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Life was all about choices.
At least it was according to Rafe’s father. Vincent Adler had always insisted that their family was only rich because his father before him had chosen to work hard, and then Vincent himself had chosen to invest his money wisely and grow his business rather than spend it all on useless frivolities (unlike a certain, horribly disappointing heir of his). A man crafted his own fate; built it out of willpower and charisma and a desire to reshape the world in his own image.
Rafe begged to disagree. The moments in which he had truly felt that he had control over his own fate had been few and far between, and even when those choices were presented to him he always seemed to make the wrong decision anyway and things never turned out the way that he had planned.
Take now for example.
He was supposed to discover Avery’s lost treasure and achieve respect and fame in the archaeological and treasure hunting communities, ideally with Sam at his side. The money didn’t matter... much. The respect did.
And Sam? Well, Sam was something else entirely. Something confusing that he didn’t want to think too hard on right at that moment.
There was not supposed to be so much fire, Nadine and her men were supposed to have remained loyal and by his side, and he had definitely not planned for exploding mummies, or for the brothers Drake to prove so annoyingly persistent and unwilling to see sense.
In hindsight he probably should have expected that last one. After all, the brothers Drake had never been the sort to follow someone else’s plans for them.
It had all started more than fifteen years ago. Rafe had been in awe of the brothers Drake within minutes of their meeting. They were everything he had ever wanted to be, completely free and unbeholden to anyone, intelligent, brave and so god damn likable that he’d become swept up in their hype more quickly than he could sign the checks needed to fund their slightly crazy expedition.
And he was fully aware that he would never know as much about their quarry as Samuel and Nathan (he hadn’t spent his entire life obsessing over Avery and his treasure after all) but god help him, he had tried his best to keep up with the other two men. He had studied what books he could find among his father’s massive hoard of business and self-help books and had asked questions of the two brothers whenever they could be pulled out of their own special little bubble for more than a few seconds at a time, and while Nathan could be relied upon to launch into the occasional wide-eyed diatribe that often only answered Rafe’s original query in passing, Sam was the one that had taken him aside and explained the essentials in a way that Rafe could actually understand.
As much as Sam bitched about Rafe’s presence behind his back, and Rafe knew that he did (he was under no delusions there) he was kind and polite when dealing with Rafe in person and could at least be bothered to acknowledge his existence rather than getting that fucking glazed over look that Nathan did whenever they talked, as though he would rather be doing anything other than talking to Rafe at that moment.
Sam had also taken the time to teach Rafe slight of hand. It wasn’t as though Rafe had asked him for tutelage. Sam had just offered, seemingly out of the blue, and Rafe knew that he would have to be a fool to decline considering the career he was contemplating thanks to the presence of Drake brothers.
“No, no,” Sam had said as his hands wrapped around Rafe’s and moved them through the motion with a gentle touch that didn’t quite match up with Sam’s rough exterior. “Like this. You bend your fingers like that and you’re gonna give away what you’re doing. You need to keep ‘em flat.”
Sam’s touch had sent shivers down his spine, and Rafe had spent more than a few lonely nights after that remembering the warmth of Sam’s hands on top of his own.
And then there was the prison and the whole mess with Vargas. He had tried to be as useful as possible. Yes, it had been his money (or his father’s money, if you wanted to nitpick) that had allowed them to infiltrate the prison and buy Vargas in the first place, but he had tried to hold his own when they had been forced to fight as well, and he had at least tried to keep up as far as the treasure hunting was concerned. The last thing that he had wanted was for Sam and Nathan to see him as nothing more than a spoiled, rich brat that needed to be babysat the whole time.
And then Nathan Drake had to go around picking fights with the wrong people, and Vargas had found out more than he was supposed to and... well... Rafe had panicked and done what had seemed like the right thing at the time. But of course killing Vargas hadn’t been the right thing; at least not as far as Nathan and Samuel were concerned.
They had been forced to run, and Sam had been shot.
Rafe had not planned for that. Of course he hadn’t. He had liked Sam after all; liked the fact that he treated Rafe like a god damn human being and not just the heir to the Adler fortune, liked his crooked grin and the way his eyes lit up, even liked the way that he looked out for his younger brother before anything else.
He had grieved too; grieved for all the unsaid words and lost chances and could-have-beens; but quietly, when and where no-one could witness his heartbreak, just as his father had taught him to do. There was none of the loud sobbing or awkward declarations that had dogged Nathan for the next few weeks.
Nevertheless, despite their mutual grieving over Sam, he and Nathan Drake continued the search for Avery’s treasure.
But it hadn’t been the same. Nathan cared too much, about whether they were doing the right thing, about people, about that damned mentor of his (and Rafe had never been able to see what the hell Nate saw in the older man) and about the far too large empty space that had been left behind after Sam’s death.
It wasn’t as though Rafe couldn’t feel it as well. He could still feel it, patches of negative heat on the skin of his hands where Sam’s fingertips had once rested.
He knew that Nathan Drake considered his brother’s death to be Rafe’s fault as well. He never said as much, but Rafe could sense it, in the wary looks Nate gave him any time he grew even a little angry. Rafe couldn’t really blame him. After all, if Rafe hadn’t chosen to kill Vargas then maybe, just maybe, Sam would have still been with them.
Rafe hadn’t been surprised when they had started to fight. Without Sam between them there wasn’t really much to keep him and Nathan working together. He wasn’t surprised when Nathan gave up either. Disappointed, yes. But surprised? No.
Sure; he could have chosen to beg and plead for Nathan to stay and continue to assist him, but he still had his pride, and the longer he and Nathan Drake spent in each other’s company the more they came to dislike each other.
So Nathan had left him, and for a while Rafe’s life had turned back into normal, boring mediocrity. He didn’t give up the search. Of course not; after spending so much time and money on the search giving up then would have been a waste. But without either of the Drake brothers to help him and with no real leads, progress was so slow as to almost be non-existent.
And then a few years later his father had passed away, and it was as though Rafe’s prayers had been answered.
Yes, it was true that he was almost completely alone in the world, but he was free; free to blow an excessively large amount of money on the land in which Avery’s body had been buried, without fear of his father’s ire at Rafe’s having wasted so much time and money on ‘meaningless fantasies’.
He also took to spending a rather large sum of money on even more meaningless gifts to ensure that his bed was warmed by men and women who may not have given a shit whether or not he lived or died, but who were at the very least attractive and willing to spend a few days pretending to like him in exchange for a piece of jewelry or the chance to drive one of his sports cars.
There was something missing though. There had always been something missing, and with no progress in regard to Avery’s treasure Rafe was left with nothing to distract him from the gaping, lonely nothingness that his life threatened to turn into should he allow himself to lapse into mediocrity for more than a few minutes.
When he had discovered that Sam was still alive and had been rotting away in a jail cell for the last thirteen years it really didn’t feel like he had any choice at all. Of course he had to find a way to get Sam out. Even putting his feelings for the other man aside, Sam was useful. Rafe knew that Sam would be able to find some sort of clue where he had been unable to.
However, when the appropriate amount of money had changed hands and Sam emerged from the jail it was clear that he was not the same man that Rafe remembered. At first Sam looked at Rafe as though he could barely believe the other man was really there at all. Rafe had smiled and had intended to throw his arms around Sam’s shoulders in as warm a hug as he could manage (affectionate physical contact being another one of those things that he had very little practice in and had never been able to master) but he had ended up freezing on the spot as he looked Sam up and down.
He felt like an idiot. Of course Sam had changed. He’d been in prison for thirteen years. Those years hadn’t been as cruel to him as they could have been, but Rafe felt every one of those years as he took in the shadows beneath Sam’s eyes and the creases around his face. Once the only lines that had marred Sam’s face had been those clearly earned through smiles and laughter. Now the frown lines around his brows were far too pronounced for Rafe’s liking. (Not that he didn’t still find Sam attractive. He just didn’t like the thought of Sam suffering alone in a Panamanian jail long enough for such lines to have found their way onto Sam’s face.)
He caught sight of a tattoo showing several birds in flight on the side of Sam’s neck, and felt that familiar echo of warmth on his hands again, as well as an almost painful desire to push Sam up against the nearest flat surface and run his teeth over that particular patch of skin. That tattoo had not been there before, and Rafe felt his blood boil in a not particularly unpleasant way when he thought of what those birds represented; freedom, the very thing that he had so envied of Sam and Nathan when he had first met them, and the very thing that he was now able to return to Sam.
In the meantime the moment in which he might have been able to embrace Sam without it being awkward had disappeared, and when Sam approached him, what looked like suspicion and distrust clear on his face when he looked at Rafe, it felt awkward when Rafe reached out to only pat Sam’s shoulder a couple of times.
Sam didn’t seem to notice the awkwardness though, just gave Rafe a half-smile that sent a wave of warmth through Rafe’s torso, and muttered something in the way of thanks.
Part of Rafe was terrified that Sam had changed too much; that the other man might no longer want anything to do with the hunt for Avery’s treasure, but all that it had taken was his explaining that he was still looking for it for Sam’s eyes to immediately light up.
“You still up for helping me out with this?” he had asked Sam.
“Damn straight,” Sam had told him, giving Rafe the most distractingly beautiful half-grin. God help him, he’d almost forgotten how beautifully Sam’s eyes lit up when he smiled.
It was easy with just the two of them. Sam spent half of his time simply marveling at all of the things he had missed while in jail; the feeling of the somewhat mild (thanks to Scotland’s weather) sun on his face or the sound of the waves as they lapped against the cliffs. He smiled a lot during those first few months, and before long that smile even looked at home on his face once more.
Rafe found that he was happy too, possibly the happiest that he had ever been in his life, even if a rather embarrassingly large part of their time together involved him staring at Sam and hoping that the other man wouldn’t notice.
Sam had noticed though. They had only been in Scotland for a couple of weeks when Sam had pressed Rafe into a corner, one of his hands rising to gently cup Rafe’s cheek.
At first Rafe wasn’t sure what was happening, but then Sam leaned in to rest his mouth just an inch or so away from Rafe’s ear.
“You like me,” Sam had murmured. “Don’t you?”
“I barely tolerate your presence,” Rafe lied. “I only broke you out of jail because I knew that you would be useful to me.”
Sam failed to bite back a chuckle at that.
“Perhaps I worded that the wrong way,” he said, leaning back a little so that he wasn’t crowding Rafe in so much. “You think you’re being subtle, don’t you? I know you’ve been watching me Rafe.”
He stepped back as though observing Rafe for a moment.
“You want me,” he said. “That a more accurate assessment?”
Rafe was afraid that he immediately turned bright red at the suggestion. He tried scowling to cover it up, but Sam appeared to take no notice of his outrage.
“Don’t look so worried,” Sam said, clapping a hand down on his shoulder. “I’m not freaked out by it or anything. In fact I might be... you know... a little interested myself.”
And that confession had Rafe’s thought processes shuddering to a halt.
He had been meaning to object; to tell Samuel Drake that he needed to approach the matter with a little more class if he hoped to share Rafe’s bed, but before he could say anything Sam was swooping down and claiming his mouth in a kiss that was grounded in exactly the right place between heart-achingly gentle and lip-bruising need.
He really didn’t have it in him to put forth even the most basic of objections (they were in the ruins of a chapel when it first happened, for god’s sake), not after he had spent so many years longing for the other man’s touch.
They barely managed to summon up enough civility between them to reach a bed that first time, and if Rafe had been hoping that their lovemaking would be any more dignified than their first kiss then he was sorely disappointed.
Sam was able to wring an embarrassingly large and loud assortment of moans from him, and when Rafe had realized partway through that the high-pitched keens he was hearing were coming from his own mouth then he might have died from shame if it wasn’t for the way Sam’s arms were wrapped tightly around him, keeping him anchored, body and soul, to that freezing cold tent in Scotland.
It had been the first time, but it was far from the last. At first neither of them mentioned it, and Rafe stubbornly refused to acknowledge it for fear that it would piss off Sam and break whatever chance they had at continuing to work peacefully together.
And then Sam had approached him once again, and Rafe hadn’t even had the chance to express his relief before they were falling into bed once again, tangled in each other’s limbs.
At first it continued on like that, the two of them only hooking up every week or two, when it felt like one or both of them could no longer keep in whatever it was that was that had been steadily growing between them, but then as they grew more comfortable with one another the frequency grew, so that a year later it was as common for them to spend their nights together as apart.
But while their relationship became rather comfortable (if centered almost exclusively around sex) their attempts to recover Avery’s treasure continued to be frustratingly non-productive.
“We should go to Nate with this,” Sam would suggest when they inevitably reached another dead end.
“We don’t need Nate,” Rafe would always reply.
He would often follow that up with only mostly bitter comments about Nate probably being too busy discovering lost cities to help them, or if he was feeling a little more honest then he would bring up the falling out between himself and Nathan, always blaming Nathan for it of course, but the truth was that he did not want to have to share Sam. He knew that as soon as Nathan Drake was back in the picture the Drake brothers would go back to their old ways; talking in their own special language and leaving Rafe completely out of most conversations. He would be lucky if Sam even had time for him anymore.
He wanted Sam’s smiles. He wanted Sam’s arms around him when he fell asleep at night and the first thing he felt when he woke in the morning. He wanted all of Sam, every tiny thing that he would be willing to give, and the more time he spent with the older Drake brother, whether having sex with him or simply being on the trail of the treasure with him, the worse it grew.
But as far as he could tell, there was never going to be anything but sex between them. They never talked about their feelings for one another. It just wasn’t that sort of a relationship. Oh sure, there was the occasional, far too intimate confession whispered by Rafe in the heat of the moment, but nothing that mattered.
At least, he didn’t think that it mattered. Occasionally he would catch Sam looking at him with what he thought must be love, or at the very least, a sort of grudging affection.
But no. He was being foolish. He knew that he was. Sam saw him as a friend and a convenient sexual partner. To pretend that there was anything else between them was tantamount to emotional suicide.
It was almost two years after he had first freed Samuel Drake from that Panamanian jail when Sam brought him the oh-so-excellent news of the existence of a second Saint Dismas cross.
Rafe was overjoyed. Finally they were making some real progress. He hired some muscle in preparation of the journey ahead; Shoreline, lead by Nadine Ross, a strong fighter and a woman that he had thought was trustworthy. She and Sam had seemed to get along all right as well.
Everything was looking up.
And then one morning in the depths of winter, after what had been a particularly passionate and playful session with Sam, a pile of plush blankets on top and around them and absolutely no clothing between them, the room echoing with laughter as much as with Rafe’s moans, Rafe had woken up to find himself completely alone in a hotel bed that suddenly felt far too large for just one person.
Despite the pile of blankets and the excellent heating in their room Rafe suddenly felt cold.
At first he thought that Sam must have woken up earlier than him and left the hotel room so that he could stretch his legs or grab a smoke or whatever it was Sam would do if for some reason he decided he had somewhere to be that wasn’t curled up in a nice, cozy bed with Rafe.
But a rather extensive search revealed no trace of Samuel Drake.
He had left, for what Rafe was forced to realize when there was no sign of Sam even after several days of searching and waiting desperately for word from the other man, was for good.
The bastard hadn’t even left a note. He hadn’t bothered to say goodbye to Rafe either, instead simply disappearing in the dark of the night without a single warning or word of explanation.
Rafe was sure then that he was justified in being completely pissed off when Sam reappeared, younger brother in tow, to steal the Saint Dismas cross right from under his nose.
He had trusted the older man. Had (and he had to grit his teeth when he thought of it now) actually let himself fall in love with the older Drake brother. In the end Samuel Drake had proven to be no more than a rotten, two-bit thief only interested in the treasure.
And he had tried to keep his calm where Samuel and Nathan were concerned. He had tried so hard, but there was only so much that he could do against such stubborn, reckless arrogance.
He had tried several times to get Sam alone; to talk to him and try to make sense out of it all. Perhaps if he could get Sam back on side then the younger, more obstinate Drake would follow.
But Sam had proven to be more trouble than he was worth. Rafe knew that he probably should have listened to Nadine when she told him (more than once) to get rid of Sam for good, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. Meanwhile both Drakes fought him tooth and nail every step of the way, and no matter how many times Rafe tried to steal Sam away, he always ended up back with Nathan somehow.
And then Rafe and Nathan both discovered that Sam had been lying to his brother the whole time, because of course he had been lying. There was no way that Sam’s precious younger brother could possibly learn that it was Rafe that had broken him out of that prison cell in the first place. That would raise too many questions, and probably make Rafe look too good.
At least now he knew that Sam was nothing more than a greedy, lying piece of shit. It made it so much easier for Rafe to act like he hated him.
Which lead them to here and now, in the hold of a burning wreck, left to die by a woman who had promised Rafe her loyalty and turned sour when they discovered that Nadine also on occasion lacked the courage and conviction to do what needed to be done.
Sam was unconscious and pinned beneath a piece of wood too heavy for Nathan to lift on his own. The treasure hunting golden boy was screaming something about Rafe helping him.
And Rafe? Rafe was having a moment of complete clarity.
In the end his father had wasted slowly away, body connected to more tubes and machines than Rafe could count, nothing more than a sad, lonely old shell of a man, despite his vast wealth. Rafe had been the only one to sit by his bedside, and the old man had wasted whatever breath he had left to spare on complaining about Rafe’s decision to chase after what he saw as ridiculous fantasies.
He didn’t want his life to end like that.
The temptation to throw himself at Nathan and fight to the death over the treasure was a strong one. The Drake brothers may have been good fighters, but Rafe knew that he was superior, especially with Sam out of the picture. He had chosen to devote most of his life to finding this treasure. He had earned it, hadn’t he?
But maybe, just maybe, Nadine had a point. Maybe it wasn’t worth all three of them dying.
“Come on Rafe!” Nate screamed.
Perhaps in another world Rafe would have picked up the nearest sword and attacked Nate, letting out all of the frustration that had been building up inside him since that morning in that hotel in Scotland. Perhaps in that world he would even get to claim all of the treasure for himself and live somewhat happily ever after.
But that was not this world.
In this world he took one last glance at the piles of treasure that surrounded them, cursed his own sentimentality and ran over to crouch by Sam’s shoulders.
“You lift and I’ll try to pull him out,” he told Nathan.
“Oh thank god,” Nathan muttered as he bent down to heave at the piece of wood once more.
“Just so you know,” Rafe said as he grabbed Sam beneath the arms, ready to pull him out as soon as Nate hoisted the wooden beam up the mere inch or so that they would need in order to free Sam. “I still regard all of this gold as mine and I have every intention to come back at a later date and claim it. You and your brother will not be welcome.”
“Ha,” Nathan managed to bark out between grunts of exertion. “That’s fine asshole. As long as we get Sam out then I don’t really... don’t really care...”
Rafe dragged Sam back as quickly as he could.
“You’re welcome to the treasure,” Nathan finished as he stood back up and brushed the sweat from his brow.
Sam came to while Rafe’s arms were still mostly wrapped around the older man’s chest.
“Woah, woah,” he exclaimed as he violently tried to escape Rafe’s clutches.
“Calm down jackass,” Rafe snapped. “I just saved your life.”
Sam looked at him with so much confusion plain on his face that it did something painful to Rafe’s heart. Did he really think that Rafe was just going to leave him there to die? There was something else there too; something fragile that Rafe had been terrified to name ever since he had first spotted it in Sam’s features in Scotland.
They didn’t have any time to linger on the issue however; not while the whole ship was continuing to burn and collapse around them.
Together the three of them escaped; the ship, and then the cave in which they had found it crumbling around them as they ran and then swam as quickly as they could towards freedom. They had a couple of close calls as falling bits of debris narrowly missed one or more of the three of them.
Eventually though they made it outside of the cave, and when Samuel and Nathan started swimming towards a blonde woman standing on a small island nearby Rafe followed the other two men without a thought.
The woman in question was of course, Elena Fisher, Nathan Drake’s wife and celebrated reporter. She had frowned when he had crawled, half-drowned, out of the water behind the two Drake brothers, but after a couple of words from her husband and Sam it seemed as though she was calm enough to resist the temptation to tear him to shreds, at least for the time being.
The four of them stood there and watched as the cave in which they had been in only minutes before collapsed, rock after rock falling into the water below. Nathan Drake made some wisecrack about their having narrowly escaped death, but Rafe had no attention to spare for him.
No, at that moment he found that all that he could do was stare at Sam, and wonder.
A few hours later they had all made it safely back to a dock in King’s Bay, each of them having had their wounds attended to and wearing a change of clean, warm clothing. It took quite a lot longer than that for everyone to go their separate ways and for Rafe and Sam to finally be allowed a moment alone, and even that moment had come with glares and silent promises of pain from both Nathan Drake and his wife should Rafe do anything to hurt Sam.
Now that they were alone there was so much that Rafe wanted to say, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to say any of it.
They walked in silence for a while, and eventually came to a stop in a small plaza overlooking the ocean. Sam moved to lean against a short brick wall, his back to the ocean. Rafe joined him, his arms leaning on the top of the wall as he pretended to take in the view in front of him, when in reality his mind felt as though it was on fire as he tried to work out how the hell he was supposed to talk to Sam about everything that had happened between them.
Sam took a moment to light up a cigarette, and took a deep draw of it before turning to send what was an incredibly insincere smile in Rafe’s general direction.
“Come on,” he told Rafe. “Out with it.”
“Out with what?” Rafe muttered.
“I can practically hear you thinking,” Sam said. “You’ve probably got a lot of shit that you want to get off your chest. Probably pissed off with me too.”
He paused to take another breath from the cigarette.
“Can’t say I blame you,” he added. “So come on. Hit me. Hopefully not literally. That hurt badly enough the first time. But you know... if you have to...”
Rafe had punched Sam when he had finally caught up with the brothers. It had felt good then; justified, righteous even; but he wasn’t so sure that he wanted to do it again. No, he was too damned tired. Right then he just wanted answers.
“Why did you leave?” Rafe asked him.
It was the question that had been on his mind ever since that freezing cold morning in Scotland. He had wanted to ask in Madagascar, and then again on the island, but there had never been time.
“And don’t tell me it was because you wanted to cut me out,” he continued. “I know you and Nathan better than that. You may be criminals but you’ve never been heartless.”
Sam paused, cigarette paused halfway to his mouth and his eyes staring at some indeterminate point between the stars up above them. For a moment Rafe thought that perhaps he wouldn’t get an answer after all, and clenched his fists, ready to storm off and be done with the man once and for all if Sam refused to talk. He had at least earned an answer, hadn’t he?
And then Sam tilted his head and gave Rafe that crooked half-grin that always made Rafe’s heart trip over a few beats.
“I’m not very good with commitment,” Sam said.
And what the fuck did that have to do with anything?
“I never asked for commitment,” Rafe replied.
“I know,” Sam said. “If I remember correctly then I was the one doing most of the asking, at least where the sex was concerned, but er...”
He paused again and reached up to clutch nervously at the back of his neck.
“Do you realize I haven’t had sex with anyone but you in over fifteen years?”
Rafe had not, but now that he was thinking about it he supposed that it made sense.
“I realised that when we were in Scotland,” Sam continued. “I was kind of freaked out by it, you know?”
“You were in prison,” Rafe said, as though it was really no big deal. He couldn’t count the number of men and women he had taken to bed in that time, but none of them had really meant anything, at least not when compared to Sam.
“It’s to be expected,” he added.
“Yeah, I guess so,” Sam replied, but he was still wearing that stupid half-grin of his, which was making it incredibly hard for Rafe to keep his cool. “But you know something else?”
Rafe wasn’t sure that he wanted to hear whatever Sam had to say, but he replied anyway.
“What?”
“Do you remember the night before I left?” Sam asked.
Rafe wished that he could say that he didn’t, but god knew he had spent enough time revisiting the events of the night over and over again after Sam had left, searching for something that he might have said or done to drive the other man away. It wasn’t the first night they had spent in the hotel, but it had been the quietest and most comfortable. They had ordered room service and curled up in front of the television to watch cheesy old action movies for a few hours, before retiring to bed in a pile of blankets and laughter.
It had been almost painfully normal and lovey-dovey and disgusting, and up until the moment that he had woken to find that Sam wasn’t there he had thought it was one of the happiest nights of his life.
He shrugged.
“You said you loved me,” Sam told him.
So what? It wasn’t as though it had been the first time Rafe had said it.
“I don’t see why that’s relevant,” Rafe told the other man. “I must have said it a dozen times before you disappeared.”
“I know, I know,” Sam said, reaching out as though to touch him and pulling his hand back at the last second, possibly because Rafe was glaring at him.
Rafe was furious, and more than a little confused. If his being emotional like that had bothered Samuel so much then why hadn’t he mentioned it once before his disappearance?
Oh well. He supposed this was what he got for allowing his heart to rule his head. He never should have allowed himself to get this sentimental over the other man; was it any wonder that Sam had been driven away? A shared hotel room. Jesus, what had he been thinking?
“I almost returned it,” Sam said, so quietly that Rafe almost missed it.
“What?”
“That night, before I left,” Sam paused, and Rafe was annoyed by how his heart sped up in hopeful anticipation. “When you said that you loved me, I almost... I almost said it back.”
Oh, there was no way that Rafe was going to be able to get his heart back under control now. What the hell was Sam trying to do to him?
“You...” Rafe began, and then shook his head when he realized that he hadn’t quite gotten his thoughts under control enough to actually speak coherently.
“That’s why you left?” he asked Sam, ashamed when he realized how weak he sounded.
Now it was Sam’s turn to shrug.
“Is it a problem?”
“What? That you left?”
Yes, of course it was a problem. Rafe’s heart had been completely broken by Sam’s disappearance and subsequent betrayal. How could it not be a problem?
“That I’m in love with you,” Sam corrected him.
Oh.
That... that had not been at all what Rafe had been expecting.
In fact he wasn’t entirely sure how he was supposed to deal with this.
“You... you’re...”
“In love with you,” Sam said, before taking another long draw from his cigarette. “Yeah.”
“Even after all of that shit on the island?”
Sam shrugged again.
“I guess I really can’t blame you if you hate me now,” Sam said. He paused to drop the cigarette on the ground and then stamp it out, making sure to keep his eyes on his foot or the stars above them, or on anything that wasn’t Rafe. “God knows I’ve made some pretty bad choices over the past few months. Hell, I always seem to fuck things up somehow, especially when I’ve got something good going on.”
And wasn’t that just a little too familiar for comfort?
“Well,” Sam continued, still refusing to look directly at Rafe, “you still want to talk now that I’ve made this super awkward? I’m fine with leaving you alone now if you want me to, or... or maybe we can find a shitty little hole in the wall and both drown our sorrows until neither of us can remember me saying any of this.”
Rafe realized that Sam’s hands were shaking just a second before Sam thrust them into the pockets of his jeans. Rafe still hadn’t said anything coherent in response to Sam’s confession, and apparently the older man was sick of waiting, because he took one very brief look at Rafe before nodding to himself.
“Right,” he said. “Well, maybe I should just... I’ll just...”
And with that he was turning as though he did indeed intend to leave Rafe alone.
“Wait!” Rafe screamed, reaching out to clutch at Sam’s arm before he could take another step.
Sam’s head turned slowly so that he could look properly at Rafe for the first time since his confession, and Rafe was frozen once more by the depth of emotion in those eyes.
Sam slowly turned around so that they were facing one another directly. Rafe searched for whatever it was that he was going to say, but the words still would not come. He had a vague feeling that this was where he was supposed to tell Sam that he loved him back, but when he opened his mouth he didn’t get any further than a stuttered “I...”. Why the hell was it so much harder to say now that he knew his hopes hadn’t been for nothing?
He tried to tell himself to get on with it. He wanted Sam, right? All he needed to do now to reach out and claim this particular treasure was to say those three little words.
Perhaps it didn’t matter though. Now that his eyes and Sam’s had managed to catch each other there was something there that made Rafe think that Sam understood what he was trying to say.
Their hands found one another and very slowly (very shyly considering the two men had done supposedly far more intimate things than this many times before) wrapped around one one another, their fingers linking and running over one another’s skin.
They were drawn slowly together, until their lips met in the middle, their eyes fluttering shut as their mouths moved in a way that was simultaneously familiar and so much more tender and intense than either of them were used to.
Sam’s hands reached up to slowly run over Rafe’s arms, his neck, his face, anywhere that he could touch, and Rafe wrapped his own arms around Sam’s neck and shoulders, keeping the other man firmly in place as they continued to kiss.
It was quite a long time before they pulled apart long enough for Rafe to say those three little words once more, but this time when he did he heard Sam’s voice echoing his words back to him in a way that made his heart feel as though it might explode.
And as he curled up against Sam’s side later that night he found himself thinking that maybe, for once in his life, he had managed to make the right choice.