Kurt had a dream once while he was in college - around the same time that he and Sebastian had become good friends - that he was making love to his soulmate. The specific details – where he was, the room he was in, the bed beneath him, his soulmate's face - were blurred, but the feel was there - sweat dripping from his soulmate's skin to his own, hands gripping his thighs, nails biting in just enough to fuel his need, and the body all around him perfect in every way, as unoriginal as that sounds.
There are elements of a soulmate that are undeniable – indisputable – and Kurt knows them by heart. Smell, for one – the way the scent of that one perfect person calls to you, the way it fills every cell in your body, replacing oxygen in the blood, making your heart swell. Texture of the skin beneath the run of your fingertips is another, especially when aroused, when all your nerves ignite and touch becomes intensified, more potent. Taste is the third and probably one of the most important. It's instinctual, animal, and it makes you crave those things that taste similar, although nothing in the world tastes as incredible as your soulmate's kiss on your lips, their skin beneath your tongue, their words in your mouth.
Nothing tastes that good.
In Kurt's fantasy, his soulmate tasted like bourbon and peppermint. He smelled like leather and new fallen rain. He felt like rose petals against Kurt's skin – a sensation that imprinted itself on his neck, the palms of his hands, his chest, between his thighs...
At the end of the dream, when Kurt had cum embarrassingly hard in his boxer-briefs alone in his own bed, he caught a brief glimpse of his lover's face, but all he saw for certain were his startling green eyes.
Kurt only knew one man with green eyes like those, but he pushed that aside. It wasn't something he was prepared to think about.
That same day, after Kurt had let his amazing dream dissolve into the ether, Sebastian met him for lunch. Sebastian rushed into Kurt's arms and gave him a hug (they had just begun to do that with each other) and Kurt, knocked off his feet by the enthusiasm of his friend, breathed in deep.
Sebastian smelled like his brand new leather jacket. His hair, wet from a sudden afternoon sun-shower, filled Kurt's nostrils with its fresh, clean scent. As a tease, Sebastian took Kurt's hand and kissed it. The brush of his lips felt like the velvet of rose petals as they slid over Kurt's skin.
Kurt's heart stopped beating. Or it started. There wasn't a clear enough distinction for him to tell.
Kurt and Sebastian became closer after that – not because of the dream (Kurt never told Sebastian about it). Possibly they became closer in spite of it, because Kurt wanted to prove it wrong, but the more time they spent together, the more Kurt dared to hope. He had fallen for Sebastian, in a cliché, bittersweet, Lifetime movie way. He knew that becoming Sebastian's soulmate was a longshot, but he wanted it more than he had wanted almost anything else in his life. In his mind, as childish as it was, he had already claimed Sebastian as his own.
Kurt was a practical man. He knew realistically that Sebastian probably wasn't the one. They had held hands, shared hugs, danced, and kissed in that chaste way that dear friends do and yet – nothing. No bodyswap, no change.
Kurt knew that spending time with Sebastian was absolutely breaking his heart, but Kurt had no regrets about being heartbroken over Sebastian Smythe.
The one regret he did have was also the last thought in his mind before he blacked out on the cold street with the sharp stab of blistering pain blazing through his chest - he never got the chance to find out if Sebastian tastes like bourbon and peppermint.
In his heart, Kurt knows he does. He always knew.
When Kurt wakes, the whole world is black.
Not black - dark.
Darker than dark.
It is nothing.
He feels formless, like mist. He's floating and swirling, drifting this way and that with barely a thought, though he has no idea where all of this drifting and floating will actually take him if he lets it. He feels care free. He wants to fly away, but he's being held down. Invisible tendrils tug him back and won't let him go. Every time he tries to escape his tethers, a voice brings him back.
It isn't a voice that he hears; it's a voice that he feels. With every word, it wraps around his wrists, his chest, and his ankles. It sends a shiver of silver light through his entire body, and for a single millisecond, he can kind of see.
The silver light comes in waves, rippling through the air, outlining things that he knows even if he can't see them clearly – a chair here, a leg there, something that looks kind of like half a heart on a chain – and weaving in and out of these images, the voice ties him down.
These things become minutely clearer when the voice says his name.
Kurt tries to speak to the ripple of light but nothing he says makes any sense. It's gobbledygook, nonsense, invisible sound. He only hears it in his head because there's nothing around him for the sound to bounce off of and travel back to him.
"Hello?" he calls out, hoping to get the owner of the voice to hear him, needing to let somebody know that he's there, wherever there is, and that he needs help. "Hello? Can anybody hear me?"
When he speaks, there is no silver ripple of light, no starkly illuminated objects to hint to where he is, and after yelling himself hoarse, he stops.
He's caught in an existentialist nightmare, like in Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit, except in Kurt's hell, there is no one around to torture him.
"Hello?" a voice calls back from the void.
Or so he thought…
"Hello?" Kurt calls out anxiously. "Can you hear me?"
The voice in the darkness giggles.
"Don't yell," she says. (The voice sounds like it belongs to a she.) "Think your answers."
Kurt frowns at her response and at this cartoonish situation he's trapped in.
"Did I say something funny?" he thinks, feeling ridiculous but willing to give anything a try.
"No," the voice says, sounding louder, coming closer, "you just weren't making any sense."
"Who are you?" Kurt asks, suddenly regretting attracting attention to himself. He has no idea who this person is or why she knows these things that he doesn't. If he's stuck in his head, or Sebastian's head, who is this little girl, and why is she here?
If the manifestation of his inner self-conscience turns out to be a pre-teenage girl, Kurt is going to be royally pissed.
If this is someone that happens to exist in the mire of Sebastian's self-conscience, however, Kurt is going to be deeply disturbed.
"My name is Lydia," she says. She sounds like she's standing right beside him but Kurt can't see her, and that's very alarming.
"Kurt," Kurt says in a brief introduction. "I can't see you. Can you see me?"
"No," Lydia says simply.
"Why not?" Kurt asks.
"Because we're not really here," Lydia explains. She pauses, and Kurt can feel her thinking. "Well, that's not entirely true. We're here, obviously, but your senses are attached to your body, so you can't use them here."
"Well, that sucks," Kurt says with a sigh of defeat.
"No, that's good," Lydia insists. "If your senses were with you, then you'd be dead."
Kurt wants to believe the girl, wants to find comfort in her words, but he's still suspicious.
"How do you know this?" he asks.
"I come here a lot, unfortunately," she says, the tone of her voice dropping from amused to solemn.
"I'm sorry," Kurt says. "I didn't know."
"I know," she says, but she doesn't sound any cheerier.
"If you don't mind me asking, where is here, exactly?"
"As far as I can tell, it's kind of like an oubliette," the girl says. "A place of holding, like a waiting room."
Kurt sighs.
"Oubliettes are where people are put to be forgotten," he says.
"Possibly," the girl agrees, and then laughs when three successive silver ripples flash through his body, lighting a chair, a boot, and a cell phone, "but I'm pretty sure no one has forgotten you."
Kurt doesn't say anything; his silence speaks for him.
"You don't believe that, do you?" Lydia asks, but it's not really a question.
"Well, I'm supposed to be in my soulmate's body right now, but I'm not. I'm here. So he rejected me." The next four words take every bit of strength he has to admit. "He sent me here."
Kurt doesn't need to see Lydia's face to read her expression.
"It's not as easy as they make it seem, is it?" she asks, and Kurt knows she's shaking her head at him.
"Wha-what do you mean?"
"Well, when they tell us about soulmates, it's in that uber-sappy romantic way, so you expect it to be like in those cheesy romance novels with the pictures of people making out on the covers, but the truth is much different. Having a soulmate is complicated. Messy."
Kurt is stunned by her perception since she sounds so young, but he's not following her reasoning.
"I don't…I don't understand."
"My soulmate's name is Chelsea," Lydia says. "We were born in the same neighborhood, went to the same school, attended the same afterschool programs. We gravitated toward each other. She was my best friend. And then, on her eighth birthday, she touched my hand while we were playing tag and zap! We switched. We were soulmates."
"That's…unusual," Kurt says, a little envious at how easy she makes it sound.
"But it's not that simple," Lydia says as if reading his thoughts, "because there are a lot of things we can't do yet - things that bond soulmates together. We've been soulmates for the past six years, and I know it sounds like the stars lined up for us, but our journey is different than yours. It's harder in some ways, too."
Lydia doesn't have to say it outright for him to understand.
Soulmates bond by being together, interacting with one another, living their lives side-by-side…
…but also by making love. That physical contact, that emotional connection.
Lydia and Chelsea are soulmates, but there's a connection still missing.
That's how Kurt feels about himself where Sebastian is concerned - like something is missing.
"I never thought I was enough for him," Kurt says, thinking back to those times when Sebastian spent night after night after night in a different random man's bed. "I wanted him. I loved him. I knew he loved me, but…I didn't think he wanted this. He always said he didn't need a soulmate."
"I think..." Lydia starts, reaching out to Kurt with her mind and touching him gently, "that your soulmate didn't reject you. I think that you put yourself here because you're afraid of what real rejection might feel like."
She's right. Kurt can take a lot in the way of rejection. He lived through being turned down for solo after solo, role after role. He shrugged off his first rejection from NYADA and tried again. When the first design line he pitched to Isabelle was flushed by her boss, Anna, Kurt picked himself up and reworked it. But Sebastian…he can't take rejection from Sebastian.
Kurt looks around him – at the nothing surrounding him – and he feels lost. Wherever he is, it's his own personal prison. Only he has the key to breaking out of it.
Except he has no clue where to start.
The silver ripple runs down his body again and he sees three people talking together. One of them looks like him. He's hugging a woman.
"What's with the silver light?" he asks as another ripple flashes by brighter.
"Yeah, that happens when your soulmate talks about you," Lydia says. "It's because you're connected."
Another ripple and he sees the three people hugging all together. It's his body, but with Sebastian inside. Sebastian talking about him, thinking about him.
"Is there any way for me to get out of here?" Kurt asks, done with being trapped by self-doubt and ready to return to his soulmate.
Lydia stalls a moment, and Kurt knows that can't be good.
"I'm not sure how that's going to work for you exactly," she says.
"What do you mean?" Kurt asks, slightly panicked. "How do you get out?"
"Well, it's the drugs that the doctors give me that help me visit here," Lydia says, "especially during surgery, which is where I am now. I leave when they start to wake me up. But you brought yourself here on your own. I think you have to figure out a way."
Kurt doesn't know how he knows, but Lydia begins to pull away, and the thought of being alone in this place terrifies him.
"Wait!" Kurt screams in his head. "Where are you going? Don't leave me!"
"I'm sorry, Kurt," Lydia says, "I don't have a choice. They're bringing me out of surgery. Once the anesthesia starts to wear off, I'm going to go back."
"What kind of cockamamie surgery only takes twenty minutes?" Kurt asks, confused, fighting to keep her there, to hold on to his one connection to sanity.
"Kurt," she chuckles, "we've been talking for hours. Time has no meaning here, so I would find a way back soon, before..."
The girl's voice dies before she finishes her sentence.
"What…what does that mean?" he begs into the darkness, but it's too late. The girl is gone and the overwhelming silence returns.
Hysteria starts to set in. Minutes are really hours. Time has no meaning. He could blink a proverbial eye and waste his whole life here. He put himself here, he can find a way to leave.
He has to find a way.
The ripples start again, shooting over his body one after another, shining in the dark, leading his way. A bed, a body, the back of a bowed head. Sebastian in his body. It had to be, talking to his own empty body, trying to bring Kurt back.
"So many times…should have told you…you Kurt…always you…would have moved the stars…know it sounds cheesy…waiting for you forever…I love you…"
I love you.
I love you.
Sebastian keeps talking and Kurt keeps listening, grabbing at all the words that touch him, but the ones he holds on to closest are the ones he repeats in his head until they almost don't make sense anymore.
I love you.
I love you.
He keeps every emotion he has at bay, locked deep inside as he concentrates on following those flashes of silver light. Each inch closer is the equivalent of grabbing smoke with his bare hands and using it as an anchor to pull himself along.
"Remember when I said…forget all that…I do need a soulmate…I need you…"
He can feel Sebastian's frustration thrum through him like a vibrating thread, like a violin string being plucked over and over.
Kurt reaches out with his mind, with his non-corporeal essence, until he can about touch the body on the bed. Sebastian's body. He can see it – its substance, its form – with every word Sebastian speaks.
But then Sebastian stops talking and everything disappears.
Kurt hovers and waits for one more ripple of light.
He holds his breath, waiting for Sebastian to talk.
"Come on," he thinks, hoping that this will work the same way it did with Lydia, that Sebastian will hear Kurt's thoughts and say something, anything.
"Hum, cough, curse, I don't care, Sebastian," Kurt thinks, "just do it. Please…please…"
Sebastian sits in the chair beside his body, head in hands, trying to decide on his next move, while somewhere close by in a place Sebastian can't see, Kurt waits for Sebastian to speak, and for the nexus to light his way back.
"But, we can't let you do this," Camelia, Lydia's mom, says, throwing her arms around Kurt's shoulders with Sebastian smiling inside and fondly rolling his eyes. "It's too expensive. It's just…too much."
"Too late," Sebastian says, holding the deceptively strong woman tight in his embrace. "It's already done."
"I don't know how we could ever repay you," Amira, Chelsea's mom, says, cutting in between the two to get her hug.
"Take care of those girls," Sebastian says, trying not to give in to the feeling of despair growing in Kurt's body, the hard knot in his gut. "That's all I ask."
"We will," Camelia says, laying a hand on their shoulders and smiling, joining in the hug one more time. "And I will keep you and your soulmate in my thoughts. I know he'll wake up. I can feel it."
Sebastian clamps down hard on Kurt's tongue, not wanting to disagree.
When the two ladies finally let go, Sebastian peeks over to Chelsea, standing by Lydia's bedside, holding her soulmate's hand. She had been whispering something a moment ago, but now she's silent, her expression midway between excitement and fear.
"So, are you ready for this?" Sebastian asks, resting a hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently, hoping to give her comfort.
"Yes," Chelsea says, laying Lydia's hand back down on the blanket and bending over the bed rail to place a kiss on her forehead. "Yes, I am." Her words are accompanied by a sniffle as she turns and throws herself into the arms of the man who answered her prayers. "I don't know what to say," Chelsea whispers.
"Don't say anything," Sebastian says into the girl's ear. "Just keep praying for us. Okay? That was the deal."
"I will," Chelsea says, nodding. "I promise."
The privacy curtain slides open and the nurse steps in.
"I need to take Chelsea to pre-op now," she says, reaching out a hand to the anxious young girl. Chelsea looks up at the faces surrounding her, then turns out of Sebastian's embrace and walks off with the nurse. Camelia gives him a last look and a grateful smile before following Chelsea out, and Amira takes up Chelsea's seat beside Lydia's bed, holding the unconscious girl's hand.
Sebastian can't think of anything more to say. He's done what he can. He can only hope that the doctors at this hospital handle Chelsea and Lydia better than they've handle Kurt and himself. He walks silently out of the makeshift room, clutching a bit of Chelsea's hope to him as he returns to his own soulmate. He's been away from Kurt's side for several hours, and during that time he has been foolishly praying for a miracle - that he would walk through the curtain and find Kurt awake, sitting up and waiting for him.
He's not surprised but still disappointed when he notices Kurt's condition hasn't changed. He sits down in the chair by Kurt's bed, leaning back to stare up at the ceiling, looking at the white tiles with their weird and unattractive hole pattern repeating from square to square. He counts the tiles, then the holes, gathering his thoughts, putting them in order.
"So many times, I was such an ass," he says with a heavy sigh. "I just should have told you. It was you, Kurt. It was always you." Sebastian rakes long fingers down an exhausted face. "I would have done anything you asked me to, Kurt. I would have moved the stars in the sky. I would have given you the sun and the moon. I know it sounds cheesy, but I don't care." Sebastian closes his eyes and imagines Kurt sitting there with him, gazing at him with love and affection reflecting in his brilliant blue eyes. "I've been waiting for you forever, Kurt. I love you…"
Sebastian hadn't expected to say it just then, but it needed to be said. He doesn't know what time they have left or if he is actually going to see Kurt in the flesh again. But he says it as much for himself as for Kurt.
He needs to hear himself say those words.
"I love you, Kurt," he says again. "I love you."
Sebastian had hoped those words would be the key, but Kurt doesn't wake up, and Sebastian has lost all hope that he is going to.
"Remember when I said I didn't need a soulmate, Kurt? Well, forget all that. I was wrong. So wrong. I do need a soulmate. I need my soulmate. I need you."
Tears start as he talks. He leans forward, holding the hand near him, resting against the chest laboring to rise and fall, rise and fall.
"And I know you're probably thinking that this is just those stupid, needy hormones talking," he continues, tears soaking the fabric beneath him, "the ones they tell us kick in when the bodyswap happens, but that's not true because I chose you, Kurt. Long before this ever happened, I chose you. The only reason why I didn't want a soulmate was because I was afraid it wouldn't be you. I couldn't lose you. And I can't lose you now, so please, wake up. Wake up and talk to me. Wake up and say anything to me. Call me a liar, call me a loser, I don't care. I just…I need to have you talk to me again."
Sebastian doesn't expect anything this time. He doesn't let himself hope that what he said made any difference. He compartmentalizes his thoughts, starts to make plans – people he needs to call, paperwork he needs to fill out, maybe even researching a different hospital he can have Kurt moved to. He's so preoccupied with these thoughts - which include possibly wrapping up what's left of his and Kurt's life - that he misses the first time a quiet voice says his name.
"Sebastian?"
Sebastian shakes his head. He's going to need to stop thinking about Kurt if he's going to be able to concentrate.
"Sebastian?"
That uncomfortable conversation between him and Kurt's dad seems inevitable, and he dreads it from the roots of Kurt's hair to the scuff on his stylish shoes.
"Sebastian?"
A pained sounding chuckle causes the body on the bed to tremble, and every thought in Sebastian's mind immediately wipes away.
Because there is only one thing, one person right now that matters, and as Sebastian gazes up the length of the bed to look into his own sleeping face, what he sees instead are his green eyes staring back at him, but with the light of Kurt's spirit shining out through them.
Kurt is slow to open Sebastian's eyes, noticing the moment he returns to his soulmate's body how much heavier he feels, how much more burdened, but it's a good feeling, a solid feeling, and Kurt feels whole once again. He looks down at the man lying slumped against the bed – Kurt's own body, his own head turning to look at him, his eyes wide, an expression of shock on his face.
Kurt wants to laugh, but the gunshot wound to the chest flares up painfully, so he chuckles lightly instead.
"Kurt?" Sebastian asks in a voice that sounds like home to Kurt.
Kurt nods and smiles.
"I love you, Sebastian," he says, his voice gravelly but happy, "and I want you to know...I chose you, too."