Original art: (slash) PYsJo - seriously, it's so amazing, you should all go fawn over it, I'm such a lucky author. Huge thanks to songirll77 for making such amazing artwork.
Betas: littleguitar94 ( ) and mockingj91 (LJ)
Notes: My submission for the Glee Reverse Mini Bang! This was a total blast to write. It's very different to my usual style - mostly because I read Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse a couple of days before wrote this and I've been meaning to experiment with an omniscient third person narrator. But I actually really love this, and I hope you guys all do too.
Originally, this was going to be a lot longer - how they met and whatnot - but I was too busy to write all seven chapters. I'm going to be writing it all over my holiday as a full prequel (in my usual style) if you're interested.
The cave is silent but for the gentle lap of waves against the rock's ledge – the tide is high but not yet high enough to spill over the top – and two sets of breathing, one of which hitches occasionally, with nerves or anticipation or both, perhaps. The sun is still not due to set for another couple of hours, even though the cave is deep enough that they're more in shadow than light, but the moon will be rising any moment now.
"Don't look," Blaine says. He tugs on the edge of his shirt; he's wearing beach shorts, a tank top, sandals, no underwear; it's so different from his usual clothes – his capris and polo shirts and bow ties and cardigans – but for now he has dressed simply, and in clothes he doesn't mind getting wet, if they get caught in the tide. But today he wears them out of habit; today they won't get wet, or tomorrow, or the next day, or the next day, because Kurt has a bag in which to take them away, and he'll bring them back – and a towel – when the full moon sets again for the last time for a month.
"I won't," Kurt promises. Neither of them mention his cheeks, which are fiercely, surprisingly red; just as neither of them mention that they have seen each other far more intimately than standing nude in a cave in the fading daylight.
True to his word, Kurt keeps his eyes away, on the water, on the walls, on the entrance to the cave, and beyond, where the water breaks white against the rocks, and further, where the sea touches the cloudless horizon. He hears the rustling of fabric; the scuff of Blaine's sandals; and then the hush of flesh against the wet rock, and the ever-changing seawater eternally left in small puddles in the natural indents of the rock, as Blaine is left entirely unclothed and walks over to the water.
A light breeze rolls through the cave – most of it rebounds off the back wall, though some of it escapes through the cracks in the structure, and the rest stagnates in the corners to create pockets of cooler air.
Blaine balances on the edge of the stone, and then slowly lowers himself into the water. Goosebumps raise the hair on his arms and legs and the nape of his neck. He shivers.
He knows that the Atlantic Ocean is almost freezing, and this far north especially so, but most of the time he can't tell; and the closer it is to the full moon, the warmer he finds the water – not that it's warm anyway (this is still Maine, after all, and the temperature of the water barely changes no matter the season or time of day) but it's just about comfortable, if a little on the cold side; and the air above had been so wonderfully warm.
When Blaine gives Kurt permission to look, the taller boy spreads a blanket over the rock – right up against the ledge, onto which Blaine is holding as he treads water; his arms are folded on top, and he rests his chin on his forearms, smiling up at Kurt with eyes like hot cocoa on a snowy winter's day. Kurt lies down on his stomach, and his smile feels to Blaine worth more than a hundred 'I love you's, and he leans forward to press a gentle kiss to Blaine's lips, and the boy – young man, rather, because they're both eighteen, now – he opens up, willingly, easily, happily, the way he has always done. The kiss remains nothing more than lips against lips, a few seconds with open mouths to share breath, and then closed again; a kiss just to kiss.
Eventually, Blaine breaks away, and they share an embarrassed laugh when they realise how far over the edge Kurt is leaning, how much Blaine has risen out of the water. He sinks back down, lower than his arms, peering up at Kurt through his eyelashes in a way that could be shy or could be coy, and is actually a mix of both; but he stays above water level, because he can sense the moon is just below the horizon but still has not breached, and there may still be some time for more kissing but Kurt doesn't trust the ocean not to carry disgusting germs.
"I love you," Blaine says, unbidden of anything in particular. He feels compelled to say it, sometimes: the feeling wells up in his chest, warmth and comfort and passion, and it spills from his lips like a confession – because it is, a little, because Blaine never thought he would be allowed to love someone, because he's gay in a tiny seaside not-quite-tourist town, and because when the full moon's in the sky his body changes from human to mer.
"I love you, too," Kurt returns, Kurt always returns, because he'd never really believed he'd be allowed, either, as he watched his friends hook up and break up and flaunt their relationship statuses through song in the choir room on a weekly basis. He gives Blaine's forehead – the only part of him on display that isn't his eyes – a sweet kiss, and Blaine's eyes squint with the strength of his hidden smile.
"Are you sure you want to stay?" Blaine says quietly. He's giving Kurt a final chance to back out, even though they've talked about this enough to fill a novel. Kurt just raises his eyebrows, in amusement and exasperation, and Blaine chuckles and ducks into the water a little more, so Kurt can just about see his eyes shining above his arms, and through the fringe of eyelashes and curls.
"Of course I'm sure, dummy," Kurt says fondly, twining and twisting his fingers through Blaine's hair – they fill the spaces inside the loose, black ringlets; just the same as they fill the spaces between Blaine's own fingers; just the same as their bodies fill the spaces in the other boy's arms – he tangles his fingers in the strands of Blaine's hair and pulls him up out of the water – and Blaine goes willingly and easily, the same as he always does. His skin is cold where he's no longer underwater, but the goosebumps have gone. He allows Kurt, and himself, a few moments to kiss, but his outside is starting to feel too small for his insides and the lower half of his body is beginning to itch; they are only afforded a vignette of sky and sea and rock through the entrance of the cave, but Blaine can feel the touch of the full moon on the water as it rises above the horizon.
He is the one to pull away again, but this time he swims away, towards the open sea, although he stops just far enough away from Kurt so as not to accidentally splash him; after a final shared smile, he sinks entirely below the surface.
His movements ripple the water, distorting the view of his body, and for that Kurt is glad – he has seen Blaine shirtless almost every day of this summer and the last, because he works on the beach as one of the lifeguards, and Blaine doesn't bother with the modesty of clothing when he's changed into a merman; but they have only seen each other naked a small number of times and the novelty hasn't worn off; Kurt hopes it never does. But he's here because he wants to see Blaine change, because they've talked about it a lot over the last year, or as much as Kurt can convince Blaine not to pretend like this part of him doesn't exist – he wants to see Blaine change, but he'll miss everything if he's not paying attention because he's too distracted by thoughts of what, exactly, he has done with Blaine every other time the boy has been naked.
When Blaine changes, there isn't a bright light to obscure it, or, in fact, any light at all, except for that of the sun, which glimmers when it catches on the waves. The change isn't immediate, either; but at least it doesn't look painful – from above the water, it's difficult sometimes to read Blaine's expressions, even with the practice of talking for months to a pixelated image on a computer screen – at the most, he looks uncomfortable, pressing at his chest and his neck as his organs change to breathe underwater, and clenching his fists so he doesn't scratch at his legs as they meld together, lengthen, grow scales, lose all bone matter to become cartilage and muscle. Kurt watches, with an almost morbid fascination, the tail grows its fin; and he presses his fingers to his mouth in sympathy and protective instinct – because, Blaine said, when preparing Kurt for this, the change is uncomfortable in the way that sitting on your hands is uncomfortable, and the fin is the onslaught of pins and needles when you stand up; and now, underneath the water, his face is screwed into a grimace, and he twists his body and brings his hands up to his head to scrunch his fists in his hair. The tail unfurls from nowhere. Blaine stops moving, his eyes closed to just breathe – while the pain quickly fades, and to adjust to the non-human body – but for a moment Kurt panics that something went wrong.
That is when Blaine comes back to the surface, his smile for Kurt returned to his face. He looks different in a way Kurt never noticed before – subtle differences that he would never have noticed, of course, because he's seen Blaine as mer only twice, and both of those were before they even started dating, before he really knew him.
His skin is smoother, clearer, more rubbery in texture, similar to the feeling of latex, because the human quality of skin would prune, Kurt realises; his eyes shine more, almost literally glowing, more reflective, and they roam over Kurt's face, taking him in in this different lighting; even his hair feels different under Kurt's hand, and that's probably why Blaine's hair isn't ruined from spending so long in salt water.
Kurt whispers, "Handsome as ever," and the words soak into Blaine's skin like moisturiser, sinking through and underneath his skin, softening the nodules of tension in Blaine's shoulders until peace is all that's left; Blaine grins up at Kurt, his smile carefree and as bright as his eyeshine, and, of course, because there is no other response when Blaine smiles like this, Kurt smiles back, all of his guards at ease; and everything is so wonderfully different to the first time, when Blaine was terrified that his secret had been found out, and Kurt had been so hopelessly confused.
Together, they lift Blaine onto the ledge, although, Kurt notices, and Blaine notices Kurt noticing and grins privately to himself – Kurt notices the flex of the other boy's biceps and torso, rivulets running round the shape of firm muscles; his main job is to keep Blaine balanced. He sits with his fin in the water, next to Kurt's blanket, and Kurt takes off his shoes and socks to dangle his feet in the water, too. Blaine lets Kurt run his hand down the lap of his tail – it feels so good, almost as good as when Kurt plays with his hair, or gives him a massage, and it's a struggle not to close his eyes and moan.
And they talk.
Not about anything in particular, because there's nothing in particular to talk about. There are rehashings of old conversations – Blaine's transformation; Kurt going to college in New York, which is so much closer to Maine than Ohio is, and Blaine working at his family's restaurant until he figures out what he wants; general plans for the future, for the duration of college and the life beyond; plans for the immediate future, what they'll do for the rest of the time Kurt is in Maine; idealistic plans for the future, in a perfect world where they could both live in New York without any salination issues; earnest and sincere assurances that they won't break up, that college and New York won't break them up. There are also silly conversations, about why Blaine owns brightly coloured beach shorts, and speculating for the coming seasons of their favourite reality television programmes, and how Kurt's high maintenance best friend's future roommate will cope, and the book Blaine was reading yesterday.
Eventually, the sun sets. It's dark in the cave long before it's dark outside, and back in the water – because when he's like this, when his skin is dry, it's tight and uncomfortable, so he has slipped back into the ocean and is now resting an arm and a chin on Kurt's leg, the other hand wrapped around the taller boy's ankle and occasionally absent-mindedly stroking at the tendon, and every time, in return, Kurt smoothes his hand through his boyfriend's hair, stubbornly curly no matter how wet they get – back in the water, in the almost-dark, Blaine's eyes are practically glowing, and it's beautiful.
Blaine kisses Kurt's knee and says, "You should probably get going. Your dad will be worried."
Kurt pouts; his hand, of its own accord, grows stiffer on the back of Blaine's neck, as if that will be enough to keep them together. "I'm eighteen," he says.
Blaine laughs as he says Kurt's name – the way he always says Kurt's name, slow, almost caressing, stretching out the middle and softening the final 't'; the name is precious because the boy is the most precious thing.
"All right," Kurt sighs, "I'm going." Blaine's mother is waiting for him near the old lighthouse, whenever the boys can part, and Kurt isn't sure of the exact spot but it's purposefully somewhere difficult for full humans to casually stumble across. "I love you."
Blaine beams. "I love you too," he says softly, and then he releases Kurt's leg, so he can dry off and put his socks and shoes back on; he folds the towel and puts it inside his bag with Blaine's clothes, on top so someone can't catch a glimpse of them; and then he crouches on the floor, balancing with one set of fingertips, and Blaine rises up to meet him, and Kurt holds them together with his hand on Blaine's cheek as they kiss.
When Kurt leaves, it's with slow steps, careful, because he's mostly walking backwards and blowing more kisses to Blaine; and when he's out of sight, Blaine slips into the water, and, moments later, he's not even a silhouette against the ocean floor.