A/N: This story is being written for the 2020 Klaine Valentine's Challenge and will be the 4th installment of teddyshoney and my series, "In Every Lifetime." It also fills silentpeaches prompt and will be beta'd by teddyshoney. All mistakes, though, are my own. I own none of the characters or Glee itself.

The moment Kurt turned 16, he stripped down and looked himself over in the mirror. He wasn't exactly sure what he was looking for, but he knew he was looking for something. Anything out of the ordinary would stand out on his porcelain skin. Once he had looked over his body, his whole body, every nook and cranny, he put his clothes back on, sat on his bed, and sighed. He had hoped more than anything that he would find his mark on his birthday.

I really hope he's...surely my soulmate is a he, right? Whoever it is, I hope they're not too much younger than me, Kurt thought. I could really use someone to talk to right now.

"Daddy?" Kurt asked his father one day when he was four-years-old.

"What's up, kiddo?" Burt answered, enjoying the warm sun with his two favorite people in the world.

"Wha's dat?" Kurt asked, pointing to the yellow circle looking thing with the dots on it on the crook of his father's right arm.

"That," Burt began, smiling at the mark, "is how I know that your Mommy is supposed to be with me."

"Huh?" Kurt asked, thoroughly confused.

"Well..." Burt began, looking to his wife to see if she wanted to explain. She shook her head, knowing that if Kurt wanted to ask her, he would have. "When you get older, you will get a mark on you somewhere. And the only other person in the world who is meant to be with you will have a mark, too. It might be the exact same thing, or it might complement your mark. See Mommy's?" Burt asked, pointing to the mark on the crook of Elizabeth's left arm. "Mommy's goes with mine."

"But, what do dey mean?" Kurt asked. "How's you gonna figure it out?"

"Ours were fairly simple to figure out," Elizabeth answered. "Your Daddy and I used to meet up at the arcade in town all the time. We were friends even then, this was even before we got our marks. So, it wasn't too much of a surprise when we did get them, and they went together. They're from a game called 'Pac-Man,' and I used to kick your Daddy's hiney at it."

"You did not," Burt objected, looking at the ghost with three dots on his wife's arm. "I totally let you win so you'd keep hanging out with me."

"Wha' happens if'n somebody doesn' get a mark?" Kurt asked.

"Everybody gets a mark," Burt answered him. "And, you will meet the person who has the other mark when the timing is right. Everybody has somebody, Kurt. The Fates make sure of it."

"Okay, Daddy," Kurt said, placated by what his father had told him.

"You wanna see something even cooler than the mark?" Elizabeth asked Kurt.

"There's sumpin' cooler?" Kurt asked, intrigued by what his mother had to say. He leaned in closer to her so he could see whatever she was going to do.

"May I borrow your pen, my love?" Elizabeth asked her husband.

Burt handed her his pen, and she proceeded to write on her left forearm lyrics from the song that they had danced to at their wedding.

"Just the two of us

Building castles in the sky

Just the two of us, you and I."

"Look at Daddy's arm," she prompted, pointing.

"WHOA!" Kurt exclaimed. "Dat's super cool! Can I write on my arm?"

"You can," Burt chuckled at his son's excitement. "But, it will just be on your arm for right now. All of this cool stuff will happen when you or your soulmate turns 16."

"Why's dat, Daddy?" Kurt asked, still staring at the lyrics written on his parents' arms.

"Nobody really knows why, kiddo," Burt said. "That's just the way it's always been. If your soulmate is older than you, you will get your mark the moment you turn 16. If they are younger than you, the mark will turn up when they turn 16. And, it will always be something that will be important to you. Again, I have no idea how Fate knows what that mark will be, but it does, especially if you haven't met each other yet. Mommy and I were different. Our mark is something that has always been important to us."

"Dat's so cool," Kurt said. "I can' wait to be sis-teen."

The rest of the summer passed by slowly for Kurt. Some of his friends started getting their marks, including one of his closest friends. Brittany showed up on the day of her 16th birthday sporting a low-cut top that clearly showed off her new mark: two hands holding pinkies right under her left collarbone.

Kurt had stopped checking his body over every day after the first couple of months after his birthday. As he got into the shower one morning, however, he started singing a song he hadn't heard in years, though he knew it by heart.

"We look for love, no time for tears

Wasted waters's all that is

And it don't make no flowers grow

Good things might come to those who wait

Not to those who wait too late

We got to go for all we know"

He was just about to get to the chorus again when he noticed something on his right wrist. He had a mark. "Holy shit! I have my mark!" Kurt said aloud as he stared in awe at it. What he saw was pretty amazing; it was a red heart, but the middle of it had a missing shape, a puzzle piece. "That's poetic," he said to himself.

He got out of the shower, dried off, and sat on his bed, wrapped up in his towel. He grabbed a pen from his nightstand and wrote right above his mark, "Happy birthday!"

Nothing happened right away, so he started to get ready for school. He hoped, that wherever they were, his soulmate had a better time at school than he did. Kurt absolutely despised McKinley High. The names all of the ignorant assholes called him, he could take. They weren't anything he couldn't handle. But, the locker checks, dumpster throws, and slushy facials were getting out of hand already, and school had only started a week ago. It seemed like over the summer, the jocks had grown bigger and their dislike for him grew as well.

I'm glad that plain old marks won't show up on my soulmate, Kurt thought, really not wanting his soulmate to see the pain that was inflicted on him on a daily basis through his bruises. Thinking about his soulmate, he looked back at his mark and noticed that there was a new message right above it. "Thank you! How long have you been waiting?"

Kurt didn't think that question was too specific. He definitely did not want to have the bond severed now that it had finally formed, and he knew the quickest way to do that was to ask for identifying information about each other.

"Dad?" Kurt asked his dad one day during the summer between his 5th and 6th-grade years.

"What's up, bud?" Burt answered.

"We learned a little about soulmates and our marks at school," he began, "and I have some questions that I didn't really know how to ask at the time."

"Shoot, kiddo," Burt said. "If I don't have the answer, maybe we could look them up on the Google."

"Well…" Kurt started to explain after he had chuckled at his father. Burt knew how to use the internet just fine. He also knew calling it "the Google" made his son laugh and Kurt's laughter was one of his favorite sounds.

Kurt stopped and gathered his thoughts so that he could get out what he wanted to say. "They talked about ways that bonds could be severed. One was if one of the soulmates died, like Mom did. They said that you won't ever find another soulmate, but that it's possible for you to love someone else again."

"That's true," Burt confirmed. "I'm not sure that will ever happen with me, though. I'm not sure there's anyone out there that I could ever be with. Your mom was one in a million. But, your teacher was right; it is possible for me to love again, even though my soulbond has been severed."

Kurt was nodding along to what his dad was saying, letting him know that he understood. "The other thing that I was confused about was the writing. They talked about how we can't say certain things, 'self-identifiable things' were the words they used. But, what does that mean? It was so frustrating that they just expected us to know what they were meaning."

"You can talk back and forth like you saw your mom and I do all of the time," Burt explained. "It comes in really handy when you're heading to the store and forgot the list, or you're going to pick up take-out on the way home. But, before we connected, and I will explain that in just a second, if we ever asked the other person their names, what town we were in, or what we looked like, anything about ourselves, including if we were a boy or girl, that would have instantly broken the connection, and we wouldn't be able to communicate that way anymore. Following me so far?" When Kurt nodded that yes, he was following what his dad was saying. "After you meet your soulmate, you can put your marks together making them touch, and that seals your connection. After that, you can talk about anything you want to because the Fates are happy that you've found each other."

"Why couldn't they just tell us all of that instead of using fancy words like 'self-identifiable'?" Kurt asked, frustrated.

Burt laughed at this, "Sometimes, adults like to use big words to make themselves sound smart, and they forget that not everyone will know what they mean."

Rachel had already had her bond severed because of 'self-identifiable things'; she thought she was above the rules, and she found out the very hard way that she most definitely was not above the rules when it came to soulmates and soul bonds. She thought that asking just one little thing wouldn't be caught. The screeching went on and on once she found out how very wrong she was.

Kurt also knew that he didn't want to have pen marks all over his body, and he most certainly did not want anyone to read his private messages. So, he got a cotton ball and some rubbing alcohol and wiped away the previous messages, knowing they would also disappear from his soulmate's skin. He also had some lotion to re-hydrate his skin, knowing that the alcohol would dry it out.

"Just a few months, so not too long at all. I have to get to school, but I'd like to chat more today if we can," Kurt wrote.

"My school is really strict about everything, so I probably won't be able to until after my club meeting. Can we plan for 4:30?"

Kurt erased both messages and wrote one more. "Sounds good. I am looking forward to it. Have a wonderful birthday!"

"Thank you, again. Have a great day at school!"

Kurt erased both messages, not really allowing himself to get his hopes up that his day at school would be better than any other day. At least he had something to look forward to when his time in the hell hole was over. He moisturized his arm and then headed to school.

A/N: Song used is "Just the Two of Us" by Grover Washington Jr. feat. Bill Withers