Ballsy

by Sean Ashcroft

  It had felt like he was up there for years, but he was glad he’d done it now. Especially because it meant he never had to do it again, not for anyone.

  “You did good for a beginner.”

  Ben turned to see Annie standing behind him. Her approach had apparently been silent, or he’d been too lost in his own thoughts to notice.

  Probably the latter. She was small, but she wasn’t that small.

  “Uh, thank you,” Ben said. “That obvious, huh?”

  “It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” she said. “We get lots of beginners here. You gave it a shot, and that’s the important thing. I think Sam thought so, as well. You should have seen the pride on his face while you were up there.”

  Ben blinked, taking a moment to process that information. Sam was proud of him?

  Or, possibly, Annie was doing her job in trying to get troubled couples back together, and Sam hadn’t particularly reacted at all.

  That seemed more likely. Compared to Ben, Sam was fearless when it came to things like that. Rock climbing. Hang gliding.

  Being out.

  Everything Ben couldn’t do.

  Why he continued to insist on hanging out with him, Ben would never understand. He valued Sam’s friendship, but he never really felt like he really deserved it.

  “I bet you say that to everyone,” Ben said, hoping to make a joke out of it.

  Annie frowned at him. “Do you really think that little of yourself? Because I don’t think Sam does.”

  Ben wasn’t sure if he was imagining the note of suspicion in her tone. Maybe it was just his imagination, his fear of being exposed as a fraud coming to the fore.

  “I don’t deserve him,” Ben said.

  He was surprised that he could say that out loud to a stranger.

  Although, maybe it wasn’t surprising.

  Ben knew exactly how he felt. He was still as in love with Sam as he had been on the day Sam left, and he was also still exactly as afraid of rejection, of ruining their friendship, of coming out and then realizing that actually, he wasn’t attracted to men after all. That he was just overly attached to his best friend.

  Even now, he wasn’t sure. He wanted to be. He wished he’d taken the time to do the necessary soul-searching, or even the necessary experimentation, but he hadn’t.

  “I don’t think that’s true,” Annie said. “You should go to him. The sex is always better after the adrenaline rush. That’s why we leave such a long break after.” She grinned.

  Ben blushed to the tips of his ears at the thought. Annie raised an eyebrow.

  Maybe her suspicion was real.

  “We’re not, uh… we don’t…” Ben chewed on his lip.

  Hopefully, this would both explain his blush and their reason for being there. Annie didn’t need to know that they didn’t have sex because they weren’t together. It was the perfect, obvious relationship problem for them to have.

  It was the actual problem they had, after all.

  Well, no. That was simplifying it too much. They had a whole world of problems, but sex… that was at the core of it, in one way or another. It was as close to the truth as Ben could get without telling Annie his entire life story.

  The last thing he wanted was to do that.

  “Oh,” Annie said, her face falling. “Oh, honey,” she continued, reaching out to touch Ben’s arm.

  Ben supposed it was meant to be a comforting gesture, but it seemed too intimate for a stranger. Even a stranger who was trying to help.

  Maybe this was normal. Maybe Ben was the one who was being weird.

  He couldn’t really tell anymore. He got the impression that a normal, emotionally healthy person would have taken the risk of rejection a long time ago and told his best friend how he felt. It was definitely starting to feel like he’d been screwing up for years.

  “Well, that’s what you’re here for,” Annie went on. “To reconnect.”

  Ben chuckled darkly. She had no idea.

  “That’s the idea,” he said, all the doubt in his voice completely authentic. He hoped he and Sam would be on an even keel by the time the weekend was over, but…

  To mix a metaphor, this was throwing them in the deep end. Sam had been nothing but upbeat, but Ben wasn’t so sure he could do this until Sunday afternoon without saying something he’d regret.

  “Go to him,” Annie patted his arm. “I bet he’s just as nervous and unsure as you are. And I saw him tackle that climb. If he was my partner… I’d be getting naked right about now.”

  Ben laughed nervously, not sure how else to react to that. It was phrased like a compliment, but all he could think was that he had no idea.

  “Unfortunately for you, he’s gay,” Ben said.

  “All the best ones are.” Annie laughed. “You say that like you’re not.”

  “I’m bi, actually,” Ben responded.

  He was saying that a lot this week. To his relief, it was getting easier. The more often he said the words, the more confident he became that they were true.

  He wasn’t sure why he was telling Annie this. It would have been simpler to let her believe he was gay. Simpler, but not true.

  Maybe it was that he was lying about enough things this weekend. He wasn’t going to lie about this.

  “Oh,” Annie said. Ben braced to hear a lecture about that being why his relationship was on the rocks, that Sam didn’t trust him, that he was afraid of Ben cheating.

  He might not have been out, but he’d heard what was said to other people. He’d been listening.

  Ben liked to pretend he was above caring about what other people thought, but no one was. He was less affected by it, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t affected at all.

  “Well, that’s… kinda hot, actually.” Annie smiled at him.

  That didn’t sound like the kind of reaction she was supposed to have, but anything was preferable to judgement.

  Ben knew Sam well enough to know that Sam wouldn’t care how he identified. He’d want Ben to be honest with himself. But he didn’t need to hear yet another reason why Sam would have gotten sick of waiting for him.

  “Uh. Thank you?” Ben said, for lack of a better response.

  “Go to Sam,” she said. “Tell him you want him. Trust me, that’s what he wants to hear.”

  Ben swallowed. It was a nice fantasy, but it wasn’t something he was going to do.

  For a man who ran a project called Ballsy, he was one hell of a coward.

  “I will,” he lied. “Thank you.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Though he’d woken up starving after his nap, cooking his own dinner in front of everyone else in the whole retreat wasn’t exactly Sam’s idea of a relaxing evening.

  He’d imagined that someone else would be cooking for them, but apparently, making a meal together was good for bonding.

  That was fine for someone like Ben, who could throw a feast together from even the contents of Sam’s ill-stocked fridge, but Sam didn’t like cooking. He didn’t enjoy it, and he only did the bare minimum he had to in order to keep himself alive. Where possible, he let someone else do it, and he’d always been happy to pay for the privilege.

  The idea of being judged on his cooking skills, even silently, put him on edge.

  Now he knew how Ben had felt about the rock climbing.

  “No one’s looking at you,” Ben said, not for the first time since they’d started. He’d promised to only pass off tasks that no one could screw up, although Sam felt that trusting him with knife work meant Ben had a lot more faith in his skills than the evidence suggested he should.

  Ben probably thought Sam had learned a few things over the last decade.

  He was wrong.

  “I feel like they’re all looking at me,” Sam responded, lining up pieces of bacon on his chopping board. The recipe they’d been given was for a mercifully simple pasta dish, and Ben had promised to do all the cooking if Sam helped with the prep work.

  The last thing Sam wanted was
to be useless, but he knew that whether or not he wanted to be, he was.

  “They’re too busy squabbling,” Ben said. “I never realized what a nightmare marriage was.”

  “We’re doing okay,” Sam pointed out. So far, they hadn’t gotten into any fights, and things didn’t seem tense between them. In fact, they seemed to be getting on much better than Sam had expected.

  He’d imagined one or two uncomfortable moments, offset by the value of getting important things of their chests.

  So far, Ben had gotten one important thing off his chest, and Sam had been too afraid to say any of the hundred things he wanted to. It wasn’t even that he was telling himself there’d be time later.

  He’d taken to telling himself that maybe he’d never have to say them. Maybe Ben would, at some point, magically figure them all out for himself.

  “We’re not married,” Ben said, salting the pot of water he’d put on earlier and drizzling oil over the top.

  Those were the kind of details that made him good at this, and Sam not.

  Sam had never even been in a kitchen like this before, with huge, long benches and multiple stovetops to work from. He figured Ben probably hadn’t either, but he looked comfortable all the same.

  That was an improvement on earlier, so at least something was going right for one of them.

  Just as Sam was about to answer, the knife slipped and caught the top of his thumb.

  “Fuck,” he swore much louder than he’d intended to. If people weren’t looking at him before, they were now.

  Automatically, he stuck his thumb in his mouth, making a distressed little whimper.

  “I’ll get a bandaid,” Robert called from halfway across the room, and then disappeared.

  Sam was left looking at Ben, trying to apologize with his eyebrows alone. At least Ben didn’t seem particularly upset.

  “You’re lucky the knife was sharp,” Ben said, taking it away and letting the water run over it for a handful of seconds before setting it aside.

  Sam wasn’t sure what that meant, because right now, he felt as though he would have been much luckier if the knife had been blunt. Or, ideally, a spoon.

  No one ever cut themselves on spoons.

  “Put it under the cold water,” Ben instructed as Robert came back with a mini first aid kit, which seemed to contain little more than bandaids, antiseptic cream, and aspirin.

  Sam looked between Ben and the sink, where the water was still running, and eventually worked up the courage to take his thumb out of his mouth to put it under the water.

  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.

  He’d run home when he realized that life wasn’t forever, when he’d had his first real and serious brush with death, because his life wasn’t complete without the man he’d left behind.

  Already, he was happier. Ben would probably have laughed to hear that, said he didn’t seem happy… but he hadn’t seen the Sam of six months ago. The one who’d lived completely inside his own shell, all smiles on the outside, all heartbreak on the inside. Nothing had ever made him feel at peace.

  Not until he’d sat in the quiet room at this retreat, listening to Ben breathing beside him.

  “Yeah,” Sam said belatedly, pulling himself back to the present. “Yeah, uh. I’d like that. I’ll… supply the booze, I guess.”

  “I expected you to have an encyclopedic knowledge of wine by now,” Ben said.

  “You don’t drink wine,” Sam pointed out. Ben was a bourbon and coke kind of man, beer on really hot days in the summer. Single-malt scotch when he was feeling contemplative.

  “It’s probably time I learned.” Ben shrugged. “I was hoping you might teach me.”

  Sam opened his mouth to say that
he actually hadn’t learned much at all, but thought better of it. If Ben wanted to learn, Sam would find out and be his extremely willing teacher. He liked the mental image of Ben satisfied and wine-drunk, a little softer around the edges than usual, laughing for once.

  His heart ached at the thought. He wanted that, that simple togetherness, more than anything.

  He’d thought he was coming all this way to sweep Ben off his feet, but he would have been content to just sit beside him.

  “I guess we could come to some kind of arrangement,” Sam agreed.

  “Good.” Ben didn’t look up, but Sam could hear a smile in his voice.

  Quiet dinners with Ben were all he really wanted out of life.

  Chapter Twelve

  Ben’s stomach dropped the moment he heard the word massage. He’d known from the schedule he’d been given what was supposed to be happening today, but it hadn’t really hit him until he’d set foot in the room what was about to happen.

  Kissing Sam’s finger was one thing. Ben still felt a little strange about that, even though it had happened yesterday, but this… this was a different thing altogether.

  “You’re going first,” Sam said. “Sit.” He nodded to the stool in front of them. Every couple had one.

  At least it wasn’t a massage table. Ben wasn’t sure he could have handled that.

  He sat obediently, figuring they’d both have to do this eventually.

  Behind him, Sam chuckled. “You’ve got choices. You want chocolate or lemon-scented oil?”

  “Lemon,” Ben said. “I don’t wanna spend the rest of the day smelling of chocolate.”

  “Are you saying you don’t want to be irresistible? Because that’s what the chocolate one says. The lemon just says uplifting.”

  Ben shifted on the stool. “I’m already both irresistible and uplifting.”

  Sam laughed again, uncapping a bottle. The most offensively chemical lemon scent Ben had ever smelled hit him immediately, an assault on his nostrils that made him cough, forcing him to cover his mouth and nose to get away from it.

  Sam put the cap back on the bottle. “Sorry, I’m not using that,” he said. “You’re stuck with chocolate. Or chafing.”