Page 124 of Hurt

But mostly, he loved it because it was a lie.

Kurt wore that look when he was caught. Caught being stubborn, caught feeling something, caught being something other than the mask he presented to the world. It was a telltale sign that Kurt had dropped his walls.

Grant didn’t wait for an affirmative. He tossed the towel into the hamper and walked down the stairs. Kurt followed his progress in the mirror. That look was still in place, snarl deepening the closer Grant got.

“May I?” he asked when he got within arm’s reach.

Kurt’s reflection watched him. Something in his glare softened, and he nodded.

His bandages were still clean from the last time Willow had helped him change them, but the edges were damp with sweat. As he reached up to peel the tape off the gauze, he could feel the wet heat from Kurt’s skin. The adhesive pulled on the fabric, and Grant had to finagle it off without jerking on his injured ribs.

Once it was loose, he reached around Kurt, careful not to jostle him. Looping the bandaging around and around his chest. Their eyes met in the mirror and stayed there. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched the bandaging pile up in his hands until Kurt was free of it.

His chest looked better. The bruising had faded from a horrifying dark purple to an ugly shade of yellow. There were lines in his skin from where the wraps had left their marks—small little bits of texture in his swollen flesh. Somehow they were more disturbing to Grant than the bruising.

He brushed his knuckles against the marks. The desire to wipe them away was so strong it choked him. He could feel the quiet thrum of familiar anger begin to awaken inside him. These marks didn’t belong on Kurt. His skin shouldn’t be mottled with pain. And these bruises were merely the physical wounds. They were skin deep and would heal. The toll on his soul was incalculable. Those bruises ran deep.

“It doesn’t hurt,” Kurt told the mirror Grant.

Grant wanted to grab him. Wrap him in his arms until he stopped telling everyone he was fine. Until he let Grant smooth out all the bumps and bruises that marred him.

“It hurts me.”

Kurt inhaled sharply at his words. His shoulders tensed, and he looked down at his feet.

“I’m sorry,” Grant apologized. It was too much. He let his desire to tell Kurt everything spill out. His feelings were real, and as much as he wanted to express them, he also didn’t want to pressure Kurt into feeling anything he wasn’t ready for.

A mirthless smile cracked across Kurt’s face. “What does it say about me that no one has ever apologized when they hurt me? They laughed as I bled and smiled when I cried. But you say one nice thing, and the first words out of your mouth are ‘I’m sorry.’”

Kurt finally looked back up at him. His dark eyes were intense behind messy violet hair.

“You say sorry to me one more goddamn time, and I’m going to hit you so hard you’ll be shitting smiles for a week.”

Grant found no pity in those eyes. Not for him and not for himself.

“I’ll try.”

His eyes dropped to Kurt’s broad back. He was putting weight back on, and the hollows under his ribs were disappearing. The scars from the knife wounds were healing. The scabs were mostly gone, and the short, jagged lines were harsh against his pale skin. There was no pattern to them. Ezra had indiscriminately sliced at Kurt, finding purchase wherever the tip of his knife could dig into.

“I fell out of a tree.”

Grant’s attention was jerked up from Kurt’s back. He was pointing to a faint scar on his knee. It was barely there, a lighter line of skin.

“Willow got scared when she heard some dogs barking. She climbed so high that she was afraid to come down. I went after her and grabbed a dead tree branch. Fell right on my ass and opened up my knee.”

Picturing a young Kurt hollering after his sister to get down dispelled some of his dark thoughts. In his mind, the child he pictured had lighter purple hair and chubby cheeks.

“This one,” he flexed his right hand and traced a long scar on the back of his hand, “was from snapping a guitar string.”

There were many small scars on his hands. The tips of his fingers were pocked with callouses from taming the strings on his instrument. With the soft flesh of his skin, he held back the writhing metal, teasing and taunting the feral chords to get them to bend to his will.

“Noah threw a cup at my head when he was a toddler. The plastic broke and gave me this.” The delicate hairs of his eyebrows were parted around an almost unnoticeable scar hidden in the soft arches.

Grant wanted to touch it. Kiss it. Feel the hills and valleys on Kurt’s skin. Learn every story by heart so he could whisper it back when the night was too dark and Kurt couldn’t remember them himself.

“I’m trying to say that not all my scars have a bad story,” he explained as he finally turned to face Grant. “My body is covered in scars—good and bad. I’m trying to remember that.”

Kurt’s face was scrunched up in consternation like he couldn’t articulate what he was thinking. Or he was uncomfortable with his line of thought.