Blaine shuddered, attempting to take a breath in, but failing; the resulting inhale, sharp and painful, burning his lungs, an acrid poison seeping in through his sinuses. Blood rushed through his body and roared in his ears, pounding in his skull with the deafening ferocity of an ocean plunging thousands of feet over the side of a ravine. Sweat didn't drip down his skin, didn't trickle, it poured out his body, effusing from every pore. He was sweating in places that he didn't realize could even sweat. He felt it weave through his curls in streams, collecting at his hairline, then racing down his face. It tickled his nose and stung his eyes. He swiped at his forehead with the back of an equally sweaty hand, but it kept coming, kept tormenting him; he couldn't wipe it away fast enough.

His soaked shirt clung to his back and chest, tightening around him when he found the strength to move. He cursed his sweat pants for trapping in every last degree of his body heat. One pathetic fan, oscillating in the corner of the stifling room, did nothing to cool his overheated skin. Instead, it simply relocated the hot air, shifting it back and forth from one side of the room to the other, taunting him with the promise of a relief it could not deliver. If there was any way Blaine could strip down to his boxer briefs, he would have. He didn't think anyone would really mind. None of the blank faces surrounding him seemed concerned with his agony. But Blaine didn't have control. His Dom had all the control and he exercised it cruelly. Blaine knew Kurt wouldn't allow him to disrobe.

Besides, Blaine wasn't really in the mood to get arrested.

Blaine groaned, bowing his head, gritting his teeth at the cramp creeping up his back and torquing his muscles. But just as he thought he'd reached his brink, Kurt punished him again, over and over, pushing him towards the edge till his heart hammered against his ribs and his muscles screamed for mercy.

One glance at his reflection in the mirror in front of him told Blaine that he couldn't take much more, but he had no choice. Safety words were strictly forbidden in this den of torture.

“Come on, precious,” Kurt commanded in his sing-song voice, filled with equal parts sweetness and menace. “Keep up.”

A titter of high-pitched laughter followed Kurt's demeaning reprimand, the noise multiplying until the whole room echoed with it. Blaine didn't have the will in him to care at this point. His arms could no longer handle the strain and hung limply at his sides. His feet had gone numb. He moved by momentum alone. The burning in his lungs became so torturous, he started holding his breath.

That turned out to be a huge mistake.

Blaine's vision began to blur. A thick haze obscured his vision, the dizzying euphoria that came with oxygen deprivation washing through him, replacing the pain. Suddenly, Blaine couldn't stop himself from moving, lured in this strange dance by the high-pitched sound of Kurt's voice, his laughter, even his occasional insults at Blaine's expense. Blaine was powerless against it, against Kurt's manipulating him like a puppet, plying his sub to his will.

Blaine began to giggle. That giggle echoed, but when it bounced back to his ears, it sounded peculiar. The voices pinging around his ears didn't entirely resemble his own. His limbs, still moving without his express permission, started to falter. The world tilted and spun, picking up speed. He was standing in one spot but had the bizarre experience of seeing everything at once, in front of and behind him.

“Blaine?” A beautiful voice, full of worry, broke through the haze - his black swan becoming his angel again. “Blaine!”

Blaine felt himself fall through the air, limbs light as he plummeted to the hard wood floor. Blaine stared toward the ceiling, blank eyes open, his whole body heavy - too heavy and tired to even blink.

Blaine felt effervescent - amazingly high. He giggled again, his chest heaving as it turned into a cough. His giggles rebounded. He began to enjoy the effect of giggling into blurry space and hearing it return to him, oddly cloned and twisted. Blaine saw blurred images gather around him, swaying slightly. He reached his hand out toward them, but they seemed to bob away like balloons playing on a breeze.

Suddenly, from out of the fog, a single image became clear. Kurt stood over him, hands on hips, his lips twisted into an amused smirk.

One of the fuzzy hallucinations came closer.

“Mr. Humble,” the hallucination said with a, frankly, adorable lisp, “your friend fell down.”

“I know, Jonathan,” Kurt replied, “but I'm sure he'll be alright.”

“What should we do with him?” another blur with bright red hair asked.

“Should we call an am'blance?” asked an identical blur standing beside it.

Kurt peered at Blaine more closely. Blaine blinked, eyes fighting to focus on the images that swam in front of him, but the effort made him spectacularly nauseous, so he decided to close his eyes and rest his head back on the floor beneath him.

“Nah,” Kurt said to the class of nervous kids. “He'll be fine. Just try not to trip on him.”

The kids giggled and joked, wandering back to their spots on the workout room floor, but Kurt stayed behind, tsk-tsking as he looked down at his exhausted sub.

“Really, princess,” Kurt commented out of earshot of the children, looking down at Blaine in mock disgust. “This is a Zumba class for four- to six-year-olds, and you can't keep up?”

Blaine moaned in reply, hoping for pity, but Kurt shook his head. Blaine wanted to say something witty, to come up with a compelling defense, but the power of speech no longer belonged to him. He gave up. With a sigh, he rolled onto his stomach, pressing his cheek to the cool floor. Another low moan later, he succumbed to sleep. Kurt chuckled when he saw Blaine's breathing even out.

“We have a lot of work to do, sweetheart,” Kurt said mischievously. “A lot of work.” He pressed a kiss to his fingertips, and pressed his fingertips to Blaine's cheek. Then he straightened and turned back to his class.

“Okay, kids. From the top, and avoid the sleeping man on the floor. Five, six, seven, eight…”