Chapter Two

Blaine Anderson stood at the hull of his new birthday-present slash product-of-bribery ship, closed his eyes, and inhaled deeply.

"Isn't this great, Wes?" He roared, voice only just carried above the repetitive slapping of waves against the ship's wooden exterior, "The salty sea air, the wind blowing in your face... a perfect day to be at sea!"

Wes blanched, turning away from his best friend and the sight of open ocean to do his best at repressing the urge to heave his breakfast into the frothy turquoise depths beneath them. "Oh yes. Delightful, really." Betraying himself helplessly, Wes let out a strained gargling noise and thrust his head over the the rails, retching pitifully.

Blaine smothered a snigger, running a hand through his short, windswept curls. Maybe he should've invited David to help christen the hulking giant of a ship on it's maiden voyage instead of Wes.

"Sorry," He said, clapping his friend on the back lightly, "I always forget you get seasick. But what did you expect when I asked you to come with me here? That I was taking you to the Maritime museum or somewhere equally as exciting?"

Wes spun himself around to face Blaine, glaring at him as he dragged his hand across his lips. "I thought by 'new boat', you meant a canoe or kayak or...something." Wes gulped, startled by a particularly sudden splash of water against the hem of his pants. "I wasn't expecting your father had bought you the damn Titantic."

"I think a canoe or kayak or anything that close to the actual ocean would have you quite literally crapping yourself if being fifteen feet above sea level is making you this ill."

"Shut up."

"Whatever you say, Spongestomach Squarebrain." Blaine laughed as he accentuated the remark with a jab to Wes's belly, a gesture which the shorter boy slapped away irritably.

"Are you saying I'm fat, Blaine Anderson?"

"No. I just-"

"Because I'll have you know that between Warblers council meetings and the mountain of homework doled out by Professor Finch last week, I barely eat more than my dog Wulfric."

"Wes, shut up a sec-"

"And you know that Wulfric eats about three or four tins of dogfood a day, and..." Wes paused, brow crinkling as he considered his words. Blaine watched, amused. "Wait, scratch that, Wulfric probably eats ten times his weight in dogfood per day and I certainly do not."

"Yes, Wes," Blaine nodded, large brown eyes widening in mock innocence as he steadied himself against the growing tide, "I sincerely hope you don't eat ten times your dog's weight in meaty goo because otherwise I would have to terminate this friendship immediately."

Even strait-laced Wes couldn't suppress a small grin as he gingerly lowered himself onto one of the great many cushioned benches that studded the sides of the ship deck. "So what did you mean by that totally uncalled for jibe then?"

Now it was Blaine's turn to look uncomfortable, once again ruffling his hand through his hair. It was almost a routine nervous tic for Blaine to do so. "I meant it like because you were throwing up. As in, stomach like a sponge. Squeezing out all the ickiness or whatever," Blaine explained sketchily as he sat down beside Wes. He sighed. "It made more sense in my head."

Wes snorted. "Everything makes sense in your head. Even when there is no proof as to the matter."

"What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean, Mr. 'I'll-believe-it-until-I-see-reason-not-to'. I cannot believe you actually argued with Jennings over something as pointlessly trivial as mermaid mythology. Of all things." Wes shook his head, as if replaying the scandalous scene of Blaine challenging their Civics teacher that morning.

Blaine shrugged, looking out at the ocean and smiling to himself. "You've heard all the witness stories, Wes, they sound pretty legitimate to me. Who's to say all those people are wrong and Professor Jennings is right? That asshole probably couldn't tell a mermaid from a freaking bat if one leapt out of the sea and flopped around in his lap for a while. I just don't see the point in completely ruling out the possibility until there's real proof."

"But there isn't any real proof that they do exist either, Blaine," Wes reminded his impassioned best friend, only to have the interjection waved away. Blaine still had his eyes focused on the rise and fall of the dark blue waves, fading sunlight casting shadows across his face and giving the shorter soloist a somewhat appropriately mysterious appearance. He'd never seen Blaine concentrating harder on anything in his life- unless he counted Blaine's religious studying of sheet music before every major competition.

There was a small silence before Blaine spoke again. "So I like to believe mermaids exist. So what? I like the thought of it, you know? The thought of other people existing but not being quite the same. There's something I find... I don't know, beautiful about mermaids. The tail instead of legs, how graceful they'd look in the water with their hair cascading about them, how their skin is meant to be as soft as the powder-fine sand. It's poetic. It's romantic, even. Why shouldn't I believe it?"

Wes nodded wordlessly. He knew better than to get in the way of one of Blaine's deep procrastination sessions, the wind calming down slightly and the ship only gently bobbing upon waves now.

"Looks like a storm's brewing," Wes muttered when he saw a dark grey cloud slither across the otherwise dusky-pink skyline, a dismal charcoal smear.

Blaine dragged his eyes from whichever point on the horizon had affixed his gaze. "Looks like it is."

Wes's stomach flipped as he tried to push away images of their ship getting wrecked in a storm. "Maybe we should head back to shore now? To avoid it?"

Blaine stood up and walked to the very front of the deck, leaning against the mast and stroking the image of the wooden merman carved into the wood. He was still deep in thought. "I'm sure it's nothing, Wes. A single black cloud doesn't necessarily mean a storm's coming."

"Blaine, I really don't mean to sound awfully ungrateful and I don't mean to sound like some sort of villainously bad friend but I really think it is in the very best interests of both our persons to return to shore now before we are swallowed up by a midsummer monsoon, which would be highly detrimental to the sanity of both yourself and I in this matter as I do not recollect you ever stating to having a desire to perish at sea," Wes announced loudly, words almost jumbling into one another incoherently as he anxiously watched his best friend's grip on the mast only tighten despite the increasingly lax tide.

"Wes," Blaine began, back still facing the cowering Senior Warbler, "Has anyone ever told you that you'd been going to Dalton Academy for far too long? You're beginning to sound like one of those lit teachers who feel a need to make every sentence sound like a passage from Shakespeare. Besides, look how calm the ocean is," Blaine breathed, once again taking a deep breath of the salty air.

"I believe people call it, 'the calm before the storm' for a reason, Blaine."

But Blaine merely smiled. A smile that Wes didn't see, but Blaine was sure someone out there did. Somewhere out on that vast seascape. Try as he might, Blaine couldn't shake this feeling that something incredible was about to happen to him, and as much as he loved Wes, he wasn't going to let his best friend's untimely paranoia get in the way of it.

"Just give it a few more minutes, man. Please?"

Wes let out a shaky sigh before balling his fists and setting his mouth in a tight-lipped smile. He wondered how he'd ever let himself become such good friends with a guy that was such a ridiculously hopeless romantic. It was no wonder Blaine Anderson had never had a proper boyfriend, despite how many gay kids had transferred to Dalton for its firm no-bullying policy; Blaine, the king Disney film buff, refused to settle for anyone but Prince Charming.

"Okay," Wes muttered, massaging his temples as he squeezed his eyes shut to shield out the image of how deep and murky the ocean looked in the increasingly darkening sky, "A few more minutes."