25th August, 2012
"But muuuuuum!" Adam whined as they pulled up outside the house. "I don't want to go!"
"I know you don't," Sam replied patiently as Dean turned off the ignition. "But everybody in your class is expected to go, and we've got no good reason not too."
"I hope there's free food."
"Dean. This is an opportunity for us to get to know our kid's teachers and other parents in his class, not for you to eat."
"It's a barbecue, dude. It's basically the same thing," Dean shot back dismissively, and climbed out of the car. Sam rolled his eyes good-naturedly and copied him, opening Adam's door to help the youngster out of his seat.
"You'll make new friends, Adam," he insisted. "Then you won't be all alone when you start school, will you?"
"But what if I don't like anybody…"
"Come on, you'll be fine," Sam replied jovially and took Adam's hand in his own as they ascended the steps onto the porch of the large house. Laughter and chattering could be heard weaving its way from the back, and there were already plenty of cars littering the street. "Just introduce yourself to some people."
"Hello!"
Dean looked up sharply as a slender woman with dark blonde hair opened the door in front of them. Her eyes immediately shot to Adam, who was trying to hide behind Sam's long legs.
"Hi there," Dean replied warmly, holding out his hand. She shook it firmly.
"Hello there, my name is Hilary Norton. And who do we have here?" she asked kindly, and Sam used his grip on Adam's small hand to pull him forwards.
"This is Adam Winchester," he informed her, and used his knee to push his son forward. "Adam, say hello to Mrs Norton. Her husband will be your teacher next week."
"Hello," Adam muttered, staring at the ground, and Dean chuckled.
"In two weeks, you'll wish you'd never met him. He can be a little devil when he wants to be," he said loudly, and Adam looked up at him. His eyes glinted. "He's just being a wuss."
"I'm not a wuss!" Adam snapped, and Dean felt an invisible grip on his wrist as Adam's temper rose. He winced, and Sam picked up on the almost imperceptible reaction.
"Adam, behave," he said warningly, and his son looked up at him sullenly. The grip on Dean's wrist vanished.
"We'll just go through to the back, where everybody else is," Hilary said warmly as she showed them into the house. Perfect family photos of her along with her husband and two children furnished the walls in the hallway as they made their way to the conservatory. Dean snaffled a cocktail sausage from a plate as they passed through the kitchen.
"Now, go and make some friends," Sam pressed as they stepped onto the patio. Other children were running around and laughing whilst their parents stood to one side, chatting away to each other.
"I don't want to…"
"Now, kid," Dean said shortly. "Or I'll break your bedroom's salt line."
"Excuse me?"
Dean shrugged at Hilary's confused face as Adam trudged off in the direction of the other children.
"Just something we say. Empty threat, I'd never go through with it of course," he said as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. Sam closed his eyes.
"Dean, go and get some food."
Dean's face lit up.
"I can't believe you just said that to me. I think that's a new one for you."
"Just go, OK?"
"I'm going…"
Sam shook his head fondly as Dean made a beeline for the buffet table, and quickly cast his eyes over the children. Adam was talking to a blonde girl, and his spirits lifted. Hilary watched Dean's back as he went, and looked up at Sam.
"I take it you're Adam's father?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I am. I'm Sam."
"What about his mother?"
"I'm afraid she died in childbirth," Sam said, trying for a glimpse of sorrow in his voice as he came out with the now well-rehearsed lie.
"Oh, how terrible for him."
"It's OK. He's pretty well-adjusted."
"What was his mother's name?"
At this, Sam drew a blank. In the last four years, he'd not once been asked that. He looked around the garden for Dean's assistance and saw him heading back, plate filled with food and chewing on a burger. He realised that he was being watched and grinned.
"Uh… Mary. Her name was Mary."
"And your partner's name…?"
Dean choked on the burger and Sam shot him a glance.
"No, Dean's my brother. We raised him together after his mom died."
"Well, I'm sure he'll fit in fine with the other children," she replied decisively. She paused as her a man stepped over to them and peered over her shoulder. "Hey sweetie," she said affectionately, and gestured to the brothers. "This is Sam and Dean Winchester, Adam's dad and uncle."
"Great to meet you," Norton said with no great enthusiasm but looking very uncomfortable. "And I'd love to talk to you both later, but right now, could you please sort out your son? He's talked the other children into storming the buffet table, it's kind of awkward."
Dean leaned to one side to see around them. The children were attacking all the parents and worming their way between them, descending upon the table en masse. Adam was stood imposingly on a rock, shouting out orders. Dean grinned.
"Boy after my own heart."
"Dean!" Sam bit out. "This is what we're trying to avoid, remember?" he hissed as they jogged over to the table. "One minute four-year-olds, next minute demons?"
"Dude, calm down. We've got seven years to sort him out."
"These things start early," Sam growled back and reaching out, swept Adam up into his arms and off the rock.
"OK guys, stop with the attacking," Dean called over the heads of the children, and they completely ignored him, quite intent upon eating as much of the food as possible. Sam sighed.
"Adam, call them off," he said shortly, and after a moment's stubbornness, Adam stuck his head over Sam's shoulder.
"Stop now!" he yelled, and the children did, immediately returning to the games that they'd been playing. Dean's face twisted wryly as they walked back to the Nortons, and Sam shifted Adam onto his hip. He was getting heavy – he wouldn't be able to do this for much longer.
"Well," Hilary said flatly as they approached. "He certainly has some leadership qualities."
Sam scowled at her.
25th December, 2016
"Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday, Adam," Sam said warmly as he handed his son a long, neatly-wrapped gift. Dean smiled as Adam took it, face full of excitement and joy. "It's from both of us."
"What is it?" Adam asked merrily, shaking the heavy package carefully and feeling along it.
"Something that we think you're old enough for," Dean hinted, and scowled as one of the trimmings fell from the ceiling and onto his head.
"What do I need that's this shape?" Adam asked Sam as Dean stood on a chair to fix the trimmings. The tree glittered behind them.
"Open it and look."
Dean sneaked on of his son's chocolates (from a girl in his class – Sam thought it was cute. Dean said it was stupid) as Adam ripped at the wrapping, quickly disposing of it all and revealing a gleaming, double-barrelled shotgun that was nearly as long as Adam was tall.
"Reckoned you're old enough to have your own," Dean said gruffly, leaning back in his chair and setting his feet on the coffee table. Sam resisted the urge to darn the holes in his socks. "I'll help you saw off the end."
"This is awesome," Adam replied reverently, laying the gun down across his lap and running his hand up the barrel. "It's great."
"Yeah, well… couldn't have you using ours all our lives, could we?"
"It's great. Seriously, Mom," Adam enthused, leaping up off the floor to envelop Sam in a massive hug. "It's the best present ever."
"Your shotgun's digging into my ribs."
4th February, 2018
"I said no, Adam!" Sam shouted as a tennis ball hurtled through the kitchenette and hit the cupboard door with a resounding thud, narrowly missing his head. His son followed it through, blue eyes sparking mischievously.
"I won't break anything, I promise!" he said flippantly, stretching out a hand. The tennis ball leapt up into it. Sam growled under his breath.
"You nearly just broke my nose. I've told you, no telekinesis inside."
"Yeah, but you also say no telekinesis in public. So tell me when the hell I am allowed to use it, Mom," Adam shot back moodily, opening the fridge door.
"You're allowed to do it when we're outside and alone," Sam replied in a bored tone. "We've had this conversation a hundred times over."
"You're such a hypocrite!" Adam burst out, pouring himself a glass of orange juice. "I saw you using electrokinesis the other day, when you and Dad were investigating that warehouse."
"That's different – we were on a hunt, and we needed lights!"
"Is there a problem here?" Dean asked as he peered around the doorframe, beer in one hand. "Only I can't hear the TV over you two squabbling like a pair of pigeons."
"Adam was using his telekinesis inside again," Sam said with a sigh, and Dean's glance flicked between the two of them.
"Yeah? And? What do you want me to do about it?"
Sam's jaw dropped.
"I want you to help discipline him!" he said, shocked, and Dean just shrugged.
"He's your son."
"Oh, so he's mine when he's misbehaving? God, Dean, we kind of agreed to share the responsibility when we took this on."
"Look out!"
Sam whipped around, more at the fear in his son's voice than anything else, and saw the glint of a wayward knife as it hurtled towards Dean in the doorway. He didn't think twice. Didn't consider his moral standing where this type of thing was concerned. Didn't really take in the blank look on Dean's face that soon became terror and realisation that he could never move in time. He just blinked, and the knife dropped to the ground. There was a moment of silence.
"Eyes, Sammy."
Sam blinked again and the black drained from his irises. He turned to Adam, slow and furious.
"That is why you don't use your powers inside," he said coldly, and Adam flinched, eyes downcast. "You could have killed your Dad. Pull a stunt like that again and I swear down I'll Trap you."
"It was an accident," Adam muttered, kicking the counter. "I was aiming for the ball."
Sam glanced at where the ball was resting beside the knife rack.
"That was your last warning. Go and pack your things. We're leaving in the morning."
Sam and Dean watched their son's retreating back as he made his way down to his room. Dean sighed heavily and walked back to the sofa, sprawling himself out on it. Sam followed and settled himself with his back to Dean's chest. They half-lay in silence for a short while, breathing in sync, not really watching the show that ran in saturated colours in front of them, wooden lines falling dead like the creatures that their son had been born to command. Sam closed his eyes, and felt Dean's fingers twine through his.
"Kids, huh."
25th December, 2019
"Fifteen minutes," Dean muttered, checking his watch, and Sam sighed heavily, running his hands through his hair.
"And what? I just go?"
"I don't know how this is going to work any better than you do, Adam," Sam replied tiredly as Dean dug into the windowsill just across the room. "I just know that they're coming for you."
"Well, what if I don't want to go?"
Dean looked up from where he had broken through to the ridge within the sill that was filled with salt and they'd subsequently re-surfaced.
"I don't reckon you got a choice, dude," he admitted, and blew the salt out of the ridge. "I mean… this is kind of your destiny."
"Well what about Mom?" he asked bluntly, and Sam's eyebrows shot up questioningly. "Wasn't his destiny to lead the army of demons?"
"That was different," Sam shot back, his head falling back on the sofa. "I wasn't born to do that, I had a choice."
"I'd say you were born for it," Adam retorted, standing up from his chair to sit next to Sam on the couch. The man straightened up and looked his son in the eye. "If you can just say no, why can't I?"
"Because you're the Antichrist, Adam," Dean pressed, settling on the arm of the couch. "There was more than one like Sammy, but you're the only one. Besides," he pulled a face, "Why don't you want to do it?"
Adam scowled and folded his arms petulantly.
"My parents are hunters. I've seen what these things do to people. I don't want to lead them as an army, it's not right."
Dean blinked, and looked at Sam, startled.
"Well Sammy, we managed to raise the anti-Antichrist," he said wryly, and Sam dipped his head, smiling.
"Even so, Adam… I don't think you can get out of this," he said quietly, and Adam's face fell.
"But I don't want to go to Hell!" he wailed, and Sam held out his arm. The young boy crawled across the sofa and under the proffered arm, burying his face into his chest, Sam's arm warm and loving and protective wrapped around him.
"They'll chase you down if you don't go with them," he murmured into Adam's hair, and Dean joined them on the couch. "There's no way you could escape them."
"You and Dad used to travel around though, didn't you?" Adam asked tearfully, voice muffled. "Before I was born, you never stayed in one place, did you?"
"But we haven't been moving around since you were born," Dean pointed out.
"What's to stop us starting again?"
The ground beneath them started to tremble, and Sam's eyes met Dean's over the trembling body of their son.
By the time the demons arrived two minutes later, the flat was empty.
The Impala screeched down the highway.