When Sam Carlisle kissed the love of his life, he hadn’t noticed.

He noticed the kiss, of course. He remembered the heat burning from both of their lips, the way it sizzled and stung, a bit like lightning, as they pressed and pressed into one another. He remembered the way he’d pulled back, just a little, and saw his love’s eyes still closed and his lips spread in the softest, prettiest smile Sam had ever seen.

It was a miracle that he hadn’t realized he had fallen in love that second, with Wesley Adams’ hands curled around him and his mouth just centimeters away.

Sam had kissed him and Wes had kissed back; or, maybe, Wes had kissed him and he’d been the one to press into it, desperate for more, and the realization that something brilliant and just theirs was waiting to explode between them and—

Sam didn’t realize he was in love with Wesley then. And maybe he hadn’t been. But it’d been nearly a year since Wes had looked him in the eyes and promised he’d be there for him when he got back, and whether it was the potential between them or the tantalizing hope for love and family and more, Sam loved him now.

He knew it was true because it didn’t feel like time speeding up like a heart attack. It didn’t feel like everything was on hyperdrive and that he was close to breaking apart because he couldn’t keep up with the speed. It didn’t feel like the hot fire burn of passion but something so much more.

Time slowed.. When he thought about Wes, his heart was finally beating so right and so true in his chest. It felt like he could stop time and just breathe, for the first time. Everything cleared. He felt clearer. He knew that love was supposed to make you better. And it was only the thought of Wes that made Sam breathe, made him think, made him happy. It made him a better person in every way. He knew that it had to be love.

It might have been discovered through reflection and time apart, but Sam was so sure.

He was in love with Wesley Adams and all he wanted to do was to kiss him again.

Not that he could, of course.

Sam was a little busy at the moment. Too busy for kisses and dreams of what the future could be.

When Sam had joined the Navy at eighteen, he hadn’t thought it’d be like this. He never thought he’d miss barbecues, backyard kisses and holding hands with a guy. He never thought he’d wish to be in Poplar, Kansas again just so his younger brother would call him for a favor or that he’d spend hours agonizing over how old his nephew was because he couldn’t quite remember.

He didn’t expect, at 18, to wake up one day and want family more than he wanted out of his old life. He never thought that he’d accidentally, from far away, fall in love with a boy and a life he never even knew he wanted.

It had been almost a year since he’d been in Poplar. The visit had been short and impromptu, only really happening because Sam realized he’d never met his nephew and his brother was starting to take it personally. It’d been a year since he’d first seen Wes, when he realized how strangely important the stranger’s opinion was to him, and Wes admitted to long-harbored feelings for Sam. Since Sam first thought that life outside of the Navy SEALs might have something to offer him.

Sam hadn’t expected any of that.

But now, it was all he wanted. It was all he thought about.

He hadn’t called Wes. He had wanted to, those first few months. Thought about it daily— twice daily, sometimes. He had written letters, long ones that spoke about heated memories and late nights where the only thing Sam wore was Wes’s name on his lips. Shorter ones, too, that confessed to how grueling work was becoming, how lonely the missions felt now that he knew he could be a part of something fuller, brighter, if he only committed. He’d told Wes about his childhood, about feeling trapped between his father and brother and a lifetime of responsibilities he never asked for; he’d written about the war and the fighting and the way he could taste blood in his mouth when he slept. In one, he had just wrote about all his favorite snack foods because he thought Wes might be interested in that. He knew he was interested in whatever Wes’s favorites were.

He wrote for months. Longer than he thought about calling. Long after he knew he’d never send them, Sam wrote to Wesley.

The letters were all different and varied. Still, each letter ended in the same, agonizing way. A promise to come home soon and a hard toss into the trash.

Sam thought he fell in love with Wes while writing those letters. Each time he wondered what to write, he thought about what he wanted to know about Wes. He thought about all the questions he had and how he thought Wes would look so nice in a sweater on Christmas and how his smile would be bigger than any other when Sam came back to him. When he realized that the only thing he needed to feel better was to think about Wes, to imagine the way he’d reply and listen and be there, it wasn’t hard to put together. Still, it wasn’t until the twentieth abandoned letter that he realized.

The twenty-first just said one thing: “Fuck it. I think I love you.”

That one had taken him longer to throw away.

Even if their exposure to one another was short, he knew that Wes was the love of his life. He hadn’t meant to feel that way and he wasn’t sure that he had that day he’d spent with him. But the longer he was apart from Wes, the more sure he was that he was meant to be with him.

After all, didn’t absence make the heart grow fonder? If a little separation could strengthen love, maybe the inevitability of ever being reunited could make it sprout like a flower in the desert.

It was crazy and dumb and not based in any facts or experience. It was just this something inside his gut that promised him it was right.

He loved him. And he couldn’t say anything.

Sam couldn’t send the letters and he couldn’t call. He considered, every time he heard about Wes through the grapevine of his brother. He wanted to ask Tommy how Wes was, if he ever mentioned him, if he loved him, too—but Sam always felt his mouth drying and the questions coming up short.

He wasn’t sure why he never called.

He only knew that it was too late now.

The mission he'd been sent on wasn’t supposed to be longer than the others. It was short, dangerous and imperative—everything that Sam liked about being a part of the Navy SEALs. It was an important mission that too many people were too afraid to do.

So Sam had donned his uniform, exchanged supportive conversations with his team and sent a note to his brother that he’d be gone for a little while.

He didn’t tell him any details, per protocol, and he told him he’d call when he was back. Cut and dry, he’d said.

But cut and dry was off the table from the second they’d found the location.

The jeep stuttered to a stop, the engine cutting off and leaving the men in momentary, deafening silence. For just a second, Sam couldn’t hear anything. Not the wind nor the breathing of the other men or the bickering of his squad.

For just a moment, there was silence.

Then one of the team said a joke and loud laughter filled the space around them.

“Shut up,” Sam said, though he made sure his tone wasn’t as harsh as his words.

“Now, listen.” Sam said, glancing at his team. Their shoulders straightened, holding themselves at attention even in the cramped jeep.

“This isn’t going to be an issue,” he began firmly. “We’re going to find the missing man and we’re going to leave. No engaging unless we need to. Intel says this place will be empty and we are not to risk the MIA officer with anything unnecessary. Do you hear me?”

“Yes, sir,” they all parroted back.

Franklin, a younger SEAL, looked around at the rest of the team, face drawn in concentration. Sam figured he was worried; extraction was rarely cut and dry.

But their intel promised an easy recon—Sam was pretty sure the full task force was just there for backup.

“Alright,” Sam relaxed his stance and the team followed suit. “Get the fuck out, alright, go, go, go.”

He shooed the men until the door creaked open and they spilled out.

Sam climbed out last, stepping past them all and surveying the space.

He hated the desert. The way the heat would bubble around him, a nearly visible entity in the air. The sand would give way beneath his shoes, making his tread heavy and identifiable. He hated the long strip of the endless desert horizon—it promised an unending battle, a fight that would drag on until the earth shattered completely.

He hated how much it didn’t remind him of home.

This part of the desert was particularly unwelcoming. There were a few ramshackle houses, a couple of decaying buildings that could have been considered businesses in the past. Sam didn’t see a single person in the entirety of the small village. A doll’s toy sat across the dirt road, covered in mud and abandoned.

His pulse beat so evenly that the hairs on the back of his neck stuck up. His body steadied beneath adrenaline and fear; his comfort was a bad sign.

Across the way, about seventy yards away, was the targeted building. There, behind the boarded up windows and doors, was their missing man.

Sam hoped the quiet was a good thing. He swallowed hard and then hardened his expression.

He turned to the building, about to motion to Franklin, Edwards, and Charles to hang left and then maybe he’d have himself and Parker take point—

Bullets rained. Sam didn’t know where they were coming from, where they were aiming—they whooshed around them, cutting through the air and his team like a knife through butter.

“Fan out!” Sam called, waving his arm to disperse his team. “Separate and stop them!”

Sam didn’t spare any of his team a look; he couldn’t, not when each scream and loud thud would have stopped him in his tracks if he let himself really notice them.

He focused on identifying the threat.

Identify the threat. Stop the threat. Save the day.

A bullet scraped across his shoulder, slicing the material and splitting the delicate weaving of his skin. He cursed and ducked behind the jeep, firing in the direction of the bullet. They exchanged fire until Sam heard a loud, gurgling howl and the gunfire from that particular direction ceased.

He ran from behind the jeep, firing again and again. He stepped over the bodies of his bleeding team. He didn’t look down. He couldn't look down.

Peaking out from behind the open door of a gun hole riddled house, Sam saw one of the men. He wore an everyday man’s clothes and held an assault rifle in his arms.

Sam dove left and knocked the weapon out of the other man’s hands. He was twice the size of Sam but he didn’t have the training he did, didn’t have the same desire to go home and desire to prove himself that Sam did. Sam shifted his weight and ducked down, swiping the leg out from under the guy and slamming against him hard. He went down and Sam hit and hit until he was out cold. Then he rolled, jumping back up, rejoining the fight that his brothers were in.

It was too much. Everything—they were outnumbered and being there for all the best reasons didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that they were only trying to extract American citizens. It didn’t matter that they were trained and good and a team. It didn’t matter.

His team might not have filled the empty space growing between his ribs the way seeing his family for the first time in five years had; but his team was his family and each shot ringing in their direction pierced through Sam, even when the bullet was aimed for someone else.

Especially when it was aimed for someone else.

They dropped like flies. Angry, hopeful, fighting flies—but destined all the same to drop.

Sam tripped, ankle rolling and his body slamming hard into the dirty sand. He could taste the iron thickness of blood and the grainy texture of the sand; it coated his tongue and his lips and his soul.

He turned his head and saw Parker.

The man was dead. His eyes had glassed over and there were so many bullet holes in his body that Sam could almost see through him. He was dead; his skin was cooling. He’d be buried in the sand here from a battle that maybe no one would know about. If Sam didn’t win, if one of them didn’t get out of this alive, no one would know.

Sam thought he remembered that Parker’s girlfriend was pregnant.

Sick coated his throat. He tasted the bile, blood, and sand. His eyes stung and his body sweated and he was going to absolutely pass out and—

The gunfire became precise. It narrowed in on him. One flew into the sand, burrowing hot and deep, an inch away from his skull.

Sam pulled the dead man on top of him, using his cooling body as an amour. Bullets flew into the already dead flesh, protecting Sam.

In the end, when the bullets stopped and Sam rolled out from under the body, the men were waiting for him.

They stood with a gun in his face and Edward and Franklin in their grasp.

Sam passed out with one hard punch to the head.

When he woke up, Franklin was dead and Edward was strung to a wall. His body was aching and bleeding and shackled in the darkness.

Everyone besides Sam and Edward had fallen. Everyone besides Sam and Edward had died.

They survived. But most days, both men wished they hadn’t.

* * *

TORTURE SCENE:

When he was seven years old, Sam Carlisle almost drowned.

The water crashed into him, the waves taller than he was even on his father’s shoulders, and the stench of salty water had consumed him from the inside out. The trip to the beach was supposed to be something fun for them to all do, his brother and his dad, the first time they’d gone and done something real in he didn’t know how long. Their small family hadn’t ventured out of their house in a while; Mom’s lack of presence hung in the air like smoke from a fire. But it had been nearly six months since she left and Dad had decided it was time for the boys to go do something fun, just the three of them.

Sam had been excited. He had taken swimming lessons the summer before and knew this was going to be his time to shine. He wanted to show his dad that he was old enough to take care of himself and to show his little brother it was okay to go out in the water.

Instead, though, Sam showed his dad that he wasn’t strong enough to stay afloat and showed his brother that they weren’t half as invincible as Sam wanted him to think.

He thought he might never get in the water again after that. Swore it to himself even. With a blanket wrapped around his shoulders and his dad yelling at him, a thousand feet tall and dripping droplets onto the sand, Sam really thought he’d never swim again.

Which, of course, was a little ironic now.

He would have preferred drowning to this.

The hand twined in Sam’s hair pulled hard, yanking his head from the bucket of ice cold water. He gasped for air, trying not to inhale until after he’d coughed out all the water from his lungs.

The man holding his hair didn’t give him the time to catch his breath. He pushed Sam’s head back under the water. Sam wasn’t sure if it was real or not, but he thought he heard laughter coming from his torturer as Sam struggled not to drown in the bucket.

Sam held his breath the best that he could.

Black spots danced behind his eyelids. He tasted blood and felt weakness surge like adrenaline through his bones.

Right on the line of passing out, of dying, of ceasing to exist, the man pulled Sam out of the water and tossed his limp body onto the ground.

He hit it hard, his head ricocheting off the solid surface. His mind skipped a beat, blacking out for just one long moment. Sam breathed in through the pain. His lungs inflated and deflated rapidly, skin burning, mouth quivering as spit and water fell from his parted, puckered lips. The smell of sick and blood was thick, permeating his senses. It was so strong he almost felt it on top of his skin, a disgusting set of armor he couldn’t shake off.

After a minute of nothing but his own wheezing and desperate attempts to stay alive, the man kicked him hard in the stomach. Sam curled into the sensation, knees hitching up to protect his stomach as the man kicked again.

“Little boy,” the man called, mockingly. Sam grit his teeth and rolled over slowly, cracking his eyes open.

The man in front of him crouched, his shadowed face grinning with sharp teeth and familiar malice. The room Sam had been kept in since his capture was only dimly lit and only sometimes; he’d never seen the entirety of this man’s face. But Sam could piece together the various images to create one cruel, Picasso-esque man.

He assumed that it was American military that disfigured the man. It would explain the jagged edges of his skin and the pleasure he took from carving similar lines in Sam’s skin.

Grabbing again at his hair, the man tugged at Sam and lifted him to his feet. Sam felt too weak to fight against it; too sure that nothing good would come of it even if he tried. He let the man push him against the wall and retie his bonds. One on each wrist, connected to chains that were bolted to the wall. They were thick and scratchy, easily digging into his flesh and tight, regardless of how much blood slicked the iron. When Sam was secure, the man stepped back and surveyed his work.

“Little boy,” the man crooned, as happy as Sam had ever seen him. He held the knife loosely between his fingertips; mostly, Sam knew, because he could.

Sam’s fists curled into themselves, the tight binding digging a little deeper from his movements. He’d tried for hours, days, weeks to break free. The divots and scars on his wrists served as a reminder that he wasn’t strong enough.

Edward passed out an hour ago. They always started with the older man, who opted to cry and pray his way through the pain until he passed out. Mercifully, it never took Edward long before his whole body shut down to avoid feeling the blades and fists against his flesh.

Sam wasn’t so lucky. Maybe it was his strength; it felt like a curse most days.

He gritted his teeth against an onslaught of curses building in his throat. His torturer laughed happily and dragged the knife a little to the left. Sam’s torso had long ago been rippled and ruined.

He thought the idea of a kidnapping, torturing terrorist was a little cliche. He was pretty sure the common protocol was just to hold soldiers in captivity for ransom or trade, a little bruised and hungry, but not really all that worse for the wear.

Maybe his commanding officers had sugarcoated it. Or maybe he’d done that himself by trying so many times to convince his baby brother that the job wasn’t that dangerous.

Either way, his task force was dead and Edward laid in a puddle of his own blood and vomit and Sam wanted nothing more than to plunge the knife currently beneath his skin into the man wielding it.

The anticipation was the worst.

The way that his Picasso would stand in front of him, teasingly shifting the knife from hand to hand, a ghoulish smile etched into his skin.

His stomach gave way to the knife’s tip. Sam watched through a haze as blood gathered on the blade and slid down his stomach, drip, drip, dripping down his bare torso. The new cut was three inches long and shallow; it was curled at the end, like a tail.

It stung like a surprise. The next one was just as shocking.

His head was heavy, shoulders too big to hold up.

His body curled into itself, organs and blood and muscles all rushing towards the middle of himself. He felt like that moment after too much to drink, sitting in front of the toilet and just wishing you could throw up. He felt on the cusp of disaster and wished he could just throw himself overboard.

The man grabbed his throat, fingers clenching tight. He could still breathe. That mattered.

Sam focused on the fact that he could still breathe.

Bile climbed up the back of his throat and he tried hard not to choke on it when the man let go of his throat suddenly. He dragged the knife hard and fast down Sam’s arm.

A shout spilled from his mouth when the man pulled away. Sam cursed, body jerking up without his permission. The surprise of the slice hurt more than the open wound.

For a moment, Sam found himself back in that truck. He felt the warm sun streaming through the window and heard the timber of Wes’s voice. For a moment, Sam wasn’t in pain.

The press of a hand against his cheek brought him back to the moment. There was a bit of blood gathered on the top of his lip, trickling down. He could taste the metallic sickness of it when his breaths were ragged enough to separate his lips.

He swiped his tongue across his mouth, gathering the sweat and blood and swallowing it back. Once upon a time, it might have made him sick; now, its familiarity didn’t even churn his stomach.

“The tiny, little man,” his torturer taunted again. They called him this frequently, despite the fact that even strung up the way he was, Sam towered over the two men who came in to check on Edward and him.

His torturer’s English was good, if a little accented. He had no trouble getting his insults and taunts across.

Sam drew his head back and smiled. It was toothy and bloody and he was sure an awful mess. The other man snarled back.

He closed his eyes when the knife moved again.

This burning was easy to ignore. He’d been doing it for what felt like his whole life.

Sam used to fight; Edward used to cry. They mostly just stood until they fell now.

In the deepest parts of his mind, Sam could retreat. It was here that he kept himself sane. It was here that he kept his father’s face and the memory of the way his mother smelled when she held him real tight right after taking a shower. He thought about his brother’s goofy grin and he thought about Wesley.

He thought about leaving the airport that hot, summer day. The way he’d scanned the parking lot for someone he’d never met and never could have known would change his life so thoroughly and honestly. The bright eyes he had and the way his body, lithe and thin and so solid beneath his shirts, leaned against the side of a pickup truck.

God, Sam was gone for that man.

He kept him in his mind’s eye and his heart when the blade cut the deepest.

He inhaled sharply when the man pulled too harshly on his already tautly hung body. He saw white stars beneath his eyelids, lungs too small to get enough air.

Sam could feel every nerve in his body slow. The knife plunged in deeper than it had before. The man laughed loudly and Sam threw up.

The sick trickled down the side of his mouth, the smell and taste nearly making him vomit a second time.

Every moment alive felt pointless. Every second he struggled to remain conscious felt pointless. He was fighting against time and fate and a blade that hungered for the taste of his blood.

He could give up.

He wanted to give up.

Tom would never forgive him; Wesley would never kiss him again.

Sam drew his head back and coughed, spitting the vomit from his mouth.

“Fuck you,” he spat. The man recoiled and snarled, stabbing him again.

Sam let him. He cleared his mind and focused on surviving; focused on hope.

Hope tasted like the memory of Wesley’s lips pressed against his. Their kiss was a shimmering spark of potential, a life that Sam hadn’t known he could have. One that after basically no time at all, he realized he wanted desperately.

He wanted to see how pink Wes’s lips could get, after letting them be worried between his teeth and soothed with his tongue. He wanted to see if his big, beautiful eyes would sparkle more brightly. He wanted to hear what he sounded like when he moaned and the way he reacted when Sam told him he loved him.

He wanted to tell Tommy he was happy and home and safe and in love. He wanted it to not be a lie.

With each stroke of pain, he pictured his brother laughing and his nephew growing up and a white picket fence with a dog and a boy and a life he really, really wanted.

He knew it was pointless, but he still hoped it would all turn out okay.

When the pain got too much and he could feel the panic threatening to swell his throat and heart and just end it all, he swallowed around the lumps and vomit. He focused on Wesley’s face, his bright eyes, and his pink lips that he stretched into a smile. He focused on the sound of Wesley’s laugh.

Everything slowed. Everything calmed. His heart promised to keep trying and his mind cleared through all the pain and fear.

He’d keep trying. He’d keep trying. He’d keep his promise. He’d go home soon.

—-

When Sam woke up next, he was curled on the ground. His captors had released his chains enough for him to be able to fully curl into himself and extend his limbs back again. He knew from experience he would also be able to reach the outer corner of the room, where a piss bucket was kept.

Edward was awake as well. He sat as he always did, legs crossed and his forehead resting against the hard wall.

Sam cleared his throat twice before he was able to speak.

“Ed,” he said. His voice sounded scratchy and raw from the torture of holding back as many screams and cries he could. He was used to the uncomfortable feeling, even if he hated it almost as much as he hated the pain that caused it.

Edward didn’t answer. He rarely did.

But Sam had been briefed, the same as Edward had, on how to keep yourself sane in situations like theirs. He knew that speaking, that being able to remember your reality and to be able to root yourself in the truth rather than just the pain of the now, was crucial in extracted victims coming back to themselves.

Some days, Sam so badly wanted to give in and give up the way Edward was trying to. He knew it would be easier in the now if he just dissociated from his life.

But he couldn’t do that. Because he didn’t know when and he didn’t know how, but Sam knew that he was going to go back to his family. He knew he had to be okay enough to really make it back there.

Tom would never forgive him if he didn’t. And what was it that Wes had said, that day so many days ago, when he explained why he had even bothered picking Sam up from the airport? Anything for Tommy.

Anything for Tommy. Sam knew that had to include surviving.

“You okay, Ed?” Sam looked the man over, trying to gauge the color of the blood staining the man’s skin to see if any of his wounds were fresh or still bleeding. So far, both men had been unreasonably lucky. As far as Sam could tell, neither of them were irreparably damaged. Sam had a few fingers that were surely fucked and he’d broken at least one rib, but nothing had been punctured and they both seemed to not have any internal bleeding. A little scarring and pain was nothing so long as they both survived.

Ed appeared to be alright. His face was swollen, almost entirely blue and purple, but he did have enough of his own wits about him to shoot Sam what he figured was a really nasty look.

Edward had been a fun guy, before. All the younger guys really liked him because his stories were fun and his personality was giving.

He didn’t resemble that guy so much any more. Sam couldn’t say for certain if he resembled who he used to be either.

Sam pushed himself into a sitting position, wincing when his side protested at the movement. The wall was cool against his back and he hissed against the cold pressing into the open marks there. After a second, the heat of pain settled and the throbbing became manageable. Then, as he knew it would, the cool wall soothed it.

He let his head fall against the wall. His neck felt so heavy to hold up.

Edward had fought a lot those first few times. But he must have decided it was easier to let the pain become separate from himself. Sam didn’t think that was worse than what he was doing; he was pretty sure it would be easier. But maybe he wasn’t as strong as Edward was.

Who was he kidding? He knew he wasn’t. Edward should have been leading the mission that day.

“I’m sorry,” Sam said lowly. He said it often; Edward never replied. “I know this isn’t what was supposed to happen. This isn’t where we’re supposed to be.”

Sam closed his eyes. When his heart felt too heavy to stay in his chest, he pictured Wesley’s face. Saw his bright eyes, happy to see him.

“I know how bad this is. I do, Ed, and I’m so sorry for everything. But we’re going to get out of here. I know it seems impossible and every day is a new horror, but Ed, I promise you— I’m going to get us out of here. I’m going to get us back to our families and our country. If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to save us both. I promise you.”

Sam felt tears welling in his eyes. His whole heart felt heavy, his body too full of pain and blood and sorrow. As he slowly gave into the darkness and numbness threatening his thoughts, he repeated his promise over and over again to Edward.

Sam didn’t know how but he knew he would keep his promise. He was a man of his word and if he didn’t keep his word to Edward and save them, get them out of this hell hole, he’d never be able to keep his promise to Wesley.

And Sam was going to keep his promise to Wesley. He was going to go home and hold the love of his life in his arms and he was going to tell him that he was the love of his life. Sam Carlisle was going to be happy, goddamn it. He was going to get the boy and the white picket fence and the happiness that seemed so farfetched he almost ached for it. He was going to get it all.

He just had to survive first.