Page 168 of Hurt

His fingers found the long strands of purple and held them between his fingers. They were still silky from when he washed it the night before. He sorted the hair away from the angular face and let his fingers linger against the warm skin. Delicate lashes fanned out across cheeks that had no color. Pale lips were gently parted as breath flowed in and out over them.

Two people went over the balcony in the Catacombs, but Grant was the one who died.

They called it a coma. Kurt had broken almost every bone in his body when he fell, but he had survived.

Against all odds, he had lived.

As the weeks dragged on and his body healed itself, the doctors became less and less hopeful that Kurt would wake up. They gave Grant a lot of long-winded answers. They also told him that every day that went by with no response significantly reduced his chances of waking up.

And if he did wake up? There was no telling the amount of damage. He could have no memories or motor skills.

There was a three percent chance he would wake up. That’s what the best doctors in the world could give him.

It was enough.

Grant knelt beside the bed and took Kurt’s hand in his. He felt the pads of Kurt’s fingers. The callouses from years of taming wild guitar strings had faded with disuse. They faded just as the lacerations on his face healed. Thin streaks of white crisscrossed his face from where Ezra had used the very thing he loved to inflict pain.

“The house is almost done,” Grant told him. “Wallace insisted on an almost exact replica of the old mansion.” He smiled despite himself. Some things could always be counted on to stay the same.

Most days Willow came over while Grant worked. She never needed an audience to talk, and her voice filled the room. When she grew tired of speaking, she would play for Kurt. Grunting when she got something wrong and complaining when she had to do it again and again. She would ask Kurt’s sleeping form what he thought of this stanza or if she was too slow in certain spots.

Roland had come without Willow once. He stood at the side of the bed and stared down at Kurt. He never said a word but there was a complicated expression on his face.

After two months Willow showed up with her violin and a camera attached to a tripod. She set the camera up facing the garden and stood silhouetted by the soft rays of afternoon sunlight. She played through several pieces one time, stopped the camera, and called it a day. Willow told them it was an audition tape.

Even after ten years Willow’s name was still on every one’s lips. The moment the tape surfaced in the music world she was inundated with offers to play. Willow was picky. She would only play locally and refused to leave overnight in case Kurt woke up.

But she was playing again. She was back performing, the place Kurt always thought she belonged, and she was slowly picking up the pieces of his life he had dropped ten years ago.

Noah had visited a couple of times, too. He mostly paced around the room and yelled into the air. He yelled until tears filled his eyes and then he stormed out of the room and stayed away for another few weeks.

Grant rubbed his thumbs against the palms of Kurt’s hand and gave it a final squeeze before getting up to go finish his work.

He worked until the numbers danced in front of his eyes and the names blurred together. Exhaustion clawed at him but still he pushed. The only way he could ever sleep was if he pushed himself to the place where he physically couldn’t think anymore.

Pulling the string on the lamp he let his familiarity with the darkened office guide him to the hallway. The house was quiet—the only sound was the pattering of rain and the occasional crack of thunder.

He stopped in the middle of the hallway and let the exhaustion come forward. He hoped it was enough to overtake his grief. Just for a little while.

His memories of Kurt were so few. For all the emotions the man elicited in him there just wasn’t enough for him to replay. He had hoped to have a lifetime of memories to pick and choose from. Instead he was left grasping at what he had. He replayed them so many times that the edges began to fray like an old swatch of fabric. With time they started to lose their vividness. Details were disappearing to the greedy passage of time.

The one thing he never forgot was the music. Grant could never forget the first night he met Kurt.

Sitting up on the stage under a single spotlight, baring his soul in a way Grant could never understand. Hoarse, low notes twanged out from his guitar. Notes that made Grant feel things he didn’t believe. He had stood in the dark of the bar crying tears he didn’t know he had.

Even now, if he closed his eyes, he could still hear the music. The notes winding their way around him like airy smoke. They curled around him and drew out all the things he felt.

Something wet dripped down his face, and he reached up to feel a tear tracking down his cheek. He stared down at the droplet on his fingertip. He had not cried for months.

Then he heard it.

Tentative notes, soft and low. They didn’t sound like the music from that night in the bar. This was different. Hopeful rather than mournful.

His heart hammering in his chest he ran down the hallway. Reaching the door, he whipped it open.

Kurt was sitting up in bed, bent over the guitar with purple hair falling over his face.

Dark eyes turned to him, bright in the light of the fading sun.