Work Text:
“Do you have panic attacks?”
Otacon looked up from his keyboard, a coffee stirrer dangling from his mouth. He had been reverse engineering Alaska’s DoE homepage.
“What?”
Snake leaned back in the patio chair and ashed his cigarette into the tray on the windowsill. “Do you have panic attacks?”
“Um,” Otacon took the stick out of his mouth, “Why do you ask?”
“I overheard- well, uh.” Snake took another drag. “There were some old ladies talking about it down the street. Anxiety meds and panic attacks. When you went in, I looked up what they were.”
He glanced between his laptop and Snake, then looked back down at the screen. “I dunno. I’m not really familiar. I mean, probably, I have.. I definitely have anxiety, you know.” A shrug, a dismissive hand wave. “Why suspect me, though? You seem to have them.”
Snake’s expression froze over. He put out the cigarette, lit another, and tossed the box onto the table. Otacon grabbed one and Snake lit it for him. He continued.
“You just - when you’re not on a job, if you hear fireworks or something, you shut down. I mean, you bottle it up, but it’s- you, um- you get kinda fucked up around loud noises. Similar responses if I touch your forehead. I dunno what it is. But you don’t calm down for ages.”
“Huh.” Snake tucked his chin down to his chest, the butt of ash sagging parabolically. Cold air melted around his head, obscuring his features in ghostly shadow.
Otacon exhaled smoke through his nose and looked away. “I’m gonna get another coffee. You want a water or anything?”
“No.”
“‘Kay.” He got up without another word and took his cigarette inside.
Door opened, pleasantries exchanged, semaphore by way of busy kettles and cups of creamer. Conversation rose to little more than a murmur now, what with the miners getting off their day shifts, the clock ready to strike four. Otacon got his drink to go. When he returned, Snake was stood with his face to the frosty wind, a flagpole of wool and fleece. He blew the froth off the top of his cup and took a sip. Whatever warmth his face had maintained, dissipated, replaced by frosty skin and the dry scratch of his unshaved facial hair.
“I’ll wrap this up and we can head back.”
“Uh-huh.” Snake leaned against the wooden pillar.
It didn’t take long. He put out the butt and got back to work, dusting ash off the keys, untrimmed fingernails scratching on plastic. The security was poor, and the passwords kept in plaintext. What he really wanted, though, were the email credentials of the central treasurer. She was also the wife of an interim governor who was conspicuously connected to multiple national security projects. As such, her personal emails were protected by systems far too advanced for someone of her station, and it was less than easy to get them without going through her place of work.
Whoever had set up this system, thankfully, was a fool.
She used the same password for her department page as her personal email, something she should not have done. Too late now. He wrote down what he needed to and tested them through a virtual box running in another window. They worked. Several emails marked “[CLASSIFIED]” immediately came to his attention on the left-hand side. Perfect. Just needed to set up his crawler script, and…
Otacon signed out, disposed of his virtual machine, and left the DoE system as he entered it. Not like their network admin would be monitoring it, anyway. Like shutting a door, he closed off all relevant connections, reset the portable OS he’d brought on a flash drive, and shut the laptop. Cold rushed back to his senses and made him shiver. Who would’ve thought a computer cafe’s WiFi could be so useful?
Snake was staring at him with an odd little smile. “Done?”
“Yeah, thereabouts. Still need to double-check everything later, but the actual security risk is done.”
“Cool.” Snake hauled his bag over his shoulder. Otacon tucked his laptop inside his coat and downed his coffee, leaving the cup on the table.
Twilight stretched out into the beyond. Streaks of sunlight reflected on the icy road and against the frosted windshield of the truck. Cat’s claws; snakeskin kisses. Otacon rested his computer on his lap vertically and snapped the seatbelt on top.
Snake started the car and lit another cigarette. “I don’t have panic attacks.”
Otacon glanced at him, then back to the windshield. “Oh.” He shrugged. “Okay.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“Um..” Otacon smiled awkwardly, twirling a strand of hair behind one finger. “No?”
Snake extended the cig to Otacon, and he took it. “Well. That’s fine.” Leaning back, he took the truck out of park and pulled onto the street. “But I don’t. I was genetically engineered not to.”
“I don’t think-” He sealed his lips shut, sighed through his nose. Cigarette smoke bloomed around their heads. “Some things we don’t know are possible. You’re still human.”
“Okay. But I don’t have them.”
“I won’t argue with you, Dave.” He tucked a leg underneath himself. “It’s pointless. But you brought it up first, you know.”
No response. Tires crackled over ice. Hal warmed his hands against the dashboard vents. He needed to repair his fingerless gloves, which were now growing holes like mushrooms. The surrounding town faded into frosty countryside, and the air in the car slowly grew warm with the smell of air freshener and dog hair. Sunlight dappled the trees in their periphery, illuminating icicles and abandoned bird’s nests.
“Do you think about your family a lot?” David dropped one hand across his lap, letting the other hold the wheel.
“No.” Flat lie.
“Okay.”
The broken windshield wiper rattled against the hood of the car.
David coughed. “Why?”
Hal stared at him incredulously. “Are you trying to wind me up?”
“No.” Probable lie.
He bit the inside of his cheek. “It stresses me out. I don’t like thinking about them.”
“Maybe I’d have panic attacks if I had a family like yours.”
Hal cracked an unsmiling grin. “Okay.”
“I don’t think Boss had panic attacks.”
“I dunno, Dave. They’re not necessarily genetic.”
“But if he didn’t have them, then I wouldn’t either.”
“He also didn’t have blonde hair, but Liquid did.”
“Liquid was a fuck-up.”
“Sure.” Hal reached over and took the pack out of Dave’s jacket pocket. He lit one of the four remaining cigarettes in the dashboard lighter. “Are panic attacks a fuck-up trait?”
“Yeah. I mean, probably.”
He held the cigarette between pointer and thumb, elbow on his knee. Feeling Freudian, Hal pushed further. “You’re really bothered by the idea of having a panic attack.”
“I don’t have them.”
“I said the idea of them. Play with it a little. How would you feel if, y’know, conceptually, you could have them?”
Dave reached for the cigarette. Hal pulled back. “Gimme that.”
“Answer the question.”
“No.”
“Are you afraid of feeling human, Dave?”
David visibly bristled, his grip wobbling on the wheel. He took the next turn sharply. “The fuck? What? That doesn’t make sense.”
He smiled. “If we moved to Jupiter, you’d bring all the details of your life with you. Think about it. It’s like.. it’s like something from my undergrad philosophy class. Whatever’s in your head shapes your world. Your panic attacks would mold Jupiter. Jupiter would become a panic attack world.”
“I don’t fucking have panic attacks, Hal!” Dave barked. “I don’t fucking- Jesus, give me the stupid cigarette.” Finally, Hal relented.
“I mean, you don’t wanna be like Boss, sure. But why are you so stirred up about this? You have a whole complex about being weak, yeah, but..” He shrugged, “This is really something else. You can be weak about something soldier-y. But you hate being human.”
David grit his teeth and slammed on the brakes. He put the car into neutral on the side of the road and shouldered the door open, walking out onto the asphalt. The cigarette butt flew from his mouth and into the snow, his hands in his hair.
Hal waited until his hands grew cold, but David still didn’t move. After another minute, Hal unbuckled his seatbelt, unlocked the door, and joined him on the road, hands stuffed into his pockets.
“Fuck you, man.” David’s voice was scarcely audible above the wind.
“Okay.” Hal’s teeth chattered.
“I don’t hate being human. I am human.”
“Okay.”
“Stop that!” David whipped around, eyes blazing. He grabbed Hal by the collar and nearly pulled him off his feet. “What the fuck are you even talking about? Are you high? Are you stupid? What’s your play here?”
Hal’s hands went to the other man’s wrist. His toes tried to push him away, but David - no, Snake - held firm. “I just- I just wanted to know, why are you interrogating me?”
Snake’s grip tightened, eyes widening furiously. After a few seconds of stunned silence, he pushed Hal off and to the ground.
Hal scooted backwards on his ass. “Snake, are- are you jealous that I was abused?”
Snake’s mouth opened, then shut. He raised a hand to his forehead and stomped off to the car. It started in a blaze of light and noise and, for a moment, Hal was worried he would drive off.
Of course, he didn’t.
And, like every other time, Hal got back in the passenger seat.
After he buckled himself in, the car rolled back onto the road. It took until they were inside the house to say anything.
On the couch, beer in hand, with Hal a migrating shadow in the doorway, David mumbled it. “I just don’t think someone like me can have those.”
“Even animals in captivity are still animals.”
“But poison can’t drip through plastic.”
“I dunno, Dave.” Hal’s hands descended to the back of the couch, then to his shoulders. “It can spill over, though. If there’s enough.”
David pressed the can to his forehead and sucked in a breath.