They leave the Lima Bean in complete silence.

The ride to Kurt’s house is in complete silence.

They exit the car and walk into the Hudmel household in complete silence. Blaine steps inside, trailing behind Kurt, and closes the door behind him softly. Then he freezes, looking down sheepishly at his feet.

“You’re mad,” he whispers. There is no question involved.

Kurt stares at him for a moment before walking towards the stairs. He steps onto the first step and then turns, raising a single finger towards Blaine and beckoning him to follow.

Blaine swallows. Silence – at least this much of it – is never good. Not wanting to disappoint him any further, he walks behind him, following Kurt all the way up to his room.

Where Kurt locks the door.

Burt has a rule – the door stays open. But they’re home alone. They’re home alone, and Kurt is angry, and so the house rules have fallen to the wayside.

There’s a tense silence. Blaine is just willing Kurt to say something, but he just stares Blaine down until he’s squirming awkwardly in his shoes.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles, toeing the carpet nervously. “Please talk.”

Kurt takes a step towards him. “Do you understand why I’m mad at you, baby?”

Blaine inhales sharply. So they are doing this. He falls into his role as naturally as breathing, though. “Yes, Daddy.”

“Tell me.”

“I – I gave Sebastian our songs,” he says, his voice small.

Kurt steps closer to him, and for a moment, some small part of Blaine thinks that maybe – just maybe, he can hope – Kurt was going to hug him and tell him everything was okay.

But he doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t. He moves to sit on the edge of his bed, walking around Blaine without touching him. After a second, Blaine takes a step forward, moving to come sit by him, but Kurt holds up a hand to stop him.

“No. Stay there.”

Blaine clenches his eyes shut, but steps back to where he was. Kurt’s left him standing in the middle of the room, and from where he’s sitting and looking up at him, Blaine feels completely on display.

“Giving Sebastian our songs was a very bad thing, baby. You’ve made all of Daddy’s friends very upset too. But that’s not all you did bad, is it?”

Wringing his hands anxiously in front of him, Blaine shakes his head.

“Sweater off,” comes the next command.

In one swift movement, Blaine pulls the heavy striped sweater over his head, leaving him standing just in his undershirt, jeans, and shoes. A slight shiver runs through him, and he isn’t sure if it’s from the sudden cool air on his skin or nerves – or both.

“Why else am I disappointed in you, sweetheart?” The endearment is sweet – one they commonly use in place of baby – but Kurt’s voice is so very cool still. Blaine flinches.

He disappointed his Daddy. That enough is enough to make his eyes well up.

Blaine clears his throat before he speaks again. “’Cause I talked to him without permission.”

Kurt hums in agreeance. “Mhmm. And why is that bad?”

He mumbles out his answer, his eyes never leaving the floor.

“What was that? I didn’t hear you. Speak like a big boy.”

“I said ‘I don’t know,’ Daddy.”

Kurt regards him carefully, like he’s trying to decide what his next step should be – what course of action he should take to punish him. Every passing second makes Blaine more nervous. Every moment Kurt spends making Blaine wonder just what is going on in his mind is one that leaves him fidgeting, restless, scared.

“You know Sebastian wants to take you away from Daddy. We don’t take to bad people like that. If he tries to talk to you, you’re supposed to come directly to me. We’ve been over this, baby.”

Blaine lets out a choked off sob. Kurt just sounds so upset with him. “I know. I’m sorry, Daddy, I’m sorry. Please – I… I forgot. Please don’t be angry, please.”

Kurt falls quiet again, just watching as Blaine wraps his arms tightly around himself, as if he can hold himself together. Finally, in a soft voice, much softer than any he’s used all afternoon, he calls out to him, one arm outstretched. “Come here.”

But Blaine violently shakes his head, staying firmly rooted where he is.

“Baby,” Kurt begins, his voice still tender, but somehow also stern. “That wasn’t a question. Come here. Shoes off, and come here.”

Slowly, Blaine slips out of his shoes and shuffles to the edge of the bed, standing in front of him until Kurt grabs his hand and makes him sit down beside him.

“I want you to lie over my lap.”

Blaine recoils in on himself, pulling his knees up to his chest. “No. Please, no – I’ll be good, Daddy, I promise. Please.”

Kurt looks at him strictly. “Don’t interrupt me, Blaine. Daddy’s talking.” Obediently, he falls silent. “Good boy. Now, as I was saying – I want you to lie over my lap in a moment. You need to learn that what you did was not okay. And I want you to count for me.”

He whimpers softly, and Kurt can already see the fear in his eyes. “Don’t think of it like a punishment, baby. Think of it like a lesson. You have to learn to keep quiet. You can do that, can’t you?”

Whether he’s confident in his abilities or not, Blaine nods. He nods because he doesn’t want to disappoint him even further. He nods because he wants this to be over. He nods because he’s not sure if he’s allowed to speak at all other than counting.

“Okay. Jeans off.”

As slowly as he dares, Blaine shimmies out of his pants, postponing the inevitable as much as possible. When he finishes, he’s left standing there in his undershirt and his boxer-briefs. Kurt doesn’t call to him again – just stares up at him expectantly, moving his hands out of his lap.

Swallowing hard, Blaine lays himself across his lap. His shirt rides up some, exposing his stomach, and he wiggles, trying to get into the most comfortable position he can.

Kurt runs his hands slowly down his back, stopping just above the curve of his ass. “Remember to count. But no other noises. Do you understand?”

“Ye-“ he begins, but Kurt slaps harshly across his thighs, and Blaine cuts himself off with a startled yelp.

“What did I just tell you?” When Blaine doesn’t reply, Kurt begins again. “No noises means no talking. If I want a response from you, I’ll tell you you can speak. Understand? Nod for me.”

Blaine nods quickly before going still again. He’s already tense, his entire body braced for the first impact. He has no idea when it will come, and that in and of itself is enough to make him nervous.

Kurt doesn’t waste any time, however. He runs the palm of his hand across Blaine’s ass – up and down, twice, a third time – before suddenly taking it away.

Blaine hears his hand coming before he feels it – the quiet whoosh of air as he descends. The first slap isn’t too hard. It’s sharp enough that it’s startling, his body involuntarily twitching upon contact, but still soft enough that he knows much worse is coming.

“One,” he breathes out.

Kurt’s hand comes down rapid-fire, smacking him twice before he can get anything out between them.

“Two. Three,” he continues. He clenches his fist, biting down harshly on his knuckles, trying desperately to stay quiet.

There is a pause before four, lasting just long enough that Blaine relaxes his body. As soon as Kurt feels his weight sag against him, he brings his hand down again sharply, hitting him right where his ass meets his thigh. Blaine lurches up off his lap with a strangled cry, the sensation much sharper there than on the cheeks.

Kurt’s free hand settles heavily in the middle of his back, holding him down as he spanks him just as hard in three short, staccato bursts. Blaine opens his mouth to count them off, but Kurt shushes him before he can. “Those don’t count. I told you, stay quiet. Next sound makes it fifteen.”

Blaine fights back a groan, but manages to just nod. He slides his hands down, gripping Kurt’s leg tightly, and bites down on his lower lip.

Five comes quickly, falling right in the middle of his ass, across the cleft. Blaine clenches, his fingers digging into Kurt’s calf, but he stays quiet, other than a murmured “Five.”

The hand in the middle of his back rubs softly, a brief moment of tenderness amidst everything. “Halfway done. You’re doing well, sweetheart.”

And then it’s over. The hand weighs him down again, fingertips pressing in against him until there are tiny indentations in the curve of his back. Six and seven once again have no break between them, and Blaine swears he’ll be bruised tomorrow. Kurt hides it under sweaters and long sleeves, but he’s much stronger than he looks. “Six. S-seven.”

After a moment, Kurt pulls down his briefs, offering himself Blaine’s bare skin. His fingertips ghost across the new expanse, almost reverent in their exploration, before he once again sets his palm down across his ass.

Blaine is shaking, his body overrun with tiny tremors from the force it takes to hold back all sounds he wants to make and the continual, sharp pain of each slap. He feels Kurt remove his hand, the heat radiating from it suddenly disappearing, and braces himself for the next hit, but it doesn’t come. After a moment, he looks up at Kurt with questioning eyes.

“You would tell me if it was too much, right?” Kurt asks.

He doesn’t answer, just stares up at him with wide eyes before giving him a small, almost-imperceptible nod.

“You promise? You can answer.”

Blaine licks his lips and swallows again, trying to wet down his throat. “I promise. Please,” he begs, his voice young and innocent.

It’s all the confirmation Kurt needs, and he falls quickly and easily back into his role. Without another word, he brings his hand down again, slapping firmly against his left cheek.

“Eight.”

Nine is the hardest yet – or maybe it only feels like it because the final barrier is no longer there. But when Kurt pulls his hand back again (“Nine”), even he sucks in a harsh breath through his teeth. He takes a moment to shake his hand out, trying to get more blood flowing again.

“Last one. We’re almost done, baby.”

The tenth and final slap falls against the curve where his ass meets his thigh again – a test. Blaine bites down hard on his lower lip. It’s not hard enough to draw blood, but it’s close.

He stays silent.

Kurt, just as silently, pulls his briefs back up, bringing both hands down to his ass and massaging lightly. He leans down slightly, murmuring soft strings of barely intelligible praise into Blaine’s ear.

“You did so well. I’m so proud of you, sweetheart. You’re such a good boy.”

Blaine sits up, curling up on Kurt’s lap, and hisses softly when he puts his weight into sitting. Kurt rubs his back before lifting him off his lap and setting him down on the bed.

“Just a second. Let me help you,” he says, pulling his underwear down once again.

He reaches into his bedside drawer, and Blaine whimpers, shaking his head against the comforter. Kurt chuckles softly. “Not like that. You’re too little for that, baby. Let Daddy take the sting away.”

Blaine can’t see what it is he pulls out, but a moment later, he feels Kurt’s hands, made cold by some kind of cream, press into his skin. There’s an almost immediate effect. It doesn’t numb the pain – Kurt doesn’t want him to forget, after all – but it does take it down to a more tolerable level.

“I don’t want you to bruise. I just want you to feel it tomorrow,” he explains, rubbing whatever this miracle medicine is until it’s fully saturated into his skin. “I’ll send this home with you. If you bathe tonight, put more on. If not, you should be good until the morning. Make sure you use more before school, though, okay?”

He whispers out a barely-there “Okay” before Kurt pulls his hands away, wiping them down on a towel he pulls out of the drawer.

“I didn’t say you could talk yet, did I?”

Blaine looks up at him over his shoulders, his eyes wide. He shakes his head before letting his eyes fall shut in resigned defeat. There’s more. Of course there’s more. That had been too easy.

Once again, Kurt fumbles in the drawer before finally withdrawing his hand, full of bright green plastic.

Blaine has to bite back the protest that he wants to let fly. Instead, he settles or shaking his head back and forth violently and trying to crawl away on the bed.

“This isn’t up for debate. The more you protest, the longer I’ll make you leave it in,” Kurt says, the pacifier dangling from his finger.

Still, Blaine moves away, curling his knees up against his chest as he leans up against the headboard. He just keeps shaking his head, even as Kurt moves in closer.

“One last time – you can take this like a good boy and maybe I’ll even let you pick a movie for us to watch, or you can keep acting like this and keep it in for longer. It’s your decision, baby.”

They stare at each other in silence for an entire minute, though it feels like much longer, before Blaine finally raises his hand and opens his palm up to Kurt.

“No, sweetheart, come here. Let me put it in.”

Face flushing with embarrassment, he does as he’s told, crawling back over to his Daddy and sitting beside him. He opens his mouth, allowing Kurt to slip the pacifier in. Blaine closes around it, but refuses to suck on it, just holding the weight heavy against his tongue with a pout.

“It’ll be more pleasant if you stop fighting it,” Kurt says, once again rubbing his back sweetly.

Blaine points to the TV in the corner of the room, but dutifully stays silent.

“Movie?” He nods. “We can watch a movie, if you be the good boy I know you are and accept the last of your punishment.”

He huffs around the plastic, his face petulant and mopey, but eventually relents, sucking rhythmically. Kurt smiles and presses a tender kiss into his curls.

“That’s it. Now, do you want to help me pick a movie?”

Blaine jumps to his feet and races over to the movies, dropping down to sit cross-legged in one quick move. He cocks his head to the side, pouring over the various titles. His finger traces along the spine of the DVD cases, and Kurt moves to kneel beside him, twirling a lock of Blaine’s hair around a finger.

“See one you want?” he asks, burying his face in Blaine’s hair.

Finally, Blaine’s hand darts out, pulling Hercules off the shelf. He turns to look at Kurt hopefully, and Kurt smiles when he sees that he’s still sucking hard on the pacifier.

“Is that the one you want?” At Blaine’s insistent nod, he laughs. “Okay, okay. Go lay down and I’ll get this set up, okay?”

He pulls the disc out of the case and slides it into the DVD player, skipping past all the previews until the menu comes up. After pressing play, he heads back to the bed, curling up behind Blaine. He drapes an arm across his torso, pulling him in close against his chest, and they settle in to watch the epic tale of how Hercules won his right to become immortal and turned it down for love.

Towards the end of the movie, sometime around when the Cyclops shows up, Kurt feels Blaine drift off to sleep, his form becoming limp in his arms. Even through his sleep, he keeps sucking. Kurt just cuddles him close, pressing light kisses against the back of his neck as he watches the battle unfold on the screen.

Things will be different when he wakes, and Kurt knows that. They always are. So he enjoys the few moments he has left with his boy. He grabs the remote, turning the volume down some, and lets him doze.

When Hercules reemerges from the River Styx as a hero, Blaine shifts in his arms, raising a hand to rub at his eyes. With a yawn, he opens his eyes, turning to look at Kurt with a sleepy smile.

“Hi,” he says, his voice hoarse even with just the few minutes of sleep.

Kurt rubs his stomach through the thin material of his undershirt. “Good morning, sunshine. Have a nice nap?”

Blaine stretches out, raising his hands above his head, groaning when his back pops. “Mhmm. How much of the movie did I miss, Kurt?”

And there it is – the sign that now he’s Blaine, and not baby. Kurt sighs, already missing it, but yet still also glad to have his boyfriend back.

“Not too much. The battle. They’re about to offer him immortality again, which of course, he’ll turn down.”

“Of course,” he replies around a yawn. “Love conquers all.”

Quietly, and in a significantly more timid voice than he’s used all afternoon, Kurt asks, “Do you really believe that?”

Blaine freezes and looks back at him. “Of course I do. Why?”

“Do you think that this – what we have – can overcome anything?”

Kurt picks at a loose thread on the comforter, decidedly not looking up at Blaine. It’s such a vast change from the dynamic they’ve worked with all afternoon, and it takes Blaine a moment to shake out of it and respond.

“I do. I know you’d never let anyone hurt me – just like Hercules did for Meg. He gave up his life for her; he was prepared to die for her. That’s pure love if I’ve ever heard of it.”

“He needed her too, you know. Without her, Phil never would have come back to him and he probably would’ve been killed by the Cyclops. She’s his reason for living, for trying harder every day,” he says. He looks up at Blaine, his eyes overly-bright, and pulls him in for a kiss.

After a moment, Blaine pulls back, his lips still brushing against Kurt’s as he talks. “I’d pick you every time. No matter what.”

Kurt just smiles and brushes his nose against Blaine’s. “Ditto,” he whispers.

They stay clinging to each other for a while – long enough that the credits start rolling behind them – before Blaine moves to get up off the bed.

“Sorry,” he says, a bit sheepish. “Cold. Where are my clothes?”

Kurt gestures vaguely to the floor on the other side of the bed, and with a nod, Blaine turns to his side and pushes himself up off the bed. As soon as his feet hit the ground, he hisses, his face scrunching up in pain.

“Blaine? Are you alright?”

He turns to glare at Kurt, not at all threateningly, and swoops his hand down to grab the pacifier. No sooner than he grabs it, though, does he chuck it at Kurt’s chest. “My ass hurts. I hate you,” he mumbles, hobbling awkwardly around the bed to pick up his clothes.

Kurt just laughs, watching him with a bemused expression. “I love you too, Blaine. Don’t ever forget it.”

And he won’t. The bruises and the pain will fade, and eventually they’ll both forget all about Sebastian and leaked set lists and phone calls and punishments, but that’s one thing neither of them will let slip away.