Surface Tension (Chapter 4)

[wallmakerrelict]

Aaaand I'm caught up. More chapters to come as I write them. No promises on the update schedule because vet school is a harsh mistress.

Chapter summary: Castiel wakes up, and he's not happy to find out where he is. Dean realizes that being responsible for Cas is going to be more work than he thought.

For Rae.

Previous chapters: 1| 2| 3

-----

The open ocean held a strange sense of privacy for Dean.

Not that it was really private. After all, he was packed onto a boat with his crew like peas in a pod, and there was very little they could do to escape each other. It wasn't like the land, where one could wander off and find some space to oneself. Every inch of space on The Impala was spoken for, whether by some person or some purpose. Everyone was accounted for at every moment of the day and night. In many ways it was one of the least private places imaginable.

But then, Dean would turn a slow circle on the deck and see the unbroken waterline forming a horizon in three hundred and sixty degrees, and he would feel so blissfully alone that it ached. There were no societal expectations or obscure rules of conduct out here in the blue. There was only work to be done. As long as each member of the crew did his or her part, the ship ran like an organism in and of itself. And when she sailed, she was free.

Dean fed on that freedom, feeling his ship as an extension of himself, cutting through the water toward the never-ending horizon, tranquil in his solitude.

Castiel ruined all of that.

With Castiel on board, the ship became a trap. Even the horizon seemed to be penning them in. Dean scratched and fidgeted his way through his duties, always with one eye on his cabin door. He couldn’t enjoy the work, couldn’t let himself be one with the flow of action on the deck, couldn't subsume himself into the mechanism of the ship and enjoy her ride. Not when, just yards away, there slept a secret that could tear his crew apart.

He couldn't relax even when he was alone in his cabin. He had always had just as much space as he had needed in there, and no more. Now with a huge basin of water sitting in the middle of it, the cabin was decidedly less comfortable. Every time Dean barked his shins against the edge of it, or had to climb over it to get to his bed, it was one more reminder that the one room on the ship that should have been reserved especially for him was no longer his own.

It wouldn't have been so bad if he could have seen some reward for his trouble, but Castiel stubbornly refused to improve. He just stayed curled motionless under the water, looking unnervingly drowned. Dean carefully lifted him out of the water whenever he got the chance. His wound seemed to be healing well, and his fever began to go down. With some effort, Dean even managed to get Castiel to swallow the medicine Bobby had left with him. But still Castiel didn't wake.

After two awful, sleepless days at sea, the doubt that always lived in Dean began to balloon into something monstrous. Perhaps he shouldn't have dragged Castiel out of that cave. If he was going to die anyway, what was the point of putting him through the pain of closing his wound and confining him in a basin for the last few miserable days of his life? Wouldn't it have been better to let him drift off peacefully and undisturbed in a familiar place?

By the third day, Dean's thoughts turned morbid. He couldn't help but notice that Castiel's body would not fit through the porthole in his cabin. If Castiel died (and in his mind, Dean went back and forth between if and when), Dean would have to take a late-night watch alone in order to have time to drag Castiel out on deck and dump him overboard.

When he returned to his cabin that night, his hope had dwindled so low that he was half prepared to find Castiel lying dead. He certainly wasn't prepared to find the basin empty. He was so unprepared that, when that is exactly what he found, all he could do was stand there and stare at the wooden bottom through the empty water, the cogs of his brain whirring as he tried to figure out what had happened.

It occurred to him too late to turn around and look behind the door.

He felt the door handle slip out of his grasp as something slammed it closed behind him. Then he was on the floor with very little recollection of how he'd gotten there.

The first thing he noticed, besides the hard floor at his back, was the cold. Something cold and wet and incredibly strong was twisting itself around his waist between his shirt and his trousers, around his thighs, and his chest. Then it found its way around his neck and tightened, cutting off his air before he could even think to cry out. He flailed upwards with his fists. Something wrapped around his wrists and pressed his arms back down to the floor, but this time it wasn't cold, this time it was warm skin and thick fingers - human hands attached to human arms and a human face above them.

"Cas..." Dean choked out.

Castiel's face fell from chilly resolve to mortified horror in an instant. "Dean!" he gasped, and the cold grip of his tentacles loosened.

Dean gave him a shove, and Castiel fell off of him in a heap of elbows and tentacles. Coughing, Dean scrambled to his feet. "What the..." He had to pause for one more coughing fit, and then, "What the fuck, man?"

"I didn't know it was you," said Castiel.

"Maybe fucking take a look before you go and strangle a guy?" Dean snapped, rubbing his neck. Luckily, it didn't feel like it was going to bruise. Those would have been difficult marks to explain to his crew.

"Dean." Castiel levered himself off the floor and stood up, balancing on his tentacles. From a squishy pile on the floor, they thickened and straightened until, together, they formed a column. On top of that column, Castiel was almost as tall as Dean. He looked him in the eye. "I apologize. But in my place, would you have stopped to ask questions?"

In Castiel's place? Waking up in a strange room after days of delirium? Out of his element? A stranger walking through the door? Oh. Yeah. Dean wouldn't have strangled anybody; he would have shot them dead. "Okay, fair enough."

Castiel nodded, satisfied. He sank down on his tentacles and began using them to pull his way back to his basin of water. In the water, they had looked silky and graceful. Now they slapped their way across the floor like wet rags. It would have been comical if Dean couldn't still feel the imprint of one of them across his stomach, where it had held him as strong and hard as wood.

Castiel wobbled once. His hand went to his side, where his stitches were straining against his movements. "You need some help?" Dean asked.

Castiel's eyes dared Dean to touch him.

"Geez, fine," said Dean, putting his hands up. "Just offering."

Castiel tipped himself back into the basin with a small splash. After dipping his whole body under the water, he popped back up and set his forearms on the edge, looking at Dean expectantly. "So," he said. "Where am I?"

"Uh," said Dean. He spread his arms. "Welcome to my humble abode."

"Very humble..." said Castiel under his breath as he glanced around the tiny room.

"Better get used to it. It's your abode too, for the next few weeks at least."

Castiel didn't ask what Dean meant by that. He just squinted at him until Dean felt compelled to go on.

"We're, uh..." said Dean. "We're on our way to Havana. It's just a quick run. Just picking up a few things. As soon as we're done down there, I'll bring you back home. I promise, okay? I promise."

But even as Dean layered explanation on explanation, Castiel's eyes grew wider and his mouth tightened. "We're asea?"

Dean pointed at the porthole in the wall by way of proof. Castiel leaned over the side of his basin to poke his head out of the little window. He looked left and right. When he pulled his head back inside, he was a couple of shades paler than before. He drew back from the porthole as if he were afraid that he might be sucked out of it at any moment, and huddled back down in his basin.

"Where's the shore?" he demanded.

"We're too far out to see it," said Dean. "But it's that way." He pointed.

"Take me there. Let me off. I'll get home on my own."

Dean blinked. "Uh, no. No, that sounds like a terrible idea. For one thing, you're hurt. I mean you just almost died. You could barely crawl five feet just now, so there's no way you're making it up two hundred miles of coastline. For another thing, we're coming up on the Georgia coast. There's a Navy warship stationed outside of Savannah. If we come within sight of land, they'll be on us like a hound out of Hell."

Castiel's tentacles curled with anger, the tips poking out of the water and rolling into tight spirals. "You should never have brought me aboard your ship."

"Right, I should have left you to die. I'm so sorry," said Dean.

"You could have returned me to my cave after treating my wound."

"Yeah, and I'm sure you would have woken up before you starved to death or died of blood poisoning," Dean shot back in the most sarcastic tone he could manage. "It's not like I've been playing your nursemaid for the last three days or anything."

"If you had returned me to my people, they would have taken care of me," said Castiel, glowering.

"I don't even know where your people are! No one does! What was I supposed to do, go two days out of my way to dump you overboard somewhere around the place where someone saw a mermaid once ten years ago, and hope one of your kind picked you up before you got eaten by bottom-feeders?"

Castiel tried to lift himself up on his tentacles to match Dean for height again, but he gave up, wincing and holding his side. "So your only option was to make me your captive?" he said ruefully.

"Don't be so dramatic. I said I'd bring you right back."

Castiel just glared.

Dean didn't mean to laugh at Castiel's displeasure, but a chuckle escaped him anyway. "Hey, I know you're pissed," he said, "but I'm still just happy you're not dead."

Castiel's tentacles finally uncurled and dropped back into the water. "I suppose I am, too," he muttered. He turned around and set about trying to make himself comfortable by leaning against the side of the basin.

Dean sat on his bed and tried not to stare at his temporary roommate. It had been one thing when Castiel was asleep. It had been like having an extra piece of furniture. But now that he was awake it was a whole new level of awkward. The way Castiel was sitting, with just his bare chest and shoulders poking above the surface of the water, he could easily have been naked. Then it belatedly occurred to Dean that Castiel was naked, and always had been, of course, and once that thought had entered his mind it stubbornly refused to leave.

"Do you require something?" said Castiel when he noticed Dean blatantly staring.

Dean was about to say something lewd, but instead what came out was, "How did you know my name?"

Castiel's eyes darted away. Almost too quickly, he said, "I overheard your crewmates talking about you just before they stabbed me."

"Oh," Dean said. Then, "What were you doing so close to their boat, anyway?"

This time, Castiel met Dean's eyes and paused before answering, "Looking for you."

A lump of guilt rose up in Dean's throat. He swallowed it down. "Oh," he said.

-----

If Dean had thought that Castiel was an intrusion on his privacy while he was unconscious, that was nothing compared to after he woke up.

His little ambush-attack appeared to have taken it out of him, so he hunkered down in his basin to nurse his wound. But a few hours later, when Dean was just skimming the edge of sleep, a voice said in the darkness, "Dean."

"Mwha?" Dean opened his eyes. The room was dark except for the bluish outline of a face lit by the moonlight through the porthole, and two pinpricks of light glinting off of eyes. The face was less than two feet from his own. His body jerked ungracefully in surprise. "Don't do that!"

"I need to talk to you," said Castiel, not moving away.

"You can talk to me without looking up my nose." When Castiel had obliged by scooting over to the far side of his basin, putting a few more feet between himself and Dean, Dean said, "Okay, what do you want?"

"This water is stale," said Castiel, splashing lightly with a tentacle. "It's warm, and I can't breathe in it anymore."

"What do you want me to do about it?"

"Get me new water."

Dean hesitated. Sleep was a precious commodity aboard a ship. And his bed had just warmed to his temperature, his thin mattress molding to his body as well as it ever would. "In the morning," he said, putting his head back down on his pillow with a yawn.

"If you're going to keep me captive, the least you can do is make my conditions livable."

"You're living just fine," Dean said into his pillow.

"I can't breathe."

"Stick your head out of the water and breathe with your damn lungs like normal people."

"It's uncomfortable."

"Suck it up." Dean threw his head back onto his pillow and shut his eyes.

There came the soft sound of water sloshing. Dean ignored it. Then there came the slap of wet flesh hitting the wooden floor, and Dean cracked one eye open just in time to see Castiel half in his basin, and half out of it. Before Dean could say anything, Castiel attached four legs to the floor and four legs to the edge of the basin, and with a knotting of muscle and a mighty pull he upended the whole thing with a crash of water.

The water spread out to cover every inch of Dean's floor, and then slowly began to seep into the wood and trickle out from under the door. Castiel plonked the basin back down where it had been and raised his eyebrows expectantly.

"You stupid fucking..." Dean sputtered. His hands reached out, fingers clawed, half in frustration and half in threat. "You want more water? I'll throw you the fuck overboard, how do you like that?"

Castiel almost snarled, "You can try." He raised two tentacles, each as thick at the base as Dean's calves. And then two things occurred to Dean. One, those tentacles had just turned over a basin of water that Dean couldn't have moved with all his strength. Dean had absolutely no chance of besting Castiel unarmed. Two, even as Castiel poised himself to fight back, his body shrank in on itself and his eyes went wide.

Dean had seen enough people looking for a fight, and enough people scared for their lives, to know the difference. And Castiel wasn't looking for a fight.

With a sigh, Dean sat back down on the edge of his bed. "You scared of me?" he said.

"No." Castiel's voice was so hard and even that Dean found it hard to disbelieve him. And yet.

"Then what's your problem?"

Castiel couldn't keep his eyes from darting to the porthole and the moonlit waves outside. He said, his voice going just a shade softer, "I don't want to die out here."

Dean scoffed. "What, the water? You're scared of the water? You fucking live in the water."

"No," said Castiel. "I live in the rocks. Out here, in the open water, I am as vulnerable as you."

"You can't drown though."

"Yes. And long past the time a human would have mercifully drowned, I'll still be sinking. I'll be conscious and aware when I sink into view of something big enough to kill me. Or when I get deep enough that the weight of the water crushes the life out of me. Or..."

"Geez, okay, I get it." Dean couldn't help but shudder. It had been a long time since he was a child, looking over the railing and wondering how long it would take his body to touch bottom, but that old horrified awe was still there if he looked back for too long. He slid his feet off the bed and onto the solid wood floor. "But you don't have to worry. The Impala is safe."

"Not for me," said Castiel. He spread his arms, inviting Dean to look at him: huddled on the floor, his tentacles spreading out, trying to seep up the last of the standing moisture before it disappeared into the floorboards.

Wordlessly, Dean stood up. Sam had tied a bucket to the end of a rope in order to fill the basin the first time - the bucket and rope were still standing in the corner of the cabin. Dean retrieved them. The bucket barely fit out the porthole, and when it popped through and hit the water below the waves almost tore the rope out of Dean's hands. But he held on, hauled it back up, and emptied it into the basin.

Maybe it was because he had been distracted before, but it seemed that the basin had become full a lot faster when Sam was the one doing the work. Ten bucketsful later, the water in the basin was no more than the depth of a puddle. But Dean offered Castiel his hand and said, "You getting in or what?" and this time, Castiel took it. He pressed on Dean's hand, trusting his weight to him as he climbed back into the life-giving water. There wasn't even enough to cover the tops of his tentacles. He swished the cold, clean water contentedly, anyway.

Dean tossed the bucket out of the porthole again. And again. He didn't bother to track the time, though the height of the moon in the sky told him that he was working his way through his prime sleeping time. He muffled his yawns in his sleeve and kept drawing water until the basin was full and his arms were sore.

"Better?" he said.

Castiel replied, "Yes," and curled up under the water to go to sleep.

Dean fell into bed. He was asleep before he even hit the mattress. Less than an hour later, the bell rang for the watch change. Dean rolled back out of bed, put on his boots and his coat, and went out to take his shift.

From under the water, Castiel silently watched him go.

-----

"What is this?" said Castiel, leaning over the side of the basin to inspect the handkerchief on the floor. Wrapped up in the handkerchief were a hard tack biscuit and a chunk of salt pork.

"It's food," said Dean, gnawing on his own biscuit. "You eat it."

Castiel delicately wrapped the end of a tentacle around the biscuit, picked it up, and sniffed it.

"Come on, man, you haven't eaten in days. Aren't you hungry?" said Dean around a mouthful of biscuit.

"Yes," said Castiel. "But I'm not completely convinced that this is actually edible."

Dean had almost taken an extra ration for Castiel out of storage, but in the end his conscience had gotten the better of him. Who was he to steal from his crew's food stores? So he had wrapped half of his own ration up in a handkerchief and saved it for Castiel. He had even given away his goddamn pork, which was the only thing to eat onboard that had any kind of flavor. Now the pit of his stomach felt hollow, and there was Castiel sniffing his food with a frown as if he thought it might bite back if he tried to eat it.

Dean swallowed the last of his biscuit and stared at the pork by Castiel's basin. "Are you gonna eat it, or what?"

Castiel took a couple of nibbles of the biscuit. His face flattened out as if he'd just swallowed sand. When he took a bite of the salt pork, his eyebrows twitched upwards and he said, "This actually isn't so bad," but he could only get through a quarter of it before the taste overwhelmed him and he had to put it back down. He lifted one tentacle out of the water and used it to push the handkerchief and its remaining contents across the floor towards Dean's feet. "Have it," he said despondently.

As Dean devoured what remained of the food, he said in between bites, "You gotta eat something."

"Don't you have any fresh fish?"

Dean shrugged. "We have dried fish."

"Everything in this place is dry," Castiel pouted.

He had a point. The biscuits were so dry that Dean's mouth felt like cotton after chewing through half of one. He swallowed the last bite whole to avoid having to work up enough saliva to dissolve it. "Yeah. Problem is, the only water we've got around here is the open ocean and the bilge." It took him a few seconds, but then he perked up with a, "Oh! Dude, I've got an idea."

"What is it?" said Castiel, but Dean was already on his way out the door.

Half the crew was below decks, enjoying their dinner. Anna was commanding the other half. The work was as minimal as it possibly could be on a sailing ship - the wind was with them, the sea was calm, the weather was fair, and they all knew the route well. Anna almost looked bored until Dean sidled up to her saying, "Hey, wanna help me do something stupid?"

"Yes," she said without hesitation. Her shoulders drooped under the weight of long-suffering acceptance. "But only because if I say no, you'll just get someone else to help you, and they won't keep as good an eye on you as I will."

"Great," said Dean, ignoring her lack of enthusiasm. "I need you to make me a rope harness."

Now Anna looked interested. "Don't you think we should wait until tonight, when we have some privacy?" she said, the corner of her mouth quirking upwards.

"Nice thought," said Dean with a wink. "But I said we're doing something stupid, not something sexy."

"How stupid?"

Dean told her.

Anna covered her eyes with her hand. "I'll get some rope," she said. She had long since learned that there was no point in arguing with him. She knotted him into a harness - crossing the ropes around his hips, between his legs, under his arms, and over his shoulders - and took hold of the free end of the rope that was attached to the final knot just above his belly button. Dean started climbing over the edge of the railing and rappelling down the side of the ship as Anna muttered, "This really is incredibly stupid."

"Just hold on to the rope, okay?" Dean shouted as he dropped below the level of deck. His feet were planted against the hull of the ship, but his weight was resting on the harness. He shuffled his feet to keep himself steady as he neared the water. There, in the trough of each wave, he could see dark patches on the wood below the water line. Wherever the paint had chipped away or worn through, sea life was clinging to The Impala. Scum and slime, tiny plants, but also, farther down, mussels and barnacles that were just big enough to be worth eating. It was a crying shame that Dean had let his ship get into such poor condition, and he meant to give her a good scrub and a re-paint as soon as he had the time and money. But in the meantime, he had a supply of shellfish readily available. All he had to do to get at them was risk drowning. Again.

Anna played slack out into the rope as Dean walked his way downwards. "I am holding onto the rope," she sighed, and Dean grinned up at her.

Soon the waves were lapping over his shoes. He kept going until he could reach the bigger mussels, until he was hips-deep in water. The sea was calm and the day was warm, but the water was still chilly and choppy enough that he would have trouble keeping his head in the air if he were to fall in completely. He glanced up. The rope that held him disappeared over the railing, the angle of it pulled taut by his weight. He couldn't see Anna anymore, but he knew she wouldn't let him fall.

Prying mussels off of wood was harder than he expected. He cursed every time he sliced his fingers on their edges, and he cursed louder every time they came free with a sliver of his ship still attached to their sticky little feet. Slowly, his pockets filled with them until they were bulging.

"Aren't you done yet?" Anna called down to him.

Dean yanked one more mussel off the hull, stuffed it in his pocket, and began climbing the rope back up to the deck. Anna's arms were beginning to shake, but she didn't loosen her grip until Dean was safely back over the railing.

They had drawn a bit of a crowd while Dean was down there. Every sailor who didn't have anything pressing to do had gathered to watch Dean curiously. Now they huddled around him where he sat on the deck, dripping wet from his armpits down, shellfish spilling out of his pockets.

"What are those for?" someone asked.

Dean shrugged. "Just wanted something to eat that hadn't been sitting in the hold for weeks."

Anna picked up a mussel from the deck by Dean's hip. "I know the feeling," she said as she inserted her thumbnails between the two halves of the shell. As if it were the easiest thing in the world, she pried the thing open and slurped the chewy, juicy organs out like she was slurping soup out of a spoon.

"Oh God," said Dean, barely holding back a gag. "I was gonna cook them first!"

"Why?" said Anna as she picked up three more and walked away, eating them one by one.

Dean replaced the rest of the spilled mussels in his pockets. He milled around the deck until the crew lost interest in his latest escapade and went back to work. Only when he was sure he wasn't being scrutinized did he slink back to his room.

Cas's head was resting on the edge of the basin, watching the door. When Dean came in, he said, alarmed, "Why are you all wet?"

Dean beamed. "Got you something," he said, just before he leaned over the edge of the basin and turned his pockets inside out. Dozens of mussels plopped into the water.

"Where did you get these?" said Castiel, picking one of the bigger ones up and inspecting it.

Dean flopped onto the bed and turned so that he could enjoy the expression on Castiel's face. "Had 'em all along," he said. "I was holding out on you."

"Why do you resort to obvious lies in order to highlight absurdity and avoid answering questions?"

"It's called sarcasm, Cas."

"I know what sarcasm is." Castiel squinted at the mussel, then at Dean. "You didn't put yourself in any danger to acquire these, did you?"

"Eh, not much," said Dean.

Castiel inserted his thumbnails between the two halves of the shell, pried it open, and sucked out the organs hungrily. Dean couldn't keep from pulling a face, but Castiel's contented smile kept him from being too grossed out.

"Thank you," said Castiel.

A prickle of warmth spread from Dean's cheeks down to his chest. "No problem," he replied.