“Please!” Even through the tiny phone speaker the frantic desperation in the voice was as crystal clear as a Mercedes Jones high-note. “Please!”

“No, Kurt! She's your best friend.”

“She's threatening to show the video Blaine. The video of the birth.”

“Didn't she have a c-section? Do they let you bring video cameras into operating rooms?”

“I don't know!” Kurt hissed in his ear. “But I do know finding out could involve me seeing things that cannot be unseen and I am not taking that risk.”

“Then just tell her you don't want to see it.”

“Gee, why didn't I think of that? This is Rachel, Blaine. If I don't want to was an option with her, I would have an entirely different and exponentially less humiliating set of high school memories. It is so not fair that you get out of this just because you have homework.”

Blaine suppressed a sigh. “I have to present my dissertation topic tomorrow. It's a little bit of a bigger deal than just homework.”

“All you have to do is tell her you're sick or something and you need me. She loves you. She'll let me go if you tell her.”

“Why can't you tell her yourself?”

Kurt didn't bother to suppress his sigh. “She'd never buy it from me. She knows me too well. She can tell when I'm lying. But you never lie.”

“Exactly. I never lie. You like that about me. You prize my obedient honesty.”

Yes! I found it! Blaine heard faintly through his phone. Then a high-pitched whimpering sound he was pretty sure came from Kurt.

“You're so right,” Kurt said, and his voice took on a wheedling tone that Blaine trusted not at all. “But think about it. If you lie to Rachel then I can punish you for lying. Tomorrow, obviously, after your faculty meeting. Think about it Blaine. We still haven't broken in that new flogger . . .”

Kurt! Get in here! Clearly Rachel's voice now, much too robust for a woman who had so recently given birth via major surgery.

Kurt made the whimper noise again.

Blaine took a moment to weigh his personal ethics against his physical situation. It was a short moment.

“Two days out of the cage,” he said into the phone, “and an orgasm.”

There was a long silence. Kurt apparently taking his own moment. Blaine didn't know what he was weighing, but his moment was longer.

“One day out of the cage OR an orgasm,” he countered.

“One day out of the cage AND an orgasm. Final offer.” Blaine said as firmly as he could manage.

“Dear God, is standing up to pee really that important to you?!”

“And I still get the punishment for lying.”

This time Kurt's noise was deeper, more frustrated, and it made Blaine shiver with the hope that maybe he'd earned a punishment for this negotiation too.

Kurt! Even louder now, an undeniable command.

“Done!” Kurt said.

“Put her on the phone.”