his hands clenched on the edges of the doorway. His eyes are wide and there’s a hint of disbelief lurking in the smile on his face.

“Jesus Christ, brat- you nearly took my head off!”

Adam feels his cheeks burn with embarrassment as he shrugs awkwardly. “Sorry?”

Footsteps on the stairs reveal Sam, his hair wet and slicked back from what Adam guesses was shower time. His hands slowly drop to his sides as Sam takes in the coffee splattered over everything and the shiny chocolate glaze on his brother’s cheek.

“So….no coffee then?”

Dean shoots him a look that could kill, patting the donut shrapnel off his shirt as he closes the door behind him. “No, Sam- no coffee.”

“What are you guys doing here?” Adam blurts out, unable to hold it back. He’d never thought he’d seen them again and- “Are you squatting in my house?”

“We were waiting for you to be released,” Sam says, his expression sincere. Dean doesn’t say a word, simply leans back against the door and crosses his arms. Disapproval is written clearly in his expression.

“Why?” Adam asks, before a frightening idea rears its ugly head, “Are there still more of those things out there? Are they going to come back?”

Sam looks at Dean, obviously looking for help but Dean simply cocks his head to the side and quirks a cynical eyebrow.

Sam sighs and frowns at him, scratching his damp hair in thought. “No not ghouls specifically….but there are other things out there. Even more dangerous and you need to know about them.”

“Other things?” Adam exclaims before his mind catches up with the rest of the conversation. “Wait- how do you both know about them?”

“We’re hunters,” Dean says from behind him, unable to keep completely out of the conversation. Adam’s grateful. His familiarity with Sam ends at saving him from becoming ghoul chow and accidentally passing out on his legs. “I told you about this before.”

At the crypt, Adam remembers, his heart pounding. And in the car. Dean had said that John was a hunter as well.

“How did you know my Dad?” It’s still hard to talk about John in the past tense, it feels wrong, like Adam’s missed a step between finding his father and losing him.

Sam looks away, his eyes flickering over at Dean in that amazing way that seems to be a form of communication all it’s own for them. Adam only wishes he could be that close to someone.

“I think you already know the answer,” Sam says softly, touching the matching bandages on his wrists. Adam simply stares.

“I’m Dean Winchester and this is my brother Sam,” Dean introduces them like Adam’s a stranger. “And John Winchester was our father.”

Part Three