Kurt lay there, trying to keep as still as possible. His ears were buzzing and his left side was throbbing. His eyes were closed, but no longer able to keep the tears from escaping and leaving trails as they ran down his cheeks. Because it hurt. He'd dealt with days like this before, bad days, but never before had Uncle Tim left him in the middle of the kitchen floor hurt, and, and Kurt felt something wet and sticky with his fingers, bleeding.

The silence around him signaled that Uncle Tim wouldn't be coming back any time soon. Kurt had no idea where his uncle had gone but Kurt thought he vaguely remembered the sound of the front door slamming. Taking a deep, painful, breath, Kurt winched as he pushed himself to a sitting position to examine the damage. There was a thick line of crimson staining the fabric toward the bottom of Kurt's shirt. Slowly, Kurt lifted his shirt and gasped at the sight of a rather large piece of the coffee cup Uncle Tim had thrown sticking out of his side. Kurt held his breath, grabbing onto the piece of porcelain and carefully pulling it out. It wasn't in there deep, but Kurt cried out softly as he let out a shaky breath as he felt the shard become removed from his body before he dropped it to the floor beside him, a fresh batch of tears falling from his eyes.

Using the top of the dishwasher, than the kitchen counter, for leverage, Kurt managed to push himself to his feet. Once he was vertical, Kurt looked down at his side again; the spot on his shirt had grown. Steadying himself, Kurt reached a bloody hand over and grabbed some paper towels off the rack, folding them over a few times before placing them underneath his shirt, applying pressure to his cut. With short steps while carefully listening for the sounds of Uncle Tim returning, Kurt walked himself into his bedroom.

Kurt shut the door to his bedroom and locked it behind him. He moved carefully to his dresser and pulled the first aid kit he had stored inside the top drawer. He moved to stand in front of the full length mirror next to his vanity. Carefully, Kurt removed his shirt, tossing it carelessly to the floor. Blood was still oozing from the cut on Kurt's side. He should've gone to the hospital. He should've called the police. But he didn't. Instead, he followed a procedure he'd done twice before: clean the wound, wrap it up, and repeat until there was nothing left but an ugly scar.

Once he was wrapped in his last bandage, Kurt padded slowly back to the kitchen, there was a mess than needed to be cleaned up. There was just a tiny smear of blood on the floor from where Kurt had been lying and shards of broken coffee mug. Kurt grabbed the broom from behind the refrigerator and tried, pathetically, to sweep up the broken bits with one arm, the other applying slight pressure to his side. When he got most of it off the floor Kurt grabbed rag from the drawer next to the sink, wet it, and then knelt down on the floor to wipe up his own blood from the linoleum.

Kurt changed into an old pair of pajamas, exhausted both physically and emotionally. He'd stopped crying somewhere during the first trip from the kitchen to the bedroom, but Kurt could feel how swollen and red and irritated they were. It was barely eight and he had a ton of homework he needed to finish but all he wanted to do was sleep. As he settled in, he lay flat on his back and staring up into dark, Kurt had never been more ready to leave Lima and everything behind him. There were only seven months until graduation. And by then the bleeding would have stopped and all that would be left would be a scar to remind himself of the past, and to push him harder towards his future.

Kurt couldn't manage to get himself to school the next day, or the day after. The bruising made it painful to bend over and move with the same grace as he was known to do. Plus while searching through his closet for a pair of boots, Kurt realized that he'd moved the wrong way and the fresh wound had started bleeding again and maybe a couple of days in bed would be for the best. Kurt talked himself twice out of the idea of super gluing his wound shut. But the thought of the scar being even uglier because Kurt had decided to mend it with such barbaric methods made him cringe more than the hideous sight that already tainted his sight. The only bright spot in spending two days as prisoner to his bedroom were the text messages from Blaine. Blaine had seemed concerned when Kurt wasn't at school the next day after their study session where he seemed just fine. But Kurt explained that he'd woken up with a migraine, two days in a row. Instead, Blaine sent Kurt snarky text messages about teachers which made Kurt smile while he worked on some new sketches.

So now he walked slowly through the halls of McKinley, deciding that one day in this hell was better than the one more where his Uncle Tim was home all the time. If he could get through the day without anyone paying him any attention then he could spend his weekend getting through the worst of it and by Monday he could pretend like things were bright and shiny.

Except he was Kurt Hummel and it seemed like Azimio and Karofsky couldn't just let him slide under their radar just this once. Classes hadn't even started for the day before Kurt was sent flying across the hallway, his back crashing into a bank of lockers. This was getting old really fast. Kurt whined as this side throbbed but gathered himself before he headed further down the hallway towards his locker. Three o'clock couldn't come soon enough.

When he got to his locker, Blaine was already there putting his books into his bag. He smiled when he looked up and caught sight of Kurt.

"It's good to see you're feeling better," Blaine said cheerily, "No more migraines?"

"No more migraines."

"That's good, I'm glad. I turned the first part of our project in. I think Mr. Henson thought we were going to use your absence as an excuse not to turn it in on time."

"It's a good thing you decided to take it home to type up the rest of it. Otherwise it wouldn't have even mattered that we worked through that last cup of coffee."

"That coffee was the only reason I was able to stay awake long enough to finish typing it up. Seriously, Rachel's rehearsal schedule makes me tired even on the days we don't rehearse. She's got us..." Blaine said before his voice faded.

Kurt turned his head away from his locker toward Blaine who was looking at him, eyes wide and terrified. But he wasn't looking at Kurt's face, he was looking somewhere lower.

"K-Kurt," Blaine said panicked, "I think you're bleeding"

"Shit," Kurt hissed following Blaine's line of sight to his side and found a line of red seeping through his white shirt. Why had he worn white?

Leaving Blaine with his jaw on the floor, Kurt turned and walked quickly down the hallway toward the bathroom. It was only moments before he could hear Blaine's voice calling behind him, the other boy's footsteps a half a beat behind his own. As soon as Kurt entered the empty bathroom, he rushed into the first available stall and locked himself inside.

"Kurt," Blaine said as he came into the bathroom, "Kurt, what is going on?

"Blaine," Kurt said his voice shaking from inside the tiny stall, "Please, leave me alone."

"Kurt, let me see," Blaine insisted.

"Blaine, please just go," Kurt urged, "I'll see you in English."

"No, Kurt. I'm not leaving until you come out here."

Kurt didn't respond. He couldn't go out there. He couldn't show Blaine what he'd been hiding from everyone else for years. He could explain away small bruises and tiny cuts on his arms. He could hide those with concealer and with lies. But there wasn't a believable story that Kurt could come up with for the angry gash that was inflamed on his side.

"Kurt, if you don't come out," Blaine threatened, "I'll just have to go get a teacher and—"

"Oh, my god," Kurt shouted as he unlocked the stall door, slowly emerging from its shelter.

"Thank you," Blaine said, "Now tell me what's going on."

"Nothing is going on Blaine. Just leave it alone."

"No, Kurt," Blaine said, "You're bleeding. And then you freaked out so I know there is something you're not telling me."

Kurt felt cornered, but not in the way that Uncle Tim had done. Kurt was cornered by the boy with the beautiful hazel eyes who just wanted to help. But Blaine couldn't help and he wasn't going to let Kurt get away without an explanation.

"Fine," Kurt said, "But you have to promise me that you'll believe me when I say it was an accident and not ask any questions."

"Okay," Blaine said looking so concerned that it scared Kurt.

Kurt lifted his shirt, exposing his side to Blaine. Two days and it was still as, if not more, swollen and purple and blue than it had been the first day. The shove into the lockers had pulled the skin apart just a little so that there was just a thin line of crimson against the wound. Blaine winced as he examined the wound, as if the sight of it had hurt Blaine.

"I'm going to be fine," Kurt explained, "it was an accident."

"Kurt, that's really bad. It looks infected."

"It looks a lot worse than it feels," Kurt lied.

"What happened?"

"Blaine—"

"Have you seen a doctor?"

"Those are questions Blaine."

"Kurt," Blaine said, "it isn't deep but I really think it's infected. You should at least go to the nurse."

"No."

"Why not?"

"More questions, Blaine."

"You're just treating this yourself? With what?"

Kurt sighed, "Antiseptic and Neosporin."

"Can I?" Blaine said gesturing towards Kurt who just shrugged.

But the truth was having Blaine that close scared the shit out of Kurt. Having Blaine look at him that closely made his heart rate quicken and something fluttered low in his belly, as his body rebelled against his mind. This was incredibly unnerving considering that Blaine was doing nothing by staring at the gash in his side. Kurt had thought about it hard while he was lying in bed, trying not to turn onto his left side and manage to be comfortable. He couldn't continue to have any feelings for Blaine. So maybe he'd found the only person in Lima who actually understood what it was like to be Kurt, most of the time. Blaine understood what it was like to be gay in Small Town America. Blaine understood what it was like to be bullied and thrown into lockers and slushied in the face. But for all Kurt knew Blaine went home to a Leave It to Beaver household with a doting mother and a doting father and perhaps a sibling or two. Kurt went home to a nightmare each day. Kurt went home and hoped that all he experienced was verbal abuse instead of the physical kind. Kurt could never pull anyone into that mess. It was part of the reason he'd pushed Rachel away. Doing that wouldn't be fair to Blaine and all of it wasn't fair to Kurt. It wasn't fair to allow himself to imagine that there could be something there, because there couldn't. Despite the way he felt when he was around Blaine; despite the way his heart swelled to a million times its size every time the other boy looked at him, Kurt would never be able to be with Blaine.

"Do you have any bandages?" Blaine asked interrupting Kurt's thoughts.

"I'm out of the bigger ones. But I've got the rest of the first aid kit bag," Kurt explained.

Blaine laughed because despite the fact that Kurt was standing in front of him with an ugly gash on his side that was clearly infected, he still found it absolutely fascinating that Kurt would carry and entire first aid kit around in his bag.

Blaine moved over to grab Kurt's bag, glancing at Kurt to ask permission to open it. Kurt gave a nod and Blaine reached inside and amongst the folders, notebooks, and textbooks, Blaine found the first aid kit. He opened it up and grabbed the tiny package of antiseptic ointment and the box of wound closures and before placing the kit back in Kurt's bag and placed it back on the floor.

Blaine grabbed some paper towels from the dispenser on the wall, wet them with warm water and a little soap at the sink and then moved back over towards Kurt.

"You're going to want to use an actual washcloth when you do this at home," Blaine explained, "but I've got to improvise."

Blaine gently placed the paper towel against the wound and Kurt jumped back; Not from pain or cold, but because it was finally registering that Blaine helping him treat the wounds that Uncle Tim had left him with. It registered that Blaine was touching him and there was a jolt of electricity coursing through him. Kurt scolded himself for letting him feel those kinds of things for Blaine. If Tuesday night had taught him anything, it was that it was best to continue to keep Blaine as far away from his head and from his heart as he could. Blaine didn't need to get wrapped up in the drama of a bad day. Blaine didn't need to be lied to. Blaine had only ever been extremely kind to Kurt; there was no reason to be that cruel to him in return.

"Sorry," Blaine said.

Kurt reached over and grabbed the paper towel from Blaine's hand, "Just—just let me do it."

"Just clean it off and put some of the antiseptic on it and use those butterfly bandages," Blaine said, "And try not to get shoved into any lockers until that's healed."

"I'll see what I can do about that. Blaine?"

"Yeah."

"Thank you," Kurt muttered because despite how much Kurt wanted to push Blaine away, Blaine deserved to hear how thankful Kurt was for everything he'd done for Kurt.

Blaine nodded in response, "I know there something you're not telling me, Kurt. But if you want to, you can."

"This goes beyond locker buddy talk, Blaine."

"Then please realized that I'm your friend, Kurt. I know you may not like it, but it's true. You don't have to be my friend, but I am certainly yours."

"I don't deserve your friendship," Kurt said softly

It was true. Kurt had his reasons, but he still had been nothing but rude to Blaine most of the time. And yet there Blaine was, standing in front of him, offering the one thing Kurt wanted the most. But that same thing Kurt wanted was also the same thing he needed to pull away from. Everything with Blaine would go away as soon as their project was turned in and they didn't have to work with each other on a weekly basis, things would go back to normal. Kurt would keep his promise not to return to the hostel boy he was when they'd first met, but that was all that was going to become of Kurt and Blaine. The table that had been dubbed theirs would go back to being the table in the corner on Tuesday afternoons. Kurt would mourn the loss of it all, but he understood that was how it was meant to be.

"I don't think you know what you deserve," Blaine said looking Kurt right in the eye.

A silence fell between the two boys as their eyes remained locked together. Kurt wasn't sure how to respond to what Blaine had said, he wasn't sure what Blaine had meant. But a heartbeat later, Blaine took a step forward and laid a warm hand against Kurt's neck. Kurt felt Blaine hesitate for a second, Kurt himself terrified of what was happening. And then Blaine went up on his toes just a little and Kurt felt the crush of Blaine's lips against his forehead.

"I'll see you in English," Blaine whispered falling back on the pads of his feet, his arm running almost without thought from Kurt's neck down Kurt's arm. It sent bolts of electricity through Kurt so much he wasn't sure if he could walk properly if he needed to.

Kurt managed a nod, afraid of what would have come from his mouth had he opened it. Blaine took a step back, his eyes focused on Kurt, a tiny, bashful smile on his face before he turned away from Kurt leaving him alone in the bathroom and more confused about his feelings as ever.