It stung like hell, but it wasn’t the worst injury he’d ever sustained by a long way. It was more embarrassing than anything.
“You’re okay,” Ben said, taking Sam’s hand to hold it under the water. “Could’ve been a lot worse.”
“Easy for you to say,” Sam grumbled, but then, Ben had been through his share of hardship today too. He’d even been less of a baby about it than Sam was being now.
“Extremely easy for me to say,” Ben agreed. “I’m not the guy who can’t handle a knife.”
Coming from anyone else, it would have been an insult. Coming from Ben, though, it was… fond. Playful, even. Intended to take Sam’s mind off the cut, off the pain, and give him something else to focus on.
It was another reminder that Ben was all grown up now.
Grown up Ben was really, really hot.
Ben took his hand, and Sam couldn’t bring himself to argue about that. If Ben wanted to take care of him, he wasn’t about to complain. He intended to enjoy it.
Sam watched him pat the cut dry, wipe away the remaining blood, and then wrap two bandaids around it.
“One to keep the other in place,” Ben said by way of explanation. Sam had understood what he was doing, but this was nice. He liked the softer, more caring version of Ben he was seeing right now a whole lot.
Ben didn’t let go of Sam’s hand immediately once he was done bandaging it. Instead, he raised it to his lips, kissing the knuckle below the bandaids so softly Sam was only half-sure it had actually happened.
It was enough to render him speechless, which anyone who’d known him for more than ten minutes would have considered a miracle.
Sam swallowed, unable to stop himself staring at Ben.
Ben kissed his hand.
They’d never… he’d never had contact with Ben’s lips before, not in the entire time they’d known each other. There’d never been a drunken kiss, or an accidental collision, or anything.
“You’re supposed to be my partner,” Ben said, softly enough so that no one else could hear. “And I’m sick of us not being the cutest couple.”
Despite his shock, Sam laughed. There was Ben’s competitive streak. He’d wondered if maybe it had fallen away over time, but apparently it had just been lying dormant.
“We are the cutest couple, though,” Sam said. “Or at least, you’re the only one of these people I’d take home with me.”
He wanted to swallow the words back the moment they’d escaped him. What the hell possessed him to say something like that?
“I’ll take that as the half-assed compliment it was.” Ben glanced over at the rest of the room, who’d apparently decided they’d seen enough drama for the moment, and food was more important.
Sam breathed a sigh of relief. Ben seemed to have taken it as a joke, and he didn’t seem mad about it. Maybe there was some hope for them yet.
That seemed like getting ahead of himself, though. Sam didn’t want to get his hopes up. Not again. He was starting to think that all this time, he’d seen something in Ben that just wasn’t there.
On the other hand, Ben had just kissed him unprovoked. That was… nice.
“I think you cut yourself to get out of making dinner,” Ben said, throwing out the bacon that Sam had been cutting and flipping the board to start again. “Which is a little extreme, to be honest. You could have just asked.”
“I always want you to make me dinner,” Sam said. The times Ben had done it for him when they’d been younger were some of the happiest memories of his life.
“Then we should do it more often,” Ben responded, focusing on chopping bacon. “When we’re home, I mean. Make it a regular thing.”
Sam swallowed. Ben wanted him around more often.
That had kind of been a central theme of the last few days. Ben wanted him around.
Even if it was only as friends… Ben meant the world to him. More than the world. He’d seen the world, and he’d spent most of the time he was seeing it wishing Ben had been there with him.
He’d lain in the beds of other men in the pre-dawn hours and told them about Ben, about how much he missed him, about how he’d left a part of his heart back home. Eventually, he stopped saying it out loud, but he still thought, after every encounter, about what it would have been like if Ben was there instead.
