“Holy crap.”

Kurt's voice was low, pitched so only Blaine would hear him. Blaine was pretty sure Kurt must be as awed as he was, but he couldn't tear his eyes away from their surroundings to check.

“You can say that again,” he murmured back. His fingers tightened around Kurt's. He'd been in the New York Public Library dozens of times, but it had never looked like this before. Filled with tiny, twinkling lights that illuminated the vaulting ceiling, and reflected off the china and crystal and golden centerpieces on dozens of white-draped tables set for two. And then there were the men and women milling about in designer gowns and tuxedos, looking like something out of a movie. The beautiful people of Manhattan were definitely much more beautiful than the beautiful people of Ohio, Blaine thought, and he felt thoroughly out of place – a hobbit-sized bumpkin even in the Paolo DiPieta original tuxedo that had been loaned to him (after extensive alterations) for the evening.

A tug on his hand made him realize that they'd been standing smack in the middle of the entryway, blocking the flow of traffic. He followed Kurt into the shadows at the side of the golden carpet that marked an aisle through the center of Astor Hall, where they huddled together against the wall, still clinging to each other's hands.

Kurt looked awestruck, but he also looked like he belonged. He was just as beautiful as any of the models and starlets and fashion icons streaming past them into the hall. His PaoloDi tux – no alterations needed because it had been custom-made for him – clung to his body in ways that even his most amazing outfits never had. And nervous as Blaine could see he was, there was a glow about him too; at least part of him couldn't wait to move out into the room and take his part in the proceedings. And Blaine, overwhelmed as he was, felt like he might die of pride at any moment. If anyone deserved this, Kurt did.

“Are you ready for this?” Blaine asked, squeezing Kurt's hand and giving him what he hoped was a confident smile.

“Oh God yes.” Kurt didn't have to try to look confident. He just effortlessly was.

“Then we should probably go check out the food.” Blaine tossed his head in the direction of the buffet tables, where tall ornamental plants that probably cost more than their rent filled the spaces between silver dishes. “I have a feeling it's going to be exquisite.” He tried to mimic Paolo's accent and succeeded enough that Kurt giggled as he followed Blaine out into the room.

They didn't get five steps before they heard the real thing. “Kurt!” rang out in Paolo's distinctive tones, loudly enough that people in the vicinity craned their necks to see who the great designer was favoring with his attention. Blaine saw confusion flit across some of the beautiful faces. No one knew who Kurt was. Yet. That was very much about to change, Blaine was sure.

The designer floated toward them – Paolo seemed to float everywhere, Blaine had noticed – arms gracefully opening as he came. His hair was swept up at an impossible angle, his suit was breathtaking, and his smile was blindingly white and perfect. He had a date in tow but he had eyes only for Kurt, and he wrapped those long arms around Kurt's shoulders and dramatically pecked each cheek, then each again, four kisses, which Blaine certainly found excessive. So did the date, if the wry look he gave Blaine was any indication.

“Darling, you're incomparable,” Paolo gushed, holding Kurt by the shoulders and eyeing him up and down. “That suit never dreamed of being so beautiful. I gasped when I saw you come in. Ask Emilio. Did I not gasp?” He spared the briefest of glances for his date before returning all his attention to Kurt.

“I did hear a noise,” Emilio murmured in heavily accented English. He stared at the floor and fiddled with the brown cuff on his right wrist.

“You were too kind, Paolo,” Kurt said. “The suits are amazing.” He waved a hand to indicate himself and Blaine.

“Ah, yes. And here we have . . .”

“Blaine,” Kurt supplied, quick, smooth, anyone else might hardly have noticed that Paolo, despite having met Blaine several times, had no idea what his name was.

“Of course! Blaine my darling.”

The arms opened in Blaine's direction then and the kisses were repeated. However Blaine, expecting four, apparently only merited two, and so was left with his neck sticking out like a chicken's when Paolo pulled away. Emilio smirked, and Blaine quickly renounced the empathy he'd started to feel for the other submissive.

“I have to admit that even I was wrong. I was quite sure shortening those trousers would completely ruin the lines. But you have pulled it off.” Paolo sounded exceptionally grudging with the praise, but that could have been Blaine's biased imagination.

“Blaine looks beautiful in anything,” Kurt said, smiling at Blaine, who couldn't help smiling back.

“Or nothing, eh?” Paolo winked at Kurt, who blushed.

Blaine's smile faded. He'd never liked the designer, but he tolerated him because of everything he'd done for Kurt. But this was too much. Kurt blushed for Blaine, and only Blaine.

A small crowd began to gather around them. People hovered, each assuming him or herself more important than this unknown boy Paolo was talking to; each eager to be the next recipient of the guest of honor's attention, or perhaps even the means of his rescue. But Paolo seemed oblivious, still looking at Kurt like he'd like to eat him alive, even though they were both doms.

“I cannot wait for you to see the pictures,” Paolo said, moving closer to Kurt, creating a sense of intimate space between them. “You are going to be the sensation of New York City. This time tomorrow everyone will be desperate to know who this mysterious dominant is.”

Kurt must have been able to sense the stress Blaine was sure was radiating off him, because he shifted to the side a tiny bit, away from Paolo. Closer to Blaine.

The move pulled the designer's attention once again toward Blaine. “You may not even recognize him,” he said with a raised eyebrow.

“Oh, I doubt that,” Blaine responded, forcing his voice to say light.

Fortunately, one of the hoverers, a statuesque woman in a plunging ice blue gown that left almost nothing to the imagination, chose that moment to approach and whisper in Paolo's ear.

“Ah!” He ignored the whisperer and smiled at Kurt again. “I must go. It is time to introduce you to the world.” A waiter passed and with the speed of a snake Paolo snatched two champagne glasses from his tray. He handed one of them to Kurt. “Here. To toast yourself.” Then he turned and was gone, taking the second glass for himself, ignoring both Blaine and Emilio, who turned and trailed after him as if he was leashed.

“Champagne?” Kurt held his glass out to Blaine, smiling that lopsided smile that he knew always mollified Blaine when he was upset.

Blaine smiled back and he made damn sure his smile was genuine. This was Kurt's night and Blaine wasn't going to let anything – anything – mar the triumph of it. He snagged his own glass of champagne from another circulating white-jacketed waiter. “Let's find a table,” he said. “I think I need to be sitting down for this.”

Kurt nodded and led the way to one of the beautifully appointed tables. Blaine could see heads still turning as they went, watching, wondering. As soon as they were seated another waiter appeared at Kurt's elbow with a tray of canap�s that looked as designer as the clothes everyone was wearing. They filled their plates, but didn't have time to so much as take a bite before Paolo's voice was ringing out from the stage set up at one end of the hall.

“If I could have everyone's attention, please, everyone.”

Blaine wondered if Paolo's Italian accent was actually stronger now than it had been before, when it was just them, or if he was just uncharitably remembering wrong.

Under the table Kurt's hand reached for Blaine's and held tight.

Around them the din of chatter died as people found seats and eagerly turned toward the front of the hall, where twin spotlights illuminated the designer, smiling his European smile as he surveyed the crowd.

Paolo held the silence with the timing of a true professional. He waited until the hush was complete before leaning into the microphone again. “When it was suggested to me that I should consider designing a slightly more ready-to-wear line –” he made a face and whispered ready-to-wear, as if it was something vulgar, the mere uttering of the phrase a social faux pas, “ – I was, resistant, to say the least.”

Titters of laughter skated around the room, knowing, condescending. Blaine wondered what the reaction would be if anyone knew he was wearing socks from Target.

“How could I even begin? I am couture. The man who wears PaoloDi, I know that man. Who would this other man, this casual man, be? I sketched and I draped but I was uninspired. I did not think I could do it.”

“This is all sounding very backhanded,” Blaine whispered to Kurt.

“Shhh. Wait.”

“But then, in a stroke of lightning, out of your blue, I found him. The Pieta man. And I realized, after a while, as I talked to him, that he and the PaoloDi man are one in the same. He's younger, he's not quite at the stage in life that the PaoloDi man has reached, but he sees it waiting for him. He wants it and he knows he deserves it. He will become the PaoloDi man, but for now he is Pieta. When I found that man I found my muse. So of course I made him the official face of Pieta. Stand up Kurt!”

It was so unexpected; it surprised Blaine when spotlights began to search the crowd trying to pinpoint their location. But Kurt seemed unfazed. There were no blushes now. He stood up slowly, waiting until one of the spots found him, then blew a kiss in Paolo's direction while applause smattered around them, as if he'd been doing things like this all his life. Blaine supposed he had, in his imagination at least, but still it was amazing to watch. He held the moment just the exact perfect length of time, not a second too long, then sat back down and, as if he'd explicitly dismissed them, lights and heads turned back toward Paolo at the other end of the room.

“He's exquisite, as you all can see. I think Christopher took three times as long to shoot him as was necessary, and I'm sure every submissive in the room will understand why, once you see the campaign. And so, for the very first time, I give you all, Pieta.”

The spots went out, leaving the room to the twinkle lights climbing the arches and the candles flickering on the tables. Music began to play, something classical that Blaine should be able to place, but he was too nervous on Kurt's behalf to give his attention to it. Then suddenly four images seemed to appear in thin air, two on each side of the stage Paolo still occupied.

Blaine wasn't sure if other people gasped or if it was just his own, too loud, echoing in his ears. Kurt's hand was real though, of that he was sure, clutching Blaine's tighter than he could remember it ever having clutched.

Four Kurts floated in front of them, four iterations of the most breathtaking images of dominance personified that Blaine had ever seen. He was just modeling – standing at the rail of a balcony, sitting in a chair, turning his face into the sunlight – but Paolo had been so, so wrong about Blaine not recognizing him. On the contrary. Until this moment Blaine would have sworn that he was the only person in the world who had ever seen this Kurt. Blaine squirmed with preemptive humiliation as his body instinctively responded even as his heart sank a little. Whether or not there had been gasps before, there were murmurs now, a swelling undercurrent of whispering as people took in the images.

And then they began to switch, flashing on and off, picture after picture in a slideshow of Blaine's life, his very, very private life, Kurt after Kurt after Kurt flaring into existence then disappearing to be replaced by another. Clothes, there were clothes, the clothes were the whole point, but Blaine couldn't see them, couldn't see beyond Kurt's eyes. They were the eyes that haunted his most intense, private, desperate moments, the eyes of his lover and his dominant and his master, there on the screens reflected, burned, public forever.

“Oh my God, look at me. I look so . . . powerful,” Kurt breathed and Blaine tore his eyes away to stare at the real thing. He watched Kurt watch himself; he watched Kurt's shoulders straighten and his lips curve from the self-conscious lopsided smile into something new, something conscious. A new awareness.

“That's how you look to me every day,” Blaine said back, because he wasn't going to do anything to ruin this for Kurt, no matter how exposed he suddenly felt.

Kurt didn't look away from the images flashing on the screens to the building strains of the music, but his other hand joined the first, sandwiching Blaine's between them and holding tight.

The show seemed to go on forever, image after image of this Kurt he knew so well but didn't know at all, Kurt in suits, Kurt in t-shirts, Kurt formal and casual and everything in between, and occasionally the room would burst into applause, whether for a particular outfit or an image itself Blaine had no idea. As the music rose a crescendo the images slowed, until all four stopped on the same shot, Kurt on a balcony with his back to the camera, looking over his shoulder and down, black jacket stretched across his shoulders, white shirt peeking out at cuffs and collar, waiting. Waiting to be obeyed, Blaine knew, because he'd been on the receiving end of that look many, many times.

Then the image began to fade, Pieta Kurt drifting away like a ghost at dawn, and the room burst into applause. A woman Blaine didn't know appeared at the microphone. “Pieta, ladies and gentlemen!” she announced, waving a hand to the side of the stage where Paolo was already surrounded by the faithful, accepting congratulations.

Kurt dropped Blaine's hand so he could clap too and Blaine joined in, after all, this was Kurt's big debut as well. But he stopped before Kurt did and slipped an arm around Kurt's waist to pull him close. Kurt's eyes were shining; he was overwhelmed, Blaine could see. Shell-shocked almost.

“You're amazing. Those were amazing. You're going to be a star. Not that I ever doubted it.”

Kurt fell into Blaine's arms and Blaine held him tight. “That was me,” Kurt whispered against Blaine's ear.

“I know.” Blaine held on until Kurt's arms loosened then he set him free right away.

“I don't think my brain's working right. I can't feel my feet.”

Blaine laughed, and that seemed to be the right thing because Kurt did the same, and laughing seemed to help him breathe and breathing seemed to help him think.

“Excuse me?”

They both turned to find a tall, willowy red-haired woman in a gold one-shouldered gown holding out a hand to Kurt.

“It's Kurt, right? I'm Monica Cleaver, from Metropolitan Models. Those were amazing photos . . .”

“Kurt, Josh Davidson, with Out in Soho. Congratulations, you really . . .”

Emboldened by the first two, a whole crowd of beautiful people began to flock to Kurt, offering hands and cards and words that sort of blurred into a jumble of incoherence before they reached Blaine's ears. He may have looked stunned at first, but Kurt was quick to recover and soon was holding court in the center of a group like he'd been doing it all his life. Like he deserved all the attention. Which he did, Blaine reminded himself.

Blaine dropped back into his chair and took a long swig from his champagne glass. The bubbles tickled his nose, but that made him feel better so he took a second.

He knew he was being petty, and he resolved to keep his pettiness to himself. This night was the culmination of months of hard work on Kurt's part. Ever since Paolo had “discovered” him, sitting in their bookstore caf� on a Saturday morning three months ago, Kurt had been working almost around the clock. When he wasn't at NYADA, or studying, he was in fittings and meetings for the campaign, and of course the photo shoots. He'd barely had a moment to call his own, but he'd thrived on it. This was the life Kurt Hummel had dreamed of.

Blaine had been less content, but he knew that it was selfish of him. He could live with less of Kurt's attention. This was going to change their lives, for the better, and once the campaign was over, he told himself, they'd have time for each other again. It was a small sacrifice to make, for something that made Kurt so happy.

He just hadn't been prepared for the pictures. He tried to reason with himself. Obviously the photographer had asked Kurt to look dominant and Kurt had done that, never thinking that he would be sharing with the world something that up to now had been theirs alone. And Blaine knew at least some of the details of the campaign. By this time tomorrow Kurt's face and body would be all over Manhattan, and every gay sub in the city (and some of the straight women too, he supposed) would be imagining themselves on the receiving end of what belonged only to Blaine. He should have known, of course. He wasn't an idiot. But the implications of it hadn't occurred to him until he saw the photos. They made him feel both painfully exposed and at the same time invisible, as if now there was a whole narrative about Kurt in the world that didn't include him.

He dragged his attention back to the room only to realize that Kurt had disappeared. He almost panicked, but even as he was talking himself down two arms slipped around his neck from behind and Kurt's voice whispered in his ear. “Come dance with me.”

He drained his champagne and allowed himself to be led to the open area where couples were beginning to move along with the strains of standards the band was pumping out. Kurt held him close and Blaine buried his nose against Kurt's neck and breathed in the warm scent of skin and light cologne. This was his happy place, he reminded himself. And it would always be his. It didn't matter how many pictures Kurt took or how many magazines he graced. Blaine's place in his life was unique and eternal.

�

*� *� *

The first week was surprisingly normal. Or as normal as you could call daily deliveries of flowers and congratulatory messages, and taking your boyfriend to Times Square to stare up at his image, twenty time life size, floating high above the traffic. Kurt had clung to Blaine in the cold, tears freezing on his cheeks, and Blaine had cried too, his misgivings banished as he watched Kurt take it in. But no one recognized Kurt, bundled up as he was, and they made their way home to their dinner of chicken alfredo and saut�ed broccoli just as if Kurt wasn't the new face of Pieta at all.

No one brought it up to Blaine at school. He'd only mentioned it to his closest friends, and they must have all understood that he didn't want to make a big deal out of it. If Kurt's friends were talking about it, Kurt didn't tell him. By the weekend Blaine was starting to feel optimistic that the biggest change this might wreak on their lives would be the discussion they were currently having about whether to look for a bigger apartment now or wait until a second campaign padded their savings account even more.

But fate tends to kick you in the teeth just when you stop watching out for it – Blaine knew that from experience and he should never have let himself forget.

“Oh my God, there he is again. I would get on my knees for him so fast.”

He was on the train heading home on Monday afternoon. It was early, so the car wasn't crammed with people. It was just full enough that Blaine could take a peek at the girl who'd spoken, teenage submissive on the other side of the car, and a few seats over. She was staring at something on the wall opposite her.

“What are you talking about?” The boy next to her, also young, also cuffed on the right, dressed in a devastatingly stylish double-breasted jacket, looked up from his phone long enough to raise an eyebrow at her in a move that echoed Kurt so well it made Blaine smile.

The girl nodded her head in the direction she'd been looking. “That ad. I keep seeing it everywhere. That boy could beat my ass any day.” The wistful sound in her voice made Blaine smile even wider, remembering his own teenage days and his carefully guarded horde of Celebrity Dom magazines.

“Oh, honey, it's so cute that you think he'd have any interest in your ass.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

The boy leaned back a little and stretched his feet out into the aisle, staring at whatever had grabbed their attention. “That boy is as queer as . . . well, as me.”

Now Blaine was really intrigued. They hadn't noticed him listening, so he turned a little to check out the object of their interest.

He should have known, of course. If he'd just been thinking a little it might not have hit him as hard as he did when he found himself looking at Kurt. It was the balcony picture; the most iconic image from the campaign. The one that was currently presiding over Times Square in inhuman size. Kurt with his back turned, looking over his shoulder as if captured in the moment a beautiful submissive caught his attention. Kurt looking like he was on the verge of turning and uttering a command to some very lucky individual. Blaine's stomach twisted.

Across from him, the conversation had gone on without him.

“- because my gaydar is flawless. He,” the boy nodded again toward Kurt's picture, authoritatively, like he knew these things beyond a shadow of a doubt, “likes to torture cock. I'd bet my life on it. And I bet he knows how to make a boy scream.”

There was something so knowing, so suggestive in his tone that Blaine's stomach turned.

“Yeah, he's definitely gay.” A new voice entered the fray, another boy, this one from Blaine's side of the car, across the aisle from the other two teens. Other passengers blocked Blaine's view of him, but he could hear him just as well as he could the others.

The girl reached out a foot and kicked the boy across from her. “What if he's bi, huh? Did you consider that? Or are you erasing entire orientations now, just because he makes your dick hard?”

The first boy, the one Blaine could see, went back to staring at his phone. “Accept it. That one is ours. There are millions of straight boys out there for you to lust after. Leave me my share of dicks to imagine sucking.”

“He's not bi.” The boy across the aisle again, with a tone of finality.

“What? How do you know?” the girl asked.

“Wikipedia,” came the answer.

The first boy perked up again and reached out to the second. “Let me see that.” He dropped his own phone in his lap as the other was handed over. His finger pushed at the screen.

Blaine's brain felt scrambled. Kurt had a Wikipedia page? How was that even possible?

“Ha!” the boy looked up long enough to stick his tongue out at the girl then turned back to the screen. “Kurt Hummel.” Kurt's name on his lips only fed the revulsion in Blaine's belly. “Definitely gay. Eighteen. Dear God he's only eighteen and he already makes me want to crawl for him.”

“You're only seventeen,” the hidden boy pointed out.

The girl took advantage of the distraction to snatch the phone from the boy's hand.

“It's just not what you expect,” the first boy went on. “I mean, he looks like he could tear you apart without breaking a sweat.” He shivered, Blaine could see it from where he sat.

“Maybe he's photoshopped.”

“Are you insane? You can't photoshop a look like that. I can almost hear him telling me to strip. Oh, God, can you imagine? Him walking around in that suit while you're naked at his feet? Just kill me now.”

Blaine realized he was trembling. It was wrong, so wrong, and part of him wanted to smack all three of them but he was afraid if he tried to move he'd throw up.

The girl dug her elbow into her seatmate. “Down boy. He's taken.”

“Please. Whatever schoolboy romance he dragged with him to New York will be over as soon as he figures out . . .”

“No, taken taken. As in soulmate bonded.”

Blaine stopped breathing.

“No!” the boy cried with all the anguish of a tragic heroine.

“And . . . oh my God!”

“What?”

“He's old!”

“You said he was eighteen.”

“No, the soulmate. He's like thirty.”

The subway car began to blur in front of Blaine's eyes and he wondered, almost casually, if his body would unlock and let him breathe before or after he passed out.

“What?! Give me that . . .” The first boy, standing out in weird sharp relief against the darkening car, took the phone back from the girl. He scanned in silence for a while, while the girl tossed a devilish smile in the direction of the boy across from her. “Blaine Anderson. Twenty-nine.” The boy flopped dramatically back in his seat, his hand with the phone dropping to his side. Blaine wondered if he really could see his own face looking out of the screen, or if hypoxia was already making him hallucinate.

“This is tragic,” the boy moaned. “Tragic. All that potential wasted on some fossil who'll probably have arthritis before . . .”

A hand from across the aisle took the phone back. “He's twenty-nine. That's not exactly fossilized yet, you know.”

The girl giggled.

Blaine realized that he was still conscious, so he must be breathing somehow. He was pretty sure if he wasn't he'd have hit the floor by now.

“Still, a dom like that? It's such a fucking shame. He deserves every advantage that youth and vigor can provide.”

“Your youth and vigor?” the other boy asked. “Give me a break. You can barely run around the block.”

“I would for him. God, you're right. I'd crawl for him. Can't you just hear him? ‘On your knees boy. Suck my cock boy.' Mmmm. Yes, master.”

Sudden pain drew Blaine's attention to the fact that his fists were clenched so hard his fingers were beginning to cramp. He forced them open, forced his eyes away from the teenagers and tried to close his ears but their voices rang clear above the other din in the car.

“Well now I know what to get you for your birthday. I'll pull the ad from In Style and get it framed. You can hide it under your bed and jerk off to it.”

Their faces swam in front of him even as he stared at the dirty floor of the train, so young, so beautiful, at least the two he could see. It was much too easy to imagine the boys at least – and the one he couldn't see was even more perfect in his imagination than the one he could – kneeling for Kurt, strong and young, fresh and unused, learning together . . .

“Honey, you are my new best friend. I would jerk off to that so hard.”

. . . and he knew they weren't soulmates but what if there was something more, something they could give Kurt that Blaine couldn't, or even just the difference, a piquant spice, a flavor that Blaine couldn't bring because he'd experienced so much, because he needed so much, he'd waited so long and of course he clung and begged and always asked for more but these boys, they could meet Kurt as equals, they didn't have Blaine's years of desperation fueling them . . . .

They were all laughing now, at something witty the girl had said, then mercifully Blaine heard his stop called over the loudspeaker. He jumped to his feet, too fast, his heavy bag fell to the floor and heads turned in his direction as he scrambled to pick it up. The teens looked along with everyone else and as he stood Blaine's eyes met those of the pretty young man, only briefly, he turned and fled up the car to the doors at the other end, putting the nightmare train ride behind him at last.

Or so he thought. But the faces, the voices, the boy's breathy yes, master followed him up the stairs and out onto the street, and Blaine was still shaking, even worse than before, by the time he reached their building. The tiny, rickety elevator didn't help at all. It made him nervous under the best circumstances so he was practically panicking by the time he managed to get their door unlocked.

The apartment was empty and he knew, he knew that it was probably just a class running long but Blaine was in full freak-out mode now and all he could think was that Kurt was being mobbed somewhere, signing autographs, beautiful young submissives kneeling for selfies. He dropped his bag by the door and grabbed the back of the couch, leaning into its support, counting as he breathed to try to find some measure of control. But counting wasn't enough. He was half naked before he was even aware of making a decision to strip, and he dropped his clothes on the couch and fell to his knees, facing the door, just inside, pulling his arms tight behind him in formal position.

But for once even that wasn't enough. He needed more, further abasement, so he fell forward until he was prostrate, his arms still crossed behind his back, his forehead on the floor. It was better. The earthy smell of the old wood floorboards filled his nose and helped to ground him. This was what he deserved, face down on the floor crawling at Kurt's feet. Kurt would come home and Blaine would beg his forgiveness. He didn't know exactly what he needed to be forgiven for, he just knew that something very dark and ugly was taking over his insides, eating away slowly at his guts, and he needed it gone but he had no idea how to banish it.

Kurt would know. Kurt had to know.

He wasn't sure how long he waited. Long enough that linear thought gave way to pure anxiety. Long enough this his trembling became shuddering. Long enough that his throat closed tight around tears he desperately didn't want to shed. Long enough that when Kurt finally opened the door he slammed it fast with an “Oh my God, Blaine!” and was on his knees in an instant, hands running over Blaine's shaking body.

Kurt's hands usually made it better, but this time Blaine just trembled harder.

“What happened?! Look at me, Blaine.”

He heard the panic in Kurt's voice but he couldn't raise his head; he was afraid to. The dark think in his belly wasn't shrinking in Kurt's presence, no, it was growing. He pushed himself down instead of raising himself up, pressed his forehead harder into the floor, and groveled, as low as he could get without sinking through to the apartment below them.

Kurt's hands slowed. One tightened in Blaine's hair and squeezed, gentle still, but firm. “Blaine,” he said, commanding, but with fear in his voice as well, “sit up and tell me what's going on.”

He couldn't. Or he didn't want to. Blaine wasn't sure why he was doing anything at this point, he felt full of fear and anger and he disobeyed because . . . because he needed.

Kurt's hands disappeared; his body moved away. Blaine could hear his boot heels clicking on the floor as he circled Blaine's prostrate form. Slowly. Thinking. As frightened and lost as he was, maybe because he was so frightened and lost, Blaine still could feel their connection and he could see, as if he was inside Kurt's body, how he must look cringing at Kurt's feet as Kurt tried to assess the situation.

Eventually Kurt lowered himself again to the floor by Blaine's head, and a warm, gentle hand cupped Blaine's cheek. “I want to help you,” Kurt said quietly, the way you'd talk to a terrified animal, “but I need you to look at me first.”

Kurt's hand pulled in gentle encouragement, and Blaine raised his head just enough to focus on Kurt's knees, covered in fabric printed with a geometric pattern that seemed to spin as he stared at it.

“Are you hurt? Did anybody . . .”

Blaine shook his head without speaking.

“Are you in some kind of trouble that we need to deal with?”

Again, he shook his head.

“Look at me Blaine. Look in my eyes.”

He had to arch his back painfully but he pulled his head higher and finally found Kurt's blue eyes, full of concern.

“Do you promise me you'll safeword?”

Blaine held his gaze without speaking, because he couldn't remember his safewords. But he nodded anyway.

“No. I need your voice. Tell me.”

“I promise.” He had to force it out, so quietly he could barely hear himself.

“What are the safewords Blaine?” Kurt insisted.

Frantically he searched his brain, until they came to him in a flash of recognition. “Decrescendo. Caesura.”

Kurt pressed his lips together and nodded, and his thumb made one sweep over Blaine's cheekbone before he let go, letting Blaine's head fall back to the floor.

Blaine felt him stand, and back away; he kept himself pressed down there by the door, still trembling, but already he felt safer with Kurt there. Fear was starting to resemble anticipation as Kurt moved around the room. Blaine heard the closet door open and close, and water run in the kitchen. Then something slammed like a pronouncement of judgment and Blaine flinched away from the sound. Kurt's voice came from behind him, different, loud, angry.

“I don't know what you've done that makes you think disobeying my direct order is even close to acceptable, boy, but trust me, you're going to regret it. Get your ass in that bedroom so we can get to the bottom of this.”

It was like Kurt and yet not like him; it sent a thrill through Blaine's body that he didn't even try to identify. Instead he unfolded his cramped arms and pushed himself up from the floor.

Something pressed between his shoulder blades – Kurt's shoe he realized when he felt the heel – and pushed, carefully but implacably, forcing him back to the floor.

“Oh no. Disobedient sluts crawl.”

The air rushed out of Blaine's lungs and tears filled his eyes but they were tears of relief, of gratitude, clean feelings that rushed through his body in waves, not quite cleansing the rotten thing that was eating at him, but challenging it, offering hope. He waited until Kurt's boot lifted then he slithered on elbows and knees, he was sure he must look ridiculous but he didn't care, even as the rough floorboards chafed his skin. He was lower than low and thank God Kurt knew it, Kurt knew exactly what he deserved, and his cock began to harden even as it found every bump and crack in the uneven floor with painful thoroughness.

He stopped just inside the bedroom door and pulled his knees under him again, but kept his face pressed to the floor, pulling himself as small and tight as he could. Kurt swept past him, so regally that Blaine was sure he felt a breeze as he went, and pulled open their drawer, the one with their growing collection of toys. Blaine kept his face down through clinks and clanks, holding onto that tiny seed of hope that the word “slut” had planted in his head. Kurt had never spoken to him that way. Never. And it was just possible that Kurt knew exactly what Blaine needed, even when Blaine himself had no clue.

“Up on your knees.”

Blaine obeyed immediately. Kurt was right in front of him, and he knelt down to Blaine's level yet again, but this time his eyes were hard, distant and cold. Without a word he pulled Blaine's arms to the front of his body and stripped him of his cuff. The bondage cuffs went on instead, and were clipped together, then attached to the rope that hung from their pulley in the ceiling.

“Get up,” Kurt said, getting up himself. He moved fast; he was tugging on the rope before Blaine could even manage to climb to his feet. So Blaine was half hauled upward as the rope shortened; he got his feet under him but Kurt kept pulling, dragging him onto the balls of his feet and higher, until his toes just brushed the floor and he was, for all intents and purposes, hanging from the ceiling, stretched farther than he ever had been before. His nipples pulled tight and thrust forward from tense muscles and his cock bounced like it was having the time of its life.

Kurt paid no attention at all. He secured the end of the rope around the cleat on the wall and went back to the toy drawer. He came back with a handful of items that all meant one thing. Pain.

Blaine had to fight to keep his breath under control as Kurt expertly tied off his balls, separating them with a tight wrap that made them ache. The parachute came next, the studded one, of course, and Blaine moaned as Kurt snapped it tight around his already painful scrotum. Its chain hung down, unweighted, at least as of yet, but still the studs pricked his tightly tied skin and Blaine shuddered at the thought of what weight would do to it.

Kurt went once more to the drawer to retrieve an item and when he turned back Blaine moaned again, even though he hadn't been touched at all. In his long-fingered pale hands Kurt held their most recent investment. The tawse was black, a short, brutal leather implement, halfway between a whip and a paddle, and Blaine knew from experience that it hurt more than either. The thrill of fear just the sight of it sent through his body made his cock spurt precome, but Kurt ignored that entirely. Instead he pulled the armchair from the corner of the room so that it faced where Blaine hung and sat down, crossing his legs, the picture of elegance. He laid the tawse across his lap and stroked it with one threatening finger.

“Now,” he said casually, as if they were about to discuss their day, “let's try this again. What happened?”

Kurt's words brought back the memories and the ugly feeling grew again, inside Blaine. He stared at the tawse and didn't speak. He wanted it – so badly. But once more Kurt was ahead of him.

“Oh, you're going to get this. You've already disobeyed me twice. Once by not answering my question and once by kneeling out of position with no cushion. I would suggest you think carefully about how much punishment you're ready to take.”

Blaine looked up from the tawse and into Kurt's eyes instead. They were still cold and distant, but powerful. He looked so completely in control, sitting there in the chintz armchair, as fully dominant as he had in the picture . . .

“On the train,” Blaine breathed.

Kurt raised an eyebrow.

“I was on the train. They were there, looking at your picture. Talking about you.”

As if Blaine's admission was some kind of signal, Kurt got up and came closer, holding Blaine's gaze. “You saw someone on the train?” he said.

Just the words seemed to make it more real, and the ugly feeling gnawed deeper, twisting Blaine's guts, stretched as they were. “They were so young,” he whispered, “they were so pretty. They said you deserved someone like them, not me. And I tried but I couldn't . . .” Blaine didn't even know how to explain it, it sounded ridiculous, silly, just some teenagers sighing over a man in a picture, he was so stupid to have let it destroy him the way it had but the rotten pain would not let him go just because it was stupid. He was afraid if he tried to say any more he would vomit, despite the way the stretching pressure helped contain him. He pressed his lips together and implored Kurt with his eyes to understand.

Kurt stayed close, so close that if Blaine had been able to get good purchase with his toes he could have pushed their bodies together. But as it was his own strained after Kurt's futilely.

“So you saw some people on the train who were looking at my picture.”

Blaine nodded.

“And they were young. Like me?”

Tears sprang to Blaine's eyes and he nodded again.

“And they knew about you, somehow.”

“Wikipedia,” Blaine whispered. “They said I was too old. That you deserved better.”

Kurt's eyebrows climbed his forehead. “And you somehow decided they were right?”

A few of the tears overflowed; they tickled as the rolled down his cheeks. Blaine turned his face into his upper arms to wipe them away.

“So that's a third thing you need to be punished for, isn't it? Imagining you're not good enough for me.”

Again, Blaine nodded.

“Is there anything else I need to know?”

Blaine stared into Kurt's eyes for a long time before he answered. “I imagined them with you. Submitting to you.”

Kurt's chin lifted, and his eyes narrowed. “How many of them were there?” he asked.

“Three.”

“And you imagined me with all of them?”

“Not the girl.”

“Well, it's good to know there are some limits even you won't cross in your attempt to debase yourself. And me.”

The words were sharp, sharper than any Kurt had ever spoken to him, but Blaine welcomed them. He longed for more. Kurt's anger was the only thing that seemed to be able to push back the self-loathing Blaine felt.

“And that's it. That's what all this is about. You saw some kids on the train and decided I should be with them, not you.”

“They kept talking . . .”

“That's enough.” Kurt's voice was sharp. He turned his back on Blaine again, to rummage in the toy drawer, and Blaine was sure he saw Kurt's shoulders twitch. He had the sudden suspicion he was being laughed at. But when Kurt turned back again his in-charge face was firmly in place and Blaine was too busy cringing to worry about anything else.

Kurt held two weights with little hooks attached to them; hooks for suspending them from things, like the chain hanging off the ball parachute. Blaine had never taken two before. Kurt held them up in front of Blaine's face.

“One for each boy,” he said, then he bent and hooked both around the chain, letting them drop.

Blaine cried out; it felt like a cinderblock had been dropped from his balls, the parachute stretched them down, spikes digging mercilessly into tender flesh, and more tears fell, inspired by pain this time. Kurt stood and watched, unmoved by Blaine's suffering.

“Now, I think five strokes for each infraction,” Kurt said, “The pillow, the disobedience, imagining you weren't good enough, and then the boys on the train.”

Twenty. Blaine shuddered and let his head fall forward. Twenty was going to hurt like hell, but he craved the pain. Clouds were already starting to build up in his brain, because of his balls and the painful stretch of his arms, and he wanted more, he wanted them to swell into the deep and blanketing fog that was often the only thing that could protect him from his own thoughts.

“Five for each boy you imagined would be better for me than you. So, twenty-five. And you'll take them with the weights on.”

He gasped then, and stared at Kurt in disbelief.

Kurt grabbed his jaw with strong fingers, the first time he'd touched Blaine since stringing him up. “You deserve more than that. So I think you should thank me for being so lenient.” He stared a challenge.

“Thank you,” Blaine breathed.

“You're welcome, boy.”

Kurt's hand released his jaw and slid downward, stroking Blaine's neck, pressing flat over his heart. His thumb rubbed at the nipple there until Blaine whimpered with the warm friction of it, then he slipped around behind Blaine, trailing his hand across the skin and muscles stretched over his ribs.

“Get ready,” he whispered hot in Blaine's ear. “This is going to hurt.”

Blaine's cock jumped, which rattled the parachute, sending pain cutting through his balls. Except then the first stroke of the tawse fell and Blaine's entire concept of pain was changed irrevocably.

Kurt didn't hold back. This was punishment and he treated it as such, swinging hard from the very first, giving Blaine no build-up. The leather lashed hot fire and rocked him forward, sending the weights hanging from his balls swinging wildly, an agony of stretch and pull. He shouted with each stroke, was crying by the fourth. Kurt's arm rose and fell with deadly precision, each stroke hitting virgin flesh, the sharp sting of each lash forced the air out of his lungs and seemed to burn him from inside. He longed for a gag, something to bite, to hold on, but Kurt had granted him no such help. He turned his face into his upraised arm, trying to anchor himself even as his feel lost their tenuous grip on the floor and he swung freely. He keened with the pain as his balls swung past their weights and back again, until Kurt's arm wrapped around his waist and held him still under the blows. The tawse seemed to fall forever and yet Blaine was surprised when it stopped suddenly.

He struggled for breath, gasping in lungsful of air while he could. His ass throbbed three times its normal size and his balls were screaming for relief. But his cock, of course his cock was standing proud, thrusting itself out, begging for attention, dripping tiny rivulets of slick fluid.

Lips pressed his ear again. “That was the first twelve,” Kurt whispered, “I've run out of new places to hit so these are going to be worse.”

Blaine sobbed at the thought of it, and pushed his head back against Kurt, whether in supplication or in thanks he had no idea anymore. Kurt's fingers stroked over the flesh of his ass and the intensity of it made Blaine moan. He couldn't take thirteen more. Not from the tawse. Maybe the paddle, but this was too much to bear. The safeword swam through the haze in his brain and hovered on his lips – he knew Kurt would respect it, Kurt had demanded that he use it if he needed to. But at the same time, he realized as Kurt's fingers slid up his chest to pinch at his taut nipples, the ugly thing that had been eating away at his insides since the train was starting to shrink, like it couldn't survive the fire that was sweeping through his body.

“Please,” he begged.

“Please what?” Kurt barely sounded winded, which only made it better.

“More.”

The next stroke was immediate, followed by another, and another. Blaine couldn't even cry out – his throat tightened around his breath and he was reduced to desperate grunting as the lashes fell, tears still pouring down his cheeks. But the fog was filling his head and the fire was burning him clean, expiating all his sins, and he arched his back and offered his ass for more, welcoming the lash, meeting it with surges of agony and unbearable pleasure. The heat of it loosened him, opened him and he could feel the pain in his balls start to shape-shift into the first tendrils of orgasm, clawing its way through the most sensitive parts of his body, powered by the heavy sting of the tawse in Kurt's perfect hands. It grew and built, it could peak, dear God, he could come from this, he would come from this if only Kurt would go on forever.

So of course Kurt stopped.

As the sound of the last slap receded Blaine realize he was babbling a hoarse litany of please and more and Kurt.

“That was twenty-five. And if I hit you any more I'm afraid you'll come.”

“Please,” was all Blaine could say. “Kurt.”

“Do you deserve to come?”

The clouds were heavy in his head, thunderstorm dark, so it took Blaine longer than it should have to decide that he didn't. He shook his head, but Kurt had already moved away. He heard a sound, something that should have been familiar but wasn't, and then he was falling. No, not really falling, but moving; Kurt was lowering him carefully to the ground.

“Get on your knees,” Kurt ordered, as if Blaine had any choice. His legs weren't going to support him. But he managed to fold them under himself as he descended to the floor. The weights touched down first, sending instant and overwhelming relief through his balls. It was so intense that he might have passed out from it if not for the throbbing pain in his ass keeping him in the here and now.

Kurt lowered him just enough to be kneeling upright, then tied off the rope again. Blaine was still hanging from the ceiling, just lower now. He hovered there, not trying to think at all, just breathing, feeling, being, until Kurt's hand gripped his jaw again and Kurt's cock pushed hard against his lips. He opened his mouth eagerly, as wide as he could manage and Kurt pushed in without preamble, rough and fast deep into Blaine's throat on the first thrust. Blaine gagged, but he leaned in anyhow, desperate to take every centimeter, longing for it. The taste was ambrosia to him, he needed it more than he even needed punishment, this evidence of how much Kurt wanted him; that in his suffering he gave as well as took. His pain, and Kurt's pleasure in his pain, bound them, like binary stars holding each other in eternal embrace.

Hard and fast, Kurt fucked his mouth, driving toward the orgasm that Blaine swore he could feel as well. Blaine was both mouth and cock, it was strange and blissful and he wondered if it was possible to be high on pain because when Kurt came, and filled his mouth with the sharp flavor that was only ever Kurt, he swore he could see himself, kneeling, taking it, he swore he felt the slamming rush of orgasm ripping through him, he swore he felt Kurt's own fierce pride in his submission, but when Kurt's hips finally stilled and Blaine slipped back into only his own body, his cock was still hard and unsatisfied and the only liquid dripping from his body were tears. Still more tears. He was amazed he hadn't run out.

Kurt pulled out without a word but Blaine didn't need words anymore. He felt the tug on the rope again, lifting him from his knees, and moaned as his balls took the brunt of the weights once more. He was left more firmly on his feet this time, but his legs were so wobbly that his arms still bore most of his weight. He didn't have the strength to lift his head; it hung forward between his upraised arms. At least, it did until Kurt's fingers tangled hard in his hair and lifted. He groaned against this new pain, but he welcomed it as well. Anything. He would take anything Kurt wanted to give.

Kurt had to duck down a little to put himself in Blaine's line of sight. He held up his left arm, still holding the tawse, wrist facing Blaine. At some point he'd stripped off his cuff so Blaine was confronted with his own name, familiar, carved in scars on Kurt's wrist.

“What does that say?” Kurt asked in a low, dangerous voice.

Blaine didn't not want to say it, but his throat closed again and wouldn't let it through.

Quick as lightning Kurt's hand whipped down and the tawse smacked against Blaine's tortured ass. Blaine wailed, which at least opened his throat. The hand was back just as fast, and Blaine spoke quickly before he lost the ability.

“Blaine Anderson.”

The tawse whipped around again; Blaine, more prepared, kept his cry in the vicinity of a yelp then practically shouted, “Blaine Anderson!”

“Again!” Kurt struck again, the whip smacked loud in Blaine's ears.

“Blaine Anderson! Blaine Anderson! Blaine Anderson!”

Then the tawse fell to the floor with a thud and Kurt's lips were on his, the hand in his hair softened into a caress, and Blaine was kissed like he was perfect, a beautiful, cherished treasure. Blaine hadn't faded so much that he couldn't kiss back, for all he was worth, and he cried some more because his arms were bound and he couldn't hold Kurt, and he cried because that was completely perfect.

*� *� *

Kurt held him for a very long time. Blaine wasn't sure how long. He wasn't sure how he got down from the ceiling and over to the bed; he knew at some point he was wracked with shuddering sobs, and at some point he laughed for what felt like hours. Kurt, now naked as well, held him skin-to-skin, wiped away his tears, gave him water and pretzels he'd conjured from somewhere, kissed him when he was still enough, and soothed him with gentle hands and soft words.

Kurt also knew, as he always seemed to, the exact moment when Blaine settled back to earth, the clouds in his head finally whisped into invisibility. Kurt's hand stroked Blaine's head where it was pillowed on his chest, gently soothing the tender flesh he'd pulled at before.

“Don't ever do that to me again,” Kurt said.

“I'm sorry.” Blaine pressed a kiss to Kurt's sternum. “I guess this week just caught up with me. And then sent me spiraling into some kind of submissive black hole that I didn't know I had inside me.”

“Do you honestly think a couple of teenage twinks could even come close to being what you are to me?”

Blaine lifted his head, careful to move only his head. As the bliss of afterglow faded the pain was coming back with a vengeance. “No. That was never really it. I don't think so anyway.”

“So what was it?”

“Sharing you, I guess. Having people see you the way I see you. Having them assume things about you, and about me, us. I don't want to take this away from you, I swear. I'm so fucking proud of you.” Blaine shrugged. “Insecurity's just a bitch I guess. It never quite lets you go.”

Kurt lifted Blaine's chin higher and kissed him, chaste and tender and heartbreakingly sweet. “I'm not going to lie. I love this. I love all the attention and I don't want to give it up.”

“No, never!”

“But I need to know that you can handle it. I can't come home to that again. You scared me to death, Blaine. I had no idea what was going on with you. You have to at least be able to tell me if things are going nuts like that for you. Text me or something. You blindsided me and I can't do that again.”

Blaine settled his head back on Kurt's chest and stroked Kurt's arm. “I get it. I think this is the worst. I didn't expect it so it hit me too hard. But now I'm ready. I know what to expect. And I promise I'll send you a message if I'm ever freaking again.”

“You can program a one-touch into your phone. Sexy twink alert.”

Blaine laughed, then groaned as the movement jostled his ass. “Well the good news is that I don't think any of those twinks could take even half the punishment you gave me tonight.”

Kurt rolled out from under Blaine so that he was on his side, staring deep into Blaine's eyes, suddenly deadly serious. “It's not about the punishment. You need to know that. You are my soulmate. You are the only person I want to be with and the only person I will ever want to be with. You are the love of my life. And it's not because of how much punishment you can take or how you look on your knees. It's because you're you. If you caught some disease tomorrow that made you not submissive anymore, you'd still be the only person I ever want in my life this way. You get that, right?”

Blaine was too busy crying – and really, how was this even possible? – to answer him.

�