A/N: Warning for nightmares and anxiety related to Kurt's mother's death.
Kurt couldn't relax and he couldn't sleep. His eyes sticky and his face swollen from crying, he felt broken, his body and soul torn apart – irreparable. Talking for hours with Blaine - hearing him promise over and over that he would always love Kurt, come what may - didn't help. After Blaine had said I love you a dozen times, the words didn't even sound like words anymore. Kurt couldn't comprehend them. Blaine loved him and he loved Blaine. So why? Why did this happen?
How could something Kurt held so dear matter so little in the end?
What made it worse was that Kurt wanted to hear Blaine say that he loved him – he'd never get tired of hearing it - but his body wanted to be somewhere else in his house with someone else entirely. In the depths of Kurt's confused brain, he felt wretched and dirty, like he was cheating. He was an outsider in his own head. He didn't know himself anymore. Something important that he had, that he had always clung on to, was now gone.
Kurt felt the same way he did on the day that his mother died. He was only a small boy when his best friend, his kindred spirit, the person who understood him better than anyone, had gone away.
He felt like there was nothing left for him.
It didn't make sense and he didn't understand it, because this Dom/sub relationship crap shouldn't be this hard. Kurt had seen plenty of people in his school date casually, then one day find their match (Kurt cringed away from using the words soul mate, though it was a widely acknowledged term) and boom. It worked like flipping a switch. The couple would break up and go their separate ways with their Dom or sub, and life went on. There was no unhappiness, no bitterness, no regret.
So why was his situation different?
Why was what he had with Blaine and Sebastian so difficult?
If he and Sebastian were truly meant to be, how could he still be in love with Blaine?
Could it be because this was some big cosmic mistake? That being matched with Sebastian was wrong - a genetic anomaly? If that was the case, then could it be fixed? Who would he have to see for that?
He'd never heard of it before. He even broke out the pamphlets his father had given him and rifled through them, looking for any information – a paragraph, a sentence, something to explain what was going on. Somebody had to know. If he went to the counselor at school or saw a doctor and told them about his suspicions, would anyone believe him?
The more he talked with Blaine, the more it felt like beetles eating through the soft tissues of his brain, and before he was prepared to say good-bye, he had to hang up the call. The discomfort came from his psyche – biological measures put in place, a series of hormonal responses meant to keep a person from straying from their match. Even though he and Sebastian hadn't bonded yet, those connections were growing, and they were strong. As long as Kurt still loved Blaine and Blaine still loved him, talking to Blaine, being near him, even thinking about him, would eventually cause Kurt intense pain. It could even make him physically sick.
It was a sickness that came from misplaced affections – a sickness that only the act of dominating his sub would heal.
Kurt scoffed at the thought. He couldn't care less. He wasn't a machine, controlled by arbitrary body chemistry. He was a human being, flesh and blood, with thoughts and feelings and emotions. He could think for himself, be his own person.
He could fight this and win.
As for Blaine, Kurt knew he'd be on board with at least giving it a try. Blaine had gotten his Dom designation – the dark blue five pointed star behind his left ear, just as Kurt had gotten - but strangely enough, he didn't have a sub. Sebastian's full name was etched onto the skin of Kurt's inside left wrist, the same place where all Dom's carried the names of their subs, but Blaine's wrist remained blank. That had to be proof that this was all a big mix-up. Kurt had a sub he could never love, and the boy he loved didn't have a sub. Kurt had to be right about this - he just had to be.
But that didn't make him feel any more relieved.
Kurt remained in this lucid state as his mind worked to find an answer, but Kurt's body finally gave in to sleep. A patchwork of recollections and dreams knitted themselves into strange patterns inside his head, planting messages that he couldn't decipher.
Kurt felt his thoughts spiral back through time, picking out memories at random.
He was a young boy and he was alone, sitting beside his mother's open grave without a single tear in his eyes. The yellow sun shone over his head in a bright, cornflower blue sky - its overwhelming beauty mocking his pain. Why couldn't it rain? Didn't it usually rain at funerals? Why couldn't there be a downpour to hide the fact that his body refused to shed a tear?
Everyone around him wept, shooting confused and somewhat mean glances his way as he sat and stared, trying to will himself to cry. Even his father kept his distance. He was the worst son in the world because he couldn't cry for his own mother's passing, and he would never forgive himself.
Another spiral of memories swept him up like a funnel cloud and when it stopped, he was in high school. Dalton. A boy was being cruel to him, pressuring him, pushing him, jeering at him, but it wasn't Sebastian – it was Blaine.
Blaine disappeared, and there was Sebastian, holding Kurt in his arms, telling Kurt over and over again that he loved him and he always would.
There was a flash of light and sound, and Kurt was standing side by side with Sebastian as doors slammed in their faces – no, the same door slamming about a dozen times, each time slicing into Sebastian's body like a dagger. He fell to his knees screaming, grabbing at his skin, blood seeping through his clothes. Kurt fell to the floor with him, wrapping his body protectively around him.
"Stop!" he screamed. "Stop! Can't you see you're hurting him?"
But the older man at the door, preparing to slam it shut once again, growled mercilessly, "Why do you care?"
The door slammed shut, and suddenly they were surrounded by people Kurt knew, people he loved, reaching their arms out to him, trying to pull him towards them, but he couldn't move. He reached out, desperate to go with them, spinning his head around to find the closest one to him, but then he saw Sebastian, and he realized that he had to make a choice – stay with his family and friends, or be with his sub. His friends and family called to him, but Sebastian stayed silent, waiting for permission to move or speak, pleading with Kurt with wide green eyes, full of sorrow.
Kurt couldn't make a decision. He didn't know who to choose or which way to go. He started climbing, up and up, fingers digging into hard ground that felt sharp and cold like ice. His body felt heavy, a weight onto himself, dragging him down. Voices shouted at him. He was closer to them now, but he was leaving something behind, something that tore at his chest with ragged claws and left him an open wound.
Sebastian. Kurt was leaving Sebastian behind, and it was breaking Kurt's heart.
Kurt gasped, choking on air as he fought to take a breath, his mind going blank. He panicked for a second, his lungs starved for oxygen, but he felt himself breathing normally again. He didn't struggle to open his eyes, not wanting to get stuck in the arms of sleep paralysis. That had happened to him twice before. It was an experience he wouldn't wish on anyone.
Kurt thought he was done dreaming. Maybe if he lied still and waited, he'd wake up. Then he would make himself a mug of warm milk, wrap up in his blanket, put Moulin Rouge on his laptop, and play the role of insomniac for the rest of the night.
The dreams weren't over. His body needed something that Kurt refused to give it, and it had other plans.
Kurt felt a hand take his – sweaty palms pressed together, fingers laced - pushing his hand into the pillow beneath his head.
Hooded dark eyes flashed in his mind – wide obsidian pupils without an inch of colored iris to be seen.
Eyes that were eager to obey.
"Touch me," he heard his own voice command, panting and breathy, but forceful and completely in control. Fingertips trailed up his leg to the juncture of his thighs, over his stomach, up his chest, along his neck, then traced his lips. He heard a moan and he knew that it was him, reacting in his sleep.
Jesus, he hoped no one else could hear him.
"Kiss me," he said, and without another breath, lips slipped over his. An incredible sensation of warmth washed over him, making his skin tingle. He was underneath someone – definitely underneath – legs opened wide, pushed into, filled up, but he was in utter and complete control of everything going on around him. The body above Kurt's moved because he wanted it to, the hands holding him down did so at his command, the thick length dragging slowly in and out of his body was there because this was how he desired to make love.
That's what was happening – he was commanding someone to make love to him.
"Bite me," he said, and the sharp sting of teeth tantalizing the skin at his throat made him buck up, arching his back, fighting to find the flesh and the heat he knew should be there, but wasn't.
An animal instinct burned inside Kurt. His body had a mind of its own, and that mind longed for the touch of someone too far out of his reach.
Find him, a voice in his head said. Find him.
He swung his feet off the side of the bed and settled them on the floor. Slowly he rose, pushing himself up on his elbows, sitting upright, and then standing. He trudged slowly since he hadn't really opened his eyes before he started making his way to the staircase. He blinked in the dark as he took step after step, his hand brushing the railing, the glide of his fingertips over the polished wood bringing to mind thoughts of caressing smooth, tan skin.
Find him, the voice repeated. Find him.
Kurt made his way through the living room, and what remained of his conscious brain awake behind bleary eyes steered his body toward the front door. Kurt figured that the plan had to be to get into his Navigator, drive to Blaine's house, climb in through Blaine's bedroom window, and get into bed with him.
Then Kurt could finally give Blaine what he had dreamt of giving him for the last few months.
Maybe that would be enough to change things.
But his subconscious mind balked, twisting him away from the door and leading him up the stairs.
Find him…find him…
Kurt ran his hands over the walls. He felt the house move beneath his fingertips - like a body breathing, hitching at his touch. His fingertips slid from wall to door, wall to door, until he found the door he wanted. He reached down for the knob, turning it carefully, and swung the door open.
Kurt rarely went inside this room. He had no reason to. When his friends spent the night, they stayed with him in the basement.
Kurt didn't want to be in this room.
The person asleep in here should be in bed with him downstairs.
Kurt closed the door behind him quietly and flipped the lock. He crossed the floor, bare feet sinking into warm carpet, muting the sound of his steps. He reached the bed, pulled back the comforter, and climbed underneath. His fingers reached out for the person he knew was there, touching smooth skin and finding a waist to wrap his arms around. He laid kisses along a collarbone bearing his own name, tracing the letters with the tip of his tongue, and then licking them away. He heard a voice mumbling in the dark - a curious sounding, "Kurt?" calling to him.
"Kiss me," Kurt said, bringing a hand up to twine his fingers into sleep matted hair.
"Wh-what…sir?" came the shaky reply.
"Kiss me," Kurt repeated, tugging at the hair wrapped around his fingers.
He felt lips tentatively press against his – chaste, dry, sweetly apprehensive. Kurt licked those lips, the taste of them beneath his tongue awakening more of the animal inside him. Kurt kissed back, sucking a lip between his teeth and biting it, hearing a deep voice moan into his mouth.
"Touch me," Kurt said, reaching for a hand and drawing it up under his shirt. He craned his neck, arching pale skin toward the mouth he felt hovering near his cheek, warm breath ghosting over his skin.
"Wh-what do you want me to do, sir?" the voice asked as lips started to press along Kurt's neck, a finger pulling back the collar of his shirt to continue over the curve of his shoulder.
"Undress me," Kurt said, reaching beneath the comforter and anxiously pushing his pants down his legs. "Make love to me."
Sebastian shook his head to clear the sleep from his brain, to make sure he heard Kurt correctly when he said, "Undress me. Make love to me."
He felt the immediate reaction of those commands moving his body, taking control of his senses, taking away his ability to make a choice.
"Kurt?" Sebastian repeated, hoping the sound of his name on his sub's lips might bring him around. "Kurt, sir, I don't think you want to…"
Kurt's hand snaked down the front of Sebastian's pants and grabbed a hold of his half-hard cock, stroking up and down his length slowly. Every objection Sebastian had died a quick death in his throat.
"I didn't tell you to think," Kurt said, twisting his hand a bit beneath the head of Sebastian's erection, making Sebastian's body bend to be closer to his Dom. "I told you to make love to me."
Sebastian's eyes became clear as the force behind that command registered in his head, overriding every personal directive Sebastian had to resist. He leaned down close to Kurt's mouth, breathing Kurt in, letting himself feel dizzy.
"Yes, sir," he said, claiming Kurt's lips for his own.