Blaine takes in a deep breath of the pungent salty sea air and watches the last rays of the rising sun light the sky. The cool breeze off the water ruffles his curls, blowing a few of them straight so that the strands hang down around his face. He brushes away the hair tickling his cheek and sighs, grateful for this stolen moment of peace. This is his ritual every day – to sit on the sand and watch the sun rise over the water, to meditate in the cool ocean air and then collect sea shells, all as a way to de-stress before he is forced to face the harrowing demands of the third grade. Blaine smiles at the comment when it pops into his head. He had made that remark once to his mother, and she had laughed like it was the funniest joke in the world, so he keeps it in his repertoire for any time his poor, overworked mom needs a laugh.

This morning, his brother Cooper would be driving him to school, so Blaine had made it a point to come out to the shore earlier than normal and soak in as much of this sublime beauty as he could – just in case he never sees the light of day again.

Blaine loves Cooper, and now that his older brother (nearly fourteen years older) lives out in California, Blaine barely gets to seem him anymore. Blaine was over-the-moon excited when Cooper flew out to spend time with him, though Cooper was mostly there to help out their mom while their parents worked their way through a messy divorce, but Blaine isn't fond of Cooper driving him to school.

Cooper's driving skills tended to be a little iffy, to put it nicely.

With no real want to leave, Blaine unwinds his legs from the lotus position he's been sitting in for the past fifteen minutes and slowly rises to his feet. He raises his arms above his head and stretches out his back, feeling the satisfying click-click-click as every vertebra snaps back into place. He bends his legs at the knee, one at a time, loosening up his limbs. He gathers up his towel and shakes out the sand, maneuvering so the wind doesn't blow the grains into his face. He moves methodically, hoping that time might slow down to a more comfortable speed if he performs every action with excessive thought and care. He folds his towel and stuffs it under his arm, then picks up his bucket and heads towards the water. At best, he only has a few more minutes before his brother finds him, and then the horrific incident of terror that is the drive to P. S. 229 would begin.

Blaine walks down the shore, heading back in the direction of his house, picking up a shell here and there along the way and putting it in his pocket until the mass of collected shells clatter together like wooden nickels. A few steps ahead, where the waterline meets the dry sand, Blaine spots a mound of trash – plastic 2-liter bottles, shredded newspaper, faded plastic beach shovels, fast food wrappers, and on top of the whole thing, glittering in the new morning sunlight, a glass jar wrapped in dark green sea weed with something sticking out of it.

Something that looks like the limp body of a fish.

Blaine rushes forward, excited at the prospect of finding a better treasure than rocks and broken shells. He approaches the mound, tiptoeing carefully, not wanting to startle whatever might be inside the jar. When he's almost on top of it, he sees that there is definitely a fish inside – a fish with exquisite golden scales and a long, flowing tail, the delicate fan tinged with a pinkish hue.

It's a gorgeous fish of singular beauty.

Unfortunately, it also looks very much dead.

Blaine picks up the jar. He unwraps the sea weed and turns the jar over in his hands. He stares at the fish's body to see if it's breathing, trying to find the gills to see if it's still gulping. He hopes it isn't dead. It's a stunning goldfish…even if it seems to have a pale, disturbingly human-looking face. Blaine doesn't let that bother him. He chalks it up to the horrible amount of pollution that has plagued the Eastern Seaboard over the last few years. They've seen everything from old tennis shoes to rusty car parts to blood collection bags wash up on these shores, along with some disgusting oil slicks and the wildlife they kill. They've even found mutant crabs and three-eyed fish. Blaine takes the pollution personally. This ocean side community has been his home his entire young life.

He wants to live there forever.

Blaine tries to pull the fish out, tugging gently on its tail, but the fish is too stuck in to move. He looks around the beach for something to break the jar with and spots a formation of three jagged rocks, jutting up from the sand. He carries the jar with the fish inside to the rock closest, tapping it against one of the rock's sharp points and hoping that he can find a way of breaking the glass without cutting the fish. He knocks the jar once and pauses…twice and waits to be sure the fish is still okay…then on the third tap the jar shatters. A sliver of glass cuts into the tip of Blaine's thumb, since no good deed goes unpunished. He hisses at the pain but ignores it as best he can, racing to get the fish to his bucket and fill it with sea water to try and bring it – no, he…the fish is a he as far as Blaine is concerned – back to life.

Blaine watches anxiously as the fish floats in the water belly up, and then slowly rolls around in circles, bright, shimmering scales throwing off droplets of sunlight.

“He's dead,” Blaine mutters sadly, but even as he says those words, the fish, with eyes shut, sticks out a small, pink tongue and licks the cut on Blaine's thumb. Blaine startles, fumbling the bucket, but he manages to grip on tightly to the rim so as not to drop it. “He licked me!” Blaine crows happily. “He licked me! He licked me!”

“Hey, squirt!” Cooper calls from atop one of the sand dunes, black hair sticking out every which way, dark sunglasses shielding his eyes from the morning sun. “I've got to get your ass to school, buddy. Stop playing in the sand and come on.”

Blaine looks up at his disheveled brother and nods, not letting on in his expression how little faith Cooper's bedraggled appearance gives Blaine that he'll actually make it to school alive. At least now he has his new friend to help give him courage.

Blaine races up the dune with his towel under his arm and his bucket in his hands. He doesn't look back at the ocean, so he doesn't notice the waves that chase him up the shore, licking at his heels to get its fish back.

Cooper lowers his sunglasses down the bridge of his nose as his brother hurries by.

“Blainers, you're bleeding,” Cooper says with alarm, catching Blaine's arm and bending down to take a look at the cut on his brother's thumb.

“It's just a scratch,” Blaine says, pulling his arm away.

“You didn't cut yourself on a hypodermic needle or something, did you?” Cooper asks, looking equally worried and disgusted as he follows his younger brother away from the beach. “You know that we get medical waste on these beaches sometimes.”

“No,” Blaine assures him. “I just…cut it on a piece of broken glass.”

“Good,” Cooper says, ushering his brother to his awaiting Toyota Corolla. “I don't want to havta take you to the E.R. today. Mom would pitch a royal fit.”

Blaine climbs into the passenger seat of his brother's car and buckles himself in, holding the bucket with the swimming fish in it between his gangly legs.

Cooper settles into the driver's seat, closing the door as quietly as possible, moving as if every noise, every creak the car makes causes him intense pain. Eventually, he buckles himself in and turns on the engine, grimacing as the tinny Toyota springs to life. Yawning, he glances Blaine's way and spots the bucket in his brother's lap. Cooper waits a minute while the car engine warms up and watches the fish swim around in circles, every so often looking up at Blaine, blinking at the boy with wide, blue eyes.

“Uh…am I really hung-over, squirt, or does that thing have a human face?” Cooper asks, squinting at the fish who seems to become self-conscious at Cooper's scrutiny.

“Kind of,” Blaine says. “But I don't care. I think he's pretty.”

“Ugh,” Cooper shudders, sitting upright and throwing the car into gear. “Creepsville.”

Blaine rolls his eyes and shakes his head.

“Don't listen to him,” Blaine whispers down to the fish. The fish tilts his head at the face Blaine makes, and then mimics the gesture of rolling his eyes and shaking his head. The fish doesn't quite pull it off, but Blaine smiles at his attempt.

“So, are you taking that thing to school with you?” Cooper asks hopefully. He's not looking forward to driving back to the house with a human-faced fish in a plastic green bucket.

“Yup,” Blaine answers simply, making more faces at the fish, which the fish tries to copy.

Blaine's stomach growls loudly. He had left the house so quickly in the morning that he'd forgotten to eat breakfast.

“Oh, here, kiddo,” Cooper says, reaching blindly into the back seat and grabbing a plastic shopping bag, the car changing lanes unintentionally with the movement of his hand, “I grabbed some leftovers from the fridge. Eat some breakfast. We're already running late and I won't be able to stop by the drive thru at MickeyD's.”

Blaine opens the shopping bag and sticks his whole face in.

“Are these…hot wings?” Blaine asks, sifting through the contents of the bag.

“Probably,” Cooper says, reaching past Blaine and shoving a free hand into the bag, grabbing out a wing and changing another lane. He takes a sizable bite out of the relatively small wing and chews experimentally. Suddenly, his face scrunches and he gags. He rolls down the car window and tosses the wing out, spitting the bite he had taken along with it. “Watch out. They're chicken wings, but they're not good anymore,” Cooper says between spits.

Blaine continues to look through the bag for something decent to eat until he finds an unopened, factory sealed tub of deli meat – honey ham, with an expiration date for a month from now. He breaks into the tub, catching a glimpse at his injured thumb.

“Hey! My cut is gone!” Blaine exclaims, bringing his thumb up to his eyes and examining it thoroughly.

Cooper sneaks a few slices of ham from the tub, rolls them into a tube, shoves the whole thing into his mouth, and starts to chew.

“Mmmm,” he says, relaxing into the driver's seat, “that's the good stuff.”

Blaine makes another silly face at his fish, but instead of copying it this time, the fish pokes his head out of the water and steals a slice of ham. Blaine giggles.

“Hey!” Cooper complains when he hears the splashing and sees the fish drag a perfectly good slice of ham into the bucket of scuzzy sea water. “Tell your fish to lay off the ham!”

“Kurt,” Blaine corrects, looking into the goldfish's luminous blue eyes. “I'm calling him Kurt.”

“Kurt?” Cooper asks, raising an eyebrow. “For a goldfish? Not like Goldie, or Swimmy, or Flippers? But Kurt?”

“Yes, Kurt,” Blaine says, watching as Kurt pokes his head out of the water to snatch another slice of ham. Blaine smiles. “I saved his life. He's my responsibility now.” Blaine leans down to the bucket while Kurt chews his ham. “I will take care of you,” Blaine whispers. “I promise.” The fish lifts his head, tries his best to smile, and presses his cold lips against Blaine's nose.