Blow to their working relationship aside, it was a couple of months before
Snake felt the scene was cool enough for Philanthropy to be edging back into
active duty. Besides, they had no material suggesting any immediate need for
action. As such, it was almost three months after their last mission, and ten
after Shadow Moses, that Snake ventured out again in the sneaking suit.
They got in at nearly 6am, the sky just beginning to lighten. Snake slipped in
first, still quick and limber from the mission high. Otacon stumbled in after
him and headed immediately for the couch where he collapsed, groaning.
“A little physical exertion every now and then won’t do you any harm,” said the
soldier with a grin, working the complicated laces to his boots. The engineer
hadn’t bothered with taking off his shoes, sneakers still on his feet where
they hung over the edge of the arm rest.
“Changing a tire is not a little physical exertion.”
“You weren’t even alone. You had that nice cop to help you.”
“I thought I was going to have a heart attack when he pulled over. Thank God we
didn’t have the RPG in the back. It was bad enough with you in there under the
sheet.”
“Good thing you look too innocent to be an international terrorist.”
“I am not an international terrorist. Name one act of terror I’ve perpetrated
outside the U.S.” The engineer’s voice was heavy with exhaustion. It was
probably, Snake thought, that same exhaustion which was responsible for his
chatter. Such light conversations were unusual, or at least had been after the
motel room. It had come as near as possible to breaking Philanthropy, but they
had gotten away with a few deep cracks and, the soldier thought, with time
those might eventually be sealed. He had never been an optimist, though, and
could hardly think they would be forgotten.
“You were telling me just the other week you had hacked into the British SAS,
though I’m damned if I know why you’d want to.”
“That wasn’t terrorism, that was,” the engineer paused to yawn, and finished
his sentence with a nearly incomprehensible, “information gathering.”
“Uh huh,” said the soldier softly, phasing out the conversation, careful not to
move too much in case it alarmed the other man. But the engineer’s breathing
was already changing as he fell into sleep. The soldier smiled, and slipped
through the apartment and into his room on silent feet.
----------------------------------------
“Some failures are a given,” hissed Snake to his partner, lying still on his
bed, teeth clenched tightly together.
“Stop talking, you’re going to bite your tongue,” replied the engineer in a
voice hardened with fear as he fumbled with a syringe and vial.
“Had worse than a shot in the leg.” The soldier spoke with gruff
contemptuousness, tone nearly steady.
“You’re just lucky you could walk out of there; I’d never have been able to
carry you out.”
“Never ‘ve been able to get in in the first place,” pointed out the soldier.
“True. Now hold still, I’m not very good at this,” Otacon’s tone was a model of
cold professionalism, and Snake, more concerned about his lack of skill with
the syringe than anything else, didn’t notice the pain in his face.
He did notice, when he woke up again more than two days later for a brief few
minutes, that the engineer hadn’t been sleeping again. But when he next
resurfaced Hal looked pale with worry, but no longer lack of sleep.
----------------------------------------
Shadow Moses’ one year anniversary passed unmarked, Snake sleeping in a pain
killer-induced haze, Otacon reading internet articles about gangrene.
Philanthropy’s one year anniversary passed similarly unmarked, although more
because neither man was the type to keep a datebook than due to other
preoccupations.
Snake had only just stopped limping completely when they returned from the UN
negotiations as a newly minted NGO, both men ten times warier than they had
been before they proclaimed their existence, admittedly to a small group.
Neither had visited the safe house – procured several months before going
public explicitly for that purpose – but neither were particularly surprised to
find what had been described as four rooms with furniture to turn out to be
more like two with a mattress and a shaky table.
“We’ll stay here long enough to set up the next stop, and then get the hell
out. In a month’s time, we might actually be back into the range of decent
apartments again.” Snake dumped the luggage he had brought up from the car in a
door-less closet.
“I’m not sure if I could handle electricity and running water,” replied
Otacon, stacking his own load in a corner. A second run to the car brought up
the rest of their possessions.
The engineer, finished piling things in corners, looked around for something to
sit on and came up blank. “A chair would have been nice,” he said, sitting
cross-legged on the floor with the stiffness of inexperience and several hours
in a car.
“Who’s got high expectations now?” said Snake. And then, more seriously, “Why
don’t you just go to sleep? It’s already,” the soldier glanced at his watch,
and then in surprise at the dark night sky outside the curtain-less window. “11
o’clock? Finding the place took longer than I thought.”
“I’m okay,” replied the engineer in a flat tone. “I’ve still got a bunch of
stuff to look at, and we still have to submit some information, and…” he
sighed. “Plenty of stuff to do,” he repeated, without getting up to get his
laptop, or even moving from his slump on the floor.
Snake stared at him for a long minute, eyes thoughtful. They had come a long
way in a year, but in the six months since the motel neither had mentioned the
engineer’s fit of insomnia, the whole situation having become taboo by silent
agreement. “Hal,” said the soldier eventually, the other man looking up at his
real name. “There’s only one bed.”
Otacon glanced through the open doorway to the second room, mattress lying on
the dusty floor. “I know,” he answered cautiously, unsure of what was being
suggested.
“I don’t mind sharing. For as long as – for now, anyway,” Snake shifted,
skirting the issue with a wide berth. Otacon watched him with careful eyes,
then slanted them away to glance at the bed again. Allowing the man too long to
think about it would result in refusal, the soldier was well aware. “I’m done
in, anyway,” he said, stretching with a sigh and walking across to give the
mattress a thoughtful kick. The only result was a dull thump and a small mist of
dust.
“All right,” said the engineer, from behind him. “I’ll get the bedding.”
Ironically, it had been much less awkward back at the beginning, when they had
hardly known each other. Probably, thought the soldier, as he lay in the dark
listening to the engineer’s unsteady breathing next to him, that was why
it had been less awkward. Six months had dried up the man’s fear of him, he was
pretty sure, but sharing a bed was still an embarrassing, personal thing for
most people. People who hadn’t lived through war zones and slept with piles of
strangers to keep warm. The soldier smiled.
“You know,” he said softly, hearing the engineer start at his voice, “I once
slept with five people in a bed.”
There was no answer to that.
“And I didn’t know any of ‘em. Just crawled in ‘n spent the night.” An
exaggeration, but not much of one.
“And you say you don’t trust people,” answered the engineer softly.
“That’s not trust. It’s necessity.” The soldier waited for an answer, but
received none. He turned onto his side, facing the engineer. “Taking what you
need, or at least asking for it, isn’t a crime Hal,” he said, careful to
continue using the engineer’s name for emphasis.
“I thought about that, after Shadow Moses. Thought I’d like to be able to act,
to speak up for myself. I mean, we’re out there sabotaging Metal Gear projects,
but somehow I haven’t gotten very far on a personal level.”
“Well, it’s not like opportunities come along every day. You’ve got to grab
them when they do.”
A longer silence. Then, “Can I come closer?”
The soldier refrained from sighing. It was a start. “Yes,” he answered mildly,
and waited for the engineer to shuffle nearer before reaching out to bridge the
gap and pull him to lie close enough to feel the soldier’s heart-beat.
“Do you ever wish you didn’t need anyone?” Otacon’s voice was barely a whisper,
chest rising and falling under Snake’s encircling arm.
“No - I never did. But, a while ago, I started wishing … wanting … to need
people.”
“You know, when we first met, I thought I could never meet anyone I was more
different from. Then after a while, I started to think that maybe, somehow, we
were very similar.”
“And now?”
“Now I think … you can’t think about people that way. It doesn’t work. It
doesn’t matter.”
“Hm,” hummed Snake quietly in vague agreement.
“You’re you, and I’m me, and we’re Philanthropy, all nice and official now
too.”
“Hal?”
“Yeah?”
“Go to sleep.”
They stayed in the apartment for five days, each sleeping on his half of the
bed when he felt like it. Nothing more was said.
----------------------------------------
The next mission came and went, the pair returning actually after dawn this
time, long summer days making night operations difficult. Otacon fiddled with
the apartment lock for several seconds before giving up and letting Snake do
it; the soldier managed it in a single try, turning to roll his eyes at the
engineer. Otacon glared at him and pushed his way past into the darkness
beyond, not bothering to turn on the light; there was nothing in the main room
anyway.
Snake locked the door behind him and busied himself with taking off the fiddly
sneaking suit while Otacon put away his equipment, organising everything for
his morning – or more likely afternoon – run over the data. By the time he’d
finished unpacking the laptops and fitting them into their docking stations,
Snake had changed into his usual loose sleeping clothes. The engineer finished
fiddling and made his way over to the soldier’s room, staring in through the
open door. Snake glanced over at him with a raised eyebrow. Otacon fought the
urge to glare at the man who had to know perfectly well what he wanted to ask.
Who was forcing an opportunity on him.
“Can I s – stay here for a few hours?” he spat out eventually, indecision
regarding words becoming a near-stutter. Snake, gratifyingly, didn’t smile.
Just nodded.
“Sure.”
Hal found his place next to the soldier, and slept.