Blaine sought answers high and low throughout the ocean, his heart calling out for the man with skin pale as the baleful moon and eyes deep and shifting as the water his soul belonged to, his very being aching to be with him, to take his hand, to walk on human feet with him on golden sand. He wanted to be human, to have legs and feet and ears to understand the language and a voice to speak it and a warm body to twine with the mystery man's, like fronds of seaweed tangled around each other in the shifting currents.

There were ancient riddles, hidden in rocks embedded into the seabed and whispers from the elders of the kingdom, with their greying hair and the shimmer faded from their tales. Enraptured, he listened to their tales of a young woman who had longed to be free and love the human man who had captured her heart, who had come to them to escape him who she was betrothed and bound to, who had taken the potion and left their lair with courage bright in her eyes, and had never been seen again.

Of course, Blaine knew of her. Everyone had heard the stories of Elizabeth, the only one of their kind brave enough to go against a betrothal, taking a concoction from the elders and swimming to the surface, transforming herself into a creature she knew little of and submerging herself into a frightening and unfamiliar world to be with the one she loved. He not only knew of her, he had daydreamed of being like her since he was a mere child and had heard the stories for the first time.

And yet he was scared to take that step, so to speak, into the human world. Perhaps there was a way, a potion to enable him to speak the human's language, or to have the man speak his language, or to have him breathe as they were submerged beneath the waves.

The elders tutted lightly at him, but handed him a potion and told him to swim up to the surface and drink deeply, thinking of nothing but the man and the way Blaine felt about him even so early in the strange relationship they'd composed with the tips of their fingers, the flat pink palms of their hands.

Blaine did their bidding, waiting until the moon slipped into her place, her silver beams chasing away the sun, and his head broke the surface of the water, the vial clutched tightly between his trembling fingers. He looked up into the pale arc of the beach, and saw the man's silhouette there, waiting. For him? A small smile crept over his face, and, with renewed zeal, he placed the rim of the bottle to his lips and drank deeply, ready to speak the human language and communicate with the mysterious object of his current affections at long last.

Pain took hold of him, his mouth open in a silent scream as the magic took hold, too late to stop anything. This was worse than the most violent of storms holding him in its clutches, a self-inflicted agony that he couldn't stop or control, only suffer through until it ebbed as quickly as it had flowed.

Only now the panic came, because he couldn't feel his tail, couldn't flick his fins against the water, and salt flooded into his mouth, choking him. The water was no longer his friend, his ally, carrying him gently on the rolling swell, but dragging him down, black spotting his vision as he fell through the depths.

Then, suddenly, he was no longer falling, but floating, flying, something damp and solid beneath him, hands on his chest, pressing firmly, a soft voice begging him to open his eyes. And lips on his, warm and vaguely salted, breathing something into him, something precious that has his eyes flying open, his hands instinctively moving to rest on shifting muscle beneath thin material.

"Thank God you're okay," came a soft voice, and joy swelled in Blaine's heart, hearing that musical voice and knowing his magic had worked. "Can you stand? Can you hear me? What's your name? I'm Kurt."

Blaine smiled softly, shaking his head slowly. But, moment by moment, realisation crept over his mind. He was only supposed to be able to understand and speak the language, he wasn't supposed to be on land. His scales would dry out and he would fall life-threateningly ill, and he couldn't breathe out of water, and the ocean, his familiar, should never have attacked him like that.

He sucked in a breath of the unfamiliar substance as he looked down at himself. He wore nothing, all his sun-dappled skin on display in the pale moonlight. He had feet, legs, a body below the inward curve of his waist.

He was human.

Kurt's house was pretty, like him, all pale grainy wood like sand and the calm blues and white of the sea and the foam that flew with the waves. He set Blaine down gently on a padded chair, and went through into a room filled with strange shining appliances, floor-to-ceiling windows giving way to beautiful views of the beach, of the lingering sunset leaving the clouds shot through with gold.

"Do you need a drink?" Kurt asked softly, leaning through a gap in the wall, over some square things that appeared to be made of wood, with a gentle smile on his face, making his eyes sparkle like smooth water beneath a sunbeam. "I have tea, coffee, fruit juice, water, and there's alcohol around if you're someone who drinks before the moon's in the sky. That's the way I prefer to do it."

Blaine blinked at him, trying to find words that seemed foreign on his tongue, the sounds too guttural, not as beautiful as they were when rolling from Kurt's tongue. "Water, yes," he tried, and winced at the sound of his own voice, so much lower than Kurt's, too different, not beautiful. Kurt gave him an odd look, but turned to one of the devices, and pulled the door of it open. A sunbeam flickered on inside, and Blaine stared as Kurt removed a bottle from the shelf inside, and poured it into a glass such as he had discovered in the sea bed after shipwrecks.

"Oh, um...would you like to borrow some clothes?" Kurt asked, cheeks turning rapidly red as he looked over at Blaine and his eyes drifted downwards, to where his body curved out beyond his waist, where his tail had been until that terrible potion. Blaine looked down at himself to, looking at his legs, stretched out in front of him, his feet, toes curling into the carpet, and, between his legs and waist, something he had never known of. "You really should cover yourself up." His eyes rested on Blaine's face for a moment, and he said, "What's your name? I think I know you from somewhere."

"I am Blaine," Blaine said softly. "Clothes would be nice, please." Kurt nodded and rushed from the room, his cheeks red as the sky at sunset, to return a few minutes later, when Blaine had taken his glass of water and sipped at the cool, clear liquid, that wasn't salty as it was in his home, but simple against his tongue, an odd flavour that seemed like nothing but with a weight of so much more, with a bundle of clothes in his hands. "The sweats might be a bit long, but you can roll them up, and hopefully the T-shirt fits right, we're built differently." Kurt handed the clothes to Blaine, and he stared for a moment before stepping into what Kurt called 'underwear', then into the sweat, pulling the T-shirt over his head and emerging from the material to see Kurt's eyes on him again, darker than they had seemed previously.

The eyes fell to his legs, then drifted back up to the inward curve of his waist, then comprehension dawned in the lightening blue and Kurt's jaw dropped a little. "Are you the mermaid from the beach?" he asked softly. "The one who came every night to hear me sing." Blaine nodded, and Kurt crossed the room, falling down to sit next to Blaine, astonishment painted over his stunning face. "When you smiled when I touched you, I...it was wonderful, getting to touch you. I've always loved mermaids. My mother used to tell me tales about them, before she was...before she had to leave me."

Blaine laid a hand tentatively over Kurt's, curving it over the muscle of his thigh, mouth forming into a small O at the feel of the flesh beneath his palm. "It's terrible, that your mother had to leave you," he said gently. "I believe that some things are too beautiful to exist in your world. Perhaps that was such with your mother."

Kurt gave a small smile, and looked up with droplets like rain in his eyes, one slipping down his cheek, that Blaine swept away with a press of his thumb. "I shouldn't cry, I'm sorry-"

Blaine stopped Kurt from crying by wrapping his arms around him and cradling him into his chest, as his brother often had to comfort him. "You aren't weak," he whispered to the handsome man. "Courage."