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Rachel Berry gets her soulmate mark when she’s four. It’s precociously early, but she’s not surprised; she always knew that her love would be bigger and brighter than anyone else’s around. Epic. Kurt Hummel, get ready, because here she comes.
Kurt gets his soulmate mark when he’s five. He cries in his room and won’t come out for days. How could he get a girl’s name when - he already knows - . Elizabeth tries to tell him that friendship can be just as important as anything else, but he’s stubborn and yells at her to get out, shut up. Burt tells him that it will be okay, kid, maybe she’s that one in a million and there’s nothing wrong with liking boys of course but this way at least he’ll have an easier life. Kurt stops being a hopeless romantic, and covers his mark.
Blaine Anderson gets his soulmate mark at seven. He’s just happy to have one, mostly; it was late coming in and his parents were worried for a while, but now he fits in just fine again. Tina Cohen-Chang, he says, tracing the syllables. He wonders when he’ll get to meet her, and he hopes that she’ll have a nice smile.
Tina gets her soulmate mark at six. She doesn’t care at all. It’s a mark, she has it, almost everyone does. One day it will be important, she figures, but for now she’d rather just sit and read.
~*~
Their world doesn’t allow social networking, listing in the telephone directory, or any similar sort of public use of the real names of people under eighteen. Everyone wants to find their soulmate, but finding yours too young is considered dangerous. You need to be strong enough to support another person first; you need to grow into your own shape properly before you can fit with someone else.
~*~
Rachel and Kurt don’t have any classes together their first year at McKinley High School, but he signs up for Glee club first. When she sees his name on the sign-up sheet she knows. Singing has always been her road to fame; all she’s ever needed is the proper duet partner. And he’s there, in the choir room, she’ll finally get to meet the destined male lead to her ingenue.
(His voice is almost as high as hers. He’s gay, although he doesn’t tell her that at first. He runs away as soon as she says her name because he kind of hates her sight unseen.
They become friends, eventually, but it takes more than a year.)
~*~
Blaine didn’t know he was gay when he got his mark at seven. He figures it out at twelve, comes out to both his parents and his classmates at thirteen. At fourteen, in his freshman year, he gets the shit kicked out of him taking another boy to a dance, and his parents start hinting that maybe it’s time to start looking for that Tina Cohen-Chang girl after all.
(He does, but just to get them off his back.)
He runs into her by accident when he goes to spy on the Glee club that the Warblers will be competing against for Sectionals. She’s nice enough, but nothing special, and of course he’s not surprised, he’s gay - but maybe he had hoped. Turns out that sorry, Dad, no, I’m not even a little bi, not even for her.
He transfers to her school due to a series of odd coincidences, and ends up falling in love with her friend Kurt Hummel.
~*~
Kurt’s seventeen and a junior in high school, Blaine’s fifteen and a sophomore, when they fall in love. They’re not soulmates but then again almost no high school couples are; it’s still considered that dating in high school will prepare you for being a good partner when you meet your soulmate later, and anyway, it’s fun.
Kurt says that they’re both gay and the names on their arms are girls, who cares about soulmates, Rachel is so important to him, he can’t even say, but he’s still not going to be single his whole life.
(Neither is she, she says; they’ll live close enough if not together, and figure it out somehow. This is an unusual situation, but not unique. Her dads know people…)
Blaine agrees, but secretly, in his more sentimental moments he thinks that soulmates are real. That he is Kurt’s and Kurt is his, and the names on their arms are mistaken but that is the truth, because he’s never felt anything for Tina or anyone else that could close to compare.
(Tina’s kind of soured on the whole concept of soulmates since hers turned out to be a gay guy, but when he confides this idea to her she still thinks it’s kind of crazy.)
~*~
Kurt and Rachel go off to live in New York when they graduate high school, leaving their boyfriends behind. Blaine watches Kurt carefully when he sets him free; there are stars in his eyes and a restless dance in his steps. They’re not soulmates, after all, they never were.
He doesn’t believe in the concept anymore either.
They didn’t break up, but he cheats on Kurt in October, because it probably wasn’t bound to last anyway, and of course Kurt breaks up with him then. Won’t even talk to him anymore.
He tries to kill himself in November, and Tina finds him. She calls the ambulance, and later, she makes sure he calls the other doctors too. So it turns out that soulmate does mean something after all; it’s the person who keeps you whole and alive when no one else is there. Tina’s the one person to whom he can confide things, whom he can lean on, who sees when he’s falling apart and at least tries to understand. He knows what Kurt means, now, when he used to say that romantic relationships don’t have to be the thing that makes you whole.
He never does fall out of love.
~*~
Tina’s soulmate has finally come around to the whole idea of the marks. He’s relying on her, and inviting her to rely on him; their friendship is far closer than it ever was before. She’s been bitter about the marks for a while now, since she met Blaine and he told her that he was gay, but now…
She thinks her soulmate might finally be falling in love with her. It took a while, there were some false starts and misunderstandings, but now she won’t have to be single anymore.