Surface Tension (Chapter 3)
Moooore pirate/merman!AU
Chapter summary: Dean returns to the cave to look for Castiel and brings him to Bobby, who used to be a surgeon on John's pirate crew. But Castiel needs ongoing care, and Dean needs to get to Cuba. And there's only one way to do both.
For Rae.
Previous chapters: 1| 2
Castiel barely existed to Dean. He was a handful of surreal moments in an underwater cavern. A quickly-fading, dreamlike impression. An unquantifiable experience.
A burning, gut-tearing gratefulness to be alive.
So Dean went to bed that night only for something deep in his stomach to tug him toward the ocean until he relented and went out to stand on the deck of his ship, looking into the inky water as if it held some kind of answer. There was no movement down there but the gently lapping waves.
If Castiel had survived, he was probably making his way up the coast, back to where Anna had said that more of his kind lived. More likely, he was dead on the ocean floor somewhere and Dean stood no chance of ever finding his body. But there was one more possibility, and that possibility was what finally made Dean tear his gaze away from the water and begin to kick off his shoes and strip out of his coat, vest, and shirt.
He dove in. With a great gulp of air and all the strength he could muster, he began searching for Castiel's cave.
After diving and resurfacing five times, he was beginning to think that it was pointless. He could barely reach the bottom of the cove, and when he did he could see next to nothing by the starlight trickling through the water. All he was doing was wearing himself out and giving himself hypothermia. But just then, the moon came out from behind the clouds. By its light, Dean saw the beach. He was even able to pinpoint the exact spot where Anna had dragged him out of the water.
Comparing his position to that spot, Dean paddled his way over to where he thought he might have come up on his way out of the cave. And he dove one more time.
Even by the light of the moon, the landscape under the water was murky and indistinct. Every shadow looked like the entrance to a cave, and everything was in shadow. Dean felt his way around hopelessly. He was about to give up and kick his way back to the surface when his searching hand slipped off of bare rock and into a dark void. What he had thought was just another shadow was actually an opening in the rock, just big enough to be the tunnel he was looking for.
It might have been nothing but a shallow depression in the rock. It might have been an entrance to the wrong sea cave. It might have been a long tunnel leading to a blind end, with no pocket of air on the other side. But it might have led to Castiel, and if Dean surfaced now he would never find it again.
He kicked his way inside and pulled himself forward by the craggy rocks around him. He was vaguely aware of when he passed the point of no return - the last point at which he could have turned back and still had enough air to reach the surface again - but he shoved past it with barely a thought. He would be dead if not for Castiel. If Castiel was in that tunnel, hurt and dying, then Dean owed it to him to find him. Or drown in there, which was looking ever more likely.
When Dean hit a wall, he thought he was dead, but then it occurred to him to look up. Above him, he could see silvery surface and the soft glow of blue algae. He scrabbled his way up to it and broke through, sputtering and coughing.
It was definitely the same cave. Dean could even see the shelf of rock where he'd woken up days before. But there was no sign of Castiel. Dean allowed himself a few minutes to cling to the rock and catch his breath before scraping a handful of algae off the wall and diving back down.
He lit his way with the algae, casting its light on every crack and crevice in the rock. He saw nothing more interesting than a few crabs and guppies. Then, at the bend where the vertical tunnel became a horizontal one, he shined his light on a nook in the rock just big enough for a human torso to squeeze through. The nook was filled in with a fleshy, ropy mass. As he drew closer, Dean could see a line of suckers.
Dean touched it, and the mass flinched away so violently that a surprised burst of bubbles escaped Dean's lips. He went up for another breath, and then back down again. He shoved his hand into the nook. By the fading light of his algae lantern, he could see the outline of a man pressed against the back wall of the nook, his hands up and ready to fight, his boneless lower half coiled tightly and defensively around the right side of his abdomen, where a trickle of blood was darkening the already-dark water.
Dean dropped the algae and beckoned with his hand. Castiel shook his head and drew back deeper into the rock. There was nothing for Dean to do but swim back up into the blue cave and pull himself out of the water and onto the little ledge.
He knew enough about octopuses to be sure that he wasn't strong enough to pry Castiel off of the rocks if he didn't want to come. But he would be damned if he was going to swim out of there empty-handed after all the effort he'd gone through to find the place. So he sat on the rocks and waited for an idea to come to him. As the minutes dragged, be began absentmindedly drumming his fingers on his perch.
At first he tapped randomly. Then the beats to his favorite songs began flicking out of his fingers. The music, such as it was, calmed him. It helped him forget that he was stuck underwater without so much as a clue, let alone a plan. The melodies began rumbling in his chest. No words, just a deep humming.
It didn't occur to him that Castiel might be listening. Not until he heard the soft splish of broken surface tension. He stopped humming, looked up, and saw Castiel's face poking out of the water right by his feet.
Castiel gasped, and Dean almost reached down to help him keep his head above water before he realized that Castiel was not fighting for air, but panting from pain and exertion. Castiel held onto the rocky ledge, white-knuckled, his legs still coiled around in the wound in his side. He couldn't swim. He had climbed up the rocks hand-over-hand.
He looked like shit. The bleeding aside, his eyes were glassy and his skin was so pale that it had a greenish tint. Even with the water buoying him up, his arms shook with the effort of holding himself above water. Dean offered him a hand again, but Castiel shied away.
"Why are you here?" he rasped. He sounded even worse than he looked, like each word was being torn out of him with great effort.
"Is this a trick question?" Dean scoffed. His hand hovered in front of Castiel's face, though Castiel made no move to take it.
"I don't need your help."
"Bullshit. Would you take my fucking hand before you sink?"
"Do you think you owe me this? Do you think this makes us even?"
Dean hadn't thought about it that way, but he nodded with a sarcastic frown. "Well, I'm saving your life, so yeah, I think this about squares us out."
"I'm not interested in charity offered out of a misplaced sense of obligation." That sentence was enough to wind Castiel, and for a moment Dean really did think he would lose his grip and sink. But he held on.
"You got room to be picky right now?" said Dean. "Look, I'm here. I'm here, okay? What does it matter why? I'm here to help you."
Castiel's fingers began to slide off the rock as his grip weakened. His eyelids drooped, then fluttered, then closed. With the last of his strength, he lifted one hand and placed it in Dean's. "Then help me," he whispered just before he fainted dead away.
Dean hauled his limp body onto the ledge. Even straight out of the chilly water, his skin was warm and feverish to the touch. "Shit..." Dean muttered as he laid him flat. His many legs flopped away to reveal a nasty, oozing wound as long as a hand was wide. The spear had landed right in his gut, on the line where purplish-brown octopus flesh became smooth human skin. In the center of the knot of clotting blood, Dean could see the splintered remains of the shaft of the spear and, a little deeper, the flared back end of the spearhead lodged in the wall of his belly.
He'd been down here like this for nearly two days. It was a wonder that he was still alive.
But by the look of him, he wouldn't be for long. His chest rose and fell, but his breathing was ragged and stuttering. His eyes were rolled back in his head when Dean lifted his eyelids to see, and the whites were bloodshot. Dean inspected Castiel's wound again. He didn't see any pus or blackened skin to suggest blood poisoning, but he wouldn't be at all surprised if something was festering in there. He didn't dare try to pull the spearhead out. He was no doctor.
Who could he go to for help? His crew wouldn't understand. They were loyal, but they were as superstitious as most sailors and Dean didn't think they'd react well to the shock of seeing one of their late-night-watch fairy tales come to life. Besides, they were much more interested in staying in work and in coin than in helping their captain pay off personal debts. They'd see Castiel as an unwanted distraction at best. At worst, a monster.
Anna would sympathize, but she was too fiercely practical for Dean to fully trust her with such an illogical request. She had her own best interests at heart, and Dean's, and the crew's. She wasn't the type to risk everything for a stranger.
So once Dean had made the long, treacherous swim out of the cave, alternating between pushing Castiel's senseless body ahead of him and towing it behind him (and occasionally going up for air), he stashed Castiel safely in some deep tide pools. And then he made his way, faster than he had ever made it before, through the brush and up to the road to Stanford.
He ran the road so quickly that his clothes were still damp when he made it to Sam's door. He rapped on it twice - loud enough to wake Sam, but hopefully not so loud that it would wake Jess and her family upstairs. Then he leaned against the wall and doubled over, huffing and trying to regain enough breath to speak by the time Sam opened the door.
The door cracked open just far enough for Dean to see a lock of tussled hair and one bleary eye. Then Sam recognized his brother. Fully awake in an instant, he closed the door, rustled around inside for several seconds, and then reappeared fully (if messily) dressed. He joined Dean on the street and shut the door behind him, never opening it enough for Dean to be able to see inside. "What happened?"
"Can I come in and sit down?" Dean asked, gesturing to the state of his clothes.
Sam hesitated for so long that it blew right past suspicious and into comical. "... no," he finally said.
When no further answer appeared to be on the way, Dean spread his hands and said, "... why?"
Sam swiped a hand over his face and set about straightening his clothes. "Because Jess is inside, and if you went in now you'd see more of her than I think she wants you to see."
Even with the night he had been having, Dean's mind ground to a halt. "You..." he sputtered. "You're getting action?"
"Would you shut up and tell me why you're here?" Sam snapped, reddening.
"You are!" said Dean, louder than was wise. "You sneaky bastard! You're not even married yet!"
Sam's blush faded as righteous indignation took over. "Oh, is a marriage license required to share a bed now? Because wow, congratulations, I must have missed it when you got married to Anna. And, oh, half the population of the southern coastline."
"It's okay when I do it," Dean insisted. "But you... you were always so proper about it. I didn't figure..."
"Please tell me you're not going to try and scold me."
"Scold you? I could kiss you! I'm definitely buying you about fifty beers later. Ah... that is, after you help me with a little situation I have at the moment."
He filled Sam in as best he could, leaving out as much about his deal with Crowley as he could manage. The holes in his story weren't exactly well-patched, and at first Sam looked like he would have liked to stop Dean and ask some probing questions. But once Dean got to the part about Castiel and the events of the last couple of hours, Sam seemed to forget his suspicions. Instead, he sat down against the wall of his house and rested his head in his hands. "You are fucking with me," he said.
"'Fraid not, Sammy."
It would be a hard story to swallow for anyone. Dean resolved to give Sam five minutes, give or take, to process it. Sam was back on his feet in less than two. There was a low fire of resolve in his eyes, the kind Dean hadn't seen since Sam left The Impala. "This merman. He saved your life?" was all he asked.
"I'd be at the bottom of the cove right now if it weren't for him, and you'd never have found out what happened to me."
Sam nodded. "Then you know who we need."
"I can't take him to any doctor, Sammy. I need someone I can trust."
"Exactly."
"Wait... no. You don't mean..."
Sam shrugged. "He was a surgeon."
"Decades ago, Sam," said Dean. "Decades."
"Do you have anyone else in mind?"
Dean did not. "Fine," he said. "Let's go."
-----
Robert Singer had already accumulated a long and colorful history as a pirate even before he became the ship's surgeon on The Impala under John Winchester. John had been new to pirating and, though he was the captain by virtue of owning the boat they sailed on, he owed every bit of his knowledge to Bobby. Bobby had run things behind the scenes for those first few crucial years. Then he'd retired, but by then John was in the perfect position to become the most feared pirate in the Caribbean.
As for Bobby Singer, he did what most pirates never get the chance to do: settle down and live off his spoils. He was still a great forger, and his old friends still came to him for false documents and real advice. He could even be persuaded to go along on a quick job every now and then, if the money was good and the risk was low. But mostly he kept to himself in the abandoned salvage lot just outside of Stanford and drank a lot.
To Dean, Bobby was like family. Dean had even encouraged Sam to settle down in Stanford specifically because he wanted Bobby around if Sam ever got in trouble. But that didn't mean he was exactly eager to go crawling to the old man for help.
The door of Bobby's shack bowed inward when Dean knocked on it. Seconds later it opened, and the barrel of a rifle appeared. The rifle barrel swung from Dean's chest up to Sam behind him, and then a voice at the other end of the gun said, "Oh. It's you," and the rifle was lowered. Bobby's familiar craggy, bearded face poked out of the darkness and into the moonlight. "Well, come on in and tell me what the emergency is."
"I didn't say anything about an emergency," said Dean as he stepped over the threshold.
"Of course there's an emergency," Bobby growled. "Not like you idjits ever drop by just to say 'hello.'"
For being a shack in the middle of a salvage yard, Bobby's home was surprisingly welcoming on the inside. It had all the necessities, plus a few creature comforts, and a small fortune in books that Bobby had collected over his years of piracy. It was comfortable. But none of the men bothered to make themselves comfortable now - they all knew that they wouldn't be staying long.
Dean had given Sam the shortened version of the story, and now Sam gave Bobby the shortened version of that story. "I know it's a lot to take in all at once," said Sam, "but..."
Bobby smacked Dean upside the head with a dish towel.
"Ow!"
"You were here less than a week ago and you didn't come and see me?" Bobby scolded, brandishing the towel.
Dean frowned. "Did you hear a word he said?"
"Of course I did," Bobby sighed. "He said that you want me to go out to your stupid cove in the middle of the night and patch up some poor half-fish kid who was too stupid not to get himself speared through the gut, all because you were too stupid not to get yourself conked on the head and drowned."
Bobby could complain like a mule, but in the end he always came through. Sam and Dean looked at him expectantly until he rolled his eyes and said, "I'll get my coat."
Dean couldn't convince them to run as fast as he had, but they made good time back to the ship anyway. Castiel was where Dean had left him. Dean was half hoping that he'd have regained consciousness, but if anything he looked even worse. For a moment he looked dead, but then his legs twitched and his lower half ballooned out as he drew water up and through his gills. The underwater version of breathing.
Together, the three of them managed to haul Castiel aboard The Impala and sneak him into Dean's little cabin. Dean laid Castiel on his bed. He couldn't even make himself care that blood from Castiel's wounds and a slimy sheen from his tentacles were staining his sheets.
"Balls..." Bobby muttered as he inspected Castiel's wound. Sam stood behind him, holding up a lamp. "This wasn't pretty even before it sat untreated for two days."
The jostling around, and now Bobby's prodding, was beginning to wake Castiel up. His head flopped to the side and his lips parted, though no sound came out. Dean rested a hand on his head, willing him back to sleep. "You can fix him up, right?"
"Hold your horses. I won't know how bad it is until I get this thing out." He poked gingerly at the end of the broken spear, testing to see how firmly it was lodged. Castiel's eyebrows moved closer together, and a soft sighing sound came from the back of his throat.
"Make it quick, okay?"
"You gonna tell me how to do my job?" Bobby snapped. "It'll take as long as it takes to do it right. You just make sure he stays quiet, or you'll have some explaining to do when your crew comes running."
"How am I supposed to do that?"
"I don't care. Gag him, if you have to." He opened his medical bag, pulled out something gleaming and metallic, and bent over to begin working.
Dean didn't watch. It wasn’t that he didn't have the stomach for such things; a childhood peppered with stab wounds and gunshots had erased whatever squeamishness he may have started with. He didn't watch because he didn't need to watch. He knew how these things went. Instead, he kept his eyes on Castiel's face and braced himself for the screaming that he knew would come.
Castiel's eyes flew open, unfocused and sightless. His lips curled back against clenched teeth. He gripped weakly at Dean's arms, his hands shaking with the effort. But he didn't scream. The only sound he made was a quiet, choked moan. Dean frowned. Either Castiel was one tough bastard, or he was farther gone than Dean had realized.
"Dean?" said Bobby's bemused voice. Dean glanced up to see two of Castiel's tentacles winding their ways around Bobby's wrists, pushing his hands away. Three more tentacles curled up to cover the wound that was now bleeding fresh and fast. When Sam tried to pry the tentacles off of Bobby, more rose up to fight him off, too.
Dean bent back over Castiel's face, tapping his cheeks lightly and calling his name. "Cas?" he said. The nickname came to him as naturally as 'Sammy' had decades ago. "Cas, look at me." For a second it looked like Castiel's eyes were trying to focus, but then they glazed back over - half-awake and confused and hurting.
"C'mon, Cas, it's not that..." Then Dean swallowed hard as he recognized his father's words coming out of his mouth. He'd heard them when he was eight (getting a broken arm set) and when he was fourteen (having shrapnel dug out of his back) and countless times before, after, and in between. It's not that bad. Man up. Get yourself through it.
It had worked. Dean had manned up and gotten himself through it. But John's presence had always been a challenge, and never a comfort.
So instead, Dean leaned in closer to whisper in Castiel's ear, "Cas, listen to me. I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere, okay? Hang on to me. I'm gonna get you through this. But you gotta let Bobby do his thing, you hear me? He's gonna fix you. I promise." At first Castiel's fingers dug harder into Dean's shoulders, his pained breath hissing in Dean's ear. But then his grip loosened by a fraction. Dean peeked over his shoulder just in time to see Castiel's tentacles slide away from Bobby's hands and coil themselves at the foot of the bed, out of the way.
Bobby wore the serene expression of a man who cannot be surprised anymore.
Dean pleaded, "Get it done."
Castiel didn't wake up through the whole thing. Not really. His eyes stayed open, locked on nothing. Eventually his teeth unclenched and his jaw cranked open, every sinew of his face so tight with pain that it hurt Dean just to look at him. But even then, nothing came out of his mouth but weak groans and gagging coughs. His fingers clamped down on Dean's arms so hard that they felt like they would pop through the skin. Every time his grip tightened, Dean would whisper in his ear, "Almost there. Almost done. I got you. It's okay, I got you..." Soothing, intimate things that he wouldn't have dared to say if Castiel had been conscious. But it didn't matter that they were effectively strangers. Whatever Castiel needed to hear at that moment, Dean was willing to say it.
When it was over, Dean's sheets were a bloody mosaic. But the spear head was on the floor, and the nasty, oozing gash was nothing more than a line of stitches.
"Wow," said Dean. "That looks better. That looks good. It's good, right?"
Bobby rinsed his hands off in a bowl of water. The water turned the color of rust. "It's better than it was. But it ain't good. Pretty damn far from." He squinted down at Castiel's waist and ran a finger over the base of one of his tentacles. "He seem dry to you?"
"Huh?"
"How long can he be out of the water without shriveling up?"
Dean mimicked Bobby, testing Castiel's skin with two fingers. It felt fragile and sticky, like when you wake up after sleeping with your mouth open and your tongue cleaves to the roof of your mouth. "I don't know," he said. "But let's not find out."
Dean rolled an enormous basin out of a storage compartment, and with a bucket on the end of a rope Sam quickly hauled up enough water to fill it. Dean winced at the prospect of salt water on a fresh wound, but when he laid Castiel down in it he actually gave a relieved little sigh. His tentacles plumped up with moisture and became slick again. Somehow, though the basin didn't seem big enough to allow it, Castiel managed to curl up so that he was completely under the water.
Bobby, Sam, and Dean watched him for several seconds. When he didn't move, Bobby sighed and said, "Okay, now what?"
"How long will it be until he wakes up?" Sam wondered.
Bobby gave him a look. "Do you think I'm psychic?"
"In your professional opinion?" said Dean.
"In my professional opinion..." Bobby sighed. "In my professional opinion, he's probably not gonna wake up. That wound is festering down deep. He needs time to fight off that infection. And the ocean just isn't a friendly enough place to give him that time."
"Then we'll buy him time," said Dean. "Bobby. If we rig up a stretcher, could we get him back to your place before he dries out again?"
"If you think you're leaving him with me, you've got another think coming. I've got old friends who I can't keep from dropping in on me. And most of them are the type that, well, if they saw a living merman then by God they'd find a way to make a buck off him. I hear there's a market for their organs up in New England."
Dean shuddered, then looked at Sam.
Sam winced apologetically. "I'd do it," he said. "You know I'd do it for you, but... how the Hell would I explain him to Jess?"
They stood in silence. Finally, Dean nodded and said, "Okay. Okay. I'll take him. It's the only way. I gotta take him to Cuba with me."
Sam blinked. "Cuba?"
"I've got a job."
"What about the wedding?"
"When I get back, Sammy."
"You said that last time. Just stay for a few days, it won't take..."
"This can't wait. I'm sorry."
Sam stared, but Dean refused to meet his eyes. "Fine," said Sam as he stormed out of the cabin and back toward the dinghy.
When he was gone, Bobby tilted his head toward Dean and asked, "This about Crowley?"
"No," said Dean.
"Don't lie to me, boy. You in trouble?"
"I can handle it."
Bobby caught Dean's jaw in his hand and brushed his thumb against Dean's temple and the corner of his eye where the edges of his black bruises were beginning to heal into yellows and greens. Dean jerked his head away. "You sure you can afford this extra risk?" said Bobby, gesturing at the basin where Castiel was sleeping.
"I don't have a choice," said Dean. "I owe him."
"You owe too many people."
Dean grinned wryly. "Tell me about it."
-----
When Dean woke up the next morning before dawn, having caught less than four hours of sleep after seeing Bobby and his brother back to Stanford, he lit his lamp and held it over the basin of water that took up a good chunk of his cabin's floor space. Castiel didn't seem to have moved since the last time Dean had checked on him. He was still folded up under the water, his thick tentacles coiled around the bottom and his human upper half resting on top of them. The water had evaporated off a little, and Castiel's bare back was almost grazing the surface.
Dean placed the palm of his hand against one bony shoulder blade, just to make sure the skin beneath the water was still warm and alive. Castiel stirred at his touch, but didn't wake.
Dean hauled one more bucket of water up through the porthole in his cabin wall and dumped it into Castiel's basin, just to make sure he had enough. Then he rooted through his possessions until he found the key to his cabin door hiding in a box with a few other odds and ends that he seldom used. He went out onto the deck, locking the door behind him.
His crew was just coming up from below decks. They saluted him as they passed.
"Let's get to work," said Dean.
They edged their way out of the cove by the light of the sunrise, turned southward, and sailed.
( Next chapter)
Chapter summary: Dean returns to the cave to look for Castiel and brings him to Bobby, who used to be a surgeon on John's pirate crew. But Castiel needs ongoing care, and Dean needs to get to Cuba. And there's only one way to do both.
For Rae.
Previous chapters: 1| 2
Castiel barely existed to Dean. He was a handful of surreal moments in an underwater cavern. A quickly-fading, dreamlike impression. An unquantifiable experience.
A burning, gut-tearing gratefulness to be alive.
So Dean went to bed that night only for something deep in his stomach to tug him toward the ocean until he relented and went out to stand on the deck of his ship, looking into the inky water as if it held some kind of answer. There was no movement down there but the gently lapping waves.
If Castiel had survived, he was probably making his way up the coast, back to where Anna had said that more of his kind lived. More likely, he was dead on the ocean floor somewhere and Dean stood no chance of ever finding his body. But there was one more possibility, and that possibility was what finally made Dean tear his gaze away from the water and begin to kick off his shoes and strip out of his coat, vest, and shirt.
He dove in. With a great gulp of air and all the strength he could muster, he began searching for Castiel's cave.
After diving and resurfacing five times, he was beginning to think that it was pointless. He could barely reach the bottom of the cove, and when he did he could see next to nothing by the starlight trickling through the water. All he was doing was wearing himself out and giving himself hypothermia. But just then, the moon came out from behind the clouds. By its light, Dean saw the beach. He was even able to pinpoint the exact spot where Anna had dragged him out of the water.
Comparing his position to that spot, Dean paddled his way over to where he thought he might have come up on his way out of the cave. And he dove one more time.
Even by the light of the moon, the landscape under the water was murky and indistinct. Every shadow looked like the entrance to a cave, and everything was in shadow. Dean felt his way around hopelessly. He was about to give up and kick his way back to the surface when his searching hand slipped off of bare rock and into a dark void. What he had thought was just another shadow was actually an opening in the rock, just big enough to be the tunnel he was looking for.
It might have been nothing but a shallow depression in the rock. It might have been an entrance to the wrong sea cave. It might have been a long tunnel leading to a blind end, with no pocket of air on the other side. But it might have led to Castiel, and if Dean surfaced now he would never find it again.
He kicked his way inside and pulled himself forward by the craggy rocks around him. He was vaguely aware of when he passed the point of no return - the last point at which he could have turned back and still had enough air to reach the surface again - but he shoved past it with barely a thought. He would be dead if not for Castiel. If Castiel was in that tunnel, hurt and dying, then Dean owed it to him to find him. Or drown in there, which was looking ever more likely.
When Dean hit a wall, he thought he was dead, but then it occurred to him to look up. Above him, he could see silvery surface and the soft glow of blue algae. He scrabbled his way up to it and broke through, sputtering and coughing.
It was definitely the same cave. Dean could even see the shelf of rock where he'd woken up days before. But there was no sign of Castiel. Dean allowed himself a few minutes to cling to the rock and catch his breath before scraping a handful of algae off the wall and diving back down.
He lit his way with the algae, casting its light on every crack and crevice in the rock. He saw nothing more interesting than a few crabs and guppies. Then, at the bend where the vertical tunnel became a horizontal one, he shined his light on a nook in the rock just big enough for a human torso to squeeze through. The nook was filled in with a fleshy, ropy mass. As he drew closer, Dean could see a line of suckers.
Dean touched it, and the mass flinched away so violently that a surprised burst of bubbles escaped Dean's lips. He went up for another breath, and then back down again. He shoved his hand into the nook. By the fading light of his algae lantern, he could see the outline of a man pressed against the back wall of the nook, his hands up and ready to fight, his boneless lower half coiled tightly and defensively around the right side of his abdomen, where a trickle of blood was darkening the already-dark water.
Dean dropped the algae and beckoned with his hand. Castiel shook his head and drew back deeper into the rock. There was nothing for Dean to do but swim back up into the blue cave and pull himself out of the water and onto the little ledge.
He knew enough about octopuses to be sure that he wasn't strong enough to pry Castiel off of the rocks if he didn't want to come. But he would be damned if he was going to swim out of there empty-handed after all the effort he'd gone through to find the place. So he sat on the rocks and waited for an idea to come to him. As the minutes dragged, be began absentmindedly drumming his fingers on his perch.
At first he tapped randomly. Then the beats to his favorite songs began flicking out of his fingers. The music, such as it was, calmed him. It helped him forget that he was stuck underwater without so much as a clue, let alone a plan. The melodies began rumbling in his chest. No words, just a deep humming.
It didn't occur to him that Castiel might be listening. Not until he heard the soft splish of broken surface tension. He stopped humming, looked up, and saw Castiel's face poking out of the water right by his feet.
Castiel gasped, and Dean almost reached down to help him keep his head above water before he realized that Castiel was not fighting for air, but panting from pain and exertion. Castiel held onto the rocky ledge, white-knuckled, his legs still coiled around in the wound in his side. He couldn't swim. He had climbed up the rocks hand-over-hand.
He looked like shit. The bleeding aside, his eyes were glassy and his skin was so pale that it had a greenish tint. Even with the water buoying him up, his arms shook with the effort of holding himself above water. Dean offered him a hand again, but Castiel shied away.
"Why are you here?" he rasped. He sounded even worse than he looked, like each word was being torn out of him with great effort.
"Is this a trick question?" Dean scoffed. His hand hovered in front of Castiel's face, though Castiel made no move to take it.
"I don't need your help."
"Bullshit. Would you take my fucking hand before you sink?"
"Do you think you owe me this? Do you think this makes us even?"
Dean hadn't thought about it that way, but he nodded with a sarcastic frown. "Well, I'm saving your life, so yeah, I think this about squares us out."
"I'm not interested in charity offered out of a misplaced sense of obligation." That sentence was enough to wind Castiel, and for a moment Dean really did think he would lose his grip and sink. But he held on.
"You got room to be picky right now?" said Dean. "Look, I'm here. I'm here, okay? What does it matter why? I'm here to help you."
Castiel's fingers began to slide off the rock as his grip weakened. His eyelids drooped, then fluttered, then closed. With the last of his strength, he lifted one hand and placed it in Dean's. "Then help me," he whispered just before he fainted dead away.
Dean hauled his limp body onto the ledge. Even straight out of the chilly water, his skin was warm and feverish to the touch. "Shit..." Dean muttered as he laid him flat. His many legs flopped away to reveal a nasty, oozing wound as long as a hand was wide. The spear had landed right in his gut, on the line where purplish-brown octopus flesh became smooth human skin. In the center of the knot of clotting blood, Dean could see the splintered remains of the shaft of the spear and, a little deeper, the flared back end of the spearhead lodged in the wall of his belly.
He'd been down here like this for nearly two days. It was a wonder that he was still alive.
But by the look of him, he wouldn't be for long. His chest rose and fell, but his breathing was ragged and stuttering. His eyes were rolled back in his head when Dean lifted his eyelids to see, and the whites were bloodshot. Dean inspected Castiel's wound again. He didn't see any pus or blackened skin to suggest blood poisoning, but he wouldn't be at all surprised if something was festering in there. He didn't dare try to pull the spearhead out. He was no doctor.
Who could he go to for help? His crew wouldn't understand. They were loyal, but they were as superstitious as most sailors and Dean didn't think they'd react well to the shock of seeing one of their late-night-watch fairy tales come to life. Besides, they were much more interested in staying in work and in coin than in helping their captain pay off personal debts. They'd see Castiel as an unwanted distraction at best. At worst, a monster.
Anna would sympathize, but she was too fiercely practical for Dean to fully trust her with such an illogical request. She had her own best interests at heart, and Dean's, and the crew's. She wasn't the type to risk everything for a stranger.
So once Dean had made the long, treacherous swim out of the cave, alternating between pushing Castiel's senseless body ahead of him and towing it behind him (and occasionally going up for air), he stashed Castiel safely in some deep tide pools. And then he made his way, faster than he had ever made it before, through the brush and up to the road to Stanford.
He ran the road so quickly that his clothes were still damp when he made it to Sam's door. He rapped on it twice - loud enough to wake Sam, but hopefully not so loud that it would wake Jess and her family upstairs. Then he leaned against the wall and doubled over, huffing and trying to regain enough breath to speak by the time Sam opened the door.
The door cracked open just far enough for Dean to see a lock of tussled hair and one bleary eye. Then Sam recognized his brother. Fully awake in an instant, he closed the door, rustled around inside for several seconds, and then reappeared fully (if messily) dressed. He joined Dean on the street and shut the door behind him, never opening it enough for Dean to be able to see inside. "What happened?"
"Can I come in and sit down?" Dean asked, gesturing to the state of his clothes.
Sam hesitated for so long that it blew right past suspicious and into comical. "... no," he finally said.
When no further answer appeared to be on the way, Dean spread his hands and said, "... why?"
Sam swiped a hand over his face and set about straightening his clothes. "Because Jess is inside, and if you went in now you'd see more of her than I think she wants you to see."
Even with the night he had been having, Dean's mind ground to a halt. "You..." he sputtered. "You're getting action?"
"Would you shut up and tell me why you're here?" Sam snapped, reddening.
"You are!" said Dean, louder than was wise. "You sneaky bastard! You're not even married yet!"
Sam's blush faded as righteous indignation took over. "Oh, is a marriage license required to share a bed now? Because wow, congratulations, I must have missed it when you got married to Anna. And, oh, half the population of the southern coastline."
"It's okay when I do it," Dean insisted. "But you... you were always so proper about it. I didn't figure..."
"Please tell me you're not going to try and scold me."
"Scold you? I could kiss you! I'm definitely buying you about fifty beers later. Ah... that is, after you help me with a little situation I have at the moment."
He filled Sam in as best he could, leaving out as much about his deal with Crowley as he could manage. The holes in his story weren't exactly well-patched, and at first Sam looked like he would have liked to stop Dean and ask some probing questions. But once Dean got to the part about Castiel and the events of the last couple of hours, Sam seemed to forget his suspicions. Instead, he sat down against the wall of his house and rested his head in his hands. "You are fucking with me," he said.
"'Fraid not, Sammy."
It would be a hard story to swallow for anyone. Dean resolved to give Sam five minutes, give or take, to process it. Sam was back on his feet in less than two. There was a low fire of resolve in his eyes, the kind Dean hadn't seen since Sam left The Impala. "This merman. He saved your life?" was all he asked.
"I'd be at the bottom of the cove right now if it weren't for him, and you'd never have found out what happened to me."
Sam nodded. "Then you know who we need."
"I can't take him to any doctor, Sammy. I need someone I can trust."
"Exactly."
"Wait... no. You don't mean..."
Sam shrugged. "He was a surgeon."
"Decades ago, Sam," said Dean. "Decades."
"Do you have anyone else in mind?"
Dean did not. "Fine," he said. "Let's go."
-----
Robert Singer had already accumulated a long and colorful history as a pirate even before he became the ship's surgeon on The Impala under John Winchester. John had been new to pirating and, though he was the captain by virtue of owning the boat they sailed on, he owed every bit of his knowledge to Bobby. Bobby had run things behind the scenes for those first few crucial years. Then he'd retired, but by then John was in the perfect position to become the most feared pirate in the Caribbean.
As for Bobby Singer, he did what most pirates never get the chance to do: settle down and live off his spoils. He was still a great forger, and his old friends still came to him for false documents and real advice. He could even be persuaded to go along on a quick job every now and then, if the money was good and the risk was low. But mostly he kept to himself in the abandoned salvage lot just outside of Stanford and drank a lot.
To Dean, Bobby was like family. Dean had even encouraged Sam to settle down in Stanford specifically because he wanted Bobby around if Sam ever got in trouble. But that didn't mean he was exactly eager to go crawling to the old man for help.
The door of Bobby's shack bowed inward when Dean knocked on it. Seconds later it opened, and the barrel of a rifle appeared. The rifle barrel swung from Dean's chest up to Sam behind him, and then a voice at the other end of the gun said, "Oh. It's you," and the rifle was lowered. Bobby's familiar craggy, bearded face poked out of the darkness and into the moonlight. "Well, come on in and tell me what the emergency is."
"I didn't say anything about an emergency," said Dean as he stepped over the threshold.
"Of course there's an emergency," Bobby growled. "Not like you idjits ever drop by just to say 'hello.'"
For being a shack in the middle of a salvage yard, Bobby's home was surprisingly welcoming on the inside. It had all the necessities, plus a few creature comforts, and a small fortune in books that Bobby had collected over his years of piracy. It was comfortable. But none of the men bothered to make themselves comfortable now - they all knew that they wouldn't be staying long.
Dean had given Sam the shortened version of the story, and now Sam gave Bobby the shortened version of that story. "I know it's a lot to take in all at once," said Sam, "but..."
Bobby smacked Dean upside the head with a dish towel.
"Ow!"
"You were here less than a week ago and you didn't come and see me?" Bobby scolded, brandishing the towel.
Dean frowned. "Did you hear a word he said?"
"Of course I did," Bobby sighed. "He said that you want me to go out to your stupid cove in the middle of the night and patch up some poor half-fish kid who was too stupid not to get himself speared through the gut, all because you were too stupid not to get yourself conked on the head and drowned."
Bobby could complain like a mule, but in the end he always came through. Sam and Dean looked at him expectantly until he rolled his eyes and said, "I'll get my coat."
Dean couldn't convince them to run as fast as he had, but they made good time back to the ship anyway. Castiel was where Dean had left him. Dean was half hoping that he'd have regained consciousness, but if anything he looked even worse. For a moment he looked dead, but then his legs twitched and his lower half ballooned out as he drew water up and through his gills. The underwater version of breathing.
Together, the three of them managed to haul Castiel aboard The Impala and sneak him into Dean's little cabin. Dean laid Castiel on his bed. He couldn't even make himself care that blood from Castiel's wounds and a slimy sheen from his tentacles were staining his sheets.
"Balls..." Bobby muttered as he inspected Castiel's wound. Sam stood behind him, holding up a lamp. "This wasn't pretty even before it sat untreated for two days."
The jostling around, and now Bobby's prodding, was beginning to wake Castiel up. His head flopped to the side and his lips parted, though no sound came out. Dean rested a hand on his head, willing him back to sleep. "You can fix him up, right?"
"Hold your horses. I won't know how bad it is until I get this thing out." He poked gingerly at the end of the broken spear, testing to see how firmly it was lodged. Castiel's eyebrows moved closer together, and a soft sighing sound came from the back of his throat.
"Make it quick, okay?"
"You gonna tell me how to do my job?" Bobby snapped. "It'll take as long as it takes to do it right. You just make sure he stays quiet, or you'll have some explaining to do when your crew comes running."
"How am I supposed to do that?"
"I don't care. Gag him, if you have to." He opened his medical bag, pulled out something gleaming and metallic, and bent over to begin working.
Dean didn't watch. It wasn’t that he didn't have the stomach for such things; a childhood peppered with stab wounds and gunshots had erased whatever squeamishness he may have started with. He didn't watch because he didn't need to watch. He knew how these things went. Instead, he kept his eyes on Castiel's face and braced himself for the screaming that he knew would come.
Castiel's eyes flew open, unfocused and sightless. His lips curled back against clenched teeth. He gripped weakly at Dean's arms, his hands shaking with the effort. But he didn't scream. The only sound he made was a quiet, choked moan. Dean frowned. Either Castiel was one tough bastard, or he was farther gone than Dean had realized.
"Dean?" said Bobby's bemused voice. Dean glanced up to see two of Castiel's tentacles winding their ways around Bobby's wrists, pushing his hands away. Three more tentacles curled up to cover the wound that was now bleeding fresh and fast. When Sam tried to pry the tentacles off of Bobby, more rose up to fight him off, too.
Dean bent back over Castiel's face, tapping his cheeks lightly and calling his name. "Cas?" he said. The nickname came to him as naturally as 'Sammy' had decades ago. "Cas, look at me." For a second it looked like Castiel's eyes were trying to focus, but then they glazed back over - half-awake and confused and hurting.
"C'mon, Cas, it's not that..." Then Dean swallowed hard as he recognized his father's words coming out of his mouth. He'd heard them when he was eight (getting a broken arm set) and when he was fourteen (having shrapnel dug out of his back) and countless times before, after, and in between. It's not that bad. Man up. Get yourself through it.
It had worked. Dean had manned up and gotten himself through it. But John's presence had always been a challenge, and never a comfort.
So instead, Dean leaned in closer to whisper in Castiel's ear, "Cas, listen to me. I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere, okay? Hang on to me. I'm gonna get you through this. But you gotta let Bobby do his thing, you hear me? He's gonna fix you. I promise." At first Castiel's fingers dug harder into Dean's shoulders, his pained breath hissing in Dean's ear. But then his grip loosened by a fraction. Dean peeked over his shoulder just in time to see Castiel's tentacles slide away from Bobby's hands and coil themselves at the foot of the bed, out of the way.
Bobby wore the serene expression of a man who cannot be surprised anymore.
Dean pleaded, "Get it done."
Castiel didn't wake up through the whole thing. Not really. His eyes stayed open, locked on nothing. Eventually his teeth unclenched and his jaw cranked open, every sinew of his face so tight with pain that it hurt Dean just to look at him. But even then, nothing came out of his mouth but weak groans and gagging coughs. His fingers clamped down on Dean's arms so hard that they felt like they would pop through the skin. Every time his grip tightened, Dean would whisper in his ear, "Almost there. Almost done. I got you. It's okay, I got you..." Soothing, intimate things that he wouldn't have dared to say if Castiel had been conscious. But it didn't matter that they were effectively strangers. Whatever Castiel needed to hear at that moment, Dean was willing to say it.
When it was over, Dean's sheets were a bloody mosaic. But the spear head was on the floor, and the nasty, oozing gash was nothing more than a line of stitches.
"Wow," said Dean. "That looks better. That looks good. It's good, right?"
Bobby rinsed his hands off in a bowl of water. The water turned the color of rust. "It's better than it was. But it ain't good. Pretty damn far from." He squinted down at Castiel's waist and ran a finger over the base of one of his tentacles. "He seem dry to you?"
"Huh?"
"How long can he be out of the water without shriveling up?"
Dean mimicked Bobby, testing Castiel's skin with two fingers. It felt fragile and sticky, like when you wake up after sleeping with your mouth open and your tongue cleaves to the roof of your mouth. "I don't know," he said. "But let's not find out."
Dean rolled an enormous basin out of a storage compartment, and with a bucket on the end of a rope Sam quickly hauled up enough water to fill it. Dean winced at the prospect of salt water on a fresh wound, but when he laid Castiel down in it he actually gave a relieved little sigh. His tentacles plumped up with moisture and became slick again. Somehow, though the basin didn't seem big enough to allow it, Castiel managed to curl up so that he was completely under the water.
Bobby, Sam, and Dean watched him for several seconds. When he didn't move, Bobby sighed and said, "Okay, now what?"
"How long will it be until he wakes up?" Sam wondered.
Bobby gave him a look. "Do you think I'm psychic?"
"In your professional opinion?" said Dean.
"In my professional opinion..." Bobby sighed. "In my professional opinion, he's probably not gonna wake up. That wound is festering down deep. He needs time to fight off that infection. And the ocean just isn't a friendly enough place to give him that time."
"Then we'll buy him time," said Dean. "Bobby. If we rig up a stretcher, could we get him back to your place before he dries out again?"
"If you think you're leaving him with me, you've got another think coming. I've got old friends who I can't keep from dropping in on me. And most of them are the type that, well, if they saw a living merman then by God they'd find a way to make a buck off him. I hear there's a market for their organs up in New England."
Dean shuddered, then looked at Sam.
Sam winced apologetically. "I'd do it," he said. "You know I'd do it for you, but... how the Hell would I explain him to Jess?"
They stood in silence. Finally, Dean nodded and said, "Okay. Okay. I'll take him. It's the only way. I gotta take him to Cuba with me."
Sam blinked. "Cuba?"
"I've got a job."
"What about the wedding?"
"When I get back, Sammy."
"You said that last time. Just stay for a few days, it won't take..."
"This can't wait. I'm sorry."
Sam stared, but Dean refused to meet his eyes. "Fine," said Sam as he stormed out of the cabin and back toward the dinghy.
When he was gone, Bobby tilted his head toward Dean and asked, "This about Crowley?"
"No," said Dean.
"Don't lie to me, boy. You in trouble?"
"I can handle it."
Bobby caught Dean's jaw in his hand and brushed his thumb against Dean's temple and the corner of his eye where the edges of his black bruises were beginning to heal into yellows and greens. Dean jerked his head away. "You sure you can afford this extra risk?" said Bobby, gesturing at the basin where Castiel was sleeping.
"I don't have a choice," said Dean. "I owe him."
"You owe too many people."
Dean grinned wryly. "Tell me about it."
-----
When Dean woke up the next morning before dawn, having caught less than four hours of sleep after seeing Bobby and his brother back to Stanford, he lit his lamp and held it over the basin of water that took up a good chunk of his cabin's floor space. Castiel didn't seem to have moved since the last time Dean had checked on him. He was still folded up under the water, his thick tentacles coiled around the bottom and his human upper half resting on top of them. The water had evaporated off a little, and Castiel's bare back was almost grazing the surface.
Dean placed the palm of his hand against one bony shoulder blade, just to make sure the skin beneath the water was still warm and alive. Castiel stirred at his touch, but didn't wake.
Dean hauled one more bucket of water up through the porthole in his cabin wall and dumped it into Castiel's basin, just to make sure he had enough. Then he rooted through his possessions until he found the key to his cabin door hiding in a box with a few other odds and ends that he seldom used. He went out onto the deck, locking the door behind him.
His crew was just coming up from below decks. They saluted him as they passed.
"Let's get to work," said Dean.
They edged their way out of the cove by the light of the sunrise, turned southward, and sailed.
( Next chapter)