AN: Hi there aha it's been a while. Going to try update regularly for now, until college starts in September. I'm working on a multi-chapter story at the moment and that's taking up most of my time, so I apologise for the long wait for this oneshot. This one was really fun to write aha so I hope you enjoy and see you soon x

Nose

"For a dork, you're not that smart, but at least you can throw a good punch," seventeen-year-old Sam teased, lightly dabbing a cotton pad on the injured boy's face. Freddie winced and let out a quiet hiss at the contact. "Man up…or, well, at least boy up. It's just a scratch."

Freddie swatted her hand away and cradled the side of his face in his hand. "My face is basically disarranged!"

"It's not that bad," Sam insisted, moving his hand out the way. "I've seen worse than this." Once she'd soaked another cotton pad in the alcohol rub, she held his chin gently with two fingers in place and began to dab at the broken skin. "Hold still, Benson. I'm trying to help you here. You never should've done that in the first place."

"I was defending you, Sam," Freddie reminded her with a huff. "How grateful."

"Hey, I can deal with my skunk bag of an ex-boyfriend myself," Sam said. "I don't need backup from a nerd." Sam and her latest boyfriend, Pete (2.0, as Carly called him) had broken up last week, claiming he found she was in still in love with Freddie – that information was not in fact public knowledge as far as Sam knew. Nobody was particularly bothered by the development at school, simply shrugged and thought it was just another failed high school romance. Half of the girl population were just grateful that Pete was single again now. Though, when Freddie overheard Sam telling Carly some certain details that she'd failed to tell him in her first account of the breakup, he couldn't stop himself and before he knew it, he found Pete outside the school and there was a, uh, squabble. Sam managed to pull Freddie back to check if he was hurt and insisted that he left it alone. To her, he was stupid for doing that. To him, he was just defending her and she was overreacting.

"If you don't care, why are you helping me and cleaning up my face?" Freddie asked.

"I didn't say I didn't care. And I'm doing this because if you go home with your face like, well, this – it's worse than usual, dude – your mom will kick my ass," Sam pointed out. "Covering my own back."

"Ah, yes, right, because you're Sam Puckett. And you only look out for yourself, right? Caring for someone is a weakness. Being sweet is a weakness. Loving someone is a—"

"Don't finish that sentence," Sam said through gritted teeth. He was trying to wind her up deliberately; he wanted a reaction, she could tell. "Of course I care about you. And yes, of course it's a weakness, but you're Freddie. I'll always care about you."

Freddie gave her a look. "Must I remind you that when I got hit by that taco truck, you bought a taco from said truck before going to get help?"

"No, no, must I remind you that I called the ambulance while in the queue for the truck, so technically I went for help before I ate," Sam shrugged. "Plus, that was years ago. Are you really still holding that against me? You handcuffed me to Gibby!"

"Because you cut the sleeves and legs off my clothes!" Freddie defended.

"Yes, because you wear stripes." She pointedly looked down at his shirt of choice. "Yuck." They were quiet for a while, while Sam continued to clean up his face and control his nosebleed. His eye, they couldn't do anything about as it was going to swell a pretty purple colour with or without ice, but Sam still got Freddie an icepack, wrapped it in a dishcloth and made him hold it on his eye for fifteen minutes at a time.

"How do you know so much about looking after someone?" Freddie asked quietly after a short while.

Sam just shrugged her shoulders. "You learn after injuring others so much, I guess. My mom dated a male nurse a couple of years back, and I came home beaten up that day, all bloody in the face – I couldn't have come back to Carly's looking like that. She would've tried to fight them with a makeup palette. Anyway, he sorted it out and taught me how to stop swelling, etcetera, etcetera," she explained.

"Wait, beaten up? When was this?"

"I don't know, like a week after we returned from Japan. One of my old juvie buddies decided to "teach me a lesson" in an alleyway near my house. Don't worry, you should've seen the other guy. I did not have it as bad as he did. Serves him right. Skunk bag deserved it." Sam took out the two of the oddest-looking, bright pink candy wrappers Freddie had ever seen in his life and went to open them. He guessed it was the new wrapping for something Fat-branded. "You know, Pete did look pretty destroyed. It'll take more than alcohol rub and cotton wool to sort that busted lip and bleeding face out. Mama's proud."

"Thank you," he said with a chuckle, feeling the slightest bit proud that he had gotten Sam Puckett's approval on the masterpiece he had painted on Pete's face. Then he watched as she pulled out two misshaped cotton wool balls from the packets that he previously thought were candy wrappers; he frowned, noting the strings coming from them. "Uh, what are they?"

Sam wanted to laugh but at the same time, wanted to cry. Was this really the generation parents everywhere were raising? A teenage boy didn't know what she was holding in her hand. "Did you not pay attention in that whole "these are the changes the opposite sex goes through" workshop, like, last year? And that whole not giving into your urges speech?"

Freddie grinned at the urges comment. "Oh, yeah…well, neither of us paid attention to that then." Sam rolled her eyes and lightly shoved him in the shoulder, to which he winced and quickly clutched his shoulder and upper arm.

"Ah, shoot, sorry, I forgot," she apologised. "Anyway, think, Benson, think."

He must've had a lightbulb moment because a second later, she watched his face scrunch up and eyes widened. "Oh," he said, shocked. Until he finally snapped himself out of it and shook his head. "Hang on…why are you holding two tampons?"

Sam grinned, before shoving them both up his nose. Freddie groaned and swatted her hands away, but she was much quicker than him. "They absorb the blood, calm down," she told him. "My phone's in my bag if you're afraid I'm going to start taking pictures."

"What if Carly comes home?" Freddie asked, embarrassed.

"She's at some after school club and probably won't be back for a while. She said her and Wendy were going to the Groovy Smoothie for a bit after, and I was gonna join them, but this is too funny for that."

Freddie rolled his eyes. "Yes, yes, laugh it up, Puckett."

"Well, it's working, isn't it? You haven't got blood dripping down your face anymore," Sam said to him. "Also, uh, if you want me to have a look at your shoulder, you're gonna have to take your shirt off. I don't have some sort of x-ray vision." So, slowly, the two worked together to get Freddie's shirt off, leaving him in a plain black vest-top, his arms muscular and shoulders broader than Sam remembered from the numerous other times she had seen him shirtless. She tried not to stare at his muscles, as he jokingly flexed them to tease her. If he wasn't hurt, she probably would've shoved him again. "Oh, and by the way, I do care about you." Once she located the bruise on his shoulder, she grabbed the icepack from his eye and placed it on the bruise instead, frowning when she realised how quickly it was melting.

"I know you care," Freddie sighed. "I'm sorry."

"You better be," Sam huffed, but with a joking tone surrounding her words. She ran her fingers lightly across the bruise before covering it up again, feeling him shiver under her touch. "What you did," she started, her voice now soft and gentle. "It was sweet, Freddie. Even though I'm probably gonna tease you with this for the rest of your life."

"I'm honoured that you're gonna be here for the rest of my life," Freddie grinned goofily. Sam rolled her eyes but laughed. "Also, don't take it personally, but your hand is doing things to me…" She didn't know whether to scoff or laugh at his comment, as the blushing boy rubbed the back of his neck nervously. Only then did she notice her other hand resting on the crook of his good arm, practically clinging onto his muscles. With all her attention on nursing his shoulder, she hadn't even realised. "C-Can you move it?" He half-expected her to make fun of him, but she did nothing of the sort. Just apologised and moved her hand, applying more pressure to his shoulder.

"Serves you right for getting into a fight in the first place," Sam teased. "What's mommy gonna say when your eye swells up? You know how insane she went after that fencing incident and even then, you were in protective gear."

"She isn't going to find out," Freddie said. "Because I'm going to tell her it's a bad reaction to something. Flowers is my best bet; she hates those and loves to hit those with a mallet."

Sam snickered. "Lying to your mommy, huh?"

"What she doesn't know won't hurt her," Freddie pointed out with a grin. "Thank you by the way. I feel like we're getting sentimental, so I might as well thank you now for looking after me like this. Not for the tampons because I'm sure this isn't at all attractive – but for everything else."

Sam just nodded. "It's what friends do."

Friends. That word stung the both of them, and Sam regretted saying it almost instantly. They had promised that one day, they'd try again, but that day didn't seem like anytime soon with Sam saying things like that.

"Friends?" Freddie repeated quietly. "I-Is that all we are then?"

"I thought that's what we decided on," Sam said. "You know, in the elevator that night. I don't think we're supposed to be any more than friends when we literally broke up."

"I don't think we were supposed to have done what we did that night when we literally broke up," Freddie remarked. "But we still did."

"Hey, we said we'd never mention that again," Sam huffed. "Plus, it's probably best we stay just as friends. You've been getting a little too friendly with Carly lately. Only the other day I heard you ask her if it's too late for her to love you, so you know, clearly you have some stuff going on."

"Sam, I didn't mean it like that—" He stopped himself, knowing fully well that by the absent look on her face, she wasn't listening. Wordlessly, she removed the icepack and searched for a new one in the freezer, before switching them over and pulling out the tampons from his nose, discarding them in the trash immediately.

She wiped up the excess blood with a skin-friendly wipe and admired her work. "Your face looks almost like new. Your eye needs some work, though. I mean, so does your whole face, but it looks the same as before," she said as if he didn't say anything a few minutes later. "Although, I think your nose looks slightly crooked, but it definitely isn't broken – I'd know since I'm usually the one causing broken noses. And I believe he ripped a bit of your hair out at the back, but you should be alright. Barely noticeable." She had to admit to herself, never aloud however, that she had admired the back of his head leading up to the weeks they had dated when she switched with the kid behind him for her former seat by the window in geometry.

"Sam," Freddie sighed. "Please don't change the subject."

"What more is there to say?" Sam shrugged, grabbing the roll of bandages from the first aid box she'd found under the sink in the kitchen. She began to wrap them around his shoulder. He opened his mouth to speak. "If you say another word, I will bandage your mouth shut and gag you with it." At that, his mouth automatically closed, and he just allowed her to bandage the throbbing bruise. Then when she was done, he silently helped her to pack away everything. "Thanks," she said quietly.

"I meant what I said, you know."

She didn't need to ask. She knew what he meant. In the elevator, he meant what he said. And so did she. "I know," she promised. She knew deep down that he was just trying to distract himself with Carly, and it was true – he was trying to convince himself he was in love with her because things would be easier and a lot less painful. "Me too. I just, it won't work out, Freddie. It's sweet what you did, alright, and I'll give you brownie points for that, but you can't change my mind on this."

"What if I win you back?"

Sam smiled at this. "Win me back, huh? How do you plan on doing that? Beating up every boy that breaks my heart? Oh, wait, you already did that."

"Ha ha," he said dryly, rolling his eyes.

"But, really, if you're so sure about this…" she heaved a sigh. "Then okay. You can try and win me back, but I'll warn you now, it won't be easy."

"And I'm willing to accept the challenge.