“Blaine? Darling? Where are you?”

Blaine, still in bed with his pillows piled over his head, doesn't hear his mother come into his room.

“Blaine…” She calls to him, but stops in the doorway when she sees him cuddled beneath three blankets, hidden entirely so that not an inch of him shows. The outline of his body curled with his knees up to his chin is the only evidence that he's still there. “Oh, Blainey,” she says, carefully digging him out a pillow at a time. “That was quite a storm last night, huh?”

“Uh-huh,” a sleepy voice agrees, then yawns, then groans. “It was.”

“I take it you weren't a fan of the thunder,” his mom deduces, unburying her son completely and running her fingers through his dark curls.

“No,” Blaine says sheepishly. “Or the lightning.”

“I can see that.” Pam smiles, small and sad. Nearly a man, barely turned fifteen, and he's still afraid of thunderstorms. But he has a good reason. Pam sighs. She doesn't like seeing her son distressed, but she giggles at his creased, rosy cheeks, and his disastrously tangled hair. She wishes she could let him crawl back under the covers and hide in his dreams, but no storm as violent as the one last night ever leaves without casualties. “Look, I know you probably didn't get much sleep last night, but I need your help this morning.”

“Hmm?” Blaine sits up, rubbing his eyes, trying to make them open and work when all they want to do is stay shut.

“The storm knocked some tree branches down and they made quite a mess.” Pam walks around the room, picking up Blaine's pants and shirt that got kicked to the floor some time before he climbed into bed. “Wrecked one of our fences out front. Now, Cooper's gone to town to get us some supplies to fix it, but I need you to clear away those branches before he returns.”

“Mmm, okay,” Blaine says, swinging his legs out from beneath his blankets and putting his feet on the floor before he even opens his eyes. “I'll get started (yawn)…right…away.”

Sitting on the edge of his bed, Blaine's head drops forward and he begins to snore.

“Get up,” Pam laughs, smacking her son with a pillow, jarring him awake. He snorts in surprise and mutters, “I'm awake. I'm awake. I'm getting up. I'm going.”

“Of course you are.” Pam opens one of his dresser drawers, yanks out a fresh work shirt, and tosses it his way. “When you're done, you can nap until lunch.”

***

With a thick piece of jam and buttered bread in hand, Blaine walks outside their house to investigate the damage. He picks a path through the courtyard while nibbling his breakfast and surveys the splintered branches scattered everywhere. Several thick ones in particular, as thick around as his upper leg, had fallen on their fence, snapping the posts into pieces.

“Jeez,” he mumbles, assessing the damage. “Mom's right. That must have been one hell of a storm.”

Blaine wouldn't know. Packed beneath his blankets and pillows, he barely heard a thing. But for several hours before he fell into an uneasy sleep, he felt it. He felt the thunder shake their house, the walls trembling with the pressure the air created, which grew and grew as great anvil clouds stacked above their heads. But the worst part was the waves – pounding the seawall, creeping up to the front door, sometimes spilling through the cracks and getting inside, staining the woodwork and softening the stone floor.

Living by the ocean has its perks. Summers are blissfully cool, the breeze off the water crisp but pleasant. Every sunrise is a masterpiece, every sunset a blessing. Even though the Anderson family is poor and their house relatively cramped, they have, by far, the most glorious view of the ocean, making them the envy of all their neighbors further down. Their house – a quaint cottage perched on the rim of the Atlantic – is the only known Anderson legacy. Generations of Andersons have been sheltered within it walls for the past hundred years.

But winters on this cliff side are a terror. Any tiny squall turns the sea into a nightmare. As gorgeous as it is, if Blaine had his choice of locations, he probably would not choose this one. But his father had been a fisherman by trade, as was his father before him, as his older brother Cooper is now, so this proximity to the coast is crucial.

“Respect the ocean,” his father would say, “and share in her bounty. And always remember that you are a child of the water. The sea runs through your veins. You will one day become a fisherman like your father, like your grandfather, and at the end of your days, in your boat on the waves you will return.”

Arthur Anderson, Blaine's father, a man that Blaine looked up to, a man that he loved dearly, was, however, not on his boat when he was lost to the sea. He had been swallowed up a foot from the seawall abutting their house, standing in the spot where Blaine now stood.

Blaine's feet sink into the damp grass, the mud underneath still holding the depression of his father's hefty footprints. It triggers flashbacks of that night, of watching his father from his bedroom window as he ran for the house. Behind him, conjured by a passing waterspout, a siphon of water formed that, in the end, Arthur could not outrun. That night served as a grim reminder to the Anderson boys of one warning their father drilled into their skulls – to never turn their backs on the ocean.

The memory sends chills up Blaine's spine, especially when, set against the soothing song of waves rushing up onto the beach below, a thump tugs at his conscious. He turns to look at his house, to see if his mom is trying to signal him by knocking on the windows of one of the upstairs bedrooms, but she's nowhere to be seen, and besides, the sound is coming from much, much closer.

He starts walking toward the seawall with plans of peering over the edge to check if something got caught in the swells, like a small boat, and is banging against the rocks. His naked feet, sucked in by the moist earth, make a loud squelching noise when they lift free, and the thumping stops.

“H-hello? Is anyone…is anyone there?”

The voice is soft, but it sort of echoes, and Blaine's first instinct is to look to the sky. He laughs at himself when his head snaps up, knowing that there's no way something flying overhead could possibly be talking to him.

“I'm here,” Blaine says, turning in a full circle, talking to no one but the ocean, the broken trees, and the wind. “Where are you?”

“Uh…I'm…” The voice goes quiet. Blaine holds his breath, eliminating the sound of his breathing in his head. “I'm…uh…I'm kind of…in the well.”

Blaine jerks upright, spinning in search of their well. He hurries over, noticing it for the first time, and thankful to see it untouched. With nothing but salt water for miles, their well, which taps into a pocket of fresh water deep underground, is crucial to their survival up on the ridge. It would likely have to be pumped out to clear away as much sea water as possible.

And apparently someone is stuck inside.

“In the well...” Blaine stops halfway when a face peeks out – the face of a boy with milky white skin and eyes like twin stars on a clear spring night. The boy smiles, pink lips inching up at their corners, and raises a hand to brush away a lock of tawny hair, topped with a crown of papery white flowers nestled in his waves.

“Hello,” the boy says, smiling at the way Blaine's eyes focus on his face, a bloom of crimson dotting the apple of the boy's cheeks.

“Uh…hello,” Blaine says, taking a hesitant step forward. “Are you okay - oh my goodness!” Blaine's hands shoot immediately to his mouth as shock settles in, and the boy shushes him.

“Please, don't shout,” he begs. “I…I don't want anyone else to see me.”

Blaine nods, moving forward another step. He gasps as he takes in the rest of the boy's body, bare to midway down his chest when flawless alabaster skin transforms into delicate looking pearl scales, each one catching the sunlight and reflecting rainbows on the well's stone wall.

“How did you get in there?” Blaine asks, leaning over the edge to see how the boy might be caught. He seems to simply be floating within the narrow confines of the well, the only thing between him and freedom being a few feet of rocky ground and the seawall.

The merboy – Kurt is his name, though he keeps that a secret – folds his arms on the well's edge and rests his chin upon them, holding himself up to watch Blaine with curiosity and interest.

“Well, you see,” Kurt says, his tail swaying beneath the water, “I was taking a nap, floating on the waves, when that storm hit. I tried to get away, but I didn't move fast enough, and I got caught up in it. I think I knocked my head because the next thing I knew, I opened my eyes and here I was, in your well.”

Blaine peeks into the well again. Other things have been stranded, too – sea stars, a small school of silver-colored fish, a rope of seaweed, a crab – but they are outshined by the merboy's glorious tail, shimmering in the shade of Blaine's body with a subtle hint of gold, gossamer fins running along the back flushing rose as Kurt blushes, aware that Blaine is staring with his mouth falling open.

“Are you alright?” Kurt chuckles, overwhelmed by Blaine's unembarrassed attention. “You've gone quiet.”

“I'm…I'm sorry,” Blaine stammers, losing words left and right as the sun shifts position, thin rays sneaking into the well, making Kurt's tail shine brighter . “I'm sorry for staring, but you…”

Kurt tilts his head and smiles.

“I what?”

“Your tail,” Blaine says. “It's beautiful.”

Kurt bites his lower lip, his cheeks positively glowing pink. “Thank you.”

“You're welcome,” Blaine says, leaning closer, floating somewhere between the beauty of the merboy's tail and his spectacular, gem-like eyes. “My name's Blaine,” he says, shaking himself back to reality when he realizes just how close to this boy's face he's gotten. “Blaine Anderson.”

“Blaine,” Kurt repeats. “Blaine…that's a wonderful name. It's a musical name.”

“Thank you,” Blaine says bashfully. “And what's your name?”

“Oh,” Kurt says, “I'm afraid I can't tell you that.”

Blaine furrows his brow, looking disappointed as well as confused.

“Why not?” Blaine asks.

“Because where I come from, names have a certain power,” Kurt explains. “They hold a special kind of magic. If you knew mine and you spoke it out loud, well then…”

“Then what?”

“Then you'd lock me to land, and I would have to stay here…forever.”

“Oh,” Blaine says with a measure of sadness. “I didn't know.”

“I know,” Kurt says. He feels the sun warm his skin, his shoulders slowly turning pink beneath its heat, and he pushes off the wall to dip down into the cool water of the well. “And unfortunately, I have to go back, or even in this well, I'll dry up when the sun rises overhead.”

“Oh,” Blaine says again, more a sigh than an actual word. “Well, let's get you back to the ocean then.” Blaine takes a step back and looks at Kurt in the well. Then he judges the distance between them and the seawall. He sees no way for Kurt to make it over the wall by himself. “Would you mind if I carried you?” Blaine asks. “I can't think of any other way to get you to the water.”

“Um…I don't mind,” Kurt replies, taking one more dip, this time in the hopes of extinguishing the burn turning his cheeks from a slight blush to a fiery red.

“Okay.” Blaine puts out his arms and wraps them around Kurt's torso. “Now, put your arms around my neck,” Blaine says. Kurt does as he's told, looping his arms around the back of Blaine's neck, trying not to squeeze too tight. “I'm going to lift you out onto the edge on the count of three. One…two…three.” Blaine pulls Kurt out of the well and sits him on the edge. Then he scoops an arm underneath Kurt's tail and gathers the boy into his arms. With a quick glance back at his house to see if his mother or brother are about, he carries Kurt over to the seawall. A narrow gap in the wall leads to a staircase set in the cliff face, the only path from the cliff down to the beach. It's steep and slick, but Blaine takes it slow, feeling out the steps beneath him one at a time because, for the life of him, he can't seem to keep his eyes off the boy in his arms. They reach the final stairs, and when Blaine's foot touches sand instead of stone, his heart feels bulky, weighing heavy in his chest. He carries Kurt to the water's edge and wades through the encroaching tide to a rock in chest deep water, far enough out that Kurt won't get trapped on the beach with no way to return to the water.

“I hope you'll come back,” Blaine says, wiping his hands nervously on the sleeves of his shirt, “and visit me.”

“Would you like that?” Kurt asks, eyes darkening to pools of liquid silver.

“I would love that,” Blaine says, glancing up, his smile honest and his eyes alive, like the breath of flowers around them that managed to survive the storm.

“Then, I will,” Kurt says, slipping down the rock and into the water. “Maybe at sunset? When the tide is high?”

“It's a date,” Blaine says. He walks backward up the incline, watching the waves leap over themselves to welcome the merboy home. “At sunset,” he repeats. Giddy, Blaine keeps his eyes on the elegant creature slinking towards the ocean. Kurt ducks beneath the foam, but sticks around, bobbing just below the surface, to watch Blaine until the last inch of his bare feet disappear up the steps. Kurt giggles, the sound obscured by the crashing of the waves and the rapid beating of his heart.

He did it. He finally did it. He met the boy with the golden voice.

Kurt hadn't been asleep on the waves, like he said. He had been sitting in an alcove, just below the level of the house, listening to Blaine sing while he did his chores – the way Kurt does every night since he arrived on this shore.

Kurt thought he would be safe there when the storm hit, but the rising water and the persistent waves dragged him out of hiding and dropped him into Blaine's well, where he waited out the night.

That whole time, Kurt wondered how Blaine would react once he found him.

Now that he knows, the hours till sunset will feel like an eternity.