febuwhump 2k22
day 9 - spiked drink
fandom: supernatural (brotherhood au)
whumpee: Dean Winchester
caretaker: OC
other characters: Sam WInchester, John Winchester (mentioned), Caleb Reaves (mentioned), Brotherhood Triad (mentioned)
tw: neglect, alcohol, drugging, gambling, assault, implied prostitution
word count: 2,940
summary: after john takes off following a heated fight with sam, dean goes to earn the money he neglected to leave–and give sam some peace and quiet to finish his college applications. however, dean's headspace soon finds him in a position he's usually too careful for.
notes: this is the first of a two-part thingy I have planned with one febuwhump prompt and one whumptober prompt. I realize it's pathetic that I can do that and I don't wanna talk about it lol. i also highkey hate it, but we're just going with it anyway.
also, this isn't really related to the truth, the first installment in this series, but the next part will reference it a little. you still don't have to read it to get it… it's just basically connecting the timelines as the same. i plan to keep filling in the blanks as inspo hits and hopefully eventually have a much smaller gap between that first part and this one.
I got bills to pay, I got mouths to feed,
And ain't nothin' in this world for free.
- Cage the Elephant
The slam of the motel room door was almost a welcome sound in light of the past two hours of screaming. Dean imagined anyone else who'd happened to be occupying their own rooms at four pm on a Wednesday felt the same.
"Can you believe him?"
Apparently, Sam didn't think there had been enough yelling quite yet. "He's insane! He's clinically f–"
He couldn't handle the raised octave of the boy's voice anymore, holding up an exhausted and slightly shaky hand.
"Sammy," he croaked, "I know. Just… please… please calm down."
The sixteen-year-old gave him a long, confused look that dripped of a little contempt. "You don't agree with him, do you?"
"Of course not."
He couldn't afford to have an opinion on the matter.
"I just…" He swallowed hard. "Please no more yelling."
Sam rolled his eyes and dropped back onto the bed that Dean wasn't seated on. "Whatever. I actually need to finish this anyway."
While the statement didn't explicitly ask him to leave, the sentiment was very much present, and Dean wasn't keen to make the boy get any more obvious about it, pushing himself to his feet with a soft groan.
"Should probably go earn some money so we're not on the streets this time tomorrow," he mumbled.
Sam just nodded a little. They'd both heard John drive away, and they both knew he had what little cash existed in their family with him. Since this was a cash-only place, credit card scamming wasn't an option, so that meant it'd be a long night for Dean.
Sometimes, he could actually take pleasure in hustling pool and poker so they had a roof over their heads. It was a break from the pressures of hunting, and it was something he was good at. Better than Caleb, better than Mac, way better than his dad.
Caleb was actively proud of how good he was at poker in particular, seeing as he'd taught him how to play, and he couldn't help but think of his best friend whenever he played it.
It was a welcome reminder given the past several long months of being officially unallowed to contact the older man thanks to Sam's escapade to Flag Staff.
Caleb had stubbornly checked in every week or so, but that simply wasn't the same.
September had taken its sweet time getting there, but it was almost August now. Soon, maybe things could go back to some semblance of normal.
He knew better than to believe that given the growing volatility of Sam and their father's relationship, but at that exact moment, he needed to cling to the hope of it anyway, because the past few months had been the definition of hell.
"That gonna take you awhile?" the older brother asked as he pulled on his jacket.
"Yup."
John would have his head for trusting the boy by himself, but he really was enveloped in these essays. Stanford, Harvard, Vanderbilt… they all had scholarship essays due in the next week, and it was all Sam could think about, much to their father's displeasure.
"Okay," he confirmed. "I'll be late."
"Yup," Sam repeated, his tone saying loud and clear, Hurry up and leave, then.
With a sigh too quiet for the boy to hear, Dean obeyed.
The nearest bar was just down the street, so he left the Impala where it was and elected to walk. It was definitely too hot to be walking around Houston in a leather jacket, but that jacket was as good as his baby blanket when it came to hustling. He'd been wearing it since he was twelve years old, using it to make himself feel larger and stronger and less easily messed with. He might be twenty now, but there was something about hustling that could take him back to the mindset of that scared, desperately little kid just like that.
He tried to shove the thoughts from his mind, but they weren't so easily banished, and he continued to bounce between them and reminders of John and Sam's latest screaming match. Sam was about to be a junior. This was only going to get worse.
The thought of two more years of low blows and raised voices and Dean having to step between them, both of whom would be taller than him soon, to keep it from coming to blows, made him sick to his stomach.
Not that he liked the "light" at the end of that tunnel any better.
He didn't know what he wanted.
A new life.
He felt guilty for the thought before it was even fully formed.
No, he didn't. He was a Brotherhood hunter. He did a hero's work. He'd never known anything else.
And at least he'd be able to talk to Caleb again soon.
At least.
As he neared the shady little spot he'd chosen to begin his work, a sense of utter exhaustion washed over him.
Maybe he should just do an hour and call it a night.
But he hated that.
He tried to convince himself he didn't. He'd tried hard. It was better money than poker ever would be, and in principle, it shouldn't be altogether miserable. He got to pick who he took, and that had only ever been fairly attractive, if rich in the most insufferable way, women between twenty and forty.
He just hated it.
And as much as he'd like to not have to work all evening, he didn't want it that bad.
Besides, as much as his family did lie to Caleb and the Triad, he didn't enjoy doing things he didn't want to tell them about.
So, poker it was.
Given his current, shambled mental space, he'd see how this went.
For a few hours, it went alright.
He played it cool, didn't take the hustling side of things too seriously because he simply didn't have it in him to play it up, and just played his very good game of poker. That tended to frustrate his competitors less than the alternative, and a few became very convinced they were going to beat him at least once. His profits appreciated that.
Then, he forgot about his drink for a little too long.
It was a more challenging round than he'd faced yet. His hand was crap, and he couldn't decide whether he wanted to bluff it out, or just not risk it and fold. When he got the feeling the one competitor who didn't quickly put down his hand was facing the same dilemma, it was all about whose crap hand was, in fact, worse–or which bluffer was, in fact, braver.
He ended up pushing the other guy to fold at last, using the comfortably high amount of money he'd already won to the best of his advantage. However, he'd gone over twenty minutes without so much as glancing at the drink beside him.
The bar was loud and crowded, and he'd had the opportunity to make plenty of enemies that night. When he finally raked in his winnings and picked up the beer once more, he had the fleeting thought that if someone had spiked it, he probably wouldn't have noticed.
It was more of a joke than anything.
That was, until he started to feel way too drunk for the beer and a half he'd consumed over the past three hours.
It started with his mind growing fuzzy to the point he laid down his cards to avoid making a stupid decision in the thickness his thoughts were suddenly wading through.
Then, the nausea hit him in a rush.
He lurched forward in his seat, resisting the urge to puke as the room spun around him.
What the…
He swore out loud at the memory of that fleeting thought before he finished his ignored drink.
One of the guys who'd been there since he'd arrived, who had gone from arrogant to annoyed to impressed over the course of the past few hours, looked over at him with an arched eyebrow. "You good there, kid?"
Dean swallowed hard, his mind trying to spin but barely functioning at all.
He needed to get out of there.
I gotta go, was what he wanted to say.
"I… go," was all that he was actually able to choke out.
He grabbed his backpack and desperately shoved the money he'd earned inside, still feeling as if he was on a merry-go-round.
"You're gonna take off with our money just like that?" another one of the dudes who'd been there awhile asked sharply, but the first guy held up a hand to rebuke him.
"It ain't our money anymore, Jack! But are you okay, kid?"
Dean didn't answer, too focused on desperately blinking back the darkness threatening his vision.
He needed to get a grip of his surroundings. Someone had done this, and he doubted they'd done it for kicks and grins. They probably wanted the money, and he was not in a position where he could let them have it.
He used the table to push himself to his feet, and his head and stomach both turned violently. He just had to get down the block.
Except that at the moment, getting to the door sounded daunting.
He pulled his backpack onto his back and closed his eyes for a moment, desperately trying to gather whatever strength he had left.
He could fall asleep standing up. Everything was thick and heavy and he was so, so tired…
No.
He shook himself awake sharply.
He had to keep his head on.
He was pretty sure the other guys at the table were still talking to him, but the entire room was just noise and lights, and all he wanted to do was get outside.
He managed three shaky steps, then another.
He was almost there.
Two more.
He'd made it to the door.
He was going to pass out.
He couldn't.
Just down the block. He just had to make it down the block.
Thanks to the thick Texas humidity, the sun's disappearance had done little to ease the thick heat of the day. He dully thought that he'd do close to anything for a breath of truly fresh air.
Then, he registered a hand around his arm a long second after it touched down.
He pulled away sharply only to realize that his other was being held as well. The city–or maybe it was just the ringing in his own ears–was screaming, the lights were blinding, and he was…
No. No, he wasn't going down. Not like this.
John's disappointment at hearing that he'd been drugged like a runaway teenager, and in doing so lost their lodging money, taunted his half-conscious mind.
He gasped for oxygen in a last, desperate attempt to wake up for long enough to get away.
For just a few seconds, the ringing in his ears faded enough for him to make out the voices of the people holding him, to realize that they were trying to pull the backpack off of him.
"You're a pretty little thing, aren't you?" A deep, raspy voice asked in the most demeaning voice possible. "Maybe I should bring you home to the Missus. The three of us could have some real fun."
Another voice, this one younger, but equally gruff in a decidedly cigarette-induced way, laughed. "You should. Not like he's in the position to tell ya no."
Dean didn't know if they were serious, but he was not waiting around to find out. With every ounce of strength he had left, he flung all of his weight forward.
It took them by surprise more than overpowering them, but either way, they let go.
Dean hit his hands and knees on the concrete sidewalk hard, but the drugs made it so he barely registered the pain of fall, only the impact and the feeling of hot blood hinting that it should have been intense.
He didn't give himself the chance to dwell on that, scrambling to his feet and blindly sprinting back in the direction of the motel. But he heard footsteps echoey shouts behind him, and his vision was quickly blacking out again.
He chanced a look over his shoulder. In between black spots, they were gaining on him.
He turned his attention forward a second too late to avoid colliding with a cop that he realized had been holding up his hands in a directive to stop.
He gasped in a sharp, afraid breath, anticipating the feeling of either taser or bullet as he scrambled away from the man, once again finding himself on the concrete, and this time without strength to regain his footing.
However, he obviously wasn't the only one he'd spotted. His ever-more-blurry figure was indeed brandishing a weapon, but it was pointed in the direction of his attackers, not him.
Dean squeezed his eyes shut as a dull, heavy thought hit him.
Like a sixteen-year-old caught redhanded with stolen bread and peanut butter, he was definitely going back to jail.
That was the last part of the ordeal Dean really remembered. He wasn't fully unconscious after, could remember bits and pieces of bright lights and wailing sirens and more uniformed figures, of being loaded into a cop car by surprisingly gentle hands.
However, when he did wake up, he did so in a hospital bed, not a jail cell.
He heard himself moan as he blinked rapidly in defense against the too-white room around him. His head was throbbing. His hands and knees ached. He felt like he had one of the worst hangovers of his young life–and that was saying something.
He tried to sit up and felt the tug of an IV on one of his forearms.
He checked the other, but didn't find the handcuff he was expecting.
A tap on the doorframe brought his attention to a tall, uniformed man who was maybe a decade older than him. He hadn't been able to focus well enough to see the face of the man he'd run into on the street, but something about this one felt familiar.
"You're awake." The cop's tone was unreadable.
Dean nodded slightly, eying him suspiciously. "Am I under arrest?"
A slight shake of the man's head surprised him, an arched eyebrow conveying his disbelief.
The police officer shrugged a little. "I talked to the other patrons at the bar. They said you earned the money in there…" He indicated the black backpack which Dean now realized was at the foot of his bed. "Fair and square."
Dean continued to glare up at him. Gambling on poker was very illegal in Texas, and he wasn't about to walk into admitting to anything.
"Really nice of you to wash all their cars for them," the cop added tiredly.
The younger man stayed stubbornly silent, and the older finally let out a heavy sigh.
"I know what y'all were actually doing, and y'all know what you were actually doing," he stated plainly. "But none of them were gonna admit that, and it's pretty clear you're not either, and busting y'all for betting on a poker game isn't exactly my top priority at the moment."
"We weren't betting on a poker game."
"No, of course not," the cop scoffed a little. "you were just washing their cars."
Dean felt a slight smirk make its way onto his face as he nodded slightly.
"Look, Kid." The officer crossed his arms across his chest as he walked further in the room. "You may not be in trouble this time, but this is exactly why you're not supposed to do this crap. When you publicly make a boatload of cash, you're essentially painting a big red x on your forehead. Those guys could've killed you."
Dean looked away and said nothing.
"It's not your fault you got drugged," the cop clarified with another sigh, "And it's not your fault you were almost robbed. But you gotta be more careful. Don't put yourself in these positions anymore."
"Easy for you to say," Dean scoffed without really meaning to.
The guy frowned down at him for a moment, his face intense and unreadable. Then, exhaling slowly, he sank down into the seat next to Dean's bed.
"Yeah, it is," he conceded quietly. "But it wasn't always."
Dean searched his face for a hint of where this was going.
"I didn't become a cop because I never dabbled in the otherside growing up," he continued simply. "I did. I've been there. And if my guess is right, you weren't earning that money to feed just yourself."
The younger man's eyes finally dropped. Guy was good, he'd give him that much.
"Yeah, that's a yes," the officer sighed. "Lemme guess… little brother?"
Dean's incredulous breath said yes for him.
"That's tough."
He really did not know what to do with this guy.
"But the last thing he needs is to find your body in a ditch cuz some asshole drugged you and you fought back. There are better options."
The older man dug into the pocket of his shirt and produced a business card, holding it out to Dean. "That's my contact info. If you need some help finding 'em, just give me a call."
Then, he got up again, turning towards the doors. "As soon as they're happy with your fluids, you can check yourself out. If you feel so inclined and wanna make sure those guys get put away, swing by the station to give your statement."
The news was a breath of fresh air in the midst of his crappy night.
Checking himself out was not only convenient, but represented two very important things.
His dad didn't have to find out, and he didn't have to call Reaves.