(unnamed 'verse) -- I'm on a losing streak

[the_death_card]

For not the first time, Jack is somewhere he shouldn't be. It's also not the first time he's regretted being in it - though not why he's here. The bar just sucks, even if the friend that asked him to come with doesn't. He lost her to her boyfriend and the dance floor a few songs ago, though, and he's been guarding their table while the two do their best to have fully clothed sex under the flashing lights.

He wants to leave, and he should. He's underage, his curfew is in less than an hour - and the fact that he actually cares about that is new. Rhodes is still the strangest foster he's ever had - but he's also quickly turned out to be the best, and he doesn't actually have a reason to be an asshole to the guy like he did so many of his other placements.

Jack glances at his watch as the song ends, downing the rest of his Coke as he starts to get up, to find June and her boytoy in the crowd - but then he glances toward the bar, eyes drifting over the crowd gathered there. A group of snickering fratboys has him rolling his eyes - but then he catches movement between them, and he stops. He's been running hustles and picking pockets long enough to know sleight of hand when he sees it, and he tracks the movement of a small vial from the pocket of one of them, to their hand - to the drop of liquid into the glass of a girl next to them.

"Fuck," he swears, his voice lost in the bass of the next song, and he makes a decision as he sees the girl reach for her glass. It's easy for him to slide through the crowd, up to the bar, to take the glass out of the girl's hand and take a drink.

"Hey!" she complains, and Jack looks at the glass, feigning puzzlement at her upset.

"Oh, shit, this was yours? Shit, I'm really sorry," he all but yells at her, and she still looks upset, but the anger's fading, now. "Let me get you another one." He sets her drink down out of her reach and reaches back, presumably for his wallet - but his hand dips into the back pocket of the frat boy behind him as he nods to the bartender and then to the girl, to get her her new one. "Sorry again."

"It's okay," she tells him and moves away once she has her new drink, and Jack sighs, tucking the frat guy's wallet into his own pocket as he takes her seat. The frat boys are glaring at him, but he ignores them, reaching for the spiked drink to pass it over to be dumped. The fact that he hasn't been drinking should buy him some time, and he has some other plans before he bails.

Ten minutes later and a round of the dance floor, he has the other two wallets, an iPhone, some other smart phone, a watch, a baggy of what he assumes is ecstasy, and the vial - and the frat boys have a nice dose of it in their own drinks. He also has a headache and the beginnings of double vision, the room feeling too hot, the feeling of a buzz creeping up on him despite the fact that he still hasn't had any alcohol.

"Fuck," he says to no one again when he runs into someone instead of dodging around them, and he changes directions to head for the bathroom. The X goes into the toilet before he puts the lid down and sits down hard, fumbling for his phone with hands that don't feel like his own. It takes him three tries to dial Dylan's number, and he drops his head into his hand while he waits for the phone to ring.

For not the first time, he's in serious trouble. He just hopes this time goes as well as the last time he needed his foster's help.

Comments

[onebehind]

Dylan's two rooms away when the phone starts ringing, starting to wind down for the night, to put things in order for the next morning. That in mind and understandably, it takes him a minute to hear it and another to actually go for it, and so it's just seconds short of hitting his voicemail when he does answer. If he knew something was up, he would have been faster. As it is, he figures Jack might just need a ride home from where ever he is, keeping his curfew in mind.

"Hello?" he starts, casually, all that said. Cradling the phone between his ear and shoulder, he meanders back in the direction he came, scooping up a file he needs for tomorrow as he passes.

[the_death_card]

Jack huffs out a breath when Dylan picks up, considering he was starting to be sure he wouldn't. "Don't be mad," he starts, and that's not at all what he means to say and definitely not how he means to say it considering it comes out vaguely slurred and panicked. It's getting harder for him to think by the moment, and he hates it. Even if he can't blame alcohol for this, feeling like this is part of why he doesn't drink and doesn't get why assholes like the ones out in the bar right now do it.

It's also possible some of that comes out of his mouth. He's not entirely sure.

[onebehind]

With that kind of start, all of Dylan's zeroes in on Jack, his paperwork forgotten for a moment. More than as he sets the folder down on the nearest available surface so he can take the phone back in one hand, press it to his ear as if that will help him understand him better through the panicked slurring. It doesn't, not really, but at least, as hoped, he doesn't swing towards anger. Right now, he's more confused and worried.

This isn't like Jack in any sense.

"What -- where are you?"

[the_death_card]

"Uh," Jack begins, breathing out a quiet fuck when he can't immediately think of it. "It starts with an L," he begins, casting around for a long moment where his voice is replaced by the bar's music - and then sees it on one of the advertisements on the back of the cell door. "Lustre. This place sucks, too."

[onebehind]

Dylan has no idea where that is, but that's what Google is for. Turning, he darts for his laptop with a muttered, "Give me two seconds, I'm gonna look it up." A beat. "And keep talking."

That said, he throws himself down on the couch, once again cradling the phone between shoulder and head so that he can reach for it. He plugs Lustre and New York into the search bar, hits enter and waits.

[the_death_card]

"Okay," Jack agrees, because there's not a lot else he can do. "Uh. What about?"

He knows what Dylan means, he really does - but he's doing well to hold any kind of train of thought right now.

[onebehind]

"Shit, I don't know," Dylan answers a little shortly, hitting the page for the bar as it comes up. Finding the address, however, is another story entirely because God forbid they put it somewhere intuitive on the page like on the other end of a contact or about us link. "Baseball?"

It's the first thing that comes to mind. He doesn't expect Jack to be able to talk coherently on the subject, but -- it's something.

[the_death_card]

"Sorry," Jack murmurs into the pause and then reaches up to knead at his forehead. "Uh. Like... nobody knows I snuck into Yankees Stadium one time? And it wasn't even hard?"

And yes, it was magic, but he doesn't know that's a thing, yet.

[onebehind]

"How old were you?" Dylan asks, voice a little distant, now, instead of angry as he tries to navigate the clusterfuck of a webpage. He's just about decided that he's going to find out who designed this shit and figure out how to put them away for a long, long time when he actually finds the address. He gives up on the thought, if only for the time being, and leans to grab a pen off the nearby end table to scrawl the address on his hand.

[the_death_card]

"I don't...." Jack begins as he tries to remember. "Like... thirteen, maybe? But there was a game and I wanted to go and I was just in a group home and sneaking was kinda easier than stealing a ticket. Someone would probably have noticed that."

[onebehind]

"Wait," he starts as he returns his laptop to its place on the coffee table and gets to his feet. "You snuck in during a game?" He'd been imagining that Jack broke in after the stadium was closed for the night; the fact that it happened during a game is more impressive.

Either way, he grabs his keys from where he left them and heads for the door, the car beyond it.

[the_death_card]

"Yeah," Jack agrees. "I dunno. I guess I thought it'd be harder than it was?"

His voice trails off a little at the end of that - and though it clears again a moment later, he sounds abruptly younger. "Did you find me?"

That's also not actually what he means to ask, but. The weirder he feels the more scared he gets.

[onebehind]

"Huh," Dylan says, effectually. If he plans on continuing beyond that, though, the intent dies, however briefly, at the question. A nod that Jack can't see follows. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm getting in the car, now. I'll be there as soon as I can, but I'm not gonna hang up, okay?"

He's a little afraid of what might happen if he hangs up to drive.

[the_death_card]

The night passes after their conversation ends, nurses and doctors and a couple of cops drifting in and out to change IVs and get Jack more fluids and check on how he's feeling and find out for the fifth time what happened in the first place.

Finally, as morning rolls around, after Jack's gone from mildly out of it to feeling better to getting antsy to get up, after one shift changes for another, they finally bring around the papers for Dylan to sign him out.

He gets to the car under his own power, this time, though when they get there, he immediately curls into a ball, wrapping himself in his jacket. At the apartment, he heads first for his room, coming back into the living room a few minutes later in his pajamas to turn on the tv and curl up on the couch under a blanket.

Apparently just because he was antsy to get out of the hospital doesn't mean he's feeling a hundred per cent better, yet. The odds are good he'll drift off again before too long.

[onebehind]

While Jack drifts, sleeps even, between rounds of the seemingly endless onslaught of personnel, Dylan doesn't. At first, it's because still sucking on the sour taste his and Jack's last conversation has left in his mouth, then it's because, despite reassurances that Jack will be fine, his worry keeps him up. He sits, arms folded, a sentinel, his eyes only leaving Jack to acknowledge whoever's in and out of the room this time.

He's exhausted by the time a nurse shows up with Jack's discharge instructions and more than when they finally get home, but even as Jack heads for his bedroom, he doesn't go for his own. Finally freed from the nervousness that Jack somehow might not survive, he's shifted in to stewing over this whole thing, and the longer he thinks about it, the angrier he gets. A small part of him thinks that that upset might be the lack of sleep talking, that if he just goes to bed now, he might wake up feeling less like Bradley isn't the only one that has it coming and much more immediately, but -- no, fuck it. Heads are going to roll for everything that happened to Jack, last night, and they're going to roll now.

That in mind and not expecting Jack to reappear after his retreat to bed, Dylan's sitting on the couch when he returns, something cold, almost feral behind his eyes as he growls into the phone at his ear. " -- their Goddamn liquor license, at the very least. You have any idea how old my kid -- "

He stops when he spots Jack, frigid expression fixing on him for a moment before it softens marginally. He holds up a hand very briefly and then shifts so he's not quite facing Jack, the ice sliding back into place on, now, his profile. He wets his lips with his tongue and continues in a hiss, "Call me back when you've got every last one of their heads on a fucking stick."

Not waiting for an answer, he ends the call and drops the phone onto the couch next to him and in lieu of pitching it across the room like he looks like he wants to. He scrubs a hand over his face, exhaling heavily through his fingers, and when he finally looks back to Jack, he just looks tired again. He feels tired. "Hey, sorry." A beat. "I hope I didn't wake you up or whatever."

Never mind the fact that he's not sure Jack was gone long enough to have fallen asleep. He's not entirely sure. Time is a tenuous thing, right now.

[the_death_card]

Jack stops in the living room doorway when Dylan looks at him, tensing at that look, old reflexes starting to kick in that maybe he did do something wrong after all, that Dylan is mad at him after all - and then relaxing again when Dylan's expression softens, when he realizes who Dylan must be talking to - and why he's talking to them. When Dylan turns away, Jack heads for one of the easy chairs, for the blanket draped over its back. "Nah. I was gonna crash out here again."

Like he had after he had gotten dragged into the fight, when the idea of closing himself in his room by himself was as unsettling as the rest of the night had been.

[onebehind]

Dylan grunts, accepting of that. After a moment of pause, in which he's very clearly fighting through the fog descending over his thoughts in the wake of his anger, he shifts a little on the couch, not quite moving but possibly intending to.

"You want me to move?" he asks, explaining the shuffle. The couch might be more conductive to sleeping than one of the chairs, after all.

[the_death_card]

"Uh," Jack begins, a crooked, exhausted grin pulling at his mouth. "Unless you want me in your lap or whatever."

There's probably room on the couch for both of them, actually, considering Jack intends to burrow under the blanket and pass out again, but since Dylan asked.

[onebehind]

"This couch ain't big enough for the both of us," Dylan shoots back, intentionally misquoting The Western Code. Never mind the fact that, yes, it is, and he wouldn't particularly mind sharing it with Jack -- he still drags himself up off of it, that said.

"All yours," he continues, as if it wasn't obvious and as he drifts towards a chair. He's halfway down into it when he realizes he didn't take his phone with him, but while he makes a small, distantly frustrated noise at that realization, he commits to sitting down, too worn to bother getting back up. He can, however, spare a gesture in its direction. "That's still mine, though."

[the_death_card]

Jack snorts at the misquote even as he settles onto the couch, flailing a little as he gets settled under the blanket and adjusts one of the cushions for a pillow.

He arches his eyebrows curiously at Dylan's wave - and then blinks at the phone when he realizes what Dylan means. "Nope, it's on my side now."

That said, he still shifts to reach for it. "Catch," he says once he has it in hand, tossing it easily, effortlessly - and perfectly accurately - in Dylan's direction.

[onebehind]

"You wanna do a headcount when my guy at the NYPD calls back, you're welcome to it," he answers. Never mind the fact that he's not sure he'll get a return phone call in the next few hours, if at all today. Much as he'd like to see every person involved in this fiasco skinned alive right this second, these things take time, and if he can bide time for as long as he has on other fronts, he can wait a few days for this. He'll get what he wants in the end.

Satisfied with that, he snags the phone out of the air as it comes at it and sets it down unceremoniously on the end table beside him. "Nice throw."

[the_death_card]

"Ugh, no," Jack groans. "Then I'd need a Benedryl for the hives from talking to another cop, and everybody's had enough medical shit for one night." He's joking, obviously, but that's probably proof enough he is feeling slightly better, if Dylan wanted it.

"Thanks," he returns to the compliment, though he says it like it's no big deal. Obviously his aim isn't something he doubts.

[onebehind]

"Right, sorry," Dylan shoots back, holding up one hand placatingly. When he drops it, he offers Jack a hum in lieu of a you're welcome and falls silent. A moment passes this way, then, more seriously, he continues, "Seriously, though. What happened last night? It's being taken care of."

Which he figures Jack may have guessed from catching the tail end of his phone call, but.

[the_death_card]

Jack cringes immediately, because this is getting into admissions of guilt since he shouldn't have been in the bar in the first place but Dylan deserves the whole story, considering how the night went and how he stuck by him through it.

And maybe also for what Jack just walked in on, with him calling him his kid. That's not something Jack minds too much.

"Uh," he begins after a moment, as he resettles and props himself up on an elbow. "I was hanging out with a friend, and we were meeting her boyfriend there, and then they wandered off, so I was watching our shit, and then there were these frat boys. I saw one of them put something in this other girl's drink, so I drank it." He makes a face - and also purposefully stops there, before he gets into picking their pockets and drugging them right back.

[onebehind]

Dylan wasn't so much looking for an explanation as he was trying to bring them back around to it. Still, he sits through Jack's recounting of the night without correcting him, and when he finishes, leans forward over his knees, shaping his exhaustion into something sharper but not necessarily angry as he does so.

"You rob them?" he asks when the look lessens.