Blaine waited.

On his knees, alone in the apartment, he waited.

Naked, in the living room, facing the door on his knees on the little pillow, he waited for Kurt.

He waited for his waiting to be done.

�

Seven Days Earlier

Blaine was in heaven. Or maybe in hell. Actually, he wasn't sure he could tell the difference anymore. Heaven could be hell. And hell was almost always heaven. And it was all, basically, Kurt. He was in Kurt. That was how he had come to think of it.

Except actually, at that exact moment, Kurt was in him. And under him. And all around him, touching, stroking, writing love letters with his fingers on Blaine's skin as Blaine rode him, up and down, lost in the sensations Kurt's cock sent rocketing through his body on each long, glorious slide. His own cock was throbbing, surging, Kurt's fist a tight warning around it while the pad of his thumb circled the crown in time with Blaine's rhythm. Pleasure radiated through every cell of Blaine's body, and need, desperate, perfect need balanced on the knife point of release but held back by Kurt's strong hand and implacable will and the look in his eyes. Like Blaine was the most sublime creature imaginable.

Summer vacation was Blaine's new favorite thing on earth. No classes, no homework, no glee club practices or strict rules about weekends only; Kurt was his, all the time. So much time. An overwhelming, obscene surfeit of it. They wallowed in time. Nights and days and nights again. There was time for friends and family, time to play music and go to movies and watch television, and still plenty of time for them, for Monday night sex, stripped and sweaty on the big bed, Blaine straining after an orgasm Kurt wasn't going to let him have and loving every torturous second of it.

“Faster” Kurt ordered, sliding his free hand up Blaine's chest and back down again, trailing his fingers over one sensitive nipple in each direction.

The ease with which Kurt commanded him made Blaine shiver. He obeyed, picking up the pace to push Kurt closer to his orgasm and tilting his pelvis just enough to keep himself from tipping past the point of no return into his own.

If Blaine had expected the freedom of summer to mean more orgasms for him, he'd been very much mistaken.� He'd never imagined he'd be coming less than ever. Kurt had explained it to him. Something about the school year creating an artificial constraint with the weekend-only sex, and how the fact that Kurt could now make Blaine come whenever he wanted to made him want to wait until he really wanted to . . . but to be honest, he'd explained it while Blaine was spread-eagle on their bed – not tied, they weren't quite there yet, but held in place by the self-bondage of obedience – and Kurt was doing wicked, terrible, mind-blowing things to him with hands and lips and tongue. The only thing that had managed to work its way in to Blaine's long-term memory was that Kurt was in charge – as usual – and taking charge more actively than ever. And since that was pretty much Blaine's lifelong dream come true, he hadnt worried too much about the details.

He rode his boyfriend and luxuriated in the control it gave him to keep himself just there, so close, riding the edge, hormones and longing and frustrated need flooding his body and brain with pleasure. Pleasure that wasn't quite the same as an orgasm, but combined with Kurt's restraining hand keeping him in check was just as good; even, in some ways, better. He rocked himself down onto Kurt's hard cock, and Kurt's hands teased and stroked, and oh he was close, just a whisper away. Release called to him, a siren's song of temptation, but he was stronger. He lashed himself to Kurt's frame, wrapped his hands around hard biceps, and let the music flood his soul even as he forced his body ruthlessly away. Kurt moaned in harmony and if there was any greater bliss than this in the universe, Blaine had never experienced it. He wanted to stay here forever, just like this, perfectly balanced between his need and Kurt's command, proving the force of his submission and the supremacy of his obedience in the face of inhuman temptation.

But then . . . then Kurt cried out and thrust up hard and the fist around Blaine's cock tightened and the fingers on his nipple pinched and twisted and the pain – sharp and bright and unexpected – the pain flooded through his body, supplanting his self-control and he was slipping, tripping over the brink, falling into the climax that swelled up to meet and overwhelm him as his balls clenched and spasmed in an agony of release and the world shrank down to a single, infinite, ecstatic singularity.

“Sorry . . . I'm sorry . . .” he managed to offer before speech became impossible. Kurt held him as he shuddered, stroking long paroxysms from his cock even as the aftershocks of his own release were still rolling through his body. And Blaine clung to Kurt as the pleasure surged and surged, until eventually it peaked and began to recede, leaving a heavy, echoing stillness in its wake. He collapsed onto Kurt's broad chest and surrendered to the muffled lethargy that always followed such an intense release.

He was dimly aware of movement; Kurt sorting them out, cleaning up as best he could, and dimly, in the back of his sluggish brain, something poked at him, something wrong, but he had no strength left to tug it into consciousness. At least not until a strong arm wrapped around him from behind and tugged him into a warm embrace, and lips pressed gently on the back of his neck. Then he remembered, for an instant, just long enough to gasp and murmur, “I came! I wasn't supposed to come.”

“Shhh.” Kurt's breath fanned his ear, blowing away the pesky thought. “Go to sleep, Blaine. We'll talk about it in the morning.”

That was a command Blaine obeyed immediately.

�

�

He knelt in formal position. Kurt had not demanded that. Kurt had made no demands at all. But Blaine's own submission required it of him. It was right, to hold himself to the most exacting standard. It was also right that his cock was half hard. Half hard had been its state for most of the week. Being denied what he longed for most was equal parts terrible and, although it had taken him a long time to see it, wonderful, and his cock was a faithful barometer of his mental and emotional state. It was new, this halfway place, but Blaine felt new himself, in many ways.

So he knelt with arms folded against his back, head high, eyes downcast, legs spread just wide enough to make his thighs ache warmly. And his cock lay mostly soft, but occasionally throbbing its approval.

�

Six Days Earlier

“A week?!”

Kurt looked at him from across the sofa, but didn't speak.

“Kurt, there are only what? Nine weeks of break? You really want to waste that much of our time?”

One thin eyebrow arched. “Waste?” The word was knife-sharp.

“Not waste, I didn't mean that exactly,” Blaine backpedaled. “I get how important this is but – anything else, Kurt. Anything. I need this time with you.”

“And you'll have it. I'm not going anywhere. Just the opposite – my dad already waived the two-nights-at-home rule. I'm not going to leave you alone.”

“But if I can't . . .” He struggled to find the right words. To make Kurt understand without making it sound like this was only about the sex. “You don't understand how important that . . . how many ways I need . . .”

He couldn't do it. The scope of the whole idea was too overwhelming to put into words. Kurt had said it so matter-of-factly, as if it was nothing. For the next week you're not allowed to touch me. At all. It wasn't a punishment. It was beyond punishment. It terrified him.

“You probably should have thought about that before,” Kurt said, sounding so much like a disappointed parent that anger roiled in Blaine's stomach. He wasn't a parent. He wasn't even an adult.

Blaine shoved the anger aside and tried very hard to not sound like he was arguing as he argued. “I didn't do it on purpose. I wasn't trying to disobey. I wanted to be denied. That was the whole point! I was keeping myself close but I never even thought about actually coming. It wasn't like I made a choice. It was a mistake. An accident.”

“Was it?”

“I just said –“

“Do you know what you've never once mentioned in all your explaining?” Kurt asked. “Me. You didn't want . . . you were trying. And where was I? I had no idea you were so close that just a pinch could send you over the edge. A pinch, Blaine. You don't think you should have made me aware of that?”

“I . . . obviously I should have and I didn't but – a week, Kurt? For that?” Did he not understand how precious their time was? The double crept in and poked at Blaine's never-quite-conquered insecurity. Did it not matter as much to Kurt as it did to him?

Kurt looked at him, silently, with an expression that seemed too self-assured and mature for his face. “I gave you a little control,” he finally said, “and you took it and – you went somewhere all by yourself, Blaine. That's what you're being punished for. The orgasm was just the result. You took your sexual experience out of my hands and into your own. It doesn't matter that you didn't mean to come. A fundamental part of dominance for me is to control what you feel and when you feel it. You took that away from me last night. And so in punishment I'm taking away a fundamental part of your submission.”

Blaine played his final card, desperately, and with little hope of success. “But if I can't touch you I can't make you come. So it's like you're being punished too.”

“Well maybe that's how it should be. After all, I didn't do a very good job keeping you under control, did I?”

Blaine squirmed uncomfortably on his side of the couch as the part of him that was an adult and didn't like being scolded by a teenager warred with the part of him that wanted to prostrate himself on the floor in the face of Kurt's strict resolve. He didn't answer back. He could see it would be useless. Kurt had decided, and the only thing to do was try to get through the week as painlessly as possible.

“What about sleeping?” he grumbled.

Kurt ignored his tone and spoke so casually, as if it was no big deal at all. “We obviously can't sleep together. You're a vicious sleep cuddler.” Kurt smiled at that, but Blaine wasn't anywhere near ready to smile back. “There's the bed and the couch. You can decide who sleeps where.”

“Obviously you should have the bed,” Blaine said, not quite meeting Kurt's eyes.

Kurt breezed on, as if he hadn't just destroyed an�entire week of their limited time together. “Then that's settled.” He reached for the remote control and switched on the TV. “I'm pretty sure there's a Project Runway we haven't watched yet.”

And just like that he moved on, calling up the program and settling a universe away on the far side of the couch to criticize the efforts of the mediocre contestants (and they were all mediocre in Kurt's eyes).

�

�

Little twinges and pangs were calling attention to how long he'd held his form, but Blaine ignored them. He pushed all thought out of his mind, all but Kurt. Patience was a powerful kind of submission, he'd learned. Giving Kurt control meant being whatever Kurt expected him to be. And right now Kurt expected him to be patient. So he gave his entire self over to the waiting, and his cock twitched happily.

�

Five, Four, and Three Days Earlier

At first, Blaine sulked. That was the only word for it. He tried to tell himself he was only expressing righteous indignation, but in all honesty he was sulking like a two-year-old at naptime.

The orgasm was part of it. Blaine had already figured out that his submission had a refractory period, just like his penis did. After an orgasm he felt lazy and relaxed and not quite as submissive as he should have. It took time to get himself back to that place where submission felt completely natural and right. Physical contact helped, but of course that was out of the question now. And orders helped as well. Kurt expected him to submit, slump or no slump, and going through the motions was the quickest way to shake off the post-orgasm blues and get himself back in perfect submissive shape again.

But now Kurt wasn't giving any orders. Their simplest and most fundamental routines, right down to taking off and putting on their cuffs, were suspended. Blaine had grown so used to Kurt giving him casual directions throughout the day that he began to feel strangely untethered, like his compass had lost true north. It was an odd sensation, and instinct led him to focus more on Kurt in order to stay connected. And the more he looked at and thought about his boyfriend, the more aware he became of the constraint that bound him. And the more he thought of it that way – as a kind of bondage – the more he began to loosen his grip on his anger.

Kurt ignored all of this. He got out of bed, cooked and ate meals, yammered at Blaine about Rachel's latest crisis, read, watched television, as if nothing at all was amiss.

He also touched Blaine. A lot. If anything, more than he usually would. A palm to the curve of Blaine's back, fingers slipping down an arm, and the fleeting caresses at first both angered and excited Blaine. After all, his body wasn't going to stop having its usual reaction to its soulmate just because Blaine was feeling petulant. Was it a test, Blaine wondered? Was Kurt trying to catch him out, to see if, without thinking, Blaine would disobey and reach out to touch back? The idea increased the sense of bondage, and Blaine even began to imagine, when Kurt touched him, that he was actually restrained, just to keep himself from accidentally breaking the rules. He didn't really think about how submissive imagining being bound would make him feel. But little by little, over the course of those three days, his body began to react more and more to Kurt – his presence, his touches, the way he moved and sat and smiled. By Thursday afternoon he was following Kurt from room to room like a puppy (like a slave, his brain supplied, but he pushed that thought away because it made him hard instantly and he didn't want to be getting off on this terrible punishment, no, he didn't).

But when Kurt went to take a shower Thursday afternoon, Blaine hovered in the hall just outside the door, listening to the little sounds he made and fantasizing about the body he could not touch, naked and wet, how he'd serve Kurt if he was allowed to be in there with him, running the soapy cloth over Kurt's pale skin, falling to his knees to suck Kurt's cock into his mouth as the warm water poured down over him. The need for Kurt overwhelmed him and he pressed first a hand, then his whole body against the door, filled with a longing that he'd never felt before.

When the water cut out Blaine fled to the bedroom before Kurt could catch him practically humping their bathroom door and tried to talk himself back under control. But then Kurt walked right in, naked except for the towel slung low around his hips. Blaine clenched his fists and forced himself to be still but he couldn't keep a low whimper from escaping his lips. Kurt was right there, his skin glowing, water droplets sparkling in the afternoon light, so much of it, broad chest and toned arms and narrow waist and Blaine was sure he was only seconds away from throwing himself at Kurt and clinging like a drowning man.

“Blaine?”

“I can't . . . I need help . . . it's too . . .”

Kurt understood immediately, despite Blaine's complete inability to form a coherent thought.

“Back up against the wall.”

He said it mildly, almost more of a request than an order, but to Blaine's dominance-starved brain it felt like as imperious a command as he'd ever been given. He could feel muscles relaxing as he obeyed, stepping backward until he was pressed against the wall.

Kurt felt it too, he was sure, because his next order was unambiguous. “Put your hands above your head.”

Blaine complied at once and waited, pressing his crossed wrists into the wall overhead.

Kurt just looked at him for a moment, evaluating, then with a quick movement he pulled the towel loose and dropped it on the floor.

It should have felt even more impossible to hold back, with Kurt standing naked so close to him, but obedience was stronger now that Kurt was issuing commands again. And it should have felt wrong to have Kurt naked while he was clothed, but Kurt's unshakable confidence and Blaine's need to obey made it all feel so right instead. He was forced to be still, contemplating the entirety of what he could not have. Kurt stepped closer and Blaine moaned again – he couldn't help it – but he didn't move. In his head he begged Kurt to touch him but he didn't speak. Not until Kurt's hand closed over his crossed wrists and pressed them harder against the wall.

“Oh God, yes. Thank you,” he breathed, then Kurt pressed the length of his gorgeous body against Blaine, and Blaine couldn't have spoken if he'd tried.

“Relax. Let go,” Kurt whispered in his ear. “That's all I want from you. That's what this is all about. Submit.”

Somewhere a stubborn part of Blaine's brain wanted to cry out that he had nothing to submit to, if Kurt refused to give him any orders, or let him serve in any meaningful way, but Kurt's lips brushed his ear, then traced his jaw, and even that final stubborn rebellion was silenced. The tiniest head turn would bring their lips together, but Blaine held himself still even as Kurt's mouth brushed the very corner of his own, then hovered only millimeters away, tantalizing him with possibilities and impossibilities.

And then Kurt's mouth moved back to his ear and whispered, so low Blaine could barely hear it, “Good boy,” and he was gone, snatching up the towel from the floor and disappearing back into the bathroom.

�

�

The slam of the car door, faint as it was from Blaine's position, went through him like a blow. His cock swelled to full erection but that was the only urgency he felt. Anticipation, yes. Longing to have Kurt with him again. Hope that it was finally over. But all of those things were what Kurt wanted him to feel and so he embraced them. The fight had gone out of him days ago. He was meant to submit. Sometimes that meant touching; sometimes it meant serving. Sometimes it meant obeying orders and sometimes being punished. But none of those things, not the touching or serving or obeying, had any meaning without his unconditional submission.

His cock flexed and twisted and Blaine waited for his master.

�

Three, Two, and One Day Earlier

Eventually, Blaine moved from the position Kurt had left him in, and made his way to the living room to find Kurt on the sofa perusing the latest copy of Vogue. He didn't look up, didn't speak, didn't seem to be having any reaction at all to what had happened in the bedroom. Blaine settled at that opposite end of the couch, close enough to be touched but Kurt didn't touch him. Submit, Kurt had said. And the stubborn corner of Blaine's brain argued again, to what? Blaine wanted to feel the release he'd experienced in the bedroom when he was following Kurt's orders again. But did submission have any meaning if there wasn't something to submit to? He'd always been told what to do. He loved rules and instruction and the chance to prove his obedience. Could submission, on its own, be an answer?

There was only one way to find out. He'd been given no command; Kurt had no expectations. But he slipped off the couch anyhow, pulling a pillow with him to cushion his knees, and settled on the floor in the cramped space between sofa and coffee table. Kurt said nothing, but he lifted his legs and stretched them out on the couch, making more room for Blaine.�

At first it felt strange, just kneeling for the sake of it, after all his struggles that week. But eventually his tension began to give way to the familiarity and he began to relax, slowly, bit by bit, but it happened. The world around him began to slip out of focus, until the only things he was aware of were the soft scritch of turning magazine pages and his own deepening breathing. And at some point a hand, Kurt's hand, coming down to tangle in his curls and scratch gently at his scalp.

And suddenly it didn't feel like punishment at all.

That night at bedtime Blaine dug into the back of his closet for his camping pad and laid it out, with a pillow and blanket, on the floor at the foot of his bed. Kurt didn't say anything about it, but he murmured a soft, gentle “Goodnight, Blaine,” as they settled down in the darkness.

After that, Blaine did the things he had to do. He showered. He ate. And he knelt. At some point he abandoned clothes and knelt naked. Kurt still made no demands and gave no orders, but Blaine offered his readiness anyhow. He prepared himself to serve. He waited.

�

�

�

Kurt's key turned in the door and Blaine couldn't have described the feeling it gave him if he'd tried. How was it possible to feel both anxious and serene at the same time? How could his need feel so raw and alive at the same time he was sure that he could wait forever if that was what Kurt wanted from him? So many sensations that should have conflicted instead existed in perfect harmony in his body and mind. And one supreme over all the others. Kurt.

“Thank God I'm not cursed with Rachel Berry perfectionism,” Kurt was already talking before he'd even gotten properly in the door, not fazed in the slightest by the sight of Blaine kneeling naked and silent, waiting for him. It was a thing that had happened over the past two days. Kurt simply accepting the fact of his display of submission and going about his business as if it didn't even need commenting on. It turned Blaine on more than words could express.

“I mean, it's a community theatre in Lima. This is the girl who would have led our glee club to a national championship if she'd been able to keep her need to discipline her sub in check until we'd finished the damn number. She could sing Happy Birthday and she'd get the part.” He tossed his bag on the table as he chattered, dropped a small stack of music books on the kitchen counter, then circled back around to stand in front of silent Blaine. “She still hasn't chosen a song. I have no idea what goes through her head.”

Then with no warning at all Kurt fell to his knees, wrapped a hand around Blaine's neck, and pulled him into a hard, deep kiss.

And despite the surprise, despite his need and his arousal, Blaine managed to hold himself perfectly still as Kurt's tongue plundered his mouth, managed to restrain the joy that filled his soul at finally, finally feeling those lips on his and tasting Kurt once again. And when Kurt pulled back, he resisted the overwhelming urge to chase those lips for more. Not this time. Not until he was released.

Kurt's blue eyes blazed and he flashed his most dazzling smile. The one that showed all his teeth. “Oh, very good,” he murmured. “Do you have anything to say to me before your punishment is over?”

Blaine knew exactly what he had to say. He smiled back, not as brightly as Kurt, not yet, but enough for Kurt to know how sincerely he meant it when he said, “Thank you.”

Surprise filled Kurt's eyes, surprise and something else that Blaine couldn't place. “What are you thanking me for?” he asked.

“All of this,” Blaine said, and this time words flowed freely because he'd had days to think about this, about what he would say to Kurt when the time came. “I've always thought of submission as being in reaction to something, if that makes sense. You order and I obey, I submit. All the books say that submission is a gift and I never really understood that before this week. You wouldn't let me do any of the things I thought of as submission. So I had to figure out what my submission meant. Not to you, but to me. I realized that it's a thing, all by itself. I don't submit because you dominate. I love it when you dominate. I live for it. It's everything to me. But I submit because that's me. And that doesn't change no matter what.” He smiled and shook his head. “I'm probably not explaining this very well.”

“You're explaining it perfectly,” Kurt said, his voice full of emotion. “And now your punishment is officially over. All restraints are lifted.”

He kissed Blaine again, and this time Blaine responded wholeheartedly, finally unfolding his cramped arms and wrapping them around Kurt's neck, clinging for dear life as Kurt climbed right into his lap and ground his growing erection against Blaine's. Two pairs of hands worked in tandem stripping Kurt of his clothes, although to be honest after Kurt's shirt was opened Blaine was too busy running his hands over his lover's soft, perfect skin to be much help with the rest. Kurt had to stand to get his shoes and pants off, and he pulled Blaine up with him, probably intending to get them to the bedroom but they only made it as far as the couch, falling over and onto it, Kurt giggling and Blaine moaning at the sensation of Kurt on top of him, Kurt's hard cock sliding over his own, the muscles of his ass bunching under Blaine's hands as they thrust together.

He didn't need Kurt's “Come for me, Blaine.” He would have happily, happily refrained. He was there to please Kurt. But if it pleased Kurt to let him come, well, Blaine was nothing if not obedient.

�

�

Much later, after Kurt finished freaking out that they'd both come on the couch, and had scrubbed the cushions within an inch of their lives and made Blaine promise that they'd call an upholstery cleaning service first thing in the morning, and after Blaine had a bit of a delayed reaction to the stress of the whole week and spend twenty minutes crying in Kurt's arms, and after they made and ate dinner and tried to watch television but kept drifting off, they finally cuddled in the big bed together, and Kurt was just as happy to have Blaine back as Blaine was to be there.

Blaine fell asleep immediately, he was snoring gently practically before his head hit the pillow. But Kurt lay awake, letting the tension of the week fall away. It had been terrible, watching Blaine battle. But every time it seemed to be too much, he remembered what Mira had told them in dom class about punishment. He had repeated her lectures to himself over and over during the whole awful week. It was one thing to know that what she said was right, but very much another to sit and watch the man he loved struggle with the punishment that he'd imposed. A dozen times he'd come so close to calling it off.

But now, lying here with Blaine sleeping peacefully in his arms, the only thing he could remember were the very last words Mira had said on the subject. “If you've done your work well,” she'd told them, “then when the punishment is over, your sub will thank you.”

He still wasn't sure he understood the epiphany that his punishment had given Blaine, but he didn't think it mattered. It was enough that it mattered to Blaine. Kurt was just very, very glad that it was over. He'd hated making Blaine unhappy.

That, and he'd really, really missed the blow jobs.