#ignobledeath

meme.     /     @ignobledeath.

            his first thought is,   you don’t mean that.     he almost says it,   too,   because it’s not rafe talking.     not really.     not the same rafe he spent two solid years with,   who pulled him out of a thirteen - year - long hell and made both him and his brother bleed.     who managed,   somehow,   to scrape his way from henry avery’s burning ship by the skin of his goddamned teeth,   bones shattered by the brutal weight of obsession made tangible.     nathan cut that rope,   in more ways than one,   even though it was a rope that sam’s machinations gave to him.     but nathan was desperate.     they were   all   desperate.

            is that an excuse?     if it is,   sam doesn’t want it.     he’s a little burnt out on excuses these days ;   penitent men often are.

            ironic,   all things considered.

            it’s not rafe talking,   anyway.     he knows that.     it’s the pain medication,   the steady intravenous drip of dilaudid that makes this,    temporarily,    more bearable.     this   is a hospital bed,   a bleak prognosis,   a long cycle of surgery and recovery and surgery and recovery,   a lifetime of chronic pain.

            two months,   going on three,   since libertalia.     he hasn’t told his brother yet.

            not just because nathan   still   isn’t speaking to him,   but that’s certainly part of it.     there’s no sense of accomplishment,   no victory in something that feels like defeat ;   nothing to gain when everything feels like loss.     we were meant for this.     what a stroke of genius,   right?     he’s left with that same emptiness,   that wide,   hollow space,   and maybe that’s why he keeps coming back here  —  why he keeps paying out when the coffers are coming back bare.     maybe that’s penance,   too.

            he looks at his hands,   one curled into a loose fist against the bend of his knee.     they’re weathered,   callused,   a little bruised around the knuckles.     the fist flexes,   curls again.     then he looks at the clock on the wall.     eight,   almost eight - thirty ;   not late,   but the nurse threw a glance twenty minutes ago that told him he’d overstayed his welcome.

            then he looks at rafe.

            his eyes were always deep - set,   and the crescents underneath them make it look like someone gave him a pair of matching shiners.     the curve of his cupid’s bow isn’t a smile,   but it’s more relaxed than it would be if he were lucid.     off meds,   it’s usually drawn tight into a purse or a hard line.     it’s softer like this.     the sleepy tilt of his gaze is softer like this.     the colors in his eyes remind sam of every piece of shitty poetry he’s ever written.     stay with me tonight.     how long’s rafe been holding that in,   he wonders.     how long has that,   or some variation of that,   been lodged in his throat like broken glass?     fifteen years?     don’t think he never noticed.     don’t think for one fucking second that he never noticed.

            “what,   here?     with florence nightingale just waitin’ to get the drop on me?     how much you wanna bet she’s got a goddamn   scalpel   in her scrubs with my name on it.”     he offers all that in an absent way,   very by - the - numbers,   because he’s not committed to it.     he doesn’t have the conviction for an easy sell.

            when he swallows,   the glass is in his throat instead,   stuck there,   set deep in the meat of his esophagus ;   the compulsion to cough is like a boot heel pressing down,   but he’s afraid he’ll cough up blood.

            that’s what this feels like.     choking on his own blood.

            or maybe it’s not his.

            rafe’s still watching him with those deep - set,   half - lidded eyes,   heavy with painkiller.     the colors haven’t dulled.     he’d have thought they would’ve dulled.     there’s a word forming on his mouth and sam doesn’t need to hear it clearly to know it’s his name.     just his name.     dry,   gritty,   like he’s trying to speak around a mouthful of sand.     and still,   somehow,   it almost sounds admonishing.

            samuel.

            “—  yeah.”     he blows out a breath,   looks at the clock again,   looks at the door as though he’s expecting the nurse to come bustling back in.     she doesn’t.     they’re alone,   for now.     he shrugs out of his jacket and slings it over the back of a chair,   pushes the chair up next to rafe’s bed.     as close as he can get,   without messing with any of the wires and the tubes and the machines that keep up a steady   beep,   click,   hiss  so he doesn’t forget where he is,   or where they’ve been,   or what they’ve done to get here.

            rafe wouldn’t allow this,   if he wasn’t doped up.     wouldn’t allow the proximity,   the soft stares.     when sam’s fingers brush his,   where his hand’s laid flat next to him over the blanket,   he’d probably flinch away.     he goes from that,   the benediction of touch,   to something a little more solid.     a press of his palm,   the gentle curve of his grip.     something rafe can deny later,   if he wants to.

            “yeah,”     he repeats,   quieter.     “got nowhere else to be,   remember?”

            he means,   if i didn’t want to be here,   i wouldn’t be here.     he means,   i could’ve left a hundred times over and didn’t,   so what does that tell you?