Kurt's breath left him in a whistle. He hesitated, listening for his father's footsteps in the sand. Hearing none, he followed it up with a lilting little limerick, breath sharp through his lips as it rung through the air like a bell.  The sound carried softly over the waves, which lapped at his bare toes.

            “Kurt!”

            He stopped immediately, caught in the act.

            “What've I said about that?” Burt grumbled, stalking towards him. From behind his angry silhouette, the fishing boat Elizabeth buoyed in the waves. The mast was set, ropes hung and the furled sail racketing in the slight wind. Kurt could see from here that the anchor had been reeled in.

            “Plenty,” Kurt bit out, crossing his arms defensively over his chest.

            “Then you should know by now not to do it then,” Burt reprimanded, drawing level with his son. He, too, was barefoot. Their boots awaited them on the dock.

            “You've said plenty, but haven't meant much,” Kurt clarified staunchly. “I hardly see how it's a bother to anyone.”

            “You don't want anyone overhearin' that, buddy. People'll think it's—“

            “What? Queer?” Kurt sneered. “Not to pun, father, but I think that ship has sailed.”

            “Still, ain't no reason to pour oil on a fire, I keep telling you. When you go to that fancy school in the city you're always harpin' on about in a few years, you can have a bit more freedom an' you're old man can breathe easier. Hell, I'm getting old….”

            “Would you rather I sing instead?”

            “Kurt, enough. Now are you comin' or not?”

            Kurt bit back the rest of his angry retort. It had taken a solid two weeks of begging and guilt tripping to get his father to take Kurt on one of his fishing trips, and he wasn't about to have all of his efforts wasted on a bit of whistling. At Kurt's silence, Burt nodded to him, turned, and led the way back to the Elizabeth.

            It wasn't even that Kurt particularly fancied spending his entire day out at sea, surrounded by the scent of fish. Burt had never really liked having his son around the ocean or the ports; probably because of the fisherman and their wives, the looks and the scorn. Kurt had always preferred more inland activities anyway, like music and his acting classes and tailoring. For all Kurt's life Burt had been the utmost supportive of this, and had never once encouraged otherwise.

            However, for the past year Burt had been seeing the local innkeeper, a widowed woman by the name of Carol who had a son around Kurt's age. Finn and Kurt got along decently enough, but in an effort to ease the two into the inevitable binding of their two tiny families, Burt had been making more of an effort to bond with Finn. This usually meant the two would spend the day out on sea, coming back later that day joking and jubilant with a moderately sized catch of fish. Blaine wasn't a fisherman by trade. He repaired boats, not usually taking the time to sail them. But he seemed to enjoy these trips all the same.

            With someone else's son. Not his own.

            So Kurt, finally bed up, had begged himself along. He could sense the lengthening gap between himself and his father, and the ever-shortening one between Burt and a boy of no relation to him whatsoever. Striving to connect on some level, Kurt point-blank insisted on joining Burt on one of his numerous trips a fortnight ago.

            The argument sparked a long two weeks of tense conversations, bitter arguments, and such a great and hurtful quell of misunderstanding Kurt almost wished he hadn't brought it up in the first place. His father downright loathed finding Kurt with as much as a foot in the surf. Perhaps more to stop the fighting, or out of guilt, Burt had begrudgingly given up only just yesterday and allowed Kurt to follow him out to sea today.

            Although he frequently helped his father his in his repair business, and therefore knew a ship inside and out, Kurt had very little idea of how to actually sail one. But while he'd been spacing out, Burt had taken the opportunity to get the small ship ready. Kurt switched shoes over, leaving his scandals on the deck as he stepped into the heavier fishing boots. They felt quite heavy and awkward on his feet.

            Once Kurt stepped down onto deck, Burt released the lead rope from the dock and let it drop, nudging his foot against the boards and kicking off.

            “What do you need me to do?” Kurt asked, eyeing the mast. The sail suddenly seemed much larger.

            “Grab that rope—no, other one, with the white on it, you're gonna help me let out the sail—“

            It took some time with Kurt's inexperience hindering the process. But Burt was patient, coaching Kurt through it until half an hour later, the wind bracketed them on both sides as they bumped and skidded over dark waters, land fast becoming small and insignificant. Kurt felt a great swooping in his stomach as he watched it sail away. His shoulders sunk lower, and he took a deep breath of the salt. Fresh sea spray flecked his cheeks, and the first smile he'd grinned in weeks parted his lips. The motions of the boat were wholly unfamiliar. He could count on one hand the times he'd been out on sea, and however strange, it felt oddly like coming home.

            When Kurt opened his eyes again, his father was no longer in front of him. He had opened a latch of a large tankard nailed to the deck, and was pulling from it long folds of netting. Kurt went over to help, and together they unraveled it before folding it into a long, rectangular roll before buckling it to the side of the rail, ready to be released once they lay anchor on the boarder of the gulf just off the eastern peninsula. It was a deep, fathomless depth of sea, cradled by jungle clad land. There was a single lighthouse on the highest cliff, but nevertheless the gulf was off limits come night. The nighttime swell was tumultuous at best, jagged rock rising from their depths come midnight, a fisherman's graveyard if there ever was once. It was quite safe now, though, nature's traps hidden safely under midday tide.

            “Why do you never sell those fish that you catch?” Kurt inquired curiously, watching his dad hitch the nets up a bit further. “You always give them away.”

            “Don't really catch enough to make a business of it,” Burt responded, twisting the ropes into hearty knots.

            “Then why bother at all?” Kurt pressed, shifting his weight from one foot to another. He was at a slight loss as to what to do. It was a small ship, and his father seemed quite content to do most of the work. “I never thought you particularly enjoyed fishing.”

            “It's a hobby.”

            “Repairing ships is your hobby, dad.”

            “Yeah, then what about you.” Burt finally straightened to turn and look at Kurt, who immediately stiffened under the gaze.

            “What about me?”

            “Why're you out here? And don't give me that whole bonding nonsense you've been goin' on about.”

            “Maybe I've taken an interest up in boating,” Kurt said waspishly.

            “You like boating,” Burt repeated back with heavy disbelief.

            Kurt shrugged tightly. “I… like the sea. It's pretty,” he finished dumbly.

            “The sea ain't for everybody.”

            “Well maybe it is for me,” Kurt lied without thought, and he nearly winced when those words finally caught his father's undivided attention.

            “Oh yeah?” he asked, leaning down to slide himself into a sitting position against the mast. Kurt remained standing, even though the waves buffeted the small ship to and fro beneath them. It was an unfamiliar sensation, and Kurt found his awareness constantly being split to watching his balance. “Since when?” Burt asked, heavy resignation in his tone that Kurt could hardly decipher the origin of.

            Kurt shrugged. “Since,” he replied unhelpfully, casting his eyes to the side. He was quite unwilling to cite his insecurities as reason to his being here, because it just now occurred to Kurt this was one of the few times he'd ever expressed interest in what his father did. He didn't want it attributed to something so childish as jealousy.

            Even though it was.

            Seemingly playing along for now, Burt said, “Could'a said something before now, if it was.”

            “Well you've certainly never encouraged any fascination with it,” Kurt accused, still not looking at him. He ran his hand along the rail, staring hard into the waves. It was barely noon, but they already looked so very dark, except for the white tipped peaks of churning waves that struck the boat's side.

            “You've never shown any sorta fascination with the ocean, Kurt.”

            Kurt finally looked up, and it was to catch the flash of guilt across his father's face as he was caught in his own lie. “Yes I have… Of sorts,” Kurt corrected slowly. “But whenever I'm so much as near the ocean, I'm scolded for it.”

            “And why is that?” Burt rebutted, ignoring the jibe, his tone finally losing its forced nonchalance and betraying his curiosity. “I've seen you more times near the sea in this past week alone than I have since you was a baby. What in the hell gives all of a sudden, Kurt?”

            This was, in many ways, true. And strangely enough, Kurt could pinpoint the exact moment of it all started, too. It was on the eve of his seventeenth birthday, nearly ten months ago. He was at the inn, settled in an alcove practicing his music reading, overhearing his father and Carole in the dining hall. They were planning something of a surprise dinner for him the following night, discussing Finn's conversations with one friend of his or another's. It had pleased him, in a sense. To know that at this point in life he'd garnered enough friends, as odd as they all were, that a party was even possible.

            But there had been a key necessity missing, something that Kurt could not identify even to this day. He'd woken that morning, sensing it, and his eavesdropping only gave his worries a firmer grip. It was like biting into a slice of cake that was missing the vanilla, leaving it slightly bland on the tongue. It was like playing the perfect tune on a piano, but finding his pen out of ink when going to write down the notes. It was coffee with cream, but no sugar. A painting with no signature.

            In that moment, just sitting there and listening, something inside had snapped like a tightly wound cord. Left in its wake was a fierce, bubbling, nameless tension Kurt could not place. It made him stand, suddenly restless, and slip out the backdoor in the kitchens. The feeling forced him down streets and through corridors, stopping at some places, practically jogging at others. The tension hurt his toes, filled his head with a deep ache, and he could hardly breathe, he felt on the verge of tears that night. Had closed his eyes and walked, walked, walked until quite suddenly, the ground beneath his feet gave way to sand.

            He heard the swell. The water was closer now, night having brought the tide deep into the land. There was barely a few yards of sand separating Kurt's feet from the water. It was rough and cold looking, and through the almighty roar of it, somehow quiet.

            Kurt had toed off his shoes, and walked some more. The sand was cold beneath his feet and when he reached it, the waves were bitter like ice. It was like a balm to his headache, and the humiliating burn in the back of his eyes lessened. The lump in his throat began to lessen.

            The ocean moaned and groaned before him, and quite quietly, Kurt had begun to whistle. Meaningless little sounds that he'd found he could make from very early on. His mother had called him her little warbler for it, when he was young, a private smile in her eyes. His father had never liked it. Never much liked music, or singing, or anything of the sort. His face would sober when he caught Kurt at it, until he learned to do it away from his father's notice.

            But then, Kurt whistled to the waves, and it felt like finally breathing, as his feet grew numb and his muscles cramped.

            He'd settled into the sandy banks that night, lay down on his side, and watched. The sea had never been much of an interest to him before then. It was like a doctor's office, or school, or the market. It existed, and would continue to exist, whether Kurt took notice of it or now.

            He certainly took notice now.

            That was how Burt found him on his birthday. When Kurt hadn't come home, Burt had torn through every one of his friend's places and his usual haunts until he'd resorted to checking the boat. Kurt had been fairly close to the docks, deeply asleep, curled up in the sand. Burt had collapsed there on his knees, grabbed Kurt by the shoulders, shook him into a seating position and demanded what the hell was wrong with him, to scare him like that, what was Kurt thinking…

            Kurt didn't have an answer for him, looking around and blinking sleep from his eyes. He lifted a hand to his face and felt sand gritty on his cheek.

            The waves had ebbed with the morning tide. There was a tension in the pit of his stomach, clenching and folding him from the inside out.

            Burt had dragged him back to the house, to a warm bath and some questionable soup from Carol's kitchen. Kurt had barely sipped at it before curling up into bed, coughing and shivering. Cursing and panicked, Burt had called the local doctor because his son had gone and caught himself a sickness like the idiot that he was, sleeping in the damn ocean, could have rolled in and drowned and what was Kurt thinking…

           Kurt still didn't know what he was thinking. Only that after three days shut inside the house with pneumonia, with his father turning into the most butch mother hen on the coast, he didn't feel an ounce better. Food refused to stay down, his lungs burned as if the air was tainted with acidic gas, water made his swollen throat throb with pain. Bored from his mind with the monotony and agony of it all, Kurt waited until his father left the house for a few hours to check on his repair business, and slipped a pair of boots on before slipping himself out the door.

           He walked. And walked. And several hours later, he returned, smelling of the sea, sand crusted on his ankles, head and lungs clearer than they'd felt in days. He felt a hundred pounds lighter.

            Kurt had never, ever seen his father so angry as when he walked through that front door.

            In the months that followed, Kurt reflected as he stared out along the endless expanse of water (the sure was a mere thread of color to them now), a seemingly unmovable, bitter rift formed between father and son. Although Kurt could still not say why, there was something about the ocean that calmed him even now. He was plagued by uneasiness in his mind, and a grave ache in his bones that could only be relieved by being close to the water's edge. He still felt on edge, a hollow and hungry feeling in his gut that no amount of sleep or food could satisfy, but nonetheless the calm of the ocean would help to take the edge off. He'd overheard Carol telling Burt it was growing pains. Puberty, she'd called it. Kurt was growing, and like all phases, this too would pass. He needed solitude, some alone time and his walks along the coast provided him with that. He'd go back to normal in no time, she'd assured Burt.

            Kurt wished it would pass sooner.

            He wasn't sure if it was that one night ten months ago setting a precedent, but Burt utterly detested the sight of Kurt anywhere near the sea. He took to asking ceaselessly after Kurt, what his every plan for the day was, so that when he was unaccounted for he could stalk down to the docks and shoo Kurt away. Kurt chafed severely. He was not a child, he was only two months away to his coming of age, and the mollycoddling and subsequent shouting matches when he refused to submit only served to wear him further to the bone. Most days he walked around feeling stripped bare, angry and tense, his personality growing more and more avoidant as of late.

            And that's where they stood now. With Kurt stubbornly clinging to the last of his family, who not only seemed to disapprove of everything he did as of late but was now bonding with a more… normal type of boy, of son. It was the last straw, and Kurt couldn't fix it…

            “I don't know,” Kurt finally answered. His father was somber and silent, for once not yelling or pestering, finally listening. “I guess…”

            “Hold that thought,” Burt said suddenly, frowning and standing. Kurt scowled, fully expecting his father to interrupt, to plough right through him…

            And suddenly, the world jarred and he was toppling over—

            Burt caught him just before his head could hit the rail. A second later, and another harsh rock had them both tumbling into the opposite direction.

            Burt cursed vehemently before tumbling towards the front of the ship. Kurt clung to the rail, frightened eyes scanning the water. It had been choppy when they set off, but now, there was far more white than before, and a steep wave crashed high enough to overlap the gunwale, sea water flooding the deck. “Dad!” Kurt cried.

            “Hold on!” Burt shouted. He had done something to the wheel, and as he skidded his way back to him, Kurt saw it turn on its own. The sail above their head cracked like a whip as a sudden heavy gust of wind buffeted over the waves. A second and third wave smacked into the starboard side, and Kurt was drenched to his knees. The previously calm sea had quite suddenly transformed into a walloping chaos, white crested waves violently twisting beneath them, gusts of wind howling as if they themselves arose from the ocean.

            “Dad, what's going on?!” Kurt shouted in a panic, still frozen to the rail as Burt began to fumble with the ropes near the mast.

            “S'just a squall!” Burt said loudly, and it was anything but reassuring as the boat rocked dangerously to the side. “Damn thing wasn't forecast this far north!” he added angrily to himself, unraveling a knot and letting it loose.

            “What can I do?” Kurt asked, frozen and unsure against the railing, wishing fiercely he'd taken a keener interest in sailing before now so he'd have some clue as to what was going on. He knew what squalls were, fierce and sudden patches of storm that came through on clear skies and that turned the water black like iron and rough as a hurricane. He knew ships survived them.

            He knew that ships also didn't.

            “Get the sail in!” Burt shouted over the din. Kurt stumbled his way over, the soles on his boots barely gripping along the drown deck. Window howled and hisses, salty water like needs as it sprayed over their heads like a downpour of rain. The ship groaned in pain. “No… grab the—“

            Kurt's hands scrabbled over the cleat, fingers tugging uselessly at the knots until his father skidded to the side, taking over. The boat heeled dangerously towards port side, and automatically they shifted all of their weight into the opposite direction to counteract it. It was much more difficult than any safety manual Kurt had ever read. It was very much like trying to stay standing on a bucking horse.

            “Get to the cabin!” Burt finally bellowed after a minute of fruitless efforts, gripping Kurt tight at the elbow. “Get to the cabin and stick low to the ground!”

            Kurt shook his head frantically, sea water buffeting his face and muffling his reply. “No, I'm not leaving you to—tell me what to do, I'll help!”

            “Help me by getting into that cabin!”

            Another wave, this one greater, and if Kurt wasn't drenched before he certainly was now. He gagged as a great wave crashed across the stern, flooding the entire deck until it looked momentarily completely underwater. They dipped dangerously backward, and a moment later a second wave crashed, and a third far larger than its predecessors. It felt like a thousand pounds of sheer weight crashing down on Kurt's shoulders. His stomach churned dangerously as he and his father clung tightly to each other and the rope bound cleat, their entire world plummeting several feet as they sank and rose with the swell.

            “It's no use!” Burt yelled. “Grab that rope—don't let it go!”

            Kurt's hands, almost entirely numb by now, nonetheless gripped tightly to the portion of rope his father frantically indicated towards. Keeping it in a tight trip, Kurt watched as his father hacked at it with a small switchblade he yanked from his belt. The affect was almost immediate. As soon as the rope was cut through, the sail made an almighty snap as a portion of it buckled without anything to buoy it. The bow creaked and groaned beneath the pressure, but nevertheless the boat steadied itself slightly. Kurt could almost find footing again.

            “We need to get to the cabin!” Burt repeated himself yet again. “We'll wait it out and let the boat ride along with it.”

            Kurt nodded along, not caring for much besides the fact that his father would be going with him. Burt kept a firm grip on Kurt's forearm, tugging him along.

            A sudden great rocking buffeted the boat and its tiny crew to one side, and then sharply to the next. With his sea-seasoned legs, Burt clung fast to the rail, but lost his grip on his son's arm. Kurt was not so fortunate. One moment the sky was above him, startlingly and ironically clear, and the next it was beneath his feet. The back of his head met the deck, and for several long moments the clouds and everything else went black and still. There was no noise, only a gentle hollow rushing as he slid. He heart his father shout. He blindly clung to whatever he could grab, but then there was a vicious tug at his arm, and the side of his head slammed against something hard and--

            Cold.

            Kurt struggled to breathe, but it was like fire in his lungs as water quite suddenly replaced air. His legs jerked and snapped automatically, as if searching for land, but they met nothing but ocean. His body writhed helplessly without his command, something slammed into his side—the boat—

            That was the boat.

            Oh god I'm not on the boat I'm not

            His hands struck out blindly, but there was nothing. For a brief moment his hands grasped cool air before another turbulent wave crushed down upon his head. Kurt turned, somersaulted beneath the waves, arose for a few brief grasping moments of starved breath. He struggled to see through his burning eyes, but everything was spotted and black. A wave slammed into his head and he was under a split second later. He swallowed and gulped until it was oxygen he was choking on instead of sea water. Burt's voice rang very vaguely in the distance, but Kurt couldn't make out the words. Everything was the same, the surface felt no different than what lie beneath, everything was cold and frigid and every muscle in his body clenched up painfully.

 Oxygen burned fiercer than the salt water, and the ocean depths were almost like a balm as Kurt sank back under for the last time. He could suddenly see the hull of the Elizabeth, her dark silhouette so sturdy and familiar even from the angle, until she too faded away in the depths. He blinked hard against the salt blinding his vision.

            All was quiet and dark when Kurt opened his eyes. He couldn't see the sky or his father, or the namesake of his mother. Every direction was darker than the next, an endless stretch of dull gray and blue. He felt suffocated long before his lungs started to burn. He twisted and turned, flailed his arms uselessly to what he thought was the surface. He was moving through the ocean alternatively in wide lurches and miniscule inches, although in which direction Kurt couldn't tell.

            The fire in his chest was flaring back up, panic increasing his struggles until there was no energy left in his oxygen starved limbs. Kurt floated listlessly, twitching and cold and it was strange, so far below the surface.

When surrounded by water, it didn't feel wet.

It was the last full thought Kurt would later remember having. Everything else could have been before, or after. He didn't know how long he floated, whether the storm continued to rage above him—or below him. Gravity didn't exist in the sea. Only those that could survive it and those like him who couldn't.

There was water, and more water, and a forever of blue.

And color.

Color, behind his eyelids? Kurt blinked, he shuddered, there was pressure about his midriff and a great rush of movement. Something hit his leg heavily, but the throbbing pain barely came through as anything more than an afterthought. Kurt couldn't bring himself to register any amount of surprise, only a dulled realization until all consciousness was lost.