At some point, Kurt dozed off while reviewing the papers, hunching over the table top with his cigarette slowly fizzling out in the ashtray at his side, filling his dreams with thickly scented smoke that permeated not only what he smelled in slumber, but also the look of his dreams with heavy, grey fog. In those dreams, he was in a large room, empty aside from the fog that swirled around him, suffocating him and limiting his field of vision. He was alone.

But that was nothing new.

A small, still voice was what woke him, and for a moment he thought it was part of his dreams until his eyes snapped open and he lifted his head from the table, where it had fallen to face the man he had set on the couch earlier. Blaine stood at the open, arching entrance to the dining room from the living room where he had come, arms wrapped around his waist like they could protect him, and looking at Kurt curiously.

“Sorry to wake you… but… who are you? Why am I here?”

So the drugs had worn off, at least enough for Blaine to regain control of his motor and verbal skills, and now he looked at Kurt with confusion and worry smattered over his mediterranean quality features. In the dim light, Kurt couldn't see the amber of Blaine's eyes, just the black pupils set against white. As always, Kurt took his time with his answers, thinking them over before speaking and lighting a fresh cigarette with a roll of his thumb over his lighter as he considered how to approach Blaine with the information. He had two options - be direct, or be more subtle. In either case, there were considerations and consequences to be had.  

“Uhm… did you hear me? I-”

“I heard you,” Kurt snapped, cutting Blaine off. He wasn't used to being interrupted during his thought process, and whether or not Blaine knew that wasn't a reason for him to get away with it. A long, drawn out puff of cigarette smoke put Kurt's mind and body at ease with the way it coursed through his brain and dried out his throat, and he watched Blaine shuffle uncomfortably in place, eyes dropping to the white tiled floor as Kurt raked his eyes over his body.

“I bought you. You belong to me.”

Kurt had already considered the different reactions Blaine could respond with. The first was rage, the second was freaking out, and the third, which is exactly how Blaine responded, was disbelief.

“You're joking right?”

“No,” Kurt said, continuing on after he had taken in another circle of smoke that seared into his lungs and only a regular smoker could find satisfying. “I own you.”

“Slavery is illegal.”

“Yet it's more prolific in this day and age than it ever has been. There's about 25 million slaves in the world and it generates about 35 billion in revenue each year globally.” Another puff of smoke, another burn to caress him from the inside out.

“You… you can't own me. It makes no sense…” Blaine uttered, a waver in his silken voice. He took a step backwards and looked behind him, no doubt to look for an exit to run to. Let him, Kurt thought to himself. It would do him no good and he'd learn the reality of his situation quickly.

Which is exactly what Blaine did when Kurt arched an eyebrow his way, his way of judging without using words, prompting the expected reaction of Blaine running to the door. Kurt didn't stand to stop him as he ran slightly off kilter, probably still affected by the drugs in his system. Instead Kurt just continued sucking back the smoke as Blaine yanked open the front door and stepped out.

And screamed.

Kurt knew well enough what happened, and he snubbed out his cigarette in the overflowing ashtray before walking slowly to the entrance where Blaine has crumbled into a heap at the threshold, holding his hands over his ears as tears marked the corners of his eyes. Kurt couldn't hear it, or feel it, but he knew from what he heard that to stop human product from running, their trackers were equipped with military quality perimeter deterrents. When the delivery guy had come and checked out Kurt's apartment, he had also programmed in the boundaries for Blaine to exist in, and the instant he tried to escape, he set off an internal siren and nerve stimulus that essentially paralyzed him.

“It will keep on going until you are completely inside the apartment,” Kurt noted stiffly, refraining from showing any compassion though a part of him wanted to reach out to Blaine to pull him back. “If you aren't completely within the apartment after a minute, enforcers will be sent to your location.”

“Wha- what is this? Why?” Blaine cried out, wincing with the ejection of each word and gritting his teeth after he had spat it all out.

“Thirty seconds now give or take.”

“Y-you can't!”

“Fifteen.”

With a cry of anguish, Blaine shuffled himself backwards on the floor, and Kurt closed the door after him. The alarm within him must have stopped because he laid on the floor, panting and catching his breath for a moment before rolling his eyes to look up towards Kurt, towering over him, and struggling to get back onto his feet and stand.

Men were all the same. When they were put into a confrontational situation, they wanted to be face to face. They held their territory, their ground, and may as well have urinated all over it like a dog on a hydrant the way they postured, forcing themselves past any discomfort and fear to go eye to eye with the ones they saw as their problem. Blaine was no different, and though he was considerably weakened by the drugs and the alarm, he still tried to make himself look bigger and act bigger than he was.

“I'll call the cops.”

“Go ahead. Most of them work for me or my associates.”

“I'll send a message... on your computer…”

“I don't keep one in my apartment.”

“You can't keep me.”

“You can't escape.”

Blaine faltered for a moment, eyes going blank again as he went inside himself to seek out a solution, and Kurt returned to the table to light up a fresh cigarette, despite only having burnt off half of the last one.  

“Is Sebastian okay?”

Kurt glanced over his shoulder, where Blaine had crept up on him, though maintained a distance of a meter. Where he had just been defiant, his face was now wrinkled with worry.

“He's employed.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means he found a way to work off his debts.”

“What debts?”

Kurt let his eyes roll along the top of his eyes before looking back at the papers, gesturing towards them for Blaine to see. “The ones that had him sell you to try and cover the interest costs.”

Blaine looked warily at the mess of paperwork, then back up to Kurt, before shuffling forwards and looking down at the paper, just a foot away from Kurt's side. Quietly he scanned what he could see and then shook his head. “No… it doesn't make sense. Sebastian had lots of money. He can't be in debt.”

“Tell me Blaine.  Why did you go to Cuba with Sebastian?”

“He… he really wanted to go on a humanitarian mission there. We were helping at an orphanage…”

“But you were in college.”

“How do you…?” Blaine glanced questioningly from Kurt and then again to the papers, making a small o with his mouth as he understood and looked back the floor. “He convinced me to take a break from it…”

“And then he just as quickly convinced you to come back to New York.”

“He said he had family problems…” Blaine uttered, his voice quieting with each spoken syllable.  

“Sebastian owed several of the families big money for gambling debts. He took you with him to Cuba to try and evade them, but they're not stupid. They found him and threatened him if he didn't return - and the first thing he did when he returned was to sell you-”

“NO!” Blaine snapped, and Kurt did his best to not let his eyebrows lift to reveal his surprise at the outburst. “Sebastian is a good person and my friend! He wouldn't do that to me!”

“Sebastian is a con and a liar, and because of that I own you now.”

“No… no… no, he's not…” Blaine choked out, running away from Kurt.  

Kurt listened as Blaine checked each room, ran up the stairs to the loft and checked all the rooms. As he sat at the table, restacking the papers that constituted Blaine's existence, he listened to the shuffling, the running around, the cries, and the mess that was no doubt created in the wake of a man who was realizing that he wasn't dreaming, and that he was duped by someone he obviously trusted a little too much.

Kurt smoked through all of it. He had discovered cigarettes not long after uncovering the truth about his uncle, and despite despising them and the cancer they stood for all through his young years, he took to them quickly - finding comfort in the way they inflamed him from the inside, making him feel like his body was alive despite all other evidence to the contrary. Since his father's death, he felt like he was a soul loosely inhabiting an unwilling body, and the only way he felt connected to the meat on him was through that smoke. Cancer be damned.  

When the noises stopped, and Kurt finished off yet another cigarette, he stood up and went to the library where he found Blaine sitting on the ground, back against Kurt's shelves dedicated to financial management, and staring up at the ceiling.

“How do I get out of this? Can I?”

“Some do.”

“How do I?”

Kurt went to sit on the couch in the library - an old, antique style couch popularized in Freud's time as one used for counselling. It wasn't terribly comfortable, but it tied the room together nicely - or so he thought. “Not sure.”

“Do I... have to earn my way out or something?”

“Maybe.”

“Why won't you give me a straight answer?”

Kurt leaned back on the arm of the seat, glancing out of the window behind him and into the New York skyline. No matter what time it was, the city always glowed with life. “Because I didn't intend to purchase a slave, so I haven't completed my research on the matter.”

“Then why did you buy me…?”

Kurt glanced back at Blaine, eyes narrowing at he looked at him, irritation growing within him as he realized that while he recognized Blaine, Blaine clearly didn't recognize him. How stupid he had been to think that there had been something between them during that brief, adolescent meeting. What an idiotic mistake he had made…

“It was a mistake.”

“If it was a mistake, let me go.”

Kurt snickered at that. Blaine obviously had been sheltered enough not to know about how the mob worked out in New York, or anywhere for that matter. There was no just “letting someone go”. That was not how debts were settled. That was not how the mob sent messages about crossing them. There were rules, codes, and while Kurt was not a made man, he was an associate of all the major New York families and other syndicates that ran different territories. He had an image to maintain, and that image was ruthless.

“You'll have to work off your debts like most do.”

“How?”

“I'm not sure yet. Most of the women end up working in brothels or strip clubs until they're too loose or worn out to be of use -”

Kurt didn't miss how Blaine shuddered at that and then tensed right up.

“- some of the human product ends up functioning as enforcement, others as maids or general servants…”

“Maybe-”

“Don't interrupt me,” Kurt snapped, wincing his eyes into lines once more as he glowered at Blaine before continuing. “You're too small and frail to be an enforcer, and, somehow, I think that your privileged background limits whatever homemaking skills you might think you possess.”

“I won't have sex with you.”

Kurt made a small snort at that, though the statement tore at him a little right under the ribs. “Pretentious, aren't you? What makes you think I'm interested in you that way?”

“The men… at that place… were all touching me…”

“I didn't.”

Blaine glanced up, and Kurt caught the reflection of the city in Blaine's eyes. “No. You didn't.”

“Quite frankly, I haven't had enough time to judge what skills would be of use to me that you might actually possess. Your transcripts and background suggest limited employability options.”

Blaine's crooked, fuzzy eyebrows squinted at that, and his lips turned down in a frown. “I went to college to work at what I love… what I want to do… what I'm good at…”

Kurt would have loved to have attended NYADA, to have a chance at the stage, or maybe even the screen. It wasn't fair that this kid, whose parents were both still alive but out of the picture for some reason, who could afford a specialized college like NYADA, who probably skated through life with ease, got the opportunities Kurt would have begged for.  

“... and a fat lot of good it did for you. By the time I figure out what to do with you, you'll be too old to find a spot on stage.”

Part of Kurt delighted in the way Blaine's whole face seemed to fall, to try and drip off his skull at those words, but another part cringed. Within him, somewhere, was that boy who believed in righteousness, and kindness, and all the fluff taught in kindergarten classes - and that boy couldn't believe the words that came out of his mouth.

Would his dad recognize him if he were alive? Would he know the man Kurt had become from the boy he was?

No. Not the way Kurt reveled in how he could twist sadness and submission out of a man sitting on the floor that had once made him forget all his pains for a day. Not only would his dad not recognize him, he wouldn't even like him.