Chapter Text
You were never very good at being alone.
The first time you went without sleep for so long that you started to hallucinate she was with you. It was blisteringly cold; the windswept northern coastline smelled powerfully of ice and salt, stinging your nose and your skin, as the two of you climbed the cliffsides. Up was freedom, down was death under the surging waves.
Four days and a hundred miles: that was when the pounding surf started to call to you. A roar like a voice, tempting you to let go. You knew what it was, that it wasn't real; she'd briefed you on everything that could happen when you pushed your body as far as it could go. But it was enough to distract you, and when you lost your footing, your fingers missed a hold, your chest tight as you slipped past the point of no return--
She grabbed your hand.
"You know your limit now." Her grip was strong as she hauled you to the top, like you imagined a father's could be. But she knelt with you at the edge as you shook, her palm on the back of your hand in what felt like tenderness. "Go to sleep, Jack."
You have fifteen minutes.
Now, when the hum of insects turns to shrill cries somewhere out in the jungle's murk, her voice comes back to you. The will is strong; the body is weak. Without rest, you'll make mistakes. That is, if you don't collapse on your feet.
Where the ocean was refreshing, the heat here is oppressive, and with the suffocating humidity, even sweat brings no respite. The muddy water that splashes under your boots is tepid and foul. What little light filtered through the leaves above has waned, but you know that the night will be scarcely cooler.
But it will be safer. Sleep is the lowest on a soldier's hierarchy of needs, she taught you. Sleep makes you vulnerable. Infinitely moreso solo.
You trudge a step before her sharp voice reprimands you; your next footfalls are professional. Quiet. You fingers flex across the grip of your weapons. You are tensed, loose. Ready. You prowl, and it doesn't take you long to find lightning-struck, toppled tree with a hollow. A few streaks of mud across your face and neck to break the lines of your body for anyone who might be searching for you, and you can disappear into its roots.
It's as secure as it's going to get. You've cleared and cleaned your weapons. You've had enough clean water to sustain you for a few more hours. You've had food... such as it was. The bracingly chill shellfish you pried off the rocks with her were delicious in their rawness; the frog you just ate was a bloody mess of crunchy gristle and tasted like you imagine your boots smell. You've checked over your kit, even if it was more perfunctory than she would have approved of. Nothing's missing or broken. You're clear to sleep.
You grunt getting into position; it's not comfortable. It's rotted but still hard, and you have to evict a snake or two. But the mossy coastal rocks hadn't been comfortable either; you passed out on them in seconds, regardless.
But she'd been there, watching over you.
You ache. You're in your prime, like she was back then, but you're no longer young. Regaining all the muscle you've lost starving here will be a trial, and it will take much longer now than it did when you were nineteen. Your skin itches with old sweat and filth. Your face throbs around your ruined eye. You don't even want to think about going back to the range.
Maybe she did unmake you, after all.
You hurt in a way you can't describe, because you've never had a lover before. Before her. Time slips by, and you can't sleep, despite the bone-deep exhaustion you feel. You could reach out and talk to them about it, any of them, the voices in your head... No, you can't. You never could. They wouldn't understand.
The way she saw everything in a room, every detail, and could repeat it back to you an hour later. The next day. A month from then, when you'd forgotten you'd ever been there. In the middle of a fight. The way she could tell that someone was left-handed by the way they walked. How she could cut her chute and roll from twenty feet off the ground; how see could tell what twenty feet was, spinning, at full speed. How she could pull off every trick shot you could name, but she didn't - each round was released in the pause between breaths, the soft exhalation of her perfection.
Deep into your mouth.
The hard lines of her face eased, and her every movement was powerfully gentle as you rocked together in the night. The tautness of her body embraced you, the hard-won muscles you could feel under your hot hands, even under the softness of her breasts.
She never mentioned where this was on the hierarchy of needs, but you need it now. You're not sleeping anyway.
You peel away the sweat-soaked fabric covering your half-hard shaft; squeeze, and pull. Try to remember. Try to forget.
Why did she leave? Why would she turn her back on you? It hurts, in a deep, hollow way that doesn't fade. She told you not to trust people, because people change. But the way you feel about her never will.
You're curled over, panting, thinking of her damp hair brushing your shoulder as she rides you, when you hear the faint but unmistakably sharp tone of metal on metal.
Christ, kid. His footfalls are light; he ghostwalks naturally, rolling his steps forward to the balls of his feet. But the clink of those ridiculous spurs gives him away.
Maybe, if you stay perfectly still, he'll pass you by.
Maybe, if you move quickly enough, you can put a bullet in his eye.
But, if you're being honest with yourself, you don't really want to. For all of her jokes at your expense, you do understand what Eva is trying to tell you about him. "Ocelot." (Though you, as "Naked Snake," can't hold that one against him - you can the meow.) He's enamored of you. For all that he's your enemy, he's impressed. Like you were, of her. That's why he keeps trying to "duel" you or "fight" you, rather than get the drop on you to put you down for good.
Had you ever been that stupid? Probably. No, you don't want to kill him. He's no older than twenty, probably younger; just a boy, and he'll learn from this. You've had enough killing for one mission. The thought of watching him thrash and bleed and twitch and slowly fade repulses you. Let him chase, let him play. His claws are too short yet to be threatening.
"Hm," he says, as if in contemplation, and with a start you realize that he's much, much closer than you thought he was. He rounds the tree stump, a few feet from your head, spinning his weapon in that casual, pointless way he does that irritated you until you realized that he was doing it to impress you. Now it's endearing. "If I were a snake, where would I hide...?"
That's when you should make your move, but you don't. His boyish admiration won't ease the ache inside of you, but at least you're not alone. "I would be lurking, somewhere in the dark," he tosses one up in the air with a flash of silver in the starlight, gesturing dramatically: "Waiting to strike."
And that's when he sees you. Misses the catch, fumbling the grip into his other hand awkwardly.
He catches himself quickly enough and keeps on spinning, though, like a cat that, having fallen off a table, will strut off with its tail held high; didn't happen, nothing to see here.
"Like what you see?" You joke, offhand, your voice low with lust. It'll only be a few moments until you're soft again, and you can see what he wants. He's a man; he's seen it all before. He drag yourself out to sit on the edge of the trunk, watching him.
His reaction is not what you expected. He's hot-headed and high-strung and he likes to run his mouth; he's silent, now. Almost shy. He's so fair-skinned that you can make out the heat rising to his face, even in the dim jungle.
He nods.
The way he licks his deep red lips makes the blood surge back down to your cock in a way you can't explain; delusions? Exhaustion? It doesn't matter. She taught you to live in the present. The battlefield is always evolving. "So," you rumble, "What are you going to do about it?"
The words hang in the thick, buzzing air for a time, before he holsters his revolvers decisively and stalks toward you.
Drops to a crouch at your knees, his gloves creaking as they whisper across your damp thighs. A brief flash of uncertainty when he leans close to your throbbing tip; he's clearly never done this before, and you can tell he thinks the way he brushes his lips slowly over the slick head looks seductive, rather than hesitant. You'd laugh, but even that slight touch makes you shiver. You need this.
His hair's too short to tangle your fingers in, but you grasp the back of his head anyway, coaxing him forward. He opens his mouth and there's a hot breath along your skin before wet tightness closes in around you with a stab of lust to the gut. You exhale.
He bobs his head - you never let him pull too far away - pleasantly enough, though it's clear he doesn't know what to do with his tongue. Tries a few awkward licks before abandoning it to suck at you, eagerly. Each ragged groan you utter spurs him on to try harder, go further, relax his throat--
Catch your sensitive skin with his teeth when he leans too far forward and falls to his knees.
"Fuck," you hiss, but you would never dream of taking it out on him, not when you're finally succeeding at putting her out of your mind. He's nothing like her, even with your eyes closed. He's unsure where she was certain, delicate where she was powerful, his weight against you slight where hers was heavy, his scent is oil and gunsmoke and fine silk where hers was worn leather and earth and sweat; raw, feminine.
Damned if he isn't enjoying it, too. He reacts to the sounds you make and the way your breath catches when he swallows your precum makes the corners of his half-lidded eyes turn up in a grin. The way it glistens on his lips is sex itself; you twitch when he pulls his mouth off for a second to catch his breath and a thread of it, mixed with saliva, dangles between your tip and his tongue.
That's when you see the damp bulge at the front of his own pants. It's only fair, you tell yourself, but a part of you knows you want to, and wouldn't have otherwise: you brace yourself on his shoulder, lean forward, and squeeze his erection roughly. His throat closes around your shaft in surprise, and a shudder runs through your whole body in response.
"Pretty good," you breathe, only mocking him a little. The tight noises he makes in the back of his own throat make you throb and drip as you free his length and pump it; straightforward enough. No mystery here. Every man likes it his own way but there are a few things every man likes.
He's pulsing for you; his hand closes over yours, and he sucks you even more heatedly. His gaze meets yours, and there's a ludicrous challenge in it, daring you to let go before he does.
Your breathing grows ragged and his grows heavy, through his nose. Pleasure floods your sore muscles, until there's no pain. No regret. No betrayal. Only here, and now. His heat, his sighs, his soft damp skin.
Wet seed drips through your fingers a moment before the heady weightlessness builds in the pit of your stomach and you lose yourself inside his mouth.
He looks dazed in the aftermath, but he swallows, and the look he gives you under his pale eyelashes as he pulls away, white beads on his chin, is one that you'll remember for much longer than you ever expected. His uniform is crumpled, his knees are caked in mud, and he's mussed and filthy where you've touched him.
On impulse, you kiss him, grip firm on his scarf--
It's only later, when you wake, tucked safely amongst the roots, that you think you must have dreamed it. You smell so awfully that you can hardly stand to be near yourself, and your mouth tastes like old dead frog. What it means that you've dreamt it is best left unexamined; it's morning, and you feel marginally less like walking death. The insects sing as insects do.
Then the metallic glint of a casing catches your eye in the early light. It's a single round, placed deliberately right-side up beside your head. But, not the .45 cartridge of a Single Action Army.
It's the 9mm round of a Makarov.