{3} Second Chances

A/N: my babies are going bowling! Blaine's aliveeeee shits about Togo down :D

"So..." Blaine started as Kurt picked up a lime green bowling ball and held it up, his tongue stoking out just a little bit in concentration in such a way that Blaine would be lying if he said it wasn't absolutely adorable. "You're best friend comes back to life, and your first instinct is to go bowling?" Kurt swung the ball and let it roll down the lane, mocking down a good 7 pins. "Not that I'm not having fun but..."

He spun around and shrugged. "It's been eight years. And I know how quickly life can be cut short by unexpected events..." He reached for his hand and looked down. "I just don't wanna waste any time I get with you." He said softly.

Blaine smiled and lifted Kurt's head up with his hand. "You're not gonna lose me again. I can promise you that."

You don't know that, thought Kurt. But instead he said, "If you don't mind me asking... What-what was it like?" He asked timidly.

"Being dead you mean?" Blaine looked down at his feet and shrugged. "I don't actually remember dying, just up until when I got knocked out in the crash, and... This is gonna sound insane but... I know I was somewhere, with people... Maybe..." He looked up at Kurt. "Heaven..? Or someplace like that. I know I was there I just... Can't remember any of it, it's kind of like I was asleep the whole time." Kurt tried shrugging unfazed since he decided he didn't believe in god a long time ago, but he couldn't help but feel a little comforted at the thought of the possibility that his mom was still somewhere, watching over him.

"I also couldn't help but notice," Kurt started up again. "You don't exactly look the same as you did when you were nine... And you don't act too much like a kid, either... Well, a little but you've always been immature," Kurt smirked.

Blaine laughed sarcastically. "Ha ha, you're hilarious." And yet again gave another shrug. "I don't think I like, stole anyone's body, I mean, this feels like me. And I don't have any questions about who I am. What I like, what I don't, how I act... It's like, wherever I was, I was growing up there instead of just ceasing to exist, you know?"

Kurt nodded. "Yeah, I think I get you." He waited a while to ask his next question, knowing it was going to be a tough one to answer. "Do you think the same thing happened to your parents?"

Blaine bit his lip and looked down, shaking his head. "The first day I asked around, people I thought I used to know. They all said the same thing. The Anderson's moved away about 8 years ago... Nobody remembers the crash, or anything."

"Then why did I?" Kurt asked. "I mean, if not even my dad remembered..." He shook his head, then it shot up. His eyes widened as he realized someone else was missing from this picture. "Oh, my god! We need to call Cooper!"

Kurt got up, probably to find a quiet place to call Blaine's brother, but Blaine grabbed his wrist and looked up at him with worried eyes. "What if he doesn't remember, either?" He asked, terrified.

Kurt placed a reassuring hand in his friends shoulder. "Then, we'll make him."

"I'm so nervous," Blaine announced as the ringer started up on the other end of the line. They were at Kurt's house, in his room waiting to call Cooper and trying to figure out what to say. In the end, they'd decided that they actually needed to get him here before they went off talking about the dead rising and all.

"Just let me do the talking, Blaine, because right now you either don't exist to him, or you're dead."

"That's comforting," Blaine mumbled as he rolled his eyes, right when the click of someone answering the phone could be heard.

"Hello? Kurt, is everything alright?" Cooper asked.

"Uhm," Kurt started. "Do you remember... That thing that happened—"

"Woah, Kurt, like I said, I was super drunk, I didn't mean to kiss you, I thought—"

"Not that!" Yelled Kurt, cheeks burning red. Blaine gaped at him and mouthed. "You kissed my brother!?"

"It was an accident!" He whispered sharply back. "And he kissed me! Later!"

"Kurt?"

"Huh? Oh, no! Not that, I meant... Eight years ago..." He finally said, and things got a lot quieter on the other end.

It was silent on Cooper's behalf for a few tense and suspense filled moments until he eventually sighed and said quietly. "How could I forget?" Blaine let out a sigh of relief and nearly burst out into tears of joy. His brother remembered him. "Why, what's up? Are you having... Those thoughts again?"

"What? No!" Cried Kurt. "I just..." He sighed. "It's urgent and something I need you to actually see."

"You can't tell me over the phone?" He asked.

Kurt groaned. "No... It's kind of... Big. Just, please, Coop? For me?"

The older man sighed. "Alright, I've got an audition tomorrow night, so the earliest I can be there is Friday afternoon. Can you hold on till then?"

"Yeah," Kurt breathed. "Definitely. Bye, Coop, and thanks."

"No problem, Kiddo. See you Friday." And with that the other line went dead.

Blaine smiled. "Cooper really became an actor?" He asked.

Kurt nodded. "Right now he's just in some credit report commercials, but I hear he's slowly making his way up. He did stay here for a while, you know?" Kurt added. "After the accident. He stayed for about a year then he told me he couldn't take it and moved to LA to chase his dreams."

Blaine laughed a little. "Well, I'm glad he did." He raised an eyebrow. "So are you gonna fill me in about—"

Kurt groaned and rolled his eyes. "Oh my god!" He moaned childishly. He sighed. "Your brother came to visit every so often, and I had my permit and he needed a designated driver for a party and I wasn't going to let him drive drunk. There was this girl he was flirting with at the party who.. She had hair that was short and my color, and our skin tone was very similar as well as our height... and Cooper was very drunk and came up behind me and kissed me, alright?" Blaine looked like he was about to die laughing. "Then I pushed him away because ew its Cooper and then he realized what happened and we kind of just had a silent agreement to go home and never speak of it again..."

"God," Blaine laughed. "He's always been such an idiot. I'm kind of afraid to ask what he meant by "those thoughts"." He chuckled.

Kurt got quiet and looked down. "That's... That's a different story." He said quietly, and Blaine got the feeling that this was a more serious type of story. "I... I called up Cooper one day, crying, because I felt shitty and I said it felt like there was nothing left to live for... My mom was gone, you were, too. I was getting beat up almost every day. Hell, I had a therapist. The only thing that kept me grounded was my dad but... I just felt really, really alone." He looked at Blaine with ashamed eyes. "I was thinking about killing myself," he admitted. "And Coop talked me out of it. Three times," he added. "The most recent when my dad had a heart attack and went into a coma for a week. The only ones who know are him and Santana..."

Blaine didn't have anything to say, so he just pulled Kurt in and gave him the biggest hug he'd ever given anyone.

Kurt wrapped his arms around him and buried his face into Blaine's chest, all the while thinking how great it was to do this with someone he never thought he'd get a chance to see again.

The next day, Santana walked out onto the courtyard after school and was surprised to see her favorite gay sitting with Blaine Anderson. She strode up to them and smiled slyly. "Well, well," she practically purred. "Kurt, who's your friend?" She asked.

He raised his eyebrows and looked at Blaine, silently asking if he could confirm what she thought earlier. He smiled and said, "Why not?" While shrugging.

"Santana," Kurt started. "This is Blaine..." She rolled her eyes. Well, duh. Then he continued. "The Blaine from eight years ago."

Her face fell into a display of confusion. "Wait, what?"

Blaine looked up at her and shrugged. "That's me," he confirmed.

She quickly sat down and kept her voice low. "No fucking way," she said in disbelief. She narrowed his eyes. "So you're not like, playing him or some shit like that because if you are—"

Kurt cut her off. "Santana, he knows things about me that only he would know. It's him, trust me."

She stared down at the ground, eyes wide as a bush baby's. "Holy fuck," she muttered, running her hands over her hair.

"Oddly enough," Blaine started. "Kurt mentioned that you were the only one who remembered anything about me..."

"Yeah, that is kind of weird," she admitted. "But we can't just keep talking about this out here in the open," she whispered. "Who knows who might be listening?"

Kurt raised an eyebrow. "Paranoid?"

She scoffed at him. "Look, let's just go right outside the courtyard where there's nobody there," she offered. "Cosas buenas llevan un precio muy caro! Good things come at a price! And I don't know, but we need to keep this on the DL."

Kurt rolled his eyes while Blaine just shrugged and obediently gathered his belongings and followed Santana to the secluded cloister.

"Ok, I have one question," she started up. "What the actual fuck?"

Blaine laughed and Kurt shook his head. "I don't know, San. It's not like an answer's just gonna come falling out of the sky, you know?" Just as he spoke, her eyes grew wide as she stared at something in the sky behind him. "What?" He asked.

"Holy crap," she mumbled. "Kurt, I think someone's falling out of an airplane!"

"What!" He spun around and saw a figure that looked like a teenage girl plummet towards them, hitting the wall right next to Santana who screamed bloody murder.

The other two were rushing towards her to check if she was hurt or injured (though she seemed unscathed), when she suddenly popped up and announced, "Man, the landings are always rough." The three teens stared at her in utter awe as she turned to Blaine, her red pulled back hair flipping across to her other shoulder. "Hi, Blaine," she smiled.

He took a step back and furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. "Uh, do I know you?" He asked.

She twisted her smile so that it was just a bit one sided. "Well," she hummed. "You did..."

"What?" Blaine cried.

Santana threw her hands up and yelled, "Holy fucking shit!"

"Everybody calm the fuck down!" Kurt yelled. Everyone instantly silenced, and Kurt protectively placed himself between Blaine and the stranger. "Who—what are you?" He raised an eyebrow. Anything that could literally fall from the sky and survive after hitting a brick wall probably wasn't human.

She straightened up. "My name is Castiel and I'm an angel of The Lord." Santana suddenly squealed just a little bit, and the girl laughed. "Nah, I'm screwing with you... Supernatural fans, I take it?" Santana nodded vigorously. "My name is Daniella, and while I'm not technically an angel, I've come with some important information for Blaine. And we haven't got much time."

He stepped out from behind Kurt. "You said you knew me..?" He cautioned.

She smiled sadly. "Yeah, up in heaven. You were sort of my mentor."

Kurt raised an eyebrow. "But you look a lot older than he did when he..."

She raised her eyebrows. "You don't age in heaven, only down here... I died more recently, and he had been there longer." She sighed at their pitiful looks. "We'll reminisce later—hopefully much later—but right now, you need to know why you came back."

"Ok," Blaine said. "Why did I come back."

Daniella wasted no time explaining. "In Heaven, every millennia or so, a few people who meet certain criteria are chosen as candidates to come back, and through voting, it usually narrows down to about the top ten and from there more voting and shit, and boom you've got a winner." She paused and the other three looked at her expectantly. "But there's a catch," she started. Slowing down, she added, "the one who comes back has to find his/her soulmate and consummate the relationship with a kiss within the allotted time or else they quote unquote "go back the way they came"."

"That sounds like a fucked up version of the Hunger Games," Santana mumbled.

"What's that?" Blaine asked.

"Ok, seriously, do you live under a rock?" She asked, rolling her eyes.

Blaine gave her a sideways glare and brushed it off. He sighed. "But um..." He started nervously. "Does Heaven," he pointed upward. "Know that I'm... Um... My soulmate is probably—"

"Male?" She cut him off with a raised eyebrow and rolled her eyes, as Santana and Kurt gave him surprised glances. "Of course they know, you told every one a long time ago."

He chuckled nervously. "Well, I guess that's a relief..."

"You're gay?" Kurt asked. "Why didn't you tell me."

Blaine looked down at the ground. "I didn't know how you would feel about it, and I had just gotten back—"

Santana laughed really loudly. "Oh my god, Anderson," she howled. "You're so oblivious, everyone here is as queer as a three dollar bill."

Blaine turned to Kurt. "Really?" He asked.

The other boy chuckled. "I thought you knew. I mean, everyone else does and I thought it was just common knowledge."

"Anyways–" the girl continued. "It turns out, you've got until next Sunday at 8:00 which is sunset."

Kurt's eyes bugged out of his head. "Sunday!?" He cried. "That's hardly enough time!"

She sighed. "I know, but the rules are malleable... Ish... Like, say his soulmate was halfway across the country, they would have given him much more time," she explained.

Santana looked up. "So his soulmate is in close proximity to us?" She asked, and Daniella nodded.

"Exactly."

"Well," Blaine started. "Where can I find my soulmate, then?" He asked her.

She pursed her lips and shook her head sadly. "I don't know. I don't know who he is, where he is, or anything about him... And if I did, I couldn't tell you, or else you'd go immediately back."

Kurt shook his head. "Why would they do that? Just give him his life back and then—" he cut himself off, eyes watering at the thought that he could still lose Blaine, yet again.

Blaine placed a comforting hand in his friend's shoulder. "Don't worry," he whispered. "I said I wasn't leaving you again, and I intend to keep that promise."

Santana suddenly raised an eyebrow. "Just curious, who were the other quote unquote candidates?" She asked.

Daniella sighed and rolled her eyes a bit. "Sandy, who was 60, but her soulmate died and joined her. They're super cute. Amanda, Josh, Henry and..." She hesitated. "Like I said, people who met certain criterion...

"Like—" Blaine pried when she stopped.

She groaned, thinking how annoying it was to be bothered with such tedious details. Sighing dramatically, she continued, counting the rules on her fingers. "Like, your soulmate has to be living, can't be in a relationship ie they can't have a boyfriend/girlfriend, fiancé or wife/husband. You can't have been in a relationship with your soulmate before you died—personally I think that's a dumb one, but Michael says it denies the idea of second chances or whatever."

Kurt furrowed his eyebrows. "Why did everyone forget about Blaine?" He asked.

She shrugged. "Well, obviously, we can't have people calling 9-11 about the dead rising and whatnot, so we took care of that."

"Wait, then why do I remember him?" He asked.

She closed her eyes like she was trying to remember something. "Oh, there was a clause in there somewhere about profound bonds, and people directly involved..."

"That still doesn't explain me," Santana butted in.

Daniella looked up at the sky. "I did not sign up for this many questions," she complained. "Santana was at the car scene, Kurt and her are best friends now, so..." She shrugged. "I don't make the rules, just read 'em."

"What does it all mean, though?" The shortest boy sighed.

Daniella pursed her lips. "It means you are one lucky bastard who got another chance, and if I were as lucky as you, I wouldn't waste it." And with that she ran off and turned the corner, disappearing into thin air.

A/N: shitty second half of chapter is shitty :)

To recap: Blaine's basically got until next Sunday (bout ten days) to find his soulmate (OH JEEZ I WONDER WHO THAT COULD BE) and kiss him or else he dies again.

Next: The boys go soulmate hunting at a familiar place and Cooper gets a big surprise!