Work Text:
My place Friday?
Tim stared at the text message he had sent for a moment before he flipped his phone over and attempted to focus on his work. It had been a few days since Ben had escorted him home from the bar and ended up playing doctor to him instead of the cute hook up Tim had intended; Ben insisted that they couldn’t do anything strenuous because it could make his injuries worse. Tim had grumbled and informed Ben that he was lucky that he was so cute or else he would have kicked him out of his apartment. They had spent the majority of Saturday together, curled up on Tim’s couch while they watched shitty day-time television while occasionally making out but never getting much further than that. When Ben left around dinner time, claiming he had to get ready for his shift at the hospital, Tim was left feeing happy, happier than he had been in a very long time, but also extremely frustrated. It was Tuesday now and Tim and Ben had been texting back and forth over the past couple of days. They hadn’t seen each other since Saturday and Tim was hoping to change that, especially now that he was fully healed from his concussion and other injuries sustained because of Daryl Crowe Jr.
Tim was taken out of this line of thought by the loud vibrations of his cell phone. Feeling nervous, Tim flipped over his phone and looked at the new text from Ben.
Sure. Sounds great :D
Tim couldn’t help but smile, not only was he pleased that Ben agreed to meet with him but the fact that Ben showed exuberance via emoticons. It was dorky and a little juvenile but also endearing. Before Tim got a chance to tell him that much, primarily the dorky part and not the fact that Tim liked it, his phone buzzed again.
What are you doing for lunch today?
Tim had planned on taking a working lunch and attempt to get through some of the backed up paperwork he hadn’t had a chance to get to but he figured what would another day delay hurt?
Staying at work because I still don’t have a car.
Ben replied almost instantly.
What would you say if someone rescued you from work and took you to lunch?
Grinning, Tim responded just as quickly.
I’d say are you paying?
“Who are you texting that is making you smile like a kid in a candy store?” Rachel asked as she slapped a couple of files down on the corner of his desk. “Also, I shouldn’t have to remind you that you shouldn’t be having personal conversations during work hours.”
“How do you know this is a personal conversation?” Tim asked as he set his phone down and swiveled in his chair to face Rachel.
“Because my phone is silent and I am the only person in this office who could ever work a genuine smile out of you,” Rachel said with a knowing look. “Get off your phone and get to work.”
“It’s Chris the I.T. guy,” Tim shouted over the barrier as Rachel began to walk away. “He’s a really funny guy when he stops being a complete dick.”
Once Rachel had returned to her desk and began work on something on her computer, Tim returned to his cell phone and found three new texts from Ben.
Pay for your own lunch cheapskate.
Fine I’ll pay but you’re paying for food on Friday.
What time’s your lunch break?
Tim sent him a quick text before he shoved his phone back into his pocket and attempted to return to his work without focusing on how lunch seemed very far away from right now.
One o’clock found Tim waiting outside the back of the courthouse, hoping against hope that no one happened to walk out or see him from a window and wonder what the hell he was doing or who he was leaving with. Really he was just worried Rachel would see him. If some random person from the office questioned him he would be able to make up a reasonable excuse or pass it off with a sarcastic comment but if Rachel found him he would be forced to tell her the truth and he was just not ready to deal with that. He loved Rachel like a sister but damn, he just wished she’d cut him some slack every now and again and let him give her a bullshit answer.
“Need a ride?”
Tim looked up and found Ben leaning out of the window of his car, grinning happily at him. Unable to fight the smile that came to his face, Tim pushed himself off of the wall, walked around the car, and climbed inside.
“You know if you were a classy person you would have opened the door for me,” Tim commented as Ben drove away from the parking lot.
“When did I ever say I was classy?”
“Well you didn’t say it but I just figured a nice, young doctor might have a little bit of class.”
“Maybe if we were somewhere else but Tim, this is Kentucky. I’m afraid there’s a bit of a shortage of class here,” Ben teased.
“My mistake,” Tim apologized before he glanced around at the scenery around him. “Where is it that you’re taking me? Because if you’re planning on kidnapping me, you’re gonna have a couple Deputy Marshal’s on your ass before you can tie me to a chair.”
Ben smiled and shook his head slightly before he answered Tim.
“There’s this diner on the other side of town that I like to go to. It’s a little out of the way but it’s nice. And it won’t be busy this time a day.”
“Which means there will be less people who see us together?” Tim asked quietly as he stared out the window at the passing scenery.
“Which means we’ll have more privacy; more like a date,” Ben amended after a long pause. He turned to smirk at Tim. “More romantic that way.”
Tim smiled slightly and shook his head at Ben’s comment. While they were curled up on the couch they hadn’t exactly gotten around to discussing how comfortable each other were with being together in public. Tim was a little uneasy at the idea of being together in public where everyone could see him and more importantly see him with Ben. He had to admit he was in a better place with his sexuality than he was years ago but he had to remind himself that Kentucky wasn’t exactly the most proactive state in the country. Tim assumed that Ben was going out of the way for Tim’s benefit; he asked him out so clearly Ben was more comfortable being out in public with another man.
Ben parked in front of a tiny diner, his car being one of only five cars in the parking lot. Inside there was only two other people, a booth occupied by a very elderly couple. A young waitress sat them at a booth on the other side of the room and took their drink orders before leaving. There was a moment of semi-awkward silence where Tim stared around the diner and Ben fiddled with the plastic menu, looking nervous. It finally ended when Ben smiled at him, leaned across the table, and began talking as if he were able to divulge some big secret.
“You know this place has got to have the best pie in all of Kentucky,” Ben said wisely.
“In all of Kentucky?”
“Yup. And in Virginia,” Ben added as an afterthought.
“Been to Virginia often?” Tim asked.
“You could say that. I grew up there,” he said as the waitress returned with their drinks and they paused their conversation to order their food.
“You’re from Virginia?” Tim asked as he added cream to his coffee.
“Yeah. My parents and sister live there still,” Ben answered while he pushed his glasses back into place before they slid any further down his nose.
Tim nodded. Ben had mentioned to him on Saturday that he was the older of two children but Tim had been a little distracted by other things to ask him more questions of his home life.
“I visit them on the holidays,” Ben said with a shrug and a smile that Tim decided was all too cute for a grown man to pull off but somehow Ben managed. “They always want to visit me but I don’t really have room for them in my apartment and they’d have to get a hotel…”
“Roommates?”
“Huh?”
“You don’t have room in your apartment? Do you have roommates or something?”
“No. I live alone. Well, except for the termites,” Ben admitted with a grimace. “My apartment’s pretty much you’re generic bottom-of-the-barrel lonely bachelor’s apartment. Not really fit for visitation.”
“Rich doctor like you can’t afford a decent apartment?” Tim asked over the rim of his coffee cup. “I find that hard to believe.”
“It’s easier to believe when you factor in all of my student loan debt I’m still paying for after eight years of school.”
“Shit,” Tim hissed.
“Yeah. I figure I’m still pretty young. I can deal with living in a shitty place for another year or two if it means I’ll be out of debt sooner,” Ben shrugged. “We all gotta make sacrifices.”
Their conversation was interrupted once again with the arrival of their waitress and their meals. For a few minutes there was silence again at the table as they dug into their meals but it was no longer awkward; Tim dared to call it comfortable.
“So, you’re from Virginia. How is it that you’ve come to work and reside in Kentucky?” Tim asked after he swallowed his mouthful of food; he thought of Raylan and some of the others from the office for a moment and imagined how shocked they would be if they were aware of the fact that Tim actually could be polite and not talk with food in his mouth. He knew better. He just didn’t feel like those people deserved it.
“I got accepted into the University of Kentucky and I really liked it here so I applied for their med-school program and I got it there too,” Ben answered. “And after med-school I got an internship at the hospital here and that’s basically it,” Ben finished lamely with a half-smile with his eyes focused on his meal. Tim watched him play around with his meal for a moment before Ben looked up at him and smiled warmly. “So, Tim, where are you from?”
“Indiana,” Tim answered bluntly while he felt a frown come to his face at the thought of his home state.
“And how is it that you came to call Kentucky your home?” Ben asked brightly, clearly unaware of how suddenly uncomfortable Tim felt.
“Well, after my Federal Law Enforcement training at Glynco in Georgia I applied to all open Deputy Marshal positions and I got accepted at the Lexington office,” Tim answered.
“How long was your training?”
“19-weeks,” Tim answered. “There were a lot more tests and studying than I expected.”
“Have you always been a Marshal?”
“No,” Tim answered while he felt his stomach tighten and twist uncomfortably. “No, I started my training when I was twenty-eight.”
“What were you doing before then?” Ben asked gently, as if he could sense Tim’s discomfort on the subject.
Tim let out a deep breath while he thought about the question. Usually when Tim met knew people he avoided questions about his past and rarely volunteered information about himself; he remembered when he first arrived at the Lexington office and it was like pulling teeth for Rachel to fish any useful and meaningful information out of him. But Ben… well, there was something about Ben that made Tim feel like he should tell him important things.
“I was in the Army,” Tim answered while he looked Ben straight in the eyes.
He watched as Ben’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped a little in shock before he attempted to quickly compose a more neutral expression.
“The Army? Really?” Ben asked blinking his green eyes while sounding mildly surprised.
“Yup,” Tim answered while he mentally cursed the sudden serious air that dropped on top of their previously light conversation. “From the time I was eighteen until I was twenty-six.” Tim then added as an afterthought, “I was in the Army Rangers.”
“Really?” Ben repeated before he let out a low whistle which was then by a tiny laugh that Tim now realized was a bit of a nervous tick. “Damn. From eighteen to twenty-six I was stuck inside with my nose in a textbook and playing with cadavers. You make me look like wimp.”
“How does saving lives make you a wimp?” Tim asked with a frown. “Any monkey can be trained to be a soldier but not everyone can be trained to heal.”
“I doubt I could be trained to be a soldier,” Ben admitted.
“Yeah well you’re-” Tim started before he cut himself off and forced himself to stop before he said something stupid like ‘well you’re too good to be a solider’ or something equally as embarrassing. What the hell was wrong with him? He hardly even knew the guy.
“I’m what?” Ben asked with a crease in his forehead.
“Nothing. I mean, you’re not nothing just-” Tim growled before he let out a hiss and ran his fingers angrily through his hair. He didn’t want to fight. He liked Ben and Tim didn’t want to fuck it up right at the beginning of…whatever the hell this was. “Can we just change the subject or something?”
“Sure,” Ben said with a nod before he added a quiet, “Sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” Tim mumbled into his almost empty-coffee cup.
The air of comfort and ease that had previously surrounded the two had disappeared and was replaced with something much more prickly and uncomfortable. Tim didn’t know what to say and couldn’t even think about what they were talking about before their conversation took an ugly turn. He couldn’t even look at Ben and instead chose to stare at their hands on the table. Tim’d sat folded, closed and close to his body; Ben’s where spread out and open, reaching half way across the table. It seemed appropriate.
“So what do you do for fun when you’re not being a Marshal?” Ben asked, attempting to break the awkward silence.
“My work takes up a lot of time,” Tim answered. “I don’t really get out much.”
“I don’t really know what Marshal’s do, sorry,” Ben apologized. “Is there a lot of outside work? Are you sort of like cops?”
“We’re a bit different than cops. Marshal’s deal mostly with fugitives; tracking them down and hunting them down. We’re also used as body guards at times, protecting judiciary against threats or federal witnesses if we think they’re endangered, transporting federal prisoners if they need to be transferred to another prison or need to be taken somewhere for medical reasons. It’s not all gun slingers and Mexican shoot outs.”
Ben smiled at him while Tim thought of their conversation about his interesting day at work on the day they had met.
“But sometimes we have to do stake outs and those can take days sometimes; days and nights on end, usually holed up somewhere shitty. Sometimes I’m called in by the SOG team and that usually eats up at least and entire day.”
“SOG?” Ben asked in confusion.
“It’s Special Operations Group,” Tim answered. “Sometimes they need an extra hand with a situation and I get called in to play sniper.”
“Play sniper?” Ben asked in a would-be calm voice.
“Yeah… I was a sniper in the Army Rangers,” Tim admitted while he mentally kicked himself.
He looked up and found Ben staring at him with wide eyes. Tim didn’t know what to call the emotions he found in Ben’s deep green eyes but even if he could name them Tim was sure they wouldn’t be good. He didn’t want it to be fear or disgust because even though it had only been a couple of days he knew that he already really liked Ben. Tim also didn’t want Ben to be impressed or pleased with the knowledge because he didn’t want someone to be impressed with the fact that he was an expert killer, at least not when it came to someone he was trying to take to bed.
Tim didn’t want this. He didn’t want Ben to know all of his shit right off the back. He thought back to Saturday when he and Ben were curled up on the couch, feeling relaxed and maybe a little silly. They had spent the time together talking about movies and television shows and books that they liked and hated in-between making out and Ben checking his concussion, or lack thereof, while Tim rolled his eyes and told him to stop being a doctor.
Now in his years since returning to civilian life, Tim had grown to realize that it was important for certain people to know what he had done. His coworkers, he realized, should know what his skills are especially when dealing with a dangerous situation, but there were certain people Tim did not feel comfortable discussing his past as a sniper with and a cute doctor he had met less than a week ago was definitely one of them. It was way too early in the game to scare the guy off.
Tim was about to ask Ben once again if they could change the subject when his phone saved him from having to speak when it began to ring loudly. He glanced at the caller I.D. and saw that it was Raylan. He apologized quickly and quietly before he answered the phone.
“What?” he asked bluntly.
“Where are you? I need you to help me with something,” Raylan responded; Tim could tell by the background noises that he was probably driving while on the phone once again.
“I’m out on lunch,” Tim answered. “What the hell do you need help with?”
“Just somethin’ down in Harlan,” Raylan said innocently. “Just would appreciate it if you came along for the ride. And I do believe your lunch break is going to be up soon anyhow. Tell me where you are and I’ll pick you up.”
For a moment Tim thought about fighting Raylan on the request because not only did he not feel up to enduring a two hour car ride but he didn’t want to leave Ben just yet. On the other hand, Tim was edging rather closely to having his dirty laundry aired out to Ben and no way was he mentally prepared for that shit show. With a sigh, Tim rubbed his unoccupied hand across his face before he responded with his location; he frowned at Raylan’s chipper response that he was already in the area and would be there soon.
“I’m really sorry but my coworker needs a hand and-”
“It’s okay, I understand,” Ben said with a smile. “I get called into work all the time. It happens. Go do what you gotta do.”
Tim nodded and went to pull out his wallet to pay for his meal but was stopped by Ben before he could finish the act.
“No, I’ve got it.”
“Ben, really I-”
“I asked you here so I’m paying,” Ben said firmly. “Besides, I told you earlier I was buying.”
Tim nodded and frowned when he saw Raylan’s shiny black town car pull into the empty diner parking lot. Guy was quick. Feeling as if he had completely fucked up this encounter, Tim slid out of his seat and paused at the table’s side.
“Sorry about dining and dashing,” Tim apologized again.
“I’m sure you’ll make it up to me,” Ben said with a smile that seemed too genuine for him to believe.
“Right,” Tim nodded before he quickly walked out of the diner and hopped into Raylan’s car. When Raylan didn’t drive away immediately Tim turned to look at him, feeling annoyed. “Are you waiting for something?”
“Who were you eating with?” Raylan asked without moving.
“A friend,” Tim answered with a growl. “I know you don’t really know how friends normally work since all of your ‘friends’ seem to want to kill you but normally friends get lunch together. So are we going to Harlan or are we gonna sit in this parking lot all damn day?
“Well this is gonna be a fun car ride,” Raylan sighed as he shifted the car into drive and pulled out of the parking lot.
Tim chose not to respond to Raylan’s comment and instead tried to get comfortable in his seat while he prepared for the long ride to Harlan and tried to think of anything that wasn’t Ben and how he probably just scared him off with his bullshit.
Tim and Raylan’s trip to Harlan turned out to be pointless. Whatever lead Raylan had been chasing turned out to be false and after driving around the country side for two hours they were forced to return to Lexington empty handed. Once they returned to Lexington, Raylan dropped him off at the garage where his car was being fixed and was now thankfully returned to driving condition. By the time Tim returned back at his apartment it was well passed dinner time and his foul mood had not lessened in the slightest. After he slammed the front door behind him, Tim paused to kick off his boots and toss his jacket onto the kitchen table before he pulled a beer out of his fridge along with some old leftovers. He cracked open the beer and chugged half of it before he opened the container and attacked the cold leftovers.
After the food was gone and his beer was finished, Tim grabbed the rest of the six-pack from the fridge and collapsed on top of his couch. He wished it were a weekend and not the middle of the week because as he sipped his beer he instantly began to crave something stronger and didn’t envy the idea of showing up to work tomorrow with a hangover. However, after he was one beer in and found his mind wandering back to the botched lunch date-was it even a date? He didn’t date, never really had. He just hooked up with strangers from bars around town when he could. He didn’t know what constituted as a date-Tim left the couch to retrieve the bottle of bourbon from the kitchen.
He didn’t want to think of Ben’s face when Tim told him he was a Sniper in a war and he didn’t want to think of how Ben had not seemed at all upset with him skipping out early and he definitely didn’t want to think about the gentle smile that was on Ben’s face as he said goodbye, the one that was clearly meant to let him down easily. Ben let him down easily because he was a nice guy and Tim understood why he was letting him down because who would want to keep talking to a guy like him after hearing that sort of information? Especially when it was the very beginning of whatever this was and it was easy to duck out and end things before anything more serious happened. Tim thought of nightmares and his flashbacks and his binge drinking and all the blood that was on his hands and knew nobody in their right mind would want to get involved with him when they knew or at least could assume all of those things that were wrong with him.
Not caring that he had to work tomorrow, Tim ignored the now empty glass he had been using for his bourbon, brought the bottle directly to his mouth and took a large drink.
Work on Wednesday was awful for several reasons. Raylan apparently mentioned to Rachel about where he picked Tim up from the day before and five minutes into work Rachel cornered him in the locker room with several questions about who exactly he had been having lunch with the day before and if they were the same person who he had been texting and making him smile. Rachel was one of the very few people in the world who knew of his sexuality and was smart enough to realize that whoever he had gotten lunch with yesterday was definitely not just a friend. Tim’s hangover was killing him and after Rachel’s persisting he snapped at her before he stomped out of the locker room and refused to even make eye contact with her for the rest of the morning. Raylan came to his desk halfway through the morning and asked if he would help him out again like yesterday and while Tim would have enjoyed a distraction from the office and a chance to get away from Rachel before she tried to press him for answers again, Tim was still annoyed with Raylan for spilling the beans to Rachel and for leading him on a goose chase yesterday so he declined with a sneer and sharp comment.
Thursday wasn’t any better for Tim, partially due to the fact that Tim had decided to indulge in his bourbon two nights in a row and was once again entering work with a pounding head and a desert-dry mouth, but also because an hour into work Ben texted him. Tim stared at his phone for a moment before he decided to ignore whatever polite excuse Ben had come up with. He didn’t want to hear it. Tim understood why Ben was doing what he was doing and seeing the exact explanation wouldn’t make anything better or easier. Tim resigned himself to deleting Ben’s number later and told himself never to enter the bar by his apartment where he ran into Ben again.
Tim’s resolve to keep this promise was tested when, on his way out of the courthouse, his phone received another text message from Ben. He contemplated looking at what Ben had sent while he waited for the elevator but decided against it when Rachel stopped next to him. He shoved his phone into his pocket and waited quietly for the elevator with Rachel.
“I’m sorry,” Rachel said as the elevator door closed in front of them and the elevator jerked downwards.
“Excuse me?” Tim asked with a raised eyebrow. “I wasn’t aware that phrase was in your vocabulary.”
Rachel shot him a stern look but didn’t argue with him.
“I know you’re not one to share about personal things and yesterday morning I got a little pushy-”
“A little-?”
“Anyways,” Rachel said firmly. “Even though I consider us friends, it wasn’t fair of me, especially while in the workplace.”
Tim nodded but didn’t say anything. They walked out of the elevator and out to the parking lot together, only parting when they arrived at their separate cars. Tim’s phone burned in his pocket on the entire way home and when he stepped into his apartment, he tossed his cell phone into the clutter drawer in his kitchen instead of looking at the texts and possibly deleting Ben’s number.
Tim grabbed a couple of stray beers from his fridge and brought them to his couch, determined to keep himself away from the heavier stuff for the night and from walking into work for the third day in a row with a hangover. Somewhere around his second beer and his third slice of Tim heard the muffled sound of his cell phone going off. It could be anyone, work calling him in for something crazy, Rachel, Raylan, but he knew who it had to have been so he turned up the volume on his television and ignored it.
Tim didn’t retrieve his phone from the drawer until he was on his way out for work on Friday morning. He glanced at it quickly to check that work hadn’t tried to contact him for some emergency reason but only one person had attempted to contact him, five times.
What could Ben possibly want? Tim realized Ben was good, clearly much too good for him, but was he really one of those people who felt the need to break things off in person? It would have made sense if they had known each other for longer but seeing as they had only met a week ago, a text was all that was needed to break things off, if there needed to be any sort of communication at all.
Tim was annoyed and in a prickly mood all day at work and everyone gave him a wide berth. The day passed slowly with little incident, filled heavily with paperwork and little to break up the monotony; it was a day that would have put him in a less than desirable mood if he came into work pleasant. On his way home he thought of possibly stopping at a bar but decided against it when he thought about the last time he went to a bar and decided to stop by the liquor store and pick up some more beer and cheap bourbon.
When Tim entered his apartment he only paused long enough to order a pizza before he turned off his cellphone, plugged it into its charger, and planned to ignore it for the entire weekend. He didn’t bother putting his beverages into the fridge and simply brought them over to the living room area and set them down on his coffee table. Half an hour later, there was a knock at his door. It was much too early for his pizza to be here and he very, very rarely had guests. Figuring it might be Rachel who got annoyed with his cell phone being turned off and decided to come to his apartment to talk to him, Tim answered the door.
“Ben,” Tim said after a slight pause as he stared at the man, dressed in an old flannel shirt with his brown hair out of control as usual, shifting uncomfortably under his gaze while he fiddled with a medium-sized take-out container in his hands. “What are you doing here?”
“You weren’t answering my texts,” Ben answered with a frown quietly. “Can I just come in for a second? I won’t be long, I promise.”
Figuring he had nothing to lose, Tim took a step back and allowed the taller man to walk into his apartment. Tim closed the door behind him and as soon as he did, Ben rounded on him.
“Are you mad at me?” Ben asked, looking upset but sounding much angrier.
“What?” Tim asked in confusion.
“Did I do or say something at the diner to upset you?” Ben asked in confusion. “I know things didn’t really end like I wanted but I didn’t think they ended that badly.”
“You think I’m mad at you?” Tim asked after he blinked and leaned against his kitchen counter while he tried to piece together the conversation.
“Well, yeah. We talk for a couple of days and then I messed up at lunch and then you don’t respond to me anymore,” Ben explained.
“Ben… I’m not mad at you,” Tim said slowly, still feeling a little confused about what had just happened.
“Well then why did you stop talking to me? I get that you’re busy and I can be a little overbearing at times and can be annoying but I would have appreciated a fucking emoticon to let me know you got the messages,” Ben said, the anger in his voice becoming stronger. “I mean, we’re grown adults here, Tim. I thought I wouldn’t have to deal with this high school shit anymore and I’m sorry, I like you, but if this is how you are I don’t know how well this is gonna work.”
“You like me?” Tim asked. “Still?”
“Well, yeah. What do you mean ‘still’?” Ben asked; it was now his time to be confused.
“To be honest I was sure I scared you off with all my Army/Sniper talk,” Tim admitted, letting out a small laugh when he realized how completely idiotic and cowardly he had been acting. Tim let out a groan and ran a hand through his hair, feeling mildly embarrassed. “I’m an idiot. And a huge pussy. I’m sorry.”
“What?”
“I was so sure you didn’t want to see or talk to me anymore after that lunch I was sure that when you texted me it was to tell me to buzz off,” Tim explained while he let out a small laugh, sure that if he didn’t laugh he was feel furious with himself. “And seeing as I’m clearly the biggest pussy in Kentucky, I didn’t want to look and see what you had to say.”
Tim turned to look at Ben with a grin still on his face and found Ben frowning at him, clearly both annoyed and upset. Tim felt the smile melt of his face and form into something closer to a grimace while he redirected his vision to the floor, feeling very foolish more than a little angry with himself.
“So let me get this straight: you’re not actually mad at me?” Ben asked.
“Nope. Just a huge idiot.”
“Don’t worry, I realized you were an idiot when I saw you drinking while healing from a concussion. I just accepted it as one of your quirks,” Ben said dryly.
“So… you still want to talk to me and see me?” Tim asked as he looked up at Ben.
“Of course I do. Why wouldn’t I?” Ben asked.
Because I was in the Army and not the Army-Reserves but Special Operations Army Rangers, Tim thought while he stared into Ben’s green eyes. Because anyone has to know that being in Special Ops means I’ve seen some shit and am not only probably but definitely messed up in the head. Because who wants to deal with this shit I’m going to bring into your life with my binge drinking and nightmares and flashbacks and dark humor. Because you’re a nice, respectable, young doctor who could do so much better than some sarcastic asshole like me.
“Just figured you could find someone with less baggage than me,” Tim shrugged.
“Maybe I find your baggage interesting,” Ben muttered, still looking highly annoyed.
“You sound sort of like a glutton for punishment right now, you know that, right?” Tim informed him.
“Yeah well, we all have our faults,” Ben shrugged, smiling shyly.
Tim watched Ben for a moment before he decided to focus on the container he still clutched in his hand, long fingers squeaking slightly against the Styrofoam.
“What’s in the box?”
“Oh, um,” Ben mumbled as he looked down at the container in his hands, as if he had forgotten he was holding the damn thing. “I brought you something.”
Ben set the container onto the kitchen counter next to Tim and opened it, revealing two pieces of slightly beat-up looking apple pie.
“You brought me pie?”
“I told you that diner has some of the best pie I’ve ever eaten,” Ben reminded him, grinning like a little kid. “I was hoping you’d let me join you but if you’re not up to it-”
Before Ben could continue, Tim lunged forward and kissed Ben. It wasn’t much more than a chaste, quick kiss but it was enough answer for Ben to know what was going on in Tim’s mind. Face still close to Ben’s, Tim grinned and said quietly, “I’ve got a pizza coming my way if you wanna wait until after to eat the pie. I know it’s not much but we did initially make plans to eat here on Tuesday.”
“I guess it’ll have to do,” Ben grinned, head tilting closer towards Tim. “You’ll just have to make it up to me somehow.”
“And how would I go about doing that?” Tim smirked, not a drop of innocence in his voice.
Ben titled his head forward and brought their faces together. Fingers sliding through hair, hands tugging at waists and pulling at undershirts, and lips pressing everywhere they could, it was safe to say that their dinner was the last thing on their minds.