Surface Tension (Chapter 5)
New chapter of the pirate!merman!tentacle!porn AU that is ruining my life.
Chapter summary: Sam chats with Bobby, and Dean contemplates telling his crew about Cas.
For Rae.
Previous chapters: 1| 2| 3| 4
-----
Heavy clouds hung suspended above Stanford. The road that led from town out to Singer's salvage yard was awash in gray. When Sam reached Bobby's shack and knocked on the door, the first raindrops were beginning to fall.
Whether because it was still light out, or because he was expecting the visit, Bobby answered the door sans firearm. "What do you want?"
"The other night made me think," said Sam, shuffling his feet. "I don't come to see you often enough."
"You're damn right. But what do you want?"
Sam stared, then thought, then sighed. "I want to talk about Dean," he said.
"That's what I thought," said Bobby, opening the door wide.
Chairs ranging from spindly to overstuffed were nestled between stacks of books and seafaring souvenirs. Sam found a seat that looked comfortable and took it after moving a dirty plate, a book of ancient runes, and three enormous fishhooks off of it.
Bobby joined him with two mugs of a strong-smelling liquid. Sam declined. Bobby downed his in two gulps. "So you want to whine about how your brother didn't stick around to be your best man?" he said with trepidation.
"No," said Sam. "I know he's going to Cuba on Crowley's orders. And I have an idea of the kind of shit he'd be in if he had delayed."
Bobby looked impressed, in spite of himself. "How'd you figure that?"
"I'm not an idiot," said Sam.
Bobby barked a laugh. "I forget that sometimes. Okay, what do you want to me to do about it?"
Sam rested his forehead on his hands. "Nothing. I want to know what I should do about it."
"Meaning?"
"Do you think it'd make a difference if I went back?"
Bobby set his mug down on a side table where it immediately disappeared into a crowd of similar mugs that had never been put away. "What, you mean sling the life you built here by the side of the road like it meant nothing? Leave your girl? Leave your work? Leave Stanford? Go be a crook with your brother, working against a debt you're never gonna pay off if you live a hundred years? Which you won't. You won't live twenty. You won't live ten. I'll be honest, you probably won't even live long enough to see Jess marry someone else."
Sam gulped. "Yeah, that's what I mean," he said.
"Sure, it'd make a difference. It'd make all the difference in the world." Sam almost despaired before Bobby added, "It'd break Dean's damn heart, is the difference it'd make."
"Huh?"
Bobby stood up and loomed over Sam, shaking a finger in his face. "You're out, Sam. And if you love your brother, you'll stay out."
"I can help him," Sam protested.
"Let me explain something to you," said Bobby as he made his way back through the maze of books and chairs to where he had left the rest of his booze. He poured himself another glass and said in between swigs, "This life you have right now, your job, the opportunity to meet someone you want to spend the rest of your life with... Dean bought you that. Dean stayed in so you could get out."
"You think I don't know that?"
"Do you?" Bobby snapped. "Then why the Hell do you think it'd do a lick of good for you to throw away the gift he gave you? Do you think he'd feel better knowing that he'd screwed up bad enough that you had to give up everything to go bail him out? As far as he's concerned, getting you out of the life was the best thing he ever did. Don't you dare take that away from him. And whether you think so or not, you deserve every ounce of happiness that you’ve found here. Don't you dare take this..." And here Bobby gestured with his glass in the general direction of Stanford. "...away from yourself."
The mug of grog that Sam had turned down was still sitting on the armrest of his chair. Reluctantly, he picked it up and took a sip. "So I'm supposed to just leave Dean to face Crowley on his own? What if he's in over his head?"
"Dean lives every day of his life in over his head," said Bobby. "But if it ever looks like he's not gonna come back up again, I'll be the first to dive in after him."
"You'll be the second," Sam corrected him with a faint smile.
"Technically, that fish kid beat us both to it."
Sam's smile slipped into a frustrated grimace, and he took another drink. "I don't know what to think about Castiel."
"I don't trust him," said Bobby quickly.
"You don't trust anybody," Sam laughed. Then he pointed out, "He saved Dean's life."
Bobby noticed that Sam's mug was getting low, so he poured him some more. Sam let him. "Don't get romantic on me, Sam," said Bobby. "No one saves anyone's life who doesn't have a good reason for it."
-----
Dean entered his cabin to find Cas hanging half-out of his basin, his chest against the rim, his elbows propped on Dean's bed. A few of his tentacles were poking above the water and waving absentmindedly, like a foot tapping in the air. He was holding Dean's copy of Frankenstein gingerly between his fingers. Every few seconds, he flipped the page and stared at the words intently.
"Can you even read?" said Dean.
Cas didn't take his eyes off the book. Flipping another page, he said, "It has pictures in it, too."
"You must think it's a really fucked-up story if you're just going by the pictures," Dean laughed. As he shucked his shoes and coat, he almost warned Cas not to get the book wet. Then he looked again at how careful Cas was already being to keep the paper away from the water, and he let it slide.
"I admit that I am perplexed," said Cas, flipping past several pages to get to the next illustration. It was an etching of the monster standing over the limp body of a young boy.
Dean tapped the side of the basin with his foot. "I'll tell you about it later," he said. "Now hop out, I gotta change your water."
Cas pulled from one side, and Dean lifted from the other, and together they slowly poured the stale water out of the basin. Dean had worried that dumping and refilling the thing every day would eventually flood his room, but the water seemed to find its way across the deck and through the wood just as rain and storm water would, eventually trickling uneventfully down to the bilge.
Cas sloshed through the quickly-disappearing water and crawled up on Dean's bed to curl back up with the book. He had taken to perching on Dean's bed in the evening, when his basin was unavailable. Dean found that he couldn't complain, not even when Cas's tentacles left slimy slicks on his sheets. It was worth it to see Cas propped up on one elbow, one hip jutting in the air, looking like a painting. Even his tentacles, which were usually a dark reddish-brown and textured like gravel, smoothed out and took on a bluish hue when he lounged among the blankets.
As Dean drew water up to refill the tub, Cas thumbed through a few more pages. But he soon gave up with a frustrated sigh and put the book aside. He scooted over to the edge of the bed, as close to Dean as he could get. "Does the large human really kill the young human boy?" he asked.
"What?" said Dean. He dumped another bucketful of water into the basin, then, "Oh! You mean the monster? Yeah, he kills the kid."
Cas flipped back through the book until he found the illustration again. He peered at the artist's rendition of a hulking beast, veins popping, limbs disproportionate, face disfigured. "Is it meant to be a monster?"
"That's what they call him in the book," said Dean.
Cas scooted even closer, until he had to wind one of his tentacles around the opposite leg of the bed to anchor himself lest he fall off. "Will you tell me the whole story?"
Dean chuckled as he thought about it. "Aw, Cas," he said. "I don't know if I remember everything that happens in it..."
Cas thrust the book in his face. "Then read it to me."
"I can't read and haul water at the same time."
Before Dean could chuck the bucket out the porthole again, one of Cas's tentacles snapped out to grab it. His skin rippled as dozens of suckers engaged, holding the bucket effortlessly. "I'll draw the water," he said. "You read to me."
Dean let go of the bucket reluctantly. "You sure? You're still hurt, and it's pretty heavy."
The look that Cas gave him could have peeled paint. "I am more than capable of lifting a bucket of water."
Dean surrendered with a nod, and took Cas's place on the bed. He picked up Frankenstein and thumbed back through to the title page.
At first, Cas sat on the floor and tried to pull the rope at an angle over the sill of the porthole. But he quickly realized that the extra friction was making his job harder than it needed to be. His tentacles puffed up and darkened with frustration. Dean didn't offer any suggestions. He just watched as Cas silently appraised the situation. Finally, Cas tentatively reached up toward the porthole cover - a circular window of iron and thick glass that stood open, swung inward. Cas attached his suckers to the glass and tested his weight against it. Then, when he was sure it would hold him, he wrapped four tentacles around its circumference and lifted himself off the ground. He wobbled, and Dean almost lurched forward to catch him, but soon he managed to attach all of his tentacles to the glass, the iron, or the wooden wall around. His suckers held tight, and his tentacles became firm with the effort.
From his new, higher angle, Cas pulled up the bucket of water easily. He emptied it into the basin.
Dean was so busy staring at the tentacled body plastered to his wall, lean arms pulling rope hand over hand, that he forgot that he was still holding a book.
When Cas caught Dean staring, his tentacles blushed blue. "Dean?" he said.
"Right," said Dean, clearing his throat as he lowered his eyes to the book and tried to stop wondering what else those tentacles could do if they were strong enough to hold a man in the air. "Uh, I gotta warn you. It's not a nice story."
"Just read it, Dean," said Castiel as he raised and dumped out another bucket.
"Okay. Um, yeah okay. I remember this now. It starts out with this guy Walton writing a letter to his sister. So this is Walton talking now: 'You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings. I arrived here yesterday, and my first task is to assure my dear sister of my welfare and increasing confidence in the success of my undertaking...'"
Cas kept his eyes on his work, pulling the bucket up again and again until his basin was full. With every twist of the story, with every change of intonation in Dean's voice, colors and textures washed over his skin like waves.
-----
Dean had never been terribly good at keeping secrets. He could smirk and charm his way around them, but eventually he was always found out. Part of it was self-sabotage, he was sure. After all, knowing something that no one else knows is a lonely feeling, and Dean never did well with loneliness.
He tried to tell himself that it would all be over in another week or two. He would drop Cas back off north of Stanford, and he would never have to worry about keeping a secret this big from his crew again. But still, every time someone addressed him or asked him a question, he had to bite his tongue to keep from answering, "There's a merman living in my cabin. He's been there for over a week now. He'd actually be really hot if he had legs instead of tentacles."
"Cas?" said Dean that evening, passing him half of their ration of salt pork.
Cas had finally developed a taste for the stuff. He swished his way across his little basin to take it from Dean's hand. "Yes?" he said.
"What do you figure would happen if my crew found out you were here?"
Cas had just taken a bite, but at Dean's words he stopped chewing abruptly. He squinted at Dean. He swallowed. "Well," he said slowly. "They'd kill me, wouldn't they?"
"Oh," said Dean with a gulp. "Yeah, well. I guess. I mean... would they really?"
"Of course they would," said Cas without hesitation. "If you allow yourself to be seen by humans, they will pursue you until they catch you, and then they will kill you. Every mer-child knows that."
"Funny," said Dean softly as he tried to work through the idea of humans as fabled murder-monsters. "I heard some pretty nasty stories about merfolk when I was a kid, too. About how you sabotage ships so they sink when they reach the open water. They say if you see a mer-person around your boat, you're better off burning it than sailing in it again."
"The difference is," Cas huffed, "our stories are true."
Dean gave a wry little laugh. "You telling me one of your kind never sank a ship?"
Cas pressed his lips together and looked sideways. "I'm sure there have been incidents," he admitted. "But it's not as if we're all on a ship-sinking crusade."
Dean spread his arms wide. "And you've been sharing a room with a human for this long, and you're not dead yet. Maybe the stories we heard were a little overblown."
They ate in uncomfortable silence for a while.
Then Dean ventured, "Why'd you sink our ships, anyway?"
"I didn't sink anyone's ships," Cas snapped. "But I've heard of it being done when your shipping routes interfered with our homes." A pause. Then, "Why do you kill us on sight?"
"I never killed anyone," said Dean. "No merfolk, that is. But I guess people do it... aw, fuck. Cause they're scared? Cause they don't know what they're looking at and they're too stupid to do anything but shoot it?"
"But you hunt us," Cas insisted.
Dean took a big bite to buy himself time to put his words together. "Yeah, well, there are other stories. Some old-timers say that you can earn fair winds for the rest of your life by eating a mermaid's heart."
"Her heart?" said Cas, horrified.
"Hers or his. I don't think gender matters a ton. And it's not the heart in all the stories. Sometimes they say you have to drink the blood. And, like, other organs are supposed to do other things, like give you powers or whatever." Cas's face looked more and more stricken, so Dean added, "It's bullshit. No one really believes it."
"You don't have to believe it to profit from it," Cas pointed out. "If you killed me and cut me into pieces, and one of these old-timers were willing to pay, how much could you sell me for?"
Enough to get out of debt, Dean thought. But what he said was, "I would never do that," and he meant it.
"My deepest gratitude," Cas deadpanned. "And are all your crew as honorable as you are?"
"I wouldn't call them honorable, but they wouldn't kill you just to make a buck," Dean muttered ruefully. Then he brightened, saying, "My first mate, though. She's the honorable one. She'd keep your secret. I mean, if you let me tell her. You can trust her."
"I don't think you understand, Dean," said Cas, munching on his pork, his voice deceptively calm. "I don't trust you."
-----
Dean saw it coming before Anna even opened her mouth. He recognized her smug smile, her graceful way of meandering across the deck towards him. The way she sidled up to him so that he could feel the cushion of her hip against his side.
"I'll meet you in your room tonight," she whispered. "Be ready for me."
Her voice - the tone of it, the words, the promise behind them - it went straight to his crotch, as effectively as if she'd stuck her hand down his trousers and squeezed. What she was offering him was exactly what he had been needing. A release. A surrender. A chance to let go of the anxiety and paranoia that had accompanied him on this trip - not due only to Cas's presence, but also to Crowley's looming influence. He was a bundle of nerves, and Anna knew exactly how to smooth him out.
So it almost physically pained him to have to say, "Sorry, I can't. I mean... some other time, definitely. I'm just not feeling it right now."
"Oh." The assured, commanding tone dropped out of her voice with a thud. She pulled away from him, increasing the distance between them from intimate to social.
"Sorry."
Anna shook her head vehemently. "There's no need to be sorry. It's just... hm. Right when I thought I was getting good at reading you."
As she walked away, for one desperate second Dean contemplated whether she would notice if he were to turn the basin of water over and hide Cas underneath it. For another second he wondered just how mad Cas would be if he were to bring Anna back to the cabin and explain that he'd had to betray Cas's confidence in the interest of kinky sex.
In the next second she was gone, back to her duties as if nothing had happened, and it was too late to change his mind.
He still had fifteen minutes left before his shift ended, but he stomped back to his cabin anyway. Everything was under control on deck. And he wouldn't be much use to anyone in the mood he was in now.
Cas was reclining against the edge of his basin, his tentacles draped over the side. When Dean slammed the door open, he flinched so badly that the skin of his tentacles bunched up into little ruffles and turned blood-red. But they relaxed back into a glossy brown as soon as Cas recognized Dean. "Good evening," he said.
Dean answered with a grunt. He clambered across the room and over the edge of the basin to his bed, unbuttoning his trousers as he went, and flopped onto his mattress. He seethed and grumbled the whole way.
"Are... you well?" Cas asked. He looked concerned. Not least because of Dean's crabby demeanor, but also because Dean was currently rolling onto his back and shuffling his trousers down around his knees to reveal his semi-hard cock. Cas had seen Dean in various states of undress before, of course, but he had never seen Dean take himself in his own hand with a purpose. And he seemed to immediately comprehend the difference.
His hand wrapped around the base of his cock, Dean turned to Cas with a sigh. Somehow, even that piercing stare wasn't doing anything to kill his libido. If anything, he was getting harder. He must have been even hornier than he'd thought. "Look," he said. "I need to blow off some steam. You don't mind, do you?"
"Not at all." Cas looked left, then right, then stared directly and curiously at Dean's cock as it nudged its way out of his foreskin. "Would... would you like me to face the wall? Or something?"
Dean blew out a frustrated burst of air. "Christ, Cas, I don't fucking care," he said as he began to jerk himself off.
At first, when he closed his eyes and began to work his wrist up and down rhythmically, he thought of Anna and all the terrible, wonderful things she might have done to him if he had taken her up on her invitation. Tests of endurance. Loving commands. Sweet rewards. That highly-polished wooden phallus with the flared base that she sometimes strapped to her pelvis with leather bands and paraded in front of him, making him beg before finally fucking him with it.
But as a lightness gripped his chest and a heaviness settled into his pelvis, as his hand jerked more and more frantically, as he began to pant out quiet little breaths to mask the deep moans he wished he could let out... he also found himself thinking of a cold embrace. Of smooth, slick limbs sliding over his skin to bind him as strong as rope and as gentle as holding hands. Of suckers attaching to his chest and thighs and the base of his cock, drawing the orgasm out of him.
Of being filled with strange appendages while kissing a familiar mouth.
When he came, his throat tight and his teeth gritted, he was careful, very careful, not to let his eyes slide over to where Cas was sitting, sloshing quietly in his water. But he had a feeling that Cas was not facing the wall.
-----
The night was dark, and even the chilly breeze off the ocean couldn't mask the faint mugginess in the air. They were nearing the Caribbean. Soon they would be off the safety of their sailing home and back into the thicket of swindlers and thieves that made up their dangerous line of work.
But instead of worrying about what they were going to do once they got to Havana, Anna was busy trying, and failing, to remember the last time Dean Winchester had turned her down for sex. Dean never turned anyone down for sex. Especially not Anna. Especially not at a time like this, with the stress of the job and Crowley's threats hanging over him, when his need for distraction should have been at an all-time high.
The bell for the change of watch broke her out of her reverie. As she handed over the wheel to the next batch of crew, she shook her head and smiled. Maybe her preoccupation with Dean's rebuttal had less to do with her concern with Dean and more to do with her own frustration, her own need for release. She let it go. There were more important things to worry about.
Instead of descending to her barracks, Anna wobbled her way sleepily to Dean's door. Sex wasn't in the cards tonight, but that didn't mean she couldn't snuggle up beside him for a while.
The door handle wouldn't turn. She jiggled it, trying to unstick it, and it took her several seconds to realize that it was locked. She stood back and stared at the door. She tried the handle one more time.
Dean's door was never locked.
As she stood in confused silence, just before she turned and tip-toed back to her own bed, she thought she heard the sound of water sloshing on the other side of the door.
-----
When Dean stepped out of his room the next morning, he was met by a small band of his crewmates. They stood in a semi-circle around his doorframe, staring him down and blocking his path. Dean slid out from behind the door and closed it behind him. He was careful never to open it far enough to expose Cas to the prying, waiting eyes.
"Can I help you with something?" said Dean brightly, though a note of warning growled in the undertones of his voice.
One man stepped forward. He had been on Dean's crew for a couple of months, but he was still new enough that Dean had to pause to remember his name - Creedy. By his swagger, and by the way everyone else in the little circle looked the slightest bit sheepish, Creedy seemed to be the mastermind of this little ambush. "You're keeping your door locked now?" he said.
"You got a problem with that?"
Creedy shook his head. "Your door is always open. You made a point of that when you hired me. Any man, no matter how lowly, can come into the captain's quarters and make himself heard. You going back on that policy?"
"I'll still listen to anything you have to say," said Dean. "But I'm enjoying a little bit of privacy on this trip. It's nothing to worry yourself about."
Creedy stepped forward, invading Dean's space. "Do I look worried to you?"
One of the other crew members piped up, "We're not accusing you of anything, Cap. It's just... why the change? You got something to hide?"
Dean glared them all down. "It sure sounds like you're accusing me of something."
"Exactly what kind of deal did you make with Crowley down there in The Inferno?" Creedy sneered. "Did he give you a nice bonus for you to ferret away for yourself?"
"Crowley didn't give me anything but sass and specs on the next job," said Dean evenly, measured. "You're out of line. You need to stand the fuck down."
But Creedy kept pushing. "Show us inside, if you've got nothing to hide."
And even though Dean did have something to hide, he felt his blood boil with anger rather than fear. "I'm the captain of this goddamn ship," he hissed. "I'm the one who pays you, even when that means going hungry myself or letting my ship fall the fuck apart because she needs repairs that I can't afford. Even when it means getting in deeper with Crowley, I take care of all of you first. There's nothing behind this door that any of you have any claim over. And you'd better believe that, because I'd say you owe me the benefit of the fucking doubt."
That was enough to make almost every crew member present lower their eyes in embarrassment and take a few steps back. There was a path for Dean to escape now, but he stood fast, guarding his door. Creedy hadn't noticed that the support had fallen out from under him. He still stood up to Dean like he had something to prove.
"Just let me take a look..." He reached past Dean and put his hand on the doorknob.
At first Dean thought the metallic click was his door opening. Then he belatedly realized that he had drawn his pistol and was pointing it at Creedy's face.
"I told you to stand down," said Dean in a voice that he didn't recognize.
Creedy took his hand off of Dean's door.
Dean blazed a glare down on Creedy, who would not meet his eyes. Then he turned his gaze on each person still standing in front of him. They all looked away, too. "Get to work," he said softly, and everyone obeyed.
He stopped Creedy with a hand on his shoulder before he could escape. "When we hit Havana," said Dean, "I want you off my ship. And don't come back."
Creedy went a little pale. "How am I supposed to get back to the States?"
"You can swim, for all I care."
Dean waited until Creedy and everyone else was well out of sight before he slipped back into his room, leaned against the door, and gave such a sigh of relief that it shook his body. He had pointed a lot of guns at a lot of people in his life, but he had never drawn on his own crew, and he had hoped never to have to. Now his hands were shaking so badly that it was all he could do to get the pistol back in its holster.
"Dean?" Cas was leaning with the heels of his hands on the edge of his basin, ear cocked to the door and straining to hear what was happening outside.
"It's okay. I got rid of them," said Dean. Then, after a hard swallow and a humorless chuckle, "You were right, weren't you? If Creedy had had his way, they would have killed you."
Cas lifted his right hand and stretched it out to Dean, palm cupped inward. And though Dean couldn't tell it if was an invitation to a hug or a handshake or... whatever... he found himself drawn irresistibly forward. He staggered one step, then two. Cas's hand hovered just in front of him. But he couldn't quite make himself take that last step to turn the motion into an embrace. He stopped just shy, and kneeled.
Because Cas couldn't reach to put his arm around Dean, he settled for gripping his shoulder. Just a single point of contact, but so strong that Dean felt as though Cas's fingers were searing an imprint onto him.
His eyes burned into Dean too, radiant, and beaming with something like gratitude.
Chapter summary: Sam chats with Bobby, and Dean contemplates telling his crew about Cas.
For Rae.
Previous chapters: 1| 2| 3| 4
-----
Heavy clouds hung suspended above Stanford. The road that led from town out to Singer's salvage yard was awash in gray. When Sam reached Bobby's shack and knocked on the door, the first raindrops were beginning to fall.
Whether because it was still light out, or because he was expecting the visit, Bobby answered the door sans firearm. "What do you want?"
"The other night made me think," said Sam, shuffling his feet. "I don't come to see you often enough."
"You're damn right. But what do you want?"
Sam stared, then thought, then sighed. "I want to talk about Dean," he said.
"That's what I thought," said Bobby, opening the door wide.
Chairs ranging from spindly to overstuffed were nestled between stacks of books and seafaring souvenirs. Sam found a seat that looked comfortable and took it after moving a dirty plate, a book of ancient runes, and three enormous fishhooks off of it.
Bobby joined him with two mugs of a strong-smelling liquid. Sam declined. Bobby downed his in two gulps. "So you want to whine about how your brother didn't stick around to be your best man?" he said with trepidation.
"No," said Sam. "I know he's going to Cuba on Crowley's orders. And I have an idea of the kind of shit he'd be in if he had delayed."
Bobby looked impressed, in spite of himself. "How'd you figure that?"
"I'm not an idiot," said Sam.
Bobby barked a laugh. "I forget that sometimes. Okay, what do you want to me to do about it?"
Sam rested his forehead on his hands. "Nothing. I want to know what I should do about it."
"Meaning?"
"Do you think it'd make a difference if I went back?"
Bobby set his mug down on a side table where it immediately disappeared into a crowd of similar mugs that had never been put away. "What, you mean sling the life you built here by the side of the road like it meant nothing? Leave your girl? Leave your work? Leave Stanford? Go be a crook with your brother, working against a debt you're never gonna pay off if you live a hundred years? Which you won't. You won't live twenty. You won't live ten. I'll be honest, you probably won't even live long enough to see Jess marry someone else."
Sam gulped. "Yeah, that's what I mean," he said.
"Sure, it'd make a difference. It'd make all the difference in the world." Sam almost despaired before Bobby added, "It'd break Dean's damn heart, is the difference it'd make."
"Huh?"
Bobby stood up and loomed over Sam, shaking a finger in his face. "You're out, Sam. And if you love your brother, you'll stay out."
"I can help him," Sam protested.
"Let me explain something to you," said Bobby as he made his way back through the maze of books and chairs to where he had left the rest of his booze. He poured himself another glass and said in between swigs, "This life you have right now, your job, the opportunity to meet someone you want to spend the rest of your life with... Dean bought you that. Dean stayed in so you could get out."
"You think I don't know that?"
"Do you?" Bobby snapped. "Then why the Hell do you think it'd do a lick of good for you to throw away the gift he gave you? Do you think he'd feel better knowing that he'd screwed up bad enough that you had to give up everything to go bail him out? As far as he's concerned, getting you out of the life was the best thing he ever did. Don't you dare take that away from him. And whether you think so or not, you deserve every ounce of happiness that you’ve found here. Don't you dare take this..." And here Bobby gestured with his glass in the general direction of Stanford. "...away from yourself."
The mug of grog that Sam had turned down was still sitting on the armrest of his chair. Reluctantly, he picked it up and took a sip. "So I'm supposed to just leave Dean to face Crowley on his own? What if he's in over his head?"
"Dean lives every day of his life in over his head," said Bobby. "But if it ever looks like he's not gonna come back up again, I'll be the first to dive in after him."
"You'll be the second," Sam corrected him with a faint smile.
"Technically, that fish kid beat us both to it."
Sam's smile slipped into a frustrated grimace, and he took another drink. "I don't know what to think about Castiel."
"I don't trust him," said Bobby quickly.
"You don't trust anybody," Sam laughed. Then he pointed out, "He saved Dean's life."
Bobby noticed that Sam's mug was getting low, so he poured him some more. Sam let him. "Don't get romantic on me, Sam," said Bobby. "No one saves anyone's life who doesn't have a good reason for it."
-----
Dean entered his cabin to find Cas hanging half-out of his basin, his chest against the rim, his elbows propped on Dean's bed. A few of his tentacles were poking above the water and waving absentmindedly, like a foot tapping in the air. He was holding Dean's copy of Frankenstein gingerly between his fingers. Every few seconds, he flipped the page and stared at the words intently.
"Can you even read?" said Dean.
Cas didn't take his eyes off the book. Flipping another page, he said, "It has pictures in it, too."
"You must think it's a really fucked-up story if you're just going by the pictures," Dean laughed. As he shucked his shoes and coat, he almost warned Cas not to get the book wet. Then he looked again at how careful Cas was already being to keep the paper away from the water, and he let it slide.
"I admit that I am perplexed," said Cas, flipping past several pages to get to the next illustration. It was an etching of the monster standing over the limp body of a young boy.
Dean tapped the side of the basin with his foot. "I'll tell you about it later," he said. "Now hop out, I gotta change your water."
Cas pulled from one side, and Dean lifted from the other, and together they slowly poured the stale water out of the basin. Dean had worried that dumping and refilling the thing every day would eventually flood his room, but the water seemed to find its way across the deck and through the wood just as rain and storm water would, eventually trickling uneventfully down to the bilge.
Cas sloshed through the quickly-disappearing water and crawled up on Dean's bed to curl back up with the book. He had taken to perching on Dean's bed in the evening, when his basin was unavailable. Dean found that he couldn't complain, not even when Cas's tentacles left slimy slicks on his sheets. It was worth it to see Cas propped up on one elbow, one hip jutting in the air, looking like a painting. Even his tentacles, which were usually a dark reddish-brown and textured like gravel, smoothed out and took on a bluish hue when he lounged among the blankets.
As Dean drew water up to refill the tub, Cas thumbed through a few more pages. But he soon gave up with a frustrated sigh and put the book aside. He scooted over to the edge of the bed, as close to Dean as he could get. "Does the large human really kill the young human boy?" he asked.
"What?" said Dean. He dumped another bucketful of water into the basin, then, "Oh! You mean the monster? Yeah, he kills the kid."
Cas flipped back through the book until he found the illustration again. He peered at the artist's rendition of a hulking beast, veins popping, limbs disproportionate, face disfigured. "Is it meant to be a monster?"
"That's what they call him in the book," said Dean.
Cas scooted even closer, until he had to wind one of his tentacles around the opposite leg of the bed to anchor himself lest he fall off. "Will you tell me the whole story?"
Dean chuckled as he thought about it. "Aw, Cas," he said. "I don't know if I remember everything that happens in it..."
Cas thrust the book in his face. "Then read it to me."
"I can't read and haul water at the same time."
Before Dean could chuck the bucket out the porthole again, one of Cas's tentacles snapped out to grab it. His skin rippled as dozens of suckers engaged, holding the bucket effortlessly. "I'll draw the water," he said. "You read to me."
Dean let go of the bucket reluctantly. "You sure? You're still hurt, and it's pretty heavy."
The look that Cas gave him could have peeled paint. "I am more than capable of lifting a bucket of water."
Dean surrendered with a nod, and took Cas's place on the bed. He picked up Frankenstein and thumbed back through to the title page.
At first, Cas sat on the floor and tried to pull the rope at an angle over the sill of the porthole. But he quickly realized that the extra friction was making his job harder than it needed to be. His tentacles puffed up and darkened with frustration. Dean didn't offer any suggestions. He just watched as Cas silently appraised the situation. Finally, Cas tentatively reached up toward the porthole cover - a circular window of iron and thick glass that stood open, swung inward. Cas attached his suckers to the glass and tested his weight against it. Then, when he was sure it would hold him, he wrapped four tentacles around its circumference and lifted himself off the ground. He wobbled, and Dean almost lurched forward to catch him, but soon he managed to attach all of his tentacles to the glass, the iron, or the wooden wall around. His suckers held tight, and his tentacles became firm with the effort.
From his new, higher angle, Cas pulled up the bucket of water easily. He emptied it into the basin.
Dean was so busy staring at the tentacled body plastered to his wall, lean arms pulling rope hand over hand, that he forgot that he was still holding a book.
When Cas caught Dean staring, his tentacles blushed blue. "Dean?" he said.
"Right," said Dean, clearing his throat as he lowered his eyes to the book and tried to stop wondering what else those tentacles could do if they were strong enough to hold a man in the air. "Uh, I gotta warn you. It's not a nice story."
"Just read it, Dean," said Castiel as he raised and dumped out another bucket.
"Okay. Um, yeah okay. I remember this now. It starts out with this guy Walton writing a letter to his sister. So this is Walton talking now: 'You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings. I arrived here yesterday, and my first task is to assure my dear sister of my welfare and increasing confidence in the success of my undertaking...'"
Cas kept his eyes on his work, pulling the bucket up again and again until his basin was full. With every twist of the story, with every change of intonation in Dean's voice, colors and textures washed over his skin like waves.
-----
Dean had never been terribly good at keeping secrets. He could smirk and charm his way around them, but eventually he was always found out. Part of it was self-sabotage, he was sure. After all, knowing something that no one else knows is a lonely feeling, and Dean never did well with loneliness.
He tried to tell himself that it would all be over in another week or two. He would drop Cas back off north of Stanford, and he would never have to worry about keeping a secret this big from his crew again. But still, every time someone addressed him or asked him a question, he had to bite his tongue to keep from answering, "There's a merman living in my cabin. He's been there for over a week now. He'd actually be really hot if he had legs instead of tentacles."
"Cas?" said Dean that evening, passing him half of their ration of salt pork.
Cas had finally developed a taste for the stuff. He swished his way across his little basin to take it from Dean's hand. "Yes?" he said.
"What do you figure would happen if my crew found out you were here?"
Cas had just taken a bite, but at Dean's words he stopped chewing abruptly. He squinted at Dean. He swallowed. "Well," he said slowly. "They'd kill me, wouldn't they?"
"Oh," said Dean with a gulp. "Yeah, well. I guess. I mean... would they really?"
"Of course they would," said Cas without hesitation. "If you allow yourself to be seen by humans, they will pursue you until they catch you, and then they will kill you. Every mer-child knows that."
"Funny," said Dean softly as he tried to work through the idea of humans as fabled murder-monsters. "I heard some pretty nasty stories about merfolk when I was a kid, too. About how you sabotage ships so they sink when they reach the open water. They say if you see a mer-person around your boat, you're better off burning it than sailing in it again."
"The difference is," Cas huffed, "our stories are true."
Dean gave a wry little laugh. "You telling me one of your kind never sank a ship?"
Cas pressed his lips together and looked sideways. "I'm sure there have been incidents," he admitted. "But it's not as if we're all on a ship-sinking crusade."
Dean spread his arms wide. "And you've been sharing a room with a human for this long, and you're not dead yet. Maybe the stories we heard were a little overblown."
They ate in uncomfortable silence for a while.
Then Dean ventured, "Why'd you sink our ships, anyway?"
"I didn't sink anyone's ships," Cas snapped. "But I've heard of it being done when your shipping routes interfered with our homes." A pause. Then, "Why do you kill us on sight?"
"I never killed anyone," said Dean. "No merfolk, that is. But I guess people do it... aw, fuck. Cause they're scared? Cause they don't know what they're looking at and they're too stupid to do anything but shoot it?"
"But you hunt us," Cas insisted.
Dean took a big bite to buy himself time to put his words together. "Yeah, well, there are other stories. Some old-timers say that you can earn fair winds for the rest of your life by eating a mermaid's heart."
"Her heart?" said Cas, horrified.
"Hers or his. I don't think gender matters a ton. And it's not the heart in all the stories. Sometimes they say you have to drink the blood. And, like, other organs are supposed to do other things, like give you powers or whatever." Cas's face looked more and more stricken, so Dean added, "It's bullshit. No one really believes it."
"You don't have to believe it to profit from it," Cas pointed out. "If you killed me and cut me into pieces, and one of these old-timers were willing to pay, how much could you sell me for?"
Enough to get out of debt, Dean thought. But what he said was, "I would never do that," and he meant it.
"My deepest gratitude," Cas deadpanned. "And are all your crew as honorable as you are?"
"I wouldn't call them honorable, but they wouldn't kill you just to make a buck," Dean muttered ruefully. Then he brightened, saying, "My first mate, though. She's the honorable one. She'd keep your secret. I mean, if you let me tell her. You can trust her."
"I don't think you understand, Dean," said Cas, munching on his pork, his voice deceptively calm. "I don't trust you."
-----
Dean saw it coming before Anna even opened her mouth. He recognized her smug smile, her graceful way of meandering across the deck towards him. The way she sidled up to him so that he could feel the cushion of her hip against his side.
"I'll meet you in your room tonight," she whispered. "Be ready for me."
Her voice - the tone of it, the words, the promise behind them - it went straight to his crotch, as effectively as if she'd stuck her hand down his trousers and squeezed. What she was offering him was exactly what he had been needing. A release. A surrender. A chance to let go of the anxiety and paranoia that had accompanied him on this trip - not due only to Cas's presence, but also to Crowley's looming influence. He was a bundle of nerves, and Anna knew exactly how to smooth him out.
So it almost physically pained him to have to say, "Sorry, I can't. I mean... some other time, definitely. I'm just not feeling it right now."
"Oh." The assured, commanding tone dropped out of her voice with a thud. She pulled away from him, increasing the distance between them from intimate to social.
"Sorry."
Anna shook her head vehemently. "There's no need to be sorry. It's just... hm. Right when I thought I was getting good at reading you."
As she walked away, for one desperate second Dean contemplated whether she would notice if he were to turn the basin of water over and hide Cas underneath it. For another second he wondered just how mad Cas would be if he were to bring Anna back to the cabin and explain that he'd had to betray Cas's confidence in the interest of kinky sex.
In the next second she was gone, back to her duties as if nothing had happened, and it was too late to change his mind.
He still had fifteen minutes left before his shift ended, but he stomped back to his cabin anyway. Everything was under control on deck. And he wouldn't be much use to anyone in the mood he was in now.
Cas was reclining against the edge of his basin, his tentacles draped over the side. When Dean slammed the door open, he flinched so badly that the skin of his tentacles bunched up into little ruffles and turned blood-red. But they relaxed back into a glossy brown as soon as Cas recognized Dean. "Good evening," he said.
Dean answered with a grunt. He clambered across the room and over the edge of the basin to his bed, unbuttoning his trousers as he went, and flopped onto his mattress. He seethed and grumbled the whole way.
"Are... you well?" Cas asked. He looked concerned. Not least because of Dean's crabby demeanor, but also because Dean was currently rolling onto his back and shuffling his trousers down around his knees to reveal his semi-hard cock. Cas had seen Dean in various states of undress before, of course, but he had never seen Dean take himself in his own hand with a purpose. And he seemed to immediately comprehend the difference.
His hand wrapped around the base of his cock, Dean turned to Cas with a sigh. Somehow, even that piercing stare wasn't doing anything to kill his libido. If anything, he was getting harder. He must have been even hornier than he'd thought. "Look," he said. "I need to blow off some steam. You don't mind, do you?"
"Not at all." Cas looked left, then right, then stared directly and curiously at Dean's cock as it nudged its way out of his foreskin. "Would... would you like me to face the wall? Or something?"
Dean blew out a frustrated burst of air. "Christ, Cas, I don't fucking care," he said as he began to jerk himself off.
At first, when he closed his eyes and began to work his wrist up and down rhythmically, he thought of Anna and all the terrible, wonderful things she might have done to him if he had taken her up on her invitation. Tests of endurance. Loving commands. Sweet rewards. That highly-polished wooden phallus with the flared base that she sometimes strapped to her pelvis with leather bands and paraded in front of him, making him beg before finally fucking him with it.
But as a lightness gripped his chest and a heaviness settled into his pelvis, as his hand jerked more and more frantically, as he began to pant out quiet little breaths to mask the deep moans he wished he could let out... he also found himself thinking of a cold embrace. Of smooth, slick limbs sliding over his skin to bind him as strong as rope and as gentle as holding hands. Of suckers attaching to his chest and thighs and the base of his cock, drawing the orgasm out of him.
Of being filled with strange appendages while kissing a familiar mouth.
When he came, his throat tight and his teeth gritted, he was careful, very careful, not to let his eyes slide over to where Cas was sitting, sloshing quietly in his water. But he had a feeling that Cas was not facing the wall.
-----
The night was dark, and even the chilly breeze off the ocean couldn't mask the faint mugginess in the air. They were nearing the Caribbean. Soon they would be off the safety of their sailing home and back into the thicket of swindlers and thieves that made up their dangerous line of work.
But instead of worrying about what they were going to do once they got to Havana, Anna was busy trying, and failing, to remember the last time Dean Winchester had turned her down for sex. Dean never turned anyone down for sex. Especially not Anna. Especially not at a time like this, with the stress of the job and Crowley's threats hanging over him, when his need for distraction should have been at an all-time high.
The bell for the change of watch broke her out of her reverie. As she handed over the wheel to the next batch of crew, she shook her head and smiled. Maybe her preoccupation with Dean's rebuttal had less to do with her concern with Dean and more to do with her own frustration, her own need for release. She let it go. There were more important things to worry about.
Instead of descending to her barracks, Anna wobbled her way sleepily to Dean's door. Sex wasn't in the cards tonight, but that didn't mean she couldn't snuggle up beside him for a while.
The door handle wouldn't turn. She jiggled it, trying to unstick it, and it took her several seconds to realize that it was locked. She stood back and stared at the door. She tried the handle one more time.
Dean's door was never locked.
As she stood in confused silence, just before she turned and tip-toed back to her own bed, she thought she heard the sound of water sloshing on the other side of the door.
-----
When Dean stepped out of his room the next morning, he was met by a small band of his crewmates. They stood in a semi-circle around his doorframe, staring him down and blocking his path. Dean slid out from behind the door and closed it behind him. He was careful never to open it far enough to expose Cas to the prying, waiting eyes.
"Can I help you with something?" said Dean brightly, though a note of warning growled in the undertones of his voice.
One man stepped forward. He had been on Dean's crew for a couple of months, but he was still new enough that Dean had to pause to remember his name - Creedy. By his swagger, and by the way everyone else in the little circle looked the slightest bit sheepish, Creedy seemed to be the mastermind of this little ambush. "You're keeping your door locked now?" he said.
"You got a problem with that?"
Creedy shook his head. "Your door is always open. You made a point of that when you hired me. Any man, no matter how lowly, can come into the captain's quarters and make himself heard. You going back on that policy?"
"I'll still listen to anything you have to say," said Dean. "But I'm enjoying a little bit of privacy on this trip. It's nothing to worry yourself about."
Creedy stepped forward, invading Dean's space. "Do I look worried to you?"
One of the other crew members piped up, "We're not accusing you of anything, Cap. It's just... why the change? You got something to hide?"
Dean glared them all down. "It sure sounds like you're accusing me of something."
"Exactly what kind of deal did you make with Crowley down there in The Inferno?" Creedy sneered. "Did he give you a nice bonus for you to ferret away for yourself?"
"Crowley didn't give me anything but sass and specs on the next job," said Dean evenly, measured. "You're out of line. You need to stand the fuck down."
But Creedy kept pushing. "Show us inside, if you've got nothing to hide."
And even though Dean did have something to hide, he felt his blood boil with anger rather than fear. "I'm the captain of this goddamn ship," he hissed. "I'm the one who pays you, even when that means going hungry myself or letting my ship fall the fuck apart because she needs repairs that I can't afford. Even when it means getting in deeper with Crowley, I take care of all of you first. There's nothing behind this door that any of you have any claim over. And you'd better believe that, because I'd say you owe me the benefit of the fucking doubt."
That was enough to make almost every crew member present lower their eyes in embarrassment and take a few steps back. There was a path for Dean to escape now, but he stood fast, guarding his door. Creedy hadn't noticed that the support had fallen out from under him. He still stood up to Dean like he had something to prove.
"Just let me take a look..." He reached past Dean and put his hand on the doorknob.
At first Dean thought the metallic click was his door opening. Then he belatedly realized that he had drawn his pistol and was pointing it at Creedy's face.
"I told you to stand down," said Dean in a voice that he didn't recognize.
Creedy took his hand off of Dean's door.
Dean blazed a glare down on Creedy, who would not meet his eyes. Then he turned his gaze on each person still standing in front of him. They all looked away, too. "Get to work," he said softly, and everyone obeyed.
He stopped Creedy with a hand on his shoulder before he could escape. "When we hit Havana," said Dean, "I want you off my ship. And don't come back."
Creedy went a little pale. "How am I supposed to get back to the States?"
"You can swim, for all I care."
Dean waited until Creedy and everyone else was well out of sight before he slipped back into his room, leaned against the door, and gave such a sigh of relief that it shook his body. He had pointed a lot of guns at a lot of people in his life, but he had never drawn on his own crew, and he had hoped never to have to. Now his hands were shaking so badly that it was all he could do to get the pistol back in its holster.
"Dean?" Cas was leaning with the heels of his hands on the edge of his basin, ear cocked to the door and straining to hear what was happening outside.
"It's okay. I got rid of them," said Dean. Then, after a hard swallow and a humorless chuckle, "You were right, weren't you? If Creedy had had his way, they would have killed you."
Cas lifted his right hand and stretched it out to Dean, palm cupped inward. And though Dean couldn't tell it if was an invitation to a hug or a handshake or... whatever... he found himself drawn irresistibly forward. He staggered one step, then two. Cas's hand hovered just in front of him. But he couldn't quite make himself take that last step to turn the motion into an embrace. He stopped just shy, and kneeled.
Because Cas couldn't reach to put his arm around Dean, he settled for gripping his shoulder. Just a single point of contact, but so strong that Dean felt as though Cas's fingers were searing an imprint onto him.
His eyes burned into Dean too, radiant, and beaming with something like gratitude.