Requests and Challenges - Playing for Keeps: Part One
Master Post // Writing Schedule // Announcements
Title: Playing For Keeps
Author: girlgotagun
Pairing: Dean/Cas
Prompter: ohwillothewisp
Community: None ( original source: spnkink-meme)
Prompt: LINK
Rating: NC-17
Kinks: kidnapping/abduction, hurt/comfort, anal, oral, fingering, first time, angst, masturbation, manipulation (this list will surely be added to as the story goes and details are refined)
Warnings: retrospective discussions of child abuse
Summary: Dean is a professional kidnapper, snatching up the spoiled kids of rich fat cats and ransoming them for obscene amounts of money. It's not honest money, but over his illustrious five-year career not one of his victims have ever been hurt and hey, he's gotta put Sammy through school somehow, and ivy ain't cheap. When he kidnaps Castiel, the 20-year-old son of a publishing mogul, Dean figures it'll be a pretty cut-and-dry job. Dean is so wrong.
Part One
~~~
There weren’t really any nice-sounding words to describe Dean Winchester’s profession. The best he could come up with, when asked by people in bars or on the rare blind dates he let his brother set him up on-Sammy had been on a kick about Dean settling down ever since he found Jess-was that he brokered high-asset deals with some of the major players in the pacific mid- and northwest. But even that was a bit of a stretch and, despite what may be expected, Dean didn’t like to make it a habit of lying. Lying betrayed guilt, and guilt drew attention. Attention that Dean couldn’t afford to have on him.
So he started just saying that he worked in sales. Which was true enough, he supposed. So what if he was selling something back to a person? So what if he had stolen it in the first place?
Okay, so it wasn’t really called stealing in this particular case. Police called it kidnapping. The feds could probably push for a human trafficking charge, if they wanted to. Words like hostage and captive were thrown around. Ransom. Abduction.
So see, there were no really pretty words for it. And maybe what Dean did wasn’t pretty; wasn’t shiny and glamorous and strictly above board, the way Sammy wanted to live, wanted him to live. But it got the job done. The children of major players-corporate fat cats and low-level politicians-were easy targets, and their parents were pretty used to tossing money at a problem rather than addressing it themselves, so the cash that Dean requested in exchange for returning them was pretty easily handed over. The kids were always returned, safe and sound, and Dean figured it was pretty much a no-harm no-foul sort of situation.
He had done this six times. Well five really, if you were counting the times that he had actually planned and executed the whole thing. The first time, when he was twenty-one, was a bit of a fluke. Dean had been waiting for Sam to get out of school, leaning against the Impala across the street from the school. He had been waiting about five minutes when he heard a kid crying. After a bit of investigation he found her, crouched under the slide in the park behind him. The girl was a mess, covered in what looked like days worth of dirt and grime, leaves and twigs stuck in her matted blonde hair, startlingly clean streaks across her face where her tears were trailing down and her nose was running.
Dean hadn’t really thought twice about it. When she had been too distressed to pull herself together long enough to tell him her name, address, phone number, or even her parents names, Dean had taken her to the police station. It turned out that her name was Emma, she was six years old, and she had been missing for just under a day-no matter what the layers of dirt said to the contrary.
It turned out that her parents had offered a reward for her safe return. So after Dean was questioned thoroughly to make sure that he hadn’t snatched her up as she walked the short distance from her bus stop to her house or something, he was tearfully given a check for five thousand dollars from her grateful parents.
By the time he got back to the school to finally collect Sam, his brother was livid. Until, that is, two days later when his early acceptance to Stanford University arrived. The little nerd had been offered a full ride for his tuition, but nothing to break the cost of books, room and board, meal plans, lab fees, and the million other things that apparently came along with a very expensive piece of paper. Their dad had told Sam straight-up that he wouldn’t be paying for any of that. Sam and Dean were expected to stay in North Dakota and help him and Bobby around the shop. Dean was cool with that, but he knew that Sam never had been.
He spent the next week on the phone with the university, and every penny of that five thousand went to Sam’s dorm and meals for his first semester. He figured it up and worked out how to pay for the lab fees and books out of his wages at the garage. The hardest part was convincing the university snobs to keep his name out of their mouths, to let Sam think that he had received some grant or scholarship that had covered the costs. He knew Sam would never take it, would stubbornly work his ass off full-time to barely make ends meet and sacrifice his school work to not have to accept help after the things that their dad said, and Dean would be damned if he was going to let his little brother rip their family apart to pursue his dreams and then fail.
The next semester he actually got his friend Charlie to set up a bogus grant and submit it to Stanford for Sam. Because where the second wave of money came from…Sammy definitely couldn’t ever find out about that.
Turned out that if people would pay a lot as a reward for their kid’s return, it was nothing compared to what they’d pay in ransom. The first time he did it, he aimed high-the twelve-year-old daughter of some Hollywood big shot. He’d planned the job for months, learning not only the routines of the girl-piano practice, tutoring, ballet, middle school lacrosse-but also everyone around her; parents (rarely), nanny (often), driver and household staff (intermittent), until finally he spotted a consistent spot in the routine where the girl was alone.
She walked twice a week from her tutor’s house to the ballet studio four blocks away. Dean had followed, pulling up beside her. The lie slid out easily-alarmingly so, really, considering how much Dean hated to lie-as he told her that her father had sent him to pick her up, that there had been an unexpected change in the schedule and that he couldn’t come to get her himself, that the driver and car she was used to was currently being used by her mother.
It made him a little sad how easily she believed him, how unsurprised she seemed as she got in the car.
Dean had taken her to Charlie’s place, let his friend distract her with video games and a bunch of geek stuff that he never really cared to understand, and within a day the ransom he demanded was transferred into the bogus account that Charlie had set up. As Charlie quickly filtered the money through a couple dozen of others, typing feverishly as she buried the paper trail between each, Dean had returned the girl to where he had picked her up.
He had never really tried to scare the girl, but he had also been careful to make sure that her descriptions of him, of Charlie, of the house would be too general to really pin either of them down. He had also taken extra care not to touch her or any of her belongings, careful not to leave behind fingerprints or DNA. Not that the police would have anything to compare them to. Dean had never been taken in for anything, had no prints or DNA on file.
The whole thing had gone shockingly smoothly. Half a million dollars was split and distributed. Charlie’s take amounted to her rent and living expenses for a year, plus her mom’s healthcare expenses-the woman had been in a coma since Charlie was a kid, and after Charlie got into trouble as a teenager she couldn’t work legitimately, so the situation was a win/win for her. He deposited enough into the fake grants to carry Sam through school for another year, and the rest went into a savings account.
That should’ve been the end of it.
But it’s a basic law of finances and the driving force of the economy that the more money you have, the more you spend. And by the end of Sam’s sophomore year, Dean found himself planning again.
And so it continued. By the time Sam was set to graduate, Dean had completed his fifth ransom exchange. No one ever got hurt, and the only financial hit was to people who had way more money than sense-the type of people who dropped a few million dollars on a penthouse apartment in LA. So Dean still figured no harm, no foul. Apply all the nasty words to it that you want.
And then Sam had called him; told him that he had scored well enough on his LSATs to basically take his pick of law schools. So Dean began planning one more heist. The target this time was the twenty-year-old son of a major publishing tycoon, Castiel Novak.
~~~
The day that changed Castiel’s life had started like any other-well, maybe not any other. Most other days, he’d be in Ithaca, New York. He was about to start his junior year of undergrad at Cornell University. Cornell was his father’s college. Castiel was an English Journalism major. That was his father’s major. And it made sense, see, that his school and his area of study would be his father’s, because Castiel was being groomed to become his father.
He’d sooner die.
So maybe that day didn’t start exactly like any other. Castiel was home for the summer, working at his father’s publishing house in Seattle, Washington. Long hours, no thanks, and a guaranteed trip at the end of the day back to his childhood home, where he would lock his bedroom door and be very quiet, pretending he didn’t exist, and hope that it was one of those nights where his father forgot that his youngest son wasn’t still all the way across the country.
But it was like any other summer day, and that was the point. That was what had finally driven Castiel nearly out of his skin, had sent him surging out the doors of the airless corporate skyrise when his lunch hour hit, had sent him nearly barreling into the streets, nearly right in front of a big black muscle car. The car slammed on its breaks and the driver stuck his head out. The guy was young-maybe late twenties-with short blonde hair and green eyes vivid enough to contend with Castiel’s own bright blue.
The driver’s plump lips parted in surprise. “You trying to get yourself killed, kid?”
Castiel nearly laughed. The endless hours, the never good enough, the scorched smell of hot paper and binding glue, the belt and the sharp smell of gin, they all rolled through his head. He didn’t know what made him say it, other than the fact that it may be the truth. “Maybe.”
The guy blinked at him, looking confused. Like he wasn’t sure about the turn his day had taken. Like he was about to do something crazy. “Get in.”
“What?” Castiel blinked at him in surprise.
The man laughed. “Seriously, get in.” He jerked his head at the passenger side door.
And Castiel didn’t know what made him do it, other than the fact that the car looked like it could get him far, far away from his current situation, and there was nothing that the guy could do to him that would be worse than what he was running from.
Castiel got in the car.
~~~
Dean couldn’t believe it. He had been tailing Castiel-Cas, he decided; Castiel was too much on the tongue-for a week now. He had figured the job would be trickier than the others over the years. Cas was an adult, twenty years old, and would know better than to just get in a car with a stranger.
But then Dean had nearly run him over as the little guy went barreling out of the publishing house offices and into the street, his eyes wild and desperate, the haunted look of too much and crashing down radiating out of deep blue. And Dean had offered him a way out, and Cas had taken it.
He couldn’t believe it. The job that was supposed to take at least a month to plan was suddenly in motion. And fuck, that gamble was going to cost him. Because he wasn’t ready. Charlie was still in California, waiting for her part in the plan to come up to Washington.
See, because Cas was twenty and really should have known better, Dean had figured this job was going to require a bit more nuance. The tentative plan was for him to learn Cas’s routine and then shadow it; conveniently be wherever the young man was. Meet him, befriend him in that casual two young guys on vacation type of way. Invite him out with him and his good-single-friend Charlie. Spike his drink, take him back to their place, and then keep him that way all safe and quiet until the exchange was complete and he could be returned, happy as a clam, near enough to his own home to get there safely without Dean being spotted.
It was perfect. Clean, efficient, low-risk. The drugs would’ve even taken enough of the kid’s memory to ensure that he couldn’t reliably identify Dean.
So what did he do now? What did he do when the whole plan fell apart and Cas was sitting in the passenger’s seat looking for all the world like he had just escaped the jaws of a man-eating monster?
He took a deep breath and started to talk. “Look, Cas, I don’t know what was going on back there-”
“Cas?” The man asked, his eyes narrowing at Dean as though his mind were trying to work something out.
Dean laughed. “Yeah, well, Castiel is a bit of a mouthful.”
There was a heavy pause. “Yeah, but…how do you know my name at all?”
Shit.
~~~
With the soaring suspicion, Castiel’s heartbeat increased ten-fold, panic quickly setting in. He glanced down, his stomach dropping when he realized he had, as he thought, remembered to remove his employee ID badge before leaving the building. So how had the man known his name? He was a Novak, sure, and the Novaks were, as his father liked to remind him, very important people, but Castiel himself wasn’t important. He hadn’t done anything to be known for; his name had never been in print. He was the unknown factor. Well, mostly. His existence wasn’t secret. It was more like no one had any reason to know about him.
Unless they had purposefully sought him out.
Unless they had made it their business to know about him.
“Are you…are you stalking me?” Castiel asked. “Is this one of those crazy obsession type of things? Oh my god, you’re going to kill me aren’t you? You’re going to kill me and then keep my body around for days for all sorts of sick shit aren’t you?”
The man gaped at him, looking genuinely horrified. “What? Where do you even get that shit? You think I’m Billy the Kid or something, Clarice?”
“Buffalo Bill.”
“Whatever, Cas!” The man looked like he had never heard anything more ridiculous in his life. “The point is, no, I’m not stalking you. Well, okay. Maybe I was stalking you a bit, but not to kill you and snatch your skin or some shit and not because you’re so fucking fantastic that I’m obsessed with you!”
“Why are you acting all offended? I’m the one who’s going to die!” Castiel felt like he couldn’t breathe; there wasn’t enough air in the car. His breath was coming in short, quick puffs that did nothing to expand his lungs, to deliver the oxygen his brain desperately needed. Oh god, he was going to die.
“Would you stop saying that? You’re not going to die! No one’s ever died.” The man pulled over suddenly and reached into the backseat to produce a crumpled paper bag. He checked inside, verifying that it was empty, and then pressed it over Castiel’s mouth and nose, holding the younger man’s head in place. “Shit, man, would you just calm down? You’re going to be fine, alright?”
Castiel tried to focus on his breathing, tried to push away the panic that was squeezing his lungs painfully. But why? So that he wouldn’t die? This nutbar was clearly going to kill him anyway. His nanny, Anna, had been right when he was a kid. Never get into cars with strangers. What had he been thinking?
“Listen.” The man was speaking again as Castiel’s breathing began to even out and oxygen started to flood his brain. “I’m really not gonna kill you, alright? I’m gonna level with you-you’re being kidnapped. But I don’t plan on hurting you; I’ve never hurt anyone. I’m going to ransom you, your father’s going to pay it, and then you’ll be returned safe and sound. Immediately. Alright? And as long as you keep your mouth shut and don’t tell them it was me, you’ll never have any reason to see me again. I swear it. Nothing has ever happened to anyone during one of my jobs.”
Castiel nearly laughed. Of course the guy had done this before. Of-fucking-course. And what if he wasn’t telling the truth? How many times could someone do this before someone got hurt? Surely someone had been hurt-killed-to keep him from getting turned in, right?
But he figured his best bet was to keep quiet until he figured out another plan, and he nodded, pulling the bag from his face. The car was in motion again, calmly winding its way through the streets of Seattle.
And it was a testament to how bad his life had really gotten, in tiny little ways over the years, that one of the greatest thoughts raging in Castiel’s mind at that moment was that, tonight at least, he wouldn’t be going back to his father’s house.
Continue to Part Two