It all started when Blaine was 16.

Holed up in his room for the remainder of spring and most of the summer, there wasn't a lot for a teenage boy to do other than look at porn. His parents were out, and it was still difficult for him to get around on his own following the incident. Who could blame him?

At first, his interests remained as generic as they'd always been. Pretty, smooth-muscled boys fucking, or sucking cock, or sometimes even just touching themselves or rubbing up against another body. It was enough when Blaine was merely horny or bored, but then other times...

Other times, the anger and aggression would well up within him, an uncontrollable force with no outlet. Then the boys—the men—on the screen would fuck a little harder, scream a little louder. Sometimes Blaine would feel overwhelmingly sad—lonely and hating himself for all of his self-pity—and the boys on the screen would kiss softly and make love, and Blaine would close his eyes and pretend he wasn't so alone.

But worst of all were the times he felt helpless. The minutes (sometimes hours) following a nightmare were filled with too-familiar scenes. He could feel the phantom fists pounding and boots kicking against his skin, and Blaine wanted nothing more than to make it stop. Those times, all Blaine wanted was to feel a little more in control.

And of course, given such strong motivation and so many long, empty days with only his various electronics for company, Blaine eventually managed to find the embodiment of that control online. At first it scared him—not the scenes themselves so much but how much he liked them, how his fist would fly a little faster and he'd come a little quicker. It was even more frightening when he found himself pushing the computer aside in favor of building a fantasy in his own head, letting his mind call all the shots for a faceless man on his knees in front of Blaine. His reservations faded as he sank deeper into it, this new world he'd discovered that he eventually learned was called BDSM (although Blaine wasn't quite as much into the S&M part, but still,) and it became all he looked for, everything he craved.

Now, his only fear was of someone finding out—or how he would handle an eventual relationship, because Blaine couldn't fathom how it would work with him being this.

Months later he thought to question how he had gotten here, became this. Was Blaine a Dom because that's who he was, or had the person he was, or would become, fundamentally changed somehow when those boys had beaten him bloody?

He decided—had to decide—that it didn't matter. Blaine had always been a little too fixated on control, and if what was done to him affected him in any way, it was to assure that he would never use that control to hurt another person, but rather to take care of them.

He only hoped that the right person was out there to see that in him, to accept it and love him completely. A person—a man—who would need Blaine's control just as badly.