There are things about being a dominant that Blaine doesn’t understand. And that’s fine. He figures that he’s not meant to understand them. He has his “dominant” moments. He can effectively command a room when he needs to. He’s always considered himself a master of the stage. He can inspire people through speech. He’s a decent leader, but he’s not a dominant – not the way that Kurt is. With Kurt, dominance simply seems to flow through his body. He doesn’t always have to speak to persuade others to follow him. Blaine has seen men and women at Vogue who could be described on the surface as ‘dominant personalities’ bend to Kurt’s will the moment he enters a room. He has an aura of dominance about him. It’s just who he is.

Blaine can’t even picture Kurt submitting to anyone – bowing, kneeling, putting himself on display or offering himself up for someone else’s use. It would be like watching the sun rise green in the morning.

But Kurt is also a masochist, and that is something that’s taken Blaine a while to wrap his mind around. Watching his Master flog himself, commanding Blaine to spank him or paddle him, whip him with electrical cords, or pull his hair, knowing that Kurt enjoys it, conflicts Blaine. He knows it’s not the same. It’s not the same as being a submissive. What Kurt does, he does for pleasure, or to exert control but over himself. And any participation that Blaine takes in these acts are, as always, a submissive doing what his Master orders him to do.

Even if it makes Blaine a little uncomfortable. But it’s not even a level yellow uncomfortable. Blaine is green with it, as long as it makes Kurt happy. Blaine doesn’t question it, even when he has a hundred of them whirling through his head, itching to be asked. If there’s something that he needs to know, Kurt will tell him.

But when Blaine comes home from rehearsal one night to find his Dom stripped down to his briefs, kneeling on rice in the far corner of their bedroom, staring blankly out the window, Blaine isn’t just confused. He’s completely confounded.

Blaine despises rice kneeling. Along with caning, it’s one of the worst punishments Kurt keeps in his arsenal. He only breaks it out for truly inexcusable infractions. Considering the strain that rice kneeling puts on Blaine’s knees, and Blaine’s need to keep his body in top physical condition, rice kneeling is not a punishment that either Dom or sub takes lightly. It’s certainly not something that Blaine would ever request. But there Kurt is, head held high, back straight and strong, kneeling on rice on the hard wood floor, and for the life of him, Blaine can’t imagine why. But he’s certain that Kurt will tell him if he wants to.

Blaine walks into the loft, removing his shoes immediately to keep his footsteps silent. At this point, Blaine would start doing chores, but he doesn’t want to disturb his Master. Blaine needs guidance, but with Kurt kneeling in the corner, obviously in the midst of his own personal session, Blaine doesn’t know where to get that guidance from. This is a new situation for him. They haven’t prepared for it. Kurt is a stickler for planning, preparation, schedules, so this rice kneeling has Blaine worried.

If Kurt is straying from the norm this way, there has to be something seriously wrong.

Blaine feels a twinge of panic ball inside his stomach, his breathing coming fast as he tries to think through their usual rules, their daily schedule, trying to figure out what he should do. His instincts tell him to do his chores as normal, but sometimes he feels his instincts aren’t always the best.

That’s why he has Kurt to take care of him. He removes that burden of indecision from Blaine’s shoulders.

But, now…

“Pet?” Kurt summons in a soft voice.

“Yes, Sir?” Blaine answers, a rush of relief cooling the panic that had begun to spiral throughout his body.

“Would you lock the door and come here for a moment?”

“Of course.” Blaine locks the door and hurries over with barely a beat in between, but a secondary fear has cropped up in his brain, one that he hadn’t considered before.

That Blaine had done something to displease Kurt, he just didn’t know what it was yet. But whatever it was, Kurt was going to force Blaine to take his place in the rice, possibly for the entire evening, and from the depths of Blaine’s body, he starts to shudder.

No. Kurt enjoys the torture that comes with anticipation, but he wouldn’t just spring a punishment this severe on Blaine without talking with him first – sitting down at the kitchen table and outlining everything Blaine had done incorrectly. He wouldn’t do this without giving Blaine several chances to change his behavior and make things right. Blaine has to calm his mind and have faith. He trusts Kurt. Kurt is a good Dom. He’s a fair man. He believes in their rules and structure just as much as Blaine does. That’s why the two of them fit together so well.

Blaine stands beside Kurt – to the right and a bit behind, and with a heavy swallow he says, “May I have permission to speak, Sir?”

Blaine doesn’t see his Master’s face directly, but he sees a bit of it now through the reflection in the glass. He’s not staring out the window. His eyes aren’t open. They’re serenely shut, his face completely relaxed, as if he’s been meditating this entire time. Blaine is in awe. He doesn’t know how long Kurt has been here. He usually gets home by seven, whereas Blaine is normally out of rehearsals by nine or ten. But they ran over, and now it’s close to midnight. Which means, if Kurt stripped down the moment he got home and came straight here (from a glance at the kitchen, where there are no dishes from dinner waiting in the sink for Blaine to wash, it appears that might be exactly what he did), he has been kneeling on rice for around five hours (longer than he has ever made Blaine do). And yet, his face shows no hint of pain, except for the dry tracks of tears on his cheeks, which Blaine suspects have nothing to do with the rice.

Kurt takes a deep breath, and lets it go slowly. “You may, pet,” Kurt says on the final exhale.

“With all due respect, Sir, why you are kneeling?”

Kurt takes another breath in and lets it out. “I just…needed to clear my head, pet. It’s been kind of a long day.”

“Do you want to talk about it, Sir?”

“Not just yet, pet. I need a little more time.”

Blaine nods, even though Kurt hasn’t opened his eyes. Blaine takes a peek around, searching for clues. The place is nearly immaculate. Kurt went to the trouble of hanging up his clothes himself instead of lying them out neatly on the bed or over the chair for Blaine to hang up for him. So, this wasn’t a spontaneous decision. It was a ritual. But why? Again, Blaine is certain Kurt will tell him in time, but he’d still like to know what could bring this strong a man to his knees.

Blaine shuts his eyes, clearing the image of the room from his vision, then opens them again. There’s something he’s not seeing. He does another sweep of the loft from the front door, to the dining room, to the living room, and the bedroom. The change is subtle, nothing that would leap out at him, but through new eyes, he finally notices a few things.

There’s a new bouquet of flowers in the vase on the kitchen table. This morning, the flowers were blue irises. Now, they’re callas. White ones. Blaine loves callas personally, but Kurt isn’t all that fond of them. He says they remind him of his mother’s funeral. Blaine understands that. Callas are commonly used for funeral arrangements, but they’re also used for weddings. But Blaine doesn’t think Kurt would buy them for himself. Someone had to have sent them.

Blaine spots Kurt’s phone, sitting on the coffee table, the screen black with the time displayed, and an alert telling him he has unread messages. Kurt is fastidious when it comes to checking his messages. It’s almost a compulsion for him to make sure that they are read and cleared in a timely manner. But from the looks of it, they’ve been piling up. Why didn’t he turn his phone off? That’s what he does during his and Blaine’s sessions.

It’s almost as if…he couldn’t care.

On the bed, camouflaged by the white comforter, Blaine spots a white card, about the size of a photograph, with gold lettering. Blaine hadn’t seen it before because the card stock so closely matched the comforter. Even the embossing on the card matched the embroidery on the comforter. Kurt makes it a point to put mail away in a specified drawer the moment he opens it so it doesn’t clutter up the living space, or advertise personal business to anyone who might drop by. But this card is laying out on Kurt’s side of the bed, too far away for Blaine to pick it up without Kurt noticing, but close enough for Blaine to read a few of the words.

He looks away. He should stop himself. Kurt said that he would tell him when he was ready, but, this suspense is almost triggering. He doesn’t want to interrupt Kurt’s scene with a panic attack.

He doesn’t want his Dom to have to take care of him when it looks like Kurt is the one who needs taking care of.

Blaine decides he’ll take a glance. Just a single peek between blinks, and whatever he sees, that’ll be all. He won’t look any more than that. He shifts his eyes to the right once, not even long enough to know if Kurt’s name is on the card or not. But three words stick out clearly, and them together gives Blaine a hint as to what it all means.

The words memorial…and McKinley…and Finn.

Blaine sighs. Finn was Kurt’s stepbrother who had passed right after high school. They both attended McKinley.

Blaine looks back at Kurt’s face, eyes still shut, his façade of peace marked by a trail of new tears.

“May I join you, Sir?” Blaine asks. “Or would you prefer to be alone?”

Kurt’s first attempt to speak stutters around a hiccup. He clears his throat, but it doesn’t make much of a difference. He keeps his tone tight so as not to sob, but his voice is so full of emotion that Blaine feels the weight of it in his own chest.

“I would appreciate very much” – Kurt pauses for a breath, and Blaine thinks he’s about to be sent away, to do his chores and go to bed so that Kurt can mourn alone. Many situations like these Kurt suffers alone, whether because he thinks he needs to put on a strong front or because he’s embarrassed to let anyone see him be weak. But even on his knees, Kurt is the strongest man Blaine has ever met – “if you would join me, pet. Thank you.”

It takes a second for Blaine to process the fact that Kurt just invited him to kneel with him, so he doesn’t react right away.

“You don’t need to kneel on the rice,” Kurt adds, assuming that’s the reason for Blaine’s hesitation. “Just this once, I’m giving you a choice.”

“My place is beside you, Sir,” Blaine says, even as his voice shakes, thinking about the impending pain. “If you’re kneeling on rice, I will, too.”

The slight nausea that swells in his stomach at the thought of it, at the thought of many hours of it, subsides when he sees his Master smile with appreciation…and pride.

Blaine shows homage to the ritual by stripping off his clothes and hanging them up, tossing his underwear in the hamper, then dropping to his knees on the rice beside Kurt. Kurt doesn’t open his eyes when he hears the rice crunch, driving into the floor the same way it drives into Blaine’s knees, but when he feels his sub beside him, he takes the hand closest and laces their fingers together.

“Just for a few minutes, pet,” Kurt reassures him, knowing that he’s asking more of Blaine in this one moment than he probably should, seeing as the pain he needs to work through is his own, and not Blaine’s. Blaine did nothing wrong. He shouldn’t be subjected to this on a whim. But Kurt is grateful for Blaine’s devotion, for his loyalty, for his obedience. For not just being his sub, or his lover, but for being his closest friend. “And then, we’ll find a more appropriate way to end the day together.”