"I'm just getting the thread." I keep my back to him for the three seconds it takes to get my face right. Then I turn around.
He's watching me. He saw it. He doesn't say anything, he just holds my eyes for a moment. In that moment I understand that he knows and he's not going to make me talk about it. That’s exactly what I need from him right now.
I sit back down and start the stitches.
"You warned EJ before the antiseptic," he says. "You didn't warn me."
"EJ is nine. You can handle it."
"That's your professional opinion?"
"As a matter of fact, yes."
He settles back and lets me work. My hands are steady now.
"Does this bother you?" he asks after a while. Quieter. "What I do? What today was?"
I tie off a stitch. "Why would it?"
"Because you're asking me what happened and I can't tell you. That bothers some people."
I think about that. About whether it bothers me. About what the honest answer is. "As your friend," I say carefully, "yes. I don't want to see you hurt."
"As my friend." He repeats it and there's a smile in his voice without there being one on his face.
"Don't push it, Austin."
"I'm just noting the category." A beat. "So, you do care about me."
"Don't make me regret saying that."
He laughs, just quietly, and it does something to my chest that I don't examine.
I finish the last stitch and dress the wound before stripping off my gloves. I'm about to tell him he can go when he reaches outand takes my hand. Gently. Not grabbing, just taking it, and I don't pull away.
"Sav." He sits up and eases his legs around so they're hanging off the table, which brings him level with me, which means we’re suddenly very close. His hand is still around mine. "I came here because you're the best person I know to do this. And because I wanted to see you. Both things are true and I'm not going to pretend one is truer than the other."
I look at him. At the particular blue of his eyes in the low light of the treatment room. At the line of his jaw and the ink on his forearms and all the ways he is the same and yet not the same as the boy I knew.
"You are so much trouble," I say.
"Yeah," he says. "I know."
He lifts his free hand and touches my face, his thumb against my cheek, and I let him. He watches my face the whole time, checking, making sure I'm still here, still with him. And then he leans forward and kisses me.
It's not rushed. It's not the desperate thing I might have expected after everything that's happened tonight. It's slow and deliberate and when I open my mouth for him and feel his tongue against mine, something in me that has been clenched for approximately ten years loosens.
I step forward without deciding to and his hands find my hips to pull me closer. I let him, one hand on his shoulder, the other gripping the front of his t-shirt, and I can feel the heat of him through it. I can feel every place where we're touching and there are a lot of them. It’s the best thing that has happened to me in a very long time.
His hands move up my back, and I tip my head to give him more access when he makes a sound low in his throat that I remember. I remember that sound. I remember what it means and what it does to me. Apparently ten years has done nothing about that particular problem because it does exactly the same thing now.
When we pull apart, he rests his forehead against mine. His breathing isn’t entirely steady, and neither is mine.
"God," he says.
"Don't," I say.
"I'm just..."
