They finish off the Doritos in a silence broken only by the crackling of chips. When they’re gone, Kurt crumples up the bag, seeming to study Blaine carefully. Blaine fidgets under his gaze.

                “Are you going to?”

                “Am I going to what?”

                “Save me.”

                Blaine bites his lip, looking at the floor. “I don’t know if I’m supposed to,” he says, a little ashamedly. Kurt let his head thunk against the wall.

                “But I want to,” he continues in a whisper, drawing his knees closer to himself. “I really, really want to.”

                “Blaine, you can’t.”

                Blaine snaps hi head up to look at Kurt incredulously, but Kurt has his head tipped back against the wall. Tears are streaming silently down his cheeks and off his chin.

                “If Fate says I’m going to die, then I’m going to die.”

                “What if Fate made a mistake?” Blaine is fighting down the urge to shout, his words choked and strained with the effort.

                Kurt’s voice is quiet and too light in the heavy atmosphere that’s settled even denser between them. “Blaine…Fate doesn’t make mistakes.”

                Blaine pushes himself off the floor, glaring down angrily at Kurt, who has closed his eyes to avoid Blaine’s gaze.

                He stands there, minutes ticking by with only the hitching of Kurt’s breath to break the silence. When he opens his eyes to look at Blaine again, they are vividly blue against his reddened face. Blaine feels his anger melt into sorrow, into something deeper than rage.

            He stares at Kurt, his heart breaking all over again. "You honestly want me to stand aside and watch you be ripped out of my life again when I have the ability to stop it from happening?!"

Kurt wraps his arms tighter around himself, tears starting to trickle down his cheeks once more. He turns away from Blaine and the string around their wrists seems to tighten, trying to draw them together. "Fate doesn't make mistakes, Blaine," he repeats in a broken whisper. "I have to die."

                Blaine steps away from him, shaking his head. “No.”

                “YOU CAN’T SCREW WITH FATE, BLAINE!”

                Blaine jumps back and can tell that Kurt’s as shocked as he is, having jumped to his feet to bellow at Blaine. Kurt’s chest is heaving and his hair has fallen out of its hairspray and his face is red and hell if Blaine isn’t falling even farther right now because of it.

                There’s thundering footsteps coming up the stairs and the door flings open, startling them both.

                “What’s going on up here?!”

                Blaine doesn’t stick around to see how Kurt lies his way out of this one to Burt. He steps through his soulmate’s father and stomps down the stairs. He flings open the door, picks a direction, and runs.

                He’s got no idea where he’s going and the lights of houses blur past in yellows and blues from televisions. The chill bites at his ears and they begin to ache, but he doesn’t stop to rub at them. Blaine bolts through a late-night dog-walker and the girl doesn’t even blink. His eyes sting and his lungs burn and finally, Blaine drops to the ground, panting.

                When he’s caught his breath enough to see where he is, the streetlamps reveal a swingset and jungle gym, shadowed eerily and probably a hot spot for local drug dealers. Blaine decides to risk it.

                The swings are old and creak as he sits down, flakes of rust snowing down from the metal loops at the top. The stars are hidden behind a cover of patchy clouds and Blaine decides that it should rain, partly because it suits his mood, but mostly because he wants to know if he’d be able to feel it.

                Picking up and touching objects is so strange. The chains in his hands feel dull, the sensation of touch numbed. He’s noticed that it’s more of an effort now to feel.

 Story of his life.

He knows he’s trying to distract himself. He’s never been a particularly good liar, and there’s a really irritating voice in the back of his head telling him that he ran away again. Ran away from Kurt, ran away from pain he couldn’t control. Blaine huffs a breath out through his nose and digs his heels into the dirt. He pushes back slowly, letting the chains and the rubber seat do the work.

When Kurt comes up behind him, Blaine is half asleep, lulled by the gentle rocking of the swing. He starts when Kurt drops into the swing next to him.

“I guess I can’t really stop you, can I?”

“Guess not.”

Kurt sighs, twisting the chains so he can look at Blaine fully. “If you rip a hole in the space-time continuum, I’ll never forgive you.”

It’s not terribly funny, but once Blaine starts laughing he can’t seem to stop. He slithers off the swing and onto the ground, lying back as his shoulders hitch with giggles. Kurt makes a face and says something about dirt and his clothes but lies down next to him, the swing seats playing pendulum above their heads.

“It wasn’t that funny,” Kurt mutters as Blaine’s laughter dies down.

“I know,” Blaine says, eyes following the back and forth motion of the swing above him. “But if you don’t laugh, you’re gonna cry, you know?”

“Yeah,” Kurt says. “I know that one pretty well.”

Blaine creeps his hand into the space between them and Kurt looks at him like he’s crazy. But then he shrugs, and inches his hand forward, hesitating as their fingers overlap, and finally rests his hand through Blaine’s.

“I really wish I could kiss you.” Kurt whispers, his head lolling to face his soulmate. Blaine gives a wry smile.

“I’d settle for brushing that dirt off your nose.”

Kurt squawks, sitting up abruptly and nearly smacking his forehead on the swing as he rubs his nose furiously.

Blaine laughs and pretends that things are normal, that he’s not intangible and invisible and a time traveler and that Kurt doesn’t have an expiration date. He pretends that this is a normal date, a real date, that the red string between them isn’t split and that the real-time him isn’t obliviously sitting in his room right now.

He pretends that the only reason he doesn’t lean over to kiss his soulmate is because he enjoys Kurt’s pout.