Title: Comparing Scars
Rating: T
Summary: He feels her watching him.
Note: This chapter is really for those that couldn't read the M-rated companion piece Past, Present, and Future. I went through some big plot points in that piece (the first ILY and the discussion of Graham's issues), and didn't want to completely alienate those that can't read it. So, this is later that same night, with a little more angst than I first anticipated.

Mentions of past sexual and physical abuse, as well as child abuse.

He stirred at the first touch, though that wasn't what roused him. He could feel eyes on him, studying carefully.

Fingers trailed across his shoulder, feather-light as they traced along the raised lines and slight depressions. As he blinked, he saw her blue-green eyes were following the path, her brow furrowed ever so slightly. He came into a lazy sort of consciousness, though the sky was still a deep blue-black.

"You're staring again," he murmured. He reached out with one arm, grabbing her around the dip of her waist where cool sheet met warm skin, and he brought her firmly closer.

Her fingers paused and she looked up. A circle rolled instead, comforting instead of exploring. "Who said I'm not just appreciating the view?"

He nudged her nose, inviting seriousness instead of the playful teasing she was trying to incite. "I do."

She winced and her fingers tensed above his skin. "Just—I—I'm … not going to ask," she said, her voice hushed.

He shook his head and brought his hand to flatten hers to his heart. "It's fine, Em. Whatever you need."

Her eyes snapped up, and a slow smile crossed her face. "Em?"

He chuckled and rubbed his eyes. "I'm tired."

She looked a little pleased at that and curled closer. "Good," she pronounced simply. She leaned up and connected their lips languidly, slowly deepening. It was not a start to something more, but an echo of what was. She ducked lower and pressed a soft kiss to his pectoral, just above his heart. Her look was serious once again, a frown tugging downward. "I just … are they all from … from her?"

He swallowed, realizing where her hesitance stemmed from. He closed his eyes, thinking about the origins of the marks on his skin. He brushed his hand up her forearm and curled around her wrist, then he led their joined hands to the side of his neck. He splayed her fingers across the scarred bite that barely was anymore, the one that just missed tearing out his jugular. "No, not all. This one was from when I was a kid. Rival pack."

Her touch left a shiver as she scrapped up to his hair, soothingly tangling in the longer ends. "Wolves," she murmured.

He nodded, then tapped his nose next with a wry grin. "Broke this a couple times, from different things." He didn't linger on what those things were, though he remembered being pushed into a wall by a shopkeep, and of a steer knocking him to the forest floor. Then possibly once more in adulthood, when some drunk patron head-butted him.

She returned his smile. "Explains why it bends just a little to the right. I kind of like that."

He raised an eyebrow in surprise, but didn't linger on the fact. He moved lower, to the end of his ribs. "This is from a fight, maybe a couple years before she found me. I was maybe … fourteen? Fifteen? I can't say for sure. I couldn't really keep track, and I couldn't exactly ask my parents."

She focused on the mark, her thumb brushing back and forth over the long white line where the hunting knife had nicked him so long ago. "Not the safest life, huh?" she asked.

He shook his head. "I survived, and that was basically it for a long time. I have a couple more of less interesting scars from that time. Then, I was commanded to the castle."

She looked like she was going to be sick, her face pale and lips twisted more firmly downward. "She hurt you so much," she whispered, and her hands began their journey across his scars once more.

He didn't want to lie to her, not now. "Much of them aren't from her, actually. She'd heal those," he admitted.

She rested her head against his chest, covering her face from his view. Warm wetness hit his skin and his head bowed. He didn't want pity, but something in his soul ached to know that her reaction wasn't that. She was pained, even felt guilt of all things, over what had happened.

"Emma," he said, his tone almost forceful even as it never reached above a whisper. "Stop. I'm okay."

Her eyes were red as they raised to meet his. "I worked with her, side-by-side. I trusted her, with my life, with my family's … with Henry's."

"And you didn't know. You couldn't. She's manipulative, and what's worse is that she actually does believe that she's the victim in all this." He pet her hair back in long strokes. As he did, he noticed a small shiny spot inside the curved edge of her jaw, standing out amidst the small bloom of the forming bruise he'd made with tongue and teeth. Finding his out, he questioned, "where'd that come from?"

She glanced up with a plain look that said she knew what he was doing. Instead of fighting it, she sighed. "Burn. From dragon fire."

"When you were breaking the curse," he surmised with a smile. "See? You're the hero, Emma. You were able to save us, and that's why we're able to have this life right now."

She looked away sharply. He knew he was on uneven ground as he danced around the title she knew still troubled her. "I didn't save you."

"Of course you did," he said, then pressed kisses into the nape of her neck, nuzzling her affectionately. "You helped me break free. You make me feel safe. And I'll say it again, as many times as you need: I love you. I always have."

She cupped his face in her hands and kissed him soundly. She stayed close to his lips when they parted. "I don't need to hear it always. It used to … well, I didn't used to be okay with those words," she admitted softly. "I can feel it, and that feelsmore real. But … I guess it's nice, now and again."

"Good," he said, and managed a grin down at her. He was still in awe of it, this, her. Being this vulnerable should have been scarier. Despite the flashes of memory he'd had in the beginning of the evening, he felt at peace at that moment. "Because I plan on saying it now and again."

She smiled and buried her nose into his chest. "I love you," she said softly.

The second time those words escaped her that night, and it didn't feel any less extraordinary than the first. He picked up her hand and held it loosely in his grip, twining and untwining their fingers. Finally, his thumb caught into the webbing between hers and her forefinger. "Another dragon breath burn?" he asked. He pulled her hand closer, inspecting the small circular mark. It was too exact, too polished.

He watched as she swallowed, the lightness draining out of her eyes. All at once, her expression fell. "No. Third grade, ninth foster home. My punishment for reaching for the remote."

His own face hardened as the words dawned on him. "Emma," he said, his voice cracking. Rage built in his chest, and his lungs tightened with filling emotion. "What the hell?"

She shrugged one shoulder and avoided his eye. "Things I had to deal with growing up. Nothing as bad as someone stabbing me at fourteen," she said, then gave him a pointed look.

"No, you were eight and someone that was supposed to protect you did this," Graham replied, his words rumbling in a low growl.

She crooked her arm and rested her head on her hand. "There's nothing to protect me from anymore, Graham," she said, using her other hand to tug through his curls.

He turned and caught her wrist with his lips, feeling a tear slip down his face as he did so. He let out a sharp breath. "I wish—"

"Ah, so you see how I feel," she said, a teasing note in her tone that hid the seriousness under it.

He ducked his head and rolled a thumb under the shoelace. "Yeah, I see." He sighed, kissing the mark before his hands sought any others that may have marred her skin.

"Only other lasting one is here," she murmured, leading his hands to her leg. "Bone poked through. That home, at least, they took me from right away."

His eyes snapped up. "You mean you stayed with the other after it happened?"

She shrugged. "It wasn't easy to speak up. But when your strongest bone snaps through your skin for no good reason? It's an easier tip off."

His throat tightened, and the rage piqued in him again. His jaw clenched down as he struggled to pull back from the violent energy that flitted across him. The fierce protectiveness that he hadn't fully felt since he'd had a brother to protect ignited in the pit of his belly. "I don't think you realize how much I want to tear them apart," he said in a low, dangerous rumble.

She was quiet a moment, still but oddly relaxed as she remained in his embrace. There was something other than soothing in mind as she finally leaned forward and set deep kisses along the left side of his chest. "Yeah, Graham, I do," she murmured. "I want to hurt her. For you, for Henry, for me. Sometimes I feel like … I don't know, like it wants to swallow me up, just how much I want to."

He sighed heavily, and nodded. "I can't say that I don't, too."

"You were so nonchalant about it earlier," she whispered, her gaze questioning. She looked nauseated. "I know you said you're okay, but—"

"I am," he reassured. He grabbed her thigh and pulled it over his hip, bringing her even tighter against him. He rested his palms against her cheeks, making sure she could see the seriousness of what he was saying. "I told you: I feel safe with you."

The corner of her lip pulled up in time with her shoulder. "I feel safe with you, too." Her eyes flicked conspicuously toward the night stand. "But I'm not the one who was …. Did she … how much time passed before she said that you were the reason she couldn't—"

"Conceive?" he finished for her, somewhat bitterly. His eyes shaded, pushing past the memory as he stared down at her. Keeping steady focus on her green-blue eyes helped him from remembering the wrath in dark ones. He shook his head. "It doesn't matter. And it's not like it—not like it … stopped her."

"God, Graham," she choked out, and she buried her face again as her shoulders shook.

He shook his head and brought her face back, connecting their lips in a kiss that was just as bruising as it was consoling. He wasn't sure anymore which of their tears he tasted more prominently. He only released when he felt his lungs burn for air, and even then he remained close. "We were both hurt, Emma, and then hurting for each other is just in our nature," he stated through sharp breaths. "I know it will always live with me, just as it probably does for you. But we were given this. I don't want to waste it."

"I know how to bury the stuff I went through. I have decades of that. But I don't know how to let it go," she admitted. "Not the stuff that happened to you."

He took a long inhale, trying not to picture Emma, three years younger than Henry, icing a wound she wouldn't admit to. "Then we don't bury it. We just don't let it consume us," he offered.

"Easier said than done?"

"Yeah," he admitted. He kissed her one more time, gentler than the last. "But good thing our job gives us bad guys to take it out on."

Her eyes fluttered shut, a small smile crossing her face. "Yeah, okay." She tightened her arm around him.

"You help, you know. With my old stuff."

She opened her eyes, and gave a half smile in return. "I hope that's true. But you definitely help with my old stuff."

"It's true. I wouldn't have said it otherwise," he swore.

She peered at him, and the smile changed. Her eyes darkened as she leaned up. "All that extra energy you were talking about … there are other places we could put that to, you know."

"Hmm, you think?" he asked. He brushed her cheek with the back of his hand. It was strange, the mix of tears and seduction on her face.

She licked her lips and nodded. "I've read that sublimating helps." Then there was a bit of hesitation, an uncertainty to her expression. "As long as you're still in that 'great, fantastic, verging on utopic' sort of mood."

He stared down at her, feeling his entire body unfurl as he realized how important his "yes" was to her. Instead of answering immediately, he paused to study her. Every part of him felt awed that she was with him, and taking a moment to appreciate the fact only seemed appropriate. "I think I want to say it now."

She laughed, the sound a bright crash into what had been an overly tense moment. "No, don't say it now. Save it for 'again,'" she said, her eyes twinkling. She met his gaze and held it as she made her way closer, drifting slowly into his space. "Better if you show it for now."

"Yeah, I can do that." He pressed her onto her back, dipping low to breathe over the scar on her thigh. He remembered the way his family would heal wounds through licks, how stories of mothers kissing injuries better had seeped into his memories. He wished there could be nothing more to erase the wound from her memory than that simple gesture.

"This is real," she whispered softly, breaking his thoughts.

The familiar question made him drift back up to be level with her. He was suddenly sure she didn't just mean their life, as was usual, but also his state of mind. He nodded. "Promise, Emma."

She nodded back, somewhat jerkily. "Okay. Okay," she said, and reached to brush over his jaw. She blinked hard before nodding once more. "I believe you."

He curled their hands and pressed them into the bed aside her head "Together, Em," he said, then kissed her.

She sighed pleasantly. "Together," she agreed.