A/N: My darlings, I ask you to sit down for this: This is a whole chapter about Adam where Lawrence is barely mentioned. GASP, I KNOW! I planned for it to end with Adam going to Lawrence and telling him everything that's happened, but then I figured what the hell, it's long enough, and this chapter is supposed to mainly be about Adam and his family. Don't worry, though, they'll be cuddly again in the next chapter. ;)

20: A Lonely Little Ghost

It's August. School has just started. Adam's motivation is sky-high, probably because they've only had one test this far. With Lawrence's help, he managed to get a C+, and for some reason, he made the mistake of thinking that there was someone at home that would actually be proud of him.

When he went home with his graded test, Adam's cheeks were red from that ridiculous, childish pride that he hadn't felt in a long time, and his mom actually was happy for him. He caught the smile that began to form on her lips before dad opened his mouth.

"Well, what do you expect? A parade in your honor?"

That was it.

Right then, when both mom's and his own smile dropped, Adam also asked himself what he'd expected. But that was only for a second, before the thought that had been ringing in his head for the entire summer vacation returned for the millionth time: One of these days, one of these fucking days…

It's not even the evil genie. It's his own constant feeling of mortification.

It's August. School has just started. Adam has saved almost every penny of his paycheck from his job - those words are still so big to him - ever since Lawrence sat down with him to make a budget. He's allowed to spend twenty bucks a month on cigarettes, which is about half as much as he usually does, ten bucks on other things, but all the rest goes to his savings, and that's important, because these are the money that are going to get Adam out of here.

This is almost as important to Lawrence as it is to Adam. Because the dark marks under Lawrence's eyes are getting darker, the nights he wakes up screaming are becoming more frequent, and he's not as sure as he used to be that he's going to get out of here.

Adam tells him again and again that if he has to work double to buy Lawrence his own apartment, he will. But Lawrence doesn't even want to hear about that. His priorities are other people first, himself second. As always.

And even if they hadn't been, they're both sure that if they're not both going to make it, one of them damn sure will.

This morning, Adam's reading the apartment ads, as usual. That's his new morning ritual, since he got his restricted budget. Usually, apartment ads can't replace the satisfaction of a morning cigarette, but this morning, he almost chokes on his coffee and snaps up in his chair, and it's hard to tell if it's from joy, fear, surprise or all three.

A studio apartment. Bronx, cooking corner, close to convenient store. And not too far from his work place, or from Lawrence.

Adam's hands are shaking when he tears out the ad, folds it gently and places it in his back pocket. He's going to show this to Lawrence when he gets to school, but that goes without saying. Mary walks in while he's finishing his toast. She probably notices that he's excited, but knows not to ask why.

That thought surprises Adam more than it should.

Mary knows when he's excited. She's known him for the majority of his life. She came here when she was sixteen and he was seven, of course she's learned to read him. Hell, she's been kinder to him than most of his family.

Adam watches her as she clears out the dishes that the rest of his family left on the table. She avoids his gaze. She probably thinks he's angry as usual.

"Mary," Adam says softly. "Was this the life you'd imagined when you were a kid?"

Mary looks up. Her green eyes are widened over the simple fact that he's not snapping at her, but when she notices that he's serious and not just playing with her, she smiles absentmindedly and takes the dishes to the counter.

"I didn't imagine much as a kid," she answers as she starts loading the dishwasher. "Mom had kicked me out, I needed work, your parents needed a maid. Not much to complain about, if you ask me."

Adam sighs and walks up to her with his coffee cup and his plate. He feels the apartment ad burning in his pocket.

"Do you want something better for me?" he asks and rinses his dishes in the sink.

Mary snorts and closes the dishwasher, straightens up.

"You've been a quippy little brat since you were twelve, so technically, no," she says and wipes off her hands on her apron.

Adam laughs, and Mary smiles with him. They're quiet for a bit. Adam realizes that he really likes her.

"I didn't imagine much as a kid," Mary repeats and lowers her gaze briefly, like she's not sure if she's allowed to say this. "I knew that you were a dreamer after knowing you for ten minutes. I really can't imagine it not being different for you than it was for me."

She smiles politely, trying to return to her maid role before she's forced to face Adam's father. Then she walks outside, and Adam feels more comforted than he has in years, before he feels the ad burning in his pocket again, and remembers that he's one step closer now. To that place that entices him and terrifies him at the same time.

xxxxxxxxxxxx

Adam's surprised how simple it is to get an apartment in his age. He thought that that first ad he found would just lead to him and Lawrence checking out the place, getting rejected, and they'd consider it a warm-up.

But then he got that phone call.

It was much like when he got the call to tell him that he'd gotten his first job, only even greater. He thanked his landlord - another big word - for calling, hung up the phone, realized that his hands were shaking uncontrollably, felt tears pressing up behind the eyes but pushed them down, fuck, let's not get that girly and fuck telling his family first, and fuck the fact that Lawrence didn't have a phone in his trailer, Adam gladly power walked all the way to his neighborhood and ran the last mile, because it was less clear that he was crying then, but he didn't care, he really didn't care, his complete lack of care exploded in his chest and rose to the heavens as a golden cloud, it was too beautiful to care, too beautiful for him to hold.

He had to stop running after a couple of minutes, though. His lungs didn't allow it. Damn cigarettes…

The landlord seemed to get that it was important that he got this apartment straight away. Adam gets to move in next month. Technically, he still doesn't have enough money in his account to get by on his own, but he's stolen some from his dad to get himself started.

Dad knows this. But seven hundred dollars seems like a low price to pay to get rid off the constant eyesore that for some reason lives in your house. That little triangle of dirt that's always on the windshield, no matter how hard the wipers rub against the glass.

His father hasn't said that. But that's how Adam's interpreting his silence. He's barely spoken to him since he got the news that Adam was leaving. While mom has hugged and kissed him more during the past week than she probably has during the past five years before that, dad has just stood in the background, his hands in his pocket, and his cold eyes locked firmly on Adam. Observing, thinking.

Adam hates that his eyes remind him so much of his own.

It's September. Adam's packing the last of his stuff into boxes. It's a bit painful to try to start a life as far from your old one as possible and still having to bring most of your stuff from the old life with you, but he'll be damned before he wastes money on a whole new decoration. Even though his current bed is going to take up almost half of the new apartment.

Adam straightens up and glances over the boxes in front of him. They aren't that many. Most of them contain his records, one of them his photos. His books only take up one box, too, since the new place doesn't have room for more books than the ones he really loves. His clothes, two boxes. The record player and the camera, wrapped in more bubble wrap than Adam thought existed in the world, one box. The bed separately. He'll take some of his stolen money to buy food and kitchen supplies tomorrow. He's borrowed a car from one of his friends on the scrap yard, Mary's promised to drive him.

Damn. He's organized.

Adam looks at the boxes in front of him that are containing his life. And outside the window that he will never look through again, it's starting to rain.

"Are you all packed?"

Adam startles and turns around. Dad's standing in the doorway, expression controlled as usual, but his lips a thin line.

Adam should be worried about the simple fact that his dad entered a room without making immediate notice. But he's so happy, he's so happy that he's starting anew that he's not even mad at his father anymore.

Later on, he will regret this. But he's too happy right now.

"Yeah," Adam says with a smile and gestures towards the boxes behind him with open arms. "The car's outside, I just have to carry everything down."

Dad nods. He looks too pale. But once again, Adam won't realize this until afterwards.

"You're really going to leave?" with a curt tone.

His voice is usually smooth as silk when he talks to Adam, if they're not fighting. Adam feels his smile dropping.

"That's the plan," he says and tries to sound like he's joking.

A short nod. Adam gets an icing feeling in his stomach.

Now. When it's already too late.

"You're not leaving."

He says it so matter-of-factly. Adam takes an unconscious step back.

"I'm going to leave, dad. The first rent's paid. I'm leaving."

"You're not leaving," dad repeats and takes a step towards him.

Adam backs again, not unconscious at all this time. He swallows and tries to smile, even though he feels a small piece of apocalypse settling in his heart.

"Why don't you want me to leave?" he says, almost laughing, even though his following statement is suddenly so clear that not even the evil genie can be happy about it. "You've hated me since I told you I was gay, you've wanted me gone for six years, and now I'm leaving! Why aren't you happy?"

His father's eyes look nothing like his now. They're black as a snake's, and Adam's…

Adam's eyes have the look of someone who just realized that he's almost as unloved as a person can be.

"I said you're not leaving!"

It explodes now, his need for control, and now, when it's too late, way too late, Adam realizes that dad would rather want him dead than somewhere where he can't be controlled. And he doesn't love him. He never will.

Adam ducks away from the first hit and runs towards the living room, trying to run even though his recent insight has slowed his heart, chilled it down so he can barely move his legs.

No one's loved him. No one's loved him for six years.

The next second, he feels his dad's body weight crash down on him as he's tackled on the living room carpet. A white-hot pain covers his vision before he feels his face pressed into the carpet, he inhales the dirt of a home that doesn't want him as the person who's supposed to be his father presses his head down.

"Get off!" Adam gurgles and tries to kick him away, but his father's knees are on his thighs and he can't move, the pain is piercing. He feels the wallet in dad's pocket pressing into the back of his jeans. Adam's going to remember this for the rest of his life.

Fingers in his hair. Head bending back.

No one's loved him. No one's loved him. Not in this house.

Then his father bangs his head into the floor, blood and dust in his nose and the whole world goes red, dad's roaring like an animal and Adam screams like an evil genie, because he is, because the evil genie has never lived in him, he's been it.

An evil genie. A lonely little ghost that wanders from door to door, knocks with no one opening, because no one, no one wants him.

Dad keeps banging his head frenetically into the floor, Adam feels his nose bending and creaking disturbingly and thinks that if he'd seen his father's eyes now, they'd be red as the devil's, red because they're related, since Adam's the devil, the freak, the evil genie.

"Dad! What are you doing?"

Adam doesn't look at them. He knows that Claire and mom are standing in the doorway, he knows that mom has been there for some time but Claire just got here. And he won't look at them, because if he saw mom now, he'd give her a pleading look, look like he needed her, and he won't ask her for help. Not even in his mind, not ever.

"Dad! You're killing him!"

Then the weight disappears from Adam's back, and there's a good chance that it was Claire that finally managed to push him off, but Adam doesn't stop to look, he stands up straight away despite the spinning head and the blackness over his heart that he doesn't think that anyone will ever get through to uncover the bleeding craving for love that lies beneath. And he walks out.

He slams the door open without a jacket, or shoes, with blood dripping in slimy strings from his nose, and he starts walking in the rain that's now an absolute flood. His already drenched socks splash into the puddles on the sidewalk, and Adam keeps walking, with a black heart and a complete lack of love behind him.

He's never felt how much it hurts before.

The guilt of the world. Mom and dad's little monster.

The evil genie may have loved it, but it's gone now. And suddenly, being an outcast doesn't seem nearly as cool anymore.

"Adam!"

Adam doesn't turn around.

"Adam, stop!"

Adam keeps walking.

"Adam, for God's sake, I just saved your life, the least you can do is listen to me!"

Adam stops abruptly and spins around on his heels. Claire's standing there, of course. Her hair is already in thick, wet strands, it looks like worms. Her mascara has run down her face, because she buys the cheapest brand possible, and her nipples are pointing out in the tight fabric of her t-shirt. This one has David Bowie on it.

All these imperfections. Why the fuck is she so beautiful?

"If I'm that much of a fucking problem, why didn't you just let him kill me?" Adam hisses and takes a step closer to her. "And if you really missed having me around for them to use as their measure stick to make yourself look better, since anyone would look fucking perfect next to me, you could've brought in someone else to be compared to. Like Ted Bundy, or that guy who stands by the bowling alley downtown and pinch the teenage girls' asses!"

Claire narrows her eyes and wraps her arms around herself. Above them, a bolt of lightening rips the sky in two.

"What are you talking about?" She looks towards the house they just left, and before Adam can answer, she goes on: "Yes, they love me more than you. Do you think I want that for you? I've worked my ass off to make you look better in front of them, in case you haven't noticed."

Adam laughs joylessly.

"That's bullshit," he hisses and points an accusing finger at her. "You've spent the past six years sitting by and seeing him beat me up, and you've done shit about it. Other than the occasional laugh at my jokes, what exactly is it that I'm supposed to be grateful for?"

The anger is there, as usual. With something much more melancholy burning along with it.

"Oh, please," Claire bites back. "Dad beat me up, too. And he didn't do it because he didn't love me, he did it because I kept trying to talk to him about the way he treated you. I told him that he didn't have to accept that you were gay, but just put up with you until you left, and he fucking beat me from room to room."

Her eyes are locked with Adam when she says this, and as hard as Adam tries to stay angry, he feels himself faltering. His entire image of dad, and of Claire, is suddenly shaken to the foundation, but he picks his furious expression back up pretty quickly.

"That's different," he snaps. "I didn't know that."

Claire's jaw is clenched, lips pursed.

"You knew," she says, more gravely than Adam thought her capable of.

Adam looks at her. Sees her for what she is, truly is, for the first time in a long time. She's a lonely, sad girl standing in the rain with her mascara in stripes over her face, and he wants to take her in his arms and actually let himself feel sorry for her, but he can't. Of course he can't.

The guilt of the world. Mom and dad's little monster.

"Well, fucking adorable," he spits out, and takes another step closer, lowering his voice. "The cute upper-class girl that could've had the world, but choose to stand up for her idiot gay brother instead. Standing fucking ovation, Claire. You've always been so good at that, you're such a fucking sweetheart that it's not even me who's a freak. Anyone would look like a bastard next to you! But do you really have to underline it like that? Everybody knows that I'm the bastard and you're perfect, you know that, and I know that, can't we just leave it at that?"

Claire just looks at him. Her eyes could be tearing up, or maybe it's the rain. She shakes her head slowly.

"No," she says. "That's what you know. That's what you think. Sure, right now I think you're a bastard, and a pretty stupid one, too, but other than that, I don't care if you're an asshole, or a punk rocker, or gay, or a fucking smurf. You're my brother. I love you."

Adam wants to break eye contact, but he can't. He wants to throw a sarcastic insult at her, but he can't.

Adam has never been able to accept other people's kindness. Whether it was about having them cleaning his dishes, or standing up for him when his father was abusing him. When it comes to kindness, he's an emotional strainer. Nothing stays in him, it all leaks out. All that stays is the bad stuff.

The stuff that convinces him that he's a monster.

But now, he finds himself standing in front of his little sister. She offers him unconditional love, and he can't get himself to not want it.

Claire sends a glance towards the house. They're only a couple of feet from the front door, but have still managed to enter a whole new world.

"Wait here," she says. "I'll go see if the coast is clear. If it is, we'll go get your stuff, and I'll drive you to your place. Okay?"

Adam nods, not quite sure what he's agreeing to. His head is pounding and his heart is cracked open.

About an hour later, him and Claire are sitting on his mattress, in his apartment. She stole the first aid-kit from the place that never was Adam's home, and Adam cringes when she cleans the cut in his bottom lip and puts tape over his bent nose. Nothing's broken, the cheek bone took the worst hit.

That place was never a home. And Claire was never a sister. There's a chance she never will be, but the simple fact that Adam lets her clean his wounds is a sure sign that they might at least have something.

"Why didn't he want me to leave?" Adam asks as Claire puts alcohol on another cotton ball.

Claire can't answer him. Maybe he'll never know.

He has things in his life now. He has Lawrence, possibly Claire. And he has something he can control for the first time in years.

But when Claire leaves that night, that black cover over his heart is cracked open again. That thing he hid for years by pretending that he actually wanted to be an outcast.

It's still. He thought he didn't need all that stuff that other people needed. Love, friendship. A home. But now he's all alone, and he feels it.

The sorrow for the family he never had.