Chapter 3

Dean's back sitting in the dunes as the sun sets. He's got his eyes on the shoreline, on the mesmerizing back and forth of the waves.

As stakeouts go... It's different. It's not tucked up comfy in the Impala with coffee and donuts. And it's not hunched in some filthy alley, the machete hidden beneath his jacket poking him in the thigh with every movement.

And it gives him too much time to think. The sound of the waves, the taste of salt air on his tongue, the radiating heat of the sand beneath his ass and his fingers. It's all hypnotic, and it allows his mind to wander.

The first thing he thinks of when he wakes in the morning, before awareness, before location, is Sam. As much as he wants to wipe his brother—and what Sam did—from his mind, he can't. He'll never be able to do it.

The thought that Dean might go the rest of his—albeit short—life without seeing Sam, without hearing his voice, without knowing what he's doing and if he's safe or not, is becoming more insistent. Dean will never be able to forgive Sam for what he did—but he doesn't hate him anymore. He can't. Sam is a part of Dean as much as Dean is a part of Sam. If their roles had been reversed on that terrible night, Dean might have done the same thing to save his brother's life.

But what Sam did was all for nothing. It got Dean a few more months. That's all. He's going to die anyway. No matter what either of them do, the hounds will come, and they'll drag Dean down into hell.

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Hours pass. The moon rises, but it's waxing or waning—Dean doesn't have a clue—and so the beach isn't as bright as it could be. He can see the shape of the waves, thinks he could make out a shape that doesn't fit if it appeared. If it even would come directly ashore in the same place he took Jerry beyond the waves.

It will all rely on chance and luck.

There's a crunch of sand behind him. Dean turns, and finds Bodhi making his way through the dunes toward him.

"I bought coffee," Bodhi says, his voice soft against the night, kind and calm. Inwardly, Dean snorts. His presence is like a kind of inner peace. Damn hippie surfers.

"Thanks," Dean says. "Appreciate it." He takes the cup Bodhi pours from a thermos and buries his nose in it, inhaling the scent. It's probably fair trade or organic or something. To Dean, it's just coffee. Strong. Black. Effective. "I don't even know if I'm in the right damn place. It could come up miles down the beach—or not at all."

"You're doing something," Bodhi says, and tucks a lock of wavy blond hair behind his ear. "It's more than anyone else even tried to do. You believed me."

There's a single-strand beaded bracelet around his wrist. The beads are all black, except for six or seven colored beads, arranged in a rainbow.

"Was Jerry your boyfriend?" Dean asks.

Bodhi looks up at Dean from beneath long eyelashes. Gives him a conspiratorial smile tinged with sadness. "Just friends," Bodhi says. "Best friends. Jerry never cared that I wasn't into girls. More for him, he said."

Bodhi reminds Dean of Sam. Hell, everything reminds Dean of Sam, but there's definitely something Sam-like about this kid. Not so much with the looks, but his height, the spread of his shoulders, the way he ducks his head and then looks up at Dean while tucking his long hair behind his ear. The soft calm of his voice, the peace Dean feels around him—

Except for that night under the bridge. That was anything but peace. It was violence and desperation and Dean wished he was in hell instead of with his brother just so it wouldn't be true.

Dean drags his eyes away from the young man who lost his friend, puts them back on the shoreline. "I'll sit out here all night if I have to," he says.

"Thank you," Bodhi breathes.

Dean shivers. The hair on the back of his neck lifts, and even in the cool night air, he starts to sweat. He turns, and everything slows. The breeze grows thick, heavy. The strands of Bodhi's hair that glow in the moonlight seem to levitate.

And Bodhi's eyes, so blue during the day, have gone dark. Dean's eyes are drawn to Bodhi's lips and he wonders what they might feel like on his own. The sunburned skin, rough, against his own. What Bodhi might taste like. Coconut. Salt and sand and chapstick.

Heat coils in his belly, spreads through every part of him. What the fuck did Sam do to him? Did he wake something up? Some latent desire that was lurking inside him all along?

Or is this part of the curse?

Whatever his fears, Dean can't pull away. They hang there, in a kind of liminal moment, staring into each others eyes, panting against each others lips, just an inch away from kissing.

It's inevitable. It's going to happen. All Dean has to do is lean in—

Their mouths almost touch. Almost, when Bodhi gasps and jerks back and Dean thinks he's done something wrong, read something wrong but then Bodhi scrambles back, pointing. "There," he hisses. "That's it. It's there."

Dean drops his coffee cup into the sand, splashes cooling coffee down his jeans leg. His eyes scan the waves and then he finds it.

It's shaped like a man, but thick-necked. The arms are longer than they should be, the legs shorter, and it walks with high steps, like a dude wearing flippers.

It steps out of the waves, and then heads down the beach away from them.

"Stay here," Dean hisses, and rises into a crouch, trusting the dunes to hide his movement. "I'm fucking serious. Stay here."

He pulls his knife out of his jacket. It's sharp, real silver, and he's got his gun as well, if it becomes necessary, but he'd prefer to do this quiet.

And then he rounds the edge of the dunes and goes after it.

The sand crunches beneath Dean's boots. The surf rushes up to wipe away the creatures strange footprints after every slow step. On land, the thing is slow and ungainly, and this is going to be an easy kill.

"Hey, Ugly," Dean calls, when he's just a few feet behind it, so close he can smell the sea on it, can smell the fishy, salty air it leaves behind.

Light from the moon glints off of Dean's silver blade. The creature turns, and huge black eyes fall to the weapon, before it lifts them to Dean's face and opens its mouth.

Black lips stretch wide to expose rows of gleaming, pointed teeth. The rest of it is like a vast, black cavern, and the sound it makes is a gurgling, bubbling screech.

"Gross," Dean says, as he lunges forward, going for the place where the heart would be if the thing was human, and it's always a gamble when he doesn't know for sure, but he's got to start somewhere.

But those long fucking arms take hold of Dean. The webbed skin of the creature's hands is slick, slimy, like a decomposing shark. Dean twists out of its grip, but then he stumbles, and he falls into the surf as it rolls up onto the beach.

Dean fights to get his feet beneath him, to get his boots into the sand, but quicker than should have been possible the kabagon has hold of him again, and then he's pulled out into the waves.

"Dean."

The sound of his name comes from the shore, and Dean's head breaks the surface and sees Bodhi running down the beach, into the water. Dean sees him dive into the waves and then he goes under again.

This is it. He's going to be eaten by a fucking sea monster, with his boots still on and sand filling the pockets of his jeans. He's going to die, a few months early, and then he's going to go to hell.

It should have happened that night under the bridge. At least the last thing he would have seen would have been Sam's face. Now, his last memory when he gets to hell will be the crunch of his own bones and the burn of salt water in his lungs.

It's not in Dean to give up, though. Even while he's drowning, he thrashes out with the blade still in his hand, feels it catch, feels it tear. The kabagon screams through the water as Dean rips through its skin, but he's got no idea if he got something vital or not. Dean pulls up his knees, braces his boots on the monster, and he grabs hold of the thing by the neck. With this leverage he lifts his hand, brings it down on the shapeless mass that is all he can see of its head through the swirling, murky sea.

He doesn't have enough force behind the thrust. The water slows him down. The blade gets stuck, on meat, on bone, so he pulls it free and tries again.

This time his blade finds something soft, pliable. The creature thrashes, tossing Dean like a rag doll beneath the water. With his last ounce of strength Dean drives the knife in deeper, as deep as it will go, as deep as his burning muscles can drive it.

And the monster goes still. The webbed hand releases him. The last thing Dean sees through the water, lit by the moon above the waves, is a dark mass sinking, the last image the hilt of Dean's silver blade sticking out of one huge, bulging black eye.

Then something else grabs hold of Dean and lifts him to the surface. Dean sucks in air, coughs up seawater, and he clings to Bodhi as his boots and his jeans threaten to pull him back down.

"I got you," Bodhi says, holding Dean above the surface of the water, pulling him along as his strong legs and arm take them quickly back into shore.