It wasn't so long ago that Wrench held a blade concealed against his gut as he examined Kurt against the backdrop of the withered church, wondering at once if he was a demon or a danger. He thinks of the men he's judged and the men he's never given a second thought to and spares a moment wondering after the life he left behind. Wondering, for a time, what Kurt saw when Wrench first darkened the sidewalk before him. What he sees now, and how much of it obscures the kinds of things he wouldn't tolerate. One man's difference is apparent. It sets him apart in ways that cannot be avoided or diminished. But Wrench thinks it's Kurt who would feel disgust if only he knew what the hands that touch him now have done before.

Briefly, he wonders if he should warn the other man. But when Kurt clasps him, he finds himself falling in all over again. Losing himself in his vision of what his companion must see. Perhaps just an empty canvas of limitless potential, but how long has it been since anyone's looked at him and seen a future of any kind?

When Kurt's hands plead for him, Wrench feels every bit of his resolve fracturing. The hollow shell he's tried to shape himself within, to keep out any semblance of the humanity of the man lurking beneath. The shield from the vastness of his own fear and pain. It all crumbles, and Wrench feels it tumbling out. He feels laid raw in his own vulnerability, reaching out for Kurt for a soft place to land even as he drags him closer. This is what he wants more than anything: to find himself wanted. To be -- even if only for a moment -- someone's necessity.

There's no ceremony in the way his fingers take Kurt's waistband and drag it down his hips, shorts and all. It's a hunger to be free of everything that stands between them. To find the younger man, warm and waiting, poised in his own eagerness for Wrench. He doesn't make him wait. Instead he takes Kurt's length in his crooked fingers and buries his lips just above the bandages.