“Can I ask you something?”

They were cuddled together on the couch, Blaine nestled in Kurt's arms. His weight pressing heavy on Kurt's chest made Kurt feel, as it always did, strong and in control. Capable. Trusted. Which was probably why that was the moment when he finally worked up the courage to ask.

“You can ask me anything, you know that,” Blaine said, without even lifting his head from where it was cradled in the hollow of Kurt's shoulder.

“I know. But this is . . . you don't have to tell me if you don't want to.”

Blaine, of course, sensed Kurt's conflict immediately and lifted his head enough to smile at him. “Just ask. I don't have any secrets from you.”

Kurt knew that was true, but his heart sped up anyhow. “What did he do to you?”

Blaine frowned. “What did who . . . oh.” Realization dawned in his eyes, and with it wariness. “You mean Kev.”

It wasn't a question, but Kurt nodded anyhow.

Blaine put his head back down. His loose curls ticked at Kurt's chin. “What brought this on?” he asked softly.

“I guess because we're leaving soon and starting our life in New York, I've been thinking a lot about how it all started. Those first few days and everything that happened. I'm not upset, I promise. I mean, if you think about it, we actually owe him a lot because he gave you that push to –”

“Kurt.”

Kurt forced himself to take a breath. He knew he was babbling. He also knew Blaine was all in, one hundred percent his forever. But when he thought about that day in the coffee shop and the way Blaine had looked at Kev, like he wanted, like he wanted so badly . . . and then his silence in the car afterward. Kurt knew that his punishment and the connection they'd achieved in its wake had been deeper and more profound than anything Blaine could have shared with Kev or anyone else. But his brain wouldn't let it go. He hated himself for it but he needed to know what extreme and kinky activities had so imprinted on Blaine's memory that he would have risked their budding relationship.

“He beat me,” Blaine's voice startled Kurt out of his own head.

“What?”

“Kev. He had a bondage cross in his bedroom and he tied me to it and he beat me.” Blaine kept his head on Kurt's chest and his voice was carefully neutral. “With a leather strap. And when I begged him to stop he kept going, until I was sobbing with the pain.”

“You didn't safeword?”

He felt Blaine's head shake against his skin.

“Then he took me down and made me blow him. Then he teased me until he was hard again and he fucked me. Then he blew me, until I was begging to come, and then he let me.”

Blaine stopped talking and Kurt let silence linger between them, processing what Blaine had told him.

“That's it?” he finally asked.

“That's it.”

“But . . . I did more to you than that on your birthday.”

“Yes you did.”

“I tortured your balls, and I didn't even let you come.”

“I remember it well.”

“Then why –”

Blaine moved then, sitting up and twisting around until he was straddling Kurt's waist. He smiled, and there was none of the conflict or distress Kurt was expecting to see in his face. His eyes were full of only love.

“Kurt you did more to me that afternoon with the spoon.”

“I don't understand.”

“The things you did, you did to me. With me. Kev was having a great time with the submissive who happened to be willing to go home with him. And so was I. I won't lie, it was amazing. He rocked my world. But it could have been anyone. It was anyone, for me back then. You're my soulmate.”

“Then why did you –”

“Because I was stupid. No, that's not right. I didn't understand. I thought that because you said you weren't ready to beat the everloving crap out of me or fuck me into oblivion or whatever, that you wouldn't be able to give me what I needed. Because that's all it was to me, until you showed me how wrong I was. Don't ever, ever, think that anything Kev did could ever compare to you. By the time we went to bed that night, you were more my dominant than Kev ever could have been. You can't even imagine the peace I felt, falling asleep in your arms, hard and denied and mastered. And if I haven't made that clear to you before now then I'm . . .”

For once it was Kurt who had to pull Blaine down and shut him up with a kiss.