Ben was a smart guy. He wasn't a braggart by any stretch of the imagination, but he knew his strengths and his brain was one of them. He wasn't used to being confused, but Hopper's kiss left him reeling. Why would a guy like Hopper kiss him, of all people? Hopper hadn't made any secret of the fact that he didn't like Ben, and he hadn't made any attempts to hide his distaste for Ben. Why would he lower himself to kiss him, just like that?

It had been a nice kiss. Ben hadn't been kissed like that in a long, long time. It had only been a little kiss, but something underneath felt like a tectonic shift and he didn't know what any of it meant. What was he supposed to do with any of it? Should he just go about his business and move along? Should he seek Hopper out and try to get another kiss? Something more?

If he didn't know the guy's first name, he shouldn't be thinking of kissing him again, never mind "something more."

He laughed at himself and put his feet up. Maybe enough time had gone by. Zahi would always be first in his heart, and he could never live long enough or do enough good in the world to absolve him of the guilt of letting him die. But maybe there was a future—not a future with Hopper, because they would never see each other again once Ben left the ship, but a future somewhere for him.

Maybe he could find someone who actually wanted Ben, though, instead of the exoticism of Selena Eliot's least-regarded son. He'd had that once. Zahi had been special. Zahi had been unique, damn it, but Ben couldn't believe he was unique in that way.

He went to sleep early that night, because he had nothing else to do. The next morning he reported for work in the business portion of the Solace. The immediate influx of injuries had abated, and the ship was full up, but that didn't mean the need for surgeons had faded. Many of the wounded needed more than one surgery to recover from their injuries. While the adrenaline factor was no longer present with these later patients, Ben counted them as being just as important as the first wave of surgeries.

The first wave had been to save life. This next wave was to preserve quality of life or to recover it.

He worked to save limbs or to remove them in favor of saving patients. He hated doing amputations, but sometimes they were the only way. He removed an infected eyeball too badly damaged to be saved and wondered why it hadn't been removed before. He pulled shrapnel from a mangled arm before he set it. The patient wasn't in danger of bleeding out, but there was no reason for her to heal with all that metal still in her body.

When he'd reached his permitted eight hours of surgery, he scrubbed out and went to check on his patients from his earlier surgeries. Someone had operated to relieve the brain swelling on his patient with the coup-contrecoup injury, and she'd regained consciousness. Her chart said she was experiencing some difficulty with swallowing, and her speech was affected by the injury. Her memory seemed to be intact, and she had no problem with typing or writing.

Ben wasn't a religious man. He didn't even think of himself as particularly spiritual. He still sent up a prayer of thanks to any divinities or spirits that might happen to be listening. He'd been cautiously hopeful, but not by that much.

His other patients were starting to recover. Under ideal circumstances, they'd be able to go home and rest under the care of relatives, with regular checkups and good medical care as they healed. Any homes they had were rubble now, and their relatives might or might not be living. He had no idea where they would go or what they would do. For that matter, he had no idea where he would go or what he would do either. At least he had the resources to find a place to stay.

Speaking of which…He reached out to his mother's PR agent with the tablet the Navy had lent him and made a small suggestion. Mom was always looking for ways to stay in the public eye. If she could do it for good reasons, that would make everyone happier. He couldn't be sure how many of the refugees currently on board the ship would need to be resettled elsewhere. Latakia was a government stronghold. Plenty of people would want to go back to government held areas in Syria, if they could find safe places to be. Some would not, and Ben had a feeling he knew just who to ask.

He headed out to find the captain, who aimed him at his chief administrative officer. Lt. Nick Tobin wasn't personally interviewing patients and his Arabic was shaky, but he did have a good understanding of social service structures all over the world. He was more than happy to hear Ben out, especially under the circumstances.

"I don't know if anyone's told you this yet, Dr. Michaud, but we're going to have to pull out temporarily and find shore hospitals for these patients. We thought about offloading some of them to other, safer hospitals in Syria, but right now I don't feel comfortable labeling any place in Syria as 'safe,' for anyone." He massaged his temples. "It's tough. Our first port of call will be at Souda on Crete. You and your nurses can disembark there." He smiled, and the smile looked genuine to Ben. "That's got to be a load off your mind, right? It's a step in the right direction, anyway."

Ben squirmed. "I'm not so sure about that. It's not our call, obviously. I know Carmela will be happy to go home. She was nearing the end of her assignment, and she has something to go home to."

"And you and Ms. Karam don't." Tobin grimaced. "Well, I can see where that might cause a bit of a problem. I'll see if the captain is willing to extend your time with us for a little while. It's not like we can't use the help while the crisis here in Syria is as bad as it is." He held out a hand, and Ben shook it.

He went back to his cabin in a better mood now. He was doing something to help the people on the ship and had the tantalizing possibility of doing more. If Braden, Mom's PR guy, wasn't able to get as much help as Ben wanted out of her, he'd resort to his brother, or his dad. Both of them were government officials, though, and governments meant long waits while bureaucracies wrangled and argued and bargained over human lives. Ben would rather deal with this privately.

He headed into the mess hall later, still looking at his tablet. These things were handy for something besides looking at patients' charts. He'd have to look into getting one, if he could get off the boat in Souda without being left behind. He didn't want a laptop, because it would be too much to lug everywhere, but a tablet could fit right into his duffel bag.

He ran into Hopper, he of the miracle-working lips, in the mess hall. Hopper was with a handful of his fellow SEALs, and he didn't look happy. Ben hesitated. Should he approach? Should he stay back? What was the right protocol for dealing with a guy who'd kissed you once, randomly and out of the blue?

Hopper glanced around. He didn't look happy, but he didn't look pissed either. Whatever was going on to put that look on his face, it didn't seem to directly relate to Ben. When Hopper waved, Ben felt it would be okay to approach.

Hopper gestured to his buddies. "You remember Adami, of course. And Kelly, and Robson."

The SEALs all nodded in turn. "Hi." Ben gave what he hoped was a friendly smile. It must have worked, because they all shuffled around so he could sit down. He slid into the now-vacant seat beside Hopper. "How's it going?"

Kelly made a face. "Not so great. We're getting pulled back to Souda, maybe some other ports."

Ben blinked. He had to be missing something here. "Well, yeah. Every bed on board this ship is full. They've got to evacuate the patients, and they can't just dump them all on a beach and keep going. I'm surprised the hospital at Souda is willing to take so many. Greece has taken so many refugees in already, and with their fiscal crisis they really can't afford it. They're overloaded as it is."

Robson's face twisted. "Yeah, yeah. I know. I get that, and I'm probably an asshole for saying that's not our problem." He grimaced and gestured between his friends. "But the thing is, we have a mission."

Ben frowned and looked down at his dinner. "I thought your mission was rescuing the injured and evacuating them to the Solace."

"It is. It is." Hopper put a hand on Ben's back. He thought he'd mind, but he didn't. He kind of liked it, even though it was far more possessive than he usually tolerated. "Here's the thing. We have other things we're doing. You know, while we're in the neighborhood, evacuating the wounded and all that."

"And all that." Ben snorted. "Right. What would that be?"

Kelly snickered. "We could tell you, but we'd have to kill you." He took a bite of pasta.

Ben knew he needed to keep his temper, but some guys made that difficult. "Look. I'm sure whatever else is going on is important. I mean, they don't send you guys out to do milk runs or whatever, right?" He tried to smile. "Here's the thing. This ship is, first and foremost, a hospital ship. Even having combat forces on board stretches the bounds of their mission. Which on the one hand, they're in the Navy, they signed up, and that's the way things are."

He held up a hand to forestall the objections he could see coming. "On the other hand, right now, firing on the Solace is a war crime. If word gets out that you're using the Solace to launch combat missions, the Solace and everyone on it become fair game. So having her sit idle and not take on new passengers even when there are new casualties every day—that's going to tip off an awful lot of people. You know? And that's going to make it a hell of a lot harder to treat patients in safety going forward."

Adami sighed and moved his dinner around on his plate. "Yeah. Yeah, we know. I mean we don't usually think about it like that, and we probably should, but deep down inside, we do know."

Hopper cleared his throat. His big, warm hand was still on Ben's back. "The thing is, the guy we're looking for, he doesn't care that this is a hospital ship. He doesn't care about war crimes. He'd blow it up specifically because blowing it up would make it a war crime. You understand what I'm saying? The people we're fighting, they don't have standards, and they don't have morals. They don't have any lines they won't cross to get their way."

"That's why they're the bad guys, Hopper." Ben took a mouthful of food. "They're also not trying to build anything or maintain anything. I mean I don't know the specifics, and you can't tell me the specifics. I'm a civilian, and I don't want to know some of the things you all do." He straightened up. "I get that you Special Forces guys sometimes have to do things I'd definitely rather not hear about. But at the end of the day, keeping the ship here will make it six times as obvious that it's being used for other purposes than as a hospital ship.

"Not only will that endanger the crew and the passengers, but it's going to tip off the guy you're looking for. If he's gotten away with enough nasty stuff that he's got a team of strapping young SEALs chasing after him, he's probably not stupid. He's most likely got a big old brain, and that big old brain is going to be telling him someone is on his tail. Something as big as a Navy hospital ship being weird? Yeah, he's going to know you're onto him, and he's going to take steps." Ben took another bite of his dinner and tried to ignore all of the eyes on him.

He hadn't picked up on the presence of anyone behind him, not until he heard Chief's deep, gravelly voice. "That's pretty smart thinking, there, Michaud. Hopefully you're on our side and not the bad guys'." He took a seat next to Kelly.

Ben frowned at him. "I think we covered that the last time the subject came up, assuming we're talking about the same sort of 'bad guy.'" He didn't mention white supremacists by name. He thought about it, but he remembered the comment about how every time they tried to go after those guys they got pulled back. He couldn't break their confidence, not if they were fighting his worst enemy.

"True." Chief wrinkled his nose. "It seems the Captain wants to keep you around for a little while, even after we put into port in Souda. Any idea why?"

Ben refused to get excited about the way Hopper perked up. It probably didn't mean anything. The guy didn't even like him, for crying out loud. "I volunteered to help out with the current crisis." Ben shrugged. "As long as Borderless wants me idle, for whatever reason, I don't have anything better to do. This is the kind of surgery I'm most used to, and they're a little overwhelmed by the volume of patients they're seeing. I really don't mind."

"Hm." Chief pursed his lips and scratched his beard. "Well. I'm sure you'll have plenty of opportunity. Of course, if you'd enlisted in the Navy right out of school you'd have learned right away in Basic—never volunteer for anything."

The SEALs all laughed and snickered. Ben grinned and pretended he got the joke, even though he didn't come close. Military culture would always be a mystery to him. When he gave it some thought, he had to admit he was okay with that.

He ate his dinner and listened to the men's discussion. They seemed a little lighter now that their leader was with them. They still had an aura of disappointment about them, but it didn't surprise Ben at all. He'd be disappointed too.

What could their quarry have done that would have them all sulking into their pasta and risking the lives of so many patients? Whatever it was, it couldn't be worth the risk. It just couldn't. They should send another ship, or find some other way to send the SEALs in.

That being said, the SEALs had done fantastic work evacuating the wounded. Whatever their real mission might be, they'd saved a thousand lives. Maybe Ben shouldn't be quite so judgmental. Maybe he should stick to saving lives and let people with more detailed knowledge of what was going on worry about details.

He headed back to his cabin. His thoughts and feelings about the SEALs' orders and mission would have no bearing on those orders or mission. He would do his job, they would do theirs, and maybe they could meet somewhere in the middle.

* * *

Dave headed down to the wards. He tried not to go down there if he could avoid it. He wasn't a superstitious guy by nature, but something at the back of his mind was always troubled by hospitals. He didn't want to say he'd wind up in one if he spent too much time in them, but he wouldn't rule it out either.

He was willing to risk it, though, because Ben was down there. He didn't understand what it was about Ben Michaud that attracted him, but he wasn't about to pretend it wasn't there. And Ben could usually be found in the OR or in the wards. Because working himself half to death was healthy.

Not, Dave reflected with a laugh, that he was much better. That was different, though. Dave did his job, and it was an intense job, but then he did other things. He had fun. He lived his life. Ben just…worked. Even the ship's captain had things to say about that.

One of the corpsmen recognized him and jerked his thumb toward a door. Ben was in the next compartment. Dave had no idea what was on the other side of that door, but the corpsman wouldn't have been so casual about directing him that way if it wasn't safe for him to head right in. Dave thanked the man and headed through the door.

Ben was indeed in the small room, bending over a patient's bunk with a look of concern on his handsome face. He prodded at the patient's arm, still frowning. "Does that hurt?" he asked in Arabic.

The man on the bed winced and nodded. "I'm sorry."

Ben gave his patient a gentle smile. "You don't need to apologize, my friend. You were badly injured, and there was a lot of swelling in this limb. It's easy to miss a fracture. I'll order an x-ray. They'll check you out and hopefully we can get you fixed up and feeling better in no time at all, right?"

"Thank you, Doctor." The man on the bunk shook Ben's hand with his good hand. Ben made a note on his tablet and bade the man good night, and then he turned around. "Mr. Hopper!" He jumped a little. Obviously, he hadn't picked up on Dave's presence. "What brings you down here?"

"A little birdy told me you'd been working past the end of your shift." Dave folded his arms over his chest, pretending to be stern. "I'm pretty sure you can call me Dave, Ben. All things considered." He put a hand on Ben's back and ushered him gently toward the exit.

"I didn't know." Ben's cheeks turned pink, just under his barely-there beard.

"Didn't know what? That you'd worked past the end of your shift, again?" Dave wagged a finger at him. "Because I have it on very good authority that someone did, in fact, apprise you of that fact."

"No, no, I get that. I didn't know your first name." Ben blushed deeper. It was a good look on him. Dave was going to have to find other ways of making him blush, and soon.

"Oh." Dave stopped in his tracks, and then he broke into laughter. "Well, I guess there's no reason why you would. I mean we had to look you up and everything, to verify your identity. You couldn't do that for any of us."

Ben just stood there, looking at Dave like he'd lost his mind. "Well, no. I couldn't, and I probably wouldn't. It's creepy, Dave. I get why you had to, don't get me wrong, but it's still creepy."

Dave picked himself up and kept shepherding Ben up to the deck. "Come on. I stashed us a couple of dinners from the mess hall. It's not exactly fine French dining or California cuisine, but you know. Details, right?"

"Food is food." Ben shrugged. "You seriously grabbed a picnic dinner for us?"

Dave led him out to the small spot where he'd hidden their dinners. "There aren't a lot of private areas on a Navy ship, but I've noticed you like things a little quieter than us Sailors tend to be. I figured you might like to just enjoy the view and the free air for a little while."

Ben sat down where Dave gestured, which shouldn't have pleased Dave nearly as much as it did. Maybe he was getting soft in his old age. "That's remarkably sweet of you, Dave." He smiled and turned his gaze out over the wine-dark sea. "I've always liked the Mediterranean. Out here, you can almost forget what's going on back there."

"Right?" Dave leaned back and picked up the bag with his sandwich in it. "We've got another two days or so of this before we hit Souda. Have you been there?"

Ben shook his head. "No. Have you?"

"Yeah. I was there a little while ago. It's a pretty big base, so anyone who's got business in this part of the Mediterranean is likely to pass through at some point." He grinned, and then he grimaced. "That's when we first started running into White Dawn, actually. The job when we first found out about them, anyway."

Ben's smile faded. "Right. I keep forgetting no one in the States has heard of them as anything but a bunch of meme-distributing idiots in their parents' basement."

"Yeah, well, not everyone has the advantage of getting to jet all over Europe at will." Dave kept his tone light, but the resentment was still there. He didn't bother hiding it. It wasn't like Ben didn't know.

Ben snorted, but his eyes tightened. "Right. It's not just that they're a very different group over here."

Dave grinned. "Then there's that." He looked out over the sea. "I'm sorry. I keep getting snippy about the whole…thing. It's not fair to you."

Ben moistened his lips. His tongue was perfect, pink, and Dave wanted to taste it. He didn't know why, but he wanted. "It's not. But it's not exactly something I'm not used to, either. I can't help who my parents are. And I won't pretend it didn't somehow give me some advantages. Considering I called my mom's PR guy to lean on her to fund housing for the refugees on this ship, it's still giving me some advantages." He twisted his lips into a mirthless grin. "If it bothers you so much, why are you here talking to me?"

"I don't know." Dave put a hand on Ben's. "I honestly don't. I guess…this is going to sound stupid."

Ben looked him in the eye for a moment. "I had a patient puff her inhaler behind her ears, like perfume, and expect it to help her breathe. I don't think anything you say can sound stupid."

Dave snickered. Doctors had the best stories, sometimes. "Did she really? Where was that?"

"Boston. She was a weird kind of...I don't know. She was weird. She was a college student, her roommate dragged her in while I was in my residency. It was bizarre. I just had a nurse practitioner come in and talk to her. I couldn't address that level of…anyway. You were saying." Ben hadn't taken his hand away yet. It was so warm and solid under Dave's hand.

"Oh. Right. Well, it's obvious I'm attracted to you. I mean I kissed you, I keep following you around, all that." Dave waved his free hand. "But I come from a place where folks are poor. We're talking dirt poor, sell your kid for cash to feed the rest of them poor." He pushed the guilt from that aside, the same as he always did. "So there's part of me that feels like I should resent you, or at least your background."

Dave braced for an explosion of rage or of contempt. Instead, Ben just huffed out a laugh. "That's remarkably self-aware of you."

Dave frowned and looked down. He'd just bared a particularly ugly piece of his soul, and Ben just called him self-aware?

"What's so funny?" He scowled. "What do you mean by that?"

"Nothing. It's just most guys would sit there and pretend they weren't attracted, or try to pretend they didn't have that kernel of resentment. Then it would fester in an ugly way while we dated for a little while, until we had a huge, messy, and ugly breakup." Ben's grin was easy and bright now. "You're probably the best-adjusted human being I know. You're just like, 'Hey. I've got this issue. I'm going to get it out in the open, right now, so we can be adults about it.' I like that."

Dave hadn't realized he'd been hunching his shoulders, but now that he relaxed he could feel them unknotting. "For real?"

"It's so much better than sitting around and waiting for the inevitable explosion and meltdown." Ben leaned back and opened the knock-off Coke that had come with his dinner. "I'll be up front. I can't change who my parents are, and while I don't keep the money I make from my job, I'm perfectly happy to live off of my trust fund. The fact that I didn't earn that advantage doesn't mean I should pretend it's not there. I work hard for other people, and I'm at peace with where I'm at with all that.

"That said, I am not my parents. I'm not the kind of guy who looks for the limelight. All I want, all I've ever wanted, is to help other people and to live a quiet life of my own. Not as Selena Eliot's son or as Flavien Michaud's son, but as Dr. Michaud who saves lives." He spread his hands wide. "You'd never have to worry about a horde of paparazzi following me around or even about me wanting you to show up on the red carpet wearing an uncomfortable tuxedo."

"Good, because I don't do bow ties. They look absurd." Dave laughed. "Don't you think it's a little odd for us to be talking about the red carpet? I mean, I don't even know how long they're going to let you stay on the ship. Won't Borderless want you back at some point?"

"Maybe." Ben laughed, ducking his head and looking away. "But that's a good point. Who knows how long we'll even be around one another? I'm on the ship. You're liable to get pulled off the ship at any time, or at least as soon as you find whoever it is you're looking for. But we can at least enjoy one another's company while we're here."

Dave's heart swelled a little bit. Sure, anything long-term was out of the question, but he liked the idea of enjoying Ben's company for a little while. They probably wouldn't be very good together in the long term anyway. Here on the ship, their different backgrounds wouldn't be a problem. On land, in the civilian world, it would be an issue right away.

He leaned forward and kissed Ben. This time he let himself kiss a little deeper than he had the last time, with more assertiveness and more clear desire. Ben laced his fingers together behind Dave's neck and held on, yielding to the kiss and opening up right away for Dave. His body was so warm, pressed up against him, that Dave almost wanted to strip them.

"Whoa. I did not need to see that." Adami snickered and banged on the bulkhead. "You two should, like, hang a sock from the deck rail or something."

Ben looked away, face scarlet. Dave just turned around to glower at Adami. "Is there something you needed, bro? Or are you just here to block me?"

Adami looked up into the sky, pursing his lips in pretend contemplation. Dave knew it was feigned, because he knew his buddy. "Well, you know, Chief did tell me to 'tell Hopper to quit canoodling with that doctor and get his ass in here, pronto,' but you know, if you want me to tell him to fuck off I guess I can do that." He grinned, smarmy and cheesy.

Dave flipped him off before turning back to the quietly laughing Ben. "I'll see you tomorrow, maybe?"

"Hopefully you guys won't have to go pretend to invade the ship or anything to keep in shape." Ben's eyes twinkled merrily as he stood up and collected his trash.

"Don't give them any ideas." Adami groaned behind him. "I'm all for diving, but there's got to be a line somewhere, man." He winked. "I'll see you later, Doc."

Dave kissed Ben's cheek and followed his buddy. "God, you're a dick," he said, hurrying to catch up.

"I know. It's a personal failing. Chief really did send me to collect you, though. Whatever's going on, it's big."

They hurried to the compartment Chief and DeWitt were using as their office. The entire rest of the platoon was there, and Dave immediately felt guilty. He blushed, too, because everyone could see by his swollen lips that he'd been kissing someone. Ah, well. Everyone else got to do it, why not him?

DeWitt smirked at him. "Now that Hopper's finished wooing his man, maybe we can get started." A snicker went around the room, and Dave slouched in his seat. That hadn't been necessary, but the guys did like to tease.

"First of all, we'll be meeting up with Lupo in Souda Bay. He's en route to meet up with us there. It'll be good to see him again. Doctors still want to keep Miazga out of the field for a little while longer, but he's recovering nicely anyway.

"Second, we found out today that Bogdanovic is already on board this ship."

Silence fell over the SEALs. Dave wanted to jump up and shout. They'd caught a killer—a mass murderer, in fact. At the same time, catching Bogdanovic surely meant they'd go home after this. Right?

Chief cleared his throat. "Don't go packing your things up yet, boys. We've still got to go and talk to our boy. He's in rough shape, not that I'm surprised, but the captain says he'll be able to talk. I was hoping we'd be able to follow him to someone higher up in the food chain, but since he's here we'll just have to question him instead."

Floyd made a face, like he'd bitten into a lemon. "If he's a patient, we've got to keep him alive."

Chief shrugged. "Things happen. The guy killed eight thousand people in one go. No one's going to argue too hard for him. He was only injured in the blast because the security guards at the building found him." He shook his head. "Son of a bitch was going to make a clean getaway. Now he's missing a kidney."

Dave found that oddly satisfying. "Who's going to be in on the questioning, sir?"

DeWitt cleared his throat. "Me. Me and, I think, Fitzpatrick, to start. Keep the medical staff out of the way. They're likely to have less militant feelings about this dirtbag."

"Yes, sir." Everyone got up and prepared to defend their lieutenant. It was going to be a long night.