Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

October 2006

140.15 -- Time: 2300 hours -- Location: Outskirts of Toledo, OH

“Are you seeing this shit?” you ask Mei Ling, who’s hard at work processing Snake’s latest data. “Mei -- are you seeing this?”

“Hmm?” she asks, looking up from the computer.

For once, everyone’s operating out of the same room. This mission’s pretty critical, but you’ve all had plenty of time to prepare, so you’re holed up in a warehouse with Nastasha, Mei Ling, and Naomi, watching Snake and Otacon sneak around. Otacon’s had the time and the forethought to “hack” (you’re never sure when he’s saying hack seriously and when he’s pulling your leg) the security cameras at the parts plant they’re investigating for signs of Metal Gear production ahead of time, so you have the feed playing on a monitor. Apparently this mission involved a lot of quote unquote hacking, thus Otacon’s presence in the field.

All four of you didn’t work with them all the time, but over the last year and a half you’d come to look forward to the times when everyone would team up. The only thing that stopped you from feeling something close to happy with your status as on-again off-again member of Philanthropy (honestly more on than off, there wasn’t much else for you to do) was this bullshit occurring on your screen.

“Seriously, Mei Ling, check this out,” you say, swiveling the monitor so she can get a better view.

She scoots her chair closer to you, and squints at the screen. “Are they . . . practicing a handshake?”

“The hell?” says Nastasha, getting up from her seat to stand behind you both.

“Before anyone asks, I neither know nor care,” says Naomi without looking away from her own monitor.

“Haha, okay Naomi,” you say. On screen, Snake’s trying to demonstrate something that apparently involves grabbing Otacon’s hand a lot. “Fucking incredible.”

“Are they safe?” asks Mei Ling, still staring at the screen intently. “Just hanging around like this?”

“I’m still waiting for all the pictures Snake took to upload,” says Nastasha. “They need to stay near the console.”

“And all the guards are down and out for at least another half hour,” you say. “So I guess they decided they don’t have anything better to do than --” you point at the screen -- “this.”

You hear a familiar beeping sound in your ear: an incoming codec. “Hold on, it’s Snake, let me take this,” you say, and then -- “Hey, Snake. What’s up? How’s it hangin’?”

“Almost all finished, I think,” he says.

“And ahead of schedule, too,” you say, glancing at the clock. “That’s almost a first.”

“Yeah, Otacon did this neat thing with the, uh. . .” He’s struggling to come up with something resembling the correct words. “. . .Mainframe? We’re just waiting for confirmation from Nastasha that the data’s been uploaded.”

“Yes, I know,” you say. “We can see you.”

You’re hoping he gets the message you’re trying to convey, namely: stop doing embarrassing shit while we’re all around. But he doesn’t seem worried by the idea.

“Gosh Snake, it’s really not that impressive,” says Otacon somewhere in the background.

“Well, I think it is,” says Snake.

“Anyway,” you say, stopping any endless back and forth complimenting bullshit in its tracks before it starts. “You were calling because. . .?”

“Just wanted to give you an update on the situation,” he says. “I know you all worry about us when we’re away.”

“Tell him we don’t,” says Naomi, her head on the desk.

“Tell Naomi I can hear her,” says Snake.

“It’s true,” you say. “We don’t actually worry.”

“This is why it’s better when Otacon’s mission control, at least he worries about me,” grumbles Snake. Mei Ling covers her mouth with her hand so Snake can’t hear her laughing.

“What are you guys up to, though?” you ask.

“Handshake” says Snake, just as Otacon says “Nothing!”

“You gonna share more with the class?” you ask.

“Nope,” he says.

Complicated -- probably "secret" or something -- handshakes and super soldiers don't seem to naturally mix, but you guess it's kinda a very Snake thing to do. Ugh. “Right, well, talk to you in a bit?” you say. “Keep up the good work?”

“Uh, thanks,” says Snake. "We'll . . . wait to hear from you before we leave?"

You hang up. There’s a heavy, portentous silence in the room for a minute.

“This is bad,” says Nastasha.

“You don’t even know the half of it,” says Naomi. “You cannot even fathom what Dr. Emmerich sounds like when you really let him go on about Snake.”

You find yourself in the odd position of agreeing with Naomi. “Right,” you say. “Right. It’s insufferable. It’s embarrassing. Do they honestly not realize how they’re acting?”

“I don’t know,” says Mei Ling. She bumps her shoulder against yours. “I think it’s sweet.”

“It’d be sweeter if I didn’t have to listen to it all the time.” And if it didn’t remind you of how ridiculous you must have sounded, being so transparently infatuated with Snake for all of three hours, except this was months and months of it, months of ‘gee Snake, you’re so cool’ and ‘wow Otacon, I wish I was good at gadgets’ and ‘oh, haha, it’s nothing really, anything for you’ over and over.

“Do you think they maybe don’t realize how they sound?” asks Mei Ling. “Or. . . how they both feel?”

“Otacon, definitely,” says Nastasha. “I’d believe anything about his ability to ignore the obvious after Shadow Moses. But Snake? He seems entirely more self aware.”

“No, I can see it,” says Mei Ling. “Like, how long did Snake and Big Boss work together? Have you see pictures of them, side by side? How could you not put together the relation?”

“I haven’t,” you admit. Your clearance had never really been all that high in the first place.

“Naomi showed me a picture once, it was pretty obvious.”

“Remind me to show you sometime,” says Naomi, her voice muffled by the desk and her apathy.

“But trust me,” says Mei Ling. “It’s bad.”

“Well, and the fiasco with the Miller imposter as well,” says Nastasha. “I can’t imagine the sunglasses were that flawless of a disguise. So I suppose that’s a pretty convincing argument for a lack of awareness. Maybe not as bad as Otacon, but . . .”

“But no one’s got a lack of awareness like Otacon,” says Mei Ling. “I never started really thinking about what if they really don't realize how they act around each other?”

“I can’t put up with this for however long it’ll take them to get their shit together,” you say. “I just can’t. Did you hear that last conversation? I mean, really hear it?”

Mei Ling frowns. “Do you think maybe it’s time for some sort of intervention?”

They’ve gone back to working on the handshake. “Yeah, it just might be.”

calling 140.96 . . .

“Nice job out there today, Snake! Do you want to save your mission data?”

“Sure, Mei Ling. Got any proverbs to describe this job?”

>Save

Don’t Save

“Snake, ‘Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink/ Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;/Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink/And rise and sink and rise and sink again.’” ¹

“That’s . . . sort of a downer for you, Mei Ling. How is that proverb supposed to be related to anything at all?”

“Hey, not everything I say is a proverb! I just like the poem the quote is from.”

“Uh, okay Mei Ling. Next time, maybe save it for the book club. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Okay! Bye, Snake.”

140.48 -- Time: 1500 hours -- Location: Redacted

At first you’d wondered if the codec calls weren’t a type of clumsy flirtation on Dr. Emmerich’s part. Not the clumsiest flirtation you’d been on the receiving end of, perhaps, but up there in the top ten. The calls, after all, were frequent enough to be alarming, strange enough to be challenging, and friendly enough to be disconcerting.

But after a month and a half (during which you’d attempted to engineer a way to block codec frequencies, surely someone had thought of it before), you’re forced to conclude that Dr. Emmerich is just really really interested in the biology of Solid Snake.

“You do realize I poisoned him, right?” you ask one morning (four in the morning. Four in the morning) as he pauses mid-ramble. “I poisoned him, with the intent to kill him, with a virus that will kill him, at some point?”

“Well, you had to, right?” he says, looking only slightly uncomfortable. “You were under orders.”

“Dr. Emmerich, I nearly murdered him in cold blood. Some would say I have murdered him. I don’t understand why you continue to contact me.”

You hate him. You hate him, and you hate Solid Snake, and you hate, in particular, the ways neither seems to hate you very much. You’d suspect Dr. Emmerich of harboring a long and secret revenge plot, but if anyone was incapable of playing the long con, it was Emmerich. Snake might be able to, but he seemed utterly disinclined towards that sort of action. You loathe and abhor both of them in equal measure.

“Snake says if we took it personally every time someone tried to kill him we’d never get anything done, haha,” says Dr. Emmerich, “He did almost get killed by a robot I created.”

You despise how easy it is for Dr. Emmerich to turn his life around, to turn his greatest failure into his life’s work, to start anew. How you wish you could, but some sins are too great to atone for, some blemishes uncoverable. “You could just synthesize a cure,” he says to you once.

“Synthesize a cure? Easy for you to say, but not everything is undoable, Dr. Emmerich.”

“Well I mean, I blow up Metal Gears for a living now,” he says. “So there’s that!”

But somehow you find yourself here anyway, helping the only people who understand -- or should, at least, understand -- the full extent of what you have and will and are willing to do. Coincidentally, they’re also the only people who’ll still agree to work with you, on the run as you are.

Besides, it’s not like there’s not some logistical and monetary benefits to working with these people. Generally Emmerich skims some from the budget of whatever company decides to engineer a Metal Gear this time, “just from the budget for that project, so it’s not like they can tell anyone about it, haha,” and he’s more than willing to share some with everyone who’s helped out. He foolishly instructed you in how exactly he does this, which means you can do a little more than skim off the top of said budgets, which means you can finally buy a decommissioned missile base, just like you always wanted.

If Dr. Emmerich has noticed your extracurricular money making schema, he’s not seen fit to say anything, which suits you just fine. You have debts to pay. And if you have to pay them off by helping with some convoluted scheme or other, well . . . you’ve been asked to do worse things for your employers before. Probably. Probably you’ve been asked to do worse things than what you’re about to be asked to do.

“Why are we having this meeting, exactly?” you ask. “This is rather unusual, isn’t it? Meeting without Snake and Dr. Emmerich?”

“I wanted to discuss with you all this next job before we talked to Snake and Otacon about it,” says Nastasha.

That, at least, peaks your interest. “Does that mean it’s dangerous?” you ask.

“Not exactly,” she says. Well, nevermind then.

“Okay, so run me through this, Nastasha. What’ve you got?” says Meryl.

Nastasha starts into her talk but you quickly lose the thread. Something about a weapons development conference, some sort of head of a company who had an unusual amount of intelligence on others and only ever ventured out of his compound for a few different things, this conference being one of them, et cetera et cetera et cetera, spot opened up suddenly when previously the conference had been completely full, et cetera et cetera, perfect opportunity et cetera, something boring about Nastasha’s personal life, you’d yawn if you weren’t trying to render yourself invisible through silence.

“There’s a problem, though,” says Nastasha after her (you check your watch) whole ten minute sales pitch.

“What’s that?” asks Meryl.

“Well, the spot we’re stealing is for two people. Married couple. That’s who they’re expecting.”

Meryl sits up a little straighter, her eyes go wide.

Mei Ling shakes her head. “No, Meryl, I know what you’re thinking, and no, we absolutely cannot.”

“Why not?” asks Meryl. “It’s perfect! It’s, like, actually relevant and everything. Like, come on. The only person who can pose as a scientist --”

“Hey!!” you say.

“An engineer then, under this much scrutiny, that’s Otacon. He thrives on that kinda nerd crap.”

“Snake’s not gonna like it,” says Nastasha.

“Yes, exactly,” says Meryl.

“That’s a little devious, Meryl,” says Nastasha.

Meryl shrugs. “I’m a desperate woman. Whatever it takes to get the job done.”

“The terrible thing is it might work -- on both counts.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” you ask.

Meryl kicks her feet up on her desk, because she thinks that’s extremely cool, but it’s not. “Well.”

141.80 -- Time: 1900 hours -- Location: Houston, TX

“Getting... married?” you ask. You scratch your head and try to work through the logistics of the mission again. More espionage than stealth, a little out of your usual league but nothing, you’re fairly confident, you and Otacon can’t handle. Until that last curveball. “Mei Ling, I know you’ve all thought this through, but are you sure me and Otacon posing as a, uh . . . married couple is the only possible way?”

“Yes,” says Mei Ling, a little brusquer than usual. “I’m absolutely confident, Snake! We’ve reviewed all possible angles and this is the option that leaves you the greatest chance of success. Plus, they’re expecting a married couple.”

You’re holding a video conference call with everyone else -- Naomi, Nastasha, Meryl, Mei Ling -- while sitting at your kitchen table. Everyone but Otacon, of course, who’s sitting next to you, looking jittery. Well, more jittery than usual.

“Wouldn’t it raise less alarms for me to pretend to be married get, uh, fake married, to a woman?” you ask, though you don’t know exactly who you’d call on. “What about Nastasha? Wouldn’t she be a better choice?”

“Too many people know me who might be attending this convention,” says Nastasha. “At this sort of event, I’m actually a much more high profile figure than you or Otacon. Besides, I have some . . . personal history with Carpenter’s wife. It would be inconvenient to have to work around these sorts of limitations.”

“And Mei Ling’s too young for that to be convincing,” says Meryl.

“Or for it to be not massively creepy,” you add. “Yeah. Nao-- no.”

“No,” agrees Nastasha.

“Certainly not,” says Naomi.

“And there’s no way I’m gonna pretend to be married to you,” says Meryl.

“Thanks, Meryl,” you say, though you know she doesn’t mean it to be insulting. Doesn’t mean it to be very insulting, at least.

“Like, just think about how convincing of engineers we’d be, you know?”

She was also too young anyway, but also that was a spectacularly good point. You like to think you’re a decent liar ² but you and Meryl together would not a convincing couple make, especially if one of you had to pretend to be an engineer.

“I’m confident that you and Otacon posing as a married couple instead of you and someone else will not cause suspicion. Being slightly atypical may even help you to blend in. Would you expect yourself, if you were the enemy, to enter into a mission by pretending to be married at all?”

“I guess not,” you say. You’re pretty sure that you should be protesting more, or figuring out another solution, but you trust Mei Ling, and besides, it doesn’t seem that bad. Otacon’s a nice guy, you spend all your waking hours around each other, you’d both joked at some point that you might as well be married. What’s a little fake marriage between best friends?

"Anyway," says Mei Ling.

"Right, anyway," says Meryl gesturing for Nastasha to continue.

"I've long thought that Defense Solutions United might potentially be a group of interest, but I’ve held off drawing attention to them for a while because of the CEO, Robert Carpenter. Mr. Carpenter is, perhaps justifiably, more than a little paranoid about his competitors. That's one of the reasons he lives practically on top of his main R&D labs which, by the way, are practically impenetrable."

"So why bother with this guy?" you ask. "Sounds like he's probably more trouble than he's worth, especially if nobody's heard reports he's actually trying to make a metal gear prototype."

"That paranoia includes a prodigious amount of corporate espionage. He's heard of most of the projects his competitors are working on before their own board of directors do."

“So,” says Meryl, “Getting the dirt on this guy cuts out a lotta work for everybody on our end of things. If any of his direct competitors are working on Metal Gear, there’s a good chance he’ll already know about it. But he only really travels a few times a year, for various conferences to check up on everyone else do some networking.”

“Sounds exhilarating,” says Naomi.

But Otacon looks. . . he doesn’t look uncomfortable, at least not any more than Otacon always looks. Uncertain, perhaps. “I’m sorry, can we circle back again to something. I get why not all the rest of you, you know, but. . . I still think Snake had a good point earlier. Why not Nastasha?" asks Otacon. “Nastasha, do you really know that many people who’ll be there?”

"We're getting to that," says Nastasha.

"Here, turn to the next slide thingy," says Meryl. You have to say at the very least her mission briefings are more visually interesting than Campbell's.

“Hold on for a moment, Meryl,” says Nastasha. “The problem is Ellen Carpenter, Robert's wife.”

“Ellen?” you ask. You think back to eleven years ago. The Ellen you met, it couldn’t possibly be here, but stranger things have happened. And Madnar had mentioned she was getting married, last time. “She’s not related to a Dr. Madnar, is she? Russian, ballet dancer, little taller than Mei Ling . . .”

“I assure you, this is not the same Ellen,” says Nastasha. She switches to the next slide, and you relax. Darker skin, broader shoulders, different face. Not the woman you remember from Outer Heaven. “We're, as I mentioned before. . . acquainted."

Meryl mouths "acquainted," adds in air quotes for good measure. You think she might be enjoying herself a little too much.

“Yes, thank you Meryl. We dated briefly for a time, before she and her husband began seeing each other, though I knew Robert as well. That was a few years ago, but I’m pretty sure they would still both recognize me. I don’t anticipate her presence being much of an issue but be on the look out for her anyway.”

"So that’s why no Nastasha,” says Meryl. “On top of that, Nastasha's just run into way too many of these guys face-to-face in her work. You guys they might recognize by reputation, but not by your faces. Probably."

"Probably?" you say.

"Well, you never know."

"You never know?"

"I'll be more use to you as a consultant than in the field, for this one, and that includes being able to tell you who might best be able to recognize you," says Nastasha.

"Right. Like I said. Probably it'll be fine," says Meryl. “So! The plan is, you hang around and look legit, don’t set off any alarm bells, watch Carpenter. You wait till you’re sure he’s out of the way for a sufficient amount of time, you sneak up there, Otacon walks you through the technobabble, bam, done. Nice and easy, no shooting.”

“No shooting?” you say.

“At the very least a pretty small amount of shooting,” says Meryl.

The plan seems alright to you, but you should check with Otacon. “So how about it?” you say to him.“You don’t have to if you don’t want to -- I’m sure that Mei Ling and Nastasha will be able to come up with something else.”

You pick your missions. That’s important. You decide what you will and will not do for the mission yourself, and Otacon has to do the same thing, or it doesn’t really mean anything, anything that you’ve done so far.

Otacon makes the face he does when he's made his mind up about something, and then that face he makes whenever he's about to tell a particularly terrible joke “Gee, Snake, you didn’t even give me a ring or anything.”

“We’ll send the rings in the mail,” says Meryl. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Otacon, I’m sending you all the details now,” says Nastasha.

Otacon opens his computer, and quickly glances at the files Nastasha’s just sent.

“Well, this looks simple enough,” says Otacon. “All I need to do is have a half hour or so with the computer, and I should be able to gather the information we need. And it’s a convention, I’ve gone to this sort of thing before.”

“This isn’t an otaku convention, Otacon,” says Mei Ling.

“No, no!” he says. “I mean, a convention for work. A weapons convention, like this. They send engineers sometimes, you know, to ‘talk shop.’”

“This is a little more exclusive than whatever you’ve gone to before, I assure you,” says Nastasha.

Otacon frowns. “I did work for the FBI you know,” he mumbles, but no one can hear him but you. You nudge his shoulder and he looks at you and grins.

“Half an hour with the computer, you said?” says Meryl. “Can you get it down to less?”

“Of course I can get it down to less,” says Otacon.

“Security on this particular meeting means that the only way you’ll have access to the target and his computer is if you’re actually attending the convention. Luckily, two spots opened up recently, and you --” Mei Ling points to Otacon “--are a world class arms tech engineer. Which isn’t a lie, I guess.”

Otacon scrunches his nose. You think he likes to think of himself more as a vigilante, pursuing justice and peace wherever he goes, but you think he also likes to think of himself as kind of dashing, which he is decidedly not.

“What’s my cover?” you ask. “I mean, besides the obvious.”

“You’re his plus one,” says Nastasha.

“Plus one? You mean I’m a . . . trophy husband?”

“Yes,” says Nastasha, looking utterly pleased with herself. “We figured we’ll mostly give you a backstory as analogous to your actual history as possible, to make things easier on everyone. You’re ex-military, retired, and so on. Otacon’s an engineer, currently out of work so we don’t have to worry about you running into anyone who might be a ‘co worker.’”

“We were just going to use your real first names, for simplicity’s sake,” says Mei Ling.

It’s strange having so many people know your name. You’ve grown accustomed to “Snake.” You wear it easier than “David,” no one’s called you David much in the past decade or so, when people were calling you anything at all. Which also wasn’t much. As odd as the name “Snake” might seem in casual conversation to an outside observer, it’s the name almost everyone you’ve ever loved has called you, and the name almost everyone you’ve lost called you.³ You told Otacon what your first name was because it seemed the appropriate thing to do, after you’ve helped someone the way you both helped each other at Shadow Moses, and you called him Hal that once, because it seemed appropriate, to finish the joke. Hal and Dave, huh? Everyone else knows because it was easier if they did, and if someone’s willing to do all the stupid shit these people seem to be willing to do for and with you, they deserve a secret of yours. You don’t mind Dave, but it sits foreign on the tongue.

You glance at Otacon. You don’t know what his parents were thinking when they named him after a computer -- and they did name him after the computer, that at least you’re pretty sure of -- but whatever their reasoning, good or bad, someone had turned it into a malediction, twisted it into an ugly thing. You don’t have it in you to forgive whoever did that, whether it was the person who named him or not.

“I need to ask Otacon about something,” you say, because you know Otacon won’t say anything, because it’d be embarrassing to him, you think.

"Okay, Snake," says Mei Ling.

"That includes no listening over codec," you say. "It's weird when you do that. Alright?"

Mei Ling looks at you and then at Otacon and nods. "I'll try not to be too nosy, just this once."

The others don't say anything. You drag Otacon far enough from the screen that you're pretty sure they can't hear you, and turn your back to the video.

“David works fine for me,” you say. “It’s a common enough name, and that way there’s less chance for one of us to slip up.”

Otacon hesitates, before saying, “Well, I guess Hal is fine too--”

“No,” you say, maybe a little too quickly, cutting him off. He stares at you. “I mean, Hal’s not nearly as common, and lots more people know your first name than mine, and might associate it with you, in the context of scientists who might go to this sort of thing. I’m better at remembering things than you --”

“--That’s not true!”

“It’s a little true,” you say. “So. You can figure out one that works better, we can -- you shouldn’t use your first name, I think. Unless you want to.”

“It’s not important,” says Otacon.

You've used a dozen aliases, so has Otacon, within the last eighteen months. But this feels different, important. Because you have to live it, maybe, however briefly. Because you don't think you could stand calling him a name he hated over and over. You don’t want to say “I know you hate it,” because maybe he doesn’t want you to remember that you know it. Or at least not acknowledge that you remember that, not directly.

“If it’s important to you it’s important to me.”

“I --” He rubs the back of his neck with one hand. “I think I’d prefer it if we didn’t use Hal, yeah. Sorry.”

“I’ll tell them it was my idea,” you say.

“Well, it was your idea, Snake. Jeez, you brought it up.”

“Only because you didn’t,” you mumble.

He shrugs. “I didn’t want to make a fuss over something really small.”

This is a thing that frustrates you about him, though you try not to let it. “Otacon... if something’s bugging you, just say so.”

“We should get back to the call,” he says.

“Right, the call,” you say. “I’ll tell them, though.” Your hand briefly rests on his shoulder.

He exhales, lets out a deep breath you hadn’t known he’d been holding in. “Thanks, Snake,” he says.

You relay the relevant excuses to the others. You’re afraid that Naomi will say something, but Naomi mostly just looks bored.

“Any suggestions, then?” asks Mei Ling.

“Joshua,” says Otacon, quicker than you thought he would.

Meryl thinks for a second. “War Games?” she asks.

“You got me,” he says sheepishly.⁴

“God, you are such a nerd,” says Meryl.

“So’s Mei Ling!” says Otacon. “And you’re the one who recognized the reference!”

“Yes, but I’m great, and Mei is cool and pretty, it’s not the same.” She claps her hands. “Okay! So, that’s settled. Hard part’s all taken care of. Now we just need to convince everyone you guys are real guys, Mei and Otacon, you can, uh, hack things, right?”

“Yes,” says Mei Ling. “Really, Meryl, you can’t just say ‘hack’ every time you mean ‘use the computer.’”

“I don’t see why not,” says Meryl. “Hack away. Do -- that thing. Whatever.”

“Otacon, can you help me make a fake CV and all that? I can guess what might be good, but it’s your field of speciality, not mine. Plus I will, of course, need assistance with all the ‘hacking.’”

“Sure thing. You know, we’re going to have to check and make sure we don’t give fake-me an academic career that would overlap with anyone else’s at the conference.”

“Yes!” says Mei Ling, brightly. “It will be an absolute pain!”

“Cool,” says Meryl. She points to you. “Snake, you and me we can go over hotel security, blah blah, you know, sneaking mission, etc.” (You nod.) “Naomi, you can get the actual physical documentation necessary to prove these guys are these guys, right?”

“If I must,” says Naomi.

“Yup!” says Meryl. “And Nastasha will gather up all the information we might need on who and what’s gonna be there. Naomi, you can help with the people stuff too?”

“Under great duress. I can’t believe I’m your go-to people person.”

“I’m working with limited resources!” says Meryl, who’s still having a little more fun than maybe she should. “Neat. We’re all set.”

“All set?” you say.

“Yup, nothin’ more to discuss.”

“What,” says Naomi, with the tone of one afflicted with a great and terrible punishment, “Could possibly go wrong?”

Footnotes

¹ This is from “Love Is Not All” by Edna St. Vincent Millay.

² He wasn’t.

³ And it’s a little bit like the reason Otacon, years later, will name a harmless little robot “Metal Gear Mk. II,” but in reverse. Not a reminder of something awful you’ve made, but a reminder of something awful you could become. A warning and a promise.

⁴ War Games is a 1983 science fiction movie about a kid who hacks the computer that controls whether or not we go to nuclear war, or something like that. The kid guesses that the password to get into the secret nuke controlling AI computer is the name of the head programmer’s dead son, “Joshua.” The AI’s name is also sorta Joshua, and also sorta not.

Chapter Text

141.12 -- Time: 0335 hours -- Location: Houston, TX

Listen -- you’re not great at lying. That’s not really in your wheelhouse. There’s a lot of things not in your wheelhouse, and lying for an extended period of time is one of those things. You think this might be one of those few things you’re bad at that Snake is also bad at, maybe actually worse. So you need to try even harder to be better at it. What you’re getting at is, you’re gonna have to try to make up backstory for these people that you’re both kinda going to be for a few days. And if a few details sort of superficially match up with real stuff that actually happened. . .

Look, look -- let’s be real here. Trying to figure out what a more ideal setup for meeting your partner/best friend(?) would look like is definitely not the weirdest thing you’ve written fanfic about, you’re pretty sure people know that just from looking at you, like just glance at you and go “oh that Otacon guy, he’s written some weird stuff, hasn’t he?” It’s just, you know, the fanfic you’d least like anyone to ever see ever. People daydream about what they’d say if they won a Nobel Prize or ended up on a talk show or if they’d gotten to redo their attempts at asking girls to the Homecoming dance sophomore year, so how was this any different? Besides the part where it was written down, and you could never let anyone know it was written down? And, er, write what you know, right?

It’s fine. It’s fine. Snake has two left thumbs when confronted with computers, this weird respect for you privacy, and hopefully absolutely no idea what fanfiction is. Just, sometimes what you want and what that looks like, that’s easier to know when it’s not about you directly. And you’re going to pretend to be other people -- not that you haven’t done that before, but you’ve never pretended to be people in a way that involved inhabiting those fake people's personal lives. It’s weirdly up-close in a way you can’t sort through, so maybe if you shake that out and examine it, you’ll be able to do a better job pretending to be someone who’s also you, and --

The point is, it’s absolutely fine, and you have to shut up or you’ll talk yourself in circles for the next half hour, and it’s exhausting, so just --

C://Otacon/Documents/Anime/Robots/Transformers/Gen_1/JPN_Only
> accessing folder “transformers super god masterforce (1989)”
> accessing subfolder “tf sgm manga (88-89)”
> accessing subfolder “tf sgm manga #12”
> accessing subfolder “tf sgm manga #12 (continuity errors)”
> . . .
> access denied. please enter password . . .
> ****************
> password accepted.
> accessing document “thoughts on reprint.rtf”
> . . .
> access denied. please enter password . . .
> ****************
> password accepted. opening “thoughts on reprint.rtf”
> . . .

Take Me Back To The Start

Nobody said it was easy
No one said it would be this hard
-- Coldplay ¹

The dashing scientist was almost late for work that one fateful November day. He shivered against the sudden gust of cold wind as he entered a nearby coffee shop, one he didn’t recall going to before. It was way colder than it usually was in Florida in October, especially since the scientist, Joshua, lived near Cape Canaveral. He lived near there because he worked for NASA, and that was around where the space center was.

Anyway, he pushed open the door to the coffee shop, which the sign above it read Shadow Joses which was a funny name, and was surprised to see that there weren’t very many people in the store. There was only one employee working there at the time, a man who was maybe around Josh’s age. Or maybe a little older.

The man behind the counter was gruff, but his eyes were kind, he seemed like he was probably a nice person.

“Thanks very much,” said the scientist as he took his coffee from the man.

The barista smiled a little as he handed Josh his drink. Somehow, Josh thought he might be coming by here more often. He liked it here.

Though neither Joshua or the man behind the counter knew it, that was the morning both of their lives would change forever. . .

140.15 -- Time: 0813 hours -- Location: Outside Washington DC

NEW MESSAGE FROM: Otacon

Otacon
>Were u hitting on mei? The other day i mean

Meryl
>I DIDNT MEAN TO?

Otacon
>Whats w the capslock

Meryl
>Just. Was it that obvious

Otacon
>Probably not 2 her haha i just kno u too well.
I kno what u hittin on someone looks like

Meryl
>Like ur 1 2 talk about hittin on people

Otacon
>?????

Meryl
>UGH nvm. I dont kno why i bother.
>Does she even like girls?? Do u kno??? U guys talk a lot right

Otacon
>I am not having this convo over txt msg

Meryl
>Well i cant CODEC u

Otacon
>Just call me then???
>If anyones tapped these lines its not like its really v top secret

You’re sorting through different maps of the convention center where they’ll be staying, trying to think of different things that could go wrong when you call Otacon. It’s a pessimist’s job, which isn’t really you, but someone’s gotta do it. Like, considering worst case scenarios is a pessimist’s job, and also so is calling Otacon.

“Hey,” you say.

“Hey,” says Otacon. “You know, I didn’t actually think you’d call me. Wouldn’t Nastasha be better to talk to about relationships? That seems like something she’d be better at.”

“Nastasha’s too cool,” you say. “It’s embarrassing.” What you don’t mention is the semi-secret crush you had on Nastasha for a couple months last year, right after you all started working on setting up Philanthropy.

“Oh that’s right,” says Otacon. “You had that crush on her, right? That would make it kind of awkward.”

You have got to stop telling Otacon all your personal shit. Well. Maybe you’ll break that habit later. Or like eventually or something. “So you get why I can’t talk to her, or like, anyone else.”

“I guess,” says Otacon, who no, does not. “I just think probably I’m not the best at this, haha.”

“Look, Otacon, you’re my friend, and you’re not gonna make fun of me for this because I know you are either as bad at this as I am or you’re worse, and the only person you’re gonna tell is Snake if you tell anyone, and he’s a nice guy and probably won’t make fun of me, and you know that if you tell Mei about this I’ll kick your ass and it won’t even be a little bit hard, and you’re my pal, okay, so just like, let’s just, not, okay???”

Otacon’s quiet for a minute. “So you really didn’t mean to be?”

You’re giving up on actually doing anything productive mission-wise during this conversation. If you keep clicking back and forth between these maps you’re going to end up making some sort of planning error because you’re too busy contemplating your unfortunate romantic lot in life and then where’ll you be? “Be what?”

“Hitting on her?”

“No!” you hiss. Look you are like, the first to recognize your own personal faults, and like maybe one of them might be a sorta lack of a filter between what you’re thinking and what you’re saying, occasionally.

“But now that you know that you were, you could intentionally now? Maybe?”

You need to make a trophy for Otacon, worst romance advice giver of the century. “No!!” you say.

“Gee, sorry, I was just trying to help.”

“Do I do that stuff all the time? The stuff where I’m, I don’t know, really obvious about stuff?”

“Yeah, sorta,” he says. “I think, at least.”

“Great,” you say. Fantastic. Top fucking notch. You get out of your seat, and start hunting through your closet. You know you have some shitty soccer trophies lying around somewhere.

“You could just ask her out? I hear that’s what normal people do, apparently?”

“I’m not actually any good at talking to girls,” you whisper, though there’s not exactly anyone else around to hear you.

“Why are you whispering?” asks Otacon.

“I don’t know!” you whisper.

“Well I hope you don’t think I can give you any pointers there,” he says. “I never got a lot of second dates.” He says it like second dates haven’t been a problem for a while.

You find an old bottle of red nail polish in a box, a gift from your mom that you’d never had the heart to throw away. Maybe you can paint the trophy red. “I just don’t wanna screw it up, you know? She’s . . . well, gosh . . . girls are just so pretty??? They’re hard to talk to??”

“Uh, well, I’m sorry?”

It’s time, you’ve decided, to change the fucking subject. Really you shouldn’t be indulging in this conversational topic when you still have a fuckton of planning to do. But you like talking to Otacon, something you found weird when you first met. “Hey, what were you and Snake talking about, during the mission briefing when Snake was all ‘don’t listen to us Mei Ling blah blah me and Otacon have to have a super secret talk about some bullshit blah blah’? Anything good?”

Otacon makes an indignant disgruntled sound. “That sounds like something that’s none of your business!”

“Aw, come on, I tell you all of my business!”

“Whoops, look like Snake needs me for something, I gotta go Meryl. Good luck with your uh, gay crisis?”

“Otacon.”

“Gotta go, bye!”

Ughhhh he always does this. “Wait for like one second!” you say.

“Meryl, I really don’t . . .”

“Hey,” you say. “I won’t ask you about that but I gotta actually check on something -- did you get the rings Naomi sent in the mail yet?”

“Not yet,” he says. “I still don’t know why she’s picking them.”

“I have my reasons,” you say. “Okay, that’s it. Bye, dude.”

“Bye Meryl,” he says, and then he hangs up.

You’re halfway through painting the trophy red when you get another text from him.

NEW MESSAGE FROM: Otacon

Otacon
>Sry im such a pain in the ass meryl lol

Meryl
>Omg dont even start

Otacon
>What i totally am

Meryl
>No yr just really. Somethin. Yr somethin buddy. If i didnt like u
>I just wouldnt hang out w u tho lol

Otacon
>U hang out w Naomi!!! I though u didnt like her

Meryl
>Naomis funny. U hang out w her too

Otacon
>Ok thats fair

Meryl
>Yr an okay guy, Otacon

Otacon
>The friends that survive hostage situations and nuclear threats
>2gethr stay 2gethr?

Meryl
>Haha yeah maybe thats it

You like, worry about this guy sometimes. He’s, you guess, trying his best. That doesn’t mean you’re not sending him that trophy, though.

141.80 -- Time: 1525 hours -- Location: Houston, TX

Before you leave, you go on a walk. It’s a tradition you’d accidentally started before your first big mission -- your first real mission -- as Philanthropy. That one had been just you and Otacon, and it’d gone . . . well, it’d been interesting, at least. Nothing like encountering an evil VR simulation of your partner to really start things off right.² It’s something like a good luck charm, and something not like that at all. A promise instead maybe. A chance to say things that needed to be said before you both went into the line of fire. Okay, sometimes it’s a more serious occasion than other times. This being one of the latter.

“Maybe this’ll be weird?” says Otacon. “Hey! Can you slow down a little? Jeez.”

He has to walk a little faster to keep up with you a lot of times, you try and slow your pace to what his is. “I walk fast.”

“Yeah, I know you walk fast, that’s why I told you to slow down.”

You roll your eyes and start going deliberately slow. He bumps his shoulder into yours. “Maybe it won’t be that weird,” you say. “I was just thinking about our first job --”

“Right.” Otacon pushes his glasses up. “The one where you got stuck inside a VR simulation of a mission, and I worked hard to hack you out while you and a VR version of me sat around chatting. Did the fake VR me really have you fooled for that long, Snake?”

“I was drugged,” you say. “And it was a very convincing impersonation. Annoying, lots of technobabble, bad jokes . . .”

“Hey!” he says, and you think he might be half-offended for real, so it’s your turn to bump your shoulder into his. He smiles at you, so he gets it. “Maybe you’re right, it doesn’t get a lot weirder than that.”

“Well, at least the secret handshake will prevent repeats.”

“I really don’t think the secret handshake is the end-all-be-all of identifying each other like you seem to think it is.”

“Can’t hurt.”

You walk quietly for a bit before he turns to you and says, “Haha, we should have a version of the handshake that ends in a hug, in case one of us is really sad or something.”

“Otacon. . .”

“Or I mean! If we want to celebrate something, or something. There’s lots of reasons.”

“Otacon . . .”

“What??” he says. “It was just an idea.”

“No,” you say. “No . . . that’s brilliant.”

“Really?” he asks, and smiles.

“Yeah. Really.” You steer Otacon so you’re both headed back the way you came. “You’re not too worried about this one, are you?”

He sighs. “Snake, course I am. But I always worry, so stop asking already!”

You don’t think you’ve asked that many times. “I haven’t asked that many times.”

“You’ve asked enough,” he says. He burrows down more into his jacket. “It’s cold out. Remind me why we do this?”

It’s really not cold out at all. There’s barely even a breeze. “This is why we couldn’t live in Alaska. Fresh air is good. You want my jacket?”

“I got enough ‘fresh air’ in Alaska to last me a lifetime. Because I did, if you remember, live there. I’ve had quite enough of the place. And, uh, no it’s fine, really.”

“Come on,” you say. “I don’t get as cold as you do. And besides, you’re the one who has to do most of the talking this time, if you catch a cold that part’ll really be hell.”

“Snake, colds don’t work like that. Don’t remind me about the talking stuff,” he says. He takes your jacket from you, if a bit reluctantly. The shoulders are wide enough that it fits right over his. “You sure you can’t pull off being an engineer? What if me and Mei picked out some glasses for you, that might work.”

“No,” you say.

“Oh!” says Otacon. “Speaking of picking out ridiculous props, I forgot Naomi sent us something and it just got here today.”

“Hmm?”

“Yeah, I stuck it in my pocket earlier, meant to tell you about it.” He digs around in his jacket pocket and produces a small padded envelope. “Here, come on, stop for a second, it’s hard to show you anything while you’re walking that fast.”

You stop walking. You shouldn’t just stand in the middle of the sidewalk like this, but Otacon’s more than a little impatient at the best of times. He tips the contents of the envelope into his hand: two rings. Two -- and you’re not somebody with a particular eye for aesthetics but -- really awful rings.

“Which one do you want?” asks Otacon, holding the rings out to you.

“I’ll take the hideous one,” you say.

Otacon shakes his head. “You’re gonna have to be more specific. Why did Naomi get the rings, anyway?”

You shrug. You’re pretty sure Meryl orchestrates some things mainly to fuck with you, but it’s never anything dangerous and she never messes with Otacon too much so you let it go. “Probably . . .”

“So she could pick out really ugly ones, yeah okay that makes sense. Here ---” he hands you one of the rings. “--Have this one, it’s less shiny.”

You take it and think about putting it on for a wild second. Instead, you shove it in your pocket. “You shouldn’t have given me this yet, I’ll lose it. You’ll lose yours.”

“We were both going to end up forgetting if I didn’t do it as soon as I remembered,” says Otacon. “Anyway, if we ‘lose’ them we can get new ones.”

“That’s a nice thought,” you say.

There’s a moment where you’re both standing in the middle of the sidewalk, just looking at each other, and you’re thinking maybe this is where it’s going to start getting awkward, but Otacon just shakes his head and starts walking again. “Hurry up, I wanna get back before it really gets cold.”

“It’s not even below sixty,” you say.

“Yeah, like I said, cold. Come on,” he says, shoving his hands into his (your?) jacket pockets and walking away.

You curl your hand around the ring in your pocket, and follow after him.

140.96 -- Time: 1746 hours -- Location: Boston, MA

NEW MESSAGE FROM: Otacon :)

Otacon :)
>Hey mei ling meryls pretty cool dont u think

Mei Ling
>??? yea i think so but why?

Otacon :)
>What why! I just thought i would mention that our pal is p neat

Mei Ling
>Aw do u have a crush on her ;)

Otacon :)
>What no. I mean shes v pretty but no

Mei Ling
>Lol ok otacon :) :)

141.80 -- Time: 0941 hours -- Location: San Jose International Airport, San Jose CA

“I think I liked getting dropped out a plane better than that,” you say, as you exit the plane in San Jose. Your back hurts like nothing else.

“Oh, come on! It’s not that bad."

“Better than when you’re driving, I guess.”

“I can’t believe you’d say such things to your own husband,” says Otacon, before pulling a face, one you recognize as the “I’ve said something terrible and might get shot now” face.

You don’t know why he thinks you’d be upset, though. You have to start assuming the identities actually written on the passports in your pockets, because from here on in anyone could be watching. It sounds paranoid, but lack of paranoia has been your downfall before. It doesn’t have to be a perfect performance, just passable, they can be an awkward married couple, that’s fine. But they can’t be the kind of married couple where Otacon makes the I’m-going-to-get-shot face every time he references the relationship.

You grab his hand. “You knew what you were getting into when you married me,” you say, and, attempting a reassuring look, squeeze his hand. He squeezes back. Probably no one is going to die this weekend.

calling 140.96 . . .

“Hi, Snake! I’ll be saving all of your data for this mission. My frequency’s the same as usual, 140.96, call any time you need to save. Would you like to save your data now?”

>SAVE

DO NOT SAVE

“Snake, Shakespeare said, ‘You shall perceive how you mistake my fortunes: I am wealthy in my friends.’ That means --”

“Wait, Mei Ling. . . are you quoting Timon of Athens?”

“Yes, I am!³ Why?”

“That’s a terrible play!⁴ And that -- his friends betray him! The opposite of that happens. I don’t know if this really holds up.”

“I’m just saying that friendship is important, Snake!”

“Yeah, well, I feel like you coulda picked a better source text, is all. Really, what a terrible play.”

“I’m not the one who recognized a quotation from it instantly. How many times have you read Timon of Athens?”

“What? I just have a good memory is all, and I’m trying to figure out why you’d quote from it, this doesn’t really bode well if this is the first proverb of the mission.”

“At least three, then.”⁵

“I’m hanging up now, Mei Ling.”

“Whatever, weirdo.”

141.80 -- Time: 1328 hours -- Location: Ocean Terrace Atrium Convention Center

It’s only been a few hours, and already things are turning out a little different than you thought. You weren’t expecting

1. wearing a tie to get this uncomfortable this fast, when you know you have days of it ahead of you
2. Otacon to be more comfortable in a setting that consisted mostly of people talking about weaponry than you
3. There to be so many exhibits centered around lasers.

You peer at another display. More laser guns. “These guys sure do like their lasers. Is that -- a gamma ray laser over there?”

“Medical applications,” says Otacon, so at least that’s good. You’ve been wandering up and down the rows of booths and displays in the convention hall for what seems like a while. Longer than it’s actually been, probably, the unfamiliar setting and unconventional procedure throwing you off. Generally you’re just trying to avoid people altogether, not dodging around out in the open between people in business clothes. It’s strange seeing this side of weapons development, seeing what amount to overly large advertisements for the things you might end up finding in the field in a few years.

The word “nanomachines” on another huge display catches your attention because, well. It’s an area of interest. “Joshua . . . what the hell is this stuff?”

Otacon tries to survey the booth without getting close enough to attract any attention. “Yikes, looks like it’s something similar to, uh, you know, stuff you might’ve seen before, at your old job, but it allows a lot more control than anything I’ve ever seen before.”

Naomi, humorlessly, in your ear -- “Nor I, and you’d think I’d have heard of something like this. Dr. Emmerich is correct, this provides more control over whatever soldiers have these nanomachines than what I used.”

“Control?” you say.

Naomi hmms at you for a second. “Emotional inhibitors, perhaps. Keep everyone calm in the heat of battle, which honestly isn’t the worst idea. Wish I’d thought of it.”

Otacon scrunches his nose, and leans closer to the display. “They’re suggesting ID locks for all sorts of things, which I guess could have its advantages, but if it fell into the wrong hands, that could be disastrous. Not to mention how, well, ‘unethical’ doesn’t really begin to cover the implications of developing something to suppress people’s emotions.”

“Ah, but the applications!” says a man standing nearby observing the same display. Not very tall, balding rapidly, wearing a bolo tie of all things. “Think of the possibilities such advancements represent!”

“Excuse me?” says Otacon.

“Greater control of one’s forces means more decisive battles. Controlling emotions could lead to better focus in combat, more coordinated actions, faster victories!”

“Faster doesn’t necessarily mean safer for anyone,” says Otacon.

The man continues on as if he didn’t hear Otacon. “And, of course, quite a few possibilities for those of us in this industry, ja?” He chuckles, and pushes up his glasses.

“Who are you, exactly?” asks Otacon.

“Oh!” says the bolo tie man. “Allow me to introduce myself, I’m Dr. Voigt, I don’t work with nanomachines directly, I specialize in myoelectric prosthetics.”

He holds out his hand and Otacon shakes it like it’s a particularly odious chore. “Dr. Bell. And this is my, uh, husband?”

He offers his hand to you as well, so you shake it. “Voigt?” you say. “Like. . .”

“Ah ha, correct, like the Voigt-Kampff machine.⁶ An amusing coincidence, yes?”

“Sure,” says Otacon. He doesn’t sound too amused.

“Anyway,” says Dr. Voigt, “I merely wanted to suggest that there are certain benefits to a neater, more efficient war.”

“I just think micro-managing someone’s response to dangerous situations -- or any kind of situations really -- comes a little too close to trying to play god,” says Otacon. “People aren’t machines." He clenches his fists.

“Oh my God, is Otacon gonna fight that dude?” says Meryl in your ear.

“Not now, Meryl,” you say soundlessly, since Otacon can’t. And then, to him -- “Sorry to uh, interrupt, but I think we’re running late for something.”

“Right,” says Otacon. “Right. Late for something.”

“Ah, well, it was a pleasure meeting you, Dr. Bell!” says Dr. Voigt.

“Likewise,” says Otacon through gritted teeth.

“We’ll see you around,” you say.

“I look forward to it!” says Dr. Voigt.

Otacon’s got that look on his face he gets when he’s about to start a fight with someone on the internet. “Well --”

You wish that this was one of those times where you could bodily pick Otacon up and place him somewhere else, like you tend to do when he’s being particularly obstinate. Not that you really can blame him for being angry with this guy, but this isn’t the time or place to be anything but unobtrusive. So you grab his arm instead. “We gotta go,” you say, mostly to Otacon.

You’re pretty sure you hear Meryl go “Awww,” like she really wanted to see what would happen if that conversation continued. You worry about her sometimes.

Otacon frowns at you, pulls his arm away. “We were just talking, Dave,” says Otacon.

“Uh huh,” you say.

“Whatever,” he says, which is one of his preferred ways to indicate that a conversation is over.

“Snake, you’re no fun,” says Meryl over codec.

You roll your eyes. “Someone’s gotta be.”

140.48 -- Time: 1246 hours -- Location: Los Angeles, CA

It’s your turn, along with Meryl, to monitor the situation. You’re currently at Nastasha’s home in Los Angeles. You’d been surprised the first time she’d revealed that she intended to let you all work out of her home, and it still surprises you every time. If you were her, you’d be more wary of letting some strange woman into your home.

Meryl’s made popcorn. “Want some?” she asks, holding the bowl out to you.

“Is anyone taking anything here even remotely seriously?” you ask.

She munches on a handful of popcorn. “I dunno. Probably someone, somewhere. C’mon, relax Naomi, if I didn’t know better I’d almost say you were worried about the guys.”

“I’m not worried, just astonished at the lack of professionalism being displayed here.”

“We’re a fringe group, we’re like, an escaped convict, a grad student, a supposed to be retired super soldier, an engineer, whatever the fuck Nastasha is, and whatever the fuck I am. We’re stealing info from a weapons developement company so we can hunt down robots shaped like dinosaurs. You were trying to kill us at one point. It’s just, we’re not like, a professionalism sorta group, you know?”

“I was only trying to kill Snake,” you say. Not that you would have minded very much, had anyone else been caught in the crossfire.

You wonder if Meryl has even the faintest idea of what it’s like to be so single minded in your purpose.

Snake and Dr. Emmerich walk around the convention hall. Snake and Dr. Emmerich chatter about different displays, probably with a frustrating degree of inaccuracy about many things but you don’t care to listen, Snake and Dr. Emmerich get conversationally accosted by some man with a German accent. Oh. Well. That, at least, has potential.

“Turn the volume up,” you say, taking the popcorn bowl from Meryl.

The conversation’s a little entertaining -- at least more exciting than anything so far. Dr. Emmerich’s angrier than you’ve ever seen him, which is funny at least. You wonder how the man with the bolo tie pulls it off (maybe it’s the bolo tie that does it?), you wonder if you can learn his secrets somehow.

Despite the novelty of seeing Dr. Emmerich express some emotions besides “concern” and “talking about Snake,” listening to the conversation is as dull and meaningless as anything else that’s ever happened in your entire life for the past year. Meryl’s having more fun than you are, that’s for sure. You’d say “at least someone is,” but you have no desire for anyone to ever enjoy themselves in your presence.

She nudges you with her elbow when the man with the bolo tie leaves. “Haha did you see Otacon?” she asks, a little too gleefully. “He was almost gonna fight that guy.”

“He wasn’t going to fight that man,” you say. You take a handful of popcorn.

“I don’t know, he might’ve been getting there.”

Meryl gives Emmerich entirely too much credit. “He doesn’t strike me as the sort to actually fight anyone. Too weak-willed.”

“Yeah, okay Naomi, you’ve never seen him talk about Transformers.”

“Nor do I have any desire to whatsoever,” you say.

Meryl hands you the popcorn bowl so she can look more closely at what’s happening. “Okay, I think they’re splitting up now, so Snake can go look around the hotel and see where everything is. You wanna watch Snake, or you wanna watch Otacon?”

“Don’t we have to keep any eye on both of them? Isn’t that our job?”

“Well, we can just keep both their radars up on screen, and listen in to Otacon’s uh, socializing. Snake’s just evading hotel security, that’s not that big a deal.”

Meryl adjusts the screen so you can see both radars, and mutes the audio feed for Snake. If Snake needs something presumably he’ll call you. Well, not you. Hopefully not you. But someone.

“Besides, if anyone’s going to screw up, it’s Emmerich,” you say.

“Hey!” says Meryl, taking the bowl back from you. She kicks her feet up on the desk. You wish she would stop doing that. “Otacon’s not that bad. I’m turning our audio back on, so watch what you say, we’re not on mute.”

“Why?” you ask.

“So we can cheer him on!” she says.

“More like heckle,” mutters Otacon.

“Don’t talk to yourself in public, Otacon,” says Meryl. “It’s weird.”

“Why can’t I just, whatever it is that Snake does, mind talk or something?”

“Well,” you say, “If you’d let me inject you with some of those nanomachines --”

“Right, that’s why,” says Otacon. “No offense, Naomi, but last time you did that, you know.”

Of course he picks now of all times to bring that up. “Shut up. If you keep talking you’ll ruin everything.”

Dr. Emmerich decidedly does not shut up. You suppose it makes listening to a presentation on the Harnessing Infrastructure for Building Reconnaissance project (“So wait, DARPA wants to see inside my house?” asks Meryl. “Of course they do,” says Mei Ling, who’s joined you at this point and can probably already do that anyway) more compelling, but also more harrowing, since Emmerich continues to ask questions, continues to mention things he -- or Dr. Bell, rather -- should have absolutely no knowledge of.

“Isn’t that something like the Soliton Radar System?” he asks, even though he shouldn’t.

“Uh,” says Meryl. “Isn’t the Soliton Radar still like, sort of classified?”

Mei Ling gets up from her seat and comes to join you. “Yes, definitely. I could’ve gotten extra credit for it too if it wasn’t. What is he doing?”

“Maybe he’s forgotten about that?” asks Meryl.

“Told you he’d fuck up,” you say.

“Naomi!” says Mei Ling. “Honestly, give him a break!”

Emmerich can’t talk to you while he’s around other people, which is why it’s more amusing to insult him then. When he finds a quiet corner, after the presentation is over, he’s all apologies and regrets. “I forgot, Mei Ling, sorry,” he says.

“Oh well,” she says. “Just seriously, don’t say you made it!”

“I wouldn’t!” he says. “I’ll just say I oh, heard about it at work somewhere or something. My old work. It’ll be fine.”

Meryl pats Mei Ling on the shoulder, something you think is intended to be a comforting gesture. “If not, I’ve planned like at least three escape routes, so it’s whatever.”

“Pity,” you say.

“Oh, also, I think you got some people coming to talk to you, like, right behind you,” says Meryl.

Indeed, there’s several figures rapidly approaching Emmerich with, you assume, intent to converse. You suspect few fates -- for him -- are worse. “I think I’ll make more popcorn,” you say.

141.80 -- Time: 1502 hours -- Location: Main Conference Hall

Hotel security is mostly no big deal, but you like to be prepared anyway, so you take a couple of laps around the building, inside and out. Eventually, you wind up near one of the conference rooms that you’re pretty sure Otacon’s supposed to be around right now. You decide to check up on him while you’re in the area. To your surprise, when you track him down to one of the convention halls, he’s surrounded by a small crowd. Have they figured out --- ? but no, it’s not an ambush, but a conversation, or maybe both. It’s hard to tell with Otacon.

“Oh, haha, no I don’t know that much about it, just what I’ve read!” you hear Otacon say. “Really, I didn’t invent the Soliton or anything like that.”

“You sure do read a lot, then,” says one man in a business suit.

“Then what are you working on?” asks another.

“Well, I’ve been working on this design for portable stealth camouflage, sort of a side project, you know, it’s pretty neat actually, works by bending light.”

The scientists -- you’re assuming, now, that they’re scientists, they have that inquisitive hungry look -- gather closer around Otacon. He’s starting to look mildly claustrophobic though he’s in his element, explaining something he’d built. Still, there’s seven or eight of them practically breathing down his neck at this point, and more hanging on the periphery.

“But how do you deal with power consumption?” someone asks.

“Oh, haha, that’s not that hard to be honest --” Otacon’s looking around for an exit.

You didn’t intend, originally, for him to see you at all -- you were just going to make sure he hadn’t been kidnapped, verify his continual well being, and go back to your own business. But Otacon looks as if he could use backup.

“Oh, hi!!” he says. “I didn’t think you’d be around here right now.”

“I thought I’d check up on you,” you say. “Looks like you’re pretty popular.”

He waves you off. “Oh, well, you know.”

You, in fact, don’t know, but you nod like you do. One of the presumptive scientists asks Otacon “Who’s your friend?” and Otacon smiles and says “Oh, this is my husband, Dave.”

At least four of the scientists visibly deflate, you think, at the news that Otacon’s married. Otacon doesn’t notice, you’re pretty sure. Sometimes you worry about his inability to pay close attention to his surroundings. Honestly, you shouldn’t have even taken him with you on this one, it might be less perilous than almost anything else you’d ever done but you never knew, and putting him in line of sight of so many people who were probably armed wasn’t--

“Dave? David?” Otacon tugs on your hand, snapping you out of your security minded reverie. He slips his hand into yours.

One of the scientists keeps looking at Otacon in an intent way that you don’t particularly care for. “Hey, do I know you from somewhere?” he asks Otacon.

“Probably not,” says Otacon. “I don’t get out very much.”

“I could’ve sworn -- hey, that’s it! Were you ever on BattleBots?”

“Oh, look at the time,” says Otacon. “We have to be going now, right Dave? We have the er, thing?”

“Right,” you say. “The thing.”

“In fact, we’re probably almost already late!! Pleasure meeting you all, I’m sure we’ll talk later.”

Otacon grabs your arm and starts pulling you away before anyone can say anything else. “Walk faster,” he mutters.

“What the hell is BattleBots?” you ask.

Otacon shudders. “My past come back to haunt me,” he says.

You both walk faster. Otacon’s past is not the sort of haunting anyone wants. “And what was all that about?”

“May have mentioned the Soliton at a panel. Didn’t realize how many people would be interested. It was a big mistake. People were asking questions.”

“The wrong sort of questions?”

“No,” says Otacon. “I think they just wanted to --” He grimaces -- “Talk to me.”

“Looks like you’ve got a fanclub,” says Meryl.

“Anything we need to worry about?” you ask.

Otacon rolls his eyes. “This sort of thing happens every time I go to an event like this.”

“I can’t believe you’re nerd-popular,” says Meryl.

Otacon looks over his shoulder to check to see if anyone from the gaggle of scientists is still following. “Neither can I.”

“Were you on some sort of tv show and I didn’t know about it?” you ask.

“I’m literally googling it right now,” says Meryl.

“Oh, text Mei Ling, it sounds up her alley,” says Naomi.

“This is going to be a longer weekend than I thought it would be,” says Otacon.

calling 140.96 . . .

“Do you want to save, Snake?”

>SAVE

DO NOT SAVE

“Shakespeare wrote that “the eye sees not itself,/ But by reflection, by some other things.”⁷ Snake, remember that self-perception isn’t always the best perception! Rely on your friends to see things that you can’t.”

140.15 -- Time: 2030 hours -- Location: Los Angeles, CA

You’re technically not supposed to bug Otacon right now, probably? Because he’s on a mission, and you know, secrecy and shit. But one little non-classified codec call isn’t gonna hurt anyone, they’re all done for the day, they’re in the hotel room, and you’re calling the shots here in the first place anyway. Or, okay, you like to think you’re the one calling the shots. “So, okay, I like, googled BattleBots? And you were on a tv --”

Otacon, because he’s rude, interrupts you. “I knew that should’ve been on the list of things we should never talk about,” he says.

“Yeah, well, that woulda required telling me about it in the first place,” you say, gleefully. “And now it’s too late, and I know. I can’t believe we lived together for how long, and you never told me you were on some sorta nerd fight club show!”

“It was a couple of months,” says Otacon, like you don’t remember. “People who are roommates for a couple of months don’t necessarily tell each other everything. They don’t necessarily tell each other anything.”

You lean forward in your seat. “But it could’ve been like, a bonding experience or something.”

“I think I’m glad that we went with marathoning The X-Files instead,” he says.

You do like The X-Files. “I do like The X-Files,” you say.

“I always thought that, if you think about it, we’re just like Mulder and Scully,” says Otacon, “Except without the sexual tension or the badges.”

You laugh at that, and you think the noise startles Mei Ling, who’s half asleep at her post. “Yeah, and Mulder had a decent haircut,” you say.

“Thanks, Meryl.”

“And didn’t ever pee his pants.” That gets you a puzzled look from Mei Ling. You shake your head, mouth “Otacon,” and she rolls her eyes and puts her head back on top of her arms.

“Thanks, Meryl,” says Otacon.

“And did he actually get fired from the FBI? I don’t think he did, at least, he hasn’t in the first season or two --”

“Thank you, Meryl. And he does get fired, for your information, in the eighth season.”

“So not after, what, a couple of months?”

Otacon sighs. “Jeez, Meryl, forget I said anything.”

“Mulder, are you suggesting that I attempt to forget about your frankly abominable CV?”

“No, Scully, I’m suggesting we drop the subject in favor of more relevant topics. And . . . Is it that bad?”

You shrug. Which, like, he can’t see, but you like to think you communicate it verbally too. “How would I know?”

You let the conversation lapse into silence for a minute, watch Nastasha come into the room with a cup of coffee, watch her nudge Mei Ling and slide the cup in front of her. Nastasha nods to you. You nod back, and then say “Hey Otacon?”

“Hmm?” he says.

“You’d tell me if you found out about the existence of aliens when you were hacking into the FBI’s data things, right?”

“Database. It’s database, Meryl.”

“That’s not an answer,” you say.

“Night, Scully.”

Footnotes

¹ Otacon thought of “The Scientist” as Their Song. It wasn’t.

² Whoever had been behind the whole stunt had wanted to try and wipe their memories of the incident before they could get away, but said mysterious figures had been too late. Snake and Otacon were already gone. All attempts to figure out who, exactly, had captured and drugged Snake and stuck him in a simulation where he was supposed to thwart an attempt to utilize Metal Gear technology had only lead to dead ends. Oh well. Probably nothing to worry about.

³ More specifically, Act II Scene 2. Timon, a wealthy businessman, has just found out that he’s in way worse shape money-wise than he thought, and tells his servant to go around and ask all his friends (who were just at his house last night for a feast where everyone talked about how they were great pals) if they can lend him a hand. Spoilers: they do not lend him a hand.

⁴ It really is.

⁵ Four. It was four. Snake wasn’t proud of this, he was aware that it was a bad play, but the heart wants what it wants.

⁶ The Voigt-Kampff is a machine from the Philip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? that the police use to test whether or not someone is human or a synthetic replicant, since replicants don’t look any different from humans at first glance. It also makes an appearance in the movie adaptation, Blade Runner, except it’s spelled Voight-Kampff there.

⁷ Mei Ling’s quoting from Act I Scene 2 of Julius Caesar. Cassius, one of the main figures plotting the assassination of Julius Caesar, asks his Best Bud/Co-Conspirator/Our Protagonist Brutus “Tell me, good Brutus, can you see your face?” This quote is Brutus’s response to that question.

Chapter Text

141.80 -- Time: 2201 hours -- Location: Hotel Room 416

You have the lingering suspicion, as you get ready to go to sleep, that some of this should be odder than it actually is. You and Otacon don’t end up sleeping at the same time much — he’s significantly more nocturnal than you, except for when he’s not — but when you do, you end up brushing your teeth over the same sink. This bathroom actually has two sinks, a previously unmatched luxury in your shared history. Rent isn’t cheap, especially if it’s the sort of rent where you pay your landlord off to pretend you don’t exist, and apartments with more than one bathroom a luxury.

You hand him the floss, and he does what he always does when you try to hand him the floss, which is look at it like it’s some sort of anomalous object before making a joke about “haha, you could probably kill someone with floss, right?” and you do what you always do when he says that. That is, you say nothing. He takes the floss after another second’s pause and takes your silence to mean “probably.” (The “probably” is actually “definitely,” when you were in Kyrgyzstan for a month in the nineties, out in the middle of the desert, but some things Otacon doesn’t need to know.) Otacon continues “I mean, not that you couldn’t kill someone with a lot of things, I bet, not that I really need to know about that, haha” He really doesn’t. “Next you’ll probably say that it’s an easier thing to get on-site procurement wise than a rifle, but I’ve always wondered — is it?”

Otacon will usually fill in your half of the conversation given half the chance, which is fine. You like listening to him talk. But eventually you’ll have to prod him and go “you should floss,” or he’ll just start staring vacantly into space while talking, damp toothbrush in one hand and floss in the other. Flossing is important when your dental records are probably classified. Also you find Otacon’s tendency to accidentally get toothpaste on his shirt while waving his toothbrush around funny.

Sharing a bed, that part does not usually happen. Sometimes maybe, after a mission,when no one has slept in seventy hours and there’s only one mattress, or when someone’s bleeding internally, or got shot, a sort of “well, if you scream in the middle of the night in agony, I’ll be here to try and stop any sort of heart failure” arrangement.

You’d already agreed to use morse code, when you weren’t sure if codecs were safe or you just didn’t particularly want Nastasha or Mei Ling or whoever else to listen in. In part because Otacon insisted that if he was going to go to the trouble of learning it, they were going to go out of the way to actually use it. He’s had worse ideas. You make a show of being tired and lying down to sleep, and Otacon makes a show of resolutely not being tired, propping his laptop up on his knees and halfheartedly skimming some articles. You take his left hand, so you can tap a message to him, and if anyone’s watching, it’ll just look like you’re holding hands, and just that, hopefully.

you ok? you tap.

yes im fune, Otacon taps in response.

fune

fine. like you never make mistakes

i dont, you say.

jeez

learn anything useful

no mostly tech we already knew about or that theyre showing on the flr. some sci ppl might share more later w me but may not b enuf time

no mg? you ask.

theres a panel tomorrow

really

yes

are you going? you ask, though you already know what he’s going to say.

what? no

worried theyll get something wrong?

Otacon pretends to yawn. worried theyll get something right! what about u

always right, you say.

jeez. rly tho

carpenter on tenth flr rented bloc of rms dont kno which is actual

any guards? asks Otacon.

You shift around in the bed. four i think

thats excessive?

not letting hotel staff into the area.

well thats kinda good for us at least

y. most elevators wont stop on the tenth flr right now

so p much what we expected?

p much. hard to determine pattern of behavior in this short of time frame but he doesnt seem to spend a whole lot of time up there. wife does tho

that gonna be a prob?

we just have to wait until she leaves. worst case scenario i have to knock out a few guards.

is that really the worst case scenario?

dont worry about the worst case scenario. No matter what you say, Otacon’s going to worry about the worst case scenario.

ok what about u? he asks. u doin ok?

of course, you say. Then: shouldn’t you go to sleep soon?

dont even start, says Otacon. He tries to pass off a real yawn as a fake yawn.

otacon. . .

dont otacon me mister

But you wear him down eventually.

Otacon finally sets the tablet down and turns out the small light on the night stand, sort of sinks down into the pillows and turns away from you. You think -- as much as you can hazard a guess into what’s happening in his head -- that this is probably awkward for him, possibly even in ways it isn’t for you. The bed seems miles wide, so you scoot up closer and put a hand on his back. He tenses for a second before relaxing, and you want -- you want --

Hmm. You’re not sure what you want, and it’s strange, the wanting. Like a tooth you didn’t know was loose until you poked it with your tongue, the way you didn’t know it existed already. You file that away to wonder about later. Wanting and not wanting doesn’t matter much right now, not in the middle of a mission. You don’t have the time to wonder about what it is that sparks in your chest when you put your hand on his waist and think this is what couples look like, or nearly like it, the way you two look right now.

“Your feet are cold,” you say.

“Wow, jeez,” he says, flipping around to face you. “Your feet are freezing. Aren’t you supposed to be asleep?”

“Aren’t you?”

“Haha, very cute, how am I supposed to be sleeping when people are insulting my feet in my ear?”

“It wasn’t an insult,” you say, “They’re just cold.”

“Whatever,” says Otacon, and falls asleep. Probably out of spite.

141.80 -- Time: 0830 hours -- Location: Hotel Room 416

You wake up an hour later than normal but still before Otacon because you can count on one hand the amount of times he’s woken up before you, and most of those involved you recovering from serious injury. You gently remove his arm from where it’d landed around your waist in the middle of the night and sit up. You slept well last night.

You’re dressed by the time Otacon wakes up, which is half an hour after he was supposed to wake up. The whole thing’s made more difficult by the fact that you couldn’t say his name while you shook his shoulder, which generally seems to help. In the end, you have to resort to calling Mei Ling and asking her to play something loud over the codec. You first found out she could do that when Otacon had pulled the same trick on you, but he’d regretted tipping that particular hand in the months since then. Whatever, it worked at least.

Otacon sits up with a start, clapping his hands over his ears. “What?” he says, which is usually what he says first thing in the morning. “Glasses?” which is usually the second.

“You put them in the same spot every night, I don’t know why you always have this problem,” you say, picking up the glasses from the nightstand and handing them to him.

Of course, that’s probably not the first and second thing he says every morning. Mornings you’re not the one to wake him up (or afternoons, or nights, or whenever) you suspect he spends a good forty-five minutes getting out of bed. Maybe that’s how long it takes him to remember that he puts his glasses right next to his head.

Before he can ask what’s, half the time, the third thing he says in the morning (“Where are we?” -- a legitimate thing to be confused about with how your lives go) you say “We’re in San Jose, in a hotel, it’s almost nine o’clock, and your tablet’s right next to you too.”

“Okay,” he mumbles, still half asleep. “Thanks. Not thanks for the waking up, though. Did you have to?”

“I had to,” you say. Well, maybe you didn’t have to bring Mei Ling into it. But you can only shake him a certain amount before it starts to seem mean. Mei Ling at least gets to have a good time. “Song stuck in your head when you woke up?”

“Stuck in my head, ha ha,” he says, finding the tablet and turning it on. “Someday soon I’m gonna wake up before you again and we’ll see who has what stuck in their head.”

You’re not exactly worried.

“What are we doing today?” he asks.

“Uh, let me look,” you say, looking around for the program guide. It’s on the floor, so you pick it up and toss it at him. He doesn’t even try to catch it, instead watching as thwacks ungracefully onto the bed. “That stuff, I guess.”

“That stuff, okay,” he says. “Vague, but it’s a starting place.”

Otacon fusses over the program while you make shitty coffee in the tiny coffee pot that these sorts of hotel rooms have. The coffee pot setup comes with these flimsy paper/styrofoam cups that Otacon’s undoubtedly going to tip over at some point. You hand him a cup anyway.

“Okay, well, unless you’re really eager to go listen to people talk about neural-interface technology for two hours I guess you should do, er, other stuff,” says Otacon.

“Other stuff?”

“Yeah, you know. ‘Other stuff.’”

Otacon’s not the worst at lying, but the air quotes -- someday, you’ll have to mention that he should ease up on the air quotes a little bit.

“Sure,” you say. “I’ll get on all that ‘other stuff’ I have to do.”

He drinks some of the hotel coffee. “And I should --” he flips through the pages of the program you’d tossed at him, and frowns. “Aw, crap.”

“What?”

“I’ve got something I really really should go to in like, uh . . .” He looks where a watch would be if he wore one, remembers he doesn’t wear a watch, looks back at you. “What time is it?”

You glance at the alarm clock on the bedside table. “Almost ten.”

Otacon throws the program back at you. It doesn’t go far, just flaps ineffectually in the air for a moment. “Yikes, I gotta be somewhere in ten minutes. Why didn’t you wake me up earlier?”

“I tried,” you say, as if you haven’t had this exact same conversation what feels like a thousand times already.

“Not hard enough, apparently,” he says. “So now we gotta hurry up. Help me out here.”

You throw his pants at his head.

141.52 -- Time: 1037 hours -- Location: Los Angeles, CA

You’re not sure how to qualify or quantify your experiences with the DIA, with NEST, with anyone really, against your work with Philanthropy. Philanthropy is, you suppose, if nothing else much more varied. Much of your work during the actual missions, however, tends to resemble babysitting. Okay, okay, that’s maybe a little uncharitable towards Snake and Otacon, but it’s hard not to think of it that way when yesterday afternoon Meryl greeted you by saying “Nastasha, Otacon was this close to getting into a fight earlier, you shoulda seen it.”

It’s almost nostalgic, having all the monitoring equipment set up in your living room. A different living room than before, than during Shadow Moses, and you’d voluntarily let everyone into your home, but it still reminds you.

Naomi stands up from her spot at one of the computers when she spots you. “Oh good, you can watch him bumble about. I am going to take a nap.”

You take her spot, note the empty popcorn bowl nearby, maybe roll your eyes a little. “Meryl, how’s Snake doing?”

Meryl and Mei Ling are sitting next to each other, both staring intently at the same screen. Mei Ling’s pulled her computer over so she can huddle closer to what’s been designated the official Snake-watching station. Mei Ling waves a little when she sees you looking their direction, looking a little sheepish.

“Pretty smooth sailing so far?” says Meryl. “Lots of boring shit. You know.”

“Would you two like to take a break?” you ask.

“Nah,” says Meryl. “I’m good.”

“I’m fine,” says Mei Ling.

You settle in, put on the headphones, but Otacon’s watching a panel at the moment, so you turn the volume down lower and lean back. Probably he won’t get himself into too much trouble while someone else is speaking. Meryl and Mei Ling seem to be . . . not ignoring you, but certainly not entirely aware of your presence, you can’t help but overhear part of their conversation.

“We’re just like Mulder and Scully,” says Meryl to Mei Ling. “Except instead of trying to arrest shapeshifters, we’re saving our friends from months of embarrassing pining.”

“Wait, who’s Scully in this equation?” asks Mei Ling. “I guess you’ve got the hair for it, but --”

“You’re cuter,” says Meryl. “You’d be Scully.”

You sigh, and rub your face with your hand. Maybe you should have a talk with Meryl about subtlety. On the other hand, perhaps a lack of subtlety would prevent another incident like the situation you’re currently dealing with. Sometimes Meryl and Mei Ling make you feel sort of old, even though they’re less than a decade younger than you. Well. It’s an important decade. You’re not old, are you?

Mei Ling looks pretty happy with how the conversation’s going. “I was going to say something more along the lines of how I’m the one who believes in the ability of science to explain most phenomena, and you’re the one who likes to do incredibly impulsive things sometimes, but I guess that works too,” she says, and smiles at Meryl.

Meryl ducks her head and laughs a little bit. You look away. Maybe you are old.

The morning ticks on. Naomi wanders in again and then wanders back out. You try to do your best to keep Otacon aware of who he’s meeting and what they do as he’s forced to mingle, and now he’s wandering the hallway. It’s odd seeing Otacon in something closer to his element than the usual sneaking missions or your efforts to garner support for Philanthropy in a less brutally direct way. Sure, he can’t remember anyone’s name, he almost introduced himself as Dr. Emmerich at least once, but he’s doing a good job. Maybe this really was a good --

“Dr. Bell!” says someone.

“Oh dear,” says Otacon.

You sit up straighter in your chair. “Otacon? Otacon, I recognize that voice, that’s Carpenter.”

“Yeah, I’m aware,” he whispers. “He’s coming over here, what am I supposed to do?”

“Can you get out of there?”

“Too late,” he says. You can picture the scene -- Bob waving a little too enthusiastically, Otacon giving a stiff half-wave back. He’s right. It’s too late.

Meryl and Mei Ling start paying more attention to the conversation, and Mei Ling begins to call Snake. “Damn. Okay. I guess you have no choice but to talk to him now. Just try not to look too awkward, I’ll talk you through this.”

“Great,” he mutters.

“What did you do to make him want to speak with you?” you ask.

“Bout to find out,” mumbles Otacon, probably hoping it doesn’t look like he’s talking to himself. Knowing Bob, he won’t notice.

Hopefully their cover isn’t blown already. You thought Otacon was doing admirably well for most of the day, so you’re not sure how anything could have tipped anyone off.

“Hello!” says a voice you recognize from years and years ago, as boisterous as always, the voice of a man permanently pleased with himself, who assumed you would be too. “Excuse me, I saw you at the demonstration of the HIBR project yesterday, and I realized you were a new face around here. I know most people at these little gatherings, so I thought I’d introduce myself. I’m Robert Carpenter, President and CEO of Defense Solutions United.”

He’s probably vigorously shaking Otacon’s hand at this point. You’re never quite certain whether or not Robert’s trying to impress others with his title, or whether he just doesn’t know that introducing himself like that comes off a little showy and a tad rude.

“I’m ninety-five percent certain he doesn’t suspect anything,” you say to Otacon. “This is how he introduces himself to everyone. Don’t worry if he shakes your hand too long.”

“Uh, Dr. Joshua Bell,” he says. “Nice to meet you.”

So far, so good, you suppose. So far not a total disaster.

“Nice to meet you too!” says Robert. “Now, if you’ll forgive me, I’ll go ahead and guess that you’re not exactly here looking at the business angle --” He laughs, and Otacon throws in a stilted “ha ha” to go along with his laugh -- “So what do you do?”

“Oh, ah, most people think it’s pretty boring when I explain it,” he says.

“It’s no good,” you say. “He’s going to keep asking you until you tell him, so you might as well get to it.”

It’s not that you find Robert insufferable, just, he’d always grated on you a bit, back when you and Ellen were dating. You’d both known that the relationship had an expiration date -- you were only in town temporarily, she and Robert had been drifting inexorably towards some sort of relationship for what seemed like a while, from how she told it -- and that was fine, and you enjoyed your time together. But he was always hanging around, being just a bit too much. He would remind you of your ex-husband if he and Richard were even a little alike. You honestly still don’t see what Ellen sees in him.

You’re starting to regret suggesting this job. Well. It needed to be done, and it was safe enough, and you could bear the relatively minor strife of listening into conversations between your friends and your ex-girlfriend’s husband for a few days.

Otacon starts telling Robert his cover story, though his delivery is more hesitant than you’d like. But he gets through an abbreviated version of the resume he and Mei Ling had prepared without too much fuss. Robert seems to buy it, says that he’d heard some friends (bullshit of course, he calls everyone his friend when in reality few are) talking about some young man at one of the panels they’d been to, says they said this young man seemed to know an awful lot about the Soliton.

Otacon laughs self-deprecatingly. “I really shouldn’t have said that, huh?”

“Technically, no, you shouldn’t have,” says Robert, and he laughs too. “But if you hadn’t, I wouldn’t have thought to track you down, and we never would’ve met, and that would’ve been quite a shame! I enjoy utilizing opportunities like the one this convention represents to get to know new and interesting people, and I have to say, you certainly seem interesting.”

Which is the opposite of what you wanted. Meryl and Mei Ling chat with Snake in the background, white noise as you try to figure out how screwed you all are, or if you’re screwed at all. If you’re lucky, it won’t be too bad. You’re not often that lucky.

You wait until Otacon and Robert reach a lull in the conversation. “Now say you have to leave, for God’s sake,” you say.

“Oh,” says Otacon. “I’m really sorry to run, but I have somewhere I have to be in a few minutes.”

“Well, we’ll just have to speak later, won’t we?” says Robert.

“Uh,” says Otacon.

Robert enthusiastically shakes Otacon’s hand. “Here, take my card too.”

“Thank you?” says Otacon, eyeing it warily.

“Take it,” you hiss.

He takes it. You sigh in relief. You’ve disarmed bombs less stressfully. “Okay, now go,” you say.

“Thanks again,” says Otacon, as he starts half jogging away. “What was that?” he says to you, as soon as he’s out of earshot.

“How should I know?” you say. “Maybe next time talk less about secret government projects around nosy weapons manufacturers, okay?” Honestly.

141.80 -- Time: 1303 hours -- Location: Ocean Terrace Atrium Convention Center

You’ve been spending the past few hours doing more recon -- probably almost more than necessary, but getting lazy is when you start slipping up -- and you’re sure, now, that you’ve got the best route into the hotel room solidified, know when and how the guards will move, know when the Carpenters go in and out of the room. Meryl and Mei Ling had called you earlier to let you know about Otacon’s run in, but you figured that hey, it’s handled. Which is why, when you meet up with Otacon at an agreed upon time in a less populated corner of the convention center, the next part comes as a surprise.

“Haha, Dave,” says Otacon dryly, “You’ll never guess who I ran into earlier today.”

You know, of course, but you’re willing to play along so he can gripe. “Ran into?”

“Dr. Bell?” you hear a man shouting. You and Otacon look up, and there’s a man above you, standing on one of the atrium balconies, a story above. He smiles and starts heading towards the nearest staircase.

Carpenter. Oh. Well. Otacon shrinks into himself and looks a little like he wants to die. Or at least disappear. “Really?” you ask.

“Really,” he says. He shrinks down a fraction more, before straightening up and shrugging.

So here’s the guy you’re purposefully avoiding, barreling through the hotel lobby, waving at Otacon.

“Dr. Bell,” says Carpenter, shaking Otacon’s hand profusely. “I’m so glad to run into you again, I was hoping we could continue our conversation from earlier, thought maybe I could ask you some more questions about your work. It’s always interesting to hear from new people.”

Otacon tries to introduce Carpenter to you, but he barely gets out a “This is” before Carpenter cuts him off. “Robert Carpenter, President and CEO of Defense Solutions United. And you are, Doctor --?” He extends a hand towards you.

“Just Mister,” you say. His handshake feels very corporate executive in design, the sort of firm-grasp-two-shakes you think they hold classes on or something. “David Bell.”

“Oh!” says Carpenter. “A relative of Dr. Bell’s! You’re brothers?”

There’s an awkward half-beat of a pause. “Husband, actually!” says Otacon. “Haha, Dave’s no engineer.”

“Thanks,” you say.

“He’s mostly just here to keep me company,” says Otacon.

“Oh, my wife’s the same way. Don’t know how interesting she finds all of this, but I think she’s convinced that the only way she can make sure I actually get out of the house is if she goes with me. You should meet her, actually!”

“That would be . . . good?” you say, but Carpenter’s attention has already shifted away from you entirely.

“Oh, I meant to ask earlier before you ran off,” he says to Otacon. ”Are you going to the panel on Metal Gear later?”

“Er, I think I’ve got something else I want to do right then, haha,” says Otacon. “Was never really that interested in that Metal Gear stuff in the first place anyway.”

Carpenter frowns a little. “Hmm, what a shame, I would have loved to hear your opinions on it,” he says. “The ramifications of the Shadow Moses Incident was all anyone was talking about last year, and I suspect this year might be more of the same. Especially since all those plans got leaked, it’s causing quite a shake-up.”

“Oh, brother,” says Meryl in your ear. You’re forced to agree.

“Well, too bad, maybe we can meet and discuss something. . . similar. . . some other time?” says Otacon, in the tone of one who doesn’t actually ever plan on contacting the other person ever again.

“Splendid idea!” says Carpenter. He slaps Otacon on the back. Otacon winces. “Why don’t you and your husband have dinner with my wife and I tonight?”

“I don’t --”

“Great! We’ll see you later.”

“Er . . .”

“Just say yes, Otacon,” says Nastasha over the codec. She sounds resigned to her fate.

“Yes?” says Otacon.

“Fantastic! See you then!” says Carpenter, and he’s gone as fast as he appeared.

“Anyway,” says Otacon after Carpenter’s left, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes, “How has your day been?”

incoming call from 140.96. . .

“Do you want to save, Otacon?”

>SAVE

DO NOT SAVE

“Mei Ling, usually only Snake saves . . .”

“That’s because usually Snake’s the only one in danger. Honestly, you should every time you have to go in the field with him for longer than a few hours!”

“Snake was with me, it’s fine. Nothing was gonna happen to me.”

“But what if something had?”

“That’s what Snake’s save is for, right?”

“Yes, well, I’ve made an executive decision, and you’re saving. I think that’s just because you don’t want me getting a look at your data. Afraid I’ll find something I shouldn’t?”

“Absolutely not, Mei Ling.”

“You know I can’t actually read your mind using your save data, right? I’m just pulling your leg.”

“Of course I know that! Knew that! Continue to find that a statement of fact, as I have from the beginning!”

“Uh huh. Well. I think you should save more often.”

“Does this mean you’re going to call me all the time?”

“Yep! Come on, you make it sound like you don’t like getting calls from me.”

“Does this mean you’re going to quote something at me too?”

“You know what we remind me of, Otacon?”

“We? Like, jointly?”

“We’re just like Mulder and Scully! Except instead of working for the FBI, we’re both wanted by the FBI. I think.”

“I don’t think you’re technically wanted by the FBI, Mei. I mean, if they knew who you worked with and what you did exactly, maybe, haha, but I don’t think you are.”

“Still. Plus, you did actually work for the FBI, right?”

“Don’t remind me. Let me guess . . . I’m Mulder?”

“Yep! You got it, Otacon!”

“So, are you going to quote something at me now?”

“You have to earn the quotes, Otacon. I’ll talk to you later! Be careful!”

141.80 -- Time: 1550 hours -- Location: Ocean Terrace Atrium Convention Center

Carpenter manages to catch up with you again a few hours later despite your best efforts (the best efforts of the whole team, honestly) to steer Otacon away from him. “When Robert wants something, he goes and gets it,” says Nastasha, which prompts you to ask what she means by Carpenter “wanting” Otacon which is a whole fifteen minute discussion you’d rather not relive.

The long and short of it is you’ve run into the one man you’re trying to avoid because he forgot to actually tell you where and when he wants to go to dinner, but inevitably this devolves into a conversation about some kinda science thing. So now he’s chatting to Otacon about nanosomething or other while you try and think of ways to get out of your dinner engagement when the other person you’d rather avoid, that man with the bolo tie, inserts himself into the conversation. “Dr. Bell! What a coincidence!” says Dr. Voigt.

“Really wish people would stop having coincidences around me,” mutters Otacon.

“I was surprised to not see you at the panel on the impact of Metal Gear on warfare,” says Dr. Voigt. “I thought it would be right up your alley.”

You notice that Otacon’s hands are already balled into fists, so you try to cut the conversation short before something bad happens. “We must have just missed it,” you say. “You know how it is,” even though you don’t, actually.

“I don’t believe we’ve met,” says Dr. Voigt turning to Carpenter.

Carpenter looks as confused by the bolo tie thing as you imagine most people are, and they make their introductions. “Charmed, I’m sure,” says Carpenter, who doesn’t sound charmed at all.

Niceties out of the way, Voigt switches back to haranguing Otacon about Metal Gear. “I will say it was fascinating! Simply fascinating stuff, I know you must have heard about it, Dr. Bell, and I have to ask what you think of this so called ‘Metal Gear.’”

Otacon’s laugh is the least convincing laugh you’ve ever heard. You put a hand on his shoulder in a way you hope looks casually affectionate instead of what it was meant to be: a reminder that now wasn’t the time or the place to argue about the ethics of nuclear proliferation, and a reminder that this legacy wasn’t something he had to carry on his own. “Ha ha, I think it’s a very bad idea,” says Otacon.

“Really?” says Dr. Voigt. “Well, maybe this talk would have convinced you otherwise! Wonderful panel, very exciting, very exciting.”

“I don’t see what about Metal Gear could be especially exciting!” says Otacon, and he’s really, you think, doing an admirable job. You can see him constructing his response at a painstakingly slow pace, like it’s taking physical effort, almost.

Carpenter’s frowning. “Is this man bothering you, Dr. Bell?”

“Haha no, it’s fine,” says Otacon. “Dr. Voigt and I are just finishing a conversation we started earlier.”

“I know you were headed somewhere else. We’ll meet up with you at seven,” you say.
“Great!” says Carpenter. “See you both at dinner soon! Would love to stay and chat more with you Dr. Voigt” -- though Carpenter looks eager to do anything but that -- “But I must be off.”

You nod, and distractedly mutter “Bye,” but Otacon doesn’t seem to register Carpenter’s tactical retreat, his focus having swung back to the doctor.

“Anyway,” says Doktor, “Back to Metal Gear. I don’t know what your resistance is to it as a concept. To me it seems like an extremely effective deterrent.”

“The problem with deterrence is that there’s always someone willing to pull the trigger,” says Otacon.

Otacon looks like he’s about to start a fight, an actual physical fight, instead of the sort of fights he usually starts. Otacon’s petty, mean sometimes, vindictive on occasion, he holds grudges and he fumes and you probably know that better than anyone else, but rarely is he ever actually angry.

“Uh, Dr. Bell --” Dr. Voigt looks at you as if he’s trying to appeal to a higher power. “Mr. Bell --”

You shrug. You’d interfere more if Otacon wanted you to, or if he was in danger. But he doesn’t and he isn’t so you’ll stay out of it.

“Well, Dr. Bell, at least we can all rest assured that a man like you will never create such a device,” says Dr. Voigt.

Otacon punches Dr. Voigt in the face. It doesn’t look like he hit him hard enough to knock him off his feet, but you think he might have been just shocked enough that Otacon would do punch him that the surprise was enough to make him stumble.

“Shit,” says Otacon. “We gotta go.”

He’s got the same look on his face that he did the first time he fired a gun (at your insistence -- “Otacon, just because you don’t like them doesn’t mean you don’t need to know how to use them,” you’d said), which means it really is time to go.

141.80 -- Time: 1605 -- Location: Hotel Room 416

A lot of getting back to your hotel room involves telling Otacon not to run.

“Dave, I punched a man. I punched a man, with this arm,”¹ he says, walking a little too fast, waving his right hand around. You grab his wrist, get him to walk slower.

You’re finding it difficult to not find this funny. “It happens.”

“Yes, but usually not to me. I shouldn’t have done that -- should I? I don’t know.”

Luckily, you reach the room with no further incidents. You go inside. “Well, he did seem like he was kind of an asshole.”

“I can’t just go punching people every time they start talking about--” about Metal Gear “-- about stuff.”

“You realize that’s most of my job description?” you say. “Most of both of ours, honestly. Punching men when they talk about ‘stuff.’ In a broader, more philosophical sense.”

“In a broader more -- I punched him!”

“Yes. It was a good punch. I liked it. Look, don’t worry so much about it. We have to go to dinner soon.”

“Right, you’re right. I need to focus.”

Otacon does not focus. Otacon paces back and forth for a good two minutes, keeps stopping and staring at his hands. The amount of thought he’s putting into this is kind of cu -- kind of endearing honestly. And the world might be a better place if a few select scientists got a fist in the face once in awhile.

“My hand hurts. I’m starting to regret this.”

“Did you mess it up? Are you really?”

“No and no,” says Otacon. “Please. I didn’t hit him that hard.”

“You hit him pretty hard,” you say. You grab his hand, look at his knuckles, give it a squeeze. He doesn’t wince. You don’t let go. “Relax.”

He sighs. “Yeah, okay, alright, you got your point across. We have bigger things to worry about.” Otacon starts sorting through your luggage. “What exactly are we supposed to wear?”

Shit. “You know, I didn’t actually think about that.”

“Like, what does one wear to a nice restaurant in this sort of scenario. We’re already wearing kinda nice clothes, that’s good enough, right?”

“I have no idea. I probably have less of an idea than you do, honestly,” you say.

“We could call Mei?”

“We are not calling Mei Ling.”

“We could call Mer--”

“We are definitely not calling her.” You think Otacon and Meryl have started giving each other advice during situations where neither of them have any right to advise anyone. Which is concerning. “I don’t think she’d have any sort of idea anyway.”

“We could call Nastasha?”

“That might go okay,” you concede.

But first, you should probably save.

calling 140.96. . .

“What is it, Snake?”

>SAVE

DO NOT SAVE

Snake, Rilke said, “If the drinking is bitter, turn to wine.”²

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Hmm. . . I think it means that even when things aren’t great, you have to make the best out of a bad situation. Go with the flow.”

“Okay, go with the flow. Hopefully there won’t be a bad situation to make the best out of.”

“I hope so too!”

Footnotes:

¹ Otacon would end up only ever punching two people -- but the second time wasn’t for another eight years.

² Sonnets to Orpheus II, 29. “Silent friend of many distances, feel/how your breath is enlarging space,” “And if the earthly forgets you,/say to the quiet earth: I flow,/ Speak to the rushing water--say: I am.” This is David Young’s translation.

Chapter Text

141.52 -- Time: 1613 hours -- Location: Los Angeles, CA

“Really?” is how you start off the call, which you think is fair, considering the circumstances.

“Haha, what do you mean ‘really?’” asks Otacon.

“What I mean is, ‘really, did you call me just so I could affirm your choice in neckwear? Is that really the best use of everyone’s time? Can’t you figure this out on your own?”

“Oh right,” he says. “That really.”

Meryl’s absolutely going to kick herself for missing this one. Honestly, who let Otacon pack the robot tie?

You help them figure out their clothing, which is interesting, to say the least, but Snake never was that sort of spy. You think you’ve done that sort of work more than he has, dressed up for more fancy dinners on false pretenses to learn something you shouldn’t know. You like to think you’re rather good at it. Snake, on the other hand, is never going to look comfortable in anything even approaching a suit.

Giving your coworkers a short rundown of your ex-girlfriend’s likes and dislikes is a little weird.

“She likes dogs,” says Snake after you share that particular tidbit. “She must be nice.”

You think two things at once: the first is “well, yes, she is pretty nice,” the second, the one you say out loud, is, "Please, don't underestimate her. Especially just because you share an interest."

"Lord, they're doomed," says Naomi, who had replaced Meryl when she’d gone off to nap.

You privately disagree. Snake could make the impossible possible, you'd thought when you first met him, and prolonged exposure has only made you believe that more.

"They'll manage," you say.

Truth be told and faith in Snake aside, you really are more suited to the task. But your familiarity with the Carpenters would have ruled out your direct participation even if there hadn't been an ulterior motive for this little setup. Naomi, even, would likely be more naturally suited to the task at hand but as willing as Snake may have been to let bygones be bygones, you weren't ready to test the tenuous alliance formed between the five of you and her.

"I'll try not to backseat drive too much," you say. "I wish I could help more."

"We couldn't do this without you, Nastasha," says Snake.

"I'm sorry we're putting your talents to waste with tie selection questions, haha," says Otacon.

"There's nobody I'd trust more to help here," says Snake.

"Just try to stick to innocuous topics," you say. "Small talk, movies, nothing too personally revealing, nothing that might necessitate you talking too much about yourselves."

"What sort of movies?" asks Otacon.

"They met at a screening of The Haunting while Ellen was still in college," you say.¹

Otacon makes a sound best transcribed as "yeeauurgh."

"Scared of ghosts," mutters Snake, inclining his head in Otacon's direction. He looks unspeakably fond.

"Right. Well. Just don't talk about yourselves or your work -- or what your work is supposed to be, rather -- and you should be fine. And remember you're not supposed to know any of the things I've told you. And remember, don't look too nervous."

"Don't look nervous, don't talk about work, don't talk about ourselves," says Snake. "Got it."

141.80 -- Time: 1914 hours --- Location: Ocean Terrace Atrium Convention Center

"So, tell us about yourselves!" says Robert Carpenter. "What is it you work on, Dr. Bell?"

"Er," says Otacon, nervously.

“Robert told me you mentioned that you used to work for NASA! Is that true? How exciting,” says Ellen.

“Oh!” says Otacon. “Haha, yes, I did! I’m not anymore because, you know, budget cuts --” There’s a sympathetic murmur of agreement from around the table “-- but it was a great job while it lasted at least.”

You don't know how fancy this place is, but it's fancy enough that there's a whole drawer's worth of silverware scattered around your plate.

“It really isn’t that fancy,” says Naomi in your ear. Not the most helpful comment.

You look at Otacon, who fiddles with the menu some more and shrugs, too caught up in trying to keep up with his fake backstory and Carpenter’s questions to do anything more than that.

"Never mind them," says Mrs. Carpenter, with the practiced half eye roll and dismissive gesture of a woman who's been at plenty of dinners with plenty of engineers spouses, had this same conversation many times. "If your husband is anything like mine, they'll be content to talk each other's ears off about" -- another hand gesture you read as "whatever the hell that crap is" -- "all the way up to dessert."

"It's interesting, I guess, but most of it goes over my head," you say. "I'm just here for company."

"Mmm," says Mrs. Carpenter. "I end up going to a lot of these, for one reason or another, and I feel the same way. Helps me ask questions about how work is going, though, you know."

You do. "Right," you say. "Have to do your homework for breakfast conversations."

A genuine smile. She takes a sip of her wine. "You're ex-military, right?"

"Don't miss it much," you say, and then, seeing your chance, "Miss my dogs when I'm gone much more."

"You have dogs?" she asks, her face lighting up. "How many?"

"Do not say fifty," says Naomi in your ear.

"Three," you say.

"I have quite a few," she says.

"Oh?"

"Something like fifty," she says, apologetically.

"Dog breeder?" you guess.

"Oh no, no! Nothing like that. I volunteer for quite a few shelters in the area, and I have a tendency to sort of... Collect any strays who can't find a home. God knows we have the space, and the money, and I can't just let a dog suffer because they can't find a home -- oh, you know."

"I think that's admirable," you say.

"Most people think it's a little ridiculous," says Ellen.

“Ridiculous and admirable aren’t always mutually exclusive,” you say. “I can’t say I wouldn’t be tempted if we had the space to do the same.”

“It has its challenges, certainly, but also its rewards. I do miss them, every time."

You really really miss your dogs. "I always end up missing him more, though," you say, nodding in Otacon's direction.

You think you hear Meryl say "unbelievable" in your ear.

Dinner. . . dinner does not go as poorly as you thought it would, in general. Neither of you forgets any significant detail of your cover story. After the more disastrous beginning, you’re able to shift the topic away from the specifics of Otacon’s fake career to a more general discussion about space travel, so you suppose Otacon’s perhaps self-indulgent inclusion of NASA on his fake resume was useful for something.

You’ve reached the coffee-and-dessert part of dinner (you pointedly decline the coffee, but Otacon gets some anyway). Carpenter’s bragging about how he knows the SpaceX guy, what’s his face, and Otacon’s talking about how his mom met her partner while working on Project Mercury (one of the more improbable bits of his backstory.) “Kind of a hard story to top, haha,” he says. “Meeting wise.”

“It occurs to me you two never did tell us how you met,” says Carpenter, and you don’t like where this is going.

“Yes, how did you two meet?” asks Ellen.

You panic internally for just a second, because

1. You don’t have a good story to use here.
2. You’ve been negligent enough with planning to not actually think “hey, this might be something I need to be able to say.”
3. This isn’t the sort of sneaking mission you usually go on, you’re not usually tapped to play amateur James Bond, but this is a pretty big oversight.

But Otacon’s eyes light up and he leans forward. “Well, believe it or not --”

Weeks passed, and while Josh tried not to stray to the same place too often, he inevitably felt himself drawn to the shop where the brunette man worked. One evening, he decided to stop by for an ill advised after work pick me up. It had been a long day, and he had had to work exceedingly late. The cafe was almost closed by the time he arrived.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Joshua, when he saw that the man was already starting to put things away for the night. “I didn’t realize it was so late already, haha, I must have worked longer than I meant to. I’ll leave so you can close up.”

“No, there’s still a little while before we’re supposed to close, and I don’t mind some company too while I’m finishing things as long as you don’t mind me cleaning some at the same time.”

Joshua got his coffee from the barista, like usual. “So I was wondering,” said the other man, “what IS your job? You don’t look like a businessman, and that’s most of our customers around here. You don’t really look like a student either, though I don’t know what job would keep you out this late working.”

“Besides yours,” said Joshua.

“Obviously.”

“I’m a scientist,” said Joshua. He took a sip of his coffee. It tasted perfect. “I work for NASA.”

“Really? That’s a pretty neat job.”

“Haha thanks.”

“Why were you there so late, though?”

“Oh, there’s some project that they’re really trying to rush through completion and I’ve got to be around a whole bunch.”

Joshua didn’t mention much more than that because he thought it probably wasn’t a great idea to talk about too many particulars when they weren’t announced to the public yet and there was still a lot of room for failure. Too much room for failure. . . he was worried that the administration [???] was making everyone work too fast with too little money. Josh remembered back during the earliest days of NASA his mom had worked on a project where rushing the process of finishing everything lead to a terrible accident. Well, he didn’t remember it, obviously, because he wasn’t born yet.

All of the sudden, two men burst into the room, and demanded all of the money in the register. Josh wasn’t sure why they would try and rob a coffee shop of all places instead of somewhere with more money. Hah hah, maybe they really needed some coffee.

Anyway, Joshua decided to run into the supply closet that he knew was over on one wall, and hide in it while whatever happened happened. Maybe that was bad of him, but he had never been very good at fighting, and the barista looked like he was way tougher.

He heard some sounds outside, but he knocked some mops on top of himself so he couldn’t really hear a lot of things besides the fact that there was some yelling and probably some punching too. Eventually or maybe after a few minutes everything quieted down.

He heard footsteps walking towards the door, and wondered who would open it.

Josh quivered as the door burst open, but his dreading anticipation was for naught. The barista stood there, filling the doorway with his massive rugged shoulders. “Are you alright?” he asked, reaching a hand out to help Joshua stand.

“Yes, I’m fine,” said Joshua, a little flustered. “Haha, sorry I ran off like that, I didn’t mean to leave you to fend for yourself.” He couldn’t help but think that the other man certainly seemed to have been able to deal with the situation by himself really well. Gosh, thought Joshua, he’s super cool and tough.

“Don’t worry,” said the man. “I can more than handle a few untrained miscreants.” He was still holding onto Joshua’s hand, and turned his tight grip into a vigorous handshake. “My name is David, I’m sorry about the unpleasantness.”

“I’m Joshua, Dave,” said Joshua, caught off guard by the brunette’s -- David’s -- sudden friendliness.

“Yes, I know,” said Dave. “I write your name on your drinks, remember?”

The two laughed together as the would-be pilferers whimpered in pain on the floor of the cafe, and it felt like the first time Josh had laughed in months.

141.80 -- Time: 1946 hours -- Location: Ocean Terrace Atrium Convention Center

The Carpenters laugh. “What an interesting story,” Ellen says. She shifts in her seat to look at you. “You must tell me, what do you do on a first date after that?”

“Uh.”

This, this is not a task any amount of time in special ops can prepare you for. You think frantically back over your entire life, vast sections flashing by in an instant -- getting shot at, getting shot, infiltrating a secret base, getting shot at some more -- and realize you’ve never been on anything resembling what you’re pretty sure a date is supposed to look like.

Ellen looks at you. Carpenter looks at you. Otacon has this weird pleading sort of expression.

You have approximately three seconds. Meryl is laughing in your ear. “Er . . . tree climbing?”

“Why did you say it like a question?” says Naomi, at the same time Nastasha says “No?” but it’s too late now.

“Always coming up with something unexpected to say,” says Otacon, nervously, but awkwardly laughing through it, you don’t think anyone can tell his awkward laugh from his normal one besides you because they’re all, quite frankly kind of awkward. “Classic Dave.”

He pats your hand, leaves his resting on top of yours. “That’s just one of the many things I love about my husband.”

You would wince, if you hadn’t trained yourself not to wince, because the line sounds so unwieldy coming out of his mouth. But at the same time he looks so painfully earnest, that it hits you hard, with a sense of what -- regret? Jealousy? Jealousy of this person who doesn’t exist, this made up man you’re masquerading as for a little while? And what’s there to be jealous about (besides the not getting shot at), except for --

Otacon catches your eye and smiles, his “Snake, we’re a third of the way through and no one’s tried to kill us yet, can you believe it!!!” smile, and oh shit. Oh no. No, no. No this is not happening to you right here, right now, at this very public table in this very public restaurant, in the middle of a conversation with the man you hope to swindle out of hard earned intel and that man’s wife, in the middle of a mission, while your best friend/partner has his hand on yours. Otacon’s hand is sort of sweaty, which always happens, his hands get sweaty quickly, which you think is cute, honestly.

Wait, what? Cute? The thought is so intrusive and so overbearing that you almost start looking around for ghastly men in gas masks. But though you might not know a lot of things, one thing you do know is your own mind, and these thoughts are all yours. They’ve always been yours, maybe, and you’re rifling through, again, your memories -- specifically the past few years -- and it’s there. It’s all there.

You say something, you don’t know what, make some sort of polite addition to the commentary because you feel bad making Otacon sustain the conversation when he’s generally terrible at that. Luckily, Carpenter seems to be launching into a long involved story, giving you another moment to pause and reflect. The thing is, Otacon really is not attractive. You’ve known plenty of attractive people, and Otacon does not compare. He has awful hair, which he probably doesn’t wash enough, and fits awkwardly into every chair he’s ever sat in like a teenager after their first growth spurt. His glasses are clunky and he chews at his fingernails until his hands bleed. Half the time he looks like death warmed over, but even in his ghostliest pallor there’s something about Otacon, some elemental inertia, some initial spark, that gives him the sort of relentless drive you can’t teach. He pulls himself together. Look at him here, right now, even though he hates crowds, and nice dinners, casual conversation in general and the strain of sustained adult human interaction not related to one of his specialities (of which there are many) in particular. He punched a guy for glorifying his old mistakes and he’s talking their way out of trouble and he’s still Otacon. He’s sort of,

“Effervescent,” you mumble.

“Hmm?” says Otacon, inclining his head towards you.

“Nothing, sorry,” you say. Which probably isn’t very Married Couple of you, you should’ve thrown a “dear” in there or something, but it’s too late now. You turn your hand so your palm is facing his, and squeeze his hand. The smile on his face as he continues to listen to your intended targets is a private one.

You are sitting here holding your best friend’s hand, your best friend who you are

1. living with
2. working with
3. pretending to be married to
4. sharing a room (and, currently, a bed) with
5. almost certainly in love with

You are too fucking old for this. Aren’t you? Apparently fucking not. Damn! Damn. Should have stayed in Alaska, should have just lived with dogs for the rest of your life. Not nerds you could benchpress in your sleep, who cried over animated cartoons, who reheated Hot Pockets. Not even the good Hot Pockets, but the shit ones, with broccoli. He likes 1% milk (which, who even likes 1%, really?) and these weird frosted breadstick things, and you almost wish you really were married, so you could kiss him without regret.

Otacon’s thumb keeps stroking your wrist, back and forth, over and over. You don’t think he actually realizes he’s doing it. That or he’s better at this than you are, but you don’t know if you can really picture Otacon as anything like a good actor. You’re trying to imagine that now mostly to distract yourself, but it’s not working.

“Something something something dogs?” asks Ellen.

“Dogs?” you ask.

“Yes,” says Ellen, “I was asking what your dogs names were?”

You’re thankful you only said you had three. “Scully, Ophelia, and Roland.”²

“An eclectic mix,” says Ellen. “Ophelia, huh? Never would have painted you as a fan.”

“‘Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be.’³ People don’t tend to give her enough credit.”

You should’ve picked more innocuous names, not these, because these -- these were real names. Ones attached to real dogs, and it’s a little too nostalgic. Like this person you’re pretending to be really is someone who you could’ve been, if the world was a little different. Nevermind that now.

“Interesting,” says Ellen.

Otacon’s still holding your hand.

You manage to politely escape after the second cup of coffee. You don't understand how people can just sit around in restaurants like this. You can hide in a vent until your bones creak with the effort and then some, but this is something different.

He doesn't stop holding your hand.

calling 140.96 . . .

“What’s up Snake?”

>SAVE

DO NOT SAVE

“Snake, a poet said, ‘Nothing is better than to live a storyless life that needs no writing for meaning.’”⁴

“Interesting. That could mean a lot of things, Mei Ling, but I’m guessing you have a specific idea?”

“Yeah, I think what I mean by it is -- don’t live a life that needs to be written down! Don’t make any choices that you’ll need to use these saves to undo.”

“So you’re saying I should make you redundant?”

“Just like the poet would rather have a happy life than have something worth writing down, I’d rather not have a job than ever need you to actually need my skills.”

“But Mei Ling, then I wouldn’t get to talk to you.”

“Don’t be silly, Snake. That’s what book club is for.”

140.15 -- Time: 2028 hours -- Location: Los Angeles, CA

You wait until Mei Ling assures you that yes, the codec is as secure as it’s ever gonna get, and you call Snake to check up on him. You’d call Otacon but only one of them could actually subvocalize.

“Smooth recovery on that goof there,” you say. “Though I guess that was Otacon, not you, huh? Haha, who knew he’d be the one to carry the conversation?”

“Yeah, he was pretty good, wasn’t he?” says Snake fondly.

You roll your eyes. This is all those “gosh Otacon, I wish I was good at gadgets” moments all over again. “You okay? You were pretty quiet after that.”

“He seemed to have the situation under control. Didn’t want to interfere too much.”

That didn’t sound quite right. “It’s fine, Meryl,” says Snake, seeing what must’ve been a displeased expression on your face.

“Just answer this question for me, though,” you say, because you and Naomi have money on it, “Do you really think people go tree climbing on dates?”

“Don’t they?”

“No, Snake, no one has ever gone on a date tree climbing.” You don’t know this for absolute certain, but you’ve got a pretty good feeling about that. “Why the hell did you say that?”

“I dunno, it seemed reasonable. I didn’t have a lot of time.”

Snake looks irritated. “Trouble in paradise?” you ask.

“You know,” he says, “If Nastasha hadn’t laid out what Carpenter’s security is usually like, I’d almost think this was some sort of joke you all were making on our expense.”

“Snake,” you say. “I can’t believe you’d say something like that about us! When has anyone on this team betrayed you?

“Well ---”

“Naomi doesn’t count.”

Snake grumbles.

“Hey. We’ve bonded recently, you know,” you say. “Spent a lot of quality time the past couple of days watching you guys.”

“And what’ve you learned so far?”

“You two aren’t half as bad at this as I’d thought you’d be. Mei Ling and I were talking, she’s right, you really do make a cute couple.”

“Uh, thanks,” he says. “You’re, uh, a pretty great person yourself?”

“You’re a married man now, Snake,” you say. “Those kinds of comments are hardly appropriate.”

Snake grumbles at the teasing, but not quite as loud as he maybe should if he minded all that much. “Do you have anything else to actually talk to me about, or what?”

“Just checkin’ on you,” you say. He updates you a little more on what they’ve found out today, and then you leave him alone.

Mei’s still hard at work, though Nastasha and Naomi had both gone to sleep a while ago. “You’re not gonna watch them all night, are you?” you ask.

“What, weren’t you?” she asks, and yawns.

“When you say it like that it sounds a little creepier than it did in my head,” you admit.

It’s not like you were like, gonna watch watch them, just keep an ear out for gunshots or yelling while you . . . you dunno. Stare at the ceiling. Compile a list of things that Otacon may have been trying to hack from the FBI when he was working there. Do pushups, probably. Mei’s legitimately got better things to do with her time. You don’t have a real job -- like boy oh boy was this a lot of work but you didn’t have a job job, and you didn’t go to school, so you were good for shit like glorified guard duty.

Mei doesn’t look tired in the same way that like, Snake looks tired (which is to say, weary) but she looks a little exhausted. “You should get some sleep, don’t worry about it,” you say. “Really, it’s fine. Don’t you have a test next week or something you need to study for?”

“I always have a test next week,” says Mei. “There’s never been a time in my life where I haven’t had a test next week.”

“I can help you study?” you say, and that’s how you find yourself going through a stack of flashcards with Mei until she drifts off, and leaves you to hunt around for a blanket to put over her, leaves you to keep watch on your own.

141.80 -- Time: 2325 hours -- Location: Hotel Room 416

If last night was curiously comfortable, then tonight is just agonizing. It’s one thing for something to feel nice, and another entirely to retroactively realize just why it had felt nice, and then find yourself in the same place again, but knowing --

But nothing’s really different, and nothing can be different, you can’t allow that. The way you both without conscious thought fit around each other is bad enough, the whole thing’s overwhelming.

You wince. Otacon’s feet are still cold.

141.80 -- Time: 0817 hours -- Location: Hotel Room 416

You wake up with your face in the vicinity of Otacon’s collarbone, pressed up against it, bony but not unpleasant. Far from it, in fact, but instead really rather nice, as was his chin on your head, the sound of his wheezy almost-snore. It reminds you of the best parts of the quiet of Alaska, of moments of stillness in the middle of the winter night when the whole world seemed small and inky black and calm.

For a second you have this rushing flight of fancy, a vivid actionable daydream where you wake Otacon up and tell him it’d be better if you just quit all this NGO nonsense and went somewhere else, a dream of retreating back into some silent wilderness and replicating this moment and that memory, the drum tight tranquility of a warm cabin and no one around you for miles, the contented morning weariness that comes with waking early and resting well, the -- and this frustrates you, the intrusiveness, the terrible timing -- chest tightening tenderness you feel when his still sleeping sigh ruffles through your hair. You want to layer the two moments on top of each other, want them to coexist, co-mingle, form some cohesive whole, but they can’t.

So you reach over, and wake him up.

141.80 -- Time: 1058 hours -- Location: Ocean Terrace Atrium Convention Center

“Are you sure no one’s gonna see us?” asks Otacon. “I mean, obviously, someone’s gonna see me, but like, you know, see us see us.”

The plan’s simple enough. You sneak into the room the Carpenters are staying in while you know they won’t be there (right around now) and grab the laptop (which you’re ninety percent certain is in the room, seeing as how he never carries any sort of bag with him), bring the laptop to Otacon who’ll be nearby, make sure no one sees Otacon, let him do, uh, whatever it is Otacon does with laptops, put it back, get out of there. The guards Carpenter has are pretty competent, but there’s not many of them, and you do, after all, have the stealth camo. You’ve got a pre-arranged excuse for Otacon to be up there, in case anyone asks, something about him wanting to talk to Carpenter about something. The simplicity of the plan means something’s going to go wrong, but so far it seems like the majority of the hard work is Otacon’s responsibility.

There’s a few security cameras, but no one should be checking that footage if everything goes according to plan. At most they’ll see Otacon hanging out awkwardly for a bit and you’ve already found a blind spot for him to stand in while he’s doing the hacking stuff.

“Depends on how much faith you put in your own stealth camo, I guess,” you say.

He sighs. “I wish I’d grabbed more than one. What I wouldn’t give to be able to turn invisible whenever.”

Not that he didn’t occasionally use the stealth camo for less than strictly business purposes anyway, but you’d drawn the line at him using it to end arguments, you can’t just turn invisible and leave because you don’t want to talk about whose fault it is that the sink’s clogged again.

“Terrible decision,” you say.

“Yes, that’s definitely the worst mistake I made that day,” he says. He’s finishing something on his computer (“just two more seconds, and this’ll be ready to go, I swear”) and grimaces at the screen.

“Hey, you got to meet me,” you say.

He smiles, just a little bit, and pushes his glasses up. “Yeah, I got to meet you. You’re right, that was the real awful part, not the part where I didn’t save more prototypes of my actually useful invention.”

“I’m hurt,” you say, but you nudge his foot with yours so he knows you aren’t actually.

“Yeah, yeah,” he says.

“If you two are done?” asks Meryl over the codec. “Could we get a move on before we miss our opportunity here? The Carpenters aren’t still going to be checked into the hotel for forever.”

“Right,” you say. “On it.”

“Oh!” says Otacon. “Don’t forget to save!”

You’d almost forgotten amidst everything else. “Right. Got it.”

calling 140.96 . . .

“Do you want to save, Snake?”

>SAVE

DO NOT SAVE

"'If your mind dislike anything, obey it.'⁵ Snake, trust your instincts on the battlefield -- they could save your life!"

“Are you really expecting the situation to get that dangerous?”

“No, of course not, but you never know. A sharp eye can prevent disaster before it even happens. Think of it as a sort of deterrence.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense. And deterrence doesn’t wor--”

“Don’t worry Snake, I’ll watch your back for you, too!”

“. . . Thanks, Mei Ling.”

141.80 -- Time: 1100 hours -- Location: Ocean Terrace Atrium Convention Center

You finish saving, and nod at Otacon. “All ready to go,” you say, and turn on the stealth camo.

But before you get as much as a dozen feet down the hall, before you even reach the tenth floor, you see Ellen walking down the same hall.

“You have got to be kidding me,” says Nastasha.

"Dr. Bell!" says Ellen, hurrying to catch up to Otacon. You stay as still as you can. "Dr. Bell, oh good, I'm glad I managed to catch up to you before you left. Robert and I wanted to ask you about something."

"Oh?" says Otacon, and you're proud of him for how calm he seems, despite the fact you'd been two minutes away from doing a tricky -- if not terribly dangerous -- bit of sneaking. "Well, I'm in sort of a hurry, ha ha, David and I have a flight to catch pretty soon."

"Oh, the airport's close, this won't take long," she says. Ellen grabs Otacon's hand and grins. "Robert and I were talking, and we'd love to have you over sometime soon."

"Oh?" Says Otacon.

"Yes!" Ellen enthuses. "We have some friends over for little gatherings once every few months, you know, catch up, so many of us live so very far away, and I know we've just met but I feel like we've really hit it off!" She leans closer and says, conspiratorially, "DSU’s main R&D labs are right next to our home, Robert’s a little paranoid, you know --" Otacon laughs awkwardly -- "and I think he has some things he'd like to show you, maybe get some advice."

She's still clutching his hand in both of hers, a pose you know doesn't mean anything, but makes you frown anyway.

"A trap?" you hear Meryl say in your ear.

"I don't think so, it's not Carpenter's style," says Nastasha. "He does hold regular meetings like she's saying."

Luckily, Ellen's still talking, hopefully Otacon is managing to listen to both her and your impromptu strategy session at the same time.

"I say you should go for it," says Mei Ling. "You can always back out later, say something came up and you can't make it, that won't arouse suspicion."

"It's the sort of opportunity not presented often," says Nastasha. "Think of the access you'd have!"

"I don't trust it, Snake," says Meryl.

"Snake, I think you'd be foolish to pass up this opportunity," says Nastasha.

"Plus, it'll be wonderful to chat with David some more about Shakespeare and all that. A nice change of pace from my usual dinner conversations. Oh, please say you will!"

"Otacon, it's up to you," you say into the codec as quietly as you can. "I trust your judgement."

Otacon takes a deep breath. "We'd love to."

Ellen lets go of Otacon’s hand, and digs around in her purse. You tense, wondering if she’s got a gun, but she pulls out a pen and a pad of paper instead, scribbles furiously on the pad for a second, before ripping the top sheet off and handing it to Otacon. “There you go!” she says. “Contact information. We already have your business card of course, I’ll be in touch with more details.”

She looks at her watch, and stuffs the paper and pen back into her bag. “I’ve got to run now myself, but I’ll see you again soon, Dr. Bell!” Ellen waves as she hurries off down the hall towards the elevator, and Otacon waves, somewhat halfheartedly, back.

“Well, that was weird,” you say.

“Maybe she’s just friendly?” says Otacon. “Maybe we’ve just met a friendly person, that’s all.”

“Uh huh.”

Otacon rubs the back of his neck. “Guess we got the afternoon off, at least, haha.”

“Let’s get out of here before that changes,” you say.

For once in your life, you manage to extract yourself easily.

The next afternoon, Josh entered the store with Purpose. He had a mission now, a debt to repay. He had to show Dave his appreciation somehow, and there was only one language powerful enough to speak to the heart of the stoic taciturn barista.

Coffee. . .

Josh could have sworn that Dave almost smiled when he walked in the door. Maybe it was just his imagination, though.

“The usual?”

Joshua clenched his fists. He could do this! “Two of the usual, actually,” he confessed.

The brunette man looked surprised. “Meeting someone?”

Joshua took a deep breath. “You, actually.” At the look on Dave’s face he backpedaled. “I - I mean if you’d like, that is. i wanted to thank you, you know, for saving my life.”

David chuckled. “Just doing my job. I think my boss would be upset with me if one of our most loyal customers stopped coming by.”

“So will you join me, then?” he asked, shining his most brilliant smile at the man. Which wasn’t saying much, it wasn’t that brilliant, but you know it was worth a try.

“Sure,” said the other man. “It’s almost time for my break anyway.”

Josh wasn’t sure what would happen with the shop if he was on break and there was no one else who appeared to be working there right now, but he was sure it would be fine, and so they went and sat down at a table near the counter.

“So, haha, how are you doing today?” asked Josh.

“Oh, haha, I’m doing fine, thanks,” said Dave.

“You aren’t at all shaken up after what happened?” asked the engineer.

“Oh, no, not at all,” said David. “What about you?”

“Oh me? Yes I’m totally fine. Thank you.”

“This sort of thing doesn’t happen very often where you work does it, I bet,” said the barista.

“No, not exactly,” said Josh. “Mostly I just build giant robots.”

“Really?” said Dave. “That sounds really interesting and you should tell me about it.”

They kept talking for a while, until David said that he had to stop sitting down and had to start working again.

Even if they hadn’t talked for a while, and even if maybe the other man had just been talking to Josh out of some sense of pity or obligation, Josh still really enjoyed talking to him, and he still felt like something was changing in his life -- or was going to change.

140.15 -- Time: The Next Day -- Location: Outside Washington DC

“We didn’t plan for this,” says Nastasha.

“I don’t think it will be too dangerous,” says Mei Ling, her face furrowing in concentration. “Not any more dangerous than what Snake usually does.”

“But Otacon --” says Nastasha.

“Who cares?” says Naomi. You can only see her head in the codec, but it looks like she slumped down in her chair. “Who cares if he’s okay?”

You choose to ignore her. You choose to ignore pretty much everything Naomi -- Dr. Hunter -- whatever -- says. “Looks like they need it, because I feel like we would know if they had fucking got it yet,” you say.

“Would we?” asks Mei Ling. “Snake can be rather private.”

“We would know,” grumbles Naomi. “I think everyone would know.”⁶

“Well, Mei’s right,” you say, which gets you a smile. “It’s still pretty low risk, as long as they manage to keep their cover up, and it makes it easier for us to complete the mission.”

“Plus, I suppose, they’d have access to even more sensitive data of the sort that could help us identify where new Metal Gear technology is being produced,” says Nastasha.

“Right, right,” you say, waving your hand. Metal Gear schmetal gear to be honest. “The important thing is, we can complete all our mission objectives, and I can stop getting calls from a certain someone -- we all can.”

“I don’t know,” says Mei Ling, “I like getting calls from them!”

“Really,” says Naomi.

“They’re my friends!” ⁷

They’re your friends too, but they’re also humiliating. You’ll be better friends once they stop whatever it is they’re doing right now, the weird not-relationship thing. It’ll be such a relief, you think, for them to calm down a little. Be less embarrassing.

You’re getting another call. “Speak of the devil,” you say. It’s Otacon. “I better get this, guys. Nastasha -- give me what you know about the Carpenter’s place and I’ll start helping you work out some different escape routes?”

“Will do.”

“Thanks,” you say, and shut off the call, switching over to Otacon’s frequency.

“What’s up?”

“Do you think Snake was acting weird?” Otacon asks, without prelude. “I mean, around me, I mean, about the mission. I mean, just now.”

“He’s a weird guy,” you say. “You’re a weird guy. There’s not a great point of comparison here.”

“Weirder than normal, then.”

“Hmmm,” you say.

“Hmm?! What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s supposed to mean hmm, Otacon. Jeez, stop reading so much into everything.”

“You’ve known him as long as I have, and --”

“I’ve known him longer,” you say, interrupting him.

“By like two hours!”

“A lot happened in those two hours,” you say, wistfully. “We bonded.”

“Yeah well, okay, since I see you’re dedicated to being no help, maybe I should just go now.”

“Oh, please,” you say. “Don’t be dramatic, I get enough of that from Naomi.” You lean forward in your chair. “In all honesty, Otacon, you’ve spent more time around him than anyone else, if you can’t figure out if he’s acting weird, then none of us can. Have you tried, I dunno, talking to him?”

“I can’t just ask him, hey, Snake, what’s up? Why are you acting weird? Are you acting weird?”

You hold your head in your hands. Otacon reads too much fucking fanfiction. “You really can.”

“What if he gets mad at me?”

“Why would he get mad at you?!”

“I don’t know! Jeez!”

You groan. “Otacon, man, I think you’re really making something out of nothing. I gotta take care of some shit, but I’ll talk to you guys in a little bit. Try not to freak out about everything while I’m away.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” you say, before hanging up. Eyes on the prize, Silverburgh. This’ll all be worth the minor mental strife in the end.

Probably. Hopefully. God gosh golly you fucking hope.

Footnotes:

¹ The Haunting, a 1963 horror movie based on Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House, isn’t exactly a first date movie, but they weren’t exactly on a date. In the movie, four people investigating paranormal phenomena spend some time in a purportedly haunted mansion. It doesn’t go well.

² After the X-Files character, the Shakespeare character, and the mid 20th century French literary critic/philosopher Roland Barthes.

³ Snake’s quoting Ophelia in Act Four scene five of Hamlet.

⁴ From the poem “Missing Time” by Ha Jin.

⁵ This quote is from Hamlet, Act Five scene two. Horatio, Hamlet’s best friend and confidant (with the best friend part in the sort of massive air quotes Mei Ling used behind Snake’s back whenever he called Otacon his “partner”), is trying to tell Hamlet that something’s not quite on the level with the “friendly duel” he’s about to enter into with another guy, Laertes. Hamlet, who is pretty much Done at this point in the play, is like, “whatever, I’m over it, it’ll totally be fine” and Horatio’s like “okay well I’m just sayin that I think maybe the king is trying to poison you.”

⁶ Everyone would know.

⁷ Snake and Mei Ling had their own book club, just the two of them. They were reading The Duchess of Malfi at the moment (“well as much as you can really read a play you know, but there’s really only one filmed version and it’s from the eighties and it looks awful” Mei Ling had said), which Snake described as having “a lot of weird twin shit.”

“Relatable weird twin shit?” Meryl had asked.

“No, definitely not.”

Chapter Text

141.80 -- Time: 2113 hours -- Location: Houston, TX

There’s only a few days between now and when you’ll leave again for California, a few days that stretch in front of you like an elastic nightmare minefield of awkward comments and potential missed cues, of maybe accidentally falling out of the synchronicity you’ve managed to maintain with Otacon for -- months now, you suppose. A situation that requires the eye of a watchmaker and the tools of a lock pick, but you were never a precision instrument. And after that, there’s the rest of forever to deal with, too.

But: one thing in front of the other. First: successfully de-embarking, first getting back to the apartment, checking and double checking to make sure it’s secure, first the emergency grocery shopping, first the careful examination of the junk mail for any weapons and traps, first all of that. And then the debrief, once you’ve confirmed with the others that you’re back and relatively safe, but you try and build in enough time in your estimates of when you’ll be calling in that you have this pocket of time too, the pocket where you throw out expired milk and chastise Otacon for touching a package before he knows it’s safe and get chastised in turn for sneaking a cigarette out on the balcony. ¹

“Nice to be able to turn off the codec again,” you say, after the whole “Snake are you smoking?” “No, I’m not,” “Snake, I can smell it, you’re not even supposed to smoke on the balcony, aren’t you always lecturing me on how it isn’t safe to be out there in the first place?” “You’re not a genetically enhanced super soldier.” “And you’re not immune to lung cancer.” run around is finished. “Now I only have one nanny.”

“Oh, please,” says Otacon. “Isn’t that part of my job, as your ‘husband’?”

So that’s something that’s okay to joke about, which is good. You weren’t sure if he was going to feel awkward about bringing that up. “Yeah, I guess that’s still a thing.”

“I guess we’ll have to hold off the annulment for a little longer,” says Otacon. “Hope you don’t have any ‘hot dates’ this weekend, Snake.”

“Not unless you rope me into watching another episode of that, whatever it is,” you say.²

“Are you saying I’m your ‘hot date?’” says Otacon.

“You’re my only hot date for the foreseeable future.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re a funny guy.”

Did you just refer to Otacon as your hot date?

Shit. That is, in fact, what you’d said. This might be a more difficult few weeks than you initially thought. “Well, we are married. At least, you know. Still. For the, er. Mission.”

“Right!” says Otacon. “Right. For! That. For the mission, I guess, I have to be your ‘hot date,’ haha.”

“You don’t really have to be,” you say. The problem was always balancing out your need to make sure Otacon didn’t think he had to do anything with your need to make sure that he knew you weren’t brushing him off. “I mean, if you really don’t want to or anything, I can always tell everyone that we decided it was too dangerous.”

“It’s really not that dangerous,” says Otacon. “Come on, don’t lie -- it’s really not.”

“I just want to make sure you’re safe.”

“Oh, I always feel safe when you’re around,” says Otacon dismissively. “Plus, it’s been nice, right? Not getting shot at and everything and -- everything.”

“Yeah,” you say. “Yeah, it’s been nice.”

140.48 -- Time: 1622 -- Location: ???????

Everyone always feels the endless need to rehash extremely current events, so you’re listening to Snake and Otacon talking over what happened with Mrs. Carpenter for what feels like the fifth time. You were all there, you don’t know why this is necessary.

“So we’re really going to go through with this?” says Nastasha. “Seems a little overly hasty to me.”

“It’s that or we throw away this opportunity forever,” says Otacon. He really shouldn’t have said yes to Mrs. Carpenter’s offer. “It won’t be that risky! Carpenter seems like an okay person.”

“I’d still rather not provoke him,” says Nastasha.

“Okay, whatever,” says Meryl. “It’s happening, it’s a thing now. So what do we need to make it work?”

“An incredible amount of luck, none of which any of us seem to have,” you say, but as per usual everyone utterly ignores you.

“Plans of the house,” says Snake. “If you can get them. Same for the facilities nearby.”

“An idea of where exactly he might store this ‘intel’ that he has, besides having some of it on his personal computer,” says Otacon. “Though I guess, haha, that having a floor plan would help, since there has to be a server room somewhere, it’s definitely on site, I’d say. And what’s the security like, do you know?”

“I wasn’t friends with him when he was a billionaire,” says Nastasha. “But let me see what I can find.”

“I’ll help,” you say, because you’re bored, and because otherwise you’ll be relegated to something even more meaningless like, you don’t know, being asked by Otacon to make sure that Snake doesn’t really have a cold or something.

Everyone looks at you, like they’re expecting you to try to poison data or something. As if that was even possible. ³ You know people, okay? You have “contacts,” ones that predate your time as Dr. Naomi Hunter (and how did anyone think you got to be Dr. Naomi Hunter in the first place?), ones that might know useful things. It’s worth a try.

“Uh, okay, sure Naomi,” says Meryl.

“I mean, if you’d rather I not, I can always just go take another nap,” you say.

Nastasha sighs. Mei Ling smiles. Snake doesn’t have an adequately large enough reaction where you can actually judge it. You roll up your sleeves, and you get to work, because at least it's something to do.

141.80 -- Time: 1907 hours -- Location: Houston, TX

NEW MESSAGE FROM: Mei Ling

Mei Ling
>Snake, r we still on for tomorrow?

Snake
>Tomorrow?

Mei Ling
>Book club! :D

Snake
>Right. I thought you had that test to study for. Plus, the mission.

Mei Ling
>Are u saying u didnt read act 4 :( ⁴

Snake
>No, of course I read Act 4.

Mei Ling
>Well, what did u think??

Snake
>We'll talk about it tomorrow

Mei Ling
> :) :) :)

141.80 -- Time: 0856 hours -- Location: Houston, TX

You don’t know what to do, so you make him French toast. You can cook exactly one thing, and that thing is French toast, but as far as you can tell, you make it extraordinarily well.

You make coffee too. The coffee, you know, will be shit. No coffee that’s ever gotten within a hundred feet of any place you’ve ever lived has been decent, and that’s fine. Let others dream of coffee that doesn’t taste at least a little like old potato skins.

You knock on the door to Otacon’s bedroom once you have a plate. “Come in!” he says.

Otacon’s sitting at his desk, hammering away at the keyboard. You can tell -- and you don’t know why you’re surprised, really -- he hasn’t gone to sleep yet, it’s disturbingly natural for him to just go completely nocturnal on occasion.

“I made you breakfast, though I guess you haven’t slept any,” you say, setting the plate and cup down next to his computer, before sitting down on the corner of the bed.

He shrugs. “Yeah, sorry about that. I was going over some stuff Nastasha sent me, you know, plans and junk.”

“They couldn’t wait?”

“It’s sort of important stuff, Snake,” says Otacon, talking around a mouthful of French toast.

You want to say: not as important as you, but even you can realize how monstrously over-affectionate that sounds. Instead, you go for: “At least when we were sleeping together you had a regular sleep schedule.”

Which sounds awkward, but not as awkward as you think maybe it should? Or shouldn’t? It’s a joke that doesn’t elicit a wince from Otacon at least, which is the key thing, even tho he does laugh sort of strangely. “Haha well, not of us can just wake up at six every day like clockwork. It’s weird.”

“It’s not weird,” you say. “Going to bed at eight on the regular, on the other hand, definitely is.” You nod at the plate. “Eat your breakfast.”

“Dinner for me, if you want to get technical.”

“Whatever.”

“Did you remember to turn the stove off this time?” ⁵

“Did you remember to lock the doors this time?” ⁶

“Whatever,” says Otacon, imitating your voice. ⁷ He takes a sip of the coffee. “Blech, this is awful. Is there any orange juice left, or did you drink it all?”

“We just got back yesterday, how could I have drank it all in the” -- you check the clock -- “twenty hours since we went grocery shopping?”

“I’m sure you’d find a way.” He hands you the mug. “Orange juice, please,” he says imperiously.

You take a sip as you walk back to the kitchen, confident the coffee can’t be that bad. No, wait -- okay, yeah, it’s pretty bad.

Otacon holds out a hand for the orange juice without looking away from the computer. He’s frowning, which isn’t usually good news, but he’s halfway through his food, which is. “Was the stove off?”

“Yes,” you say, handing the cup back to him before sitting down on the bed again. ⁸ You resist the urge to try and see what he’s frowning at. “What’re you reading?”

He yawns. “Nothing terribly interesting, I’m afraid. I’ve got another hundred pages, just on rumors about what Carpenter’s working on, I don’t know where Nastasha gets this from.” Another huge yawn. “Here, look, see this?” He points to the screen. “Totally improbable, but I gotta read all of it anyway, just in case.”

You spend a few minutes reading over Otacon’s shoulder as he eats and scrolls through the document some more, telling you about how incredibly silly some of these rumors are, though you have to admit, you don’t quite get all of it. It doesn’t help that at some point his sentences turn into a series of choppy syllables interrupted by yawns.

“Right. You need to go to sleep,” you say, nudging Otacon towards his bed.

“No I don’t, Mom,” he says, in the middle of a gigantic yawn. “As you yourself pointed out, it’s morning, which is not when you’re supposed to sleep.”

“I’m not your mom. I’m your partner. ⁹ And I say you’re gonna end up killing yourself if this is the start of another stint of thirty-six hour days.”

“It’s not.”

“Right, which is why you should go to bed now.”

Otacon yawns and sort of collapses out of the chair onto the bed. He’d been up for -- how long now? You think back. Probably since he’d fallen asleep on the plane? Hmm. “You can’t make me, haha.”

“No, I can’t, but I can sit right here and look disapproving every time you try and work instead of sleep,” you say, thinking okay I put a book down somewhere last time I was here, that’s a decent excuse. “You know that look you give me whenever you see me smoke?”

“I don’t give you a look.”

“Yeah, well, you do, and I gotta tell you, it’s not nice. I’ll give you that one.”

“Snake, you can’t just sit here for eight hours watching me, that’s creepy,” he says, but he’s already half asleep, you’re pretty sure.

“I’m not gonna,” you say, brandishing the book, which you had found, it was right next to one of Otacon’s comics which isn’t where you remember putting it. Maybe Otacon had actually read something more involving than subpar manga lately. “See? I’m just going to sit here next to you and read.”

He squints at the book, gives his okay yeah, this checks out nod, and tries to rub his eyes but his hand meets glasses. “Can you put these on the nightstand?” he asks, taking them off and handing them to you.

You do so, and turn to chapter three, where you’d left off. “And for God’s sake, wake me up before it gets dark out for once,” he says.

“Will do. Night, Otacon.”

“Morning, Snake.”

You finish the book a while before Otacon wakes up, and he drools on your sleeve, but it’s fine.

141.80 -- Time: 1746 hours -- Location: Houston, TX

NEW MESSAGE FROM: Mei Ling

Mei Ling
>Snake we should read hamlet next

Snake
>What? We’ve both read Hamlet before. And seen it, I’m sure.

Mei Ling
>Yea but we could read it 2GETHER. No one else will talk about shakes w/ me.
Come on. We could rewatch some of the movies.
>U could make otacon watch the branagh film lmao

Snake
>That movie is four hours long.

Mei Ling
>Did u or did u not sit thru like a couple nge movies back 2 back.
And otacon doesnt even LIKE those movies ¹⁰

Snake
>Well I don’t like Branagh.

Mei Ling
>Hamlet is such a romantic play

Snake
>What? A romantic play?
>Mei Ling, it’s about murder. It’s literally about murder.
And guilt and ghosts and dead bodies and shit like that.

Mei Ling
>No I think its romantic

Snake
>Is this your attempt to bait me into agreeing to reading Hamlet next?

Mei Ling
>Is it working? :O

Snake
>I cannot believe you think it’s romantic.

Mei Ling
>So it IS working :)

141.80 -- Time: 1324 hours -- Location: Houston, TX

With downtime comes a sort of listless boredom. Self-reflection is good you suppose, but occasionally you’re left with too much time to reflect, or to listen to Otacon ramble.

“What do you think it means about us as a species, that we picked Daisy Bell to be the first song a computer sang?” asks Otacon one afternoon as he squints at one of his monitors.

The question surprises you. Not because the topic seems particularly out of the blue. When isn’t Otacon thinking about computers? You think he’s been thinking about his father lately too, and from there it’s only a short trip to 2001,¹¹ HAL,¹² IBM, and a computer singing somewhere in 1961. Rather the question’s surprising in that you tend to be the more philosophical one, something that’d surprised Otacon back when he still had the capacity to be surprised by you (and you by him), several years and lifetimes ago, back before he realized that spending five years in the middle of nowhere with no company but dogs gave you little time to do anything but think. Back before he’d seen your cardboard box full to the brim with Penguin Modern Philosophy Classics,¹³ a near full set, all purchased at the same time in a thrift shop in Juneau for twenty dollars sometime in early 2000 when everything was a little hazy. They’d lined up in a neat black row on the shelf above your bed in Alaska. Otacon had held up a trade paperback of The Archaeology of Knowledge¹⁴ with an incredulous expression on his face. “You get a little bored after the fifth week of being snowed in,” you had offered by way of explanation.

The second cardboard box, the one full of paperbacks not purchased all at once on a whim, but instead carefully collected over ten years was a little harder to dismiss as an accident of impulse control and desperate boredom. The face Otacon had made at your copy of Simulacra and Simulation¹⁵ in French was full of a little too much dawning comprehension for your liking. “It’s easier to read in the original,” you’d muttered.

You’re rambling. A sign of old age? A less funny joke when it’s a possibility. “Daisy Bell?” you say.

“Yeah, you know,” says Otacon. “The song the first demonstration of computer synthesized speech used.”

“I know that, Otacon.” You’re both reading at the moment, him on the computer and you rummaging through some files from your last acquisition, trying to find any sort of useful information. There are papers everywhere. As much as you might secretly read in your off time, your hands were not built for this work. “I just don’t know why it’s a question.”

“I don’t know,” he says, shifting in his chair. “I just thought it was strange, that’s all.”

“Maybe the programmers liked the song.”

“I guess I just thought it’s a very people thing to do, you know? To try and ascribe some sort of sentimental ideas to a computer, to make it more of a person that way. People do that a lot, with computers, try to make them seem more like a human."

“Or a dinosaur,” you say.

“Yes, or that too!”

“Why did you make Rex look like a dinosaur?”

“Well, I don’t think that a human-shaped robot of Rex’s size would have been very practical,” says Otacon.

“But the dinosaur was?”

“Anyway, it would’ve been hard to make a metal gear shaped like a man not look entirely silly.”

You resist the urge to say “But the dinosaur didn’t look silly,” because it might come a little close to hurting, and really Rex was sort of intimidating when met up close. “I’d’ve liked to see you try.”

Otacon finally looks away from his computer and at you, smiling. “Okay, Snake,” he says. “I can build you a man shaped metal gear, if you’d like.”

The terrifying thing about Otacon is that he might, if you asked. Otacon has an incredible talent for being utterly unable to say no to people.

So you don’t ask, mostly.

He started going to Shadow Joeses every day, and it was weird because he seemed to be there every day too? David, that is. Josh decided that this coffee shop, like a lot of them he guessed, only had maybe three or four people working for it even though it was open fourteen hours a day.

“You work a lot, you know,” he said one day to the brown haired barista.

“Yeah well so do you,” said the brunette. “What do you want today? Your usual?”

“Surprise me,” said Josh, certain that he would make something delicious for him.

“Ha ha okay,” said Dave. He turned to start making a coffee drink and as he was doing that he said, “How’s your project at work going?”

Joshua groaned because the project was a disaster. Well, okay, it wasn’t a disaster, but it could definitely be a disaster, maybe, and he thought he found something wrong with something someone else had done but . . . “There’s a problem with something and I brought it up with one of my bosses and they said that we should just ignore it because it wasn’t that big of a deal and everything would be fine.” He clenched his fists and stuck them in his pockets, except then he realized that he needed to actually pay so he took his hands out of his jacket pockets and started digging around for his wallet. “But it’s not going to be fine, and I should bring it up again but I’m afraid to push the issue.”

“Afraid of what?” asked David.

“I guess I don’t really know,” he said. “I don’t know. I’m afraid of a lot of things and I get really sick of it, you know.”

“Not really.”

He saw him fumbling for his wallet. “Forget about it.”

“Forget about what?” asked Josh.

“About paying for the drink. Haha, you know, something free for my favorite customer.”

“Oh jeez, gosh, thanks,” said Joshua. He thought maybe he shouldn’t take the drink for free, because what if it got Dave in trouble? He didn’t know if people got in trouble for things like that, giving away free drinks. but also Dave was smiling at him, Dave wanted to do something nice for him. “That’s really nice of you . . .”

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” said David. “And if you want my advice, you shouldn’t worry so much about work stuff. You should just do what you think is right, and then everything will work out. Going with what you think is the right thing to do is the most important thing, and you might regret it if you just go along with something for the sake of not getting in trouble at work.”

He thought about all the stuff that happened to his mom and he thought that he was probably right.

“Thanks for the advice.” Said Joshua. “And the coffee.”

“Like I said no big deal.”

Josh was about to turn around and leave and was half turned around but then Dave said “Hey, wait.”

“What is it?” asked Joshua.

“I just wanted to say that I know you’re very worried about all your work problems, but I believe in you. You’re a nice guy, and I believe you can make good decisions that don’t result in bad things happening. Even if you maybe did those things in the past. I have faith in you, and I hope you can have some faith in yourself too.”

Josh didn’t really know what to say to any of that, so he did what he usually did when he didn’t know what to do, and he just ran away. “I gotta go.”

“Have a good day. Hope you like the coffee.”

“I’m sure I will,” said Joshua. And he did.

Footnotes:

¹ Snake might be a super soldier, but it’s not like Otacon can’t smell smoke, especially when he knows what Snake’s likely to be up to. There’s only so much a guy can sneak around in seven hundred square feet worth of space.

² Snake remembered what it was (Gundam SEED Destiny, Otacon still wasn’t sure about how it stacked up compared to the last Gundam series), he always remembered everything Otacon showed him. It seemed important, even if he wasn’t sure of the practical application of that knowledge. Someday, though, the top ten reasons Otacon hated NGE would come up on a mission, and when it did, he would be set.

³ Not that she hadn’t tried, mind you.

⁴ That being Act IV of Duchess of Malfi, which they were still gamely trudging through. Act IV is the best act, and Mei Ling had almost conned Naomi into reading the play by talking about this one bit that’s about how the body’s like “a box of worm-seed, at best but a salvatory of green mummy,” but alas, it was not to be. Naomi gave Mei Ling an earful about Renaissance burial traditions, but resisted the siren song of the book club.

⁵ A guy forgets one time, and this is what he gets.

⁶ A guy forgets one -- okay, to be fair, somewhat consistently. Which was no good, considering, but that’s what security systems are for, probably.

⁷ Or at least, giving it the old college try.

⁸ It hadn’t been.

⁹ Which was something Snake never quite got over the thrill of saying. He’d had superiors, colleagues, combat buddies, fellow soldiers, commanders, friends and foes -- but never a partner.

¹⁰ Though Snake won’t admit it at this point, he absolutely did watch Death & Rebirth and End of Evangelion back to back with Otacon on Otacon’s request. Well, half on his request and half because hate-watch binges were always slightly concerning.

¹¹ The movie, not the year.

¹² The computer, not the man.

¹³ This book series appears to be one that only existed for one brief moment -- perhaps even only one single copy -- on one day in 2000. Never before or since has such a localized phenomena of philosophy texts from the last century in a readily available low priced form occurred, and perhaps such an event will, indeed, never occur again.

¹⁴ This is a joke about Foucault. Foucault was a French philosopher, he talked a lot about the history of ideas, how we get ideas and how we pass them along. The Archaeology of Knowledge is the sort of book that appeals to about three people in the whole world: it’s an examination of Foucault’s theory of history and the way he looks at different parts of history versus the way Historians as an Institution look at history. Sort of. Snake likes it mostly because it treats history like a thing that isn’t really real.

¹⁵ Another French philosopher, another terrible joke. Look: watch The Matrix. There you go, that’s all you gotta know.

Chapter Text

141.80 -- Time: 1400 hrs -- Location: Carpenter Mansion, Napa Valley CA

The rental car you take from the airport’s covered in dust by the end of the half mile long driveway leading up to the Carpenter’s house. Mansion. Big house attached to a compound of buildings, huge fancy thing with a mess of more utilitarian concrete and metal buildings tucked tastefully away to the back and sides. The kind of house that required a staff, the kind of compound that required guards. Wherever there weren’t guards, there’d be sure to be cameras. You spot a few on the way in, catalogue their location to recount to the others later, keep an eye out for the best spots to hide, potential ways out, hidden dangers.

“Looks bigger than in the pictures,” says Otacon, and you park the car.

Ellen greats you at the door, because of course she does, and it’s a little disorienting, the sudden drop back into this other mode of being, where you’re just some guy. Not a bad drop necessarily, but one that incurs a sudden moment of vertigo.

The room she shows you really isn’t that small, but you guess by the standards of the scale of everything else here, it’s downright miniscule.

The bed is definitely sort of on the small side, though. You glance at Ellen and she smiles at you, before launching into full on hostess mode.

“I really am so sorry about the size of your accommodations,” says Ellen, sounding anything but. “I’m afraid we’re getting ready to renovate, and I thought, well, these two young men, such a sweet couple” -- and somehow “couple” sounded like an accusation -- “won’t mind taking one for the team.”

“It’s fine, really,” you say, and plaster on a smile that your face -- still adjusting to things like diplomacy and casual small talk -- probably didn’t wear well. “We don’t mind.”

“Oh!” says Otacon, as if he’s realized he’s been prompted, “Yes, no trouble, no trouble at all.”

“Well, if you’re sure.” Ellen has a bright glint in her eyes, one that makes you think, unbidden, she’s testing us, but if she thought that this would make their cover fall apart, she’d misread them entirely.

“It’s bigger than our first apartment, actually, right Dave?”

“Yeah, I think so. Smells better, too.”

“It definitely smells better than that cabin you were living in before we moved in together --” he turns to Ellen “He had all these dogs, you know, and --”

“Hey! I liked that place.”

“Dave, it was thirty miles to the nearest convenience store.”

“Exactly.” ¹

Ellen smiles almost indulgently at the two of you. You’re beginning to feel like you didn’t get a good enough impression of her, before.

A clock chimes somewhere, and Ellen checks her watch. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m sorry, I forgot it’s time to feed the dogs.”

“The dogs?” says Otacon.

“Oh boy,” says Meryl.

“Can I. . . meet the dogs?” asks Otacon.

“Of course!” says Ellen.

Otacon’s headed in the most probable dog direction before you can as much as blink. Ellen follows him smiling a little to herself, and you’d be right there with them if it weren’t for the ringing in your ear. Naomi.

“Aren’t you supposed to be working, not messing around with animals?” chides Naomi.

“Vital part of our cover story,” you say.

She huffs and hangs up, And that’s the fly in the ointment, or maybe more aptly the gnat buzzing around your ear. The constant reminder that this, too, is artifice. You’d like to be that person you’re pretending to be for a moment. To relish the simple enjoyment of meeting some dogs, to exist in a place where this really is just your life, where the happiness you’re emulating is the end instead of the convoluted means to the end.

She’s keeping those dogs pretty close to the research facility too. Damn. That’ll be a pain to work around.

calling 140.96 . . .

“What’s up, Snake?”

>SAVE

DO NOT SAVE

“‘For thou art all that I can prize,/ My joy, my life, my rest.’² Snake, that means you should cherish the people around you, especially the ones you’re very close to.”

“Mei Ling, I don’t mean to criticize, but your quotes seem to be tending towards the more, er . . . sentimental lately.”

“Have they been? I hadn’t noticed!”

“Well, yeah, I mean --”

“Maybe you’re just projecting, Snake.”

“Okay, Mei Ling. Whatever you say. Still, I don’t know how this is really relevant to the mission.”

“You’re supposed to be in a committed relationship with the guy Otacon’s pretending to be, right? I’m just trying to help you get in character!”

“I guess that makes sense. Kinda.”

“I knew you’d get it. Bye, Snake! Be careful out there!”

“Er, yeah. I’ll make sure to do that.”

141.80 -- Time: 1600 hrs -- Location: Defense Solutions United R&D Lab

Carpenter’s eager to show off his fancy lab setup and insists on taking you both on a tour as soon as possible. You’re pretty sure the tour’s going to consist of a lot of crap you don’t understand, but no one will expect your input on anything which gives you plenty of time to get a better idea of what you’ll need to deal with tomorrow.

“I don’t see why I had to spend so much time researching the damn layout of the building if he was just going to give you a guided tour,” says Naomi over the codec.

“Hey, maybe we’ll luck out and he’ll hand over the keys to the place,” says Meryl.

You wish they would talk a little less when you’re trying to pay attention to important shit. Not like there’s not enough going on in your head already, without two extra voices.

You've been through your fair share of R&D labs in your time but very rarely by invitation. You focus more on memorizing the layout of the rooms -- potential blind spots, network connections, the placement of cameras -- than the exact details of what Carpenter is saying.

You hear someone following behind you. It’s Ellen.

“Uh, hello,” you say. Not your best conversation opener.

“Hi!” she says. “Came to see if I needed to rescue you from the technobabble team. Also, I left my sweater in Bob’s other office, wanted to run and get it.”

“Oh, that’s. . . fine. I’m fine. It’s not too bad?”

“Hmm,” she says. She’s dressed impeccably -- business casual but not too casual -- and not for the first time you wonder what she really does around here. She’s given the impression that she doesn’t work with her husband, but you think that might be dissembling. “You know, I had a friend, back in college. Well, ex-girlfriend really. She worked for NEST -- do you know what NEST is?”

“I’m familiar,” you say.

Ellen falls into lockstep with you, hands in her pockets in a way that shouldn’t look graceful but does anyway. “Well. She told me she worked for NEST because she saw the terrible potential nuclear technology -- nuclear weaponry in particular -- had to harm the world. She’d witnessed it herself. And I think back on that sometimes and wonder. . .”

“Wonder?” you say.

“I told Robert to stay away from making weapons himself,” she says. “Make the parts, be a contractor for a contractor, that’s fine, that’s far enough away. But is it really any different? Is it any safer?”

“ArmsTech,” you say.

She nods. “Yes. We’re not just producers any more. We’re targets. More than that, we make it easier for people to target others. A lot of people died at Shadow Moses. A lot more people will probably die at the hands of the weapons they develop.” She laughs. “Perhaps you think me terribly selfish, for only thinking of the ways I could be hurting others after I myself have been put in harm's way.”

“Everyone’s selfish,” you say.

“No, Mr. Bell,” she says, “You’re supposed to say that I’m not selfish at all, really.”

There’s a quiet moment, Carpenter and Otacon up far enough ahead that you can’t make out individual words, the clack of Ellen’s shoes against the floor. Nodding towards Otacon, she asks “Do you ever worry about him?”

The lab doesn’t look too much like Shadow Moses, except in all the ways it does. “Every day,” you say.

141.80 -- Time: 1730 hrs -- Location: Carpenter Mansion

Dinner happens. Conversation shifts from Carpenter’s own work to the stealth prototypes. Dinner goes better than the last time you had dinner with these two, in that you don’t have to do much talking. Just watch Otacon talk. Which is okay by you.

And then dessert comes around. “Let me lay it all out for you, Dr. Bell,” says Carpenter, and your hand creeps towards your dinner knife, because when people say things like “let me lay it all out for you” or “you see, the thing is” or “you might be interested to know that really” usually it means they’ve caught on to something and are going to try and kill you. Ellen spots you and raises an eyebrow, so you try to play it off like you were fidgeting, but damn, they did not hire you for you acting abilities, whose idea was this anyway?

I mean, you didn’t get hired at all, you were self employed, but, you know.

“Lay what all out for me?” asks Otacon.

Carpenter smiles like he’s trying to win the spot for picture next to the word gregarious in the dictionary. “I’d like to offer you a job with Defense Solutions United.”

“A job?” asks Otacon. “No offense, but I’m not really sure if my skills are really that well suited for what you do. No -- no offense, of course! Just, you do mostly parts manufacturing, right?”

“That’s correct,” says Carpenter.

“I’m more of a big picture sort of guy,” says Otacon.

“But the way we’re building larger projects is changing. Projects aren’t worked on from start to finish by the same people necessarily. And look at ArmsTech -- creating the finished product, if you will, paints a target on your back. Contract work is the work of the future, and it’s profitable work, safer work. You have some intriguing ideas, Dr. Bell. A lot you could bring to the table.”

“Gee, well, this sure is nice of you . . .” says Otacon. “But I don’t --”

“I of course don’t expect you to make the decision right away! Think it over, give it some time.”

“I really don’t . . .”

“At least promise me you’ll sleep on it,” says Carpenter.

Otacon looks around the table. Ellen smiles encouragingly. You try to look appropriately supportive instead of mildly concerned, but likely end up with the same expressionless face that you’ve been told you usually have.

“I know the job market’s more difficult now,” says Carpenter, the sort of man who experience tells you never knows quite when to quit. “What with that whole business with ArmsTech. Stocks plummeting, all those layoffs, practically hemorrhaging money.”

“Yeah,” says Otacon.

“Dreadful mess,” says Ellen.

“Yeah,” says Otacon again.

What’s hopefully not apparent to anyone else is that Otacon’s about three seconds away from very very quietly losing it. You kick his foot under the table and raise an eyebrow. He shakes his head as if to clear it.

He stands up, his chair making a terrible skreeeing noise against the floor. “Well,” he says. “I gotta go. Bye!” And he’s off.

Sort of the classic Otacon exit. But hard to cover for, given the circumstances.

“Oh dear,” says Carpenter. “I hope I didn’t say anything wrong.”

“Anything wrong?” you ask. “Er, no. Not at all. Thank you again for dinner. I really should --”

Carpenter shoos you out. “Think nothing of it. The pleasure was all mine. I’m sure you and Joshua have a lot to talk about.”

“We do,” you say.

141.80 -- Time: 2100 hrs -- Location: the bathroom

You give Otacon a few minutes before you actually start looking for him, not that it’s much of a search -- you knew he’d be in the bathroom. “Hey, Meryl, Mei Ling? Whoever’s watching,” you say to the codec.

“Yup,” says Meryl. “What’s up?”

“Can you not monitor anything for a few minutes?” you ask. Not that it isn’t anything Meryl hasn’t seen before.

“It’s not anything that I haven’t seen before,” says Meryl. “Roommates, months, Alaska. Like I have seen Otacon express a lot of emotions, most of them not positive ones. You remember this, right?”

“Still,” you say.

“Yeah, yeah, okay, I’ll avert my eyes,” says Meryl. “What’s up with you and chasing down people to talk to them in bathrooms, anyway?”

You hang up without bothering to respond, and knock on the door. “It’s me.”

“It’s unlocked,” he says and he does not sound great.

“Are you okay?” you ask.

“Sorry,” he says. He is definitely not okay. He’s sitting on the floor of the bathroom next to the toilet, the lid’s up. “I’m not actually gonna throw up it just feels like it, you know? Must’ve been something I ate.”

“Right,” you say. “Nothing to do with the job offer.”

“Career decisions are hard to make, Dave,” he says, which is admirably close to a joke. “The last job offer I got didn’t go so well.”

“I thought I was the one who gave you your last job offer?”

“No,” he says, “I offered you a job. I mean the other one, before that one.”

You sit down on the floor next to him. “Oh. That one.”

“Yeah. That one.”

“That didn’t end too well.”

“Not exactly my best exit interview.”

You want to say “that was a long time ago,” which isn’t true, and “you’re a different person now,” which is, but neither of those things seem as if they’ll be any use to Otacon right now, so you stay quiet, and watch him. He rubs at his face.

“They were nice, the people who hired me. They were nice, and they wanted to -- they told me they wanted to help people, not hurt them. I believed them, too, and they were so willing to overlook my -- the way my last job ended. The man who showed me around the place, he had blue eyes, I don’t know, like yours, I remember that because he kept complaining about his contacts, and how his daughter kept getting suspended. She was fifteen, he showed me a picture. He’s --” Dead. “-- gone now, and I can’t remember his name.”

“Well, you never were good at names.”

“Yes, I know, Dave. I guess at this point you’re gonna tell me to stop feeling so sorry for myself and get on with it, right?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“Hey,” you say. You tilt his face so he’s looking at you, because for right now, at least, you’re allowed that. “We can do this.”

“We,” he says. “I always like it when you say that.”

“Joshua. . .” you say. You struggle for a moment, trying to think of the right thing to say, the right words to pull Otacon out of this. To set everything right. “No matter what happened before, I’ve trusted all the decisions you’ve made since we met.”

“All of them?” he says. “Because I definitely remember a few --”

“Most of them. All the important ones. We’re not just the sum of our past mistakes. Whatever decision you make, I believe in you. I believe you’ll do the right thing.”

“You’re just saying that,” he says.

You could kiss him right now. The thought keeps leaping into your head, unexpectedly. You could, it would be easy, you have a thousand built-in excuses. You could make up more. You might even make yourself believe them. But any reciprocation -- not that you honestly think there would be any -- would be clouded over with a sense of obligation, with the necessity of maintaining your cover. You keep asking yourself how you’re supposed to act, to pull this off, to convince people you’re together, and mostly you don’t have to change a thing, and the one thing you might have to change is the thing you can’t. If you were someone else, you might hate how you keep thinking about this, but you’re not, and you don’t. It is what it is. You just have to keep your thoughts to yourself, you just have to keep going.

“I told you, we need to practice the secret handshake more, for situations like this,” you say.

Otacon shakes his head. “You and your secret handshake.”

“Come on, you know it’s a good idea,” you say. “You know you kinda love it.”

“Well, let’s not go too far, here,” says Otacon. “Love’s a strong word.”

Dave smiled. “I knew you could do it. I believed in you. I’ve always believed in you, since the moment we first met.”

Dave wrapped his arms around Josh, and leaned in to ki

141.80 -- Time: 2300 hrs -- Location: the guest bedroom

Otacon slams his laptop shut. You look up, maybe the slightest bit startled. He’s not one for being too rough with electronics if he can help it. He’s still perched in his armchair, computer in his lap, but now he’s just staring at it like it’s bitten him.

“Are you alright?” you ask.

You’ve been trying to read a chapter in this book for the past hour, but every two minutes Otacon sighs or rustles around in his chair, and you find yourself staring at him for a second or two too long. Now he’s staring at you, squinting, really -- you knew you should have talked to him about eye strain. Maybe the computer was too bright.

“Huh?” he says.

“Are you okay? Your glasses alright?”

“Oh, uh, yeah,” he says.

He looks away suddenly, eyes darting to the computer, the desk, the poorly composed painting of a sailboat hanging above the bed -- anything but you. Maybe his prescription isn’t the thing bothering him, then.

You should get up, probably -- you walk over and set the computer on the desk, put your hands on his shoulders and try to look him in the eyes. He doesn’t look hurt, though that doesn’t necessarily mean anything, and while him getting sick earlier was, you’re pretty sure, a physical reaction to an emotional reaction and not an actual physical illness, you never know. He could actually be allergic to something he ate. “You’re sure you’re fine?” you ask.

He gives you this one split second look of real panic before settling back into himself. “Jeez, what’s up with you? Of course I am.”

You let go of him, but not before patting him (somewhat awkwardly? maybe? maybe that’s what’s wrong -- maybe he’s noticed something's off) on the arm. “Sorry,” you say. “I just worry.”

He rubs his arm. “You’re strange.”

“You don’t think I’m that weird, do you?”

“Maybe just a little,” says Otacon.

“Anyway, we should get to bed,” you say.

“Oh???” says Otacon.

“Uh, yeah,” you say. “It’s late. We’re not at home, we have to engage with other people tomorrow.”

“What really is ‘late’?” he says. “What’s time, really, anyway? Who is to say your ‘late’ is not my ‘early’?”

Otacon only ever wants to debate the subjectivity of time with you when he’s trying to avoid going to sleep.³

“Josh . . . “ you say.

“Oh no,” he says. “No, you are not --”

But you are. You absolutely are. This is another thing that’s not -- not any different from anything else you usually do. Which, alright, yes, you’re beginning to see maybe how that’s a . . . a little something. But: you pick Otacon up and throw him over your shoulder, and he does what he does at least half the time, which is: he tells you to quit it in a very put-out tone of voice but he hasn’t quite mastered the art of not laughing while he’s doing that, so it’s not the most convincing protest. He’s not protesting as loudly as usual, though. You think maybe he’s still upset from earlier. Otacon -- and you realize the supreme irony here -- thinks too much. You think a lot of thoughts and don’t say many of them, but you take your problems apart and put them back together again and then set them aside -- either remove them or let them rest for a while. He thinks too much and, like laughing, can’t seem to master the art of stopping a particular train of thought.

“Do not throw me on the bed,” he says. “I am not gonna get a concussion because you misjudge the distance between the pillow and the headboard.”

Which you think shows a remarkable lack of trust in your Otacon throwing abilities. So you deposit him relatively gently instead, and he smiles at you, even though at this point usually he is loudly once again debating the subjectivity of time, it’s like you’ve lost the script. He’s looking at you and --

“I forgot to floss, you should let me get up and do that,” he says.

“Right,” you say. “No. I’ve heard that one before.” Generally as the prologue to him finding ten other reasons to be up for another five hours, until he actually properly passes out. He never actually flosses. It’s all lies and betrayal from stop to start.

You turn out the light. You get into bed. Otacon sighs and resignedly shuffles under the covers. Ellen wasn’t kidding: the bed’s. . . you’ve slept on smaller beds. You’ve probably slept on smaller beds with Otacon, honestly. But something’s different -- you understand what’s different on your end, obviously, but you don’t know what it is on his end. Maybe the fake marriage thing is starting to wear on him. Maybe he’s actually pissed at you for forcing him to go to sleep -- but you sort of doubt it. Whatever it is, it’s like someone's stuck an electric fence between the two of you, he’s very carefully trying to avoid touching you at all, which is difficult, because there’s not a whole lot of room. And you’re trying to respect his boundaries, but -- there’s not a whole lot of room.

“Go to sleep,” you say.

“Not all of us can sleep on command,” he says.

You get as comfortable as you can and he does the same. “Are you worried about something?”

“What? No?” he says. “Everything’s fine?”

You frown. He probably can’t see that. So you say, “Right. Okay. Sure.”

“It’s fine,” he says. He turns the codec back on (which is the indicator that the conversation is over) and turns over (which you shouldn’t read into, you strenuously try not to, but it’s generally pretty clear when something’s wrong with Otacon, and something’s wrong). “Goodnight.”

“Night,” you say.

Footnotes

¹ Honestly, he missed his dogs more than the isolation, and he missed his dogs a lot. But he also missed not getting shot at -- a thing that, like the dogs, could only ever be temporary.

² This is from a poem by Katherine Philips called “To My Excellent Lucasia, on Our Friendship.” Now, friendship could certainly be the subject of the poem, but Philips was also known as “The English Sappho” (this was in the mid 17th century) and the poem contains the line “I’ve all the world in thee,” so you know.

³ Whereas Snake refused to debate the subjectivity of time outside of the hours between ten am and six pm.

Chapter Text

141.80 -- Time: 0731 -- Location: The Guest Bedroom

You wake up, again, with Otacon’s head resting on yours, your head in the crook of his neck. Funny, you always thought you’d turn out to be a big spoon sort of guy but, well. You can’t complain.

Again, you’re reminded (improbably, since it’s the middle of October and you’re in California) of the best parts of Alaskan winters alone. Not the solitude, certainly not that, but the slowness of time, the calm, the dark. The good moments, when things felt like they might be getting better, the moments that were always very -- you struggle to think of the right words and all that comes to mind is a poem Mei Ling had made you read, these fragments I have shored against my ruin,¹ but that wasn’t right either, was it, because you had been ruined.

There’s all of that -- those fragments, that ruin -- and this too besides, and it occurs to you that this is that moment you had wanted earlier, what seems like ages ago. That moment of synthesis, between that old insufficient peace and this new fragile fleeting one. In Alaska, your eyes went to the door, the window, the door again, every few minutes, but right now you don’t feel any particular need to check anything. You’re on a mission, but everything seems secure. Otacon would have your back if anything went wrong. Not that Otacon could fight a cardboard cutout painted to look like a soldier let alone anyone actually armed without really injuring himself, but he would try, and that meant something.

You sneeze, suddenly. “Bless you,” mumbles Otacon.

You both freeze. Or at least you do internally, you’re pretty sure you don’t move at all. Otacon tenses up for a second, and you think damn, I’ve ruined it. You think: he’s awake now and it’s too late. But then he relaxes. You suppose -- you’re willing to suppose -- that he’s still asleep, that that was some unconscious subconscious whatever sleeptalk. You shouldn’t presume. You should get up. You have a lot of work to do today but you just can’t bring yourself to do it. One of Otacon’s hands moves from where it was flopped over your shoulder up to rest at the back of your head but he could just be shifting in his sleep.

You just want another five minutes, ten minutes, however long you can get away with, of not feeling like you need to be constantly looking for threats. Another tiny sliver of time in close physical contact with someone who you one hundred percent believe will not attempt to kill you or hurt you in any meaningful way. Something that you don’t get a lot of, and it’s just -- it’s nice. You keep saying that, and it’s so inadequate, so small of a word, but it’s the best you can do. “Nice” is commonplace and quiet and so is this in the best and brightest way. This weakness you wish you could crush or at least calm worries at your stomach but it’s not the worst sort of feeling. Weakness not in the sense that it’s bad, necessarily -- it’s as morally ambiguous as a gut punch can be.

Otacon’s breathing seems normal, his pulse a little fast but not exorbitantly so (your ear feels like it’s pressed right up against his heart, even though you know that’s not true) so if he’s awake maybe only partially, or maybe he thinks you’re asleep, or maybe you’re thinking too much, when you should just let this moment be still and quiet.

You should get up as much as you don’t want to, before someone checks up on you. This is going to be awkward (more for Otacon, probably, than you) no matter what so you might as well try and minimize the damage.

“We should probably get up,” you say, voice still muffled by Otacon’s shirt.

You pause. It occurs to you that

1. You’re acknowledging your consciousness while
2. Still having your head smushed up against Otacon’s general body mass, a situation that if he was fully awake he might find
3. Uncomfortable in some way. Also --
4. Your legs are kind of tangled and your left foot’s asleep, meaning extraction will not be as swift as you’d hoped for.

“Hand me my glasses,” Otacon mumbles.

You reach around him to the bedside table and grab them, push them onto his face. His hand meets yours somewhere around his left ear as he tries to adjust the glasses.

“Hi,” he says, taken aback suddenly. “Oh, hi.”

“Hi,” you say, dropping your hand, and you’re already nostalgic for about five minutes ago when he wasn’t looking anywhere but actually at you and you weren’t trying to figure out if he thought it was strange that you’d just put his glasses on for him instead of actually handing them to him.

“I just . . . woke up?” he says.

“Uh, yeah, same here,” you say, trying to move your left foot. “Sorry, foot’s asleep.”

It’s not the most awkward morning you’ve ever had, but Otacon keeps not looking at you, almost pointedly, which makes it one of the worse ones.

He pulls away first. “Getting a call,” he says, tapping his ear. Codec then.

“Sure,” you say. “I’ll just. . . get up.”

incoming call from 140.96 . . .

“Hi, Otacon!”

“Uh, hey Mei Ling, I didn’t realize I needed to save my data right now too, sorry.”

“Of course you do, Otacon! You’re every bit as much on this mission as Snake is. Your data gets autosaved every few hours, but it’s always good to go ahead and make sure you save before you make any kind of important decisions.”

“Important . . . decisions?”

“Would you like to save?”

>SAVE

DO NOT SAVE

“Otacon, John Webster said ‘Make not your heart so dead a piece of flesh,/ To fear more than to love.’”²

“Wait, no, let me guess what this one means before you give an explanation.”

“Uh, okay Otacon. Give it a shot!”

“Uh . . . let me think . . . well, he’s saying that your heart shouldn’t be dead, because you need it to live! And if you’re dead, you can’t fear or love, so you shouldn’t die. I mean, I don’t know what you’re getting at, Mei. That’s pretty obvious advice.”

“No, Otacon, it’s talking about your metaphorical heart.”

“Well he says ‘flesh,’ I don’t know what I’m supposed to think.”

“Otacon, the quote means: don’t shut yourself off so much that you become afraid to care about people.”

“I don’t really see how that’s relevant to the task at hand.”

“We all do this because we care about people, right? Specific people, but also people in general. Don’t lose sight of that. It’s what gives us all purpose, I think. Do you think so too?”

“Yeah . . . yeah I think I see your point. Though I don’t know why you didn’t just say that in the first place!”

“Because poetry is nice, Otacon. Sometimes using poetry to think about things helps you to examine your problems from a different angle!”

“If you say so.”

“I do! Good luck, Otacon.”

“Thanks, Mei.”

141.80 -- Time: 0900 hours -- Location: The Carpenter Mansion

Breakfast is -- well the actual food is nice you guess, for all that you’re paying attention to it, but the sensation of being there is something like that split second between someone beginning to lift up the bottom of the box you’re currently hiding underneath and someone aiming a gun at your face. A sort of mortified deadly horror. Well, it’s more like both of you were underneath the cardboard box and the ones lifting the box up. There’s definitely room in a lot of the cardboard boxes you use for two people. You think about kissing Otacon while you’re both underneath a -- no, you definitely don’t think about that. That would be weird, and you’re on a mission anyway, and what would Otacon think?

“How did you two sleep last night?” asks Ellen. She’s smiling. You know it’s paranoid to interpret friendly behavior as a sign that someone knows more than they’re saying, but that’s still what you can’t help but think.

“Uh. Fine,” you say.

“Oh, good, I’m glad that such a small bed didn’t bother you.”

“We hardly noticed, right?” you say.

“Haha, yeah,” says Otacon weakly.

calling 140.96 . . .

“Do you want to save, Snake?”

>SAVE

DO NOT SAVE

“‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediment.’ That’s from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116. Makes you think, huh Snake?”³

“And what exactly should I be thinking about?”⁴

“Oh, you know! Just, whatever comes to mind.”

“. . . Right.”

141.80 -- Time: 0207 -- Location: Outside Defense Solutions United Labs

About a thousand years of small talk later, you’re crouched in the bushes between the mansion and the labs, hoping to hell this works out.

“We’re just like Mulder and Scully,” says Otacon.

“No,” you say. You also want to say: “we’re hiding in some bushes waiting for a guard to move. Is this really the best time for this sort of conversation?” But he’s being quiet enough that it’s unreasonable to think that anyone would hear him, and if he’s talking about this he won’t have the time to fixate on some worry or another.

“Come on, we’re a little bit like Mulder and Scully, if Mulder and Scully hunted down robots and fought genetically altered soldiers and they were wanted by the government -- actually I think there’s at least a couple episodes like that, so it fits.”

“Scully didn’t have to wear a sneaking suit. And I don’t think shoulder pads are exactly my style.”

“Hey!” he says. The leaves on the bush shake just a little bit, and you put an hand on his arm to steady him. Sitting and doing nothing is not an inborn trait for either of you, but you’ve managed to cultivate stillness over the years. He hasn’t. “What if I’m Scully?”

“Otacon. . . I’m clearly Scully here.”

“I wanted to be Scully. Scully’s cooler.”

“Yeah,” you say. “That’s kinda the point I’m getting at.”

“The guard should be out of range of the cameras right now,” says Otacon, changing the subject. “Meryl?”

“Yeah, Snake’s right, you’re definitely Mulder,” says Meryl.

“Meryl. . .” you say.

“And Otacon’s right. You’re in the clear.”

“Got it,” you say. And to Otacon: “Stay here.”

It’s the work of two minutes or so, to knock out the guard with a tranq dart and drag his body into a little shed you’d already selected as the best place to store him. Otacon, for once, obligingly stays put.

From there on out, it’s business as usual. Only two more guards to incapacitate, a few security cameras to dodge. You’ve done this enough with Otacon that it’s nearly routine. Every time, you think back to Shadow Moses, think about how far you’ve come, how far he’s come. Everything’s easier now, or at least everything’s easier whenever Otacon doesn’t twist his ankle.⁵

Once you get to the server room, Otacon takes the lead.

“Hold this,” Otacon says, shoving his laptop into your hands and rooting around in the mess of cables connected to the back of the rack of servers.

“Wouldn’t it have been easier to just steal someone’s, er, password? To get into the er, database?”

“I considered that possibility,” says Otacon, “But there’s a good chance that no one besides Robert actually has the credentials to get to all of the information we want.”

“We’ve been living in the same house as him for a weekend, we could’ve just found out his password or something.”

“Yes, if he wrote it down somewhere or otherwise left evidence of it, which he might not have. And anyways, that would show up on a log somewhere, that he had logged in at this time, which would have alerted them as to what was up, it’s likely there’ll be more suspects for who actually broke into their database if we get in without using valid credentials. Could be any employee.”

“I mean, I think they’re gonna figure out it’s the two guys they never met before who were gone right after the break-in happened.”

“If I leave any evidence, which I won’t, because I’m the best. Honestly, put a little more faith in my skills, Snake.”

“I do,” you say.

Besides, you should’ve raised all these objections a little earlier, shouldn’t you? Instead of while I’m trying to concentrate?” He’s smiling.

“Just ‘hack’ faster.”

Everything’s quiet save for the whirring of computers -- servers? -- large computer somethings for a while, and then Otacon makes a distinctly disgruntled “hmm” sound.

“What?” you ask.

“It’s not here,” says Otacon, looking up from his computer.

“What do you mean, ‘it’s not here’? I know you read fast, but you can’t have read all that that fast.”

“No, Snake, I made an app ---” he sighs. “Nevermind. The point is it’s not here.”

“Well, where the hell is it, then?”

“I don’t know!”

“What if it’s there but just not where you think it is? Like under a weird filename or stored in an out of the way place that looks unimportant? Don’t you do that, when you want to hide files?”

“Ha ha,” he says, voice strained. “I don’t know why you would say silly things like that. And besides the program reads whole files -- or okay, more like it searches for keywords -- but the point is it doesn’t just look at file names. The entire thing would have to be in code for us to be missing it, and Carpenter’s paranoid, sure, but he also likes convenience -- I don’t think at this point he’d go to that extra step.”

“Okay then genius, where would it be? Where would you store a file that you never ever wanted anyone else to ever be able to read?”

Otacon’s face lights up. “Oh, that’s brilliant! Snake, you’re the genius!”

Not the response you were expecting. Otacon’s responses so rarely are. “Uh, thanks? So, where is it, then?”

“Well I mean, where’s the other place we’ve seen a computer around here?”

“The house.”

He nods. “The house. Not connected to any sort of network, but in a more secure location. Harder for any old employee to just wander in -- or for any old ‘employee’ to pretend they’re just ‘wandering in.’”

“So what you’re saying is . . . we have to backtrack.”

“We have to backtrack.”

“Great.”

141.52 -- Time: 0244 -- Location: Los Angeles, CA

“Nastasha, this is absurd,” says Naomi.

You mentally filter through the long list of things “this” could be referring to, and decide maybe for once she’s just thinking about the mission. “Not really,” you say. “I should have known that Robert wouldn’t leave information like that lying around on company servers, I should’ve suggested looking in the house in the first place.” A tremendous oversight on your part, one you’re inclined to kick yourself for, but later, maybe, after everyone’s safe.

“No, no, not that part,” says Naomi. “The Scully part.”

“The Scully part?” you ask.

“Solid Snake is no Scully,” she says, scoffing. “It’s laughable.”

“Oh?” you ask. You light a cigarette. One of the advantages of being alone while you’re working, you don’t have to go outside to smoke. “Are you saying you’re a better candidate?”

“An imminently better candidate, in fact.”

“Is this really the time to be arguing about whether or not you’re the Scully to Solid Snake’s Mulder?” you ask. “Besides, by the way, you’re definitely the Mulder there.”

“What if I was saying I was the Scully to Otacon’s Mulder?”

“Isn’t everyone?”

141.80 -- Time: 0249 -- Location: DSU Labs

And then you have to backtrack.

Not that difficult -- you check to make sure the two security guards are still unconscious and out of sight, that the cameras are still temporarily disabled, you’ve been working fast enough that nothing’s reset yet and it’s tense but not particularly tricky.

You do feel a little silly standing in the hallway of someone else’s fairly ordinary (if ornate) house wearing all your gear, though.

“Security camera up ahead,” says Meryl. “Right above that suit of armor. Okay, who the fuck actually has suits of armor in their house?” But Otacon’s got the stealth camo on and you can sneak past it okay (thank god for poor lighting and deep shadows) so it’s alright. Most of the security cameras you’d taken care of in the house, too, since some of them were vital to getting out to the labs in the first place. Next time you’re going to have to think about just taking all of them out, though that might be a little too obvious.

“His office, you think?” says Mei Ling, and Otacon nods.

The door to his office is locked with just a regular old lock, not any card readers or handprint scanners or anything ridiculous, and it’s easy enough to pick with a hairpin that Otacon apparently has on him (“hey, is that mine?” says Mei Ling, a little outraged, but Otacon doesn’t answer).

“Here we go,” says Otacon, sliding into the swivel chair in front of Carpenter’s desktop computer.

“How long do you need?” you ask.

“Not too long,” says Otacon. “Give me a few, sorry, the thing that’ll take the longest is actually copying the information to the flash drive.” He waves the little stick in the air. “But I think we’re all set.”

Something stinks. It’s going too well. It probably says a lot about you, that you’re not totally comfortable unless something has gone awfully wrong, but you don’t trust the ease with which things are proceeding.

“Okay,” you say. “I’m going to make sure that our escape route is still clear,” you say. “You okay in here?”

“Please,” says Otacon. “This is baby stuff.”

“I meant with the part where there could still be guards walking around nearby.”

“Oh,” he says. “Yeah, it’ll be fine. They’re probably not going to come in the house.”

You concede that this is probably true. “Alright. See you in ten.”

You double check everything, walk from the computer room to the planned exit, make sure there’s no guards around. All’s clear -- except you can hear dogs barking in the distance, getting closer. Loud enough to wake someone up.

“That’s no good,” you mutter.

“What’s the matter, Snake?” says Meryl over the codec. “I thought you were good with dogs.”

“Shut up Meryl,” you say.

“I mean, that’s what you said last time, isn’t it?”

“Shut up, Meryl.”

“Better hope there’s no snipers around, or golly, you’ll be in real trouble.”

“Are you ever gonna let that go?”

“Probably not!” ⁶

“Look, I’ll buy you dinner when we get outta here to make it up to you, will that make you happy?”

“Ooh, better not let your husband hear that.”

“I hope you’re not harassing him about this too,” you grumble.

“Naw,” says Meryl. “That’s no fun. Otacon’s too nice to needle.”

“You’ve clearly never seen him in the morning,” you mutter.

“Oh come on Snake, we were roommates.”

“So are we. And I’m saying, he’s not that nice in the morning.”

“Right, sure. ‘Roommates.’”

“Meryl . . .”

“Okay, okay, I’ll be good, I promise.”

“I’ve heard that one before,” you say. “If I remember right, it didn’t end too well.”
But the dogs are quieting down, at least. Probably everything’s going fine.

141.52 -- Time: 0310 -- Location: Los Angeles, CA

You’re halfway through something like a decent conversation with Naomi (ridiculous, but decent) when Otacon starts ringing you. Not everyone, just you. So you wave Naomi off to go give Mei Ling a hand and answer the call.

“Otacon? What’s this about?”

“Hey, Nastasha, I’ve grabbed almost all the files. Also, you were married before, right?”

Sometimes, conversations with Otacon can give you whiplash. Really this sort of talk is more Meryl’s job than yours.

“Yes, though, trust me, my marriage to Richard doesn’t exactly qualify me to hand out relationship advice.” To put it lightly.

“Who said I was calling to ask for relationship advice??”

Everyone you know is as subtle as a sack of bricks. Which -- that’s refreshing, after Richard. But it also lands you in situations like this one. “Otacon, please.”

“Please what?” he asks. You can hear him spinning around in the office chair that’s in front of Robert’s desk.

“Please don’t play this ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’ game,” you say. “It’s tiresome.”

“Haha, sorry, I guess I was just trying to figure out some things, and I thought, you know, you’re pretty sensible, maybe you’d know . . .”

“I’m really not the right person to ask about how to initiate or keep a long term relationship,” you say. “Or at least, I don’t think I am in this case.I think you already know the answer to whatever you were going to ask me, anyway. Now -- shouldn’t you be paying attention to what you’re doing?”

You’re not lying -- Otacon, you think, can’t be helped by what you have to say in the same way that Mei Ling, you hope, might be. Her issue is a more benign sort of waiting game, not the slow avalanche of disaster that is Otacon’s whatever.

“Alright, alright, sorry to bug you Nastasha.”

He’s still spinning in the damn office chair. “You’re not bugging me, Otacon. But Snake’ll be more than a little upset with me if you get killed because you were distracted while talking to me.”

“Okay, talk to you later.”

“Bye, Otacon,” you say.

You think you hear him say “Maybe if I called Naomi...” as you end the call, but you decide you’re probably just hearing things.

140.48 -- Time: 0315 -- Location: [Redacted]

Dr. Emmerich is calling you. Why the hell is Dr. Emmerich calling you? “What?” you say.

“Hey, Naomi, do you ever --”

“I don’t care,” you say, figuring it’s best to just shut him down right now. “Is it about the mission? Otherwise I don’t care. Scratch that, I probably don’t care if it’s about the mission, either.”

That’s not entirely true, but the less he knows about you, the better. Especially the less he knows about what you do or do not care about (save for the part where you are a bastion of uncaring about whatever it is he’s calling you about right now) the better.

“I’m just trying to get some advice from my pals, ha ha,” says Emmerich.

“Have you even finished doing your job?” you ask.

“I’m transferring the files,” he says, sounding bored. “It takes a minute or two when there’s enough data. Lucky mostly this is text documents, so it’s not hard to fit it all on one flash drive. I’m going to make a backup too, in case, since we should have enough time.”

“So?” you say, getting impatient. “What was it you were calling to ask about?”

“I thought you didn’t want to know,” he says.

“You can’t leave the thought hanging like that. By God, man, finish what you start.”

“Okay, uh, well, I guess -- do you ever get weird feelings at really inappropriate times? How do you make that go away?”

“Weird feelings?” you ask. “What, like anger or something?” Or like the murderous rage you were experiencing, listening to this conversation? That’s overselling it a little, but really.

“No, haha, not like that.” You can hear him spinning around in the office chair. “I guess, uh, like the opposite of that maybe.”

You could drag more words of clarification out of him, but odds are he’s talking about his hysterically obvious Snake obsession. So you don’t bother. Because you have to think about that enough as-is. Because no one will shut the fuck up about it. You’re starting to wish you hadn’t been sent to work with these people. Hah! You’re very funny!! Starting!

Back (alas) to Otacon. “I don’t get rid of them, I just hide them,” you say, which is dangerously close to true.

“How do you do that?” he says, sounding almost hopeful.

You don’t think he could hide anything, ever, even if he tried and tried. You’d find it endearing almost, if it weren’t for the, you know, unbridled hatred. Unbridled annoyance, at the very least. Definitely a little hatred in there somewhere.

“Practice,” you say. “I suggest you start practicing by pretending like you feel like not talking to me right now, and then follow up by not talking to me anymore, possibly ever.”

“Thanks, Naomi,” he says, and he’s not kidding. You hate him. “I appreciate it.”

“Please, get off the call and concentrate before you do something embarrassing like get yourself killed” you say, but you hang up before he can.

calling 140.96 . . .

“Otacon? Do you want to save?”

SAVE

>DO NOT SAVE

“You don’t want to save? What’s up? Why’d you call me?”

“Mei, do you have any proverbs for uh, not letting your feelings get in the way of friendships? Hypothetically, I mean. For the future, or something, I guess. In case someone needed that sorta proverb, you know, haha.”

“I’m not sure, I’d have to look -- is there a particular reason you’re asking me now all of the sudden?”

“Uh, just wondering?”

“Right.”

“Anyway --”

“You know,” says Mei, “The first time I ever figured out I had a crush on a girl, that girl was my best friend.”

“Oh?” asks Otacon.

“Yeah,” says Mei Ling. “My best friend all through middle school and into high school, and here I was trying very hard not to ruin that friendship with a crush. I didn’t think she even liked girls.”

“So what did you do?”

“I worried about it for almost a semester before bringing it up to her. She’d been thinking the same things about me, apparently, and we dated for the rest of high school. It didn’t last, of course, because it was high school, but I still talk to her sometimes. We’re still friends. So that’s what I think. I don’t think feelings can get in the way of friendships, unless the person you’re friends with wasn’t that great to start with, or unless you let them. Are you sure you don’t want to save your data?

>SAVE

DO NOT SAVE

“Thanks, Mei. Sorry for the weird question.”

“It’s okay, Otacon! I hope talking about it helped a little. Good luck!”

NEW MESSAGE FROM: Mei Ling

Mei Ling
>Good news I think Otacon knows : )

NEW MESSAGE FROM: Mulder (Otacon)

Mulder (Otacon)
>I think u should def ask mei ling out

Meryl
>Uh?

Mulder (Otacon)
>I think it would go over well!!!! If u wanted 2

Meryl
>WAIT u didnt like tell her or anything did u

Mulder (Otacon)
>No of course not

Meryl
>Ok. Thx bro

141.80 -- Time: 0320 -- Location: The Carpenter Mansion

You’re done checking your escape route, you’re headed back to the office, when you hear the click of a gun and the soft scuffling noise of dogs moving around and you turn and there’s Ellen.

“Uh,” you say, because this is how it ends, you in your sneaking suit in some woman’s kitchen, surrounded by her overly affectionate extremely loud extremely large dogs. You hope Otacon will tell the press a convincing story about your death. One that involves drowning tragically in Manhattan.

Ellen does not look any of the emotions you particularly expected her to look. It’s not that you underestimated her as much as you didn’t have any sort of method of estimating in the first place. You don’t know what civilian women do when met with you, in a kitchen, attempting to extricate your (your mind struggles) whatever the hell Otacon is, your Otacon, after he’s stolen top secret information from their husband’s computer.

She has a gun, but doesn’t look particularly inclined to use it. The safety’s on. She looks — amused maybe? As if she’s received an unexpected present from an old acquaintance.

You relax the grip on your gun a bit, though you don’t lower it completely. You have no real intention of shooting Ellen Carpenter, not unless you really have to, but it doesn’t hurt to remind someone that you can, hypothetically, shoot them. “I won’t insult your intelligence by pretending I got lost on the way to the bathroom,” you say.

“No, I don’t think that excuse would quite work,” she says. “In any case, it’s quite all right. I’m guessing your Dr. Emmerich has finished up in my husband’s office?”

“Er,” you say. Which isn’t quite, you think, an adequate reaction, so you try again. “Er?”

There. Much better.

Ellen looks away from you and towards her dogs, as if just noticing them for the first time. She crouches, and pets the head of a particularly large labrador, which snuffs at her excitedly. “I love my husband,” she says conversationally, “But I don’t much love his work, or the people he works with, for that matter.”

“Is that why you invited us here?”

“Well, it really was Bob’s idea. I’ll admit I hadn’t worked out quite who you were, then, which was silly.” She laughs. “You really do look like him, you know.”

Sometimes you wonder how many times you will have to kill Big Boss. How many times you’ll have to kill him in small ways, before he’s gone from your life entirely. How many times people will look at you and see him, how many times you’ll have to wonder which him they see.

“So I’ve heard,” you say. “Though if you’ll excuse me, you look sort of young to have known him.”

“I didn’t,” she says, standing, tucking her gun into a holster she’d hidden beneath the long hem of her shirt. “But my mom had pictures. She worked with him, back in the sixties.”

“The sixties?”

“Yes, you know, the decade. She was a medical consultant, said he was the strangest man.” She laughs. “You are too.”

“I’m not Big Boss,” you say.

“Thank goodness for that,” she says. Her tone grows a little more solemn. “I hope you found what you were looking for here. I hope you can undo some of what Robert’s help do.”

“I’m not a hero,” you say. “In case that’s what you’re hoping I am. I’m just a soldier, doing the only thing I know. I’m no hero, and I’m no Big Boss, either.”

“Yes, well,” she says. “Saying things like that is one of the reasons you are a hero.” She regards you with a smile you don’t particularly like, even if it’s meant to be kind. “Give Dr. Emmerich my regards.⁷ You’ll find your path to the exit will be clear. Try not to break too many things on the way out, I’d appreciate it.” She turns and walks away, her dogs trotting before and after and around her, and she doesn’t look back.

141.80 -- Time: 0331 -- Location: The Carpenter Mansion

Otacon’s watching the door when you burst in. “Snake? What’s up? Nastasha said something was wrong, but then she said she thought everything was okay? And --”

“Later. We have to go, right now.”

He doesn’t ask any questions, just follows you out the door, down the hall. You pause for a second outside the door to the kitchen. You’d planned all along to go through there as part of the escape route, but there’s the chance that Ellen’s still there. But you listen, for a long tense minute, even though she’d show up on your radar -- wouldn’t she? There’s nothing though, no sound from the other room, just Otacon breathing down your neck and the rustle-y clank of his computer bag hitting his leg whenever he shifts. He tries not to be fidgety, but he hasn’t quite trained himself out of it entirely yet.

You think you hear for a second the jangle of a dog’s collar, but there’s no one around, you’re pretty sure, no awkward confrontation with Ellen when you go through the kitchen again. It’s silent, silent, but not the too-too silent of imminent trouble.

There’s a couple of ways this could play out still:

1. This is a trap, and someone
1. stops (or tries to stop) you before you get out of the house.
2. stops (or tries to stop) you before you get onto the highway.
3. tracks (or tries to track) you all the way back to Houston.
2. This isn’t a trap, but you don’t get to the highway anyway, because someone wasn’t told it isn’t a trap, and you get shot and Otacon gets shot.
3. This isn’t a trap that Ellen set intentionally, but Carpenter finds out about it anyway.
1. Or already knows.
2. and will take what to him looks like appropriate action, and who knows what that’ll be.
4. Everything goes just fine.

You don’t like your chances. Somehow, some way, you’re pretty sure this is going to come back to bite you in the ass.

The car’s still there. The gates are open. There’s no guards watching.

“This is weird,” mutters Otacon.

“Shh,” you say. There’s still the chance that this is a trap, or that Ellen’s only giving you a half second head start, or that someone she hasn’t called off will emerge from the fucking shrubbery, with your luck.

You check the car, make sure there’s no bomb, no obvious tampering. It’s possible there’s a tracking device on it, but you don’t have enough time to look for that right now, and you’ll ditch this one soon enough. It won’t kill you, probaby, so it’ll do.

You get in the car. Otacon gets in the car. You start the car. The car doesn’t explode. So far, so good.

“Maybe Bob is your uncle?” says Otacon as you drive out through the front gates. “Maybe that’s why no one’s tried to stop us? Er, so far, I mean.”

You think he’s kidding a little. You think. “Don’t even start,” you say.

Footnotes

¹ From T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land, a poem referentially dense enough that, in a desperate bid to figure out which languages Eliot was using in the last few lines, made Snake read.

² This is from The Duchess of Malfi, Act I Scene 3, during the part where the Duchess and her love interest (spoilers) secretly get married. Since Mei Ling had started a book club with Snake, she had had to be more careful about not revealing the fact that she just took most of her quotes and proverbs from whatever she was reading at the moment. So Otacon got all the choice Malfi quotes, though they were wasted on him.

³ Mei Ling confessed to Meryl around this point that she was down to quoting love poetry and hoping that it would eventually get through. “Don’t you think this is just a little too on the nose, though?” Meryl asked. “I think Otacon’s inability to see the obvious might be rubbing off on Snake,” Mei Ling said.

⁴ It’s not that Snake hadn’t heard the Sonnet before — he had. He’d just never really thought about it in a context where it was something about himself.

⁵ It’s happened more than once.

⁶ Unfortunately for Snake, pretty much everyone he knew was better at holding grudges than him. Fortunately for him, Meryl was mostly kidding.

⁷ What Ellen didn’t have the heart to tell Snake was that she, an avid BattleBots fan, recognized Otacon long before she recognized Snake. His team swept the heavyweight class in Season Three, really spectacular work, and Otacon had sort of distinctly terrible hair no matter what year it was.

Chapter Text

141.80 -- Time: 0507 hrs -- Location: On the Road

No one comes after you.

After you get past Livermore you both stop looking over your shoulder. Otacon relaxes enough to start explaining, in detail, the differences between Gunbuster and Diebuster and even though you don’t have any context, it’s comforting to hear him ramble on. All you have to do to ensure there’s a steady stream of conversation is to occasionally disagree on some small point or another.¹ Or bring up Evangelion.²

By the time you’re almost to Los Angeles, it’s mid morning and you’ve managed to miss the worst of the traffic. You pull over to the side of the road so Otacon can take the wheel, since he’ll be jittery enough to be awake for at least ten more hours, and you need to sleep.

Otacon doesn’t talk nearly as much while he’s driving.³ Not that it would matter much if he did -- you take your sleep when you can, and you’re out almost as soon as the car starts.

The next twenty four hours consist of trading rental cars in for ones under different names, looking in the rearview mirror every ten minutes, the endless struggle that is finding a radio station you can both stomach, and your attempts to bore Otacon to sleep by talking about Deleuze,⁴ and when that proves to be above his boredom threshold, you switch to Wittgenstein.⁵

When you get to El Paso, near midnight, you wake him up so you can switch again, because you know him well enough by now to know he’ll want to listen to Coast to Coast AM⁶ and you know yourself well enough to know you should sleep if you could and that you definitely don’t want to listen to that horseshit, and while the rapt eagle-eyed attention Otacon pays to things that don’t make sense to you (UFOs, animated shows, the washing instructions on tags inside clothes) should make you feel some sort of contempt, instead it just makes you feel warm inside.

Usually he wakes up when you go from highways to smaller streets but he’s still asleep when you pull into the gas station parking lot. He’s slumped against the passenger side door and his glasses are hanging crooked on his nose. “Otacon,” you say, leaning over the gear stick to shake his shoulder, as gently as you can, “Otacon, wake up.”

You want to touch his hair, which looks soft in the parking lot lights, but you think that might be a little creepy. He looks cute, even like this, in the same rumpled clothes he’s been wearing for over a day, curled up.

“Otacon,” you say, a little louder. The gear stick is digging into your ribs, and you squeeze his arm. “Time to get up.”

“Hmm?” he says, stirring a little.

“Your turn to drive,” you say.

He pushes his glasses up, and looks at the clock. “Oh, thanks,” he says, smiling sweetly.

You’ve done this how many times before? This exact sequence of events, but it’s still different. “We’ve got another ten hours or so to go,” you say.

“Not too bad,” he says, yawning.

“We’re not out of the woods yet.”

But no one comes after you.

Footnotes

¹ Snake’s all time record for best ratio of comment length to tangential rant length didn’t come around until 2012, six words for two whole hours of conversation -- “PMMM might be better than Utena.” He was rather proud of that one.

² How someone could know so much about a series they’d never watched when their only source of information was someone who apparently loathed the thing was an eternal mystery to Snake, but sometimes it did a body good to get mad about something that couldn’t really hurt you the way other things you might want to yell about could.

³ “I’m trying to concentrate!” being the reason given when Snake first asked, in the fall of 2005, while they were on the way to one of their first real missions. “We’re in Oklahoma, Otacon,” Snake had said. “There’s not really even anything to hit.” But mostly he was quiet, and mostly Snake slept.

⁴ A French philosopher who talked a lot about concepts like the Virtual with a capital V, slightly too close to something Otacon might hypothetically someday maybe be interested in.

⁵ Wittgenstein was an analytic philosopher, or, to put the same thought more simply, he was boring. Snake didn’t like analytic philosophy much, but he’d been fooled into reading it by all the “philosophy of language” stuff.

⁶ A late night talk radio show about the paranormal and conspiracy theories and UFOs and that sort of thing. Snake learned to mentally tune it out.

140.48 -- Time: 1304 hrs -- Location: [Redacted]

Inexplicably, it seems that everything will turn out alright, which grates on your nerves. Consequence free foolish decisions, that’s the most appropriate summation of this entire endeavor. Everyone got home safely, to your chagrin, and now you have to talk to them more over a conference call.

“So, anyone wanna explain how the fact that Ellen Carpenter’s mother used to work for Big Boss didn’t come up in research?” asks Snake. “Or, even better, who the hell was she?”

“I don’t know,” says Mei Ling. “I guess I didn’t think it was that relevant? And anyway, there wasn’t very much.”

“Nastasha?” asks Snake.

“We didn’t spend a lot of time talking about our parents.”

“Nice,” says Meryl.

“Worked for Big Boss?” you ask. You’re starting to regret your tendency to zone out during these little chats. “What was her name?”

“Dr. Jane Clark,” says Mei Ling. “Why?”

Your blood freezes, and you sink back into your thoughts, only barely listening, to make sure that no one else knows what you knows because --

You've put it together, though thankfully no one else has. Dr. Clark -- there could only really be one possible Clark. You don't believe in coincidences, not anymore.

You can't say anything, is the vexing thing. You cannot tell your associates that this woman is the daughter of the woman who helped, in a way, kill your brother, the daughter of the woman you helped kill in turn. You don't want their eyes on you. The impulse for revenge rises hot and sudden, but less potent than usual. Maybe because you'd already enacted a preemptive retaliation against her, three years ago, already irrevocably damaged her family.

No one here knows what it's like to kill not out of necessity or by accident but out of spite, and it's this, of all things, that makes you miss your brother. He, you think, understood that more than any of these people could. You miss him and you miss when your deceit had a clear and simple goal -- destroy Solid Snake. You still want that a little, deep down. But it doesn’t drive you like it used to.

“Naomi, are you paying attention like, at all?” asks Meryl.

“No, not in the slightest,” you say, and thank goodness this is in character. If you’re even playing a character anymore. Are you? Maybe only as much as anyone else plays a character.

“Naomi’s not even my real name,” you mutter.

“Hmm?” says Mei Ling. Her gaze shifts to you, her ponytail swishing over her shoulder. “What was that?”

“Nothing,” you say. “Absolutely nothing.” No one knows it anymore. At least Frankie had his name, at the end.

Not much else, but he had that.

Dave smiled. “I knew you could do it. I believed in you. I’ve always believed in you, since the moment we first met.”

Dave wrapped his arms around Josh, and leaned in to ki

Dave put his arm on Josh’s shoulder and smiled softly, like

Dave wrapped his arms around Josh, and leaned in to kiss him. He was surprised that someone so handsome and neat would want to kiss him at all, and he was surprised about how much he wanted him to do that. Dave’s broad hands were on Josh’s back as he pressed him closer. His eyes were like the

Dave hugged Joshua briefly, which flustered Joshua. He didn’t think the other man was the sort of guy who did that kind of thing very often. But it was nice, he thought. It was pretty okay. He probably wouldn’t mind very much if he did it again.

“Thank you,” said Josh. “I -- I did my best.”

“Well, and you succeeded,” said Dave. “Tell you what, drinks are on me today. In celebration.”

Joshua smiled widely. “Thanks, you don’t have to do that.”

“Nonsense,” said Dave magnanimously. “That was quite an accomplishment.”

When Dave smiled at him again, Josh thought that maybe he might like him more than as a friend. He might like him a lot. Josh didn’t know what to do about that, and as much as he wanted to stay and talk to Dave some more, he felt like he should maybe leave because he didn’t know what to do. It was really nice, being around Dave at all. . .

Suddenly he knew that he had to leave or he might embarrass himself or say something stupid or do something regrettable since he just had a big revelation. “I gotta go,” he said in a rush, “Sorry I just remembered something.” He made a clumsy exit from the shop, but he knew even with that less than graceful exit it wouldn’t be long before he was back again.

141.80 -- Time: 1456 hrs -- Location: Houston, TX

New Message To: Mei Ling

Snake
>What film version do you think Otacon would like the best?

Mei Ling
>Of what?

Snake
>Hamlet.

Mei Ling
>Aww r u gonna try and rope him into watching it

Snake
>Well it’s just an important thing to consider, you know.

Mei Ling
>I still think u shd go 4 the branagh

Snake
>Are you trying to punish Otacon for something?

Mei Ling
>I just wanna see how long hed be willing 2 stick it out 4 u :P

Snake
>. . .

Mei Ling
>Bsides what r ur other options? Olivier is a no go

Snake
>Olivier is not on the table.⁷ Neither is Gibson.⁸ Jacobi?⁹

Mei Ling
>The film looks horrible¹⁰

Snake
>Its not about the cinematography!

Mei Ling
>Its a little bit about the cinematography. Hawke?¹¹

Snake
>They give Horatio a girlfriend.¹²

Mei Ling
>Yes well beggars cant be choosers!! At least its not Gibson.

Snake
>That’s true.

Mei Ling
>You could read it out loud to him

Snake
>That’d be weird.

Mei Ling
>I’m sure hed love to hear it : )

Snake
>Love to hear it?

Mei Ling
>: ) : )

Footnotes

⁷ The 1948 film version by Laurence Olivier. Considered to be A Classic, but Olivier is one of those people who makes the relationship between Gertrude and Hamlet Sorta Weird. The actress who plays Gertrude (Hamlet’s mom) is eleven years younger than Olivier (who plays Hamlet).

⁸ The 1990 film directed by Zeffirelli and starring Mel Gibson. Helena Bonham Carter turns in a good performance as Ophelia, but Gibson plays the Hamlet Hamlet wishes he was which is to say -- weirdly Rugged and Masculine, not very philosophical, straightforward. It’s not good.

⁹ The 1980 BBC Television version of Hamlet, starring Derek Jacobi. Patrick Stewart is Claudius, which is pretty neat.

¹⁰ It, like all of the many film versions of classic plays the BBC made during the late seventies and early eighties, looks like it was filmed on a potato.

¹¹ Directed by Michael Almereyda, starring Ethan Hawke, from 2000. Hamlet’s a film student and incorrigibly pretentious, which works pretty well actually.

¹² It’s weird.

140.15 -- Time: 1614 hrs -- Location: Washington D.C.

You’re bored out of your mind, halfway considering asking Otacon if he and Snake want help bungling through the new intel they got, trying to figure out how many situps is too many sit ups when you hear your phone ringing. You scramble for it, struggling to find it in plain sight,¹³ hoping it might be -- but no. It’s just Otacon calling.

“Otacon? What’s up?” you say. You weren’t expecting to hear from him, honestly. “Did Naomi finally figure out how to block your frequency so you’re calling me to talk about Snake’s anatomy instead?”

“Ha ha!” he says. “That’s a very funny! Joke you made, Meryl.”

“Yeah, okay, so what’s up?”

A pause. “Uh, Meryl?”

You’ve started flipping through the, like, poetry book you got. You have no idea who any of these people are. But it’s a really big one, so there’s gotta be something in here that Mei likes. “Yeah bud, still here.”

“Have you ever, uh, liked someone that you thought maybe it wasn’t a good idea to?” he asks.

Boy oh boy oh boy. You try and keep a straight face, then remember that no, it’s not a codec, it’s just a phone, you can make all the faces you want, and scowl at your poetry book. “Is this about that time you had a crush on the lady who shot me?”

“I thought that was on the list of things that we weren’t ever going to bring up, ever,” says Otacon.

Which would like, sound like a sort of typical Melodramatic Otacon Statement maybe but there’s a literal list, you got a physical copy of it in a drawer somewhere and everything, it’s signed. “The list is up for review. And, I dunno, it seemed relevant. But I guess it’s not?”

“Jeez, well, sorry,” he says.

Maybe you shouldn’t’ve brought it up. The List exists for a reason. The List got you through like, the first two weeks of your brief stint as roommates last year. “I’m just messin with ya, Otacon, who hasn’t had a crush on someone who’s tried to kill their friend later?”¹⁴

“I really am sorry about that,” he says, awkwardly. Well, more awkwardly than Otacon normally says stuff, which is pretty fuckin awkward.

“It’s whatever,” you say. “Everybody makes mistakes.”

“Yeah, you had a crush on Snake, right?”

That one time you had a crush on Snake for like ten minutes is also on the list of Things We’re Never Talking About, Ever. Why does everyone keep bringing that up. “Why does everyone keep bringing that up?! It was a high stress situation.” You rest your chin on your hand. You’re just baiting him now, and you’d feel bad except for how you are so over this whole song and dance. “I guess he’s kinda cute, for a guy. Nice when he’s not being a total bastard. Shame about the hair, though.”

“I like his hair!”

Of course he does. He probably loves the damn hair. “Otacon, it’s a mullet. It’s 2006, and it’s a mullet.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that!”

There is. “Why don’t you just talk to him?”

“Snake? About his hair?”

“No I mean your mystery crush.” You deserve an award for not putting air quotes around “mystery crush.”

“Him?! Why do you assume it’s a him?”

“Or her, or them,” you say. You’d already decided going the “Otacon, everyone knows about your huge crush on Solid Snake and vice versa” route would only serve to embarrass him and erase whatever progress had been made. “Just, talk to them. Maybe they feel the same way?”

“I can’t do that!”

“You have to talk about your feelings at some point,” you say.

“But why??” asks Otacon.

“You’re not reading a fanfic dude. Real life doesn’t have epigraphs, Otacon.”

“Read a lot of fanfic, huh?!” he says, as if this is an adequate comeback.

“Yes,” you say. “My favorite one is seventy thousand words long and it’s called ‘get your shit together, Otacon.’”

“A real work of fiction, then.”

“You’re not doin’ too bad. Got your very own NGO and everything.”

“Yeah well, apparently those don’t stop you from forming shitty emotional attachments.”

That’s the second time you’ve ever heard Otacon swear, this might. . . this might actually be worse than you thought.

“Otacon, we’re pals, right?”

“I guess,” he says.

“Feelin’ the love, man.”

You can like, feel him rolling his eyes all the way from over here. “Of course we’re friends, Meryl.”

“You could just tell me about it,” you say, gently as you can. “I’m not gonna blab your personal shit to anyone.”

“You’d tell Mei Ling.”

“I wouldn’t, I swear,” you say. It’s probably best not to mention that Mei Ling is likely already monitoring this call. It’s just her way. “Or you could talk to Snake about it.”

“I -- would rather not talk about it with Snake, I think,” he says.

“Okay, well, dish then. Come on, it can’t be that bad. Unless you’re trying to say you have an unfortunate crush on me, in which case: one, yeah, it’s totally that bad and two, sorry, you’re really really not my type.”

“I. . .” he trails off, and you’re like, so close, come on, once he says it out loud, you know he’ll be able to follow through, come on -- “I don’t think I can, sorry. It was stupid, calling you, sorry.”

You sigh. “It’s okay man. Everything in its own time, and all that.”

“Thanks Meryl,” he says, and sighs. There’s the clink and rustle of him taking his glasses off to polish off a smudge. “Sorry. I better get going.”

“Okay, talk to you later.” Before he can hang up, though, you say, “Hey,” say as quietly as you know how, “Just talk to him?”

“Really gotta go Meryl,” he says, kinda dejected, and hangs up.

Footnotes

¹³ It was hidden underneath a flipped open recently purchased poetry anthology Meryl had left on the kitchen counter.

¹⁴ Most people, it turns out.

141.80 -- Time: 2008 hrs -- Location: Houston, TX

For some reason, Otacon agrees to watch Hamlet with you, even though you tell him beforehand that yeah, it’s the four hour version. He’s pretending to have fallen asleep, you’re not sure why. Maybe the Branagh really is that boring? Maybe he’s trying to pretend it’s even more boring than it actually is, so that you never attempt to subject him to something like it again? You can’t pretend you haven’t done the same thing, occasionally, though usually you just actually fall asleep. ‘Slice of life anime,’ whatever the hell that was, apparently wasn’t your thing. The thing is, he’s pretending to have fallen asleep right on your shoulder, which is not a standard move in your repertoire of anime selection suggestion, so it's unfamiliar territory. Well, okay. Maybe you’ve done that a few times.

Your arm is on the back of the couch, so it’s easy to put it around Otacon’s shoulders, because why the hell not, honestly. He’s half asleep for real, you’re pretty sure, which is kind of a shame because it’s the graveyard scene and you like the graveyard scene,¹⁵ but that’s probably for the best, too, cause there’s a skull and the last time Otacon had seen one of those he’d gotten a little green around the gills.¹⁶ Blah blah, you should move, blah blah, you should feel bad, but Otacon asleep before midnight is a minor miracle, he’d feel awkward about the whole thing if you woke him up. Or he’d think you felt awkward about it, and you don’t. You’re comfortable so what the hell. This is the kind of thing you think Otacon gets hung up over, small things. He worries over tiny potentially untidy moments, how they could ruin something. As if his hand curled on your chest could ruin anything after everything else, even if you didn’t care about him the way you do.

At some point he does drift off, only to be woken up by a particularly loudly delivered line.

“Snake?”

“It was just the movie, Otacon, go back to sleep,” you say.

“Okay,” he says, and goes back to sleep.

You could get used to this, you think, just this.

Footnotes

¹⁵ By “the graveyard scene,” Snake means Act 5 scene 4 of Hamlet, where Hamlet returns to Denmark after being kidnapped by pirates (really) and gets into a philosophical argument with a gravedigger about how death is the great equalizer.
¹⁶ Well, last time the skull had been right in front of him, not on a tv screen. Which probably factored in.

140.15 -- Time: 2330 hrs -- Location: Washington D.C.

NEW MESSAGE TO: Otacon

Meryl
>Otacon i need yr help w a thing
>Its a computer thing
>Otacon
>Ok dude not 2 be weird or irritating or somethin but usually when its like the middle of the night
>and u dont answer me 4 several hrs its bc uv been kidnapped so

Mulder (Otacon)
>Sry i wbs askfep

Meryll
>U ok

Mulder (Otacon)
>Hau 2 tyqf w lft hbnd snkf fekl aslfq on my barm

Meryl
>I cant believe ur so bad at typing w ur left hand.

Mulder (Otacon)
>Wnw sry i didnt tdech myrejf 2 b anbidfxtros in mhdel skool lhke eury1 else

Meryl
>I got bored. More important tho, snake + u? Nice.

Mulder (Otacon)
>Ius not ljke tht!!

Meryl
>I didnt say it was ; )

Mulder (Otacon)
>U HMPKIED

Meryl
>??

Mulder (Otacon)
>Inpkied imqlied

Meryl
>Implied?

Mulder (Otacon)
>Y. Felk arkeep wbtchn novie

Meryl
>Cute. Y dont u just move

Mulder (Otacon)
>I cnt

Meryl
>Hes not THAT heavy

Mulder (Otacon)
>He looks like a baby bird

Meryl
>??????????

Mulder (Otacon)
>Or smtin. Peacfuj. I cnt nove hin

Meryl
>Buddy. How many times r we gonna do this

Mulder (Otacon)
>If u dnt keep covnt neithr will i

Joshua didn’t know what to do. He knew there was little chance that Dave liked him, because even if he was a smart man with an interesting job, even if he made good choices and didn’t make anything bad, he was still just some guy. Who didn’t make friends and who got nervous all the time and scared too, nothing like the handsome brave smart cool guy who worked at Shadow Joeses. Dave was out of his league. But it was nice to pretend sometimes, even for just a few minutes, that maybe he did like him. What it would be like if that was really real and not a fake thing.

~*~*~

One day Josh decided he’d had enough. If he could stick up to his bosses, surely he could ask the guy who gave him coffee every morning (and sometimes nowadays every night, and a few afternoons too) if he maybe wanted to go on a date sometime. Surely he could.

It wasn’t very busy when he got there. David smiled at him when he got to the register, and after giving his order, Josh went “How are you doing?” because he figured that was a pretty good opener.

“I was wondering, actually, if you were doing anything later,” said David, totally beating Joshua to the punch.

“D-doing anything??” said Josh.

141.12 -- Time: 0300 hrs -- Location: Houston, TX

Right. Right. Right. You know, sometimes there’s such a thing as going too far, where just everything’s so unbelievable that you totally ruin your audience’s willing suspension of disbelief. Which, okay, so the only audience here (ever, ever, ever) is you, but also that’s sort of the point because you cannot believe that Snake would ever ask you out. Or, uh, that. Dave would ask J-- oh, whatever. You’re a big enough man to admit when you’re writing self-insert fic, you’ve always been writing self-insert fic, this is so about you trying to think about crap and just you cannot envision this scenario at all even with these abstracted not-real versions of yourselves. First off just -- no??? Not happening??? Second, third, fourth, etc. etc. or just like, like, you can’t even begin to get to a second or a third or an anything it just point blank would not happen.

It point blank would not happen and you -- you’re getting frustrated, trying to communicate what Snake is like on paper. Computer. You know, whatever. It’s hard because you know you’re not great at this and that’s fine but you really -- you can’t quantify or qualify your feelings about Snake (part of the problem, part of the problem) except that they’re many and aside from that he’s a lot, he’s a lot you can’t put down right in words like this. Snake’s handsome, of course, but you already knew that -- always knew that. And he’s tough, you knew that too, and strong, and he has this incredibly clear mind, and maybe those were once the things you admired him for but that was all a long time ago (okay not that long but it feels like three lifetimes ago) and now it’s more that --

Snake’s gentle. He’s always been that way, even when you didn’t know him as anyone but this sorta scary guy covered in blood yelling about nukes he still checked on you in this way that you thought was odd, dissonant -- until you saw him keep doing it. Gentler with Naomi than he shoulda been, considering she’d basically killed him? Was actively killing him? (You make a note to ask Naomi how the hell that works anyway). Didn’t tell her a terrible truth even though he’d been asked to, tried to shield her, and he’d been kind in a way to her before she died -- but you’d rather not think about that bit. Anyway. Anyway. Anyway. He treats you like, he. . . treads around you so carefully sometimes in a way that should frustrate you but doesn’t and pushes you other times in a way that should make you mad but doesn’t and it’s not just that he treats you like that it’s that he does that for everybody, he goads Meryl on and attempts to quietly discourage Mei from going into anything with military applications, he tries to make Nastasha know how much he appreciates her help even when she finds her inability to help in the field directly frustrating, he sent Naomi a picture he had of Gray Fox from their FOXHOUND days (he’d carefully cropped himself out) and he does a thousand little tiny things for you reflexively (leaving cups of coffee next to you while you’re too wrapped up in thinking to do anything but, leaving cups of decaf coffee next to you in a misguided attempt to get you to sleep earlier, physically dragging you off to sleep sometimes when it’s three a.m. and you’re up and you’ve been up for fifty hours straight not out of necessity but out of spite, pushing you to learn to defend yourself, not pushing you to learn how to fight, clapping you on the back saying “nice work” whenever you pushed yourself to learn how to do something terrifying (fly a helicopter, throw a punch, code in C, do the sort of rudimentary first aid that needs doing a lot around here), deflects for you whenever anyone asks something about your family because even if he doesn’t know he seems to know and you always want to ask: what gave me away? What gives me away? What am I doing wrong around you that you know things I never told you?). He answers your silly questions seriously and your serious questions in ways designed to make you laugh. And that’s the Snake you -- you -- something. That you experience some sort of overwhelming ill advised inappropriate emotional attachment to, and that you can’t write down, the heart of him.

You need -- you need a lot of things. You need to talk to Meryl, probably, or else no one ever for the rest of your life. You definitely need to stop thinking about this. It’s fine. It’s fine. You should just -- stop.

Chapter Text

1140.15 -- Time: 1308 hrs -- Location: Washington, D.C.

It’s been over a day. Enough time has reasonably passed for you to call Snake and Otacon and check on them, right?

Right. You know the others would say “no” and then possibly something again about “patience” and “everyone processing things at their own pace” and “give it some time Meryl gosh” but screw that. If they’re set in their ways still then they’re set in their ways, and no amount of time will change that.

You try Snake first. “Meryl? What’s going on?”

Man, you probably really do need to call your friends socially more often.

“Not much. Just checking in on you guys, seeing how things are, you know.”

Snake doesn’t quite look like he believes that. “Uh, same as it ever was, I guess. Same as it ever was...”

“Okay, cool, good to hear you remain unflappable in the face of weird shit or whatever.” You fiddle with a nearby pen, try to twirl it between your fingers, but it just goes flying off into a corner. You sigh. Snake is the king of long conversational pauses. “Like, so, are you gonna deal with the whole Otacon thing anytime soon or what?”

“You know who we remind me of, Meryl?”

“Uh uh,” you say. You lean your elbow against a doorframe so you can just. Have something to support your hand as you stick your face in it and like, try and deal. “No.”

“We’re just like Mulder and Scully, except that Mulder never tried this hard to pry into Scully’s love life.”

“Okay I am like, ninety percent sure that’s a lie.” A thought occurs to you, one triumphant enough to like, get you to extract yourself from your pose of weary despair. “Wait, you said love life! So you do totally --”

“It’s not any of your business,” he says.

“And why the hell am I Mulder!?”

“Because you’re reading too much into shit,” he says, and he’s lying, but whatever.

“I really don’t think you’ve watched enough X-Files, dude. Also, come on, it’s like, legit painful to have to watch this stuff, can’t you two just like, sort it out?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Meryl,” says Snake, like you don’t know him. Like he’s not a shitty ass liar and like you don’t know him.

“Ha ha,” you say. “Okay, Snake, so it’s gonna be like that.”

“Yeah, Meryl, it’s gonna be like that,” he says and you get it all of the sudden, with all the clarity of a migraine, or a bullet.

Snake knows himself. He knows what he feels, and he’s not foolish enough (or not a good enough liar) to pretend that he doesn’t feel what he does. But he’s self-contained, believes he needs to be self-contained, would never -- Well. Anyway. Good news: Snake’s not in denial. Bad news is: he’s not gonna do anything about anything.

“Snake . . .”

“Meryl.”

“Fine,” you say. “Fine! Have it your way.”

“My way’s not really what’s important here,” he says, a little bemused. “Let it go, Meryl.”

“I don’t wanna!” you say. “Damn it, Snake! You’re my friends!”

“Meryl . . .”

Why does he always just repeat shit? “Repeating my name a whole bunch isn’t gonna do shit!”

“I know,” he says. “That’s why I’m hanging up. I have to go to the store. I’ll talk to you later, Meryl.”

“Oh, come the fuck on, man! Just ---” but he’s already hung up.

Well. That’s fine. You kick the pen you dropped earlier farther away, resign it to the darkness under the refrigerator. Okay. It’s not fine, really, not at all but also: it’s fine, you suppose. You feel as if there’s some sort of moral to this story, something about not messing with your friends and their interpersonal relationships, or about things not always working out for people despite the fact that they could work out and despite the fact that they deserve for it to work out. You know this whole thing’s been farcical, is likely to get even more so before you put it to bed, but your desire to meddle isn’t -- not that you’d ever say this out loud ever to anyone ever -- borne out of a need to needle, an urge to playfully irritate. If that was all it was you’d’ve given up around the time guns started getting involved. But Snake saved your life and Otacon was (unfortunately) your best friend and they could make each other happy, maybe, and you want that for them, so you punch in Otacon’s number and let it ring and let it ring until he finally picks up.

“How’s it going, Otacon?”

“Uh, fine?” he says. “Why do you want to know?”

“Chill, Otacon,” you say. “I’m not interrogating you or anything. That’s just like, a standard opener to a conversation.”

“Well, okay,” he says, “What’s this conversation that you’re opening?”

Might as well get straight (ha ha) into it.

“I’ve been thinking about that conversation we had the other day, about somebody you liked that you shouldn’t,” you say. “I think I figured it out.”

“Oh?” says Otacon. He is trying so hard to look casual. “Why would you do that?”

“It’s Snake, right?”

Otacon kinda freezes up for a minute, sorta blue screens. “Why would you think that? No! Uh, no. Why would you --”

“Otacon. Come on. Who do you even talk to on a regular basis, let alone see? Who else could it be?”

“I see plenty of people all the time!” says Otacon. “This is silly, that’s a silly idea, are you sure you don’t still like him, and you’re just projecting??”

You ignore the last part. “Okay, name five other people it could possibly be besides Snake.”

“You name five people it could be besides Snake!”

“That would totally defeat the point, man. Like I said last time -- why don’t you just talk to him?”

“There’s nothing to talk about!”

“For pete’s fucking sake, Otacon.”

“It’s -- just -- and how would you know that, anyway? If it was true?”

“Really, Otacon, you can just say it,” you say, thinking maybe if you get that far that’ll be something at least. “I am your friend. I am trying to be goddamn here for you in your time of need, but you gotta work with me.”

“There’s nothing to work on, or about, or anything like that at all. And furthermore ---”

He hangs up. You grind your teeth. You grind your teeth some more. Right. Well. At least you can say you tried it the easy way. You sure as shit fucking tried. Snake can’t budge and Otacon won’t, and boy oh boy you sure as shit tried.

1141.80 -- Time: 1421 hrs -- Location: The Apartment

You get the groceries a lot because Otacon has this tendency to buy 1% milk if left unattended in a supermarket.

“I got those frosted breadsticks you like,” you say, tossing the box at him.

He actually catches the box, which a year ago would’ve been a miracle in and of itself. “Pocky, Snake,” he says. “The name’s right on the box, I don’t know why you always act like you don’t know what it is.”

“Right. Those things. The breadsticks.”

“Well. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Help me put this shit away.”

You take a few minutes to enjoy the relative normalcy of this sort of thing. You, bickering with Otacon over how lean ground beef is supposed to be, trying to figure out how long leftovers had been in the fridge, carefully balancing all the ramen in precarious stacks. The kitchen’s a mess, stacks of books on the counter and empty mugs everywhere. You shove a pile of Otacon’s comic book crap to the side, flip through one of the back issues of Fate¹ that inevitably ended up jumbled in with the manga.

Otacon looks over when he hears you scoffing at an article. “I can’t believe that you’re willing to entertain the possibility that reality is a simulation or whatever, but you think UFOs are silly,” he says.

“I don’t think UFOs are silly, I think they’re bullshit,” you say, tossing the magazine to the side. “And that’s really not an accurate summation of what I was talking about earlier. Deluze --”

“Right, well, sending discs with Nastasha’s book on it to all those writers to magazines like that” -- he gestures to the magazine you’re holding -- “that panned out alright, didn’t it?”

“I had to rescue one of them from Russian mercenaries, I had to go to Shadow Moses and physically protect them from getting killed by Russian mercenaries, that’s how that panned out for us.”

“Hey!” says Otacon. “Gary McGolden is a journalistic hero. I should’ve asked you to take a copy of his book so you could make him sign it.”²

“I wasn’t really hoping to be seen,” you say.

“I still can’t believe Gary McGolden wrote about me,” says Otacon, almost reverently, and it’s hard to not feel ridiculously affectionate for him, this man who idolized crackpot conspiracy theory writers and didn’t idolize you. “I mean, I’d rather have not done anything worth writing about, but gosh.”³

“He used a tuna as camo to sneak onto Shadow Moses.”

“Correction,” says Otacon. “He used a tuna as camo to sneak onto Shadow Moses for the truth.”

“Whatever.”

Otacon gathers up all the grocery bags, stuffs them in the spot in the cabinet where he tends to hoard plastic bags. “How long do you think Ellen knew?” he asks you.

“Ellen knew ---?”

“That we weren’t married I mean, uh. That we weren’t who we said we were? That we were us, I guess.”

“I don’t know,” you say. “Definitely before she invited us. She might’ve known right away. Depends on how well she knew what Big Boss looked like, or how quickly she’d think to make that connection.”

“Do you think she was trying to set us up, or something?” says Otacon. “She was kind of weird about, I don’t know.”

“Everything?” you ask.

“Yeah, everything. Haha but that’d be pretty weird, right Snake? Someone trying to set us up?”

You chew on that one for a minute. Of course, it would be weird from the perspective that anyone -- particularly someone you’ve only had minimal contact with -- was trying to set you up with each other. But what part did Otacon think was weird? The you and him part? The set up part? The part where the person trying to set you up would be the person whose house you were breaking into? “Yeah, I guess it’d be kind of strange.”

“Not that it was strange being -- I mean I guess that was pretty strange but -- us being, you know, er, but I guess I can see why someone would think that ---”

“Otacon,” you say, cutting him off, because you’re pretty sure he could backpedal for the next half hour if you let him.

“Right, sorry, er, I guess just, we did alright, don’t you think? Pretending, I mean.”

You’re trying to figure out if he’s asking if the pretending itself was alright, whether he enjoyed it as much as you did. That’s probably a little optimistic, though.

You take a minute to think about the best way to answer. “I think we make a pretty good team. You’re a good guy to have as a partner.”

“Thanks,” he says.

1140.15 -- Time: 1930 hrs -- Location: Washington, D.C.

The four of you are in the same city for about five hours, which means what it always means: dinner somewhere out of the way. This time it’s your city, D.C., so at least the walk home won’t be too long. You keep wondering if you should offer Mei Ling a place to stay -- honestly, just a place to stay, nothing more -- and offer to help her get back to Cambridge tomorrow, but you’re afraid that might seem more desperate than friendly. Nastasha’s back to LA soon, and you’re honestly not sure where Naomi’s real base of operations is. You think she’s got an apartment in Philadelphia? You’re also pretty sure she’s bought a bunker in Idaho or something too, though you don’t think she lives there day to day. You hang out with a lot of people who would blow a couple million on abandoned missile bases.

The topic of conversation is unsurprising. And more than a little frustrating.

“I don’t know,” says Mei Ling. “They seemed a little more. . . “ she trails off. “Something,” she finally concludes.

“This is getting ridiculous,” you say.

“I didn’t think it would take this long,” says Mei Ling. She smiles and laughs. “Snake, what a strange man. I can see why you had a crush on him, but I can see why you gave up.”

Does everyone know about that? Apparently. Thanks, psychic ghosts. “It was a momentary infatuation,” you say. “Combat high, you know.”

Mei Ling hmmmms at you like she doesn’t quite believe you. “Yes, I know.”

“You were sure acting like you had a crush on him for a while there,” you say. “How come no one ever brings that up?”

“Mei knows everyone’s secrets,” says Nastasha. “We know better.”

“It’s true, I do,” says Mei Ling. “Occupational hazard.”

“Also she didn’t give a dramatic speech about not forgetting her to a man she just met,” adds Naomi.

You cannot believe that Naomi has the nerve to call anyone else dramatic. “I had just gotten shot!”

“Hmm, what was it?” says Naomi. “I was a fool . . .”

You shudder, remembering a little too sharply the moment she’s attempting to evoke.

“Okay, we get it,” you say, slamming your hands on the table. “Can we stop talking about Shadow fucking Moses for two seconds?”

“You’re not the only one who lost something that day,” says Naomi stiffly, before sweeping out of the room.

“Only one of us got shot, you know!” you yell, but she doesn’t turn around. You slump into your seat. “Fucking -- I fucking hate her. Why do we work with her again?”

“For any number of good and sensible reasons,” says Nastasha, “That I find myself too tired to list right now. I’m sorry to follow Naomi’s lead and run, but I have a flight to catch in the morning.”

“It’s alright,” says Mei.

“Sorry, Nastasha,” you say. “I didn’t mean to end the evening on a sour note. I just get sick of it.”

She leaves money on the table (something Naomi most certainly did not do) and is gathering her things to leave, but she puts a hand on your shoulder before she exits. “Maybe we do talk about it too much, or too often.”

“Sorry,” you say again.

“No, we all spend a lot of time thinking about that day, and that’s not something we can avoid. But we can try to be gentler with each other.” She pats your arm. “I’ll talk to you both later. Have a nice night.”

Nastasha and Mei share a look and something you miss must have been communicated there because Mei blushes and looks away.

“Well!” says Mei, as soon as she’s gone. “I guess there’s a reason we don’t take Naomi anywhere.” She fiddles with her napkin. “Sorry if I bring all that up too much.”

“I really don’t mind that much,” you say, and it’s mostly not a lie. Though you’re really over the whole Snake crush shit. “I got some sweet scars to show off to dates, and it all worked out in the long run.”

“Regardless, we’re not inviting Naomi next time we go out.”

“What about Nastasha? I’m assuming we’re not kicking her outta the club.”

“She might be busy,” says Mei Ling. “She often is.”

There’s an expectant silence, and you feel like you did in middle school, in the chorus for Music Man and you have one line in the middle of “Wells Fargo Wagon” and you cannot for the life of you remember it and you end up derailing the whole fuckin thing. You haven’t thought about this in almost a decade and now Gary, Indiana is going to be stuck in your head for hours and you still haven’t, you realize, actually said anything.

“Like what is her deal, even?” you say, “Okay, sure, yeah, I get it, the whole you know, Gray Fox thing, but she’s awful! All the time! To everyone, even people who are trying to help her and want to be her friend. Guess how many times Snake has brought up the whole poisoning thing.”

“How many times?” asks Mei Ling, though she already knows, though this is in some ways a rehash of the same conversation you’ve had a hundred times.

“Zero! Not once.”

“You know,” says Mei Ling, conspiratorially leaning closer, “I think Naomi just likes being miserable.”

“Yeah,” you say.

“I tried asking her out once and she looked like I invited her to her own funeral. There was a whole speech she gave, I’ve forgotten it now, but I do think the phrase ‘high and lonely destiny’ worked its way in there somewhere if that gives you a picture.”

You snort into your drink. This is a lot of information to process at once. Mei Ling dates women? Or at least, was willing to ask one out? You guess she’s never indicated anything to the contrary, and she’s never shown a lot of interest in any guys (except for Snake, and you’re the first to be willing to argue that whatever happened during the Shadow Moses Incident didn’t quite count), but you suppose you’d never thought that that might be a possibility.

“Don’t look at me like that! She’s cute! And we were all young once.”

“Didn’t you start working with her just last year?”

“It’s been a year and a half,” says Mei Ling. “Like I said, very young.”

Before you can stop yourself, because you really can’t stop yourself, you blurt out “I’m gay.”

Like, just so everyone is clear. Like, cards on the table, you know, you add silently in your head but that’s -- that’s not helping but Mei Ling just looks bemused and also sort of embarrassed. “Yes,” she says, looking down and stirring her drink with her straw. “I know.”

“Oh, okay,” you say. “Just, thought you should know.”

“Okay,” she says. “Duly noted.” She looks at her watch. “I gotta go now, actually.”

Shit, you’d probably fucked up big time. You don’t get why her telling you all about how she’d asked Naomi out wasn’t weird, but you just stating some very straightforward facts was. Probably because you said it out of nowhere, you tool, a voice in your head says.

“Sure, yeah,” you say. “See you later, I guess.”

“Don’t worry, Meryl,” she says. “I just have to go check on some things. And don’t worry too much about Snake and Otacon, okay?”

“Someone’s gotta.”

She smiles, and puts some cash on the table. “Oh, don’t, I’ve got it,” you say.

“Your chivalry is admirable, but it’s fine, I can pay for my share. And possibly half of Naomi’s as well? I see she didn’t leave any money.”

“Uh, okay, let me rephrase -- Campbell’s got it.”⁴

“Oh!” says Mei Ling, scooping her money back up. “Well. That’s a little different.”

She looks at you, and you’re still -- well. Of course you’re still embarrassed. And probably look it, too. I’m gay? Could you be any more obvious? “I really am sorry I have to go,” she says. “It was nice.” She touches your arm tentatively. “We’ll talk later.”

“Okay,” you say. “Good luck with the, uh, things you gotta check.”

“Thanks,” she says, and smiles again, so it’s okay, you think, really.

NEW MESSAGE TO: Mulder (Otacon)

Meryl
>Otacon help. Help

Mulder (Otacon)
>What is it????

Meryl
>I jst told mei ling im gay

Mulder (Otacon)
>U r tho right??? I remember u announcing that v clearly 2 me at one pt

Meryl
>Uhh yeaaaah. But i just said it like that. Like a big loser. Im gay. I sounded ridiculous

Mulder (Otacon)
>Welp

Meryl
>YEA WELP

Mulder (Otacon)
>Idk why u think I can help u

Meryl
>IDK EITHER. LOOKIN 4 SUPPORT BRO

Mulder (Otacon)
>There there Meryl. Its all gonna be ok.
>Hows that

Meryl
> : (

Mulder (Otacon)
>Im sure it wasnt that bad?

Meryl
>It was. It was that bad.

A few minutes later, while you’re still sitting there trying to stop replaying the moment in your head (“I’m gay?” REALLY?), your phone buzzes.

NEW MESSAGE FROM: Mei Ling

Mei Ling
>Meryl, Sappho wrote “Sappho, when some fool explodes rage in your breast, hold back that yapping tongue!”⁵
>I don’t think yr very yapping, but she means - think before you say something!

Meryl
>Gee thx where were u a half hr ago?

Mei Ling
>Sitting next to you ; )
>I meant about s&o tho

Meryl
>Pls. itll be fine

You snap your phone shut. It’ll be just fine. You have the perfect plan.

Well. For a given value of perfect. You’ll workshop it.

1141.80 -- Time: 2216 hrs -- Location: Houston, TX

You’re sitting watching Otacon sort through the information he grabbed from Carpenter’s computer. Well, not watching, exactly, that maybe sounds a little more intense than you intend. You’re keeping him company, is what you’re doing. “How much stuff did you get?” you ask. You know in general terms, but you like specificity. Plus, it's always nice to hear Otacon talk.

“A lot,” he says.

“What's a lot look like?”

“Like a lot. I won't even know how much for a while, there's a ton of uninteresting crap in here, and I can't exactly just hit control f and search the whole thing, haha.”

“What's control f?” you ask.

“Never mind,” he says. “You're a faster reader than me, wanna help read through boring expense reports and inter office memos?”

“How do you know I'm a faster reader than you are?”

“I'm observant sometimes,” he says.

“Yeah, no.”

“Well, I observe you at least. Do you want the projected growth committee logs or the contractor communications?”

“I don't know what either of those are.”

“Right. Okay. Gossipy work emails?”

“Did he just, er, hack other companies networks or computers and take everything?”

“I'm starting to think so. Which, if so, he's good -- or whoever he hires to do that is good I mean -- but it's not exactly the most efficient way to figure out if your competitors know how to build a metal gear. Sort of a ‘smash and grab’ rather than any actually sophisticated ‘hacking.’”

“So you think you could do better?” You ask.

He scoffs. “Of course I could do better. I'm not just a hacker, I'm an engineer. I worked for one of these places. I'd know where to look. But instead he grabbed everything and. . .” Otacon's voice trails off. He pokes at the keys some more, muttering at the computer like he does when it takes forever for videos to buffer. “. . . jumbles it all around. I don't know what sort of organizational system he has but it's not a very good one.”

Sometimes you think about how incredibly fortunate it is that Otacon’s a nice guy.

“Here,” he says, handing you a stack of paper. “I printed out a ton of the stuff I thought I might need your help understanding.”

“Isn't having more copies of this around dangerous?”

“Better a paper copy than duplicating it and putting it on another computer. Paper burns faster.”

“So no work emails for me.”

“No work emails for you. Just lots of jargon.” He takes his legs off the other chair and scoots it towards you with his feet. “Come on, pull up a chair, grab a pen, circle anything weird.”

“This isn't exactly my area of expertise,” you say, sitting down, though at this point you're mostly talking just to talk. “Wouldn't Mei Ling be more useful here?”

“Mei’s a grad student, she's got enough trouble in her life.” He looks over the top of his computer at you and grins, just a little. “Plus I don't live with her, it's harder to badger from a distance. And --” (once Otacon starts talking you can almost guarantee he won't stop) “--it's not like sneaking around in the dead of night was my area of expertise before, you know, everything, so you can manage.”

“Still not your area of expertise.”

“Hey,” he says, pointing at you. “I do okay.”

That’s when you notice Otacon’s still wearing his wedding ring. You guess it’s not really his, since he wasn’t the one who was married in the first place, but the point stands: he’s still wearing the ring. You know that just means that he hasn’t noticed it yet, you know you shouldn’t draw attention to it, but that fact sits in the back of your mind.

Inevitably, he catches you staring at his hand, because -- well. You’ve been doing a lot of staring. You thought you were sneakier than this, though.

“What is it?” he asks.

“Uh, nothing, just --” you should lie to him maybe, but you gesture at his left hand anyway.

“Oh, we should probably give those back, huh?” says Otacon, looking at his ring.

“No one’s asked,” you say.

“Haha still,” says Otacon, and he takes the ring off, and hands it to you, and you nod and you take it so that’s that.

Not that you’re giving them back. Yours or his. No one’s asked, and that’s good enough for you. That might be weird? You’re not sure. You don’t have a clear frame of reference. If anyone asks, you’ll just say you forgot.

You put the ring next to yours.

140.48 -- Time: 1543 hrs -- Location: Washington, D.C.

You thought you made your feelings quite clear at dinner the other day, but no one seems to have got the message. The message being: leave me alone. Instead, everyone seems dedicated single mindedly to the task of annoying you. “Naomi, we’re all a little worried about you,” says Mei Ling at one point. You cannot believe the unmitigated gall behind such a statement. The gall! Who is she to say that? You’re barely acquaintances.

Snake even approaches you at some point, because he cannot leave well enough alone, ever. “Naomi, er, are you alright?” he asks you. “Is there anything . . . bothering you?”

“Bothering me? Of course not,” you say. “I love being pestered night and day by people who I do not wish to associate with, it’s delightful.”

“Okay. Nice.”

“What I meant was, why the hell are you talking to me?”

“I just wanted to check and see how you were doing since you see a little more, er, out of sorts than usual.”

“And what possible reason could you have for wanting that information?”

The man actually looks confused. “I’m your friend?”

“Hah!!” you say. And then, again, for emphasis, just so he knows, “Hah!!!”

“Hah?” asks Snake.

“I’m laughing at you, derisively, because that is a ridiculous statement to make, one that inspires mirth and my everlasting contempt.”

“Okay Naomi,” he says. “Sure.”

Nastasha sends you a DVD of Casino Royale, even though the movie isn’t out for another month. Mei Ling leaves a series of friendly and vaguely concerned sounding voicemails, which you delete with great prejudice. Otacon sends you links to videos of cats, but you are allergic to cats, so mostly this just makes your nose feel itchy.

And then, Meryl calls you.

“Hey Naomi!” she says, sounding as usual much more chipper than you’d prefer to hear over the phone at this time -- at any time.

“What?” you ask.

“How’d you feel about a little field trip?”

“What is that supposed to mean?” you ask. “I’m a busy person, you know, you can’t just call me and say something vague and have me run off to Vegas or wherever on a wild errand.”

She sighs. “Okay, here, let’s start over. Hey Naomi!”

“Hello, Meryl,” you say.

“I’m taking some supplies and junk down to Houston for Snake and Otacon in like two days. Would you like to hear about my ulterior motive for doing this?”

“Well, you’re going to tell me anyway.”

“Got it in one. So --”

It sounds like she’s about to launch into a long convoluted explanation. “Give me the short version.”

“I’m gonna knock Snake and Otacon out and stick them in a room and not let them out until they reach some sort of satisfactory emotional conclusion to their whole -- them thing.”

“That’s the worst plan I’ve ever heard in my entire life.”

“Wow, that’s saying a lot. So is that, like, a no?”

“No, it is not, like, a no. I don’t understand why you got to this sort of trouble. Really, they’re adults, they can sort themselves out.”

“Okay, like, usually I would, sort of agree? But I don’t know if you’ve met these guys? I mean, it’ll probably take them weeks to go ‘oh, hey, so we both probably want to tenderly proclaim our love to each other’ or something.”

You think about that. You think about those weeks. Multiple, Meryl’s implying. Whole vast weeks in which Otacon has little to do but pester you and in which everyone else has little to do but gripe about Snake and Otacon and you have little to do but sit around and think about how you never really got to say goodbye to Frankie.

“So you want me to . . .”

“Come with me. Back me up. Help me physically drag them around. Oh, maybe you can help me knock them out in the first place?”

“So you’ve really thought this through then, huh?”

“It’s fine, it’ll work,” she says. “If not, it’ll still be fun for you, so.”

That’s a fair point. “Alright, I’m in.”

Footnotes

¹ A long running magazine dedicated to discussing paranormal phenomena. Otacon insisted on subscribing, Snake thought it was a waste of perfectly good paper.

² McGolden’s bestseller, The Telekinetic Powers of the Loch Ness Monster - The True Energy Source of UFOs, looked pretty much like you might expect something like that to look.

³ His book, The Shocking Conspiracy Behind Shadow Moses, reiterated the events of the incident with surprising accuracy, so Snake couldn’t fault him for that. Except for the part where he said it was aliens. It wasn’t aliens.

⁴ Otacon had, a year or so ago, done Meryl a favor -- “I guess this is technically sorta immoral, and definitely illegal, but all things considered . . .” -- and set Meryl up with a card linked directly to Campbell’s bank account. She only used it when she was out with friends or feeling particularly vindictive or needed to buy something aggravating to send to Otacon. The worst purchases she reserved for his expense account, so he’d have to explain on his monthly expense reports why he was drinking at noon on a workday several states away.

⁵ Fragment 158, translated by Mary Barnard.

Chapter Text

NEW MESSAGE TO: Nastasha

Meryl

>Going on mission if i dont make it back u cn have all my guns

Nastasha

>Starting to suspect im most of everyones impulse cntrl.

Meryl

>Lol u kno it.

Nastasha

>Little busy rn or i wld press the subj further.

>Stay safe. And im holding you to the gun thing.

NEW MESSAGE TO: UGH.

Meryl

>Campbell if i dont see u agn just wanted 2 let u kno im still mad at u

>tell mom sry i hvnt called in a while

NEW MESSAGE TO: Naomi lmao

Meryl

>Naomi time 2 go

Naomi lmao

>Yes, yes, alright.

>Why, precisely -- because I’d like you to explain it again -- is my cooperation necessary?

>Why couldn’t you have asked anyone else to do this?

Meryl

>Not gonna tell Mei til l8r N is in LA who else cud i ask

Naomi lmao

>You make me feel so very wanted.

Meryl

>Plus u kno u love it.

>Lmao ok r u gonna get in the car anytime soon im right outside

>Beep beeeeeeep

Naomi lmao

>PLEASE stop honking the horn. I’ll be out momentarily.

Meryl

>Beep beep beep

NEW MESSAGE TO: Mulder (Otacon)

Meryl

>Ok dude so r u guys gonna b ready 2 meet up when we get there

Mulder (Otacon)

>Why do u always want 2 txt?? Codecs r easier

Meryl

>Its fun so will u b there

Mulder (Otacon)

>Yes MOM

Meryl

>Haha sry just didnt want 2 go on a roadtrip w naomi if u were gonna be a no show

Mulder (Otacon)

>Wait why are u bringing naomi???

Meryl

>See u soon bud

Mulder (Otacon)

>Why r u bringing naomi w u???

Meryl

>Bye!! :)

Mulder (Otacon)

>OK, bye???

NEW MESSAGE TO: Mei Ling

Meryl

>Its time

Mei Ling

>You sure you dont want to tell me whats up? I could be your backup.

>Ill save your data and everything

Meryl

>Aww thats sweet. But i think i gotta go this one alone

Mei Ling

>Arent u takin naomi w u :? :O

Meryl

>How do u kno that??

Mei Ling

>Eyes everywhere ;P

Meryl

>Right. Right.

Mei Ling

>So you think I would stop you, basically.

Meryl

>Yea basically. If i dont make it back b sure 2 give me an expensive funeral

>+ charge it 2 campbells accnt

Mei Ling

>Can I have your dvd collection?

Meryl

>I knew u just wanted me 4 my top gun memorabilia

Mei Ling

>I thought itd be rude to say so. Really tho i dont think Snake would hurt you, Meryl

Meryl

>Haha i kno but prepare 4 the worst.

>I might die of embarrassment. Naomi might poison me. Etc.

Mei Ling

>GOOD LUCK. Dont do anything i wouldnt do

Meryl

>Babe i do nothin but

NEW MESSAGE TO: Mulder (Otacon)

Meryl

>I just called ml babe

Mulder (Otacon)

>Wow

Meryl

>I kno

Mulder (Otacon)

>Thats r bad

Meryl

>I kno!!!

Mulder (Otacon)

>Im prob gonna laugh at u when u get here just btw

Meryl

>Yea well see whos laughin l8r

You shove your phone into your pocket and groan. Babe? Really? You’ve got to stop texting Mei Ling, like, ever, or being around her, ever, the worst things come out of your mouth.

Luckily, there’s the mission ahead of you to distract you from your possible faux pas. Unluckily, there’s the mission ahead of you.

“This is a stupid plan” you say to yourself, or the NSA agent or Mei Ling listening in. But it’s not: it’s the sort of thing that you know will work on Otacon. Snake, who knows. But Otacon -- you got his number.

140.48 -- Time: 1518 hrs -- Location: Houston, TX

Naturally, you can’t just meet Snake and Otacon, you have to arrive at the predetermined meeting location ahead of time to, as Meryl says, “lie in wait.”

You help her throw a tarp over her car, which is parked a little farther away from where Snake and Otacon will be than you’d like considering you’re going to have to do some heavy lifting soon.

“Is that a vacuum repair shop?” you ask, passing by one of the now-empty buildings as you get into the spot Meryl’s designated as best for hiding.

“Yeah, I know right? No one’s been around here for forever. The store might actually be functional or something just like, no one ever goes in or out.”

“So what do we do now?” you ask, once the car is disguised and Meryl’s got her tranquilizer gun.

“We wait,” she say.

You sigh. You sigh a lot these days. You have a lot to sigh over.

“We’re just like Mulder and Scully,” you say. You’re not making conversation, not really, just trying to pass the time before Snake and Otacon arrive. “Except instead of investigating unexplained phenomena we’re kidnapping a super soldier and an engineer in a contrived plot to set them up.”

“I’m pretty sure that happens in at least one episode,” says Meryl. She leans against a wall and yawns. “Mulder, are you suggesting that this plot is in some way contrived? That the subjects in question don’t actually have romantic feelings for each other?”

“Excuse you, I’m the sensible one with the medical degree,” you say. “Obviously, I’m Scully.”

“Medical degree? I thought it was in biology or genetics or whatever the hell, you’re not like an actual doctor.”

“I am not the one who comes up with harebrained schemes that will likely get us killed, which makes you the Mulder.”

“Okay, that’s fair,” says Meryl.

You sigh and look at your watch. “How much longer until they arrive?”

“Should be -- oh wait, I think that’s the car now.”

141.80 -- Time: 1526 hrs -- Location: Houston, TX

“Why does Meryl always do this?” you ask Otacon as you arrive at the meeting spot, which is, predictably for Meryl, the backlot of an abandoned strip mall. “Pick weird places to meet us?”

“It’s not that weird,” says Otacon. He sits down on a crate someone left there who knows how long ago.

“Not every exchange has to happen at dusk in some deserted area.” You think maybe Meryl’s spending a little too much time around Naomi. That or she likes fucking with you.

Otacon scuffs his shoe along the ground. “Shouldn’t they be here by now?” he asks, looking at his watch. “I’m pretty sure they’re late.”

“Meryl’s late all the time,” you say. “Stop worrying so much.”

“This place is creepy, why’d they pick it?”

Probably, you think privately, because it’s a little unsettling. Not for you, not exactly, but you can see why it is for Otacon. And a parking lot behind a few empty storefronts at night does present a lot of tactical disadvantages, safety wise. You can’t make out who or what might be in the narrow corridors between the empty stores. You checked the alleyways earlier, of course, and you’re fairly certain no one’s in any of the buildings either, but you feel exposed nonetheless.

Of course, that’s when you feel a sharp sting in your neck, just as you see Otacon slump over. Good thing he was sitting down, you think, as you hit the ground.

The last thing you see before you lose consciousness is someone walking towards you slowly -- but you can only see their feet, and those boots could belong to anyone, except when the person stops in front of you they tap one foot. In that moment you know -- you know who it is. Which is

1. reassuring, because it means you’re (probably) not about to die
2. confusing, because what the hell?

“Meryl,” you say, before you lose consciousness entirely.

140.48 -- Time: 1537 hrs -- Location Houston, TX

“I have a doctorate, you know,” you say, more to the unconscious man you’re dragging around than to Meryl. Someone, she had said, had to carry Otacon, and she could do it in addition to carrying Snake, but really this was possibly easier. Well. Not easier for you. “I have half of another one as well. I have almost multiple doctorates, and here I am, traipsing about with three people who hate me on a ridiculous scheme.”

Meryl makes an undignified snorting sound. “Naomi, we don’t hate you, we’re your friends.”

“Why don’t you, though? I can never quite understand.”

“It’s hard to work up the energy to when there’s a lot better things to hate out there. Like my uncle, or the military industrial complex, or nuclear weapons. You’re not that special, Naomi, especially around here with the company you keep, and that’s not a bad thing.”

You choose to ignore this. “Doctorates. There are letters after my name, multiple, this is undignified, and you people are absurd.”

“You keep a pig heart in a jar on your desk to use as a paperweight and tell everyone it’s a human heart. That’s weird, Naomi. Like, okay, first off, who even uses paperweights anymore?”

"How do you know it's not a real human heart?"

"Naomi."

"You wouldn't be able to tell a pancreas from a gallbladder if I was waving them in front of your face!"

"Please don't. Watch Otacon's head, you're about to run him into something."

“Why -- and I realize that I should have questioned you more thoroughly in this regard before this point -- did you ask me to do this instead of someone more --” You’ve never appreciated how much one hundred and thirty-five pounds is until you’re dragging one hundred and thirty-five pounds across the floor “-- physically adept?”

“I thought you could use a pick me up,” she says, and she smiles.

Is this how these people make friends? Not that you’ve had any before, so you guess the question is -- is this how everyone makes friends? If so, you’ve been underestimating how much weight the average person lifts, surely you’re not the only person who has trouble physically dragging a “friend” around.

“In here, then?” you say, dragging Otacon across the threshold. “It’s not the hardest room to get out of.”

“The point is that they won’t wanna get out of the room,” says Meryl. “And yeah, you can like, just sort of dump him right over there.”

Meryl dusts off her hands and looks rather pleased with herself, so you decide to beat a hasty retreat before she tries to engage you in any more conversations about friendship or emotions or any nonsense like that.

“I’ll be waiting in the car. I brought something to read,” you say. “I hope you did too. This might take a while.”

141.80 -- Time: Unknown -- Location: Unknown

When you wake up Meryl’s standing in front of you, hands on her hips.

Okay, this is not the worst situation you’ve woken up to after getting knocked out.

“Meryl?” asks Otacon, who is also

1. here
2. fine, if looking more than a little pissed and groggy
3. so that’s good.

“Don’t worry, this isn’t some sort of revenge thing,” says Meryl. “You’re not actually in peril or anything. Just, like, I felt like I needed to make a point.”

“Make a point?” you say.

“Okay, guys, like, here’s the deal,” says Meryl.

“Deal? Meryl, what the hell?” you ask.

“Look, whether you believe me or not, this is for your own good.”

“And what exactly,” says Otacon, “is it that’s for our own good?”

Meryl rolls her eyes a little. “If you can look me in the eyes and tell me that you don’t have feelings for each other, I’ll let you go,” says Meryl, arms crossed, still looming in the doorway. The girl can loom. “And I won’t bring it up again.”

You like to think you have a good poker face. But not with Meryl, and not about this. You can’t -- you should, you should save Otacon from this sort of indignity, but you can’t lie like this to him either. You can lie by omission and maybe he can forgive you for that but that lie would break a trust so fundamental to the way you live now that it would irreparably harm your relationship.

There’s what feels like a very long silence. Meryl says, “Right. That’s what I thought. I’m leaving now.”

She locks the door behind her.

Otacon looks like he’s about to pass out. Like he’s about to fall over, and while there’s a sudden pang of hope re: why, you push that down. You’ve got to prioritize. There are chairs. Those are good. They’re puke brown and metal, but they’re chairs. “Let’s sit down for a minute,” you say, steering Otacon towards the chairs.

You sit. He sits. You slip into mission mode, because that’s easiest. What do you know for sure? You know

1. You are in love with Otacon.
2. Meryl said you could leave if you told her there was nothing there.
3. You can’t lie your way out of the room without hurting something precious, something you’re not willing to damage.
4. Otacon didn’t say anything either.
5. Otacon is sitting across from you, and he looks extremely stressed. You should do something about that, maybe.

You reach over and tap his hand. He looks at you and smiles a small awkward smile before looking away, so you hold onto his hand. This is alright, this is familiar ground. This is something you can do that’s, you think, at least a little comforting.

“Sorry my hands are so sweaty, haha,” says Otacon after another minute of silence.

“What?” you say. “Oh. No, it’s fine.”

You didn’t notice, honestly, which means -- 6. You are really really in love with Otacon.

“She can’t leave us in here forever,” you say. You wish you could give him more of an out, more of an escape route.

“Watch me!” yells Meryl. “I have snacks, I can outlast you.”

“She can, you know,” says Otacon mournfully. He looks miserable. You wish you could make him look less miserable, but you’re not certain of which way to go to establish that.

“Are you listening in?” you shout at the door. “Really?”

“Don’t worry, I won’t anymore,” she says. “I’m shutting off the monitoring system, I just wanted to make sure you weren’t plotting my death or anything.”

“You can go and tell her, if you’d like,” you say, because you have to at least try and give him an out, even if you can’t lie. “You can go tell her, uh, what she wants and then leave, it won’t hurt my fragile ego or anything.”

You attempt a smile that probably looks more like a grimace. Otacon’s looking at your hands, gripped together, the way your knees are almost bumping against each other.

“Sorry,” you say. “This is probably my fault.”

“No no no,” says Otacon. “It’s mine. I should’ve said something earlier.”

A pause. “Said. . . something?”

Otacon takes a deep breath, and holds it a little too long. He pulls his hand away, and twists his hands together, worries at the nail on his right thumb. He looks up so that when he starts talking he’s talking more to the ceiling than to you. “Okay, Snake!! You will probably never speak to me again I think!! And I would totally understand that!! But -- I should -- I have to tell you that --”

He takes another deep breath. You just wait. You, apparently, have all day to wait and whatever Otacon’s been holding in is obviously difficult to for him to say. He’s gonna mess up his thumb pretty good if he keeps irritating it like that so you take his hand again. He looks back down towards you for a second before looking back up at the ceiling. “I think I should tell you that! I really uh, I really like you. Like, a lot. Actually I think I er, actually might love you? Anyway, that’s ridiculous, and I know I’m ridiculous, but at least Meryl will let us out of here, and I said it!! So! There!!!”

Oh neat you think, and then not much else.

You sit there in the awful metal creaky chair and try and absorb the knowledge that something impossible is happening to you again, but a good impossible thing, for once. You roll the thought around in your head, attempt to integrate it with what you know of the world, let it click into place. Push past the big void of shock.

When you focus your attention back on Otacon, he looks weird. More nervous than before. The whole scenario’s foreign -- at this point in most uncomfortable conversations Otacon’s already run off, tripped his way out and away.

“So. . . there?” you say.

Otacon squeezes your hand tighter, almost angrily. “Yes, so there,” he says. “Are you going to make me repeat myself?”

“Repeat yourself?” you say.

You’re still not on the same wavelength. How you feel about Otacon seems obvious to you -- to everyone else too, apparently. But not to him. Well, Otacon’s never been great at context clues. You turn over what you want to say in your head. The chair creaks as you shift slightly in your seat. You have to take it back to the start.

“Otacon, do you remember when you asked me if love could bloom on the battlefield?” you say.

“Yes,” says Otacon. He sounds wary.

“Well,” you say, and you’ve been staring at his hands mostly (the way they’re more calloused now then they were when you met) but now you’ve got to look him, you think, in the eyes. “Even soldiers can fall in love. I think at any time, in any place, people can fall in love. . . and that’s why I wanted to protect you.”

Otacon looks torn between looking touched and wanting to roll his eyes at you. “Jeez Snake, you don’t have to be melodramatic. But --” he hesitates. “You’ll stop trying to protect me from yourself?”

His hands really are sweaty. “That wasn’t really what I meant, but yeah,” you say.

“Okay, then, Mr. Smartypants, what did you mean, huh?” He pulls one of his hands away from yours so he can unnecessarily adjust his glasses, then doesn’t seem to know what to do with it. “At least I was straightforward, mostly! I’m not even that sure about what you’re trying to say!”

You smooth back a piece of hair he’d ruffled wildly out of place. “I love you.”

“Oh,” he says. “Neat.” And then: “Hey, can I kiss you?”

For once you manage to stop yourself from repeating what someone just said to you. “Yes,” you say.

He kisses like it’s on a dare, furtive and quick. Like you might stop him. It’s brief and clumsy and good in a way that everything with him is good, which is to say: good because it’s him, if nothing else.

“That was bad,” says Otacon.

“Well,” you say. Try to think of how to deny it. “Yeah. A little. But it was good.”

“Listen, Snake, you don’t have to lie! It was pretty bad.” He scrunches his face up in a sort of sudden panic. “Wait, you’re not going to never talk to me again or start hating me or something because this was bad, are you? Like, it’s not over, is it?”

You kiss him again, and it’s a little better, though you can still feel Otacon thinking too much. Worrying about the angle of his head or where to put his hands. Something stupid. You want to tell him to calm down, but that would have the opposite of the desired effect. “You’re being ridiculous. We’re partners. We’re in this together.”

“Well you don’t have to make it seem like a terrible trial,” says Otacon. You forgot how rude he can get when flustered. He twists a piece of your hair around his finger anxiously.

“Otacon,” you say. “We’re good.” And it’s good.

140.15 -- Time: 1802 hrs -- Location: Houston, TX

You walk in. Snake and Otacon are kissing.

You walk back out. This has been, of course, your end game for God knows how long,¹ but that didn’t mean you actually want to see them kissing.

You’ve left the door unlocked and they both come out (ha ha) a minute later, managing to look smug and embarrassed at the same time. Snake, surprisingly, the more embarrassed, Otacon the smugger.

You cannot believe how much they owe you for this one. “I cannot believe how much you owe me for this one,” you say, arms crossed, surveying their sorry selves.

“You did still kidnap us,” says Otacon. “Which was, I think, a little excessive!”

“Yeah, well, that’s cause you guys haven’t met yourselves,” you mutter. Maybe it had been a little excessive, maybe. But excess seemed right, seems right, was the best you could do.

Oh God, you’ve been hanging out with Naomi too much.

“I’ll drive your car,” says Naomi, waving Snake’s keys at him. “You two go with Meryl.”

“Wait, what?” asks Snake. “Why don’t I just --”

“You were both unconscious for some time not too long ago, you shouldn’t be operating heavy machinery, and besides, it means I can be alone,” says Naomi. “Which is a not inconsiderable advantage for everyone.”

“Well, I guess we can trust you to bring the car back safely, haha,” says Otacon.

Snake looks disgruntled, but like, you know. “Are we gonna talk about the part where you two kidnapped us at all, or?” asks Snake.

“My cue to leave,” says Naomi. “Bye!”

You shoulda known she’d leave you in the lurch. You, like, stand by your whole plan here, with getting those two in a room and locking them in there and making them figure it out but you may not have thought out all the immediate consequences, i.e. the shadow of awkward discussions to come. “What, do you wanna talk about it?” you ask, counting on Snake’s tendency towards silence to help shield both of you from having to have like a long discussion about how you Cared About Them and Were Trying To Help Them and Okay Maybe Your Methods Are Unorthodox, whatever.

“No,” says Otacon, bless him, he’s your favorite.

The car ride’s weird? It’s not weird. It’s weird. They’re not making out in the backseat, which is possibly more disconcerting than if they’d been going at it. It’s unsettling, how similar but different they seem, you guess. You’re not even sure if they’re holding hands, which you would expect, at least. They’re sitting about as close to each other as physically possible, though.

“Hands where I can see them, ha ha,” you say, humorlessly. In the rearview mirror Snake shoots you a quizzical look and Otacon blushes.

None of your plans properly figured in the car ride back. You guess you always figured they’d just. . . make their own ways back, but Naomi kinda fucked that up when she stole the car keys. Classic Naomi.

It’s just --- you look in the back mirror, and they’re just talking. They’re talking! You’ve never been so irrationally irritated for people that you’re also happy for. Like, maybe you’d be happier if they weren’t sitting in your rental car talking about Transformers. You know you did this to yourself, but still.

You text Mei Ling as soon as you’ve dropped them off.

Meryl

>Mission Accomplished.

Mei Ling

>What?! rly?!

Meryl

>Y rly

>Im a genius.

>U can all thank me ltr

Mei Ling

>You have to tell me all about it!

Meryl

>I dont think i can its v embarassing

Mei Ling

>Aw i think its sweet! Did they look happy?

Meryl

>Ugh y

Mei Ling

>Cute ;)

Meryl

>Not as cute as u think

Mei Ling

>You sure you dont want 2 tell me about yr brave exploits?

Meryl

>I took a bullet 4 u all thats all u need 2 kno

Mei Ling

>You could tell me about it over dinner sometime.

Oh. Ohhhh.

Meryl

>Oh?

Mei Ling

>Yes

Meryl

>Like dinner dinner

Mei Ling

>Yes ;)

Maybe this wasn’t such a bad idea after all.²

141.80 -- Time: 1915 hrs -- Location: The apartment, Houston, TX

There’s a palpable change in the ten seconds between when you’re glaring at Meryl as she drives away and when you unlock the front door. Otacon absolutely looks like he’s going to bolt. Which you can’t let happen, because once he does he’ll probably clam up and try to pretend like nothing ever happened.

“Do you want to. . . talk about it some more?”

“No,” says Otacon, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I want to go and die of embarrassment, alone, so I’ll be headed to my room, see you.”

“Okay, well, what if you stay in here and we can die of embarrassment together instead?”

Otacon, who had gradually seemed to calm down during the whole trip, is back on full alert. But he stays anyway, rolls his eyes, slumps onto the couch, feet up on the crate he charitably refers to as a table. You sit down next to him, and both of you stare ahead at the tiny blank tv screen. Otacon got the tv at a garage sale one afternoon for two dollars and rigged it to less than legally skim off of one of your neighbors’ cable subscriptions.

You let the silence settle around you. You want him to talk first. You want -- not more than anything but certainly more than quite a few things -- for Otacon to make a decision. Not because you can’t or because you don’t want to, but because that wouldn’t be right. That’s not how the two of you fit together. Being partners means that Otacon has to know he gets the option to step away if that’s what he wants.

The sun’s set, and neither of you bothered to flip a light switch when you came in so you’re sitting in the near dark. Your eyes are adjusting, of course, so you can see the way his baggy jeans hang on his legs. Big enough to fit you -- they might have been yours at some point. He hasn’t taken off his shoes even though he usually does that right away, so he’s not quite through the door yet. You can hear a dog barking somewhere else in the apartment building. The couple above you is fighting, a regular occurrence. Meryl and Naomi won’t make it back for awhile. You hope Meryl lets you know when she’s back home and safe. You hope Otacon starts talking soon, because while you want to cultivate something like an infinite patience with him, you’ve done a lot of sitting today and it makes you fidgety. He’s making that face that he makes when he’s been trying to solve a problem for twenty hours straight and he’s finally got what might be a solution but he hasn’t tested it yet, that look of anxious hopeful anticipation.

Eventually he breaks the silence, turns to look at you. “This is the actual hard part, huh? Not the dramatic confession bit. Funny, I always thought things kinda just. . . fell into place.”

You make an affirmational sort of noise, and he continues. “You know, like, I thought that the part where you get it all out there is the scariest part, but I think everything might be the scariest part. You don’t scare me -- sorry, I know you’re supposed to be the big scary guy, but I think I was only scared of you for about five minutes -- but this scares me.”

“What about it scares you?” you ask.

“I feel like you should be offering up some more objections here,” he says. “That’s part of it. About -- about how this could affect our working relationship, or jeopardizing our mission, or it being? Dangerous? I don’t know.”

“Why?” you ask.

“I don’t know!” he says, almost shouts, he’s frustrated now.

Mostly, what it comes down to is this: you’re selfish. You want. A lot of the things you want you can’t have, but maybe you can have Otacon happy. Or happier at least. Maybe you can steal this one good thing. “Okay,” you say.

It’s quiet again. The couple upstairs have stopped fighting. Someone revs a motorcycle down the street, and the noise startles Otacon a little.

“I don’t want to lose you,” he says. “That tends to happen.”

“It happens to everyone eventually.”

He rolls his eyes. “Gee, Snake, that’s sure helpful.”

“You know what I mean.”

“It just always ends badly,” he says slowly, like he’s sorting through what he wants to tell you and what he can’t.

You know you’ll end badly, and if he sticks with the purpose he’s chosen for himself in life he probably will too. But that doesn’t mean the two of you will end badly. Besides, you don’t think he’d find that thought particularly comforting at the moment. What would be? Nothing. Commiseration? Maybe.

“I haven’t been interested -- seriously interested, at least -- in very many people. But there was this one. . .” You shake your head. You didn’t plan on this conversation tonight. “A combat buddy. Older than me, not interested in the first place. I ended up having to fight him. I didn’t want to. He lost, I won. So I won’t claim to understand precisely what you’re feeling, but I do understand at least some of it. Give me credit for that. I still don’t think every romance has to be a tragic one.”

“Okay,” he says. “Okay.”

“Okay?” you ask.

“Okay,” says Otacon, and he kisses you. It’s different this time, like he’s letting himself think this might be good, like he’s not trying to will this into something that isn’t a little awkward. He pulls your ear accidentally when he puts his hands on your face but he recovers, lets you touch his shoulders, his hair, the back of his neck.

It’s quiet enough you can hear the neighbors resume their argument. You want to move Otacon’s glasses, so it’s easier to kiss him, so you don’t see your face reflected back at you in them. You want a lot of things it’s best to wait for.

He pulls away first. “I mean, I just, what if you’re just trying to be nice to me and --”

“Otacon, cut it out,” you say. “Do you really think I’d lie to you about something like this? I’m not being altruistic.”

“Sorry,” he says. “I’m just not used to things turning out okay.”

You’ve reached the point where Otacon starts talking himself out of a good thing. “Let’s just skip the parts where you list all the reasons you think this is a bad idea and go straight to where we both agree it’s worth it anyway,” you say.

“Okay, to be fair, that part of the conversation is pretty tedious.”

“Yeah, and we’ve got a lot more interesting things we could be doing with our time.”

“Oh? Like what, precisely?” he asks, catching you off guard.

“Uh,” you say.

He actually laughs at you then. You cannot believe Otacon is laughing at you, and you cannot believe how endearing you’re finding even that. “I really didn’t not like a lot of parts of being fake married,” says Otacon. “I really didn’t not like them quite a bit.

“You know, you’re pretty cute,” you say.

“Well you’re, pretty handsome?”

“Handsome? What, I’m not cute?”

“I don’t know, Snake, you’re just sort of --” He gestures vaguely at all of you. “You’re not like, a cute sort of guy.”

“Not a cute sort of guy? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Oh my God,” he says. “Can you just take the compliment and let it be?”

“You know,” you say, and the thought’s just occurring to you right now, “We can just do that stuff all the time if we want. But intentionally.”

“Intentionally?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

You’re both, you think, just trying to process this. It’s not often that you -- either of you, really -- actually get what you want, and get it in such a relatively uncomplicated way.

“Like, we could just hold hands?” He’s frowning in that way he does when he’s concentrating intensely on a particularly difficult problem or when the toast comes out burnt even though he put the toaster on the lowest setting.

“And it wouldn’t be weird or anything.”

“Wow,” he says.

“I know,” you say.

“Just, whenever?”

“I think that’s how it works, yeah.”

“We could hold hands. . . right now even,” he says.

“Well, fuck.”

“Yes, that too at some point,” he says, and starts laughing at you again when he sees the look on your face. Otacon cannot be allowed to know he can make you flustered, because if he knows that he’ll use it to win every argument for the rest of your lives. “Okay, okay, we’ll stick to the handholding for now.”

He sticks out a hand and wiggles it at you, and you take it.

“I always forget how much of a sap you are,” he says. “For a while, I thought you might’ve been just making fun of me, with the whole love on the battlefield thing.”

“I really did mean it,” you say.

“We could also kiss again too?” he says. “You know, like we did before.”

You know, he knows, the whole incident is probably permanently burned on the inside of Meryl’s eyelids in a catastrophic unavoidable way, mile high letters made of fire, etc. But your response still comes out like a question. “Like we did before?”

“I mean, except maybe a little better, you know, but practice makes perfect?”

“Practice makes perfect?” You have got to learn to start having meaningful dialogues that don’t involve this much repetition. There’s something profound here maybe, something about Socrates and interrogating. . . something. You’re too distracted to follow that train of thought. “Practice makes better, at least.”

“Yeah, close enough,” says Otacon.

“Nice,” you say.

“I’m going to kiss you again,” says Otacon, setting his glasses down on the alleged coffee table.

“Sounds good,” you say. “Knock yourself out.”

You almost wish you hadn’t committed yourself so firmly to letting him take the lead, because he seems so out of sorts. Focused in the way he is when he’s tackling difficult problems. Incredible things happen when Otacon’s that intent on a goal, good things even sometimes, but he’s almost shaking a little.

“You don’t have to,” you say as he puts his hands on your shoulders. You’re sitting turned towards each other, but he scoots a little closer.

“Snake, please, shut up,” says Otacon. “I’m fine! I’m just nervous! Jeez!”

“Alright, alright,” you say.

Otacon grips you tight when he kisses you, like he’s afraid you’ll go somewhere. He’ll kiss you and then break off to look at you and then kiss you again. His left hand slides down to your elbow, he attempts to involve his tongue in the proceedings but doesn’t seem to know what to do with it. You try and apply a reassuring hand to his back, maybe steer him a little closer, but it’s not working. Assess the situation: what’s making Otacon uncomfortable? Answer: probably almost everything. What can you fix?

Well for one he’s still wearing his goddamn shoes.

“Otacon,” you say. “You should take your shoes off.”

“Huh?” he says.

You peel his hand off your shoulder so you can more easily bend down, start untying his shoes. Remove one. Think of another discomfort you can remove.

“Just to make it clear,” you say, “I don’t want to have sex tonight.” You remember that Otacon reads things in between the lines that you don’t mean. “Not that I don’t want to in general. But not now.”

He frowns a bit, quizzical, but you can feel his whole body relax against yours as you tug his second shoe off. A relieved slump he tries to hide. “You’re assuming I was assuming that that was the assumption.”

“Yeah, cause I know you.”

You can actually see him starting to generate an infinite set of smartass replies. But he bites them back, leans in closer to you. “Well, thanks, I guess. I think? You don’t have to slow down on my account.”

You kiss him. “Who said it was on your account?” you ask, kiss down his neck as punctuation. “I want to take my time with you.” Scrape your teeth very gently against his skin, hear him stifle a gasp. “Enjoy everything.”

“Convincing argument,” he says.

“Yeah, I was top of my class in debate in high school.”

“Really?”

“No, I didn’t go to high school.”

“You’re weird,” he says, and “do the thing with your teeth again.”

You oblige. He inhales sharply. “Do you like that?” you ask.

“Don’t make fun of me,” he says. His hand grips your elbow hard enough to bruise, almost.

“‘M not,” you say. “Want to do stuff you’ll like.”

“I like anything with you,” he says. Kisses you but he’s still at arm’s length. You want to pull him closer but try and quiet every impulse you have. Let him direct.

“Really? Cause you seem uncomfortable.”

“We did not get this couch because of the comfort it promised,” he says.

“Not very forward thinking of us.”

“No, not really.” He stops for a minute to fidget and you let him. The key sometimes is giving Otacon the space to have awkward conversational pauses. “This is going to sound really awkward in light of what you said re: sex and stuff but could we maybe do this stuff in bed?” asks Otacon. “If we get horizontal on this couch my neck’s going to make me pay for it, and anyway, you’ll hurt your back.”

“I won’t hurt my back,” you say, but he has a point. “As long as you don’t get weird about it.”

“I’m never weird about anything,” he says primly, scooping up his glasses and putting them back on.

The short three second walk to the bedroom, the bed, makes it a little awkward again, and Otacon’s still jittery but less so at least. There’s another little jolt of relief from him when the bedroom door shuts.

“This better?” you ask.

“Less easy for people to see,” he says. “I mean, I know in reality it’s not, but -- the curtains are heavier in here. The only window faces a brick wall. It’s safer.”

You kiss him again while you’re standing there near the door, as softly as you can, your hands cupping his face. “You make me feel safe too,” he says. Buries his face in the crook of your neck. Mumbles something.

“Hmm?” you ask.

“I’m worried that if you’re too close to me when we’re making out you’ll be able to tell when I get, you know,” he says. “I swear to God if you say ‘you know?’ I’m going to kill you.”

You know. “Is that likely?”

“Please, Snake. Come on.”

“I’ll just politely ignore it, then. It’s a natural reaction, and I already said I don’t want to have sex right now.”

“‘It’s a natural reaction,’” he says, mimicking you. “You’re so clinical about all kinds of junk.”

“Your junk specifically here,” you say.

“I hate you, I’m so embarrassed, this is the worst thing to ever happen to me in my entire life” he says.

“Hey, come on,” you say. “I just want you to feel nice. Besides, I know way too much about you for you to get embarrassed around me. I’ve organized your manga collection.”

“I guess that’s kinda fair,” he says.

“Is it easier for you to feel comfortable in here?” you ask. You make it onto the bed somehow, both of you. He’s taking his glasses off again, putting them next to the bed. “Did you really have to put your glasses on again, just to get here?”

“You know I can’t see crap,” he says, fiddling with them before setting them down. It’s weird seeing him without them when he’s not asleep. Mostly weird because he makes weird faces. Squints a lot. Squints now, to try and get a good look at you. “Also, jeez, what a question to ask. I guess? I dunno. It’s nice in here.”

“Okay,” you say.

He’s leaning back on his hands, legs out straight, and you clamber over him. Hover. Press your lips to his. “You can put your weight on me,” he says. “I won’t break, I promise.”

“Didn’t think you would,” you say. “Might work better if you lay back.”

He does. Squints up at you. Wrinkles his nose when you kiss it. Sighs when you lay on top of him. Every reaction Otacon ever has is fascinating in its own way, but never more than now. You thought this might be the part that would make him the most uncomfortable but he seems to settle under your weight. Puts his hands on your face, strokes his thumbs across your cheekbones, traces the curve of your ear. It’s fragile and delicate and when you kiss he sighs in a way that hits your heart, hurts like a thing too good to hold.

You change the tilt of his head to get a more comfortable angle, shift, put a hand on his side. Want to hold him as tight as you can without hurting him, express your feelings more declaratively, but resist. Instead -- suffuse as much warmth as you can over all the cold parts of him and with every affirmative noise feel more and more like you’re full of soft fire, on the edges of a huge burning contentment.

“Can I have my glasses back, actually?” he asks. “Sorry, I know they can kind of get in the way, but I can’t see you very well, and I want to be able to.”

Otacon has a way of knocking you off balance. You hand him his glasses. “Thanks, sorry,” he says.

“Sorry?”

“I know I’m introducing an unnecessary logistical issue into this whole deal, I think, and I shouldn’t do that maybe?”

“Otacon. . . it’s fine.”

“Here, let’s switch,” he says, pushing at your shoulders. Without any effect of course, because he couldn’t move even a very small dog. You tell him so and he kicks your shin but you manage to rearrange yourselves without serious injury.

“Okay, but now I don’t really know what to do with my hands,” he says.

You have very little idea most of the time, but you’re better at not looking as nervous as Otacon does in his default state. “Do what feels right,” you say.

“Super useful,” he says. “Great, super good useful advice, thanks Snake, now I know exactly what to do.”

Lying here with Otacon on top of you, all skinny knobby five feet nine of him, you feel the most relaxed you’ve felt in a long time. Disaster hounds your heels at regular intervals, but at the moment you find it difficult to worry about anything outside of this room. “Put your hands on my hips,” you say, to give him a starting off point, “and go from there.”

Otacon’s hands settle for a moment before he starts trying to take off your shirt. “Leave it on,” you say. “Don’t -- not right now.” You don’t know if you could handle the laser-focused intensity of Otacon on you half-clothed, the escalation inherent in the removal of clothing. Him looking at you like this makes you feel exposed in a way plain old nakedness never has. Otacon’s seen you naked before, helped fit the latest iterations of your sneaking suit, lived with you for months. But this is different -- because it’s this, because it’s him and you doing this -- and you want to deal with everything one layer at a time.

His hands fly off of you immediately. “Sorry, oh no, I’m really sorry,” he says.

You take one of his hands, kiss the palm. “Nothing to be sorry about. Touching’s ok, though. How about you?”

“How about me what?” he asks, propping himself up so he can look at you better.

You trail a hand up his arm and back down, as gently as you know how. “How are you doing?”

“Oh,” he says. “Uh?” he says. “Why?” he asks.

“Because I want to make sure you’re doing okay,” you say. Almost growl it, really, exasperated in the best way but still the smallest bit exasperated.

“Don’t use your bossy voice on me,” he says. He flops back down, chin poking your chest. “I think I’m doing good? I’m so nervous I think I’m gonna puke --”

“Don’t puke on me.”

“--Thank you, Snake. Though I think I feel less like that than I did a little while ago? But besides that, yeah?”

“Well, tell me if you’re not okay anymore.”

“Okay, jeez, I get it,” he says. “But so -- would you like it if I touched you underneath your shirt, then, maybe?”

It’s not like that’s really much of anything, but your face heats up a little anyway. Maybe it’s the way he says it. “Yeah,” you say.

Otacon kisses you again, more sure of himself this time. Moves his hands. It’s nice. “Your hands are cold again,” you say.

“Sorry, I can stop?”

“No,” you say. “No, it’s --” It’s harder to think when Otacon’s touching you with Intent. You exhale sharply. pull his face back towards yours. Every reaction from you seems to give him more confidence, more determination. You want to touch every part of him but you don’t.

At some point he insists on reversing your positions again, and he runs a hand up and down your back like he’s trying to memorize the feel of it.

You do something with your tongue that makes him groan, and he freezes.

“I’m really sorry, I think we have to uh, not, anymore maybe?” he says. You roll off of him. He’s staring at the ceiling. “Not that I don’t want to or, but I think that --”

You turn on your side to better see him. “Okay,” you say.

“Just like that?” he asks. Still, the ceiling.

“Just like that.”

“We’re good still?” he asks.

“Yeah,” you say. “We’re pretty good.”

“I was wondering, actually, if you were doing anything later,” said David, totally beating Joshua to the punch.

“D-doing anything??” said Josh.

“Yeah, I was wondering if you were doing anything later,” said David. “Because I think it would be nice to be around you outside of this admittedly limited context, where we could actually talk and stuff, and it sucks to only get to know you in a work-related context, you know.”

“No I don’t really know,” said Joshua since it wasn’t like Dave just showed up at his workplace or anything.

It was raining outside probably or something because that’s what happens in Florida maybe, but to Josh it felt like it was really sunny, in his heart. But maybe David just meant in a friends way he wanted to hang out, which would be cool because Dave seemed like a nice guy who Josh wouldn’t normally pick to hang out with but who would turn out to be super neat if he actually did hang out with him. Still, though, Joshua had been planning to ask him out maybe if he got up the nerve -- no!!! he was totally gonna do it!!! he couldn’t back down now -- except that Dave had gotten the jump on him.

“Well just trust me then, it would be nice to see you outside of work,” said the coffee shop employee. “I think I would like that a lot.”

“I think I would like that too,” said the scientist.

All the sudden the man was standing very close to Joshua, even closer than he was before. He touched Josh’s face softly, in a way that made him want to cry. “Honestly Josh, I should tell you something,” said Dave.

“Oh? What?” asked Joshua, his heart racing.

“I like you a lot and I think you’re pretty cute, too,” said David.

Josh buried his hands in Dave’s espresso-colored hair. Well, not really like quite that dark, maybe espresso if you put a little bit of milk in it. But not very much milk. “Oh David, I guess I’ve really liked you for a long time, and you’ve also liked me back, and now I feel a little silly about all the time we spent not being together and stuff and also how other people probably likely knew about how I felt before I myself knew.”

“I totally understand what you mean,” said the barista. “And I definitely think it wasn’t actually that embarrassing, as I also experienced the same problem, so we should just forget about all of that and kiss.”

“I think I might actually be able to manage that,” said Joshua.

“Cool,” said David. “That’s good.” David’s sentences were often as succinct as his hair was brown.

You close out of the file. You think for a minute about deleting it, so there’s no evidence of that even happening, so that there’s not even the remotest possibility that anyone (Snake) would ever see it and know just how pathetic (very) you were. You’re lying there in bed on your laptop and he’s asleep right next to you, and you were asleep too but you woke up because it’s weird being asleep at this time and it’s weird being asleep with someone else in your bed though it keeps getting less and less weird and you wanted to finish this whatever-it-is so you could close out of it forever but, just --

Snake’s next to you in bed and you’re not freaking out or anything because that’s where he’s supposed to be, next to you, and maybe it’s been like that for a while? You’re starting to think you’re maybe not as great at figuring things out as you thought you were? You’re thinking maybe you need to give back like, one of your degrees or something, haha hey here you go MIT turns out I can’t figure out when someone’s duping me into launching nukes or when my friend has a crush on me or when I have a crush on him, so I think you may have made some sort of critical error handing this out, sorry for the mixup, but. Where were you going. You were going to sleep, that’s right, in a second at least, after you think about how ridiculous it is that you have this file (that you could delete? no, maybe you won’t) where you write about how you and Snake get together and it’s wish fulfillment but really you didn’t need wish fulfillment and if you keep thinking along this line you’re going to get sappy.

Snake’s kinda sappy in general, you’re finding out pretty quick, full on ponderous romantic speeches quiet hand holding softly kissing you in the kitchen while you’re trying to make grilled cheese sandwiches sappy. It’s ridiculous. It’s some romcom style crap. It’s exactly like one of your fanfics, it’s twenty times better than anything you could ever come up with in any of your fanfics, it’s all of the above at once.

Snake’s next to you, and you want -- you want a lot of things. You want way too many things! But you’re kind of getting the idea that possibly you can get some of the things you want sometimes, without it being a disaster. Once in awhile you want the right things and you want them at the right time, once in awhile you kiss someone and they kiss you back, once in awhile you only burn one of the grilled cheeses (and that’s how Snake likes them, because he’s weird, and once in awhile he’ll smile at you when you tell him that and you’ll want to kiss him on the cheek because he’s there and he’s good and he’s good to you and because you can and so you do). Anyway. Anyway.

Anyway. The point is: sometimes you meet your -- boyfriend? husband?? your Snake? no that sounds vaguely dirty -- sometimes you meet your partner while he’s trying to stop an attempt to launch a nuke using your hell death murderbot and not in a comic meet-cute sort of way like you wish. Sometimes you work for an arms manufacturer and not NASA, which would’ve been nicer. Sometimes you grow up with your dad and -- a bunch of other stuff you’d rather not think about -- and not with your mom and her girlfriend, which would’ve been better. But sometimes you end up where you wanted to be despite all of that.

You should go back to sleep.

You go back to sleep.

Footnotes

¹ A few weeks.

² She was wrong, of course, but it’s good to hope.

Chapter Text

141.80 -- Time: Unknown -- Location: The Apartment, Houston TX

“What?” says Otacon, which is usually what he says first thing in the morning.

“Glasses?” he says, which is usually the second. You hand them over but he’s still mostly asleep and pokes himself in the eye a few times before he gives up.

Before he can ask what’s going to be the third thing he asks most mornings, you say “We’re in Houston, in our apartment, I don’t know what time it is but it’s morning.”

“You’re in my bed,” he mumbles, still half asleep. “That’s nice.”

He drifts off again for a few minutes, glasses crooked. You let yourself just stare for a while. He looks sweet like this: not bunched up, not braced for some inevitable blow.

“Hey,” says Otacon sleepily, a few minutes later.

“Hey,” you say.

“What’re you thinking about?”

“You’re cute,” you say.

He pulls the covers up to eye level, embarrassed. “No,” says Otacon. “I’m going back to bed. Goodbye.”

“Otacon. . . you haven’t even gotten up yet.”

“Bye, Snake.” He yawns.

“Otacon, we’re sharing the bed.”

He’s already half asleep again. Or more so than he was, at least. He’s going to give you hell later if you let him sleep in until two in the afternoon again. And then he’s going to give you hell for telling him to not stay up until morning, and then he’ll give you hell for telling him he doesn’t get enough sleep when “clearly if I’m sleeping so ‘late’ I’m getting all the sleep I need!” You love this man more than air.

“We really should probably get up,” you say, nudging him, pushing the covers away from yourself. “Eat breakfast or something.”

This actually kind of wakes him up. “No,” says Otacon. “No way. I am going to get up, and be back in five minutes, and you are going to just, stay there. Just stay put.”

He gets up. You hear him banging around in the kitchen for a few minutes. He comes back, triumphant, with an improbable amount of plates.

“Here, now there’s no reason to leave for at least a few hours.” He sees you looking funny at his ability to carry everything. “What?”

You nod at the two glasses he’s holding in one hand, his general ability to not drop anything. You’d never thought of Otacon as clumsy, but not coordinated either.

“Oh,” he says. He holds the hand with the glasses out to you and you take one. “I spent a summer waiting tables at a crappy restaurant when I was seventeen. They shouldn’t have hired me in the first place, but they were that desperate for help, and I got fired after a few months anyway.” He sets everything else down on the desk, and then sits on the bed, cross legged, facing you. “Apparently I wasn’t very ‘personable.’”

“I think you’re personable,” you say.

He rolls his eyes and blushes just a little. “I was fine being fired, though, it was almost the beginning of the semester and, you know, scholarships, I didn’t need the money as much then. Managed to keep the knack of carrying a lot of plates at once, that’s all.”

“I can’t really see you as a customer service kinda guy --”

“See! You don’t think I’m personable either.”

“I mean, I just think you’d hate it.”

“I did,” he says.

“How’d you end up at a place like that in the first place, anyway?”

“That,” says Otacon, frowning, “Is definitely not first date talk.”

You can tell when you’re being asked to change the subject. “So this is a first date, huh?”

“Unless you’ve changed your mind since yesterday, haha,” he says.

You pull his coffee cup out of his hands and set it aside. “Hey,” you say, running your hand through his hair for a second, because you can. Amazingly, your hand doesn’t get caught in a knot and he leans into it a little. “Hey, I’m not going anywhere.”

“I’m a pretty weird guy. That’s what I’ve been told, at least, so you know, you might wanna hold off a little before you make any promises.”

He looks nervous, like he thinks at any second you’ll change your mind. You didn’t know there was much left that could still make you nervous, but Otacon sitting cross legged on your bed, fidgeting, head leaning against your hand: that’s apparently one of them.

“Otacon, you’ve been arguing with me about the right way to hang toilet paper for over a year now,” you say. “I already know you’re a weird guy. I’m kind of a weird guy too. I also think you’re brilliant though, and extraordinary, and I’m not gonna leave you behind any time soon.”

He huffs and puts his around around your neck, mock-begrudgingly. “It’s not my fault you put the toilet paper on the wrong way.”

“Yeah whatever,” you say.

You lean in closer. “My breath probably smells terrible,” he says.

“Mine too,” you say. Your thumb strokes the space behind his ear, the corner of his jaw. Otacon closes his eyes. “I don’t care if you don’t care? It’s okay if you care.”

“Oh,” he says. He smiles, he keeps doing that lately, he keeps smiling and it hurts in the best way. “No, I don’t mind.”

He kisses you without any sort of hesitancy and it’s the imperfection more than anything that leaves you breathless, that his breath is bad, that he bites your lip a little too hard and then mumbles “sorry” against your mouth, because it’s real. Otacon’s cradling your head in his hands and you have to prop yourself up on your free hand to keep from toppling over, and it’s real, and you chose this.

“Besides, I thought Shadow Moses was our first date,” you say when you’ve caught your breath.

“Gosh, you sure do know how to show a guy a good time, then,” says Otacon. “Does it count as a date if you get shot at?”

“I hope so,” you say. “Otherwise I haven’t taken you on very many.”

“You’ll just have to make up for lost time now, I guess. But eat first, the toast is gonna get all soggy.”

You grab a piece. “We’re going to get crumbs in the bed.”

He shrugs, mouth full, to indicate his total lack of giving a shit, and the two of you eat the best breakfast you’ve ever had. You don’t taste a single thing you eat. Otacon keeps looking off into the distance, distant, before seeming to snap back to the present -- when he does, he looks at you and smiles and when he does you really realize how afraid he is that once you get out of this bed some sort of spell will break and this’ll be over. Which shouldn’t make you smile, but it does. Because he’s wrong, and you get to prove that to him.

“Meryl’s never going to let us live this down, you know,” says Otacon.

NEW MESSAGE TO: Mulder (Otacon)

Meryl

>Im never gonna let u live this down u kno

Mulder (Otacon)

>Yes meryl!!! i know!!!

Meryl

>Bc i am a hero and u 2 r awful

Mulder (Otacon)

>Then why r u txting me?

Meryl

>Wanted 2 make sure u werent actually too mad at me

Mulder (Otacon)

>I mean maybe a little mad

>Not that mad

>Snake says hi btw :)

Meryl

>Eueahghhh

Mulder (Otacon)

>Jeez chill out. I only said that he said hi. Anyway you did this to yrself

Meryl

>That doesnt make it hurt any less

Mulder (Otacon)

>Ok snake didnt actually say hi he said that its a good thing he likes me this much

>otherwise hed be a lot more mad about the kidnapping thing

>Also that he thinks its a shame that u dont think u could beat him in a fair fight + had 2 cheat

Meryl

>Wow!! What a low down rotten bastard

Mulder (Otacon)

>Hes reading over my shoulder

Meryl

>Good!!! Snake youre a rotten bastard!!

>Ill kick ur ass any day!!

Mulder (Otacon)

>I g2g now : )

Meryl

>im blocking this number

Mulder (Otacon)

>You txted me first

141.80 -- Time: 1134 hours -- Location: The Apartment

For all that everything’s changed you’re still here at the rickety kitchen table that shifts every time you move your hand, reading over the files Otacon pulled from Carpenter’s computer. Probably yesterday morning you wouldn’t have envisioned this particular scene with Otacon’s legs in your lap, but otherwise this morning looks a lot like any other.

You flip over another page. “Still not finding anything worth worrying about in Pallas Defense’s files.”

“Yeah, well, hold your horses there’s another hundred or so pages to go,” says Otacon.

“Couldn’t you have made some sort of application or something to just search for the right stuff so we didn’t have to read all of this?”

Otacon gives you that look that always kind of reminds you of the way Miller looked at particularly foolish new FOXHOUND recruits when they’d answered a question spectacularly wrong, except Otacon can’t really achieve the same sort of grizzled terror effect Miller could. “In the time it would take me to figure out how to teach any sort of ‘application’ what was relevant and what wasn’t, we could already be done with all this. It’s not like I can just dump it all in a text file and look for the words ‘Metal Gear,’ we don’t know how each individual company might refer to any sort of black budget project. Computers can only do what you tell them to.”

“I think you just like doing tedious research.”

“Absolutely not. I know it’s important, but I’m sick of looking over budget reports,” says Otacon, laying his head down on the table, almost knocking over a stack of papers with a dramatic flop of his arm.

You push the hair out of his face. “Too many numbers,” you say.

“We couldn’t make Meryl do it, do you think?” he asks. “As, I dunno, payback or something?”

“Too many numbers,” you say again, carefully running your fingers through his hair. “Besides, you really do like research.”

He props his head up on one hand. “Yeah, I guess, just you know I know it’s sort of silly but this is technically sort of our ‘honeymoon,’ I hate spending it looking at columns of numbers.”

“You like columns of numbers,” you say.

“They’re losing their appeal. I like other things more.” He rests his head on the table again. “Sorry, that’s all kind of embarrassing, isn’t it?”

“I kinda like it,” you say. “‘Honeymoon.’ That’s nice.”

“Yeah, I mean, we already did the ‘married’ part. Might as well get the perks.” He shuts his laptop. “I propose a moratorium on budget reports in celebration, I guess, of er, you know.”

You know. “You know?”

“Yeah, just -- I mean, it’s not like, I guess, we’re not officially, but. . .”

“We didn’t really talk about what we are,” you say. Hate saying it. Don’t want to talk about it as much as you want to revel in the easy openness of Otacon, awake before noon and smiling at you.

He stops smiling at you. “What do you mean? I mean -- sorry, damn. I was reading too much into things, I knew it. I -- I can back off, Snake! I came on a little strong! Forget all that stuff I said!”

“Which stuff?”

“Anything ever, probably!”

“Otacon, calm down,” you say. “Not what I meant.” You pause. “I know that I love you. And I know that you love me. But just because the others make jokes about us being married, that doesn’t mean that we are.”

“Oh,” he says. “Sorry, haha, didn’t mean to --”

“Let me finish,” you say. “I’m not saying anything about whether or not that’s good or bad. I want to know how you feel about -- about marriage. We don’t have to be. We can be. Stick with me here.”

Otacon pulls his legs out of your lap and starts fussing with the piles of paper around the table. He’s incapable of making eye contact during these sorts of discussions, so you let him. “Do you want me to start?” you ask.

“Yeah,” he says.

“I didn’t think I’d ever get married,” you say. “Didn’t seem like the sort of thing for me. Sort of thing possible for me.”

He laughs, shaky. “Yeah, you’re too cool of a guy for that sort of thing.”

“No, listen to me, it’s not like that,” you say. “I didn’t think anyone would ever want to stick around for long enough. I thought I’d be bad for. . . for anyone who would want to.”

“Oh, Snake,” he says. He pauses his shuffling of files, tries to look at you, looks away. “You’re not bad for me.”

“I know that,” you say, and it’s mostly true. “Mostly though, it just never occurred to me as a thing to want.”

“I always wanted to,” he says, shoving things into an accordion file. “Or, also, I’ve never wanted to. I kinda hated the idea, because -- anyway, just because, I do. But also I always really wanted to. I -- I don’t know. I don’t think I ever saw anyone happy and married. Certainly not --” he lets the accordion file thud satisfyingly on the table “-- anyone like me.”

“Like you?” you ask.

“You know,” he says. “Or you don’t know, in which case, I don’t think I can really talk about it. I don’t know if I can say all the things I want to say to you.”

“That’s alright,” you say. You can’t do that either. You’re finding it hard to capture into words the way every second you’re around him -- every second you’ve been around him, for months and months now -- he becomes more necessary to your continued existence. How frightening that is. Self-sufficiency was a key survival strategy for you; for him too, you think.

“It’s not fair that we have to have these sorts of conversations,” says Otacon. “I keep thinking about twenty other ones we’re going to have to stumble through, and I’m really angry about it.”

“Suck it up,” you say.

“You’re such a supportive partner,” he says. “Anyway, I have to work through a speech here, just hang with me.”

“Okay,” you say.

“I don’t want to talk about it, but I do, so, just. . .” He trails off for a second, his eyes unfocus. You take his hand, but he shoos you off. “My dad was an awful husband, I think. Maybe as bad at that as he was at being a dad. And -- but anyway, my ‘up close’ experiences with marriage are all bad. It’s all. . . lies and imbalance and bitterness and being unhappy and letting people down and them letting you down and arguments and loneliness and resentment and I wanted to be a part of it anyway.” He laughs and turns away from you, tries to surreptitiously wipe his face in the way you know means he’s crying. “This is awful, but I liked it when they said we were married, even when they were joking about it and it was fake, because it meant that it made it harder for you to leave me. Isn’t that terrible? In my head I thought, ‘well, now I can pretend he’s promised to stay.’”

He puts away the last of the papers, sits down again at the table, but farther away from you than before. “Don’t make too much fun of me for this last part, it’s really silly and obvious in retrospect.”

“Okay,” you say. “I won’t. Probably.”

“Comforting,” he says. Starts doodling on a pad of paper he’d left out with one of your pencils. He always has to keep his hands busy, which you get -- it’s taken you thirty some years to master the art of stillness, and that was out of necessity. Otacon’s more kinetic than people think, restless to move forward. To make something new. Even if what that is is a sort of cartoonish looking sketch of Rex. “When I made up aliases for us, a lot of times I’d have them be married. On paper. I didn’t really try to hide that, so I figured you didn’t mind.”

“You had us get married on paper? Are you sure you didn’t know that you, you know --”

He looks at you then for a second, just so he can glare. Shifts his gaze back away. “I had our aliases married on paper. It’s convenient. Tidy. Makes paperwork easier. And you know I don’t know anything until someone points it out to me, even I know that, which means it must be so obvious a fact that it’s observable from space. I liked it because, you know, like I said.”

“Harder to leave,” you say.

“Yeah,” he says. “It was nice, pretending that you were attached to me, even if I didn’t think ‘oh, I wish Solid Snake would sweep me up into his big strong arms’ or whatever. Usually I wouldn’t think that, at least. Because I’m always waiting to wake up and find out that you’ve left and aren’t coming back, and that way I could pretend that you couldn’t.”

“People do leave people they’re married to,” you say.

“Don’t ruin the fiction,” he says. “I know it’s silly. It was just -- it was like when I was a kid and my sister, stepsister, whatever, would wanna play house with me, pretend like we were married. To clarify she was four, it wasn’t a weird thing, I swear.”

Otacon does this sometimes, very very occasionally: gives you contextless bits of information about his life before Shadow Moses. Disjointed fragments, achronological. You’re starting to piece together the puzzle yourself. To be fair, you do the same thing to him, you think. “You’re fine,” you say. “Keep going.”

“She moved around a lot as a little kid, I think. I don’t know where her dad was, I don’t think that she knew. And I didn’t know where my mom was, back then. If I had a mother.” He draws a little speech bubble coming out of the cartoon Rex’s mouth, writes “rrrargh!!” in it. “Sometimes, and in context of everything about everything about our lives this is really silly, but sometimes I thought I might be a clone.”

“Well, I’ve seen pictures,” you say. Uncanny, the ways he looks like his dad almost exactly, but looks entirely different all the same.

“Yeah, so. She’d wanna pretend like we were husband and wife, went grocery shopping together, bought furniture and talked about the weather and had very serious adult discussions about whatever was in the paper. She could read but she understood like, a quarter of what she read at least. It was funny, and I think she thought maybe -- we were family, but no family we’d ever had actually was actually really a family, if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah,” you say. You know what he means. It’s strange sometimes -- you thought the man who was your father was family for a long time, but then he wasn’t, was just your father instead. Something hateful attached to you irrevocably, but dissociated from the network -- the very small, increasingly smaller network -- of people you could trust.

“And anyway, so, it was kind of like that. Marrying our aliases. Except not at all, obviously, but that’s the closest explanation I can give you and it really still sounds pathetic anyway, doesn’t it? Sorry.”

“You’re cute,” you say.

“Don’t patronize me,” he says.

“No, that’s not what I meant,” you say. “It’s good.” It’s incredible, really, and incredibly comforting in a way you can’t tell him. That he wasn’t just suddenly swept up in a torrent of emotion, that he’d always wanted you to stick around. Even before he knew that he wanted to be with you like this. “Maybe it’s silly. I wouldn’t tell Meryl about it. But I like it.”

“Haha, too bad we don’t still have the rings, right? To really ‘seal the deal?’” he says. Still nervous.

“Uh, actually, I kept them,” you say.

Otacon looks startled, like a hammer just fell on his toe. Like a wave just knocked him over. “Kept them?”

You pull out your dogtags to show him the two rings hanging there next to them. “I uh, didn’t know if it was weirder to get rid of them or not and I didn’t really want to so I just. . . kept them.”

Otacon’s got his “Aw jeez, I gotta go, see ya later” face on, but what he says is “You kept them on you?”

“I know you gave me yours back, but I wanted to keep it just in case you decided you wanted it later,” you say. Out of some weird pang of optimism, or else some kind of sentimentality. Otacon looks upended, off-kilter. “Think of it as my version of the fake aliases.” Which it isn’t but is.

“Jeez,” he says. “I can’t look at you right now.” He’s clutching the pencil so hard it might break.

“That might’ve been the. . . wrong thing to do?” you say. You’re out of your depths but so is he, which is unfamiliar. Usually if there’s something one of you can’t do, the other can.

“No, no,” he says. “Well, I mean, I don’t know what the protocol is in normal situations, I’m just, gosh, I don’t know, we’re --”

He falls silent. You’re sitting there awkwardly clutching your fake wedding rings, purchased for you by a woman who poisoned you not two years back, waiting for him to finish his thought. He’s embarrassed, you can tell. Probably of whatever he’s feeling right now, though it’s hard to spot what that is. Seven things all at once, most likely. But you can’t feel anything but overwhelming certainty, unassailable affection. And okay, maybe a little embarrassment. You can be this -- whatever this is -- together, without anyone watching or talking in your ear.

“We’re what?” you ask.

“I don’t know,” says Otacon. “We’re something.” He looks at the rings. Looks at you for a second, but it’s too much, he gets misty eyed. “Jeez. Snake, even though it hasn’t been that long since I last saw them, I’d forgotten how ugly those rings are.”

“I didn’t pick them.”

“I know! They’re just. . . really hideous!” He starts to sniffle, and then cry in earnest, in the way he does when he’s hoping you’ll ignore that he is.

“Hey, are you okay?”

“Yeah!” he says. “It’s just a lot! It’s just very much a lot! I hate that I’m crying over something that ugly and I’m maybe freaking out a little because it’s a lot.”

“So do you want yours back or what?” you ask.

He wipes some tears away. “Yeah,” he says.

“Okay. Nice.” You pull the ring off of the chain. “You really should have something nicer,” you mutter, and hold the ring out for him to take.

Otacon doesn’t take it. “No, Snake, you gotta put it on my hand,” he says, and he does look at you then. Right in the eyes. But he seems something there that makes him cry harder.

“Why?” you ask.

“Gee, I don’t know, Snake,” Otacon huffs, tearful, smiling a little. “I don’t make the rules! That’s just how it is.”

“Just don’t see why you can’t put the damn thing on yourself,” you say.

“Don’t be a big baby. Um, but, sorry, I know it’s kind of really silly and stupid.”

“Hey,” you say, taking his hand. “It’s not stupid. It’s just weird, that’s all,” you say, slipping the ring onto his finger. It’s a nice hand. It’s a horrible ring. “Okay, better now?”

“Yes, thank you,” says Otacon.

“Can I put mine on now or is there some sort of procedure that’s gotta be observed there too?” you ask.

“No, I want to,” says Otacon, snagging the ring from you.

You both pause to stare at the monstrosity. “Naomi really does hate me, doesn’t she?” you say. “This ring. . .”

“It’s really bad,” says Otacon. “I really like it.”

You give up on ignoring that he’s crying. “I’m not making you upset, am I?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he says. “It’s just really really nice.”

“The ring? You sure you’re okay?”

“Not the ring. The whole thing. I know the ring is stupid and it’s all very stupid but it’s nice, having something like that. Means it’s real and you can’t take it back. I mean, you can, I mean, I’m not trying to say that you have to stay with me just because, I don’t know.”

“I know I don’t have to. I want to.” You’d do anything to convince him that you mean it. You’d wear this awful ring for the rest of your life.

“Can we get. . . less hideous ones?” he asks. “I mean, I don’t know, I don’t know if that’s ‘moving too fast,’ in actuality, I was mostly kidding about the rings before, when I said it’d be neat to have them, because I didn’t want you to think I was super weird or serious or too serious about any of this.”

“I’m serious about this,” you say.

“Hey,” says Otacon, “If we’re married, that means you have to do the bridal carry thing over the doorway.”

“Why can’t you be the one carrying me for once?” you ask.

“Because I asked Meryl once what it would take for me to be able to pick you up to the degree that you can pick me up and she said she would need like a couple weeks and that I would have to consume at least my bodyweight in protein powder and she would wake me up at six in the morning every single day, and I was super disappointed.”

“Really?”

“Yeah and then I went on this whole tirade about how it was super sweet that you were concerned about my well being but it was frustrating that you were really strong and buff and generally great at stuff and so nice to me but I couldn’t even bully you into going to sleep or not sitting around in your underwear reading Kant all day and I think at some point she just hung up on me.”

You look at him. You already were looking at him, of course, but now you really look at him. You might never get enough of looking at him. “And you really didn’t know that you were --”

“Hey! Like you didn’t do the same thing. Also, that isn’t even near the worst of it,” he says. “And no, no idea.”

“Hmm,” you say. “You should tell me about the worst of it.”

“No?” he says. “No! No way. That’s like, tenth anniversary material, haha. Not that uh, not that I’m saying we’re gonna be? Together in ten years? Just, you know --”

“Otacon. . .”

“Er, yeah Snake?”

There’s a lot still unsaid. You want to ask him if he’d want to get married on paper to you -- actual you, though you know your existence legally is tenuous at best. You want to ask him if he’d let you take his last name, but he hates his name, and he might have hit his limit on thinking about his family history for today. You want everything. But you have time for all of that later. You choose to believe you have time, even if you know in reality the two of you teeter heedlessly at the edge of destruction at least twice a month. It’s worth believing in. “I think you should probably kiss me now,” you say.

“Can’t believe you kept those hideous things,” he mutters, but he does.

140.15 -- Time: Date Time -- Location: Washington, DC

It ends up being a torturously long amount of time before you can actually go on that date with Mei Ling -- and by ‘torturously long’ you mean ‘two weeks,’ a span of time Nastasha assures you is not actually torturous but what does she know anyway???

NEW MESSAGE TO: Naomi lmao

Meryl

>Naomi what r u supposed 2 wear on a 1st date

Naomi lmao

>Clothes, presumably.

Meryl

>Gee thx

Naomi lmao

>Haven’t you ever been on a first date before?

Meryl

>In like HS?? That doesnt really count tho

>Oh god i havent been on a real date since hs. I cant believe it.

>Im gonna screw this up

>Naomi if ML stops talking 2 me bc i ruin our 1st date

>its gonna make working 2gether so hard

>Naomi. Help

Naomi lmao

>Why don’t you text Nastasha and not me?

>She seems like she’d be more helpful, and she’s actually your friend.

>Unlike me.

>As I am not your friend, and never will be.

>In case the subtext of those prior messages wasn’t something you were fully cognizant of.

Meryl

>Haha ok Naomi :).

>Idk shes not answering i think she is off on one of her james bond deals u kno

Naomi lmao

>Is this what’s going to happen every single time one of you has some sort of romantic feelings?

>Endless texts? Potentially convoluted setups? Will I ever be left in peace?

Meryl

>I just wanna kno what 2 wear dude

NEW MESSAGE FROM: Snake

Snake

>Naomi said you were freaking out.

Meryl

>What does she kno!!!!

>Also i thought u didnt know how 2 txt

Snake

>I just think it’s weird. So I don’t do it very often. Otacon showed me how to.

Meryl

>Ok well i dont kno why naomi is telling u things all the sudden but its none of ur business!!!

Snake

>None of my business?

Meryl

>Yeah!

Snake

>Meryl. . .

Meryl

>Ok ok thats fair.

Im going on a date w/ ML 2nite + i dont want to screw up

Snake

>Then don’t screw up.

Meryl

>THX

Snake

>If it makes you feel any better, Otacon is talking to Mei Ling right now and she’s panicking too.

>That’s why I’m texting you instead of just calling like a normal person.

Meryl

>Right. Bc shed hear bc she hears everything

Snake

>You got it.

Meryl

>What is she saying

Snake

>I’m not going to tell you.

Meryl

>Ur a bad friend

Snake

>I’m trying to help you

>Otacon says if you want a decent conversation topic, you could ask her about her nanoelectronics seminar.

>She’s really enjoying it.

Meryl

>I dont kno anything abt that crap!

Snake

>You don’t have to, trust me.

>Clearly she wants to spend more time with you. So just spend time with her. Listen to her talk.

Meryl

>But this is different than just spendin time w her!!!!

Snake

>Its really not.

Meryl

>Yes it is

Snake

>Its not. Relax.

Meryl

>Well imho u dont have any room 2 talk about like whatevr!!!

Snake

>I dont know what imho is.

Meryl

>Ask ur bf!!!!

Snake

>I dont know what that is either.

Meryl

>omg

>wait no dont tell me u dont kno that 1 either

Snake

>Keep it together, Meryl.

Right. You can do this. Screw Snake! Well. No. Not that. You know what you mean, okay??

You check your hair at every red light from DC to Boston which results in a lot of honking but whatever everyone can just deal with it. You worked hard on this hair. But the hair looks fine. It’ll all be fine. You’re just hanging out with your good friend Mei Ling, albeit in a slightly different manner than before.

You knock on the door to her apartment, and there’s this heartstopping second where you don’t know if she’s gonna answer the door, and then she does and gosh is she beautiful. You’re about to say something to that effect when someone in your ear says “Ask if you can come in!”

There’s this like, moment where you’re like: “okay am I imagining voices now, that’s fine that’s quite frankly typical I just need to know so I can deal with that reality,” but no you recognize that not-British not-not-British accent all too well. But you can’t say anything, because Mei’s standing right there looking at you, and you could tell her oh hey Naomi’s decided to crash the date but you just -- honestly, you just freeze.

“Should we get going?” asks Mei.

“Oh, yes, right,” you say. “Hi, by the way.”

“Hi,” says Mei, and she’s smiling sweetly, and you’re this close to having a capital M Moment, when Naomi says “compliment her appearance or something, you dolt.”

Which you were just about to do, thanks Naomi. “You look really nice,” you say. She’s not, like, wearing anything special or anything, she just always looks really nice. You think she’s maybe wearing more makeup than usual, which maybe means that she really wants to look good, which maybe means she really does like you? Or maybe means she just wanted to wear eyeshadow, one of the two.

You go and you get dinner, you think it’s good, you’re not paying that much attention. You relish the opportunity to pay attention to Mei Ling instead without having to feel as weird about it maybe. Like, you’re supposed to, on a date. You’re supposed to look at her and get embarrassed and you’re supposed to want to impress her and you’re supposed to listen to her tell you stories with your chin in your hands.

Like literally every movie option available is the fucking pits but you are not Otacon you are not Solid Dave “tree climbing sounds like a reasonable first date” “though on second thought probably our first date was fucking Shadow Moses” Snake, that is not the sort of romance you’re going for. You had dinner, now you are going to see a movie, and it will be an extremely normal first date.

“Go with Saw,” says Naomi. “Scary movies are supposed to be good date movies, right?”

Honestly you don’t know if Saw’s actually that scary, it’s just viscerally depressing to you, and you think the suggestion was more for Naomi’s benefit than anyone else’s. Naomi loves that kinda crap.

War movies are right out. Historical dramas are right out. You’re not going to watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre on a first date. “Let’s see the crappy movie about the teen spy hacker,” says Mei.

“Really?” you ask. “That’s what you wanna go with?”

“Yup!” she says.

“It’s gonna be bad,” you say.

“Well, that’s okay,” she says, and the movie theatre has the sort of arm rests that you can push up out of the way and you put your arm around her during the movie (and it’s not an awkward move, like you had assumed it would be), and her hand is small and cold in yours, and the movie is terrible, but it’s nice.

You lend her your jacket while you’re walking back, even though you’re cold and even though she’s already wearing a jacket, just for the simple pleasure of seeing her wear it. Of getting to do that. You feel ridiculous instantly (also: cold) and terribly transparent, but she looks warmer and your shoulders look great jacket-free so whatever.

“Do you want to come in?” asks Mei when you get back to her door.

“Uh,” you say, after a moment’s pause.

“Say yes, for God’s sake, what’s wrong with you?” says Naomi’s voice in your ear and oh my god is Naomi still watching you????

“Yes?” you say.

“Uh, okay,” says Mei, and it takes her a minute, fumbling with the key, before she actually gets the door open.

“Haha, hey, nice Top Gun poster on the wall.”

“Gosh, Meryl, I thought you’d be the last person to think that that was weird,” she says.

“Oh no,” you say, and then, “I think it’s pretty nifty.”

Nifty? you mouth to yourself, as soon as Mei turns around. “Nifty?!” says Naomi. “Really?”

You’re standing in her living room kinda awkwardly and she’s still wearing your jacket. “Hey,” she says. “I had a really nice time tonight.”

“Did you really like that movie? It was not that good.”

“No!” says Mei. “Not that part. The, all the other parts.”

“She’s trying to say she wants to kiss you,” says Naomi, and it’s like, okay, you know what? Like, maybe you wanna wait for her to say that.

“I really want to kiss you,” says Mei.

“Oh! Uh, nice,” you say. Naomi groans.

“Would you be okay with that?” she asks and you’re leaning down and she’s leaning up and you’re a little unsteady but oh boy does it work. You try not to lean your weight forward too much, lest you tip her over, and then you think oh, wait, and put your arm around her waist and that helps.

Naomi sighs, right in your ear, and it’s like -- really? Now? “Jesus, took long enough,” she says.

You should really say something about Naomi. You really don’t want to interrupt the proceedings, but you really should. “Uh,” you say breaking away for a second, before leaning down to kiss her again. “Um,” and another long kiss, because you’ve got two warring impulses in your head and one’s winning pretty quick.

“Is something wrong?” she asks. “Sorry, I kinda --”

“No!” you say quickly. “No, no no no nothing is wrong here, this is really unwrong, just. . . Naomi keeps giving me unsolicited advice on the codec.”

“Damn it, Meryl!” says Naomi. “I was trying to help!”

“Oh,” says Mei, relieved. “Well, that’s easy enough to fix. Do you want me to block her forever, or just for a little while?”

“A little while,” you say. “She’s just tryin’ to be a pal.”

“I am not!” says Naomi.

“Ah yes, our good buddy Naomi,” says Mei.

“What a gal,” you say, deadpan, and wink at Mei. “What a pal. What a great friend.”

“Fine! If it’s going to be that way!” says Naomi. “I’ll just leave! You’re welcome by the way!”

“Is she gone now?” asks Mei.

“Yeah,” you say.

“Nice,” she says. And then -- “Wanna play Tekken?”

“Uh,” you say.

“Just kidding,” she says. She tucks a strand of hair behind your ear. “I’d beat you anyway.”

“Um?” Maybe you shoulda let Naomi stick around.

“Why do you think Naomi did that?” asks Mei. “Cyrano de Bergerac you through this, I mean.”¹

“Cyrano --?” you ask.

“Sorry, uh, try and talk you through what to say.”

“Maybe she really is starting to warm up to us?” you say. “Or it’s something really convoluted, plot wise.”

“Hmm, I think I could do without any more convoluted plots for the moment. I’ll take the first option.”

You keep wanting to say “I’m really bad at this” but you’re not sure if that would totally blow your chances to kiss her more. At the same time, it’s hard to have really complex thoughts when you can feel her breath against your neck.

“What’re you thinking?” she asks.

“Not thinking about Naomi, that’s for damn sure.”

She hmms and smiles, which means you’re not gonna get out of answering the question. “Um, I like you? if you didn’t gather that from the kissing part and everything, haha” (God you sound like Otacon, get your shit together Meryl) “and I think you’re cute and smart and kind, and I like hanging out with you, and I’d like to go on some more dates with you, probably preferably without the backseat driver, and figure out how to beat you at Tekken, and kiss you some more too, if that’s cool.”

Mei smiles even wider, and blushes, she’s got like three freckles under her left eye that you never noticed before, it’s cute as hell. “Neat.”

“Neat.”

“Nifty, even,” she says.

“Okay, no, just for that, you gotta do the thing too.”

“The thing?”

“You know! The embarrassing speech thing.”

She looks away and chews on her lip. “But I’m not very good at it.”

Which is like, sort of the point of the embarrassing speech thing. That nobody’s good at it. That’s why everybody’s gotta. “If Snake and Otacon can do it, you can,” you say.

Which is pretty much your position on anything that doesn’t involve fighting tanks single handedly or quote-unquote hacking. If those two can manage, so can you. Well. Okay. You can’t confirm/deny they did the embarrassing speech thing, but you’re assuming that happened somewhere, because Snake’s a speech sort of guy. A conversational glacier melting -- he’s all silence, silence, millennia of silence, sudden crashing torrent of words. Besides, Otacon’s chatty, there’s no way they went from zero to makeout without talking at some point.

“That’s fair,” she says, and looks down for another minute. “Okay. It’s like -- you know that feeling when you get when someone you haven’t seen in forever walks into the room or calls you on the phone, that second of excitement and anticipation?” She waits for you to nod and you nod because you think you know what she means. Like the moment between seeing your birthday presents and unwrapping your birthday presents, but more uh, conversational and less materialistic. “That’s sort of how I feel whenever you walk into a room or call me, except it’s even when we just talked half an hour ago. And I think you’re cute, too, obviously, because you are, and you know --” (she points at your arms) “-- and I wasn’t sure what that meant? I mean, I could guess, and I sort of knew I think, that you might like me --”

“Oh no,” you say. Maybe this is how Otacon feels all the time: like he is fucking dying. Like. Okay. You did not like ferment a crush for eighteen months and cohabitate and then just, end up married. But this might be a little bit what Otacon feels like all the time.

“Shut up,” she says, and nudges your foot with hers. “It was cute, I’m still talking. And I was like well, maybe I do like her? In more ways than a friend way? Sometimes an aesthetic appreciation is not really just an aesthetic appreciation. And I hate uncertainty, I hate not knowing, you know. So I thought, well, you should ask her out and find out and so I did and here we are and I think -- okay, I don’t think, I just. . . I like you.”

“But do you like-like me or just like me,” you say because you cannot quit while you are ahead.

“You know,” she says, “If you keep talking, I’m never going to be able to finish.” You mime zipping your lip which, shit, that’s kind of fuckin dorky, isn’t it. “I think I’d like to do this again, maybe a bunch more times, and that yes, I like-like you, and you’re sweet, and that’s about as much as I can handle saying I think.” She laughs.

“Nice,” you say.

“Nice?” she asks.

“Nifty?” you say. “Can I kiss you again?”

“Yeah, I think that’d be alright,” she says, and it is.

calling 140.96. . .

“Snake, do you want to save?”

>SAVE

DO NOT SAVE

“Hey Snake, do you remember that poem I quoted you a while ago?”

“You’re gonna have to be a little more specific. You’ve been on a real poetry kick lately.”

“‘Love is not all, it is not meat nor drink?’”

“Right. The depressing love one.”²

“Well, it goes on to say, ‘Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,/Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone,’”

“Not really getting any less grim.”

“Let me finish! ‘Yet many a man is making friends with death/Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.’”

“Sometimes I don’t understand the things you pick.”

“Hmm. . . maybe this would’ve been a better Otacon quote. . .”

“No, he zones out if you quote poetry at him.”

“You’ve tried?”

“Don’t start. So, the poem?”

“Sometimes you have to do a little work with these too, Snake! Don’t concentrate on the words. Find the meaning behind the words, then decide.”

140.15 -- Time: 0023 hours -- Location: Ft. Worth, TX

“Are they practicing the fucking handshake again?” you ask.

Another month, another mission, another temporary base set up in another temporarily abandoned warehouse, another long night spent watching Snake and Otacon over surveillance video. And another thing: they are. They are practicing the handshake. There’s no way around it. This is the incontrovertible fucking truth. Everything you’ve worked for has been for nothing.

“Everything we’ve worked for has been for nothing,” Naomi says.

“But they look so happy!” says Mei.

“But at what cost?” asks Naomi, and she has a point.

“She has a point,” says Nastasha. “It is sort of charming in a terrible, terrible way, though. At least we won’t have to worry about listening to any sort of melancholy bullshit in the near future.”

“See?” says Mei. “So it all works out in the end.”

She smiles at you and you smile at her and a lot of things between you are the same, now, except that sometimes when she’s not saving data she holds your hand under the desk, and one of you makes the drive from Boston to DC (or the other way around) pretty regularly, and you know a lot more about nanoelectronics than you ever wanted to, on account of helping her study. So yeah, maybe Naomi’s right (and god there’s a sentence you didn’t expect to say), maybe Mei Ling has a point.

“Now that we’ve settled that, can we all pay attention to what’s actually happening? Need I remind you they are in the middle of a heavily guarded facility at the moment?” says Naomi.

“Aw Naomi, it’s like you care,” you say.

“Dead bodies are a hassle to get rid of, that’s all.”

“Thanks Naomi,” you say, and you sorta mean it too.

You don’t know. Your life’s kinda weird and fucked up right now. You don’t have a job (not one that pays an actual salary at least), and the guy you thought was your dad wasn’t ever actually your dad, and you’re kinda not on speaking terms with your mom right now, and your friends are all huge pains in the ass, and none of you have much figured out. But you look at Naomi (scowling), Nastasha (smiling), Snake and Otacon on the monitor (practicing the goddamn handshake), you look at Mei (absentmindedly running her fingers through your hair as she frowns at something she wrote down on a notepad earlier) and you think: this is good, though, isn’t it?

141.80 -- Time: 0034 hours -- Location: Ft. Worth, TX

Otacon laughs (quietly, silently, you are on a mission, but you can tell anyway) as you flub the handshake again. “No, no, we said up up down not up down up.”

“Right,” you say. “Let’s try it again.”

“Hold on,” he says, and looks back to the computer you’re currently (okay, he’s currently) lifting some files from. “I just need to make sure this is going undetected. Hey, are you sure we should be doing this right now? we’re in the middle of a mission.”

You probably shouldn’t be. “It’s fine,” you say. “This place doesn’t exactly have the highest security, nothing bad’s gonna happen if we multitask for a second.”

“That’s the sort of thing people say in movies right before they get shot,” says Otacon. He pushes his glasses up. “I just don’t want one of us to die a tragic but ironic death, that’s all.”

If this were a movie, it would’ve ended a while ago, back when you first kissed. If this were any sort of story like that, you wouldn’t be here right now doing something weirdly mundane in its own way, practicing a handshake.

The idea of having a handshake was yours, but he’s the one who designed it (“it’s, haha, kind of a really nerdy inside joke,” he’d said when he’d first demonstrated what he thought you should go for). You’re a team like that.

“Okay,” says Otacon. “So then left, right, a, b --”

“AB? How do we do that in a handshake?”

“We’ll figure it out,” says Otacon.

140.48 --- Time: [Redacted] -- Location: [Redacted]

“Hello? Yes, of course this is Naomi, who else would it be? It’s done. Yes, I’m sure. Yes I’m sure, painfully so. Not to question your flawless logic, but why exactly would you -- I thought you hated --? No, yes, I understand. Yes, well, naturally. No, no -- no, look, I’m clearly Scully, why do I always have to reassert this, you’re the one with the -- Well and you think that gh-- Would you stop interrupting -- Fine. No, they have no idea of the nature of my involvement. Ye-- are you sure? Alright, alright, I’ll forward you their address so you can send a gift. Yes, of course. I’ll be sure to keep you appraised of the situation as it develops. . . Ocelot.

Footnotes

¹ A story where a guy tells another guy what to tell a girl he likes because the guy is too trash at romance to know what to say. Not actually that much like what’s happening, but close enough.

² The Edna St. Vincent Millay poem again, “Love is Not All.”