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It’s ten minutes of tense but blissful silence as Adam drives them through the snowy, pitch black Norwood outskirts. He’s well into wondering why he even picked Neil up in the first place, but he’s not quite ready to break the silence himself yet. Let Neil sit and seethe if he wants to, let him see how it feels. Adam’s not one to complain about him shutting up for once.
As Adam rounds a turn with snow piled up on both sides of the road, Neil takes a deep breath like he’s bracing himself for battle and finally asks: "What's going on with you lately?"
"I've got a lot on my mind," Adam replies dryly, already deflecting.
"Anything you want to talk about?"
He shoots a look at Neil, who has his arms crossed and is staring at him expectantly from the passenger seat. "Not particularly."
"See, this is the problem.” Neil sits up straighter, preparing for war. “Why won't you talk to any of us anymore? You've clammed up over the past few months."
Adam pauses, giving a taut shrug as he drives them around another bend. "I don't have anything I want to say to you."
"Really? Then why did you agree to come pick me up so we could talk?"
"Because I knew it was a bad idea but I went and did it anyway," Adam says, being honest.
Neil laughs under his breath. "That sounds about right for you."
Adam glares at him as long as he can before turning his eyes back to the road. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Then it's Neil's turn to deflect. "I feel like we haven't had an open conversation since summer, maybe longer. You're just going through the motions of a new album cycle without really being present and pulling away from the rest of us. You barely even talk to Brad any more, man. We've known you long enough to know that something's up. Like, you're out here asking around about getting your own bus? What's that about?"
"What, I'm not allowed to want a little privacy on tour?"
"No, you are, but you've never wanted it before."
"People change, Neil. They don't want the same things forever." Saying it out loud gives Adam a little rush. It's so close to telling him the truth, that he wants out of the band, more than wants but is actively working to make it happen behind their backs, and he doesn't know if he likes the feeling or not. Some smug part of him does. The vindictive part does too.
"Are "people" changing," Neil uses air quotes, "or are you the only one? Because everyone else is the same and just as tight knit as before. You're the only one acting weird."
"Wanting different things than the rest of you is acting weird?" Adam raises his voice a little, resentment starting to bubble to the surface. He faces Neil so he can look him in the eye. "Is that why I got half the say in my own album this time around? Because wanting something different is weird?"
"Is that what this is about?" Neil raises his voice in return, though it's in disbelief. "You're still mad about using some outside writers and new music styles on Transit? The album's out, dude. We can't do anything about that now."
"That's the problem. It's not my music anymore, it's thirty different people's music. It doesn't feel the same."
"It was never just your music. It's our music." Neil shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “And put your eyes back on the road.”
Adam turns his attention back to driving with an annoyed huff. "Well this album turned out to be your music because you commandeered everything-"
"Do you hear yourself? I commandeered everything? Adam, I've been apart of this since the start, if I wanted to take over I would have a long fucking time ago. Wanting to try new things is not taking control."
"It is when no one else agrees with you!" Adam snaps.
Neil returns his tone. "You're the only person not agreeing with me! What happened to it being a collaborative thing? The album doesn't get put out unless we're all happy with it? You signed off on it."
"Did I or did I just keep my mouth shut to keep the peace?"
There’s a beat of silence. Adam looks back over as Neil stares at him in a mix of anger, shock, and revelation. "Are you serious? This whole time you've just been going with it instead of speaking up when shit bothered you? How old are you?"
"I did speak up, multiple times, and I was ignored. You just overruled me at every turn so I stopped fucking trying. And now here we are with an album you love because it's yours and I hate because it's everything I didn't want this band to become."
Neil shakes his head and looks out the windshield. "You're being so fucking ridiculous right now I can't believe it. Eyes on the road."
With an irritated noise in the back of his throat, Adam turns away and white knuckles the wheel. "See, you're dismissing me again."
"I'm not dismissing you, I'm telling you you should've said all this a whole lot fucking sooner."
Adam looks over to snarl at him. "I did and you didn't listen!"
Neil instinctively leans in. “What I heard was everyone agreeing to these ideas so I got us set up with the extra writers and equipment, but apparently you were fucking lying to our faces!”
“So you agree you were calling the shots then?”
“Is that all this is to you?” Neil’s volume shoots up. “A right versus wrong thing? You just have to be right about it? What about trying to fix things, trying to make things work again?” Adam can’t tell if Neil means the band as a business or as a personal relationship. It’s likely both, and either way it pisses him off that Neil won’t just admit he’s fucked up and driven this wedge between them by being headstrong. Funny how something he used to admire in Neil is what’s coming back to bite them in the ass now. Neil gestures at the windshield. "Watch the fucking road!"
Adam turns his attention back again but yells, "Do you want to drive?!"
"Maybe, yeah! If it keeps you from killing us both!"
There’s a brief lull where Adam genuinely considers pulling off the side of the road and letting Neil take over. If he wants control of everything that fucking bad then might as well let him have it and see how he crashes and burns. But Adam refuses to give in that easily, so instead he says, a little calmer, "You don't trust me to do anything."
"I have good reasons not to trust you." The way Neil says it makes it very clear what he’s referring to, and immediately gets right back under Adam’s skin.
"It's been six fucking years!"
"Has it, Adam? Has it?” Neil accuses. “You're hiding something, and we all can tell."
So they are on to him then. They just don’t know exactly what Adam’s up to. He knows Neil is bringing it up out of some genuine, deep concern for him, but Neil would never admit that. So Adam chooses to ignore it in order to be pissed at him without feeling guilty. "You don't even trust me to be honest about my sobriety, that's a new fucking low, even for you."
"The fuck is that supposed to mean? I've been nothing but supportive of you as you got back on track. Losing you is still one of my biggest fears, even when you're being an asshole like you have been for the past five months."
Adam scoffs. "I'm the one being an asshole? You're the one sitting in my truck telling me to my face that you think I'm not sober. You have no idea how fucking hurtful that is."
Neil throws his hands up. "Well, I don't know what else explains your behavior."
"My behavior, like I'm some kind of child. Is that why you took over the album, you think I can't make decisions for myself?"
"For the last time, I didn't take over the fucking album! You didn't tell any of us that anything was wrong so we went the way we thought was right!"
"Well, it wasn’t!”
“Great! I don’t know what to tell you! The album’s out now, we can’t undo any of it!” Neil huffs, then brings his shouting down a couple notches. “What do you want me to say? Obviously you want something specific out of this and I don’t what it is other than to cover up whatever you’re fucking hiding from us.”
Adam looks over at him, finding a scowl is set just as deep on Neil’s face as one is on his own. “I’d like you to say sorry for fucking everything up, and honestly I’m not sure that’s even enough at this point.”
“Right, because I’m the one fucking everything up here.” Neil turns in his seat so he can get his face closer to Adam’s. “It’s all my fault, isn’t it? There’s no way you could ever be the problem, it’s not like you’ve ever been the problem before.”
Adam can’t stop it from coming out as he looks Neil in the eye and sharply says, “Sometimes I fucking hate you, you know that?”
Under all the anger, even after everything else they’ve screamed at each other over the course of this argument and all the others, there’s a genuine hurt in Neil’s eyes at that. Maybe he finally got it through his thick skull that he’s the one who fucked up and drove this wedge between them. “Adam-”
There’s a car horn and a bright flash of light in the truck’s cabin. Adam pulls the wheel hard, too hard. Then there’s a sick feeling of weightlessness.
It takes Adam a moment to come to. There’s a warm wetness above his eyebrow that starts to wake him up. Where is he? He manages to pry his eyes open, though it takes a while before anything he’s looking at actually registers in his brain. He’s in his truck, but it feels wrong. His arms are stuck above his head, not pinned but dangling. He’s shifted up in his seat, no longer truly sitting in it but only bound to it by his seat belt. The airbag is deployed and deflated but hangs up towards his face. That’s what makes the unease in his stomach finally make sense. He’s upside down.
With more effort than it should take due to gravity and his returning consciousness, Adam brings a hand to the wet spot above his eyebrow then pulls it away to see blood on his fingers. That must be why he blacked out, he hit his head on something. The pieces start to come together then. He’s upside down, injured, and the airbags went off. There must’ve been an accident. A rollover. It’s not just him that’s upside down, it’s the whole truck.
His survival instinct starts to kick in at that and tells him to right himself. He reaches for his seat belt release with one hand and uses the other arm to brace himself the best he can against the roof. The small movements make a pain start to stir in his chest but it’s not enough to stop him from hitting the release.
With a small thud he crumples to the floor, or the ceiling actually, and jostles himself enough that pain begins piercing through the haze of adrenaline and disorientation. He sucks in a pained breath that only makes his chest hurt worse, until the sharp ache has him immobilized. Each shallow breath refreshes the pain instead of temporarily dulling it until Adam wishes he didn’t have to breathe at all. It’s gotta be his ribs. His ribs are probably broken. His neck is starting to ache too as he sits in a weird half-heap against the roof. He tries to keep his upper body as still as possible as he gets his legs free and settles in a scrunched up position against the ground. Thank god he wasn’t pinned in at least. How bad is the damage to the truck? He twists his neck as much as he can to the side. The driver’s side window is busted, half of the glass shattered into a spiderweb still stuck in the bent metal of the doorframe while the other half of the glass is scattered about in a million pieces. They’re probably cutting into him right now but he can’t feel it yet. Even his head doesn’t hurt compared to the searing pain with every breath. What about the passenger side window and- Neil. Fuck, Neil!
Adam wriggles around until he’s managed to make it onto his hands and knees facing the passenger side. His chest is screaming in pain at all the movement but he pushes through it so he can get to Neil. The roof is dented in further on the passenger side, leaving less wiggle room, and Neil’s arms hang down to the ceiling just as limp as Adam’s were before. With a new rush of adrenaline, Adam crawls closer and reaches for Neil’s seat belt release. Neil is out cold, not budging in the slightest as Adam gets an arm under his shoulders to support him as he hits the release and the seat belt retracts. It’s as gentle of a fall as Adam can make it with the shape both of them are in. Something seems off but Adam’s focus is now on getting Neil’s legs free, which means pulling Neil closer by the back of his shirt and trying to make sure he isn’t pinned.
There’s enough give that Adam feels confident Neil isn’t pinned either, so he yanks him close and lets gravity do the rest. His legs hit the ground with a thump that makes Adam grimace but doesn’t do anything to jolt Neil awake. Adam can’t risk even a second to rest or his adrenaline might wear off enough that his broken ribs incapacitate him again, so without another thought he starts crawling backwards towards the busted side window, dragging Neil with him. He kicks out what’s left of the glass so they can fit through, and with a few excruciating tugs Adam has them both out in the snow. It’s disorienting all over again to emerge and actually see the truck upside down while the rest of the world is still right side up, but rather than try to take in the situation as a whole he hones in on the headlights. They’re still on, the yellow beams stretching across the snow and trees of the forest’s edge. If someone’s looking for them, they’ll want to be as visible as possible. They need to be in the light.
Standing on his own sounds like an impossible task, let alone standing and carrying Neil’s weight, so he trudges backwards through the snow on his hands and knees too, dragging Neil through the path he makes. The cold isn’t enough to wake him either. They both leave dark drops and streaks of blood in their wake.
With an exhausted, pained, defeated huff, Adam pulls them into the light and sits back on his legs. Hopefully someone’s already looking for them. The cold is starting to burn against his exposed skin, and he’s relatively dressed for the weather compared to Neil. Now that they have light, he starts looking Neil over for injuries. There’s nothing visible besides some small cuts on his head and face, which gives Adam some relief. There is a gash in Neil’s arm though, right where his tree tattoo is, with a trail of red leading down his forearm where the blood must’ve been dripping off as he hung upside down in the truck. A bit of what looks like jagged bloodied bone is jutting through too. Adam can feel a heavy hit of adrenaline in his stomach at the sight. He swallows hard to keep from heaving. Yet Neil is unconscious, even the incredible pain that injury must be causing not rousing him. “Neil?”
That’s when he notices. Neil’s chest isn’t moving. There’s no rise and fall, not even a stunted one like Adam is doing because of his ribs, nor the shallow breathing of someone blacked out. Nothing. “Neil?” Adam tries again, louder. He moves Neil closer so he can lean over and press an ear to his chest. He doesn’t know what he’s doing but he can’t hear any breath or feel any movement. “Neil.” He shakes him by the shoulder, but he’s limp. Adam considers pressing a thumb into the gash in his arm but he can’t stomach it. Maybe- Maybe he just can’t tell through the clothes. He’s wearing a puffy vest over a t-shirt so it could be possible, right? Adam sits back again, hissing through the fire in his chest from his ribs moving, and pulls Neil partway into his lap to try and unzip the vest. His head hangs oddly off the side of Adam’s thigh, the angle making Adam pause, uneasy. As his eyes follow the line of it, Neil’s neck looks disjointed. Unnatural. Broken.
“No. No, no, no, no, no,” Adam utters as he gently lifts Neil’s head onto his lap with cold, shaky hands. Something about it feels a little too loose. There’s a deep dread quickly growing in Adam’s broken chest as a flash of red light against distant trees catches his eye. He can’t make out the sirens yet over his panicked panting.
Later, the doctors will try to reassure him. Neil didn’t feel anything. It was instant. He could’ve broken his neck like that in the middle of a fully prepped operating room and still wouldn’t have survived. There was nothing Adam could do. And it’ll set in that there was not even a sliver of a chance at reconciliation, that there was nothing anyone could’ve done to give them an opportunity to apologize to each other, and the last thing Adam said to him in the heat of the moment, even as he saw the hurt start to well under the anger in Neil’s eyes, was that he hated him.