“Okay,” Kurt says, struggling to read his own handwriting on the wet piece of loose leaf paper he's holding, the fingers of both hands pinching the corners to keep it open, while simultaneously clutching a glass flask of fluid in his right hand, “uh, I need a piece of green coral” – he squints to make out the next few words – “and the leg of a brittle star.”

“Green coral and the leg of a brittle star,” Blaine repeats. “Specifically green coral?”

Kurt re-reads the list of ingredients.

“Yeah,” Kurt confirms. “It says specifically green coral.”

“What happens if you add red coral?” Blaine asks. “Or pink?”

Kurt shrugs. “I don't know, but I'm not sure I want to find out.”

“Got it,” Blaine says, diving beneath the water and leaving Kurt on his rock to wait, trying to make sense of the bleary words on the page. Damn, he thinks when the wind blows, almost tearing his page in half. He wishes he had used a pen instead of writing it all in pencil. At least he should have been smart enough to write it on index cards. The sea water is turning his page into tissue paper.

“Here's your green coral,” Blaine says. Kurt holds out his flask, and Blaine drops the piece in. Kurt looks at the dime-size piece, hoping it's enough. The instructions he's following are vague as far as proportions. “And here's your brittle star leg.” Blaine hands Kurt the leg, still wriggling, and Kurt, who didn't consider the logistics of harvesting this particular ingredient, swallows with regret.

“You didn't…you know…” Kurt says to Blaine, who obviously doesn't know. Kurt makes a slicing motion across his neck, and Blaine finally understands.

“No,” he laughs, shaking his head, raven curls bouncing against his cheeks. “No, no, no. I simply asked him for it. They detach pretty easily. Another will take its place.”

“Good,” Kurt says, breathing a sigh of relief. He drops the leg into the concoction, where it spins and flops, tying itself into knots and stirring the mixture around. “Alright. The last thing I need is a…” Kurt takes a last look at the disintegrating wad of paper pulp in his hand and gives up, shoving what's left into the pocket of his board shorts. He's read it over so many times between the library and here that he's got it completely memorized. He was just using the page as a security blanket. He really doesn't want to mess this up. “A vial of sand from the bottom of a trench.”

“Any particular trench?” Blaine asks.

Kurt's eyes pop open. He glances down at his pocket, considering what he would need to do to retrieve his cheat sheet and make it whole again, but he knows that's impossible by now. He has to trust his instincts. That's what led him to decide to do this after all. He has to keep that faith.

“I…I didn't write that part down,” Kurt says. “But I don't remember the book mentioning one trench in particular, so I think any trench will do. Just…try to make it a deep one?” Kurt reaches into his other pocket and pulls out a glass vial. He hands it over to Blaine.

“I think I know the perfect place,” Blaine says. He takes the vial from Kurt's hand, but stops himself before he dives again. He raises an eyebrow at Kurt, who's climbing higher up the rock to avoid being slapped by a passing wave. “What is all this for again?”

“Well,” Kurt says, finding a spot to perch, keeping his palm pressed flat over the mouth of the flask, “I don't want to ruin the surprise, Blaine, but it's actually a present.”

Blaine looks up at Kurt, amber eyes sparkling in the light of the setting sun.

“A present?” he asks, looking quizzically at the flask in Kurt's hands, it's belly filled with a hodgepodge of random odds and ends that Kurt had Blaine fetch for him, along with a few other things that were already there when Kurt arrived. “For me?”

“For you,” Kurt says, biting his lower lip, not wanting to reveal too much, “and for me, too. Now get your fin moving. The sun's about to set, and I need that sand before then.”

Blaine drops down beneath the water, his tail of black and silver scales breaking the surface, propelling him straight down with a single, powerful beat. Kurt watches him go, his boyfriend disappearing from view with lightning speed. Then he looks at the ingredients in his flask – the green coral, the brittle star leg, a crushed clam shell, a few drops of rose water, some sage, and a number of other things, including three drops of his own blood, and five shreds of pure gold.

The gold was the hardest to come by, and to a degree, the most painful. He didn't have any gold personally; he isn't particularly fond of jewelry. He had to use his late mother's wedding ring. He stole it from his father's dresser drawer while he was at work. He tried to make the cuts as invisible as possible, but it doesn't matter. Even if his dad notices, the deed is done. But Kurt would like to believe that his mother would approve. He has this chance to spend time with Blaine, without any boundaries between them. He's going to take it, whatever the cost.

Blaine breaches the surface with his arm extended, his thumb capping the vial to keep the sand from escaping.

“I got it,” he says, mildly out of breath, more from excitement than from exhaustion. “Is that it?”

“That's it,” Kurt says, holding out the flask so Blaine can do the honors of pouring this final ingredient inside.

Kurt looks through the glass of the flask, the addition of the sand turning the liquid inside cloudy. While he swishes it gently to stir the solution, Blaine watches with interest.

“So,” Blaine says, bursting at the seams to see something extraordinary happen, “now what?”

“Now for the poetic part,” Kurt says. He gazes out toward the horizon, at the sun sinking further behind the earth, and smiles. “I would say our timing is close to perfect.” He holds the flask up to the sun, letting the last rays heat the mixture in the glass, the way it said to in the book. One golden beam hits it, then another, piercing the fog of sand and breaking through to the other side. In a flash of light, the murky mess of random ingredients transforms into a translucent red liquid, glittering off Kurt's skin and the rocks and the water like a ruby reflecting light.

“What…what is that?” Blaine asks. He's sure he has it figured out, but he's waiting for Kurt to tell him. Blaine knows Kurt's been looking for a way to get Blaine on land, to transform his fins into legs, or something, anything so that they can be together, if only for a little while. This magical potion is it. Blaine feels it in his gut. It has to be. Blaine's heart thuds harder just thinking about it. The world outside his ocean scares him. It always has. Old fish tales of the frightening things land folk do to sea creatures have haunted him since his childhood. But it doesn't matter. He'll stand up to that fear, overcome it, if he gets to spend time with Kurt – hold him, walk with him, maybe even sleep beside him. It's been his dream ever since they met. He prays this flask of liquid in Kurt's hand, breathing in the sea air and holding on to the sunlight as it continues to fade into the water, will be the key to making his dream real.

“It's a potion,” Kurt says.

“And,” Blaine says, slowly reaching out his hands for it, “am I supposed to drink it?”

Kurt looks at his boyfriend, at his hopeful, expectant expression, and smiles.

“No,” Kurt says. “It's for me.”

Blaine stops reaching, his arms retreating to his sides beneath the water, confused, and a little bit hurt. Kurt didn't make a potion for Blaine to come up on land? The one thing they talked about? The thing they both wanted?

Then, what was it for?

“I don't understand,” Blaine says, looking from the red liquid glowing in the flask, to the setting sun, and then to the rock Kurt's sitting on, the tide rising around him, the persistent ocean water blocking their view of the shore. Blaine didn't realize before how far Kurt had swum out to meet him. With the water rising higher, the waves getting stronger, Kurt won't make it back to the beach in time if…

“Oh my…Kurt!” Blaine shakes his head, his face fraught with worry. “But you…your legs…I can't let you…”

“You said you'd do it for me,” Kurt argues. “Even though you're scared to death of coming up on land, you'd do it to be with me. How is this any different?”

Blaine can't stop shaking his head. He feels like he should talk Kurt out of it, but his heart is swelling with joy.

“Kurt…”

“I want to be with you, Blaine,” Kurt says. “And according to the book, the spell's not permanent. But, we'll get the weekend together. Three full days if we're lucky.”

“Kurt, I” – Blaine drifts closer to the rock, holding out a hand to help Kurt as he climbs down into the water – “I don't know what to say.”

“I do,” Kurt says, holding the flask aloft to keep it out of the reach of the water. “Bottoms up.”

Kurt brings the flask to his lips and takes a first, tentative sip. It's just what he expected from a magical potion made of sand, shells, blood, and gold. It tastes awful – bitter, salty, with an aftertaste like stale vomit and the way a baby's diaper smells. But he's careful not to let that show on his face. He doesn't want Blaine to think that this is in any way putting him out, especially considering he knows he'll want to do this again if it succeeds. He chuckles once at the thought of all the brittle stars in the ocean that will be missing one leg, and throws back the rest of the liquid, swallowing it in one painful gulp.

“Kurt,” Blaine says, rescuing the flask from Kurt's hands when he nearly drops it into the water. “Are you okay? Your shorts!” One sentence rushes into the other, giving Kurt a case of whiplash. “Shouldn't you take them off?”

Kurt looks down at his legs. The red glow from the liquid lights up the water beneath him as he feels his body change.

“Shit!” He kicks his legs, shoving at the shorts, but they stick to his wet skin. “I'm really not sure this is going to be a good look for me if I can't get these off.”

“I've got it,” Blaine says, plunging into the water down the length of Kurt's body, peeling the shorts off his legs as he goes. Kurt blushes like mad when he feels Blaine's silky hair brush against his thighs and his shrunken penis, but that embarrassment strips away at the burning sensation of skin ripping, bones fusing, and the excruciating transformation of soft human flesh into hard scales.

Luckily for Kurt, it only seems like forever. It lasts barely a second longer than Blaine taking the shorts off his body. Then Kurt feels himself upended, his bottom half floating swiftly to the surface, his top almost forced under.

“Kurt!” Blaine cries, the urgency in his voice overwhelmed by a laugh of extreme happiness that Kurt has never heard in Blaine's voice before. “Try to push down with your tail and up with your abs and shoulders.”

“Will I be able to breathe underwater?” Kurt asks, coughing up a lung full of sea water.

“Yes,” Blaine says exuberantly. “Yes, you will. But you need to get a hang of keeping yourself upright, or you'll be at the mercy of the waves.”

Kurt does his best to follow Blaine's instructions, still holding on to Blaine's shoulders for support. He's discovering he needs the help of muscles he doesn't normally use as much, and his legs – he can't imagine what they'll look like after this is done. One thing's for sure – he's well on his way to getting that six-pack he's been trying to obtain for ages.

Kurt manages to stay upright for longer than five seconds, and pushes away from Blaine a couple of inches, but he doesn't get too far because Blaine refuses to let go.

“Well,” Kurt says, spinning clumsily in the water with Blaine's hands cupping his hips to keep him steady, “how do I look?”

“You look” – Blaine's lips part, unable to believe what he's seeing. He suddenly dips down beneath the water to get a better look at Kurt's tale of blue and green scales, golden fins fanning out down the back. He bobs back up, Kurt blushing a bright red that Blaine's too thrilled to notice – “incredible! How do you feel?”

“Weird,” Kurt admits. He attempts another spin, listing like a top winding down as he struggles to get a hang of his new appendage. “I mean, I think I should be cold. The water's cold. But I'm not. And I can kind of feel my legs, but I know they're not there. And this tail…it's so bulky, so heavy, so…” He looks up at Blaine's worried face, lower lip pulled down as he listens to Kurt complain. Kurt smiles as reassuring a smile as he can to wipe the pout off Blaine's face. “But I'll get used to it, Blaine.” Kurt puts a hand to Blaine's cheek. “I want to get used to it. I want to be here with you.”

Blaine nods, the smile returning to his face. He takes Kurt in his arms and kisses him, wrapping his tail around Kurt's and twirling them around in the water, cutting through the water in a circle like they're swimming together.

Like they're dancing.

“Oh!” Kurt gasps, breathless at being wrapped in Blaine's arms this way, the two of them equals for the first time. “You're going to have to teach me how to do that.”

“I will,” Blaine says, holding Kurt at arm's length for a moment to get a good long look at him. “I'll teach you everything I know. I'll show you everything. I promise.”

“Good,” Kurt says, rescuing his board shorts from where they've gotten stuck against the rock, with the flask and the vial and the lump of not-so-useless paper in the pockets. “Let's get started. I don't want to waste a minute of my time with you.”

Blaine watches Kurt, keeping his eyes on him as the sun finishes its descent and the stars come out. Kurt – his Kurt – as gorgeous in the starlight as he is in the sun, who changed everything, altered his own body, just to be with him. He can't remember anyone ever doing anything even remotely like that for him. It's almost too much, too big a sacrifice.

“I love you,” Blaine says. It's Kurt's favorite thing to hear, Blaine knows, but it doesn't come close to conveying everything he feels for him right now.

“I love you, too.” Kurt pushes off with his tail to float back into Blaine's arms, but ends up shoving them back a few feet, and Blaine laughs. He takes Kurt's hand, preparing to lead the way, but Kurt shakes his head.

“Don't let go,” Kurt begs, squeaking when a wave rolls by, lifting them up about ten feet along with it.

“Not a chance,” Blaine says. He holds Kurt tight, kisses him hard, and sinks with him beneath the waves.