Chapter Text
"Let me kiss you one last time; the morning light is breaking.
I always knew, my love, just what the end would be.
Let me send you on your way, for there is no mistaking
The cost that every man must pay who comes to love the sea."
-In This Sea
“Angels are watching over you.”
When Dean was born, those were the first words his mother had whispered to him when she had finally been able to hold him in her arms that day in the hospital. She had made a point to tell him every day since.
Mary Winchester gazed down lovingly at her baby boy.
“Your Angel is special.” She murmured, leaning over the crib as little Dean yawned. “I picked him out especially for you in heaven.” Her hand brushed over his face softly. “He’ll take care of you, Dean. I know he will.”
* * *
When Dean was four years old, he got a new brother named Sam and Dean liked Sam a lot, but sometimes he was really loud and didn’t smell too great. It was different having a baby in the house, but Dean knew that he was going to try to be the best big brother in the world.
Six months later he lost his mother.
It was only between bouts of sobbing that his dad was able to tell him that the ocean had taken his mom from them. Some sort of accident on the beach that Dean was so fond of.
No.
Dean’s ocean would never do that to his mother. He didn’t believe it.
“Daddy,” he tugged on his sleeve, still not understanding. “What about Mommy’s guardian angels? Where were they?”
His dad had only wiped at his eyes angrily as he stood, pulling his arm away and out of Dean’s reach. “Angels don’t fucking exist, Dean.”
The day after his mom’s death, the sky began to cry fiery tears. Everyone came out of their houses and onto the beach to watch it; the adults muttering something about a “meteor shower.”
There were rumors afterward that some of the fragments had actually hit the earth or had fallen into the ocean, but nothing was ever found to confirm the theory.
* * *
When Dean was eleven, John decided that is was high time his sons figured out how to survive in the ocean. Of course, the two brothers were great swimmers after having lived near the beach their entire lives, but it was some sort of drunken revelation to John. So homeschooled swim lessons it was.
It wasn’t so bad at first, Dean could easily tread water up to his shoulders and Sam didn’t do too awful either. Every five minutes or so, John would take a swig of beer and yell, “Farther!”
So they swam out farther.
Dean could feel a slight ache in his arms by the time his Dad yelled for them to come back. Dean sighed with relief until—
“Not you, Dean! Stay out longer! Train your arms!”
Dean’s muscles were screaming but he didn’t dare disappoint his father by giving up and swimming back. He was breathing heavily as he watched Sam swim back towards the shore and towards safety. At least he was safe.
Two minutes later and Dean was officially struggling to stay above the surface.
“Da—“ he started to yell when a large wave crashed over the top of him, drowning out all sound. The boy pumped his arms hard, trying to find breathable air, but he’d been so turned around he wasn’t sure which way was up and for all he knew, he was swimming closer and closer to his doom.
Eventually he stopped.
His arms hurt, his legs hurt, his lungs hurt and it was just easier to stop trying. Dean knew what happened next. He’d seen movies like this before. Sammy would miss him. Dad might, too. Wasn’t this how his mom died? Maybe he could find her down here. He opened his eyes just as a large mass bumped into him from below.
Hard.
Shark? Was that a shark?
It bumped into him again, but all the fight was gone from him. Eat him for all he cared. Dean braced himself for a bite as his vision started to darken around the edges, the lack of oxygen taking its toll on the young boy.
The bumping stopped, only to be replaced by sturdy arms around his waist, pulling him towards what he could only assume was safety. Dean gasped as his face broke through the surface, coughing and sputtering as he instinctively began flailing in the stranger’s grasp.
“Breathe, little one. Stop struggling.”
That wasn’t Dad’s voice. Or Sam’s.
Dean stopped his panicked movements and took deep breaths, leaning back into the chest of whoever it was that had apparently saved his life. He wanted to look at who was holding him up, but he didn’t have the strength to turn his head and see. His vision was still fuzzy and he was coughing up water.
Suddenly, Dean found himself being lifted up gently and set down on the sandy ground. He closed his eyes out of relief, still breathing heavily as he felt a hand rest on his right shoulder. He quickly snapped his eyes back open, hoping to catch a glimpse of his savior. Bright blue eyes stared back at him in worry through the fog of his mind.
“Don’t ever do that again.” It was the same, deep voice. “Promise me.”
Dean coughed and closed his eyes again. “Promise.” He mumbled in response to the voice that now seemed disembodied.
“Good.”
Dean slipped into unconsciousness.
* * *
When Dean was eighteen he’d long since stopped trying to convince everyone that he’d been saved by a merman. No one had believed him, and while it had been a harsh truth for an eleven year old he now realized it had been some sort of hallucination after being half-drowned. He’d gotten lucky he’d washed up on another shore.
His dad had only gotten worse in the years since. Dean was pretty sure that he could be officially labeled an alcoholic. “Mean Drunk” would also work. Or “Asshole”. Tonight, for example, had been worse than others and Dean had made Sam sleep over at a friend’s house so he wouldn’t have to bear the brunt of Dad’s yelling. Dean had dodged two beer bottles and endured fifteen drunken screaming minutes before he walked out the backdoor, slamming it behind him.
He’d always loved living so close to the beach. The ocean had a way of giving him exactly what he needed, even if it was in a way he hadn’t expected. It calmed him down and made him feel like all of his problems could be blown away in the ocean mist. Tonight he needed that comfort.
He shoved his hands in his pockets as he walked along the shoreline. This wasn’t shit that a fourteen year old should have to go through or even an eighteen year old, but it was their life and they would just have to deal. He’d been researching how old he’d have to be in order to take custody of Sam, but he was pretty sure that by the time he was old enough, Sam would be legally an adult. Not to mention the fact that Dean didn’t even have a proper job yet. All he wanted to do was work with the ocean. His friends called him crazy, especially since his mom had drowned and he nearly had as well, but he saw more than just the bad in it. People made their choice to go out into it and surrender themselves to its depths. What happened after that wasn’t the ocean’s fault.
Dean shook his head and rubbed his eyes. It was all so fucking nuts. Him. His life—everything. He lived at home with an alcoholic father and a younger brother who he’d had to train to use the five-finger discount in order to eat some days. It was pathetic. He came to a small rocky cliff that he’d climbed many times before and stared up at it. Was it really worth the effort tonight? Dean huffed out a breath and shook his head, turning to stare out at the dark ocean.
What if his mom was still alive? How would things be then? Bobby had once said that his dad hadn’t been all that bad. He hadn’t always turned to beer and whisky to keep the pain away. No one would even talk about his mom anymore. Not dad, not Bobby. Hell, Sam didn’t even remember her. He didn’t even know the details of how she died!
Sailing accident.
The ocean took her.
Heaven wanted her back.
Where? Why? How?
The lack of answers only frustrated him when he didn’t even have a source to aim the anger towards. Had his mom not made some stupid mistake and gotten herself killed, she would still be here. Things would be a thousand times better. He was positive.
Dean began pacing through the sand, kicking rocks and muttering to himself. They could have had a perfect life. Picnics on the shoreline and a warm embrace when he got home from school. That was all he asked for. All he needed. And even that had been denied him because of a single choice.
He swallowed thickly and dropped his head in his hands, trying to keep back the sobs.
Stop, Dean. You’re better than this. You don’t need to fucking cry over this.
It was all too much for him. Things in his life added up fast and he was bound to crack one day. He turned and faced the sea, screaming so loudly it hurt.
“WHY DID YOU LEAVE US??”
He took a breath and dropped to his knees as the tears streamed down his face, the weight of the world crashing down on his shoulders. “Why did you leave me?” he murmured between breaths. Dean looked down at his hands and his eyes fell on the silver ring he’d worn around his finger ever since he’d learned it was his mother’s. All he saw was red. She’d abandoned him in this world and left him with no instruction book on how to survive it.
He yanked the ring off of his finger, and yelled as he flung it into the ocean as hard as he could, not even looking to see where it landed. The ocean had taken his mother. Why not take her ring, too?
Dean hugged his knees against his chest and tucked his face into them until the tears ran dry. He sniffed and wiped at his nose with his sleeve, keeping his eyes downcast as a sliver of horror made its way up to his heart. He’d just gotten rid of the only memento he had left of his mom. That was the only thing he had left and he’d thrown it away like it was trash. As if he needed another reason to hate himself.
He pressed his fists into his eyes, another scream building up in his chest when he heard a light splash and a dull clink of metal hitting against rock. Looking up at the unexpected sound, he blinked away any leftover tears when he realized what was on the rocks in front of him.
The ring.
Disbelief coursed through him as he crawled forward, his breathing still erratic after all the crying. But. . . he’d thrown it farther than this. It had been lost forever. Dean grabbed at the ring, brushing away the excess dirt and staring. It was the exact same one. He would cry with relief if he had any tears left in him. He slipped the ring back on his finger after staring at it in awe and glanced up at the sound of another splash, just in time to see a small, dark fin disappear beneath the water.
* * *
Seven Years Later
“Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and welcome aboard Beachcomber boat tours! My name is Dean Winchester and I’ll be your ruggedly handsome Captain today.” Dean grinned widely when half the passengers turned to look up at him from the deck. He waved back good naturedly and brought the intercom back up to his lips. “We’re going to be spending a good hour and a half out on the water. The weather’s nice so as long as that storm the other day didn’t scare all the animals away, we should get to see some seals and maybe a whale or two.”
Dean signaled over to Jo and got the engine running. He could hear the necessary mantra of “Please take your seats while we get the tour started. You’ll be free to roam once we’ve launched. Your lifejacket is located in the—“ It was usually around that point that Dean tuned it out. He’d heard it hundreds of times before and had even memorized the inflexions of Jo’s voice while she gave the speech. Sighing, he waited for Jo to finish up so he could get this show on the road. When Jo finally nodded to him he grinned and got them the hell out of dodge.
This was the one stretch that Dean was allowed to use a little more speed than needed, though he technically wasn’t supposed to. So sue him. He was used to the speedboat that he’d found in one of Dad’s old sheds last year. The fact that he’d been hiding a black beauty like that had pissed him off to no end, but he’d made up for all the years of disuse.
Once they got too close to the fish pier, Dean eased up on the engine and slowed down enough for him to be able to concentrate on giving out the information as well as steering the boat.
“Well folks, coming up we have the Chatham Fish Pier and we should be able to get a good look at some of the Northern Atlantic’s famous grey seals.”
When Dean had first started this gig, the only information he knew about any of the animals that he had to talk about was the stuff he’d memorized in the pamphlet they’d given him. Easily though, he’d gotten curious and done more research into the animals. Not a lot, by any means, but enough to satisfy his curiosity on the subjects.
“What a lot of people don’t realize is that seals are actually huge motherfu—“ Jo shot him a look, “—uh, actually a lot bigger than people expect them to me. The guys, bulls, can get up to almost eleven feet long. Yeah. I know. Huge. The girls, cows—yes, kids, they are really called that—can get to just a little under seven feet. Still taller than any one of you.”
Dean grinned as Jo made her way up the platform where he was. It was actually hilarious how many times she’d had to lecture him about swearing on the job and yet off-duty she was worse than he was. He let the boat drift next to the pod of seals that were all lounging in the sun like they owned the place and well, if you talked to the right angry fishermen, they did.
“Sorry! Sorry.” He said when he took the intercom away from his mouth and the tourists were busy snapping pictures. “Slip of the tongue.”
Jo rolled her eyes and punched his arm lightly. “Dude, just be grateful your ‘slip of the tongue’s’ haven’t been around an offended tourist. Just wait until you get a complaint.”
Dean nudged her lightly with the hand that he wasn’t using to steer the boat. “With this face? Who would complain? I am Adonis in a captain’s uniform.”
“You know who else has a captain’s uniform? Davey Jones. And he’s butt-ugly.”
Dean snickered and held up a finger as he pulled the microphone back towards him. “For those of you that are here in hopes of seeing baby seals, you’re a little out of luck. Those guys aren’t born until September. So until then, feel free to bask in the beauty of the adults.”
As if on cue, one of the larger bulls made a loud groaning sound as he flipped over on his stomach. God, he loved these guys.
Jo rolled her eyes and made her way back down to the main deck to supervise the tourists.
“Alright, we’re gonna continue onward now. There should be more seals further out and if we’re lucky, we might see a whale so cross your fingers, folks.” Dean hung the mic back up and gripped the wheel as he gunned the engine back up He gave one last look to the seals. Every single one of them was laying back and soaking up the sun except for one.
That one seal was sitting up and staring intently at the boat, not moving and not making a sound. It was almost entirely covered in black markings save for a small amount of silver on its belly and a white streak along it’s throat.
Dean looked away, putting it from his mind as they sailed away from the pier.
Weird-ass seal.
* * *
Luckily, that group of tourists was pretty low-maintenance and by the time Dean made it home that night he was in a relatively good mood.
Sam always called him insane for wanting to take a ride on his boat immediately after spending a day driving a boat. He didn’t give two shits, though. It made him feel content in a way that he couldn’t explain and that was his business. Sam was off becoming a lawyer in California and while Dean couldn’t be more proud, Sam had started to act a bit like he felt Dean didn’t know how to take care of himself simply because he’d chosen to stay at Cape Cod.
Dean walked out to the shed next to their small pier where he housed his boat when it wasn’t being used. He pulled on the rope until the boat drifted out enough for him to jump into in comfortably and not lose his balance and fall out.
“Hey, Baby.” He whispered, running his hand over the wheel and leaning over the side to admire the word Impala emblazoned in silver on the side of its black exterior. He wasn’t completely sure why his dad had decided to lock it away in one of his many storage sheds, but he could take a stab in the dark that it had something to do with his mom.
He pulled out the key and started the engine, smiling as it rumbled to life. He untied the rope quickly and sped off into the night as he resisted the urge to start whooping when he felt the familiar drop in his stomach.
Dean steered the boat around aimlessly for about fifteen minutes before he found a spot further along the beach where an outstretch of rocks made a shallow cliff side. Perfect. He shut off the motor and slowly maneuvered until he drifted close enough tie the rope to a jutting rock. It took him three tries and four curse words before he managed to climb out onto the rocks, but only once to make sure the knot on the rock was enough to keep his Impala from floating away. Once he was satisfied, Dean stretched his arms and made his way down the rocks. He couldn’t be sure that he’d never been on this stretch before, but it seemed unfamiliar and it didn’t seem like there were any houses nearby.
Normally he wouldn’t try to explore unfamiliar territory, but the light of the full moon made it a hell of a lot easier to see where he was stepping. Dean meandered along the rocky edge as he pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it carefully. The stress that had been slowly piling up the past few months was all being visualized on this stupid piece of paper. There was no way he could afford this. Even with him and Sam both working, Sam’s school bills were adding up fast and law school wasn’t cheap by any means.
Dean kicked a rock angrily and shoved the bill back into his pocket.
He’d find a way.
He’d do what he had to do.
Dean followed the rock he’d vented his anger towards and kicked at it again, feeling a small sense of ridiculous power at being able to kick it around. One more kick and the clattering sound of stone on stone didn’t happen. He looked up in mild confusion and tracked the stone over to where it had landed on top of some sort of brown mass lain across the ground.
He frowned and jogged over to it, careful not to trip over any surprising ditches. That would be fun to explain at work. Jo would make fun of him for days. He crouched down and squinted his eyes, trying to make out what the hell it was. At first he thought it was a dead animal, but it was a little too oddly shaped for that. Reaching out, he touched it hesitantly and jerked it hand back because holy shit that was furry. Or something like it because that was damn soft. He grabbed it again and sighed with relief as he stood, pulling it into the air.
It was a fucking blanket.
Dean laughed at himself as he unfolded it, studying the texture. It was obviously made of some sort of fur—some crazy soft fur at that—but he couldn’t really tell exactly what it was in the dark.
Looking back, Dean couldn’t really say why he decided to take it back with him. No one lived near the spot where he’d found it, and it had probably been abandoned by some teenager or homeless guy. Plus he was curious about it, wanted to see what it was in the light. All he could really admit was that from the moment he’d touched it, he knew he was going to take it home with him.
Whatever the reason, he found himself stuffing the strange blanket into the bottom drawer of his dresser a half hour later. It had definitely been fur. In fact, if he had to take a guess, he’d say it was darkly-colored seal skin, which was all kinds of illegal.
Dean flopped down on his bed, glad that he’d been given tomorrow off, but also hating it since no hours meant no pay.
And he desperately needed pay right now.
He rubbed at his face and yawned just as there was a loud rapping on the door. The hell? He couldn’t think of a single person who would want to come to his house this time of night. Dean jumped off his bed and stumbled down the stairs, only to realize that the noise was coming from the back door. The one facing the beachside.
Dean casually picked up the closest weapon-like thing he could find, which happened to be an umbrella.
“Hello?” he called out curiously.
No answer.
He took another step forward and unlocked the door, pulling it slightly ajar to reveal a very handsome and very naked man.
Dark hair, tanned skin, blue eyes, and a thunderous expression that quickly turned to one of disbelief.
“You?” the man exclaimed, seemingly unaware of his naked body. A fact Dean hadn’t failed to notice in the slightest.
Dean gazed back in confusion, refusing to open the door more than necessary and trying valiantly to keep his eyes above the belt. “Uh, can I help you, dude? Someone I can call or…can I get you clothes?” He waited for the man to respond but just got a betrayed expression in return. “Do you need help or something?”
The stranger’s jaw clenched and he nodded once. “Yes. You can. You have something of mine and I’d like it back. Now.”
There was something oddly familiar about that deep voice but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it, especially when all he could think was, “What the hell is going on?”
“Okay.” He fingered the umbrella unconsciously. “And what might that be?”
Pink lips thinned dangerously before he spoke again.
“My pelt.”