Chapter Text
Quinn wriggled her toes in the sand, the warmth of each grain rubbing against the skin of her heels as she bent down to pick up her flip flops. Pushing her sunglasses up onto the bridge of her nose, she stared into the distance, watching the gentle, rhythmic lapping of the waves, an endless sea of blue before her.
She loved the summer break.
Kurt loved it too, although anyone who saw him probably wouldn’t think so; he’d spent most of his holiday so far huddled beneath a huge parasol that he’d planted firmly in the sand, before lathering layer after layer of sun cream onto his exposed arms, legs, and face. He’d had one serious case of sunburn last year, leaving him red raw and unable to move for days, skin peeling from his elbows and nose – naturally, he was extra cautious now.
“Kurt,” Quinn said with an amused grin as she watched him practically create a second skin with sun cream. “I think you’ve got it – you’re good to come out of your little cave.”
Kurt glared at her, tilting his head so that she could see his eyes as he did so. “Sunburn is no laughing matter, Quinn.”
“I know,” she replied, “but I don’t think you’re actually capable of getting sunburned anymore. Like, I’m pretty sure you’re immune at this point.” She chuckled, grinning as Kurt squirted another dollop of cream onto the palm of his hand before rubbing it onto the exposed skin of his chest beneath his partially buttoned shirt. She could smell the cream from her spot on the ground, the coconutty smell sweet and sharp in her nose every time she inhaled.
Kurt huffed, finally clicking the cap back onto the bottle before leaning back in his chair, folding his arms behind his head. “Let me do what I need to do, okay? And don’t come crying to me when you're sunburned.”
Laughing, Quinn rolled her eyes as she pulled herself up off the ground, untying the strings of the pink cover-up she was wearing over her swimsuit.
“Come on,” she ordered, holding a hand out to Kurt, “We’re going swimming.”
There was a moment of silence as they stared at one another – Kurt was stubborn, but so was Quinn. She placed her hands on her hips, staring down at him over the tops of her sunglasses.
“What if my sun cream washes off?” Kurt asked, clearly forgetting that he’d been reapplying it at regular intervals of thirty minutes. His skin was coated with about fifty thin, translucent layers of cream that would definitely survive a little paddle.
Quinn wriggled her fingers, her hand still outstretched and unheld. “Then I’ll personally reapply it, okay? God, would you just get up off your ass and come paddle with me?”
“ Ugh ,” Kurt complained, but he still got up out of his chair - he just made sure to emphasise that he wasn’t remotely happy about it with a heavy sigh, right from the depths of his lungs, as he stood up. “Fine.” He ignored Quinn’s outstretched hand, unsuccessfully pretending that he’d come up with standing up and heading for the water all by himself.
As Kurt began to walk, Quinn bolted ahead of him with a burst of laughter that could only be described as devious. “Race you!” she yelled, already halfway across the dark, dense sand where the ocean met the shore.
“You’re such a cheat ,” Kurt yelled, speeding up and stumbling in the sand as Quinn felt his hand grasp at her shoulders as their feet hit the water. She wobbled, almost losing her footing before Kurt released her; his revenge wasn’t over, though. Bending down, he cupped his hands to scoop up seawater, a glint in his eye that Quinn didn’t like as he flung the water towards her face.
“Hey!” Quinn shrieked, the shock of the sudden cold against her skin catching her by surprise. Kneeling in the water, grains of sand and broken shells digging into her knees and legs, she began using her hands as propellers, spraying tiny waves of water all over Kurt’s clothes, face, and hair. She’d watched him fix his hair that morning, carefully applying hairspray to get it standing up just right, so that was a targeted attack.
Kurt clearly thought so too, and before long they were both knocked down, laying in the water tangled together like a couple of very soggy pieces of kelp. It was just like when they were kids; afternoons spent playing in the sand, splashing around in the sea, before they squelched back up to the house before dinner, soaked to the bone with pruny fingers and toes. Quinn looked forward to her beach vacations in Florida with the Hummels every year.
“Bleurgh,” Kurt groaned, spitting out a mouthful of seawater. “You’re the worst – my skin’s going to be so dry tomorrow.”
Quinn laughed as she tried to catch her breath, turning herself over into a sitting position. She tilted herself back, digging the heels of her hands into the dense, wet sand to prop herself up. Kurt joined her, lifting himself up and hugging his knees.
“Do you remember,” she began, “when we were like…ten years old, I think? My mom packed that Barbie: Mermaidia DVD for us to watch, and then we spent the whole summer flopping around on the beach pretending to be mermaids?”
Kurt chuckled at the memory, squinting as he smiled. “Oh my god, yes! And my dad had to stop us from getting in the water because we’d stuck our legs together with—”
“With one of the legs from some of my tights,” Quinn finished, her head tipping back as she laughed. “My mom was not happy when she saw all the runs.”
Kurt laughed softly beside her, swirling the water with one of his fingers. The sun was beginning to set, the clouds resting on the horizon a mixture of blushing pinks, oranges, and purples. The last light of the sun caught on the surface of the water, sparkling and cool as it tickled Quinn’s shins.
“I know that you’re avoiding the sun at all costs this year,” she began, pulling her damp hair back into a ponytail as a sudden breeze attempted to give her a soggy, salty mouthful of blonde and pink, “but are you at least gonna come surfing with me tomorrow? We’re getting the biggest waves of our lives .”
Forty foot waves, to be exact. The kind of surf that Quinn had been dreaming about since she was given her first boogie board. It was their first time in Florida, and Burt bought matching blue and purple boards for her and Kurt from the little surf shack on the beach. They’d only been able to lay flat on them, rocking up and down on the surface of the gentler waves closer to the shore, but it had invigorated something within Quinn even so. Something had pulled her towards the water, making her green with envy as she watched the older kids on the beach standing on real surfboards.
It hadn’t had quite the same effect on Kurt, who had fallen victim to a crashing wave mere seconds after laying on his own board, inhaling a huge amount of ocean and losing his favourite sunglasses. Since then, he’d not been the biggest lover of Quinn’s surfing trips, and spent his days at the beach playing his summer playlist, reading a book, and trying not to burn.
“Hmph,” Kurt responded with a non-committal sound. He would never be convinced to love surfing, despite the fact that he wasn’t half bad. “You realise it was surfing that got me burned, right?”
“Surfing had nothing to do with you running out of the house without sun cream, dummy,” Quinn teased, bobbing her tongue out at him. It hadn’t been like him to forget, but then again, Quinn had been rushing him for fear that they’d miss the best surf of the summer. There was…shared blame for his suffering. “C’mon, please,” she pleaded, “what if it’s our last chance to do this together?”
Kurt smiled, splashing her ankles as he brushed the surface of the water with his fingertips. “You know the beach will always be here, right? We can still come back, even though we’re going to college. They do give you breaks.” Kurt’s eyebrow was arched; everybody around Quinn was convinced that she was catastrophizing, but the ever approaching transition to college was right at her heels, and she was gripping onto teenhood, and all the experiences that came with it, with all the strength that she had.
What if this was her last summer of being young and free? She knew how it worked; after high school, people fell out of touch. She’d barely thought about half of the kids in her class since graduation day, and who was to say that she and Kurt would be able to maintain their close bond with the complications of distance and different schedules? Even the best intentions to stay in touch could fall through when you weren’t obligated to see one another every day.
Sighing, Quinn rested her chin on her knees as she scooped up a fistful of water from the ocean, watching it stream through her fingers like the steady trickle of sand in an hourglass. “You don’t know that,” she whispered. “I mean, you said it yourself – you’re never looking back at Ohio when you get to New York.”
“Hey,” he said, nudging her side with a light tap of his elbow, “we’re always gonna be friends, okay? Even when you’re too busy at Yale to come see me ,” he teased. “It’s not as though you’re too keen on returning to Ohio, either.”
“I know, I just…I hate saying goodbye.”
“Me too,” Kurt answered quietly, splashing Quinn one last time with a flick of cold water.
Quinn chuckled. “Let’s just…let’s just promise to make the most of this vacation, okay?”
“Promise,” Kurt replied, smiling as he reached down for Quinn’s hand, sliding his pinky around hers and shaking both of their hands firmly. “In that case,” he began, the twinkle in his eye visible even through his shades, “then there’s still one summer tradition that I’d really like to check off the agenda.”
Groaning, Quinn made a show of throwing her head back, damp stringy hair snaking down her back as Kurt grinned, looking all too pleased with himself. “Do I have to?”
*
Quinn took her time in the shower, hoping to delay the inevitable as she washed salty water from her hair with sweet, citrusy shampoo, scrubbing sand from the soles of her feet and leftover sun cream from her face.
After changing into her pyjamas, Quinn made her way to the front room of the beach house, where Kurt was already waiting with a bowl of microwave popcorn. He had the windows pushed wide open to let in the cool evening air, and the window shutters swung gently with the wind, the blue paint on the wood faded after years of exposure to sun and sea salt carried on the breeze. The last remaining slivers of sunlight streamed through the tilted wooden blinds, casting thin strips of its orange glow against the painted blue walls and dark-wood floorboards, shining on the TV screen.
Kurt was particularly fond of the fact that the TV came with a still-functioning tape player, and a copy of his favourite, not-so-guilty pleasure on VHS – a low-budget, seriously cheesy movie musical from the mid-1960s called Wet Side Story (Quinn still wasn’t sure how they’d gotten away with that). They’d found it the first time Quinn was invited to join them on their holiday, when Katherine Hummel had been searching for a way to keep them busy whilst she and Burt prepared dinner - the rest, as they say, was history.
From the moment that the opening credits rolled, Kurt had immediately fallen in love. He was entranced by the overly choreographed fight sequences, the bright colours, the romantic musical numbers… the hair – he’d attempted to backcomb Quinn’s hair into a beehive-do when they were fourteen.
Quinn got her first bob at fourteen.
In the years since that first holiday, Quinn had watched the film more times than she could count, and more times than she would’ve chosen for herself; they had to watch it at least once every summer, or Kurt just couldn’t declare their holiday a success.
“This movie makes no sense,” Quinn complained, tossing a piece of popcorn into her mouth, almost missing by a fraction of a millimetre. “Like, he just saved that dude’s sister from breaking her neck falling off a stage, but he’s all hung up on him being a surfer?”
“They’re enemies , Quinn,” Kurt explained. This was just their way of enjoying the film – Quinn complained about why it made no sense, and Kurt defended it with his life. “It’s like…they’re like Romeo and Juliet, right? Tragically torn apart by a feud that has nothing to do with them. They’re star-crossed lovers!” His popcorn bowl wobbled dangerously in his lap as he ranted, his arms doing a lot of the talking for him.
“Right, okay, but… the main girl has, like, zero autonomy – so, what? Her brother’s just allowed to dictate who she can and can’t date? He’s a piece of shit,” Quinn declared, tossing a piece of popcorn at the TV. “She should get to make her own choices.”
“Look,” Kurt said, standing up to retrieve the popcorn before tossing it in the trash next to the couch. “I never said it was perfect , but I love it!” he declared, watching as the two lovers locked eyes for the first time, sighing with wonder as though he was watching the events of the movie unfold for the first time. “It’s so romantic, I mean…they see one another for the first time and instantly fall in love, like…like they’re meant to be together.” Kurt was smiling wistfully at the screen, swaying gently to the song that the lead girl was singing, held in the arms of her love interest. When he was seven, Kurt had dressed up as him for Halloween, the look complete with a tiny plastic surfboard and his first ever hair quiff – it was, like, his hair origin story.
Quinn snorted. “You just have the hots for the dude with the smile and the hair who never buttons his shirts all the way.”
“Do not ,” Kurt protested, bobbing his tongue out at Quinn, his nose scrunching as he did so.
“Do too ,” Quinn teased. “Honestly, I don’t see the appeal.”
“You’re a lesbian, Quinn.”
“Touche,” she said, as the next scene began to play. “Oh, no,” she complained, watching as the film transitioned to a scene between the leads on the beach. He was giving her a surfing lesson and, of course , they just had to make it so the girl was always just slightly worse at it than the guy.
The thing that drove Quinn really crazy, though, was the fact that they’d always come out of the water completely dry – clothes, hair, and all. “They’re not even trying to make it look good!” she always yelled at the TV, whilst a laughing Kurt swatted her arm with one of the couch cushions, calling her a spoilsport.
After almost two hours, the film ended, Kurt was in tears, and Quinn managed to keep her mouth closed for the final scene, the last kiss between the romantic leads before the credits rolled – it always made Kurt emotional, and she was willing to let him have that, despite him making her sit through one of the worst films she’d ever had the displeasure of experiencing. Quinn was allowed to complain during every scene, but not this one.
As the credits rolled, a symphonic medley of the film’s soundtrack playing, she passed him the box of tissues for him to dab at the corners of his eyes, his nose and cheeks tinted pink.
His voice was thick as he said, “I just love this movie so much,” with a soppy little smile on his face.
Okay, so it was sort of cute to watch him get this excited about it. “I know you do,” she said, stacking their popcorn bowls before getting up to stick them in the sink.
“I know you hate it, but—”
“Hey,” Quinn protested in vain, “I don’t… hate it.”
Kurt’s eyebrow arched upwards, the corner of his mouth twitching. “Oh, really? So you spent the past two hours throwing popcorn at the TV ‘cause you were just having so much fun?”
Quinn huffed before mumbling, “I was…I was appreciating it in my own special way!” It was a lousy defence, and it made Kurt snort with laughter as he reached for the dish towel, waiting for Quinn to place a clean bowl on the drying rack.
“ Ri-ight,” he replied. “I think you secretly love it, you know?”
“You think?” Quinn asked, very interested in this theory. Kurt nodded. “You got me – secret Wet Side Story -head. I actually have a secret tumblr blog dedicated to the movie; I update it daily.”
“I’d totally follow that blog,” Kurt said as he finished drying off the second bowl. “So…who’s your favourite character?” he asked, the corner of his mouth twitching as he glanced towards Quinn out of the corner of his eye.
Quinn didn’t even take a moment to think before replying, “That biker girl. The one with the red polka-dot dress who sings the–”
“A-ha!” Kurt whispered triumphantly, careful not to wake up Burt as he pointed his finger at Quinn. “Why would you have a favourite character if you didn’t like the film?”
Having no measured, mature response to offer, Quinn simply poked her tongue out at Kurt. “Whatever,” she added, for good measure.
“You know, I really hope you’re wrong about this being the last summer,” he said as they both leaned up against the kitchen island, bowls stored away in cupboards and towels hung up to dry. “I’d miss arguing about Wet Side Story with you too much.”
“Yeah,” Quinn whispered, nodding as she smiled at Kurt. The lighting in the kitchen was dim, leaving them mostly in the shadows as half of Kurt’s face was softly lit by the blue light of the moon. “Me too.”
She felt a buzz from the back pocket of her pyjama shorts, a ‘goodnight’ text from her mom. She checked the time – it was almost eleven thirty.
“It’s late,” she said, pocketing her phone, “we should probably go to bed – gotta be well rested for tomorrow.”
Kurt nodded, leading the way up the stairs as they made their way to their shared bedroom, careful to avoid any creaky floorboards so as not to disturb Burt – he was always early to bed, early to rise, and an incredibly light sleeper.
Already in their pyjamas, they didn’t bother pulling the light switch as they entered, Quinn shutting the door slowly and quietly behind her.
“Goodnight, Quinn,” Kurt whispered into the dark as he pulled back his sheets. “I hope you have lots of lovely dreams about bikers, and surfers, and–”
“Goodnight, Kurt,” she interrupted. Kurt huffed with silent laughter, but didn’t add anything else. “Sleep tight.”
Quinn tucked herself under the covers in the single bed next to Kurt’s, her head still swimming with scenes from the film as she drifted in and out of consciousness, paying close attention to the sound of the ocean’s waves lapping against the sea wall. The rhythmic crashing of water against stone helped to lull her, slowly, into a deep sleep.
*
Sleeping with the windows open not only gave some relief from the summer heat with a gentle sea breeze in the morning, but also provided the chatter of the people arriving for a day at the beach as a gentle wake-up call. By the time Quinn finally decided to pull back her covers and drag herself out of bed, Kurt had already been up for several hours; he liked to get up and watch the sunrise every morning, taking a glass of home-made iced tea onto the front porch to wake himself up with the sun.
That morning had been no exception. Kurt’s empty glass had been left on the front garden table, the sides dewy from the half-melted ice sitting at the bottom. The smell and sound of bacon sizzling in a frying pan drifted through the air, calling Quinn into the kitchen as her stomach began to growl. It was a hot day; she’d need plenty of energy to keep her going on the waves later on.
In the kitchen, she found Burt flipping bacon in a frying pan, and Kurt buttering thick slices of fresh crusty bread for sandwiches. She pulled out the stool beside his from beneath the kitchen island, suppressing a yawn as she said, “Morning.” She reached for the jug of orange juice and began to pour herself a glass. “Sleep well?”
“Like a very cosy log,” Kurt replied. “You?”
Quinn nodded, before going into a spiel about the weird, Wet Side Story related dreams she’d been having all night, and how it was all Kurt’s fault for making her watch the movie right before bed.
“Hey,” Kurt said, pointing at Quinn with his fork, “just be grateful that my favourite movie isn’t, like, Les Mis or something. That would be a bad dream.”
Burt chuckled. “You watched that movie again last night?” he asked, starting to assemble their sandwiches. “Kurt used to be obsessed with it.” Burt smiled fondly as he passed Quinn her plate and the bottle of ketchup from the fridge.
“Used to be?” Quinn asked, eyebrows raised as she smacked the bottom of the ketchup bottle.
“Ha ha,” Kurt fake-laughed, his tone flat and his eyebrows arched, unimpressed. “Anyway, if you’re all finished teasing me–”
“Sorry – I give you permission to make fun of me for the whole morning as revenge,” Quinn interrupted with a chuckle. “And I’m sure you’ve got a bunch of material for that.”
“I do,” Kurt said, smirking. “But for now, as I was saying - are you still making me go to the beach with you today? I refuse to surf a wave that big because…well, I’m the sensible one, but I assume I’m still being forced to come watch you, correct?” He punctuated his question with an exaggerated, heavy sigh, right from the gut.
“Naturally,” Quinn replied, but Burt made a disapproving humming sound, his brow furrowing. It took him a few seconds to elaborate on the meaning of the noise as he chewed a mouthful of breakfast.
“You know,” Burt began after finishing the last bite of his bacon sandwich, mopping up an escaped dollop of ketchup with the final chunk of his bread. “Surfing conditions aren’t looking too good today, Quinn.”
“How so?” she asked. Gazing out of the window, all that she saw for miles were blue skies, blue seas, and bright rays of sun streaming through the window shutters.
“They’re predicting a storm,” Burt explained, and Quinn couldn’t help but huff a laugh, even as Burt pulled up the weather report on his phone. She turned away from the bright screen displaying its warnings, turning to face the open kitchen window instead.
“There’s not a single grey cloud in the sky,” she pointed out, tilting her head towards the open patio door. The sky was bright and blue, with white candy floss clouds hanging in small clumps - not exactly the right conditions for a storm.
Kurt’s eyebrows furrowed. “You don’t think it’s safe to go?” he asked. “I don’t think you should risk it, Quinn.”
“ You don’t have to go, but I still am,” she answered with determination. “I’m not missing out on the best waves of the summer just because there might be a storm.”
“And what if there is?” Kurt demanded as he began stacking plates for the wash bowl, filling the sink with hot, soapy water. “What then?”
“If it really gets too dangerous, I’ll just…call it a day. No wind, no waves – right?”
*
Kurt tucked himself away under his parasol again, shielded from the sun whilst still being able to enjoy his summer wardrobe out on the beach. He watched over his sunglasses, an earphone in one ear playing ‘Surf Crazy’ from the Wet Side Story soundtrack, as Quinn brushed a speck of dirt away from the smooth surface of her surfboard. He was listening in honour of her; she could complain about the movie all she liked, but he knew the truth. The truth that she’d been mouthing along to that very song last night when she thought he wasn’t looking.
However…he wasn’t feeling very surf crazy as he watched her zip up the tight-fitted, nylon wetsuit top that she had put on over her swimsuit, tightening the drawstrings of her board shorts. The sun had vanished behind a large cluster of clouds about ten minutes ago, leaving the beach in cold shade as a small gaggle of surfers waxing their boards watched the sea with furrowed brows. They seemed to have noticed, like Kurt, that the water was becoming increasingly rough as the wind picked up.
The wind was really picking up, fast, and it was almost entirely responsible for the pit that had opened in the depths of Kurt’s stomach. With every wave that rippled across the ocean surface, Kurt became increasingly nervous about the prospect of Quinn paddling out to sea. He knew his friend, and once she set her mind on something, there was very little that could be done to persuade her not to go through with it; her stubbornness would only find even more reason for her to do the thing. Kurt knew stubborn - he wrote the book, the series, the spinoff...but at least he knew when to throw in the towel.
As the waves became increasingly rough, a few of the surfers seemed to have bailed, pointing towards the clump of dense, dark clouds hovering above them before tucking their boards under their arms and walking away from the sea. Kurt watched as a few surfers already out on their boards were wiped out by the waves, disappearing beneath their foamy curls as the peaks crashed to the ocean surface. Most of the surfers began rushing out of the water, the lifeguard’s whistle shrieking as echoing across the beach.
Most of them.
Not Quinn, though. Kurt swallowed anxiously as he watched her - she was laying flat on her stomach, propelling herself forwards on her board further away from the shore as she paddled. He turned to his dad as Quinn bobbed over her first, low wave.
“Do you think she should be doing this?” he asked, trying not to bite at the skin of his bottom lip as his eyes darted from Quinn to the clouds to his dad and back to Quinn again.
“I don’t know, kid,” Burt replied, one hand on his hip and the other shielding his eyes as he gazed out to sea. The whistle screeched again. “She should really start coming in, now.”
But Quinn was still going, readying herself to stand up on her board. The lifeguard on duty brought his whistle to his mouth and blew into it yet again, the sound piercing Kurt’s ear drums and his nerves became even more frayed. Then, the lifeguard reached to the ground for the huge, red flag sitting beneath his chair. As he lifted it into the air, Kurt watched with fear as the thin pole it was attached to struggled against the wind, bending almost in half as the flag flapped wildly. The lifeguard was calling the last few surfers in, and they all complied.
Quinn didn’t. Of course she didn’t.
The grey clouds above the beach seemed to have become darker and greater in number at record speed, rain spitting onto the warm, dry sand beneath Kurt’s feet. It looked like night time compared to the brightness of the sun that morning. Pushing himself up out of his chair, Kurt jogged towards the ocean where Quinn was still paddling out to sea; maybe she hadn’t heard the whistle over the crash of the waves, the rumbling of the sky. But, surely, those sounds alone would’ve been enough to get her out of the water - right?
“Quinn!” Kurt called, but to no avail. He bought cupped hands up to his mouth, calling louder this time. “ Quinn!”
The push and pull of the ocean started to become rougher, the wind picking up its strength as Quinn wobbled slightly on her board. She didn’t stop, though, and Kurt felt all of the blood in his body drop to his feet, his face completely drained. Why wouldn’t she just listen?
“Dad!” he called, but Burt was already by his side. “Dad, she’s not coming back – why isn’t she coming back?” Kurt demanded, panic rising as his heart hammered against his chest, almost fit to burst through the buttercup yellow button up he was wearing. He’d picked out a bright colour for a bright day, but now, his yellow shirt seemed to be the only colour left on the beach, which was now entirely covered by a canopy of storm clouds.
“It’s alright, Kurt,” Burt promised, but it felt empty. Quinn wasn’t turning around. “I’ll go talk to the lifeguard.” Burt clapped Kurt’s shoulder before jogging towards the lifeguard station, where the green flag had been taken down completely and replaced by the red one, still struggling against the wind.
The crest of a wave began to build itself up a few metres away from where Quinn was lying flat on her board. As it crept towards her, it built itself up with every centimetre that it advanced.
The lifeguard’s whistle shrieked above the panicked murmurs of the crowd, above another futile attempt from Kurt to call out Quinn’s name. He watched on in horror, frozen in place as the wave approached Quinn. She looked like an action figure in front of it, small, breakable, and easy to topple with the lightest touch. Only the touch of the wave wouldn’t be light, and Kurt could tell that this wasn’t a wave that she could ride – not even with the years of practice and experience that Quinn had.
He was frozen still as the wave curled over and began its descent towards Quinn, who didn’t seem to be finding it easy to keep her balance on the surfboard after pushing herself up to her feet. Before Kurt even had the chance to scream her name again, one final attempt to get her to turn around and get the hell out of there, the wave came crashing down. Quinn stumbled on her board as the water overpowered her, pulling her under with one swoop as the crowd gasped with horror.
There were a few seconds of sickening silence as the beach waited for Quinn to resurface.
Her board came back before her, popping up out of the ocean before crashing back down onto the water’s surface with a loud slapping sound, sending up a shower of water around it.
The lifeguard was preparing to go in and get her, but he wasn’t quick enough – Kurt couldn’t wait a second longer for Quinn to drag herself up out of the water, and decided in that split second that it was about time he took advantage of his lifeguard training.
He’d taken the course out of sheer desperation and boredom two years back, when Quinn was sick with a stomach bug and had to go back to Ohio just one week into their holiday. Now, he silently thanked every single thing in the universe that it was possible to thank for it, as the lifeguard barely batted an eye when he ran towards the ocean, grabbing for one of the rescue motorboats and revving the engine as he fastened his life jacket with clumsy fingers.
It was thanks to his sudden burst of adrenaline that he wasn’t keeled over the side of the motorboat, throwing up the breakfast he’d eaten just over an hour ago as he came closer to Quinn’s lone surfboard.
Making the final adjustments to his life jacket, he dived off the side of the vehicle, breaking the surface of the water with the tips of his fingers as he held his breath. The sea was still rough, although no waves as big as the one that had wiped Quinn out had begun to build yet, and Kurt struggled to see through the dark murky water surrounding him.
Still, the pit in his stomach was deepened even further when his hands caught on a clump of hair, a translucent cloud of blonde and pink floating in the water about a metre away from Quinn’s board. Surging forwards, Kurt grabbed for Quinn, hoisting her up by her armpits as he swam with all the force that he could muster to pull her to the surface.