the wreck (Happy Birthday to a Dragons)
Title: the wreck
Author: July
Rating: R (Watchmen R)
Genre: Het
Characters Dean, Dean/OFC, more Dean
Spoilers: none
Disclaimer: I don’t own them. And that’s probably for the best, really.
Notes: Written in a rushed and haphazard manner for the birthday of writer and fangirl non pareil pdragon76. Seriously without beta. As in, I wrote this in chunks in between classes while trying to learn Finnish vocabulary. Please, please tell me if you see anything just outstandingly wrong. Dean would be 23 in this one.
Summary: Oh, the hell with it. This is shameless fangirl pandering, and I can only hope it strikes your fancy. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DRAGONS!
the wreck
Dean woke up and wished he hadn't. It was muggy and warm, and the bed didn't have any top sheets. It felt like something shit on his brain and then died in his mouth. And the room was moving. Jesus Christ, where am I? When no answer was forthcoming, he decided to try standing up. The floor was moving, too. Not a whole lot, but still-- Houseboat. Houseboat, spare cabin, Lou, shipwreck, Cuban fisherman's bar, rum. Illegal, potent, Cuban rum.
"Lou?" he croaked, burped, and put his fist against his lips.
"In here, Bowlegs."
"That's not funny." He lurched to his feet, putting a hand on the bulkhead for support, and swallowed cautiously. "What happened last night?"
"You drink like a girl is what happened."
He rounded the corner into the salon and almost fell over. He closed his eyes tight and tried hard to think about toothpaste. The air was heavy with the smell of marina water, French cigarettes, and Spanish omelet. Lou was at the stove in a wife-beater and underwear, a coffin nail in one hand and a tumbler in the other.
"Hair of the dog?"
Dean's eye twitched.
"I hope you like your eggs runny."
He scrambled for the deck, managed the stairs and the cockpit, and hit the transom on his knees. He did his best to keep his eyes closed in between heaves, because as it turned out 'feeding the fishes' wasn't a euphemism after all. Nothing made the situation worse than the sight of a googly-eyed little creature eating your puke.
"You done tossing your cookies, Bowlegs?"
Dean peeled himself away from the transom and mostly crawled back into the cockpit, lowering himself onto deck with care. Maybe he overdid it last night. Maybe. But when the only girl in bar was egging you on, it was hard to say no. Dean just wished he weren't such an easy target.
"Seriously, are you finished yet? Nobody drowns on my boat, and that includes choking on your own vomit. So let me know if I need to come up there and hold your hair back."
Lou was kind of a bitch.
][
"Dad, it's me. First of all, I can't believe you didn't tell me Lou was a girl. I introduced myself and asked where her hunter friend was, and she almost kicked me in the nuts. I hope you think that shit's funny, man. Anyway. There's...there's something a little shonky with this job. First of all, I'm not entirely sure this is still America. I don't even know what the hell a conch is. And there's more. We can't find a record of any deaths. Everything lines up, the dead divers, the phantom gunfire, all of it. But nobody died. The whole thing went down under tow, not a soul on board to haunt it. 'S weird, right?"
][
"I don't do shorts, sweetheart."
"It's board shorts or a wet suit. Now I can give you sunscreen for your legs, but there's nothing I can do for the kind of crotch rot that comes with wearing neoprene all day."
Dean decided that discretion was the better part of sartorial valor. He settled for the board shorts, Ramones t-shirt, and sunglasses. Lou gave him a once over, smiled, and tossed him the No-Ad.
"Lookin' good, Bowlegs."
Dean flipped her the bird. Lou, for her part, was wearing a bikini and a ball cap over her blond hair. In the seventy-two hours he'd known her, she hadn't bothered to cover up more than one half of herself at a time. He couldn't say he disapproved.
"Do my back?" she asked, like she could read his mind. He squirted some sunscreen onto his hand, she turned around, and he went to work. She was wiry and flat as a board, with what they called a 'Pixie Cut' but just looked like boy hair to him. It wasn't a normal kind of pretty, but Dean had always prided himself on not having a type. And then there were the tattoos.
Under his hands, her shoulders were firm and covered by the broad reach of a huge Eastern cross that stretched from the base of her neck to the last dip in her spine. She let her head fall forward, and for a moment the sun caught every single one of the dozen gold rings up and down her left ear. Her bellybutton was pierced too, with a small black pearl. There was a rooster on the top of her left foot, and a pig on the other, and a nautical star on the inside of each wrist. On the left and right sides of her waist, just under her ribs, were a red and green ship light, respectively. She had HOLD FAST on her knuckles and an anchor on her left bicep, a fully rigged schooner on her right.
Lou took her sailing very seriously. He'd tried, but she wasn't willing to give up much of her life story. She was in the Coast Guard until she wasn't. Then she was a competitive sailor until she wasn't. Then she was engaged until she wasn't. She'd given up that tidbit shortly before Dean had gone back for last night's lethal round of Cuba Libres and his memory started to skip.
"Come on, Bowlegs." She put on her polarized Oakleys and led him to another part of the marina. The bottom of Dean's feet burned on the hot cement docks, but it didn't appear to bother her at all. Come to think of it, she didn't appear to wear shoes at all. Not at the bar downtown where she'd met him, not at the bar last night where she'd drunk him under the table, and not today on the baking, ridged concrete.
"Let's go. I want to hit the tide right."
They stopped in front of a utilitarian Zodiac Pro, flat bottomed and fitted with an outboard motor that looked impressive, even by Dean's standards. He wasn't an engineer, but his gut told him that horsepower plus almost flat-bottomed boat plus light weight plastic everything equaled fast. Part of him itched to hold the throttle.
Lou sighed in contentment. "Her name is Bulfinch."
"Bulfinch? That's...poetic."
"First of all, you will treat Bulfinch with the respect she deserves," Lou said gravely.
"So any cock and Bulfinch jokes are out of the--fuck!" He was too slow, and now she had him by the ear.
"No Bulfinch cracks. Also? No whistling on board, or you'll be cleaning the deck with your tongue. Got it?"
"I got it, Jesus." He stood back, rubbing his abused ear. No whistling, no Rocky and Bulfinch.
"Good. Nobody drowns on my boat. Now get on. Right foot first."
The Bulfinch was fast. Very fast. Also, bumpy. Still, the sensation of flying over the water was new. When you moved like that, the stagnant Florida heat fell away, the wind was suddenly fast, and your focus was pulled out of you and into the blue. Lou stood to steer, cap backwards on her head, and Dean had no choice but to stand beside her. He'd tried sitting down once, but that had ended badly for a man wearing board shorts and only board shorts. But standing right next to her was hazardous for the same reason. She was warm, lithe, and smelled like sunscreen and almonds. And the bikini was very, very small.
"Wanna hear my theory?" she half-yelled above the motor. Dean nodded. "So. No reported ghosts on the ship, even while she was in combat. Even after her decommissioning, no ghosts. And trust me, sailors do not forget that shit. There wasn't any trouble from her at all until she sank."
"So who's haunting the wreck?"
"I think she is."
"Who?"
"The ship."
"Well that's outside the box."
"Think about it. The Amesbury was named for a pilot who died in action. She's a warship, that's her heart. It's who she is."
"You think Amesbury is haunting Amesbury?"
"Of course not. Don't be stupid. Look, every boat, every yacht, every ship has character. It has a spirit."
"Of course they do."
"They do, asshole. And Amesbury was a warrior. She was a destroyer class escort. She lived through D-Day and got a battle star for it. She was a soldier."
"And then they sold her for scrap." Dean stared out at the open water. It fit.
"And she sank under tow."
"Talk about insult to injury. So what's the plan here?"
"We're going to leave flowers."
"I'm sorry, what?"
"What do you usually do when you pay your respects at someone's grave?"
"Okay. Flowers."
"And some little American flags, to hit the patriot angle. I hit the store this morning while you were indisposed. Everything's in the port lazarette."
"Of course. Where else would it be?"
][
"Lucille?"
"No."
"Louise?"
"No."
"Luna?"
"Is that even a name?"
"It's a Thundercat."
"First of all, no it's not. She was the bad guy. Get that right, first off."
"Maybe it's Spanish for crazy lady."
"Maybe it's Sanskrit for fuck off and die."
][
"So when you said I had to wear board shorts."
"I was just fuckin' with you." Lou looked imminently pleased with herself, the first genuine smile he'd seen. "Not about the crotch rot, though. That's real shit. But with the shorts, I just wanted to see your legs."
"Well. I hope you're happy."
"You have no idea." The grin got wider. She put her cap and her sunglasses on the steering column and retrieved a mask and something that looked like one big fin from a cabinet on the right side, which she insisted on calling the starboard lazarette. They were moored up just off of the Amesbury, water rocking the Zodiac gently.
"So now what?"
"Just hand me shit when I tell you to. You're surface support, Bowlegs."
"That's real original, by the way. Never heard that one before."
Then she honest to fuck giggled. "How 'bout Sag-Ass?"
Dean's jaw dropped.
"Bridge too far?"
He opened his mouth to speak, but she just jumped overboard. She took a little time to spit extensively inside her mask, wiping it around the interior. One short rinse and then she was ready for the monofin.
"You're gonna look like a mermaid," he passed it to her.
"Don't be stupid. Mermaids don't have legs at all." It took a little maneuvering, but she got it on fairly quickly. "I'm just going to go down and have a look."
"You don't want, like...a tank of air or something?"
"What am I, an amateur? Just stay up here and try not to break anything." She took a few heaving, quick breaths, and then she was gone. The clarity of the water left everything a bright azure. He wondered why water looked different on the West Coast. Why everything was so much clearer here than Palo Alto.
Dean watched her descend for a moment and went looking for the port laza---the cabinet on the left to see what she'd picked up at the store. He opened it and there was nothing. Well, there was rope. Or line, or what the fuck ever. But not a single flower or flag or any of that. I fucking knew there was something shonky about this job. He looked over the side for any sign of Lou. Nothing. It occurred to him that both her suit and her fin were a deep blue. If he didn't know where to look, he'd never spot her.
"Son of a bitch." He found another mask with a snorkel and a pair of normal fins. Getting into them didn't take that long, but he realized that she'd been under for at least a solid three minutes. Dean tried to replicate what she'd done, taking a few real fast, real deep breaths, and then he jumped.
][
"Wake up. I said wake up, you stupid son of a bitch!"
Dean made a semi-human noise.
"What part of surface support did you not understand, Bowlegs? Was it the surface part? I'm thinking it was the surface part."
That was closer to a moan of some kind.
"Because the next time I saw your sweet sag-ass, it was eight meters underwater! I said nobody drowns on my boat. Were you not listening?"
Definitely a whimper.
"Don't move, shitforbrains. I'm trying to wrap your ribs. I'm pretty sure they're just bruised. It's the flak I'm worried about."
"Gluh?"
"From the ack-ack guns, you worthless sheepfuck. I'm gonna have to pick it out like cherry pits."
"Merf?"
"The ship fired on you. You pissed her off."
"Lyup?"
"This is why I told you to stay on Bulfinch. This is so far beyond you, Dean Winchester, you have no fucking idea. Now close your eyes and think about your mama. This is going to hurt."
][
"You back?"
"Yep." Dean pushed himself on his elbows, sucking in air through his teeth. Lou put out the cigarette she was working on. The ashtray was full.
"It's the ribs. I wrapped them, and your chest, but I don't have anything stronger than a mojito for the pain." She gestured to the drinks on the table.
"'Sokay. I shouldn't have gone in after you." He looked around. It was the houseboat, and the sun had already set. He'd lost some time.
"No, you shouldn't." Lou put her face in her hands. She'd changed into some sort of dress that looked like a glorified tank-top, and her voice was cracked. "But I shouldn't have brought you at all. I shouldn't have--it was a mistake. I was careless."
"Naw. It's okay. Oh God." He grimaced. "Wait, what happened to my chest again?" He looked down, the whole thing felt raw, like he'd been sunburned and then stung by wasps.
"Anti-aircraft artillery."
"They left those on the boat when they scrapped it?"
"You can take the ship out of the war, but you can't take the war out of the ship. Christ." She exhaled in disgust. "I'm so pissed at myself, I can't even tell you."
"Hey, look." Dean pushed himself to sitting, grimacing. "No harm no foul. Besides, I'm the one who jumped off the boat."
Lou laughed, bunched her fingers in her short hair.
"You gonna tell me what happened?"
"Nope." She took a long pull on her own mojito. "People like me make enemies," she studied her feet, the rooster and the pig. "One day, you'll understand. But people like me make enemies. So no, I'm not gonna tell you what happened."
"Yeah, well, I think that's bull--"
"I was supposed to get married today."
"--shit."
"But he died last year."
"I, uh, I'm sorry." That was the best he could do with that kind of segue. His brain tried to shift gears, catch up with the conversation, put the pieces together.
"I shouldn't have brought you, shoulda made you stay, or just left you on the transom. But I kinda wanted to be a hero on my wedding day." She looked down at her left hand. "You got a family secret, Dean?"
He took as deep a breath as he could, exhaled. She nodded and spoke, and her voice was strained.
"Yeah. Me, too. I'm not gonna tell you what happened."
They drank in silence for a while.
][
They were out of limes. Dean had passed the point of caring, but Lou seemed to think it was important.
"You cant just...not mojitos. Not without limes!" She slapped her palm onto the salon table. "Not on my boat, sir! Not on my boat!"
"You're not driving to get these limes, are you?"
"Oh hell no. Seven-eleven's on the street behind us"
"And they carry limes?"
"This is Key West," she said. "Everyone with a business license carries limes, brown sugar, and DEET. Go change out of your trunks. Seriously, you're gonna get crotch rot."
"Is that even an actual thing?"
"You really wanna find out?"
The thing is, though, when you were working in a spare cabin approximately the size of an airline bathroom, with bad ribs and a chest that had recently been seasoned with vintage shrapnel, the little things got complicated. Dean got the board shorts off, no problem. And then the briefs went okay, because hey, nothing to button or fasten. But the jeans. He was trying to keep his left arm as close to his ribs as possible, and not cross his arms over his chest at all, and that made working the button fly all but impossible.
He was still working on buttons five and six when Lou got back.
"Bowlegs? You down here?"
"Yeah, uh...just..."
"Oh." She appeared in the doorway of the cabin, leaning somewhat lazily against the bulkhead. Dean was glad it was dark, because she was ogling and now he was blushing.
"I'm gonna fix a couple more drinks."
"Right-o." Right-o? Who the hell says that? Butch up, Winchester, I mean Jesus. In the galley, there was the chink of glass, the sound of mint being ground up in a pestle, limes being squeezed, and sugar being mixed. She came back, a highball glass in each hand, and a look on her face that Dean didn't recognize for a moment. I'll be damned. She's putting the moves on me. She passed him a drink, and they stood in the cabin where Dean's head brushed the ceiling. The light from the salon illuminated her from behind, striking her short, sun-bleached hair and her limbs and her tattoos and the earrings.
"So tell me. You want me to help you button up those jeans, or you want me to help you take them off?"
"Off." He cleared his throat. "I want you to take them off."
She took a sip, set it down on the small ledge under the opened hatches. Then she knelt in the narrow passage between the bunk and the wall, and she unbuttoned so slowly there was no mistaking her intent. She stood back up slowly and leaned in close, taking advantage of the cramped space.
"So the 'Bowlegs' joke. That was you flirting?"
"I never said I didn't like 'em."
Dean grinned and pushed her playfully into the wall opposite the bed. He stood, pinning her feet between his, and leaned down into her neck. She had goosebumps, and she smelled like limes. He planted a crushing kiss on her lips, knocking the back of her head against the wall.
"That was for making fun of my ass."
Lou responded by raising her hands, gripping his shoulders, and spinning him. It was his turn to hit the wall, and she didn't make it gentle.
"Ngh." He grimaced, ribs jostled.
"That was for assuming I was a man." She placed two hands over the fine gauze on his chest and leaned on them. Dean's breath hissed out between his teeth, the raw, picked over skin burned. "And that's for jumping in after me."
Dean made a token effort to step away, but she pushed him back into the wooden paneling. Dean groaned again, and sweat beaded his forward. His chest burned and his side throbbed, but the rest of his body had no complaints whatsoever.
"You like it, don't you." She reached down and copped a quick feel that told her everything she apparently needed to know. "Oh this is gonna be good."
Then it was just a race to naked. It didn't take long, 'cause he was almost there anyway, and it turned out that Lou was an underwear-optional kind of girl and fuck it if that wasn't making him even harder. The cabin wasn't easy to maneuver in, and they jostled up against the bulkheads a couple times trying to negotiate it. Dean ended up on his back, Lou on top doing truly obscene things with her tongue, the pearl stud in her navel rubbing against his lower belly, until he gave up.
"Now," he gritted out. "Now."
She straddled him--Finally. Jesus, God. She's crazy.--and put one hand next to his head and the other on his left side. Merciless, she put weight on the abused ribs.
"Fuck, Lou," he moaned. "That hurts."
"I know," she whispered into his ear. "And you like it. And I like it." She dug her nails in and he winced. "God help me, I really like it."
He gritted his teeth and grunted, breath coming short. She licked her lips, laughed, and removed the pressure. For a moment, she hovered over his face. Then with surprising care, she kissed his cheek.
"Dean," she murmured. "How about we forget the family secrets for a little while. How about that."
He swallowed and bucked his hips up into hers She made a little noise of surprise and put the hand back on his ribs, squeezing at random intervals. He reached up, gripping her tight enough to bruise and watched her bite her lips. And that's how they were, Dean leaving marks on her with his hands, gasping with the ache in his chest and the ache of being inside her until they were the same ache, the same ache that filled him up and washed him over. He felt her body tense and release and when she cried out like it hurt her, he came with a wounded noise of his own.
She collapsed against him on the bunk, both of them sweaty and roughed up.
Lou pushed herself up on one shaky arm, retrieved the mojitos above them by the hatch. They were sweating in the heat, too. She sat, cross-legged, until they both caught their breath. The cabin was dark, just a crack of light shining in from the salon. It caught her earrings, but cast the rest of her face into darkness. Lou turned her head for a moment, fumbling for cigarettes, and he saw the three bars of the cross on her back before she lit up. The light, sound of water outside on the hull, the dense air, the smell of sex and tobacco, it all gave the cabin an aqueous feel.
Dean lay back, sore, and Lou smoked. He didn't want to be the first to speak, and after a while, it seemed like they'd reached a tacit agreement not to. When she was done with the cigarette, when they had finished the mojitos, she lay down next to him, careful with his ribs, and they slept. Dean dreamed about open water.
][
"Stay out of trouble, Sag-Ass."
Dean snorted. "Right back at ya, Lydia."
"Lydia?"
"The tattooed lady."
"You're a real charmer, you know that?" She gave him a weak punch in the ribs. "How 'bout them apples?"
"Nice," he grunted, stepping back a few paces. The ride to Stillwater was going to be hell, but he could hardly complain. "You're a delicate flower, Lou, really. Shrinking violet."
"Stay out of trouble, Dean." Her face softened. "Keep your head above water."
"Yeah," Dean swallowed. "You, too."
She stood back while he climbed into the Impala. "I mean it. And call me next time you're in Florida."
"Yeah?" He grinned, pleased in spite of himself. "You know, you never did tell me what Lou stands for."
"I didn't?" Lou tilted her head, smiled. "Think on it, then. See if it doesn't come to you."
The drama's done. Why then here does any one step forth? - Because one did survive the wreck.
-Moby Dick
No spoilers in the comments, please!
Author: July
Rating: R (Watchmen R)
Genre: Het
Characters Dean, Dean/OFC, more Dean
Spoilers: none
Disclaimer: I don’t own them. And that’s probably for the best, really.
Notes: Written in a rushed and haphazard manner for the birthday of writer and fangirl non pareil pdragon76. Seriously without beta. As in, I wrote this in chunks in between classes while trying to learn Finnish vocabulary. Please, please tell me if you see anything just outstandingly wrong. Dean would be 23 in this one.
Summary: Oh, the hell with it. This is shameless fangirl pandering, and I can only hope it strikes your fancy. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DRAGONS!
the wreck
Dean woke up and wished he hadn't. It was muggy and warm, and the bed didn't have any top sheets. It felt like something shit on his brain and then died in his mouth. And the room was moving. Jesus Christ, where am I? When no answer was forthcoming, he decided to try standing up. The floor was moving, too. Not a whole lot, but still-- Houseboat. Houseboat, spare cabin, Lou, shipwreck, Cuban fisherman's bar, rum. Illegal, potent, Cuban rum.
"Lou?" he croaked, burped, and put his fist against his lips.
"In here, Bowlegs."
"That's not funny." He lurched to his feet, putting a hand on the bulkhead for support, and swallowed cautiously. "What happened last night?"
"You drink like a girl is what happened."
He rounded the corner into the salon and almost fell over. He closed his eyes tight and tried hard to think about toothpaste. The air was heavy with the smell of marina water, French cigarettes, and Spanish omelet. Lou was at the stove in a wife-beater and underwear, a coffin nail in one hand and a tumbler in the other.
"Hair of the dog?"
Dean's eye twitched.
"I hope you like your eggs runny."
He scrambled for the deck, managed the stairs and the cockpit, and hit the transom on his knees. He did his best to keep his eyes closed in between heaves, because as it turned out 'feeding the fishes' wasn't a euphemism after all. Nothing made the situation worse than the sight of a googly-eyed little creature eating your puke.
"You done tossing your cookies, Bowlegs?"
Dean peeled himself away from the transom and mostly crawled back into the cockpit, lowering himself onto deck with care. Maybe he overdid it last night. Maybe. But when the only girl in bar was egging you on, it was hard to say no. Dean just wished he weren't such an easy target.
"Seriously, are you finished yet? Nobody drowns on my boat, and that includes choking on your own vomit. So let me know if I need to come up there and hold your hair back."
Lou was kind of a bitch.
][
"Dad, it's me. First of all, I can't believe you didn't tell me Lou was a girl. I introduced myself and asked where her hunter friend was, and she almost kicked me in the nuts. I hope you think that shit's funny, man. Anyway. There's...there's something a little shonky with this job. First of all, I'm not entirely sure this is still America. I don't even know what the hell a conch is. And there's more. We can't find a record of any deaths. Everything lines up, the dead divers, the phantom gunfire, all of it. But nobody died. The whole thing went down under tow, not a soul on board to haunt it. 'S weird, right?"
][
"I don't do shorts, sweetheart."
"It's board shorts or a wet suit. Now I can give you sunscreen for your legs, but there's nothing I can do for the kind of crotch rot that comes with wearing neoprene all day."
Dean decided that discretion was the better part of sartorial valor. He settled for the board shorts, Ramones t-shirt, and sunglasses. Lou gave him a once over, smiled, and tossed him the No-Ad.
"Lookin' good, Bowlegs."
Dean flipped her the bird. Lou, for her part, was wearing a bikini and a ball cap over her blond hair. In the seventy-two hours he'd known her, she hadn't bothered to cover up more than one half of herself at a time. He couldn't say he disapproved.
"Do my back?" she asked, like she could read his mind. He squirted some sunscreen onto his hand, she turned around, and he went to work. She was wiry and flat as a board, with what they called a 'Pixie Cut' but just looked like boy hair to him. It wasn't a normal kind of pretty, but Dean had always prided himself on not having a type. And then there were the tattoos.
Under his hands, her shoulders were firm and covered by the broad reach of a huge Eastern cross that stretched from the base of her neck to the last dip in her spine. She let her head fall forward, and for a moment the sun caught every single one of the dozen gold rings up and down her left ear. Her bellybutton was pierced too, with a small black pearl. There was a rooster on the top of her left foot, and a pig on the other, and a nautical star on the inside of each wrist. On the left and right sides of her waist, just under her ribs, were a red and green ship light, respectively. She had HOLD FAST on her knuckles and an anchor on her left bicep, a fully rigged schooner on her right.
Lou took her sailing very seriously. He'd tried, but she wasn't willing to give up much of her life story. She was in the Coast Guard until she wasn't. Then she was a competitive sailor until she wasn't. Then she was engaged until she wasn't. She'd given up that tidbit shortly before Dean had gone back for last night's lethal round of Cuba Libres and his memory started to skip.
"Come on, Bowlegs." She put on her polarized Oakleys and led him to another part of the marina. The bottom of Dean's feet burned on the hot cement docks, but it didn't appear to bother her at all. Come to think of it, she didn't appear to wear shoes at all. Not at the bar downtown where she'd met him, not at the bar last night where she'd drunk him under the table, and not today on the baking, ridged concrete.
"Let's go. I want to hit the tide right."
They stopped in front of a utilitarian Zodiac Pro, flat bottomed and fitted with an outboard motor that looked impressive, even by Dean's standards. He wasn't an engineer, but his gut told him that horsepower plus almost flat-bottomed boat plus light weight plastic everything equaled fast. Part of him itched to hold the throttle.
Lou sighed in contentment. "Her name is Bulfinch."
"Bulfinch? That's...poetic."
"First of all, you will treat Bulfinch with the respect she deserves," Lou said gravely.
"So any cock and Bulfinch jokes are out of the--fuck!" He was too slow, and now she had him by the ear.
"No Bulfinch cracks. Also? No whistling on board, or you'll be cleaning the deck with your tongue. Got it?"
"I got it, Jesus." He stood back, rubbing his abused ear. No whistling, no Rocky and Bulfinch.
"Good. Nobody drowns on my boat. Now get on. Right foot first."
The Bulfinch was fast. Very fast. Also, bumpy. Still, the sensation of flying over the water was new. When you moved like that, the stagnant Florida heat fell away, the wind was suddenly fast, and your focus was pulled out of you and into the blue. Lou stood to steer, cap backwards on her head, and Dean had no choice but to stand beside her. He'd tried sitting down once, but that had ended badly for a man wearing board shorts and only board shorts. But standing right next to her was hazardous for the same reason. She was warm, lithe, and smelled like sunscreen and almonds. And the bikini was very, very small.
"Wanna hear my theory?" she half-yelled above the motor. Dean nodded. "So. No reported ghosts on the ship, even while she was in combat. Even after her decommissioning, no ghosts. And trust me, sailors do not forget that shit. There wasn't any trouble from her at all until she sank."
"So who's haunting the wreck?"
"I think she is."
"Who?"
"The ship."
"Well that's outside the box."
"Think about it. The Amesbury was named for a pilot who died in action. She's a warship, that's her heart. It's who she is."
"You think Amesbury is haunting Amesbury?"
"Of course not. Don't be stupid. Look, every boat, every yacht, every ship has character. It has a spirit."
"Of course they do."
"They do, asshole. And Amesbury was a warrior. She was a destroyer class escort. She lived through D-Day and got a battle star for it. She was a soldier."
"And then they sold her for scrap." Dean stared out at the open water. It fit.
"And she sank under tow."
"Talk about insult to injury. So what's the plan here?"
"We're going to leave flowers."
"I'm sorry, what?"
"What do you usually do when you pay your respects at someone's grave?"
"Okay. Flowers."
"And some little American flags, to hit the patriot angle. I hit the store this morning while you were indisposed. Everything's in the port lazarette."
"Of course. Where else would it be?"
][
"Lucille?"
"No."
"Louise?"
"No."
"Luna?"
"Is that even a name?"
"It's a Thundercat."
"First of all, no it's not. She was the bad guy. Get that right, first off."
"Maybe it's Spanish for crazy lady."
"Maybe it's Sanskrit for fuck off and die."
][
"So when you said I had to wear board shorts."
"I was just fuckin' with you." Lou looked imminently pleased with herself, the first genuine smile he'd seen. "Not about the crotch rot, though. That's real shit. But with the shorts, I just wanted to see your legs."
"Well. I hope you're happy."
"You have no idea." The grin got wider. She put her cap and her sunglasses on the steering column and retrieved a mask and something that looked like one big fin from a cabinet on the right side, which she insisted on calling the starboard lazarette. They were moored up just off of the Amesbury, water rocking the Zodiac gently.
"So now what?"
"Just hand me shit when I tell you to. You're surface support, Bowlegs."
"That's real original, by the way. Never heard that one before."
Then she honest to fuck giggled. "How 'bout Sag-Ass?"
Dean's jaw dropped.
"Bridge too far?"
He opened his mouth to speak, but she just jumped overboard. She took a little time to spit extensively inside her mask, wiping it around the interior. One short rinse and then she was ready for the monofin.
"You're gonna look like a mermaid," he passed it to her.
"Don't be stupid. Mermaids don't have legs at all." It took a little maneuvering, but she got it on fairly quickly. "I'm just going to go down and have a look."
"You don't want, like...a tank of air or something?"
"What am I, an amateur? Just stay up here and try not to break anything." She took a few heaving, quick breaths, and then she was gone. The clarity of the water left everything a bright azure. He wondered why water looked different on the West Coast. Why everything was so much clearer here than Palo Alto.
Dean watched her descend for a moment and went looking for the port laza---the cabinet on the left to see what she'd picked up at the store. He opened it and there was nothing. Well, there was rope. Or line, or what the fuck ever. But not a single flower or flag or any of that. I fucking knew there was something shonky about this job. He looked over the side for any sign of Lou. Nothing. It occurred to him that both her suit and her fin were a deep blue. If he didn't know where to look, he'd never spot her.
"Son of a bitch." He found another mask with a snorkel and a pair of normal fins. Getting into them didn't take that long, but he realized that she'd been under for at least a solid three minutes. Dean tried to replicate what she'd done, taking a few real fast, real deep breaths, and then he jumped.
][
"Wake up. I said wake up, you stupid son of a bitch!"
Dean made a semi-human noise.
"What part of surface support did you not understand, Bowlegs? Was it the surface part? I'm thinking it was the surface part."
That was closer to a moan of some kind.
"Because the next time I saw your sweet sag-ass, it was eight meters underwater! I said nobody drowns on my boat. Were you not listening?"
Definitely a whimper.
"Don't move, shitforbrains. I'm trying to wrap your ribs. I'm pretty sure they're just bruised. It's the flak I'm worried about."
"Gluh?"
"From the ack-ack guns, you worthless sheepfuck. I'm gonna have to pick it out like cherry pits."
"Merf?"
"The ship fired on you. You pissed her off."
"Lyup?"
"This is why I told you to stay on Bulfinch. This is so far beyond you, Dean Winchester, you have no fucking idea. Now close your eyes and think about your mama. This is going to hurt."
][
"You back?"
"Yep." Dean pushed himself on his elbows, sucking in air through his teeth. Lou put out the cigarette she was working on. The ashtray was full.
"It's the ribs. I wrapped them, and your chest, but I don't have anything stronger than a mojito for the pain." She gestured to the drinks on the table.
"'Sokay. I shouldn't have gone in after you." He looked around. It was the houseboat, and the sun had already set. He'd lost some time.
"No, you shouldn't." Lou put her face in her hands. She'd changed into some sort of dress that looked like a glorified tank-top, and her voice was cracked. "But I shouldn't have brought you at all. I shouldn't have--it was a mistake. I was careless."
"Naw. It's okay. Oh God." He grimaced. "Wait, what happened to my chest again?" He looked down, the whole thing felt raw, like he'd been sunburned and then stung by wasps.
"Anti-aircraft artillery."
"They left those on the boat when they scrapped it?"
"You can take the ship out of the war, but you can't take the war out of the ship. Christ." She exhaled in disgust. "I'm so pissed at myself, I can't even tell you."
"Hey, look." Dean pushed himself to sitting, grimacing. "No harm no foul. Besides, I'm the one who jumped off the boat."
Lou laughed, bunched her fingers in her short hair.
"You gonna tell me what happened?"
"Nope." She took a long pull on her own mojito. "People like me make enemies," she studied her feet, the rooster and the pig. "One day, you'll understand. But people like me make enemies. So no, I'm not gonna tell you what happened."
"Yeah, well, I think that's bull--"
"I was supposed to get married today."
"--shit."
"But he died last year."
"I, uh, I'm sorry." That was the best he could do with that kind of segue. His brain tried to shift gears, catch up with the conversation, put the pieces together.
"I shouldn't have brought you, shoulda made you stay, or just left you on the transom. But I kinda wanted to be a hero on my wedding day." She looked down at her left hand. "You got a family secret, Dean?"
He took as deep a breath as he could, exhaled. She nodded and spoke, and her voice was strained.
"Yeah. Me, too. I'm not gonna tell you what happened."
They drank in silence for a while.
][
They were out of limes. Dean had passed the point of caring, but Lou seemed to think it was important.
"You cant just...not mojitos. Not without limes!" She slapped her palm onto the salon table. "Not on my boat, sir! Not on my boat!"
"You're not driving to get these limes, are you?"
"Oh hell no. Seven-eleven's on the street behind us"
"And they carry limes?"
"This is Key West," she said. "Everyone with a business license carries limes, brown sugar, and DEET. Go change out of your trunks. Seriously, you're gonna get crotch rot."
"Is that even an actual thing?"
"You really wanna find out?"
The thing is, though, when you were working in a spare cabin approximately the size of an airline bathroom, with bad ribs and a chest that had recently been seasoned with vintage shrapnel, the little things got complicated. Dean got the board shorts off, no problem. And then the briefs went okay, because hey, nothing to button or fasten. But the jeans. He was trying to keep his left arm as close to his ribs as possible, and not cross his arms over his chest at all, and that made working the button fly all but impossible.
He was still working on buttons five and six when Lou got back.
"Bowlegs? You down here?"
"Yeah, uh...just..."
"Oh." She appeared in the doorway of the cabin, leaning somewhat lazily against the bulkhead. Dean was glad it was dark, because she was ogling and now he was blushing.
"I'm gonna fix a couple more drinks."
"Right-o." Right-o? Who the hell says that? Butch up, Winchester, I mean Jesus. In the galley, there was the chink of glass, the sound of mint being ground up in a pestle, limes being squeezed, and sugar being mixed. She came back, a highball glass in each hand, and a look on her face that Dean didn't recognize for a moment. I'll be damned. She's putting the moves on me. She passed him a drink, and they stood in the cabin where Dean's head brushed the ceiling. The light from the salon illuminated her from behind, striking her short, sun-bleached hair and her limbs and her tattoos and the earrings.
"So tell me. You want me to help you button up those jeans, or you want me to help you take them off?"
"Off." He cleared his throat. "I want you to take them off."
She took a sip, set it down on the small ledge under the opened hatches. Then she knelt in the narrow passage between the bunk and the wall, and she unbuttoned so slowly there was no mistaking her intent. She stood back up slowly and leaned in close, taking advantage of the cramped space.
"So the 'Bowlegs' joke. That was you flirting?"
"I never said I didn't like 'em."
Dean grinned and pushed her playfully into the wall opposite the bed. He stood, pinning her feet between his, and leaned down into her neck. She had goosebumps, and she smelled like limes. He planted a crushing kiss on her lips, knocking the back of her head against the wall.
"That was for making fun of my ass."
Lou responded by raising her hands, gripping his shoulders, and spinning him. It was his turn to hit the wall, and she didn't make it gentle.
"Ngh." He grimaced, ribs jostled.
"That was for assuming I was a man." She placed two hands over the fine gauze on his chest and leaned on them. Dean's breath hissed out between his teeth, the raw, picked over skin burned. "And that's for jumping in after me."
Dean made a token effort to step away, but she pushed him back into the wooden paneling. Dean groaned again, and sweat beaded his forward. His chest burned and his side throbbed, but the rest of his body had no complaints whatsoever.
"You like it, don't you." She reached down and copped a quick feel that told her everything she apparently needed to know. "Oh this is gonna be good."
Then it was just a race to naked. It didn't take long, 'cause he was almost there anyway, and it turned out that Lou was an underwear-optional kind of girl and fuck it if that wasn't making him even harder. The cabin wasn't easy to maneuver in, and they jostled up against the bulkheads a couple times trying to negotiate it. Dean ended up on his back, Lou on top doing truly obscene things with her tongue, the pearl stud in her navel rubbing against his lower belly, until he gave up.
"Now," he gritted out. "Now."
She straddled him--Finally. Jesus, God. She's crazy.--and put one hand next to his head and the other on his left side. Merciless, she put weight on the abused ribs.
"Fuck, Lou," he moaned. "That hurts."
"I know," she whispered into his ear. "And you like it. And I like it." She dug her nails in and he winced. "God help me, I really like it."
He gritted his teeth and grunted, breath coming short. She licked her lips, laughed, and removed the pressure. For a moment, she hovered over his face. Then with surprising care, she kissed his cheek.
"Dean," she murmured. "How about we forget the family secrets for a little while. How about that."
He swallowed and bucked his hips up into hers She made a little noise of surprise and put the hand back on his ribs, squeezing at random intervals. He reached up, gripping her tight enough to bruise and watched her bite her lips. And that's how they were, Dean leaving marks on her with his hands, gasping with the ache in his chest and the ache of being inside her until they were the same ache, the same ache that filled him up and washed him over. He felt her body tense and release and when she cried out like it hurt her, he came with a wounded noise of his own.
She collapsed against him on the bunk, both of them sweaty and roughed up.
Lou pushed herself up on one shaky arm, retrieved the mojitos above them by the hatch. They were sweating in the heat, too. She sat, cross-legged, until they both caught their breath. The cabin was dark, just a crack of light shining in from the salon. It caught her earrings, but cast the rest of her face into darkness. Lou turned her head for a moment, fumbling for cigarettes, and he saw the three bars of the cross on her back before she lit up. The light, sound of water outside on the hull, the dense air, the smell of sex and tobacco, it all gave the cabin an aqueous feel.
Dean lay back, sore, and Lou smoked. He didn't want to be the first to speak, and after a while, it seemed like they'd reached a tacit agreement not to. When she was done with the cigarette, when they had finished the mojitos, she lay down next to him, careful with his ribs, and they slept. Dean dreamed about open water.
][
"Stay out of trouble, Sag-Ass."
Dean snorted. "Right back at ya, Lydia."
"Lydia?"
"The tattooed lady."
"You're a real charmer, you know that?" She gave him a weak punch in the ribs. "How 'bout them apples?"
"Nice," he grunted, stepping back a few paces. The ride to Stillwater was going to be hell, but he could hardly complain. "You're a delicate flower, Lou, really. Shrinking violet."
"Stay out of trouble, Dean." Her face softened. "Keep your head above water."
"Yeah," Dean swallowed. "You, too."
She stood back while he climbed into the Impala. "I mean it. And call me next time you're in Florida."
"Yeah?" He grinned, pleased in spite of himself. "You know, you never did tell me what Lou stands for."
"I didn't?" Lou tilted her head, smiled. "Think on it, then. See if it doesn't come to you."
The drama's done. Why then here does any one step forth? - Because one did survive the wreck.
-Moby Dick
No spoilers in the comments, please!