Kurt didn't hear from Blaine at all the next day. By Monday night he started to get nervous. He worried something bad happened, but he supposed Cooper would tell him if it did. Then he was nervous that he should be the one to call Blaine first. Or should he? He didn't know how post-date communication was supposed to work, and then again, he didn't even know if it had been a date. He just knew he missed Blaine.

But by the time he'd worked up the courage to call him Monday night, it was already 11:30, and didn't know if calling that late would be a good idea. What if Blaine was asleep? He needed to keep a steady sleep routine, Kurt knew from secretly researching narcolepsy at the library (even though Blaine insisted that wasn't what was wrong with him). Or what if his father heard the phone ring so late at night? He'd start another fight, and Kurt really hoped to avoid doing that again.

So he started thinking about the pros and cons of texting Blaine so late at night. What if incoming texts on Blaine's phone made a loud noise? While he was thinking about it, a text came from Blaine, letting Kurt off the hook.

"A paradox:" it said, "you only want to talk to me in real life, but you want to send me inappropriate texts at three in the morning. Which is the one you really want?"

Kurt smiled. "Both," he replied.

"I have a series of inappropriate texts to send you tonight. Or should I wait to talk to you about it when we see each other again?"

Kurt swallowed nervously. "No. You can send them. Or say whatever you want. Tonight." He rolled his eyes and vowed to stop text-babbling.

There was a long pause, during which Kurt's heart almost thumped out of his chest. He expected a rather long reply, after all the waiting, but there were only five words in the end. "Do you have a boyfriend?"

Kurt exhaled, realizing he'd been holding his breath. That wasn't quite as terrifying as he expected. "No."

"A crush?"

Except you? "No..." Kurt replied, deciding to let Blaine infer whatever he wanted from the ellipses.

"Ever been kissed?"

Kurt thought about it and decided the best answer was, "Not by a boy. And I hope you know you have to answer all of this, too."

"I wanted to kiss you in the car," was his response.

Kurt didn't know what to think about this. He spent a minute or so wondering if he was going to explode, or implode, and when he finally had control of his motor skills again he replied, "Why didn't you?"

"I didn't want to steal your first kiss. I knew I should ask you first, if it was okay. But I was too nervous."

"Blaine, you're my soulmate. My first kiss basically belongs to you. Anyone else should have to ask your permission before they kiss me."

"Maybe," was all he said.

Kurt waited, but nothing more came. "Your turn. Answer them," he sent finally, not wanting to end the conversation yet. And because he was curious.

"Not anymore, yes, yes."

Kurt's heart sank. These were not the perfect, magical answers he wanted. He wanted Blaine to be as much of an inexperienced idiot as he was. He didn't want to think about Blaine with anyone else, looking at them like he looked at Kurt, or holding their hand like he held Kurt's. This could just as easily mean Blaine had had wild tantric sex with about five hundred different men, too, but he wasn't allowed to ask that.

"But I'm still a virgin. Don't stop talking to me."

"I am still talking to you," Kurt texted back with shaking fingers.

"Inappropriate, I warned you."

"It's not inappropriate. I have a right to know, right? Besides, you can tell me anything."

"If your first kiss belongs to me, then my virginity belongs to you."

This was a little more than Kurt could handle all at once. He dropped the phone onto his pillow and took a slow walk downstairs to get a glass of water. Very cold water. And he stared out the kitchen window at the snow and tried to think of boring things, like taking out the garbage and French homework. And tried not to think about how his life was being turned upside down in a weird and overwhelmingly wonderful way. After he managed to start breathing normally again and his cheeks were only moderately on fire, he went back to his room and checked his phone.

"You can do with it what you wish. Goodnight," Blaine had sent.

Quickly Kurt sent a reply. "Don't go to sleep yet, I want to keep talking. Maybe not about the present topic, but about anything."

He waited, and waited, and waited, but Blaine sent nothing in return. Defeated, Kurt turned out the light and tried to sleep.

For the rest of the week, he moped around school and felt sorry for himself. He was sure Blaine was mad at him, and it didn't help that he never answered the last text Kurt sent.

He spent the first day of winter break moping at home. He frowned while he ate sugar cookies and watched Finn decorate the tree. He was supposed to be helping, but he couldn't muster the cheer.

"Are you still sulking over that Blaine guy?" Finn asked, trying to untangle little lights and only managing to wrap himself up in them instead.

Kurt glared at him. "That Blaine guy?"

"Well, I don't know," Finn frowned. "What should I call him?"

"Blaine?" Kurt offered.

"No, it's too weird. Anyway, he's all better now, right?"

Kurt shrugged. "I guess so."

"But you are. You're not sick anymore at all. Do you… do you think it really was all connected?"

He answered honestly. "I have no idea."

"If it was connected, that means maybe every time someone gets sick it's because their soulmate got sick first."

"Not every time…" Kurt frowned, trying to do the math. "Maybe half the time, or… I don't know."

"Do you think Burt and my mom get sick at the same time?"

"Yeah but that's probably because they share a bedroom." Kurt blanched. "I wish I hadn't said that. I just mean they breathe the same air."

"But all soulmates who know each other breathe the same air. And make out all the time."

"What are we even talking about?" Kurt asked. "Blaine doesn't have a contagious disease, that's why it's weird that I got sick too."

"Maybe it was just a coincidence," Finn said, starting to circle the tree with lights. "But what about people who die when their soulmates die? All those people who die of 'broken hearts.' But what happens if you don't know your soulmate? And you just randomly die in a car accident, or something?" Finn dropped the lights and stared wistfully into space. "What does it all mean?"

"I guess all we can do is hope our soulmates takes care of themselves. Keep themselves out of danger, and healthy." Kurt then decided to eat two sugar cookies at once.

"It's not fair," Finn mumbled, and started decorating again. "I don't want other people making stupid decisions that could affect me."

He might have continued his regular anti-soulmate rant, but Kurt stopped listening. He heard his cellphone ring upstairs and he ran to it at top speed.

It was exactly who he wanted it to be. "Blaine!" he kind of yelled as a greeting.

Blaine laughed in a taken aback way. "Kurt!"

"Hi!" Okay, Kurt had to stop yelling gleefully. He cleared his throat and frowned in concentration. "Hi," he tried again, calmly.

"Hi," Blaine said. "You sound happy."

"It's the sugar," Kurt explained without missing a beat. "I've been eating sugar cookies."

"Kurt… I wanted to apologize to you. I'm really sorry."

"For what?"

"For the stupid texts I sent you. I know they grossed you out and scared you away, or something. Are you mad at me?"

"No I'm not! I thought you were mad at me!" Yelling again. He sat down on the edge of his bed. Maybe sitting would make him feel less impassioned.

"Why would I be mad at you?" Blaine asked.

"Because I didn't reply right away."

"Oh," he laughed. "Lesson learned. Let's not stop talking to each other when we think the other one is mad."

"Agreed. I'm sorry too. I should have called you days ago."

"Don't worry about it. Let's make it up to each other with an afternoon of shopping."

Kurt sprang up from his bed. "I thought you'd never ask."

"I need to buy, like, fifteen $5 Christmas presents for people at school. I'll need your advice."

"I'd be happy to give it!"

They met at the mall the following afternoon, after Blaine was finished with a doctor appointment. ("They still don't understand anything. I'm officially a medical mystery," Blaine said.)

Kurt used the opportunity to learn more about Blaine, and it wasn't long before they started talking about their respective glee clubs. It turned out they probably would have met at a competition anyway, or would have at least seen each other, if Blaine was healthy enough to attend. Blaine froze at this realization and looked at Kurt. "Do you think we would have known?"

"Yes, I think we would have," Kurt said. "At least, I would have known. I would have watched you sing and I would have known. But I would have been too embarrassed to actually talk to you. If you didn't talk to me first the universe would have had to figure out a different way to push us together."

"You talked to me first this time, though."

"Well, it's easy when you can't look at me, or talk back. Not that I'm not happy you're better now. I just know that I never would have talked to you if, like, three other people hadn't forcibly shoved me toward you and kept us hostage in a room alone."

"It was a good ice breaker," Blaine agreed.

At dinner that night they talked about school, or more specifically, how they survived school. Kurt told Blaine about the jocks and the slushies, but how not everything was bad because he had an inordinate amount of friends from glee club and only had a year and a half left before he could run away to New York.

Blaine told Kurt about about being bullied in 9th grade and transferring to Dalton, where life became considerably better but a little mundane. "Until I came down with a crippling mystery disease and acquired a soulmate, that is," he amended. "Now I never know what's going to happen next."

The night before Blaine started school again he called Kurt. They compared family members and talked about the future. It was helpful, if not glaring destiny, that both of them wanted to leave Lima for New York City, to do music in some sort of professional capacity. Then they started asking random questions, like, "can you cook?" and "what's your opinion of the Beatles?"

When the conversation fell into a lull, Blaine asked quietly, "Do you think we know each other now?"

"Yes," Kurt answered. "I'm sure we do."

But Kurt was starting to think Blaine had forgotten about the boyfriend/first kiss texts. He never brought up a topic remotely close to romance, and Kurt began to wonder if he was supposed to take the hint that they should just be friends. Which was unfortunate, because the more he learned about Blaine, the harder he fell for him.