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Ocelot had never liked sunsets.
To the romantics, the creatives, the dreamers of the world, a sunset like this would be a beauty to behold, something worthy of Frost or perhaps Monet. But to Ocelot? It was nothing more than background noise.
Don’t get it twisted; it’s not that Ocelot found sunsets ugly—nothing of the sort. It's just that he was none of those things: romantic, creative, or a dreamer. To him, a sunset meant nothing more than a long night ahead filled with vulnerability. A soldier who can’t see his enemy is inefficient, and a tired soldier is a dead one.
Call it a trained callousness from his years in the Russian wilderness or something bred into him from the day he breathed his first, it made no difference to him.
What did matter to Ocelot was that it was just a bit too warm, and that—plus the added chaos of twenty men all gathering and transporting gear across the platform—made him lose all interest in helping Miller coordinate the effort.
Every day now it felt like there was a new unit being added to Diamond Dogs. Each time the boss would pull out his iDroid, flicking back and forth across the different screens as he assigned soldiers to the new unit. Ocelot and Miller, hovering over his shoulders, would write everything down, bickering over his head as to who needed to move where, what supplies would be going with them, how they should be transported, on and on.
The work afterward—actually making all those plans on paper come to life—wasn’t Ocelot’s favorite, nor was it Snake’s. Only five minutes in and Ocelot was watching the boss creep further and further to the edge of the crowd, before finally making his break, climbing up a big metal crate that had just been moved from the Support Platform to Command and settling atop it to smoke.
Ocelot gave it another five himself before doing the same. The men had been organized, and all that was left to do was gather everything up and ship it out across the long, steel roads that led to the new Combat Platform. That, Ocelot decided very early on in the process, was not something he wished to be doing. And besides, Miller was supposably the Support Unit lead. Wasn’t it his job to be supporting the move?
As Ocelot slipped away, Snake watched him, that one too-dark eye trained on him in a lazy way that told Ocelot he was only half paying attention. Nothing new, then.
“Got room for one more up there?” Ocelot called as he sidled up, watching Snake drift back into reality at his words. Snake glanced beside him briefly, as though checking if there was really enough room for them both, before silently offering Ocelot a hand.
Ocelot took it, cursing himself for how eager he was to do so, and placed a spurred boot against the side of the container before hauling himself up. He settled down on the crate beside Snake, the cool steel a welcome sensation in the heat.
Snake took another drag of his cigar, his eye still cast out to where the men were bustling about. Miller stood in the center of them with that same old scowl on his face, calling out commands Ocelot could just barely make out.
It was ironic—a little funny and a little sad; for years, Ocelot had always said that one day something would finally wipe that stupid smile off Miller’s face. Miller had always laughed. You wish he’d say, or only you could ever make me that miserable. Seems he’d been wrong after all.
And then there was Snake. If it weren’t for the metal arm or that damn horn sticking out of his head, he wouldn’t be all that different, really. Just ignore that glazed-over look in his eye, the new nervous tic of patting his palm against his thigh, and the way his strange sense of humor had fallen away and died, and it was the same man.
Snake caught Ocelot’s eye as he took another drag of his electronic cigar, the end glowing bright with its best imitation of embers.
Ocelot glanced away.
“Diamond Dogs is doing pretty well for itself.”
He ignored Snake’s slight shift of surprise at his words, instead focusing on counting the men as they loaded bags into jeeps. Twenty-two so far were heading out; not a bad start.
Snake nodded after a moment, Ocelot just catching the bob of his unkempt hair from the corner of his eye. “Yeah,” Snake rasped softly as he pulled the cigar from his lips in a puff of too-sweet-smelling smoke. “‘Getting back on its feet.”
Again, Ocelot hazarded a glance to his right, allowing his gaze to settle more firmly on Snake when he was sure the boss wasn’t looking his way. He was observing the men, particularly Miller, just as Ocelot had done. It made Ocelot wonder: just how much of the world before resided in that mind of his? The boss and Miller had been close—just how close, Ocelot couldn’t be certain—and the thought nagged at the back of his mind like a mosquito, darting away every time he tried to swat it, only to circle back when he’d almost forgotten.
But what a man remembered and what he felt—those were two different things entirely. Venom had worked with Miller in MSF after all. At one point, he’d been a man with his own thoughts and feelings like any other. And maybe he still was.
“Thanks.” One word was all it took to startle Ocelot out of his thoughts.
“What have you got to thank me for?”
Snake shrugged slightly, the scarf around his broad shoulders sliding off a bit with the movement. Ocelot resisted the urge to reach out and fix it. After a moment, Snake took a final, thoughtful drag of his cigar. “A lot,” he sighed on a smoky breath. “Couldn’t do it without you and Kaz.”
“Yeah, well, don’t thank us yet. This ain’t over.”
Snake hummed in something of an agreement, tucking the cigar back into his utility belt pocket with a skillful yet relaxed hand. His other hand, the metal one, slipped from its resting place on the container beneath them and started that soft tapping against his thigh.
Ocelot watched the motion, silently entranced by it, before his gaze slid back to Snake’s. That hand sped up just a fraction as Snake glanced back. As he met Ocelot’s gaze, he tilted his head to the soldiers still working before them. “Think they’ll ever leave?”
It was an odd question one that caught Ocelot off guard. He furrowed his brow as he asked; “Leave Diamond Dogs?”
“Yeah,” Snake nodded slowly, as though trying to process his own question. “Think they’ll want to settle down?”
That got a snort of amusement from Ocelot, who shook his head in disbelief. “Maybe,” he hummed thoughtfully, humoring the question. “Most folks in our line of business tend not to do the whole settling down thing.”
“Right.”
The way he said it—the sharp way he cut himself and the slight squint in his eye that always appeared when he was thinking hard—gave Ocelot pause. "Settling down" and "Snake" didn’t belong in the same sentence. For Snake to settle down would mean the end of all war, and the end of all war would mean the end of mankind.
Yet here he was, concerned their men might leave the mercenary business to go get married, have a kid or two, hell, maybe even open a bakery or something. It made Ocelot laugh at the ridiculousness of it all.
But then, what had Snake been planning for his future, all those years ago?
“Why? You thinking of quitting?”
Snake blinked, his face screwing up thoughtfully as he turned over Ocelot’s question. “No,” he decided after a moment, and for some reason, Ocelot really believed it.
“Good,” Ocelot hummed, relaxing his shoulders a bit as he leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. “Besides,” he added, a touch of a smile on his lips that he wiped away with a gloved hand. “You don’t need a wife nagging ya. Miller and I fill that role just fine.”
He waited for the familiar grumble that always followed his sarcastic comments—Snake’s best attempt at an exasperated chuckle. But instead, he was met with silence. Even the tap-tap-tapping of Snake’s palm had ceased.
Ocelot cocked his head, taking in the look of stern concentration on Snake’s face. His eye was trained on the soldiers, but that glazed look had come over it again, a thin yet impenetrable barrier between Ocelot and whatever was going on inside Snake’s head
Ocelot waited, watching as the first hues of coral and vermilion touched Snake’s face, deepening until the blush of his skin became indistinguishable from the rays of the setting sun. A pit formed in Ocelot’s stomach, a preemptive warning of the words caught on Snake’s tongue. The boss licked his lips, parting them to speak before clearly thinking better of it, sealing them into a thin line.
He thought better of it again.
“You and Kaz—you mean a lot to me.” It was simple, purposefully vague. There were countless ways to interpret it, countless ways the conversation could go. But with the softness in his voice, the way that lone blue eye settled on Ocelot, clinging to him as if he were Snake’s saving grace, Ocelot would have to be a fool not to see what he wanted to say, and Snake knew that.
It made Ocelot’s heart sink.
It’s easy to pretend something isn’t there if you never have to speak it into existence. When it's just you and yourself holding a thought, a feeling, all it takes is some wishful thinking and well-placed apathy and it might as well have never happened.
Twenty years had seen a lot of wishful thinking and well-placed apathy from Ocelot, and he couldn’t say he had enjoyed it much. After so long, it was finally within his grasp—Snake was only a hair's breadth away. It would take nothing for Ocelot to reach out; close his eyes and pretend it wasn’t a shadow beneath his palms; say to hell with the acceptance he’d grown accustomed to—acceptance that he could never have what he so desperately wanted.
But there was a reason that Snake had come to Ocelot first; not Miller, not them both at once, just Ocelot.
Miller would have made it happen in a heartbeat. For all that he had changed, he had still stayed the same.
But Ocelot had something that Miller didn’t: the blessing of honesty, and the curse of the truth. Snake might not have known that, but what he did know was that Ocelot kept his cards close to his chest. What he did know was that no one could ever be sure just what Ocelot was thinking.
And where did that leave Ocelot? Even if he could close his eyes and will it all away, it wouldn’t change the fact that Venom wasn’t Snake. No amount of fooling himself would ever change that, no matter how desperately he wished it would. Some sardonic part of Ocelot’s mind appreciated the irony; he was always ten steps ahead, knew every in and out of every operation, was Snake’s most trusted ally, and that’s exactly what fucked him over when it mattered most.
That settled it, then.
A sad smile, one of pity, even, spread across his face as he made up his mind. It didn’t go unnoticed, the slope of Venom’s shoulders falling with a drawn-out sigh, hardly audible. He regarded Ocelot another moment, the depths of his gaze threatening to drag Ocelot under and drown him in regret. Before the feeling could sink in, though, Venom turned away, the hard outline of his face softened by the golden halo cast by the sun.
Ocelot dragged his own gaze away, steeling himself with a breath. His eyes settled instead on the jeeps finally driving off, Miller watching them leave with a puffed chest.
Before he could do something stupid, Ocelot pulled himself to his feet, his spurs echoing hollowly off the crate as he did so. Venom made no effort to watch him leave, instead simply reaching into his pocket for his cigar again, his free hand resuming its tap-tap-tapping .
“Snake.”
Venom turned at the sound of his name, glancing back at Ocelot as the first cloud of smoke left his lips, rising upward to frame his face, untouched by any breeze. Selfish was something Ocelot no longer concerned himself with fussing over; if it was selfish of him to hope that Venom was only acting on the desires of Snake and not of his own free will, then so be it. Anything for this to not be his one and only chance thrown out the window. Anything to not be haunted by the image of Venom’s sun-soaked face for the rest of his life.
“I hope you and Miller are happy.”
And somewhere deep down, he meant it.
He turned, walking back down the crate with the rattle of his own boots in his ears. As he hopped off on the far end, the hardening shadows of Mother Base enveloped him, pulling him further and further into their grasp with every step he ventured away from Venom.
Ocelot had never liked sunsets; it was best not to waste them on him.