Chapter Text
Dean is swimming, diving into the waves with a manic grin on his face. When he comes up for air he can feel the wind and the crackling electricity from the storm. He tastes salt on his tongue and he just dives back under again.
Through goggles he sees the dark of the ocean floor. He sees fish, darting here and there among debris. He sees shells and seeweed and… wait, what is that?
A few feet from where he’s swimming Dean can see something half buried in the sand. It’s glowing, weakly.
He swims over to the glow and looks down at it curiously. He reaches out a finger to touch it but before can he’s buffeted by a wave. He only goes a few feet, though, and soon he’s back. This time he’s quicker, he reaches out and scoops up the sand covered thing.
It’s only about the size of his hand, it fits in his palm although there are things coming off of it that are falling off the sides.
The sand falls away and Dean nearly lets out the breath he’s been holding, it’s a person! Or… something.
Okay, so it isn’t a person. Not only is it too small to be a person, it also has little blue tentacles.
That’s right, the top half of the creature in Dean’s hand looks human, the bottom half is a mass of still tentacles, many of which are hanging off of the sides of Dean’s hand.
Instinct tell him to drop it and swim away as fast as possible. He doesn’t, though, because the creature in his palm is very still and it seems wrong to just leave something so strange and new.
He holds the creature gingerly as he swims one handed toward the shore. He climbs out of the surf onto the damp sad, rivulets of water running off of him back to their mother ocean. The sky above is a dark, menacing purple and, as he stands there, thunder rumbles through the sky.
He takes a moment to examine the thing in his hand, just to see if it’s alive. It seems to be. As he watches, its tiny chest rises and falls almost imperceptibly and when he puts a pinky to the thing’s chest he thinks he feels a weak heartbeat.
Dean glances along the shore quickly and yes there’s a little blue bucket laying on its side, abandoned. He gets the bucket and quickly fills it with sea water before lowering the creature into it gently.
He holds the bucket to his chest and runs down the abandoned beach until he reaches his house/place of work.
It’s a moderate sized brown bungalow just off of the beach. Outside of it are rows of surf boards, currently covered in tarp. A good fourth of the house is sectioned off and has been transformed into a little shop that sells fishing and surfing supplies.
Dean tromps in the back door, stripping off his wet swim trunks and goggles and tossing them in a pile. He takes the bucket into the kitchen and sets it on the counter while he goes to put on dry clothes and tries to figure out what the hell to do next.
He remembers, as he’s pulling his worn AC/DC shirt over his head, the time Sam bought him a beta fish (it didn’t last very long) and promptly goes searching for whatever it had been in. He finds it eventually in the attic. It’s just a small round fishbowl, but Dean figures it’ll do for now. It’s covered in dust and cobwebs and he has to wash it thoroughly before tipping the bucket, and the creature, over into it. The things drifts slowly to the bottom of the bowl, still unconscious.
Dean sits on a stool by the counter and watches it for a while, his chin resting on his folded hands that lay on the counter. The creature is fair skinned and dark haired. His(?) chest is toned and his tiny nipples are dusky in the water. He has a strong jaw and his lips are very pink. Dean thinks absently that if the creature were bigger, he might be handsome.
Watching the creature is boring, though, and Dean gets up to make himself supper. He makes himself a burger at the stove, flipping it adeptly, and warms a piece of the apple pie that his mother gave him a few days ago.
He sits again with a relieved sigh and is about to dig in when he catches movement out of the corner of his eye.
He looks quickly at the bowl to see that some of the tentacles are moving. They’re poking around at the flat floor and convex walls of the fish bowl. As Dean watches, the creature opens its tiny eyes. It blinks, once, and notices Dean.
It sits up quickly and tries to back away, but quickly comes into contact with another wall. It’s scrambling around, slapping at the walls with its little hands and tentacles and becoming more and more frightened. It starts making scared little squeaks and squeals and Dean suddenly feels really bad for bringing it here.
After a minute, though, it seems to get tired. It stops slapping at the walls and slumps dejectedly to the floor.
Dean leans forward slowly and taps gently at the glass. The creature looks up at him, its face a mask of panic.
”I’m not gonna hurt you.” Dean says soothingly. “It’s okay. Here, you can get out this way.” He touches the water at the top of the bowl to show the little guy that there isn’t a wall up there.
The creature eyes him warily, but it gets up and swims to the top. Its tentacles are a swirling mass of wriggling color and Dean is in awe of the way they propel the creature forward so quickly. It pokes its head slowly out of the water, wrapping some of the tentacles over the edge of the bowl.
”Eep.” It says.
”Uh….” Replies Dean. The creature is looking at him curiously now, head cocked to the side. Dean raises his hand up and wiggles a finger in front of the thing. “Hey, little guy.” He says.
The creature shrinks back momentarily, obviously expecting an attack. When one doesn’t come it moves closer, leaning over the edge of the fish bowl and reaching out with one if its tentacles to poke Dean’s finger before quickly retreating again. Dean doesn’t move and the creature leans forward to poke again.
It’s adorable and it doesn’t hurt or anything, it doesn’t even feel particularly slimy, so Dean just lets the little guy poke his finger to his tiny heart’s content.
After a while the creature seems to gather that Dean isn’t going to hurt him, and he begins closer inspection of the finger. He wraps a tentacle around it and drags it closer. He looks at the swirls on it, then looks at his own hand and wiggles his fingers about. He sniffs Dean’s finger too, and licks it, and even tries to bite it but Dean quickly puts a stop to that. Whenever the creature licks Dean’s finger he seems immensely pleased. He hums happily and makes a tittering noise. When he bites Dean and Dean begins to pull away the creature makes a sad little whine. Dean puts his finger back and the little guy doesn’t try to bite him again. He does shove his head against the finger a few times though, and that’s kinda weird.
He offers the creature some apple pie filling at one point, on the tip of his pointer finger. The creature makes the happy tittering noise again and licks all of the filling off of Dean’s finger. Then he whines and pokes around at Dean’s other fingers, looking for more. Dean just laughs shows him that there’s no more pie on his fingers.
After a while Dean gets sleepy and decides it’s time to turn it. He’s not sure what to do with the sea creature though. At first he means to leave it on the kitchen counter overnight but when he starts to move away the little guy starts making that little whining sound again. He decides, finally, to bring the bowl into the bedroom with him.
He’s worried that the creature will try and escape the bowl during the night, so he ends up putting a heavy dictionary on top of it. The creature doesn’t like that, it trills angrily for a while but Dean makes soothing noises at it through the glass and eventually it calms.
When Dean turns out the bedroom lights he’s reminded that the creature glows. It’s emitting a faint blue light, it’s moving and pulsating as the creature does. The glow itself seems stationary. It comes from small dots speckling the creature’s tiny extra appendages. It’s beautiful, and Dean just watches it for a while. The creature watches him back, and so they just end up staring at each other for a long time.
When Dean finally settles into his bed and pulls the blankets up under his chin he realizes that he likes the glow. It’s like having his own little nightlight.