Chapter Text
It’d started innocently enough. Dean had always hung out with older kids, and once his dad was out of the picture, off travelling, it just got easier. Bobby trusted him, let him run around so long as he was back by ten on school nights. On weekends he could stay out until midnight. So, yeah, him and the older kids would knock back a few beers in the parking lot, one of them having bought the six packs with a fake ID.
By thirteen Dean had his own fake ID, and had perfected the art of looking twenty-one. It was impressive, he never actually looked any older, but something in how he carried himself made him seem old enough to be buying bottles of vodka on a Tuesday night.
Soon it wasn’t buying for him and friends, it was buying for just him. He had it stashed all around his room, under his bed, in his closet. He kept telling himself he just liked the way it felt, the way his body would go sort of weightless and warm. But he knew that wasn’t all of it. He liked how it would dissolve his responsibilities, all the things that were his fault. He liked that it made him forget.
Cas didn’t like it. He kept trying to set things up with Dean at night, things to keep him from drinking. Dean knew what he was up to, though, and by their sophomore year he’d settled into a comfortable routine of keeping sober during the school week, spending his evenings studying or goofing off with Cas, and then getting absolutely trashed on weekends.
Even that made Cas frown, but frankly Dean figured he was owed his vices. It wasn’t like he was driving or anything. If he’d had too much –and he always knew when he’d had too much– he’d call Cas, and Cas would wake Luci and they would drive to pick him up.
When he was eighteen, with an apartment in town and a liquor cabinet all his own, he’d asked Cas to move in with him. Cas had agreed enthusiastically, but Dean couldn’t ignore the slightly disappointed look on his face when he’d seen the half dozen bottles of whiskey in the cabinet and the six-pack of beer in the fridge.
So he’d found a second vice, something that Cas, while not thrilled over, would at least find less self-destructive. He bought a motorcycle. What Cas didn’t know was that when he’d go out for his evening rides, and be gone for a few hours, he only rode for maybe thirty minutes. He’d drive out to a bar, someplace skeevy enough that they wouldn’t bother carding him, and drink until he was just drunk enough to forget, but still sober enough to drive.
But his control started to slip. It got harder and harder to tell when he was still good to drive, and when he needed to stop slamming back glasses of whiskey. He supposed it was only a matter of time before he got caught. He hadn’t expected it to be so dramatic though.
Two fractured ribs and a concussion, along with a handful of minor contusions. Doctors said he was lucky, that the accident could’ve been so much worse than it was.
That didn’t stop Cas from going white as a sheet when he saw Dean hooked up to three different machines and an IV. It also didn’t keep Sammy from going half-crazy when he saw his brother all beat up.
And it didn’t keep Dean from returning to his routine the next week.