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It wasn’t easy, being a god hiding in medical school. It got even harder when the ghouls showed up. Obviously, Kate Milligan knew that her “son” wasn’t human and therefore there were things other than humans in this world that looked and acted like humans, but still. No one wanted to explain the existence of ghouls, ghosts, demons, and other nasty things to the kind woman who had taken in an orphaned child on the word of some random drifter that he probably wouldn’t go bad if he was raised by a good enough person. She’d believed him, raised Adam well, and now he was repaying that by destroying her faith in goodness.
Then he did something he’d sworn he was never going to do. He called the hunter who had given him to Kate. He was unimpressed when the hunter didn’t answer. “Look, I don’t care who you are, I need to talk to John Winchester. He’s my father, and my mom and I are in danger because of him.”
“You are not John Winchester’s son,” the guy on the other end of the phone snapped. “I know this for a fact, because my brother and me, we are John Winchester’s sons. His only sons.”
“It’s complicated, but it’s true. If you’ll just let me talk to him, you can go back to pretending I don’t exist, and John Winchester can too for all I care as long as he gets Mom some fucking protection from the things that want to kill her for raising his son, okay?”
“Look, I would love to put Dad on so he could rip your ass a new hole, but see, the thing is, he’s dead. So you get to tell me what your problem is, and I can explain to you how to set out traps for raccoons or call the cops on college assholes pranking you and your mom.”
“Or you can cut the crap and tell me what, besides the ghouls that I cut the heads off while they were trying to rip into my mother, might be after her and me and how to protect us against them. If I’m here, I can protect my mom just fine on my own, but unless I want to lock her in a safe room and never let her go anywhere, I can’t protect her from everything all the time. I got school. So give me some real goddamn answers, or better yet, let me talk to my dad!”
To Adam’s great surprise, his brothers showed up in Wisconsin a day later. To his even greater surprise, they hadn’t been lying. John Winchester was dead, taken out by a demon in exchange for his son’s life. In a moment of bitterness, Adam wondered if John would’ve done it for him. Dean hated him almost right away, even as he set about teaching both Adam and Kate to shoot and to lay wards on their house.
Sam was better. Sam showed Adam how to track information, to sort the actual bullshit from the stuff that just looked like bullshit because no one believed in the supernatural, and resources he could use in case something came up he wasn’t already familiar with. After a productive day of study, where Sam walked Adam through decrypting John Winchester’s journal, Sam cleared his throat. “Look, um, I get why you wouldn’t want to say much, but it would help us figure out how to help you if you told us what you are. I mean, you pass really well, but you’re not human. I’m happy to call you my brother no matter what, but…”
Adam sighed. “Yeah. I was just a baby when all this happened, and keep in mind I’m getting this from John ‘Cryptic’ Winchester filtered through my mom who didn’t believe in any of this until Dad saved her life and she patched him up, but, you know. John found me after he took out a pair of pagan gods who were preying on the folks around here. The one wasn’t dead yet, and she said I was their son. So apparently I’m a pagan god. John left Mom with a list of things to watch out for in case I started developing powers.”
“Why’d he leave you with her? No offense to Kate, but Dad had some friends in the hunting community who could’ve taken you and known what to look out for.”
Adam shrugged. “Mom said that John told her he wanted me to be raised by a truly good person, away from the darkness of the world he lived in. He checked in on me a couple times, and when I was about twelve, he started coming by more often. Dunno if he was worried about what would happen when I hit puberty or what, but he tried to be my father or something, like a normal dad would’ve been. I didn’t really want it, but I accepted it because Mom wanted me to.”
“Huh.” Sam turned to Dean. “Maybe we should call Castiel? I know this isn’t seal-related, but Adam’s our brother, maybe he could do something to help out?”
“I’ve tried. You wanna try, be my guest.”
“Nah, if he’s not coming for you, he wouldn’t come for me.” Sam sighed and went back to the journal.
The next day, Adam found Sam and Dean. “Hey, uh, I was reading Dad’s journal some last night, and… there were a couple pages in there about the two of you.”
Sam ran a hand through his hair and studiously avoided Dean’s glare. “Um. I… forgot those pages were in there. Yeah. So. Dad was right. If that’s a problem for you, we really don’t care.”
“If you start causing problems for us, you wouldn’t be the first god we’ve killed,” Dean added. “So keep whatever you’re leading up to to yourself.”
Adam blinked and shook his head. “I… wasn’t gonna cause problems? I’m a god. You guys are hunters, you know something about mythology I’m sure, how many gods think incest is wincest? I just wanted to let you two know I knew, so you don’t have to hide around me. I’m not planning on saying anything to Mom.”
“Oh. Well. In that case.” Dean’s glare at Sam shifted, and Sam nodded. “I know there’s a difference between ‘it’s cool for you guys’ and ‘I’d be interested in fucking my brother’, but if you’re interested, give us a call.”
“Wait, what?”
“We both like you, just don’t exactly go around advertising the whole sleeping-with-my-brother thing,” Sam said. “Makes it hard to hit on someone, you know?”
“Oh. Um… I wasn’t gonna say anything, because causing problems in a committed relationship isn’t my thing, but if you guys are offering…” Adam forced down the blush. “Yeah. I’m interested.”