The first time they’re warriors. Blaine watches Kurt across the courtyard and tries to think of the best way to approach him. The former body slave is lithe and beautiful. He’s talking with the former body slave lover of the human mountain their leader favours, sunlight lighting his pale body blindingly white. The darker skinned man catches him watching and waves, smiling. Blaine waves back as Kurt looks over and their eyes lock. His breath leaves his body and he sees himself mirrored in the wide-eyed stare of blue eyes and the pant of breath between full pink lips. They come together in a hurry of hands and lips and someone laughs in the distance.

The second time Kurt is cleaning his brushes after a long day when he sees the young man stumble backwards out of the panetteria doorway, laughing as he apologises. He’s holding his hands up in surrender as the woman Kurt knows as the man’s sister glares and a cloud of flour follows the man as he walks towards him. Their eyes meet and a wide grin splits the man’s face that Kurt desperately wants to paint. The man looks him over and Kurt can see his desire and the building feelings between them obviously. Kurt blushes and the man’s grin widens. The sister shouts the man’s name and waves at them both as she locks up the shop and walks away muttering. The man – Blaine – steps forward, eyes beseeching and grasps Kurt’s hand.

“Spezzare il pane con mi.” (Break bread with me) He says and Kurt smirks.

“Non avete rotto abbastanza questo giorno?” (Have you not broken enough today?) He flirts back and their laughter rings across the piazza.

The third time they never get to meet and they feel like something is missing their whole lives.

The fourth time they are princes of two provinces. Kurt is to marry a princess; a union he dreads, though unknown to him his father is changing the law for him. He meets a pair of honey eyes across the dance floor and he knows he can no longer marry the perfectly pleasant and well-connected girl he’s dancing with. Later he finds the boy and they talk four hours. Their fathers find them and it turns out the prince with wide honey eyes and curly hair is even better connected than the princess and his land welcomes ‘male marriage’. Their wedding is glittering and they change convention in their tiny land, for a time.

The fifth time they are a cat and a dog. Their owners live next door to each other and think it’s adorable that the two sleep in the sun together and bark and hiss at anyone, human or animal that looks at their other twice.

The sixth time they only find each other as old man and lament the follies of time. They hold hands, stare and kiss and the closing in days make their love more sweet, cherished and passionate than, Blaine muses, any other could make. Their lives pass as they unite in bliss, no better way to go.

The seventh time they are caught up in the bohemian revolution, swept up in Paris and the passion and creativity. Blaine is a stage singer, Kurt is a painter and it sometimes feels like he knows the brushstrokes from another life, something he muses to Blaine one day who listens in raptured attention as always and calls him beautiful. Kurt sits front and centre in the audience and sketches his lover for the patrons. Blaine sits on the floor of their loft in the sunlight that streams through the window and watches his love paint.

They are each other’s muse and they live a simple life of love, passion, beauty and freedom.

The eighth time they are animals again. Kurt a doe to Blaine’s stag. They are majestic, strong, hunted and beautiful His doe bears her stag two fawns and they live a blissful, short life.

The ninth time Blaine reads about a teen missing in a national tragedy and he feels a piece of him die when the body is found.

The tenth time a voice stops a teenage boy on a stairwell. Blue eyes connect with honey and their souls bind together, but Blaine’s body and mind don’t know it yet. Kurt’s realises and waits, until the day he realises and their story unfolds. Their souls are ripped apart and through honey eyes in his dreams he sees their lives, each one and his heart cries for what he’s ruined until he realises their souls can’t let go.

Three years after he took his blue eyed soul mate’s hand and ran down a hallway he talks of past lives and eternities by his beloved’s side, bound together by their souls tied through silver rings.

The eleventh time a little boy chases a puppy across the dew wet grass of the park and almost knocks over another little boy. The other boy lets out a startled cry and their eyes connect. The curly-haired boy stares, his mouth wide open and his new puppy forgotten. The chestnut-haired boy gasps and they step closer, their hands clasped between them.

“Oh there you are.” Blaine whispers.

“I’ve been looking for you forever.” Kurt finishes.

They giggle then drag each other to their moms who are chatting, the puppy yipping at their ankles all the way.