When they get back to their apartment, it's completely silent. Nobody is talking, the TV isn't on, nothing is being made in the kitchen, there's just the quiet shifts as people move around slightly.

Kurt can't look at Blaine. He felt Blaine when he followed him home - it wasn't like he was going to send him off on his own late at night in New York City - and he can still feel Blaine's eyes on him, hear the occasional sniff that kept reminding Kurt how Blaine had cried, how they both had.

Kurt sits on the edge of his bed with his pajamas in his hand for a long time, and all the while he feels Blaine watching him from a few feet away.

He doesn't know what he was supposed to do. Normally when Blaine messes something up or hurts Kurt somehow, they talk it through and Kurt punishes and forgives him, and they're completely fine afterwards.  

Kurt isn't even sure he could do that right now. He hasn't felt this hurt in a long time, and two sides are warring in him. One, the one screaming at him to take care of Blaine, and the other that Kurt telling him that he can't right now, that he has to take care of himself first.

He's still sitting on his bed holding his pajamas, and he gets the urge to turn around and look at Blaine, wonders if Blaine will look away or hold his gaze.

He does turn his head, just a little, and then does a double take, because Blaine is on his knees, with his head bowed, just like always, and Kurt freezes.

He only freezes for a moment, though, his instincts taking over as he stands up and haltingly walks over to where Blaine is kneeling in the middle of his room. Blaine twitches when he sees Kurt's shoes below him, but doesn't react in any other way.

“Blaine,” Kurt barely manages to say, his voice is thin and dry. Blaine shudders, looks up at Kurt, and Kurt can see Blaine's splotchy face and the tears in his eyes and he looks more lost than Kurt has ever seen him as he quietly begs, “Please, sir.”

Kurt tries to keep his face impassive as he studies Blaine, but he feels like he's breaking apart inside as he slowly brings a shaking hand forward and gently cups Blaine's face. Blaine squeezes his eyes shut for a moment and leans into it, just slightly, but enough for Kurt to feel it. He feels Blaine's stubble, the spot that he had missed that morning when he shaved, and he can feel Blaine's pulse beneath his fingers and the bob of his adam's apple as he swallows.

It's a pose that the two of them make often, it's a sign of intimacy between them, and it always relaxes Blaine. Tonight, it doesn't feel quite right.

When Kurt doesn't let go, Blaine opens his eyes again and meets Kurt's. Kurt can see some of the tension draining out of him, a glimmer of hope flash across his face through the pain.

And for a second Kurt thinks that maybe they can get through this, that they can talk it out and he can forgive Blaine.

But then an image comes into his mind, unbidden, of Blaine kneeling for someone else, and his own knees begin to shake. Kurt doesn't know who, or when, or what happened, but after he thinks it, he can't stop. He's flooded with thoughts of Blaine exposing this part of himself, the part that's only meant for Kurt, and before he realizes it he's pulling his hand away from Blaine's face.

Suddenly, he knows that he can't do this. The rational part of his mind knows that Blaine hadn't submitted to anyone else, but he can't separate the Dom part of his brain from the rational part right now.

He can't dom Blaine in this state of mind, he would only end up hurting the both of them even more. He knows what he has to do, but the thought of it makes him take another step back and clench his hands together, feeling a sick twist in his stomach.

He hasn't looked away from Blaine, who appears to have lost the hope that he had had just moments ago, and is slumped in a way that Kurt always corrected. But he doesn't. Not this time.

Kurt takes a deep breath, and a split second before he does it Blaine's eyes fill with tears again, knowing what's coming, as Kurt says in a broken voice, “Dalton.”

Blaine's face still crumples at the confirmation, with the rest of his body, as he lets his hands come up to cover his face as falls forward and breaks out into quiet sobs.

Still standing before him, Kurt finds himself swaying on his feet, as if the Earth really was shaken like his world has just been, and stumbles back over to the bed to sit back down.

He climbs under the covers, facing the wall, and doesn't sleep as he listens to Blaine still trying to muffle his sobs as he has to take care of himself for the first time in over a year, and Kurt knows that the sound will haunt his nightmares for a long time to come.

He has to fight every instinct he has to not rush over to Blaine and help him, but he knows that the cause wasn't him, but Blaine's own mistake. He had safeworded, and he can't help him now, because Kurt is just as lost as Blaine is.

It was the first time that one of them had to safeword.