Title: Shiny Happy People [2/4]
Author: morkhan
Warnings: Cursing, more snark, animal cruelty (but not really), brotherly torment.
Characters: Dean, Sam, Adam, OCs... and an old friend. ;)
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4588
Summary: Adam tells the origin story of His Devoted Fanclub, and Sam and Dean try to smuggle some human contraband.
Disclaimer: Characters, universe, and recognizable things belong to CW and EK. The ridiculous plot is, sadly, mine.
Author's Notes: It GROOOOWS. Well, not really. I just realized that the next part of this story involves a shift that makes it a good place to put a chapter marker, so we end this chapter on a cliffhanger. What will become of our intrepid heroes? What usually becomes of them? XP Reviews are welcomed and hoarded and loved. Precioussssssss.
They wind up staying in a small room on the second (third? Does the basement count?) floor. Stephanie is entirely too chipper to be human and beams at them ceaselessly the entire way there. By the time she has finished talking their ears off (without actually saying anything), they have reached their rooms and the sun has finished setting.
"I'll be right back with some amenities for you," she says. "Just give a shout if you need anything, m'kay?" Without waiting for an answer, she is gone, and Sam and Dean are left to try and process the galactic pile of whatthefuckery that just landed in their laps.
"You think it's some kind of leftover archangel mojo?" Dean asks.
Sam shrugs. "I can't think of anything else it could be. He wasn't exactly an immortal, insta-healing animal magnet before he went to Hell."
Dean chews on this for a few seconds. "So why don't you have any leftover Devil powers?"
Sam shrugs. "Who says I don't?"
Dean goes bug-eyed. "Sam! You mean to tell me—"
"Joking, Dean. I was joking," he says with a gentle grin. "No Devil powers. At least, none that I didn't already have."
"That's not funny, Sam," Dean replies. "Those powers are bad news. Think about what might've happened if you'd been stuck with Satan juice or whatever and had no control like Adam… you'd be followed everywhere by death and destruction, every living thing hating your guts…"
Sam gives him a frank stare. "You do realize you just summed up my entire life story in a sentence, don't you?"
Huh. Dean has something else to chew on now. His teeth are starting to hurt. "Man… life's not fair. You're a sweet, polite, harmless young man, and chaos goes wherever you go. Adam is a foul-mouthed, angry, miserable little bastard and he gets Disney Princess powers and fuckin' flowers blooming at his feet."
Sam grins at Dean. "Awwww, you think I'm sweet."
Dean rolls his eyes. "Shut up. Needy bitch…"
"Make me, you jerk… with a heart of purest gold." A pillow is launched at Sam's head for that comment. Dean still owes him the slug from earlier. Maybe it's time to collect… nah, maybe not.
"So, what do we do now?" Dean wonders aloud.
Sam shrugs. "Seems to me like everything happening here really is harmless. Unless he really wants to get rid of those powers, I don't see any reason why we can't leave well enough alone."
"No," Dean says. "He tried to say something to me before we got dragged up here. Something like…"
"Let me in!" Dean jumps like a fire ant bit him in the crotch, and is only slightly comforted to see that Sam is now also on his feet and looking around like a panicked meerkat expecting a lion attack. A knock on the window helps Dean realize he isn't just hearing things, and raising the blinds reveals Adam, clinging tightly to the windowsill. There is a fairly creepy-looking owl perched on his head and looking quite pleased to be there. Dean kind of stares at it for a second… owls a lot freakier up close. It's the eyes, man. Seriously, those-
"Open the fucking window!" Adam whisper-shouts, and oh, yeah, right. Dean releases the latch and pulls up the glass, pulling his baby brother inside and getting a jolt of healing juice as he does it, and hot damn, that feels awesome. He can see why Adam prefers to dress in layers now—if he didn't, he'd probably have people rubbing up against him all day long like a bunch of affection-starved cats.
"Ummm, we have a door, too, you know," Sam deadpans.
"I have to keep this quiet. Otherwise, I'll never get away." Adam scratches his head—and is apparently rather shocked to find that the owl is there. He swats at the bird. "Fuck off!" The owl simply hoots indignantly and flutters just out of his reach until he stops swinging… at which point it promptly reclaims its perch. Adam eventually just sighs. "Fine, stay up there. But if you shit on me, we're finding out the hard way how far around your head twists. Just sayin'." The owl hoots in acknowledgment, largely unperturbed.
"And why, exactly, are you trying to get away?" Dean asks. "Where did you even find these yahoos?"
"What is it with you and questions? Does it really matter?" Adam asks.
"Force of habit," Sam shrugs. "Generally speaking, you never know what kind of information is going to be useful on a hunt."
Adam shrugs. "Alright, sit down, kids. It's time for another story."
So, one day, Our Intrepid Hero is wandering the Earth, trying to figure out what in the flying fuck he is supposed to do with his life now that he has been legally dead for like two years and has magic powers or whatever. As he is wandering around, he notices a big, furry dog approaching him out of the corner of his eye. Then he notices the big, furry dog is actually a huge FUCKING BEAR. Now, he didn't yet know about the whole 'beloved by God's creatures' aspect of his newfound lease on life, so he did what most people would do when confronted with a FUCKING BEAR and assumed it was going to eat him, and that was totally not cool with him, because if he was going to keep dying and coming back to life like he was goddamn Super Mario, he at least wanted some variety in his deaths to keep things interesting. Now, since he was a Boy Scout, he had a little wilderness training and sort-of maybe kind-of knew what to do in a bear attack.
Stretching up to his full height, he squared his shoulders and announced: "Go away, bear! I am a human!"
It kept coming.
"Back, foul beast!"
It kept coming.
"I will beat you up!" he said, sounding about as threatening as Snuggles the Fabric Softener Bear.
It started coming faster.
Now, Adam's scoutmasters taught him that you are never supposed to run from a FUCKING BEAR, but Adam seriously doubted any of those assholes ever had a thousand pounds of claws, fur, teeth, and hunger bearing down on them like a hairy-ass freight train, so fuck them. He ran like a bitch, as fast as his bitch legs would carry him because dying is not one of those things that gets easier the more you do it. Naturally, the damn thing just follows him, and no cartoon can properly encapsulate the pants-shitting terror that comes with being chased by a FUCKING BEAR. The chase scene seriously lasts for like 15 minutes and Adam is pretty sure his heart is going to explode if he keeps going, and decides that he is okay with that since at least it'd be something new.
He gets deeper and deeper into the woods, and is just about to pass out (again!) when halle-fuckin'-lujah, he sees a nasty-looking old cabin he can hide in. Unfortunately, he doesn't see the backwoods hillbilly gun-nut inside cabin, so upon entrance, he is greeted with the business end of a shotgun.
"HEW THA HEYLL ER YEW?" shouts the creepy old redneck, who has a beard that's only slightly less scary than the other hairy thing trying to kill him.
"Don't shoot!" Adam shouts. "Please, you've gotta help me, there's a FUCKING BEAR—"
And right on cue, the aforementioned creature beasts through the backdoor and roars to announce its presence to the world.
"HOE-LEE SHEE-IT!" the redneck hollered.
Initially, Adam saw nothing wrong with putting the redneck between himself and the bear, because the redneck had a gun and Adam had nothing but soft, tasty flesh. After learning more about his condition, he later realized that this was basically the same thing as putting someone between a Mama Bear and her cub, and thus his actions only increased the level of fuck in the clusterfuck he was stuck in. Mama Bear charged the redneck, who unloaded a shotgun blast into her chest. Said shotgun blast had about as much effect a handful of sand, so the redneck quickly found his gun knocked aside and had no choice but to take up Adam's former position of running like a bitch. He felt kind of bad about it at first, but considering what happened next, he later decided that he was being followed by some kind of Karma Bear, sent to eat psycho assholes.
"Hello?" a voice cried from somewhere in the house. "Oh my Gosh. Is someone there? Please, help me!"
Adam followed his ears to the basement, where he found a beat-up girl tied to a chair. She looked completely shocked when she saw him. "…I can't believe it."
"Are you okay?" Adam asked. She had all kinds of bruises and nasty cuts on her, and was covered in dirt and blood. To be honest, it was a pretty dumb question.
"…I'm better than okay. I'm saved!" she cried, eying him with adoration. "Please, get me out of here. This guy is freaking psychotic! He's going to sacrifice me to the Devil or something!"
Taking a closer look around the basement revealed all sorts of creepy devil-looking crap. Candles, weird symbols, dead animals… as if tying some girl to a chair in your basement isn't bad enough, this guy had her down there with a bunch of rotting animal corpses. Adam sincerely hoped the creepy Devil-worshipping buttface was being eaten, slowly, as he struggled with the ropes to untie the girl. Eventually, he got 'em off, and made the fatal mistake of offering her his hand as she got up.
She got an instant dose of magic Cure, and nothing was ever the same again.
"OHMYGOSH," she said. "That was… like… magic! You're, like, my angel. You're the answer to my prayers!" She was totally biting her nails and practically bouncing up and down with glee. "Thankyou thankyou thankyou!"
"Ummm, you're welcome, I guess," Adam said, feeling a little uncomfortable at the way she was looking at him like she kind of wanted to crush him in a hug and then swallow him whole as a way of showing her gratitude.
"I must. Know the name. Of my savior," she said.
"I'm Adam," he replied. "Nice to… uhhh… meet you?"
"My name is Stephanie," said the girl. "And I am totally going to pay you back for saving me. You won't regret it, I promise!"
He totally does.
From that point on, she follows him around. Everywhere.
"You're like…" she says with such a strong Valley Girl accent that Adam is kind of shocked anyone can actually talk like that. "Like… like… awesome! You're like the Messiah! You just go around helping people, and that is so cool!"
Adam shrugs. "I really don't have anything better to do. Also, I really wish you'd stop following me."
"But you're amazing!" Stephanie cries. "And other people should totally see that!" Adam walks into a diner just to try and get away from her. It's kind of stupid, but he's hoping the Men's Restroom Sign will be a powerful enough ward to keep her out for a few minutes. Big mistake. "Hey, you!" she says to one of the diner's patrons as Adam walks past him.
"What?" says the patron, who looks like a trucker and smells like a bus.
"Behold the power of the Messiah!" she says. Then she picks up a knife and stabs it into his fucking hand. He is pinned to the table.
"GAAAAAAAH!" the man cries.
"JESUS CHRIST," Adam shouts so hard it practically blows the dumb girl backwards. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"
She flinches at his tone. "Sorry. I was just… you know… trying to… I got a little carried away, okay?" she says sheepishly.
Adam groans and yanks the knife out of the guy's hand. "Well, stop it!" he says, and touches the guy, healing him. "Wait. On second thought, do get carried away. Far, far away. Forever."
"…oh, my Lord," says the man, and now Adam wants to jam the knife in his own eye for being so stupid.
"See?" says Stephanie. "He totally fixed you up! His fingers are… just... like… magic!"
"It's a miracle!" one of the waitresses shouts. Adam goes to bash his head on a wall for a few years, while Stephanie proselytizes about the Wonder and Awesomeness of Adam…
"…and the rest is history," Adam says with a shrug.
Sam blinks at him. "Wow. You… definitely have the Winchester luck."
Adam gives him a withering stare. "I noticed."
Dean crosses his arms, slipping on his thinking cap. "So why don't you just run away?"
"They always track me down," Adam sighs, leaning against the wall. "I don't know how they do it."
"Maybe they follow the trail of beauty and goodness and fairy dust?" Dean grins.
Adam throws the owl at him, and Dean barely dodges it before it flutters back to the Chosen Perch. "Go to Hell," he grunts.
"Been there, done that, kid," Dean winks.
Sam looks pensive. "Maybe Dean's right," he says. "Adam, when you try to escape, how do you do it?"
Adam gives him the fish-eye. "Uhhh… I run?"
"You don't use a car?" Sam asks.
"I don't have a car. I had one, but then I died, remember?" Adam duhs.
"You could steal one," Dean suggests.
Adam looks appalled. "I'm not gonna steal a freakin' car!" he says, and Dean is forcibly reminded how very, very different their respective upbringings were.
"In all seriousness," Sam says, keeping everyone on task, "if you're travelling on foot all the time, you probably really are leaving some pretty obvious tracks. It wouldn't be hard to follow you, especially considering how… err… visible your condition makes you."
The owl hoots in agreement with Sam. Adam glares at it.
"Alright, so we just need to smuggle you out of here, give you a decent head-start to get away from the crazies," Dean says.
Adam looks a little surprised. "You'll do it?"
Dean shrugs. "Sure. What's family for?"
Adam tilts his head. "Getting you damned?"
"Besides that," Dean brushes him off.
Sam lays out a plan. "So, we just need to figure out how to smuggle you out of here without anyone noticing. Any ideas?"
Adam looks like he is about to say something, when suddenly, the ever-chipper voice of Stephanie bounces its way into the room from outside. "Knock knock!" she says. "Okay, I'm coming in! I hope everyone is decent! Not that there's anything wrong with… you know… what you guys do as consenting adults, but…"
Their baby brother responds to her voice by going wide-eyed, giving an "oh, shit!" and doing a truly spectacular superman dive through the open window, launching himself so suddenly that the owl doesn't have time to let go and winds up smacking onto the windowsill, knocking itself out.
Sam and Dean stare after him, slightly awed. "9.0," Dean says.
"7.5" Sam counters. Dean raises his eyebrows, and Sam shrugs. "Points off for owl cruelty."
Stephanie enters the room carrying his and Sam's duffle bags. "Here you go, boys!" she smiles.
"Uhhh, where did you get those?" Dean asks.
Stephanie just brushes them off. "Oh, Adam told us about your car. It is so cool!" she squeals. "We found it in the parking lot and got your things for you."
Sam gives an uneasy nod, his face twitching in that special way it does when he is trying so hard to be polite that it physically hurts. "Thank you, Stephanie, really, but we'd like to go to bed now."
"Cool," she smiles. "No problem. Would you like me to shut the window for…" she trails off, seeing the unconscious owl. "Oh, ew. I'm so sorry, I had no idea there was a dead bird in here." She moves towards it, wrapping her robe around her hand. "Let me get that…" she says, when suddenly, the owl springs to life and snaps at her. "Oh!" she cries, jumping backwards.
The owl hisses at the lot of them and indignantly flies out the window.
Stephanie looks a little freaked. "O…kay. I'll just close this," she says, moving towards the window.
"Uhhhh, no!" Dean says, pulling her back. "We like the, uhhh, night air. Yeah. Fresh, night air."
"Nothing like it," Sam agrees.
A quirk of her eyebrow is the response. "Whatever you say. Sleep tight," she says as she leaves. "Don't make too much noise!" she adds with a wink as she shuts the door, and Dean vomits in his mouth a little.
After she's gone, Sam sticks his head out the window, and it is only a minute before he pulls Adam back in. The kid looks a little worse for wear, his all-white outfit now mottled with green and brown, shredded in a few places. There are a couple of squirrels clinging to his shirt, looking quite comfy, but other than few smudges of mud, however, he's basically unharmed. "Whoa," Dean says. "What happened to you?"
Adam grunts. "Broke a few tree branches with my face on the way down."
Sam's eyes suddenly light up. "But you're okay, right?"
The kid rolls his neck around. "Yeah, I'm fine."
The grin on Sam's face is far too devilish for anyone's comfort. "So you're pretty much invincible. Nothing can actually kill you or even seriously hurt you, right?"
Adam's face has suspicion written all over it in flaming holy oil. "I guess not. Why?"
"Well, we need to smuggle you out of here. And we need to do it in a way that keeps you hidden, so no one knows what we're up to." Dean thinks he sees where this is going. He likes it.
"And?" Adam prods.
"Since you're not exactly fragile cargo… knowing that opens up a few options for us that we might not have with other people," Sam says with a grin, reaching down and pulling up his duffle bag. He plops it down on the bed. "Options like, say, the luggage compartment."
Adam gapes at them. "You're fuckin' crazy. There's no way I'll fit in that." Kid has a point. He's not a ginormotron like Sammy, but he's at least as tall as Dean, which puts him just over the six foot mark.
"You won't fit easily," Sam amends. "But you'll fit."
"Screw you. I'm nobody's carry-on," Adam crosses his arms.
Dean just shrugs. "Look, kid, we're not exactly running over with good ideas here. If you want to be subtle about this, Sam's idea is the best plan I've heard so far, unless you can think of something better."
Adam purses his lips. Glares at both of them. Opens his mouth, shuts it, opens it again. Grunts. "…fine," he says, surrendering to the inevitable.
"We're using your duffle," Dean says to Sam.
"Why me?" Sam asks.
Dean shrugs. "Your idea, your duffle."
"What are we gonna do with all my clothes?" he whines.
"Dude, come on. You can buy new clothes. I don't think there's gonna be any shortages of button-downs and v-necks any time soon," Dean deadpans.
Sam arms himself with the puppy pout. "But what if I like these shirts?"
"Okay, fine! You can put the ones you like in mine. Happy?" Dean groans.
Their baby brother just stares at them slack-jawed. "…could you guys be just a little more gay? I mean, it's just not quite awkward enough that you're my secret half-brothers. I think it'd be great if we could get a little more incest vibes going between you two."
Dean pushes down the urge to punch his invincible baby brother back out the window. "Get in the bag, before I fold you up myself."
Sam, on the other hand, just grins at Adam. "Would it help if I said you'll probably fit better if you're not wearing any clothes?"
He gets a squirrel to the face for that one.
Once again, there are times when it's really convenient having a giant around. Dean is pretty sure there is no way he could carry a bag full of Adam on his shoulders and look as nonchalant about the whole thing as Sam does. They bid the cultists a not-so-fond farewell as they head to the car, feeding them some bullshit about feeding some old lady's cats while she's in the hospital. Fortunately, they don't run into Stephanie on their way, so nobody has to be knocked out. Dean is only slightly disappointed.
Sam gets a little too close to a tree, and his duffle brother takes the brunt of the impact. Sam grimaces. "Sorry," he whispers.
"I hate you both. So much," Adam grunts from inside the bag. It was kind of a difficult fit, definitely not one a normal person could pull off without serious injury, and Dean figures that even if the kid can't be injured, it has to be uncomfortable as Hell in that bag. The smell alone would probably be enough to kill most mortals.
"Don't worry," Dean says. "You'll be out of there in no time. We're almost to the..."
Dean rounds a corner and finds a big pile of nothing where the Impala used to be. "…car."
The elder Winchester immediately goes into full combat mode, all sensors wired towards Impala location, all power routed towards destroying anything that comes between him and his baby. Alarms blare, nuclear missiles are primed, lasers are locked and loaded, all bets are set to the 'off' position. It is fucking JUDGMENT DAY for the stupid bastard who dared to touch his Black Beauty. "Where. Is. My car." His breath comes in pants, his voice is a low, deadly growl.
"Oh, shit," Sam says, the shock of the moment causing him to lose his grip on the situation. Said situation lands with a flop.
"Ow!" he shouts. "What the fuck, Sam?"
Dean is scanning the parking lot. There are no signs of the Impala anywhere. "WHERE. IS. MY. CAR." He roars, more beast than man.
"Adam, the car's gone," Sam explains, doing his part to look for it as well. The dark of night makes it kind of hard make things out distinctly, but Dean does not forget where he parks and Dean could find that car if he was blind. He knows her tire tracks, he could follow her scent, hear her engine and pick it out in rush hour traffic in fucking New York City.
"The Impala? Shit!" Adam says, sounding… actually pretty horrified. But not nearly as distressed as Dean, who desperately wants to kill something small and helpless to relieve his blinding anger so he can think straight.
"Dean!" Sam says suddenly. "That girl! She got our stuff out of the car. She got our stuff out of the car without the keys."
The near-feral rage building up inside Dean finds a target. "That bitch! I'm gonna kill—I can't believe—" He runs over to Sam's bag and slides to it on his knees. "Adam! You stupid little shit, what the fuck were you thinking?"
"What? What did I do?" Adam asks.
"That girl! Steffy, or whatever! You told her about the car!" Dean rages.
"…no, I didn't," Adam rebuts.
That stalls Dean's anger for a second. "She said you told her… about…"
"Dude, I was climbing up to your room as soon as she left. When would I have told her about the Impala?"
"Then… how did…"
Lightbulbs go off. Puzzle pieces align themselves into a picture. Regis asks him to lock in his final answer. "The owl…" The owl hissed at her. It flew away from her like… son of a bitch. "Adam," Dean says, sounding much less angry and much more tired. "When you rescued Stephanie from the devil-worshipper, how did you know he was a devil worshipper?"
"Umm… I don't know. He had devil stuff all over the place."
"What kind of devil stuff?" Dean says, a little more urgently. "Describe it to me."
"Fuck, I don't know, umm… weird symbols? Pentagrams? They were everywhere."
Dean sighs. "Did one of these pentagrams just happen to be on the floor underneath Stephanie when you untied her?"
"…yeah, actually, I think so. How did you know?"
Dean gently lowers himself to the ground and begins beating his forehead against the dirt.
This leaves Sam to take over exposition duties. "Adam," he sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I don't think you saved a girl from a Satanist."
"…huh? Why not?"
"I think you saved a demon from a hunter," he finishes.
"Well, look at you! A regular Wikipedia Brown, solving the mystery at last," an agonizingly familiar voice calls out from the darkness. Stephanie steps into the dim light of the parking lot, still in her bright pink robe. "Howdy, boys. Long-time, no kill," she says, and suddenly, she is Stephanie no longer, and dear Godis Dean tired of this Hellwhore.
"Meg," he grunts, getting back to his feet and preparing to fight, only to realize that they are already surrounded by at least four other possessed cultists.
"Meg?" Adam asks. "Who's Meg?" He is ignored.
"I was seriously beginning to wonder if you boys were ever gonna show up!" she smiles, all shark-teeth and hate. "I mean, I figured you two would mosey along to fetch your precious widdle bastard eventually, but damn did you take your time about it. I thought I was gonna have to take out a friggin' classified ad! Or start putting up flyers! All this healing bullshit… it's just not me, y'know?"
"Well, excuse me if I'm not too broken up about your wait, you immortal bitch," Dean says with a snide smile.
"What do you want, Meg?" Sam growls.
"The same thing I want every day, Sammy!" Meg says with faux innocence. "Your intestines in a frying pan. Preferably while you can still feel 'em sizzle. And it looks like today's my lucky day!"
This is bad. They've got enough Holy Water to keep five demons at bay for about thirty seconds, and other than that, it's good old fisticuffs with a bunch of super-strength, unkillable meatsuits. The goddamn Magic Knife was in the trunk, along with, oh, almost all of their other weapons. They… wow, they might actually be kind of screwed here. Their only real Ace-in-the-hole is Adam, who is…
…currently trapped in duffle bag being casually swung from side-to-side by Meg. "Thanks for packing this for me," she says. "It'll make shipping so much easier. I was thinking somewhere in the Middle East… a nice, blonde-haired, blue-eyed boy like him is sure to be a real hit with the locals over there."
"Put me down, you psycho bitch!" Adam shouts.
"Let him go!" Sam adds. "You can't even hurt him."
Meg responds by drop kicking the bag into a tree.
"OW," Adam shouts.
"I can't kill him, you mean," Meg amends. "I can definitely hurt him. And I will. Right after I'm done with you." She nods to one of her henchmen. "Stuff him in a closet somewhere. This might take a while..."
The poor possessed bastard nods to her. The last thing Dean sees is the demonic son of a bitch hefting the bag of Adam over his shoulder and carrying him off into the night.
Then, he feels an impact on the back of his head, and suddenly, he don't see so good no more…
To Be Continued…
A/N: So, who guessed the twist ahead of time? I tried to include little clues during Adam's story without being overly obvious. This writing stuff can be harder than it looks. Oh, and if you're wondering why the Hunter shooting the bear didn't work… it's because his shotgun was loaded with rock salt. XP I couldn't find a way to include that in the story because it wasn't really relevant, but I figured you might want to know. ;)