A/N: My darling ducklings! You responded last chapter with an emphatic "YES PLS MOAR NOAW QUICKLEY PLSSSSS", so I hurried to get this chapter to the presses AND it's extra long! I even gave up time with loved ones to write this! I know you're all skipping over this part anyway due to sexual frustration, so I'll be brief: Your reward for reviewing this chapter is Misha Collins wearing a sock monkey hat, a felt mustache, and the blue snowflake sweater from "The French Mistake." Mix and match his accessories to create up to SIX DIFFERENT COMBINATIONS! WOW! Also, I will continue to make fic-writing a priority in spite of our impending national holiday, so. Realize how important this is. I will forsake national pride in favor of homoerotic fiction if you review.

Enjoy the chapter!

Castiel feels dizzy, and he struggles to stay completely still; he doesn't want to lean into Dean's knife and slit his own throat. "I'll answer your questions," he says slowly. "Just let me turn around, and I'll disarm you."

Then Castiel blinks.

That isn't what he meant to say at all.

Dean's fingers dig harder into his neck, and he chuckles darkly. "I asked Bela to slip something in your drink. A little truth potion. You're not gonna wriggle out of this one."

Castiel's heart sinks heavily into his gut. He is tired of this game and too drunk to connive; he is trapped. "Alright, I'll talk, just… put your knife down. I won't run away."

Dean hesitates.

Castiel sighs in exasperation. "I'm telling the truth, aren't I?" He reaches up to yank Dean's hand away, and -

Suddenly the door bursts open and fills the room with light, and a bland-faced servant bustles in with a lamp and walks toward them.

Dean and Castiel freeze wide-eyed, a guilty tableau.

The servant brushes past them and hurries to the fireplace, where he takes a few logs from the metal holder and stacks them neatly, taking flint and steel from his pocket and striking them until the spark catches. He blows gently on the small flame until the tinder lights a log, and then stands up, satisfied with the crackling fire.

"Thank you," Castiel says, Dean's blade still pressed to his throat.

"Yeah, uh, nice job," Dean adds.

"Baaaaaaaaa," the servant intones. He bobs his head and leaves as hastily as he arrived.

As soon as the door shuts Cas jerks Dean's wrist and spins around. "What are your questions?" he growls. "I resent being drugged and threatened, you snake."

Dean wrenches his arm away and glares, the edge of the blade still turned towards Castiel. Now that Castiel can see his face, all that hot-blooded fury scowling at him, he strangely feels more afraid than he did at the edge of the knife.

"Me, the snake?" Dean asks incredulously. "You've been lying to me since the day you boarded my ship. MY ship. You make insinuations the whole journey about how much you hate me and then you save my life, you heal my arm, and then you feed me some cockamamie story about being a, a, a witch!" He raises the knife again, points it towards Castiel's heart, and bares his teeth. "Tell me now: who are you?"

Castiel swallows, and exhales, and looks Dean in the eyes. "I am a servant of Poseidon," he says, "and I am your ally."

…

Meanwhile, in a Less Exciting Place

Sam finds Jo sitting on the rooftop, looking up at the stars. "How'd you get up there?" he calls from the balcony.

"I climbed up the windowsill," she calls back. "Come on up."

He joins her on the rooftop and tells her about Bela and the truth serum.

Jo shakes her head and takes another deep drink of her rum. "Good thing I've got nothing to hide anymore, or else I'd have to go fight that bitch."

"Yeah, but even without secrets…" Sam runs an anxious hand through his hair. "Nobody should be a hundred percent honest. I mean, I was kinda rude to her. I feel bad about that."

"Don't," Jo admonishes him. "Manners are just another weapon she uses. This isn't hospitality she's showing us, it's her exercising her control. This shit with her spiking the rum should teach you that. She's fucking smart, Sam, and we're in her territory. Don't forget that."

Sam gazes at her in admiration, and tucks a loose strand of her blonde hair behind her ear. "Your hair's getting long."

Jo grins and darts a hand to his head, ruffles his hair. "So's yours."

"Touché," he admits, chuckling, and he shakes his head to settle it.

"I miss the other island."

Sam looks at her, surprised.

Jo's eyes are out toward the horizon, the deep black sea that's almost invisible in the darkness. "We were always together there, and I never felt… I never felt uncomfortable, you know? I never thought about what it might look like or what other people would think, I was just… happy." She draws her knees up and perches her head on them. "Now we're here with everybody else, and there's this distance between us. I go to hug you and I stop myself. I feel you look at me but when I turn my head you look the other way."

Sam nods. "Things are different now. We're more self-conscious. Even now, I want to put my arm around you but I'm afraid to; I'm afraid to let things be that easy between us. I feel like I need to be the gentleman."

She smiles. "I'm no lady."

"You are to me," he says earnestly.

There's a moment of silence on the rooftop.

"Sam." Jo's eyes turn to him, and it makes a lump in Sam's throat. Her voice is quiet. "Do you have feelings for me?"

Sam gazes at her helplessly, and every possible word scatters from his mind except for one.

"Yes."

….

But Back in the Exciting Place

Dean grabs Cas's shirt in his fist and brandishes the knife. "You got about ten seconds to explain yourself before I split you from stem to stern."

He can see Cas tense up, but he's not sure if it's with fear or anger. His cheeks are flushed with alcohol and his eyes are dark but steady. "I am human now," Cas says, "but I wasn't always. I was a Nereid, a sea-nymph. I lived in the service of Poseidon. He transformed me into a human and commanded me to board your ship."

Dean's fingers clench tighter as he feels his rage boil over, bubbling hot. "Why?"

"Poseidon may be a god, but he is not omniscient," he says. "Zeus keeps him from seeing you from afar. He needed me to follow you, to track you. He made me human so that the other gods would not notice me, but I can still perform magic like any witch. I conjured the storm, the one that blew you out of the Caribbean and into this sea of myth, and I reported where you landed to my superiors."

Dean drags Cas closer and pushes the knife against his shirt with burning certainty. "I'm gonna kill you," he growls.

"Then you're stupider than I thought," Cas spits back, the firelight flickering orange across his face.

Dean grinds his teeth and forces himself to hold back. "Oh yeah?"

"Do you think a man loyal to Poseidon would save your life?" Cas demands. "Do you think I would risk the wrath of a god to heal a man I wanted to kill? Even now I do not dare enter the water again for fear that they will expect answers of me." He grabs Dean's wrist and wrenches it tightly, forcing him to drop the knife. "The only reason you are still breathing is because of me."

Dean winces and buckles a little, barely keeping from crying out. Cas releases his wrist and he pulls it back, glaring at him all the while. "Why? Why are you helping me?"

Cas gazes at him evenly. "Because the only reason I'm still breathing is because of you," he says in a low voice. "Because you're a good man who doesn't deserve to die. Because when I look at you, I feel… compelled."

Dean's heart skitters in its beat, and then surges back in anger when he realizes what he's doing. "Yeah, well, I don't want your help!" he snaps. "And I didn't do shit for you that anybody else wouldn't've done!"

Cas laughs.

It's such an alien sound that Dean can't do anything but stare.

"You have no idea, do you?" Cas says, shaking his head. "I wasn't the only one dying on that beach, Dean. They didn't leave you with me to watch over me. They left you because you weren't going to make it walking all that way."

A creeping horror crawls up Dean's chest, and he takes a step back.

"You couldn't see the stitches down your back," Cas goes on, his eyes growing distant with memory. "I would wake up in the night, lucid for a moment, and I would look over… They were getting worse by the day, infected. I don't know how you didn't feel it. Maybe you simply blocked it out. You were barely able to stand…"

Dean remembers staggering out of the boat, falling onto the sand, Sam helping him back up.

"And I was as good as dead. I could barely speak, barely think… and you understood." Cas meets Dean's eyes, serious and calm. "You carried me down to the water, and ripped open the stitches down your shoulder. I was slung over your shoulder and I could see the blood running down your back…"

"I thought that was sweat," Dean whispers.

"You nearly died saving my life." Cas sways a little and puts his hand to the bedpost for support. "And you didn't even like me. How can I think of you as anything less than a hero?"

And something about the way he says it, and the way it makes Dean's throat tight and tugged at the center of his chest… he can't. He can't let it. So he grabs Cas by the collar with both hands and shakes him and snarls, "I'm not your fucking hero!"

And just like that, he finds himself slammed against the opposite wall, Cas's hands pressed into his shoulders and his face savage and too close to Deans and he demands harshly, "Why do you insist on hating me?"

Because you annoy the shit out of me, Dean is about to say. Because you're not even human. Because you're a sneaky lying bastard and I don't want to be your fucking friend.

But what comes out of his mouth is a gasping, "Because you make me feel wrong things!"

That's when he realizes:

Bela got him too.

She got him with the truth potion.

Cas frowns at Dean. "You hate me because I make you feel wrong things?" he repeats. He clenches Dean's shoulders tight. "It's not my fault what you feel. I can't control that!"

"No," Dean groans, wishing he could stop talking. "I feel wrong things around you and it makes me frustrated with myself, and I get angry at you because I'm so frustrated."

Cas peers at him, leaning in too close, his blue eyes too dark and intense, and he asks in that low, gravelly voice that scrapes at Dean's skin, "What kinds of 'wrong things'?"

"Please," Dean begs. "I don't want to say."

He can practically see the gears turning in Cas's head.

"The truth spell," Cas says. "She gave it to you too, didn't she?"

"Seems like," Dean admits through clenched teeth.

A tiny smirk pulls up the corner of Castiel's mouth.

Fuck.

Castiel leans in even closer, so close Dean can smell the rum on him. "Tell me," he says. "What kinds of things?"

The words rip out of Dean involuntarily, no matter how hard he struggles to keep them in, leaving him breathless. "I – I – w-want to touch you," he gasps.

Cas's eyebrows furrow together, and he slides one hand down from Dean's shoulder, to his chest, to the skin exposed by the open v of his tunic.

A thrill of arousal races through Dean, speeding his heart and coursing in his blood, and he can't control the way his chest rises and falls so quickly and betrays him.

"I'm touching you now," Cas says. "I don't see what's wrong."

"No, I - I mean…" Dean tries to turn his face away, tries to hide but there's nowhere he can go, and even his body turns against him and heats with the thought. "I w-w-w-want to touch you. All over."

Cas presses Dean's shoulders tighter against the wall, and his eyes go just a fraction blacker, and

his nostrils flare

and

he sucks in a breath

and the light flickers across his flushed face and suddenly Dean can see the blackness in his eyes

is

hungry.

And it all comes tumbling out.

"Every time I look at your stupid face I want to touch you," Dean pants. "I want to put my hands all over you and every inch of your skin and I want to drag your body against mine, oh fuck I want you so bad Cas, so fucking bad –"

"Dean," Cas says, his breath quickening.

"- and I want to rip off your clothes and pin you down, you have no idea how many fucking times I've thought that," Dean rushes on, forbidden words pouring out of him, "and it's like this itch I can't ever scratch this unbearable need to touch you and grab you and oh I want to make you moan my name again and again –"

"Dean," Cas says again, more urgently, more breathless, his face flushing redder.

"- and I've barely even let myself think this stuff much less say it out loud and you push me up against the wall, Cas, and I'm so fucking turned on I think I could come if you moved the right way," he babbles, "and I don't know what's wrong with me because I've never been like this about a man –"

And suddenly Cas pushes his mouth against Dean's and presses their bodies together.

There is a moment before Dean thinks again.

It is a moment of sheer pleasure, soft warm lips and hot hard bodies and hungry noises escaping him, a moment of pure adrenaline and a hundred thirsts quenched and a thousand more awakened, a moment of squeezed-shut eyes and impatient roaming hands and eager hips, and for this moment the only word in Dean's hazy mind is

want

But then the moment ends

And Dean's eyes snap open.

He pushes Cas back. "No," he gasps, "this is wrong."

"Dean," Cas pleads, his hair mussed and his eyes confused. "Wait."

Dean pushes past him and staggers to the door, saying, "I'm sorry I can't I'm sorry," and he runs down the hall and into his own room and locks the door.

He falls against the wall and slides to the floor and wishes he'd dropped dead on that godforsaken island of flowers.

….

The Quiet Place Once Again

"Sam, there's… There's things you don't know about me." Jo shivers and holds her knees closer.

"I know about Dean," he tells her. "I don't care."

She looks at him, and after a minute she smiles. "That means a lot," she says, "but that's not what I'm talking about."

Sam cracks a half-hearted smile. "You're not secretly a guy, are you?"

Jo laughs lightly and closes her eyes. Then she sighs and says, "I'm married, Sam."

Sam's breath catches in his chest.

"It's kind of the reason I became a pirate." She runs a hand through her hair.

Sam scoots closer, and he crosses his legs, and asks in a soft voice, "Could you tell me about it?"

Jo nods. She sits silently for a moment, gathering her thoughts. "My father was a merchant in Hispaniola, so we were well off," she finally began. "There were several men who liked me… I found one I liked back. I was only eighteen when we were married, but it didn't make any sense to wait. We loved each other. He was so excited to start a family." A tear slides down her cheek and she brushes it off like it's just a smudge of dirt. "My mother warned me I might have a difficult pregnancy. I was her only child for a reason, after all."

"You lost the baby," Sam whispers.

She folds her lips inward and nods. "I had five miscarriages in two years."

Sam doesn't know what to say.

Her chin trembles, and she swallows hard. "I told him I wanted to stop trying, and he didn't understand why. That's when I realized I was never going to be the kind of wife he wanted. The kind of wife anyone would want." She takes a deep, shaky breath. "I knew ships, from my father's business, and I knew I how easily could run away, so I did. I cut off my hair and stole some clothes and signed on with a privateer. A year or so later I signed on with the Impala for better pay." She shrugs and smiles with damp eyes. "So here I am! Still married and a pirate."

Sam reaches his arm around her and pulls her in close to his side. "A pretty decent one."

She huffs a laugh and leans into him, lets her head rest on his shoulder.

"Look, Jo, if this is you trying to tell me that you just want to be friends, then, I'll respect that," Sam says quietly. "That was sort of my plan originally. But if this is you trying to scare me off, then…" He gives her a light squeeze. "It's not working."

"Sam," Jo sighs. She reaches up to the collar of his shirt and fiddles with it. "This is me trying to tell you that we shouldn't."

"Why?" Sam asks. "Who says?"

"You're always saying, 'I'm not a pirate, I'm a doctor.'" Jo finishes straightening his collar and lets her hand rest on his. "You don't belong on any ship. You're too good. You belong in England, being respectable, saving lives…" She sighs again. "And I don't."

"We might never get back to England," Sam argues. "Right now, we'll be lucky if we get back to the Caribbean. Why should we plan that far ahead?"

She twines her fingers through his. "Because I love you."

Silence falls again on the rooftop.

Sam stares at their hands, clasped together. "You love me?"

Jo nods. "I don't know if it's meant to be more than this, what we have, right now," she says, "but I do love you."

"Platonically, you mean," Sam interprets. "Like a brother."

She sighs. "If it weren't for this damn truth serum, I could say yes, and we'd be done with this conversation." She flexes her fingers. "But it's not exactly true. I feel a little bit more than platonic, Sam, but this is enough." She turns her face up to him, soft and sweet. "I could live like this forever and be happy enough."

Sam thinks about this idea for a moment, turning their hands over. "I think I could be too," he says slowly, "if I only knew for certain that we couldn't be happier together."

Jo rubs her thumb in a slow circle. "How about this," she says. "Compromise. When we get to England, I'll buy a dress, and you can take me to the park, or the theatre, and we'll make a go of it." She smiles. "I'll even let you buy me dinner somewhere expensive."

Sam gives her half a smile, and when she puts her head back on his shoulder he rests his cheek on top of it. "I love you too, Jo."

She sighs and presses in closer. "Sucks, doesn't it?"

"Yup."

...

Dean's Room, Which at the Moment is Very Quiet

Dean stays for a very long time with his face planted in his bed.

Someone knocks at Dean's door.

"Dean," Cas calls. "Let me in."

"Go away," Dean groans at the door. "Come back when I can lie again. Or when I'm dead."

There's a pause. "You know, you can open this door for me, or I can open it myself."

Christ.

Dean gets up muttering about stupid Nereids and their stupid fucking magic and opens the door.

Cas enters the room briskly, a man with a purpose. "You can't just leave like that."

"Cas," Dean says wearily, "I was kind of hoping you would show up but now I think that was stupid. Half of me wants to throw you on the bed and half of me wants to throw myself out the window, and I –"

Castiel glares fiercely. "Dean. You need to stop talking, and let me speak."

Dean shuts up.

"Everything between us is out in the open," he says. "I know you are still angry that I lied, but now you know the truth and why I would conceal it."

Dean looks at the floor and grunts in assent.

"I am new to being human. I can admit that freely now," Cas continues. "For awhile now, I have had... confusing feelings towards you that I could not explain. I did not understand them." His adam's apple bobs. "I believe I do now. And if I am correct..." He glances to Dean's eyes, hesitant. "You feel the same way."

Dean exhales in frustration and crosses his arms. "Basically," he mutters.

Castiel frowns. "But you refuse to act on these feelings because we are two men, and you believe this is wrong."

"Exactly," Dean asserts.

"Even though it's what we both want," Castiel adds with a puzzled look, "and you have no problems breaking any other manner of taboo."

"Yyyyyes," Dean answers more slowly.

"And we will be here on this island of luxury for at least several more days, with nothing to do except eat and drink and be merry until the health of the crew is recovered."

Dean wipes a hand down his chin. "Uhhh. Yeah."

Castiel nods. "I see. I just wanted to be clear on those points." He turns to leave and opens the door.

Dean grabs his arm.

"Cas, wait," he says.

Castiel looks back at him expectantly.

"You think you could send that servant of yours down here?" he asks, completely straight-faced. "Nobody lit my fireplace."

Cas steps back in the room with a dark look and slams the door, and just as it bangs shut the fireplace roars to life with a whoosh and a gust of scorching heat.

"There's your fire," he growls. "Now kiss me before I burn down the island."

Dean grins and complies.