Page 174 of Hurt

“What are you cooking?”

Grant explained what he was attempting to cook. The results were usually passable—not that Kurt ever complained. He was used to eating whatever the bar had stored in the back of the freezer.

“How was Willow?” Grant asked as he meticulously measured the exact amount of salt the recipe called for.

“Ridiculous,” Kurt griped. “Made me baby her all day, and she wasn’t even sick.”

“She wasn’t?”

“No, she was just…” He trailed off.

Was he going to rub it in Grant’s face that his brother was having sex and he wasn’t? That Grant had chosen someone who was so intrinsically backward that he could barely brush shoulders with him?

Grant’s soft hazel eyes were watching him. They tightened a little at the corners as he stuffed more peppers into his mouth and looked away.

Grant reached out and let his hand hang in the air between them. Kurt watched as he hesitantly pushed his hair away from his eyes and tucked it behind his ear.

His hand lingered. Just the tips of his fingers brushing against the shell of Kurt’s ear. Warmth spread down his whole face just from that touch. He swallowed and forced himself not to back away. To breathe through the rising panic.

That finger traced down his ear and gently drew a blunted nail across his jaw, tracing the junction below his ear down to the soft flesh of his neck. Just a single finger leaving a trail of fire behind it, a warmth that spread throughout Kurt’s limbs.

As hot as it was on his skin, nothing could compare to the look in Grant’s eye. The mixture of joy and heat. A starving lust being fed a tiny crumb—enough to spark a hope that had died so low it was almost extinguished.

That heat on Kurt’s neck grew in intensity. It engulfed his neck, and he couldn’t breathe. Suddenly the scars on his neck were white hot, like the guitar string was still closing around his airway, and distantly, he could hear Ezra’s satisfied grunts as he watched the life leaving Kurt’s eyes. He couldn’t breathe. The room was red, and there was a whooshing in his ears that was so loud he couldn’t hear anything except the warning klaxon. Smoke filled his nostrils, and when he blinked, he was staring at the cement walls of The Catacombs. His hands were bloody, and the arm stretching toward him was wearing a scarlet shirt.

“Kurt!”

He was back on the floor of Grant’s cabin. Curled in around himself with his back pressed to the cabinets. His lungs ached, and he was panting as if he had just run a marathon. Grant was crouched in front of him, hands raised but not touching him. His pretty face was twisted with concern.

Scrambling to his feet, he just barely made it to the garbage can before he vomited everything he ate into the bin. He breathed against the plastic bag and tried to swallow past the thickness in his throat.

“Can I get you something?” Grant asked from where he was kneeling on the other side of the room.

Kurt slid back to the floor, hiding his face against the trash can and trying not to feel too much. He hadn’t had a flashback during his waking hours in so long. Grant had been able to touch him some more, sit next to him on the couch and even gently caress his cheek. He had been getting better…he thought…

Kurt breathed in shakily. “Please stop looking at me like that.”

He heard the softest exhale from Grant. “I will try.”

That was worse. Worse than the flashback, worse than the rising panic he couldn’t identify, was Grant’s boundless patience. No matter how ridiculous Kurt was, he just took it. He took his cruelty and his insensitivity. He never said a word.

Just like he had done to Willow before, Kurt was slowly smothering Grant. Snuffing out his life with the shadows that clung to him like a cloak.

Kurt rubbed his eyes with his sleeve and used the trashcan to pull himself up. His stomach was still roiling, but he couldn’t sit there anymore. Couldn’t be still. He needed to do something with his hands.

“Find someone else.”

Grant stared at him. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Kurt started hotly. There were tears gathering in his eyes, and hehatedthem. “Find someone else to love! Find someone who can love you back! Give this, all of this, to someone who deserves you. Someone who you can touch.” His voice cracked on the last word.

There was an intensity in Grant’s eyes that he had never seen before.

“I told you, I don’t care if we ever touch—”

“Bullshit!” Kurt snapped. “I’ve seen the look in your eyes. Of course, you want to touch me, Grant. You’re fuckingnormal. You deserve to be with someone who touches you back.”

A glass crashed to the ground. It shattered into a million pieces, sending shrapnel across the kitchen. It took Kurt a moment to realize that Grant was the one who threw it.