Kurt tilted his head toward the dazzling warmth of the midday sun and smiled wide. This heat was a pleasant departure from months of suffering through the sub-zero temperatures that plagued the Eastern Seaboard. He had boarded his flight leaving JFK airport to a backdrop of dismal New York weather – the sky a dull and gloomy gray, the wind, chill and sharp to the point of making his thick wool peacoat useless, and coating the streets and sidewalks, a fair layer of grimy, waste-water slush. He had taken to wearing five layers of thermal socks on his feet and cramming them into a pair of insulated snow boots designed especially for ice-fishing that he bought two sizes too big to accommodate the bulk. But after five minutes of sprinting down Broadway to NYU, he couldn't feel his toes.

It was too heavy for Kurt - too oppressive, too suffocating - and that wasn't just the cold.

Everything exciting about living in New York City had worn thin for Kurt. The one place he saw as his Mecca all throughout high school had started to encapsulate him, and he refused to assimilate.

When American Airlines flight 1278 lifted off the ground, Kurt left the dreariness of big city existing behind, winging his way toward a life on a different hemisphere, to gaze upon a new skyline, and to see the world from a divergent angle.

Not everybody agreed with his decision to give his life a 180 degree makeover. Giving him the last of one hundred and thirty-seven hugs good-bye, one of his dearest and oldest friends, Mercedes Jones, repeatedly warned him to be careful. She had done something similar - lived the life of a transient in L.A. while working toward landing a recording contract. She spent more time than she would admit living out of her Ford Fusion. After draining her resources, she moved to Manhattan, bunking with an ex-boyfriend while she tried her luck at getting a deal with producers there. Mercedes told Kurt that the West Coast was a whole different universe compared to Ohio or New York.

She said that like it should deter him.

Kurt didn't know if it was a casual warning or if she was trying to put the fear of a god he didn't believe in in him, but Kurt wasn't scared. He couldn't wait to experience this different universe and everything it had to offer.

Besides, there was one piece of information that he hadn't divulged.

His move to San Diego, to collaborate with the researchers from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla, was only a small reason for his upheaval.

This trip didn't stop at California, and that was the most thrilling part of all.

Through his tiny window in coach, Kurt watched as the plane rose above the clouds and the sky instantly became clear and blue. Blue was such a comforting color for him. Everything he was, everything he loved, surrounded the color blue in one shade or another.

As he left New York and Ohio farther behind, the gap created by this distance from his old homes filled up with hope.

If that wasn't an allegory for Kurt Hummel's life, then nothing was.

Over the course of his flight, he noticed the quality of the light outside transform. It became sultry and golden. He could almost taste its sweetness, its purity. He was pretty sure a breath of it would feel like falling in love. Of course, being in love wasn't a concept he was personally acquainted with, but as a romantic, he tried to find it everywhere – in music, in his work, in his family, in the water.

Especially in the water.

His lower lip stung, bitten a dusty rose by how he spent most of the day trying to keep from giggling like a ninny. That bit of discomfort didn't bother him, not as he headed toward his destination, this final leg of his journey bringing him to the tropical oasis where he would spend the next few months in his own private paradise – utterly alone. He watched the foamy spray rise as the bow of the boat dipped, the water ricocheting off the hull and splashing him in the face. He let it, closing his eyes and absorbing its coolness into his heated skin. For a boy from Ohio who had never seen the ocean until he entered college, he felt completely at home here, on the vast reaches of the turbulent Pacific. A thick mist clung to his body, the harsh sea salt bleaching his meticulously coiffed hair, the over-bright sun freckling his pale skin, but he had stopped caring about his appearance (for the duration of this trip, anyway) because for the first time in his life he felt that he was truly blossoming into his own, in the place he was always meant to be.

This sea and this sun – he belonged to them. The drops in his hair, the tan on his skin, were all ways in which the sirens welcomed him home.

This was not the path Kurt initially imagined his life taking. He'd had dreams of performing on Broadway, like his lifelong idol, the incomparable Patti LuPone. Growing up, he acted when he could, sang where he could. He longed to be adored by millions. He auditioned for and was accepted to NYADA – the premier performing arts school for musical theater in the country. But it turned out, even with the work and devotion he put into in, that dream of theater stardom wasn't for him. It wasn't where his ultimate destiny lay, and in a thousand ways, he was glad. Though he will admit (if only to himself) to a second's hesitation when he handed over his boarding pass to the agent at the airport, thinking that he would regret his decision to trade in his fantasies of following in Patti LuPone's phenomenal footsteps for a major in marine biology, but looking out at the perfection and solitude of the open ocean, he knew he had made the right decision.

Here on this boat, bouncing through the waves, Kurt got a taste of true freedom. He felt an overwhelming sensation of peace – a peace that pervaded his heart as it thrummed with the speed of the vessel and permeated his lungs as he breathed in the ocean air. It spiked straight to his soul, which reached out beyond the limits of his corporal form in search of…something.

He hadn't come to terms with that part of his journey yet – the part that had nothing to do with his research and everything to do with the visions in his head.

Visions he'd been wrestling to make sense of his entire life.

Visions and voices had been Kurt's constant companions, whether he liked them or not. He never spoke about them to a soul – only his father knew, and that happened by accident. As Kurt grew older, he became better able to control them, to silence them so that they didn't take over his every minute with their insistence to be heard, their need for his attention.

The voices came from all around him, from everyone he met. He automatically created a connection with people whose hands he touched, soaking in their pain, their happiness, their distress, to the point that he refused to shake hands anymore. He claimed to be a germophobe, and had an obligatory bottle of Purell on hand to keep people from pressing the issue, but still most everyone thought him rude because of it.

What did he care, as long as he could sleep at night?

But the visions – those he had yet to learn the origins of.

Which was why this exile was ideal.

He sensed the boat's captain become alert as the man saw something in front of them that Kurt had his eyes shut to.

“Look out!” he called down from his deck. “Water wall ahead!”

Water wall. Kurt laughed. It was only a wave, maybe large enough to capsize their vessel but Kurt highly doubted it. Not if the captain Scripps hired was as good as they claimed. Kurt didn't open his eyes. He wasn't concerned. The water would not hurt him. He felt in his mind when the captain turned his head away and Kurt raised a hand to the oncoming wave. In seconds it parted, clearing a path for their boat and leaving them to pass through safely.

The captain raised his head from where he had it tucked into the crook of his arm to shield himself from the impact. He did so warily, expecting a cold, hard smack of water to the face, but then straightened in the sunlight, eyes darting around at the ocean in surprise.

“Well, I'll be dipped,” he said, searching ahead and behind for the wave that they somehow managed to elude. “How in the hell did we miss that? It was right in front of us!”

Good captain, but a little dense, Kurt thought, shaking his head at the man reaching beneath his cap to scratch at his scalp in confusion, wondering to himself if the hours staring into the sun had messed with his head.

Of course, that didn't mean that Kurt was about to run up to the man and reveal his secret.

Kurt had always been able to manipulate water – any fluid actually. Around him, outside him, inside him, it didn't matter. He had mastered the art of bending it to his will. It was a skill he was born with and he used it to great advantage, especially with regard to his research.

Kurt grew up thinking that there was no reason for him to have these supernatural talents. As far as he could tell, no one else in his family – maternal or paternal – possessed any similar or unusual gifts. He had entertained the thought that he was adopted, but that lasted only a second. One look at his mother's photograph was all the proof that anyone needed to know that Kurt Hummel was, without a doubt, Elizabeth Hummel's son.

He also believed that his father didn't have a clue about his abilities, until one day when Burt Hummel caught his eight-year-old son stirring his chocolate milk at the breakfast table without using a spoon. Burt was a stoic man, and as he looked into his son's face, terrified at being discovered, he went wordlessly about the business of adding creamer to his coffee. Then he sat beside Kurt, pushed the mug in front of him and said, “Would you mind mixing that for me, kiddo? I don't feel like cleaning a spoon.”

“B…but how did you know?” a young Kurt asked his father, stirring the hot coffee in the mug with a twirl of his finger.

“I'm your father,” his dad had answered with a laugh. “How could I not know?” He reached across the table and ruffled his son's hair. “You know, I may not have known much about raising kids before you came along, but I did know that it wasn't exactly normal for a baby to make formula fly through the air, or put pictures in your head so that you'd know exactly what he wanted.”

Kurt remembered his father telling people that he had been an effortless baby. Not until that Sunday morning at the kitchen table did Kurt understand what he meant.

Burt Hummel never expected to have a son like Kurt, but he told Kurt that his mother knew. His mother didn't have Kurt's ability to bend water, but she could read minds, and to an extent she could predict the future. Elizabeth knew her son would be unique. When he was in her womb, Elizabeth told Burt that she could communicate with their boy. Burt often times saw her in her rocking chair in the nursery, reading silently, or in deep contemplation with her eyes closed, a smile on her face, humming an airy tune. She surrounded herself with music and literature, and spoke to herself in French in the hopes that her son would learn these things, and that they would one day appreciate them together.

But there were parts of the future that Elizabeth Hummel did not predict, or if she did, she kept them to herself.

Elizabeth's pregnancy was not an easy one, but every time her doctor diagnosed a problem, it would be rectified by the next day, without the aid of medication, bed rest, or any real effort on Elizabeth's part. High blood pressure, diabetes, edema – the doctors were baffled as to how it disappeared, but Elizabeth knew.

She had faith that it had to be her son.

The day of her C-section, Elizabeth delivered a healthy seven pound, eight ounce baby boy. But during the procedure, her OB/GYN discovered holes in her placenta and a rupture where it had torn from her uterus. The tear would have – should have – bled profusely…and it did the moment they removed Kurt from her body. Clotted blood shot through her veins and raced toward her heart. Unsure which battle to tackle first, doctors barely had time to put her under before they began performing surgery to save her life. In the end, neither battle mattered. Elizabeth lived only long enough to see her special baby born. She died on the operating table minutes later, but as she faded away, as the life blinked out of her eyes, she did not worry about her son. She knew in her heart that he would someday move oceans and empty seas. He had the power to make things happen, as long he believed.

Unfortunately, Kurt Hummel, for the longest time, believed in himself the least.

Kurt had never met his mother, but he felt a strong connection to her – a connection that transcended this life that he lived. His feelings had nothing to do with God or religion – he didn't believe in any of that. But he felt that her soul dwelled within him, in some way, in some form, and he carried her wherever he went. Kurt had her startling blue eyes, her chestnut-colored hair, her snowy complexion. His father claimed that Kurt had inherited her impeccable ear for music, her eclectic fashion sense, her overwhelming strength, her bravery, and her compassion.

Which was why there were days that his father kept him close, and others when he couldn't bear to look at him.

He swore he heard her voice in his head. Normally, it would have gotten lost among the other voices, except this one he didn't actually hear at all. It didn't have a tone or a texture, it didn't resonate amid the din. He felt this voice, its presence clearing away the clamor to make itself known.

Time passed, and Kurt realized that as much as he felt his mother as an entity within him, the voice was something expressly different. It had a source – a real, viable source, somewhere in the world. A source that sought him out, that seemed to know him, and out of alarm, Kurt put up mental walls to block it, but those barriers didn't always hold, weren't always stable. They lowered whenever he was sad or scared or angry, and at those times, the voice spoke to him, or sang to him, in a foreign language that he understood without knowing how he understood it. It was a comfort to him, but he didn't abandon his walls to it completely. There was still a chance that it could be a trick – a way of building up his trust to win him over and then tear him down.

Years of bullying taught him that.

It took Kurt a while - years, until he reached high school - for the voice to connect itself with a vision. A singular pair of golden eyes that steadily began to turn scarlet in his mind. Dangerous eyes. Eyes he could get lost in. Eyes he felt himself surrender to more than once.

Eyes that called him out here.

In the last few months, serendipity had been Kurt's friend.

“Oh…oh Jesus fucking Christ…oh…”

Kurt grimaced as he sensed the only other traveler on this voyage lean over the side of the boat and wretch…again.

Yes, serendipity had been Kurt's friend…but only just.

“How much longer till we reach the island, captain?” Kurt called up to the man behind the wheel, whose eyes peered past the reflection of the sunlight on the water, still in search of that phantom wave.

“Oh, about another hour, probably less,” the captain yelled down with a smile for his eager passenger. “We're traveling at a good clip, and the water looks relatively calm here on out.”

“Great,” Kurt remarked. The sooner he was off this boat, the better. With every caress of the water on his skin, he longed to say to hell with the boat, dive into the ocean's refreshing depths, and paddle his way out to the island on his own. Kurt was an accomplished swimmer, but he wouldn't make it to the island before nightfall, so the boat was a necessary evil…along with the other passenger losing his stomach over the side.

Kurt sighed when he heard uneven footfalls make their way from the aft as the one stowaway from his life in The Big Apple finally stumbled his way to the deck.

Sebastian Smythe - or Captain Innuendo, as Kurt liked to refer to him - attended NYU along with Kurt. He was about Kurt's age, had close to the same physical stature, but with a broader build, a sun-kissed complexion, and way more muscle mass from years of playing lacrosse and water polo (a factoid that he brought up to Kurt at every possible opportunity). He was outwardly attractive, but whatever appeal he had was entirely skin deep, lost whenever he opened his mouth. It was impossible to have an intellectual conversation with the man. Every other word out of his mouth was either a comment about Kurt's ass, a lewd remark, or a recommendation as to where and how they should have sex – recommendations that he made loudly, no matter where they happened to be.

He smirked, he didn't smile, and he leered at Kurt uncomfortably, in a possessive way that he had no right to.

Sebastian had no attachment whatsoever to the marine biology department. He studied finance, on the road to earning his DBA, but something kept him tethered to the applied sciences, and Kurt had begun to speculate that something was him. He didn't want to touch Sebastian's mind to find out. He didn't want to open that channel because once he did, it would remain open.

It was a one-way street. Kurt didn't need to worry that Sebastian would learn his secrets, but Kurt didn't want to be privy to any of Sebastian's secrets, either.

He didn't have to touch Sebastian's mind to find the answer.

Kurt's suspicions were confirmed after he was awarded this internship.

Kurt had learned about it through the science department grapevine, mutterings from the grad students that a pharmaceutical company had showed interest in their department's research into the practical applications of marine toxicology with regard to degenerative diseases – research that Kurt was heading. On the off-chance there was even a grain of truth to those rumors, Kurt rushed into his professor's office, resume and grant proposal in hand, demanding to be put on the top of the list.

He was the only student who applied who was remotely qualified.

He was ecstatic when he found out he had won, but his excitement was apparently premature.

The pharmaceutical company backed out last minute.

The school was willing to go ahead with the proposed project provided that Kurt could locate private funding.

He had no idea who in the world he could go to for that amount of money. He sat down in the research lab to start a list of companies and government agencies who might show interest in his project, but starting the process of begging for money would push back his research by a whole year, maybe even three.

He compiled a fairly long list of prospects, but he didn't feel like he had much to look forward to.

Kurt didn't know how Sebastian found out the details exactly, but by late afternoon, he had stepped up with break neck speed to finance it, out of pocket, without any provisions or strings attached as to how Kurt should allocate the funding or conduct his research.

Except for this escort to the island, which hadn't been a part of the original plan, but since Sebastian's trust fund made this trip possible, Kurt couldn't exactly tell Sebastian to jump overboard…no matter how tempted he was to do just that.

Kurt didn't need to shift his eyes away from his view of the water to see Sebastian lumber over to him. Sebastian wiped his mouth on his handkerchief and shoved the violated white square of fabric back into his pocket, pulling out a small cylinder of Dramamine that he'd been popping like Tic Tacs since they left the dock – not that it was doing him any good. There was more Dramamine polluting the ocean by now than there was anywhere in Sebastian's body.

Kurt didn't greet Sebastian when he approached, his infuriating swagger exaggerated by the fact that Sebastian had no sea legs. Kurt had been taught that if you ignore someone for long enough, they'll give up bugging you eventually and go away, but Sebastian Smythe had obviously not been taught the same lesson. He walked right up beside Kurt, invading his personal space, leaning close into him so that their exposed forearms touched.

This wasn't the first time Sebastian had touched Kurt without permission, but it was the first time since they'd been on the boat (as Sebastian spent nearly the whole trip bent over the side), and when Sebastian's skin brushed against Kurt's, not only did Kurt cringe, but something deep within his mind growled.

“Sick again?” Kurt remarked with disgust, turning his face into the wind to avoid the smell of vomit that surrounded Sebastian like a sour cloud.

“Just a little, babe,” Sebastian replied, his voice a roughened version of his usual smooth speech, burned raw by the amount of stomach acid searing the lining of his throat.

“Don't call me babe,” Kurt grumbled, sidestepping away.

“Okay, sweetheart,” Sebastian volleyed quickly, making Kurt roll his eyes.

The boat hit a swell, jostling them, and Sebastian immediately threw a hand over his mouth, his cheeks puffing out like he was trying to hold in whatever he had left.

“Don't all rich guys own huge yachts that they learn to pilot when they're in the womb?” Kurt asked, turning green himself when he heard Sebastian gulp.

“Not me,” Sebastian said, mimicking Kurt step for step when he tried to get away. “To be perfectly honest, I hate boats and I hate the ocean.”

The growl in Kurt's mind grew louder the closer Sebastian came. It was indistinct, indecipherable, so there was the chance Kurt was wrong. Maybe it wasn't in his mind. It could be his stomach. The last time he had eaten they had been on dry land, but with Sebastian by his side, his head throbbed and his stomach started to twist, so Kurt couldn't tell either way.

“So, why are you out here?” Kurt asked. “I mean, this trip is all boat and ocean. Wouldn't you be much more comfortable in your penthouse in Manhattan?”

“Probably,” Sebastian agreed, leaning down to hook his chin over Kurt's shoulder, “but this particular boat has a spectacular view.” Kurt didn't glare at the familiar touch, but he pointedly ignored Sebastian. Sebastian waited for a reaction, but when he got none, he let out a frustrated breath and moved away, appearing to finally get Kurt's point. But Sebastian crossed behind Kurt to move into his line of sight, and Kurt knew he wouldn't be able to turn away again.

Kurt had to play nice with Mr. Moneybags if he wanted his island.

“Besides, we never get any time alone…” Sebastian said, his smirk widening, taking on a bloodthirsty quality that gave Kurt the shivers. “To talk, I mean. What is it you're doing out here in this Godforsaken place that you can't do in New York? What are you trying to accomplish?”

Kurt raised a challenging eyebrow – a look he reserved for extreme ignoramuses.

“Are you really interested in my…work?” Kurt asked, letting his voice drop a bit, using it to draw Sebastian in.

“Yeah,” Sebastian said, taking the bait. “I'm interested in what it is that you…do.”

The growl in Kurt's mind became a full-out roar when he leaned in, his lips barely an inch from Sebastian's mouth. This sound barreled to the forefront. It wasn't muddled, but clear as polished glass. It was primal. It demanded obedience. It set the hairs on the back of Kurts neck on end. Kurt knew he was being scolded.

Now he needed to find out by whom…

“Well then,” Kurt said, letting his eyes flick down to Sebastian's waiting lips once before he started to pull away, “why didn't you read the prospectus that was given to you when you decided to fund the project?”

Kurt had a fleeting thought that perhaps he shouldn't question Sebastian's motives. He definitely shouldn't be looking a gift-horse in the mouth, but he was honestly offended that Sebastian wanted in his pants so badly that he didn't even glance at the proposal, didn't show any respect for the immense amount of work that went into Kurt's grant application before he whipped out his checkbook. Did it really matter that Sebastian was blind to the importance of the project he was funding as long as he was willing to fund it?

Yes, if that funding relied on Kurt showing his gratitude while lying on his back. That was something Kurt wasn't prepared to do – not for this project, not for anything.

Outside of any moral objections, Kurt was saving himself, as old-fashioned a concept as that was, and Sebastian Smythe wasn't going to wrench that away from him for all of his ability to write checks.

But Sebastian's eyes had gone dark at Kurt's question, his expression solemn and drawn.

“Because frankly I saw your name and the words ‘Alzheimer's research' in the same sentence, and I knew this was a sound investment," Sebastian snapped, and this time he was the one who took a step away.

Kurt watched Sebastian prop against the railing and his own vaulted, self-righteous ego deflated. The growling ratcheted up a step, sounding more threatening as Kurt's resolve softened, and Kurt threw up a mental wall to block it out.

“My grandmother is in the advanced stages,” Sebastian said while looking down at the railing under his arm, stabbing a manicured fingernail into the weathered and peeling laminate on the wood. “She practically raised me.” Kurt put a light hand on Sebastian's arm and he tensed. For a second, Kurt thought Sebastian might shrug him off, but he put a hand over Kurt's and squeezed gently. “Not a single thing you're doing out here with your little snails will get FDA approval in time to help her, but at least…”

Kurt saw Sebastian swallow hard.

Little snails.

Kurt held on to those two words as the rest rushed by.

Sebastian had read Kurt's prospectus, or had gone to the trouble of having someone else explain it to him.

Could this sarcastic, hyper-sexed, chauvinist ass act be a front?

“I'm sorry,” Kurt said. He reached out his other hand to put on Sebastian's shoulder, but then pulled it away when the growling breached past Kurt's mental wall.

Kurt flinched. In all these years, that had never happened before.

Sebastian smiled sadly, eyes trained on the railing.

“It's fine. I mean, how could you know, right?” Sebastian pulled his hand from Kurt's grasp and adopted that irritating smirk again. Sebastian wore it like armor; he knew it would push Kurt away. This conversation had hit too close to home.

How could Kurt know that Sebastian's grandmother was afflicted with the same disease that Kurt was on a mission to fight?

He could have read Sebastian's mind.

Or he could have asked. That would have worked, too.

When did Kurt stop remembering how to act around humans? Nine times out of ten, he preferred spending his days in the lab with his little snails.

And why not? It was a relationship that was predictable – one he could rely on.

The engine on the boat sputtered and died down, the momentum of the vessel decreasing, rendering them adrift. Kurt looked to the captain who caught his gaze and pointed straight ahead. With a glance up Kurt saw it – Island Designation 567.8.

His new home.

His eyes swept over it from end to end. They were still several miles away, but that didn't make looking at it any less exciting - this strip of white sand dotted by a line of trees and clusters of metamorphic rock. Kurt stared at it in awe, but Sebastian's smirk fell clear off his face.

“This…this is your island?” Sebastian asked snidely, but Kurt didn't pay attention to his tone. There was nothing in the world that he would let dull the glory of this moment.

“This is it,” Kurt sighed, a tremendous relief lifting from his body.

“This is as far into the shallow water as I can take her,” the captain announced. “I'll moor here…”

“And I'll escort Kurt to the island,” Sebastian intervened, racing to the stern to meet the captain and untie the dinghy.

“Great,” Kurt said, “but I'm driving. I can't let your throwing up get in the way of navigating.”

“Ha-ha,” Sebastian remarked dryly, climbing down deftly to the inflatable. The captain helped Kurt hand down his bags – one duffel of his clothes (which amounted to a small collection of swim trunks, old t-shirts, a wind breaker, and a few light sweaters that he could layer – no reason to drag his signature designer clothes out to this island), a collapsible tent, a computer, a portable Doppler radar, and several cases of various diagnostic equipment. When they had filled the small boat, it was almost too full to accommodate its two passengers, but Kurt refused to make more than the one trip, especially if Sebastian was determined to see him off. As it was, Sebastian had to give him an arm down into the swaying vessel, which Kurt could have easily steadied with a single command if the man had given him a moment alone. With Sebastian's hands on his body, Kurt had to concentrate his energy on exactly where those hands were touching without accidentally flipping the boat, all the while with the echoes of that menacing growl ever-present in his head.

Kurt took a chance.

Quiet down, you, Kurt thought, reaching out with his mind. I'm trying to focus.

The growl silenced, but what returned was a laugh.

A musical laugh that filled Kurt's body from head to toe with liquid fire, like a long, breathless drink of Southern Comfort.

Kurt sat by the engine, his body hot, burning from his stomach on out with that laugh embedded deep inside his brain. He itched to get away so he could strip down and take a swim.

He needed one more than ever.

With a long pole, the captain pushed the inflatable dinghy away from the hull of the boat, and Kurt fired up the outboard motor. The excessive weight of the inflatable prohibited Kurt from driving her too quickly, which made him tap his feet madly in aggravation.

He was ready for this journey to be over. He wanted this part to be done. He had a million and one questions detonating like land mines inside his skull – one thought triggering another, setting several off at once, explosion sparking explosion, exposing new ones in its wake.

He wanted to start searching for the answers.

Kurt pulled up to the shore and Sebastian – greener around the gills as they traveled closer to the choppy water – leapt out of the boat on wobbly legs to pull them onto the sand.

Kurt might not 100% like the guy, but he appreciated his enthusiasm.

Kurt swung his legs over the side and jumped into the water to help bring the vessel ashore. His feet touched the water and the entire world shifted, the planet Earth as he knew it spiraling off its track for a few seconds while everything he knew about himself and his life reset. A flash of light swirled around him, moved through him, and he was assaulted by a slideshow of images, pictures of things and people that felt familiar, that his soul seemed to know even though he had never seen them before. Right then, standing in the shallow water, gripping the side of the boat for balance, Kurt knew that he was in the right spot.

Kurt also knew that after Sebastian left, he wouldn't be alone. The ocean here was rife with power, with something else lurking beneath its depths. The water told him so. A foreign, ancient entity. A kraken? As stupid and childish as it sounded, Kurt thought the idea of a gigantic sea monster to be plausible. There were things beneath the unexplored ocean unknown to humans – but Kurt knew them.

Kurt saw them.

When the ocean spoke to Kurt, he felt its echo in his blood, its vibrations through his skin, transmitting to him everything from offshore currents to seismic activity from the ocean floor. In this way, he translated images, impressions.

He felt the Earth, and every living thing on her, breath as one.

But this time, he touched the water and it called to him by name…

…a name, at least.

Little one.

“You know, you don't have to stay here alone,” Sebastian said, jarring Kurt from his communion with the water, hauling the last of the equipment to the beach. “I would be more than willing to keep you company.” Kurt came to, and Sebastian, unaware that Kurt's mind had drifted off anywhere, gave Kurt one of his patented suggestive winks, followed by a click of his tongue.

But his eyes had taken on a very different expression.

Sebastian worried about him, though why, Kurt didn't know for sure.

Regardless, it was the most genuine he had ever seen Sebastian.

Kurt fought not to look as stunned as he felt, walking past Sebastian and up onto the shore, fidgeting with his bags, assembling them in the sand.

“Don't you have a business to run? I mean, if you don't get back to New York and work, how are you going to afford to keep me out here?” Kurt asked, staying conversational while in his head he begged for the man to turn the dinghy around and go back to the boat. Kurt didn't want an involvement with Sebastian Smythe that extended outside his wallet. Beside, for all his sincere smiles and worry about Kurt's well-being, Kurt couldn't shake the feeling that any dalliance with Sebastian would simply serve as another notch in the man's bedpost.

Kurt would therefore accept that Sebastian had a passion for his work, but that's all he could accept.

Sebastian smiled, having made a last ditch effort and acknowledging that he'd been defeated.

That didn't mean he had any intention of giving up completely. He'd back off and give Kurt his space…for now.

“Well, be careful out here,” Sebastian said, scouring the beach with a judgmental glare and his lip curled, apparently not seeing the incredible potential in this place that Kurt saw. “Don't drown, don't get eaten. You have my cell number if you, you know, get lonely…change your mind.”

“I'll be fine,” Kurt said in response to Sebastian's persistent stalling. “You should get going. I need to set up here before nightfall.”

Sebastian nodded.

Kurt didn't know when Sebastian decided to kiss him. He didn't sense Sebastian make up his mind before the man's lips connected with his cheek, but he was incapacitated – not by the kiss, but by the ferocious rumble of what sounded like a large jungle cat stalking up behind him.

“Kurt,” Sebastian whispered, his breath ghosting Kurt's cheek, “you're trembling.”

Of course, I'm trembling, you moron! Kurt wanted to scream through lips frozen with fear. There's a big bloody mountain lion or something behind us!

But if Sebastian didn't hear it, then it couldn't be real? It couldn't be there, inches away, ready to strike…could it?

Kurt turned his head quickly to look over his shoulder, his nerves on high alert, peering into the shadows at the tree line, but the animal wasn't there.

Logically, Kurt knew it couldn't be there. This island didn't support that kind of life.

Kurt looked back into Sebastian's eyes, clouded with concern, and shook his head.

“I'm just cold,” Kurt said firmly. “Now get going so I can put my tent up.”

There was a tense second when Sebastian looked like he might argue, like he might try to insist that he stay, but he stared into Kurt's steely eyes and backed down.

“Alright,” Sebastian said, backing away and climbing into the boat, his eyes not leaving Kurt's face until they absolutely had to. “I'll see you in a few weeks.”

Kurt groaned internally.

Sebastian would be coming back when the boat picked him up.

Kurt was not going to catch any breaks.

Sebastian pulled the chord on the outboard motor and the inflatable took off over the water. Kurt watched the boat lurch over the swells as Sebastian clumsily maneuvered the craft, breaking through an unsuspecting shoal of blue fish hunting in the shallows. Kurt giggled when the boat hit another swell head on and Sebastian flew into the air, almost somersaulting out of the upended inflatable and into the water. Kurt held his breath and waited, wondering who would be expected to dive in after the insufferable man if he did end up in the water. It would most likely be him, since he was closer than the captain waiting in the other boat further out, but Sebastian regained his seat, and by sheer luck alone, made his way back to the larger boat in one piece.

Kurt didn't watch Sebastian board the vessel, nor did he wait around to see it pull anchor and head back to civilization. The sun had already begun to sink in the sky. There would be a full moon out, so the island wouldn't be pitch black, but Kurt still needed to get his shelter built. He set to work scoping out his domain, using a crude map he had been given to ascertain the safest location to make camp and where would be the best place to construct his makeshift lab. He put up his tent, tied and secured his food, connected his generator, and got his computer and Doppler online. Then, with the final thin membrane of golden sunlight aglow on the horizon, Kurt stepped down to the water's edge in search of his would be test-subjects. He knew they were there, hiding below the surface of the wet sand.

This was as good a time as any to introduce himself.

He dug his bare feet into the sand and waited, but he underestimated his intended prey and before he could react to their presence, he felt not one, but seven stabs into the soles of his feet.

Kurt had been warned by his professors to be careful around the mollusks out here - that their venom was more potent in the wild than the specimens they kept in the lab where he studied - but it hadn't dawned on him by how much. Kurt thought he had sufficiently prepared. He had been injecting himself for weeks with increasingly virulent levels of venom to build up his immunity. When he was younger, when he first discovered his talent, he thought it made him invincible. He experimented too much, got carried away. A few times, hubris almost got the better of him. But he couldn't take those same chances. He couldn't pretend that he was going to live forever – nobody did.

Kurt had a job to do - an important job. A job that had the potential to improve the lives of millions suffering from a wasting disease.

Dying at this stage of his project would be inconvenient, to say the least.

These first stings – rapidly paralyzing, extremely fatal, with the frightened creatures pushing as much venom as they could into the puncture wounds - hit Kurt's nervous system like a whale-sized anvil crashing down on his spine. White hot needles of excruciating agony tore into his vertebrae like claws with nails sharpened into licks of flame. He opened his mouth to scream, but the venom choked the sound off before it left his mouth. His body went rigid, muscles stretching beyond their expectations and then locking into place. Kurt felt the blood drain from his head, his eyes rolling till only the whites showed. He drew his last breath before he fell to the ground unconscious, lying prone in the wet sand as the tide began to creep up the beach.