This Is A Low (Part VI)
Title: This Is A Low (Part V)
Pairings: Ocelot/Big Boss (some Ocelot/Eva and Big Boss/Eva)
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 2680
Warnings: Some het, mostly in earlier chapters.
Summary: It is 1971, and Big Boss has tracked Eva to Hanoi. Enter Ocelot, who is charged with the responsibility of finding her, breaking her out, and bringing her to Big Boss.
Notes: Part six of a WIP. Unbeta'd, so all mistakes are mine. This is the penultimate chapter.
Part I Part II Part III Part IV Part V
What woke Adamska wasn't an alarm, or a gunshot,
It was the crackle of static.
Quiet, at first. Like a rustle of leaves, or a whisper somewhere deep in the recesses of his mind. He mumbled in his sleep, some wordless complaint, and buried his head a little further into the crook of his arm.
The crackle was undeterred. A low, insistent hum pervaded the dreamless space inside Adamska's head, willing him to pay attention. It was fruitless; Adamska was bone-tired, and the sound was sufficiently subdued and nondescript so as to go unheard.
The crackle regrouped. Formed itself into something concrete, something definite. Something guaranteed to get Adamska's attention.
A voice.
"Adamska."
He woke with a start. Sleepily pointed his gun at nothing in particular, then drew it back, confused. There was nobody in the shack. A wan light filtered through the cracks in the wood. Eva must be outside. It must be morning. Shit, he'd slept longer than he had intended.
He got to his feet, brushing the dust and detritus from his uniform. It was quiet, save for the low hiss of the river, and the usual background of whistles and chirrups from the birds. And something else. Something close, buzzing ceaselessly...
It took Adamska a full thirty seconds to recognise the radio clipped to his chest.
He cursed at it in several languages and jabbed at it with his forefinger.
"Adamska," it replied.
In his haste to grab the receiver, he almost tore the whole thing off.
"This is Adamska," he said, and tried to pretend his voice wasn't trembling.
There was a short delay before the radio spoke again.
"This is John." A pause, filled with the ambient noise of his location, and underwritten with yet more fucking static. "What's your location?"
"I'm at the rendezvous."
"Is Eva with you?"
"Yes." Adamska swallowed hard. The tension and panic of the past few days were beginning to unfurl, coursing through his veins in bursts of adrenaline. It made his skin itch. "John, where are you?"
"Nearby. It's okay. I'm fine. Were you pursued?"
"There was a helicopter up on the ridge. They didn't see us." The sheer lack of concern in his voice made Adamska want to lash out. Where the hell had he been? Where was he now? What was the trouble he had run into? He swallowed the questions down; there would be time enough later on.
And besides. John was safe. That was all that mattered.
"Good. Stay where you are. I'll be with you soon."
The radio went silent before Adamska could respond. That was probably a good thing; given his current conflicted emotional state, any response would have amounted to a garbled mess of words interspersed with bursts of incoherent anger. He took a long, deep breath. Christ, his hands were shaking. He was a fucking mess.
The thought that he might someday lose John was something Adamska seldom entertained. It wasn't that he thought John invincible; he'd seen the man bleed many times, seen his bones broken and his eye torn (and whose fault had that been?) No, it was the arrogance of youth, and with it, the assumption that he couldn't possibly lose something he cared so deeply about.
The days of radio silence had played backdrop to the whispering paranoia, that fear that constricted his gut. That John was dead, and he would be left, directionless, with only that consortium of fools lead by Zero for company. And they'd weep and mourn as if they understood what had been lost. A figurehead, a deity, a legend. All very commendable sentiments, yes, but they seemed to miss the point. John was not Big Boss, any more than Adamska could still call himself Major Ocelot. He was a man, with a name. Sometimes, Adamska thought he was the only one who saw that.
Anyway, he had been right, as usual. John wasn't dead. A small mercy.
Adamska stepped out of the shack. He couldn’t see Eva. Perhaps she was patrolling somewhere nearby. In the warm, pale light of morning, the shack seemed to be holding itself together through sheer force of will; it listed at a dangerous angle, the slats piled against one another in the most rudimentary fashion. A miracle, really, that it hadn’t collapsed on them during the night.
He scanned his surroundings. No obvious signs of movement. Either her stealth skills had greatly improved, or she’d gone further than he had anticipated. Either would have impressed him a little; her meekness was beginning to dissipate, revealing shades of the spy underneath.
Adamska stretched. His limbs were stiff and sore from crashing out on the concrete. He tested each finger carefully, flexing them one by one. He wasn't nearly old enough to fall prey to rheumatism, or arthritis - diseases reserved, in his opinion, for those who really ought to retire - but he had taken to checking periodically. Another concession to getting older.
The sound of splashing came in a sudden burst from the river.
He drew his gun, alarmed. Had they found them this fast? He had anticipated at least a full day's head start; these forests were tough to navigate, even with the benefit of modern technology. And goddammit, they had been so careful. He approached the riverbank slowly, gun in hand.
There were clothes in the trees.
Adamska stopped He surveyed this odd scene with a mixture of curiosity and trepidation. A t-shirt that had once been white hung from a low branch, dripping water in fat drops. A little higher up, an almost-dry pair of jeans and a bra. Eva's clothes.
Beyond the reeds, he saw a flash of movement.
"Eva?" he said, and was disgusted at how timid he sounded; of course it was Eva. The enemy weren't usually in the habit of stripping their captives and hanging their wet clothes from trees. But what the hell was she doing?
"Ocelot? Hold on, I'll be right there." Her voice seemed disembodied, floating just above the dull roar of the water. After a moment, she pulled herself up onto the bank. She was naked, save for her underwear; her wet hair stuck in long tendrils to her skin. For a long, awkward moment, Adamska felt almost squeamish, and sought to look away. There was, he thought, quite a wide gulf between fucking someone under cover of darkness and being confronted with their nakedness in the cold light of day; the female form, although not entirely unpleasant in Adamska's estimation, was not something he was used to seeing in such flagrant, unashamed detail.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"I've been hiking through jungles and sleeping on the floor," she said matter-of-factly. "And in case you haven't noticed, it's been extremely hot."
"You're...washing your clothes?"
Eva looked at him as if he were stupid. "Yes, I'm washing my clothes," she said. "Is that allowed?"
Adamska blinked slowly. “You left this place unguarded in daylight,” he said, surprised at how calm he sounded. “You leave cover and go out into the open. You don’t think a helicopter might have spotted you?”
“I’d have heard a helicopter,” she said sourly.
“You’re practically naked,” Adamska said.
“Yes,” she replied. “I practically am.”
He gestured wildly with his arms. “Were you just going to stand around here, wearing nothing, waiting for your clothes to dry? What if we're ambushed? What the hell were you thinking?"
If the situation hadn't been so fucking infuriating, Adamska might have laughed. Eva, standing on the bank, shamelessly bare and worse, paying no attention to what was going on around them. She had her arms crossed over her chest, staring at him with an expression of sulky defiance. Perhaps she wasn't used to men demanding she put her clothes on. Or perhaps she wasn't used to not getting her way. Adamska wondered how John had coped with her tagging along.
"You should have woken me," he said.
"You looked tired."
"I was tired. I would have survived."
She sat on the grass; water streamed from her hair. Sunlight refracted through the droplets that studded her naked skin. "You take everything so seriously," she said, and sounded almost disappointed.
"I'm a professional," he said.
"Is that what they call it now? " Eva's lips curled up into the ghost of a smile. "Taking orders because you hope he'll offer you a pity-fuck?"
He would have lashed out at her, but there was something horribly disarming about her nakedness, her vulnerability. It would have seemed reprehensible, even for him. She looked up at him incuriously, waiting for the stock responses - that's not how it is, there's more to it than that - and with a stab of shame, he realised he could offer no better reasoning. Of course, it wasn't so simple. But there were certain things Adamska did not intend to share with Eva. Whatever had happened to her in the interim, she was still a spy.
She smiled then. "I'm sorry, Ocelot."
So his discomfort was obvious, then. Fucking perfect.
"That's not my name." Muttered, barely audible. He felt his cheeks burn and hated himself for it.
"So you said. What should I call you, then?"
"My name is Adamska."
Eva mused on it for a second. "Cute," she said. "Adam and Eva."
"You're not Eva." Adamska knew little about who the real Eva had been - only that it had been a man, and that this woman had taken his place, appearing almost out of nowhere on Sokolov's arm. Not that he had ever really bought that Tatyana act.
"It's as good a name as any," she said, dismissive. "Adamska. Do many people get to call you that?"
"I've got a few aliases." A different alias in every country, it seemed. It seemed neater; less of a trail to follow, less chance of being tracked down. Eva took in this information with a nod. Seeing her there, near-naked, limbs stretched out like a cat in the sun, it was easy to forget just how well she knew this business. That she'd been trained young, just like him.
“I like it,” she said, and turned her face towards the sun.
Adamska left Eva at the riverside and walked past the clearing, into the edge of the surrounding forest. He hadn't told her about the radio call. It hadn't been deliberate; he had been thrown somewhat by her wading out of the river like a fucking James Bond girl. But there was some small, possessive part of him that didn't want her to know. Let her worry, if she cared so damn much about him.
No sign of disturbance. That was reassuring; Adamska did not want to lead John unwittingly into an ambush. He moved quietly through the trees. Counted his steps. Listened out for incongruous sounds. As he walked careful circuits in the still heat, he felt sweat bead on his forehead, and idly wished it had been his idea to jump in the river.
**
Adamska had been walking for close to an hour when he heard the first shots.
They were close by, somewhere in the forest to the west of the shack. His hackles rose. He stalked a wide circle up to where the ground started to slope gently downwards, heading further into the valley. The dry crack of pistol fire echoed loudly in the quiet, sending birds into the sky in great black gouts. Adamska ducked into a crouch, held his gun in both hands. Someone was coming his way, moving slowly through the leaf litter. He couldn't see it yet; its profile was obscured by the bright shafts of sunlight that burned through the canopy like searchlights.
His radio let out a series of staccato bleeps. He hissed at it, and fumbled for the receiver.
“Not a good time,” he growled.
“I can see you, Adamska,” the radio replied. “Help me with this body.”
He almost leapt out of his skin. He had thought himself relatively well hidden. Apparently, John's skills extended to spotting allies hidden in the shadows. Adamska scowled, and got to his feet. A hundred yards ahead, rounding a tree, was John. He was dragging a dead man by the legs, leaving a trail of disturbed mulch in his wake.
“Was he alone?” Adamska asked.
“Seems so,” John said. “Cover the tracks anyway.”
There was never any fanfare, any grand gesture when the two of them reunited. It always seemed like a foregone conclusion, that they'd both come out of it alive. Nonetheless, as the last of his anxiety dissipated, Adamska felt a little angry at how complacent they were when it came to each other's survival.
He retraced John's steps to where the man had fallen, kicking the wet leaves and dirt back over the disturbed area. There was no blood. That was a plus; blood was hard to hide, even in low-lit areas. There was something about it that drew the human eye, some primal instinct that made its presence impossible to ignore. By the time he had returned, John had propped the body up in a cluster of close-growing trees, hidden in the shadows. He gave Adamska a small, grateful smile. His hair was wild and damp with sweat, sticking to his face in thin coils. There was a patch of torn fabric and dark, dried blood on his shoulder. Adamska raised his eyebrows.
“You got shot?” he said. Instinctively, he reached out a hand, and John gently caught it. Held on just a fraction longer than he ought to have, and returned it to Adamska's side.
“Grazed,” John said. “It's fine, Adamska.”
Adamska nodded uncertainly.
“You made it, then,” he said. There was a gladness in his voice. For a brief moment, Adamska thought he saw relief in John's single blue eye, bright even in this gloom. He dismissed it as wishful thinking.
“Of course I did,” Adamska replied. He holstered his gun.
“Where's Eva?”
“She's back at the rendezvous.” He thought of her, alone back at the rendezvous, and of the man John had taken out in the forest. “She's uh...she's....” sitting naked on the grass, his mind offered. He shoved it away. “She's safe.”
John nodded. This time, the hint of amusement about his lips was unmistakeable. Adamska flushed for the second time that day. He averted his gaze. Mockery was not something he could take in good grace, however good-natured it might be.
Adamska felt John's hand on his shoulder.
“You did well,” he said. “And I'm grateful.”
He couldn't help himself. Adamska pulled John's face to his own, anchoring his fingers in the other man's hair. He felt the sharp prickle of stubble against his skin, the sharp angles of John's face beneath his fingers, skin slick in the heat. John's hands, solid and real and pressed against his shoulders. Even as he kissed him, he knew this was a concession, a gift from John. A thank you. Was this what he had become? A loyal dog, begging for scraps at his master's table? Shame burned deep in his stomach, and he drew back, extricating himself from John's loose embrace.
“Eva's alone,” he said. He had missed the way John tasted. Had missed the familiarity of his body pressed against him.
If John was surprised at his reaction, he did not show it. His lone eye travelled the length of Adamska's body, returning at last to his face, to the pained expression he knew he must be wearing.
“That's pretty conscientious of you, Adamska.” The comment did not register as sarcastic. “Okay. Let's regroup.”
“And then?”
“And then we get out of here.”
Get out of here. Such a simple proposition, and yet Adamska could think of nothing more sublime than doing just that. Away from this sweatbox forest, these dirty clothes, this fucking mission. What he wouldn't give for a bottle of vodka and somewhere cool to sleep. For the luxury of solitude.
Adamska did not say any of that.
He nodded.
“Sounds good,” he said, and let John lead the way.
Pairings: Ocelot/Big Boss (some Ocelot/Eva and Big Boss/Eva)
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 2680
Warnings: Some het, mostly in earlier chapters.
Summary: It is 1971, and Big Boss has tracked Eva to Hanoi. Enter Ocelot, who is charged with the responsibility of finding her, breaking her out, and bringing her to Big Boss.
Notes: Part six of a WIP. Unbeta'd, so all mistakes are mine. This is the penultimate chapter.
Part I Part II Part III Part IV Part V
What woke Adamska wasn't an alarm, or a gunshot,
It was the crackle of static.
Quiet, at first. Like a rustle of leaves, or a whisper somewhere deep in the recesses of his mind. He mumbled in his sleep, some wordless complaint, and buried his head a little further into the crook of his arm.
The crackle was undeterred. A low, insistent hum pervaded the dreamless space inside Adamska's head, willing him to pay attention. It was fruitless; Adamska was bone-tired, and the sound was sufficiently subdued and nondescript so as to go unheard.
The crackle regrouped. Formed itself into something concrete, something definite. Something guaranteed to get Adamska's attention.
A voice.
"Adamska."
He woke with a start. Sleepily pointed his gun at nothing in particular, then drew it back, confused. There was nobody in the shack. A wan light filtered through the cracks in the wood. Eva must be outside. It must be morning. Shit, he'd slept longer than he had intended.
He got to his feet, brushing the dust and detritus from his uniform. It was quiet, save for the low hiss of the river, and the usual background of whistles and chirrups from the birds. And something else. Something close, buzzing ceaselessly...
It took Adamska a full thirty seconds to recognise the radio clipped to his chest.
He cursed at it in several languages and jabbed at it with his forefinger.
"Adamska," it replied.
In his haste to grab the receiver, he almost tore the whole thing off.
"This is Adamska," he said, and tried to pretend his voice wasn't trembling.
There was a short delay before the radio spoke again.
"This is John." A pause, filled with the ambient noise of his location, and underwritten with yet more fucking static. "What's your location?"
"I'm at the rendezvous."
"Is Eva with you?"
"Yes." Adamska swallowed hard. The tension and panic of the past few days were beginning to unfurl, coursing through his veins in bursts of adrenaline. It made his skin itch. "John, where are you?"
"Nearby. It's okay. I'm fine. Were you pursued?"
"There was a helicopter up on the ridge. They didn't see us." The sheer lack of concern in his voice made Adamska want to lash out. Where the hell had he been? Where was he now? What was the trouble he had run into? He swallowed the questions down; there would be time enough later on.
And besides. John was safe. That was all that mattered.
"Good. Stay where you are. I'll be with you soon."
The radio went silent before Adamska could respond. That was probably a good thing; given his current conflicted emotional state, any response would have amounted to a garbled mess of words interspersed with bursts of incoherent anger. He took a long, deep breath. Christ, his hands were shaking. He was a fucking mess.
The thought that he might someday lose John was something Adamska seldom entertained. It wasn't that he thought John invincible; he'd seen the man bleed many times, seen his bones broken and his eye torn (and whose fault had that been?) No, it was the arrogance of youth, and with it, the assumption that he couldn't possibly lose something he cared so deeply about.
The days of radio silence had played backdrop to the whispering paranoia, that fear that constricted his gut. That John was dead, and he would be left, directionless, with only that consortium of fools lead by Zero for company. And they'd weep and mourn as if they understood what had been lost. A figurehead, a deity, a legend. All very commendable sentiments, yes, but they seemed to miss the point. John was not Big Boss, any more than Adamska could still call himself Major Ocelot. He was a man, with a name. Sometimes, Adamska thought he was the only one who saw that.
Anyway, he had been right, as usual. John wasn't dead. A small mercy.
Adamska stepped out of the shack. He couldn’t see Eva. Perhaps she was patrolling somewhere nearby. In the warm, pale light of morning, the shack seemed to be holding itself together through sheer force of will; it listed at a dangerous angle, the slats piled against one another in the most rudimentary fashion. A miracle, really, that it hadn’t collapsed on them during the night.
He scanned his surroundings. No obvious signs of movement. Either her stealth skills had greatly improved, or she’d gone further than he had anticipated. Either would have impressed him a little; her meekness was beginning to dissipate, revealing shades of the spy underneath.
Adamska stretched. His limbs were stiff and sore from crashing out on the concrete. He tested each finger carefully, flexing them one by one. He wasn't nearly old enough to fall prey to rheumatism, or arthritis - diseases reserved, in his opinion, for those who really ought to retire - but he had taken to checking periodically. Another concession to getting older.
The sound of splashing came in a sudden burst from the river.
He drew his gun, alarmed. Had they found them this fast? He had anticipated at least a full day's head start; these forests were tough to navigate, even with the benefit of modern technology. And goddammit, they had been so careful. He approached the riverbank slowly, gun in hand.
There were clothes in the trees.
Adamska stopped He surveyed this odd scene with a mixture of curiosity and trepidation. A t-shirt that had once been white hung from a low branch, dripping water in fat drops. A little higher up, an almost-dry pair of jeans and a bra. Eva's clothes.
Beyond the reeds, he saw a flash of movement.
"Eva?" he said, and was disgusted at how timid he sounded; of course it was Eva. The enemy weren't usually in the habit of stripping their captives and hanging their wet clothes from trees. But what the hell was she doing?
"Ocelot? Hold on, I'll be right there." Her voice seemed disembodied, floating just above the dull roar of the water. After a moment, she pulled herself up onto the bank. She was naked, save for her underwear; her wet hair stuck in long tendrils to her skin. For a long, awkward moment, Adamska felt almost squeamish, and sought to look away. There was, he thought, quite a wide gulf between fucking someone under cover of darkness and being confronted with their nakedness in the cold light of day; the female form, although not entirely unpleasant in Adamska's estimation, was not something he was used to seeing in such flagrant, unashamed detail.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"I've been hiking through jungles and sleeping on the floor," she said matter-of-factly. "And in case you haven't noticed, it's been extremely hot."
"You're...washing your clothes?"
Eva looked at him as if he were stupid. "Yes, I'm washing my clothes," she said. "Is that allowed?"
Adamska blinked slowly. “You left this place unguarded in daylight,” he said, surprised at how calm he sounded. “You leave cover and go out into the open. You don’t think a helicopter might have spotted you?”
“I’d have heard a helicopter,” she said sourly.
“You’re practically naked,” Adamska said.
“Yes,” she replied. “I practically am.”
He gestured wildly with his arms. “Were you just going to stand around here, wearing nothing, waiting for your clothes to dry? What if we're ambushed? What the hell were you thinking?"
If the situation hadn't been so fucking infuriating, Adamska might have laughed. Eva, standing on the bank, shamelessly bare and worse, paying no attention to what was going on around them. She had her arms crossed over her chest, staring at him with an expression of sulky defiance. Perhaps she wasn't used to men demanding she put her clothes on. Or perhaps she wasn't used to not getting her way. Adamska wondered how John had coped with her tagging along.
"You should have woken me," he said.
"You looked tired."
"I was tired. I would have survived."
She sat on the grass; water streamed from her hair. Sunlight refracted through the droplets that studded her naked skin. "You take everything so seriously," she said, and sounded almost disappointed.
"I'm a professional," he said.
"Is that what they call it now? " Eva's lips curled up into the ghost of a smile. "Taking orders because you hope he'll offer you a pity-fuck?"
He would have lashed out at her, but there was something horribly disarming about her nakedness, her vulnerability. It would have seemed reprehensible, even for him. She looked up at him incuriously, waiting for the stock responses - that's not how it is, there's more to it than that - and with a stab of shame, he realised he could offer no better reasoning. Of course, it wasn't so simple. But there were certain things Adamska did not intend to share with Eva. Whatever had happened to her in the interim, she was still a spy.
She smiled then. "I'm sorry, Ocelot."
So his discomfort was obvious, then. Fucking perfect.
"That's not my name." Muttered, barely audible. He felt his cheeks burn and hated himself for it.
"So you said. What should I call you, then?"
"My name is Adamska."
Eva mused on it for a second. "Cute," she said. "Adam and Eva."
"You're not Eva." Adamska knew little about who the real Eva had been - only that it had been a man, and that this woman had taken his place, appearing almost out of nowhere on Sokolov's arm. Not that he had ever really bought that Tatyana act.
"It's as good a name as any," she said, dismissive. "Adamska. Do many people get to call you that?"
"I've got a few aliases." A different alias in every country, it seemed. It seemed neater; less of a trail to follow, less chance of being tracked down. Eva took in this information with a nod. Seeing her there, near-naked, limbs stretched out like a cat in the sun, it was easy to forget just how well she knew this business. That she'd been trained young, just like him.
“I like it,” she said, and turned her face towards the sun.
Adamska left Eva at the riverside and walked past the clearing, into the edge of the surrounding forest. He hadn't told her about the radio call. It hadn't been deliberate; he had been thrown somewhat by her wading out of the river like a fucking James Bond girl. But there was some small, possessive part of him that didn't want her to know. Let her worry, if she cared so damn much about him.
No sign of disturbance. That was reassuring; Adamska did not want to lead John unwittingly into an ambush. He moved quietly through the trees. Counted his steps. Listened out for incongruous sounds. As he walked careful circuits in the still heat, he felt sweat bead on his forehead, and idly wished it had been his idea to jump in the river.
**
Adamska had been walking for close to an hour when he heard the first shots.
They were close by, somewhere in the forest to the west of the shack. His hackles rose. He stalked a wide circle up to where the ground started to slope gently downwards, heading further into the valley. The dry crack of pistol fire echoed loudly in the quiet, sending birds into the sky in great black gouts. Adamska ducked into a crouch, held his gun in both hands. Someone was coming his way, moving slowly through the leaf litter. He couldn't see it yet; its profile was obscured by the bright shafts of sunlight that burned through the canopy like searchlights.
His radio let out a series of staccato bleeps. He hissed at it, and fumbled for the receiver.
“Not a good time,” he growled.
“I can see you, Adamska,” the radio replied. “Help me with this body.”
He almost leapt out of his skin. He had thought himself relatively well hidden. Apparently, John's skills extended to spotting allies hidden in the shadows. Adamska scowled, and got to his feet. A hundred yards ahead, rounding a tree, was John. He was dragging a dead man by the legs, leaving a trail of disturbed mulch in his wake.
“Was he alone?” Adamska asked.
“Seems so,” John said. “Cover the tracks anyway.”
There was never any fanfare, any grand gesture when the two of them reunited. It always seemed like a foregone conclusion, that they'd both come out of it alive. Nonetheless, as the last of his anxiety dissipated, Adamska felt a little angry at how complacent they were when it came to each other's survival.
He retraced John's steps to where the man had fallen, kicking the wet leaves and dirt back over the disturbed area. There was no blood. That was a plus; blood was hard to hide, even in low-lit areas. There was something about it that drew the human eye, some primal instinct that made its presence impossible to ignore. By the time he had returned, John had propped the body up in a cluster of close-growing trees, hidden in the shadows. He gave Adamska a small, grateful smile. His hair was wild and damp with sweat, sticking to his face in thin coils. There was a patch of torn fabric and dark, dried blood on his shoulder. Adamska raised his eyebrows.
“You got shot?” he said. Instinctively, he reached out a hand, and John gently caught it. Held on just a fraction longer than he ought to have, and returned it to Adamska's side.
“Grazed,” John said. “It's fine, Adamska.”
Adamska nodded uncertainly.
“You made it, then,” he said. There was a gladness in his voice. For a brief moment, Adamska thought he saw relief in John's single blue eye, bright even in this gloom. He dismissed it as wishful thinking.
“Of course I did,” Adamska replied. He holstered his gun.
“Where's Eva?”
“She's back at the rendezvous.” He thought of her, alone back at the rendezvous, and of the man John had taken out in the forest. “She's uh...she's....” sitting naked on the grass, his mind offered. He shoved it away. “She's safe.”
John nodded. This time, the hint of amusement about his lips was unmistakeable. Adamska flushed for the second time that day. He averted his gaze. Mockery was not something he could take in good grace, however good-natured it might be.
Adamska felt John's hand on his shoulder.
“You did well,” he said. “And I'm grateful.”
He couldn't help himself. Adamska pulled John's face to his own, anchoring his fingers in the other man's hair. He felt the sharp prickle of stubble against his skin, the sharp angles of John's face beneath his fingers, skin slick in the heat. John's hands, solid and real and pressed against his shoulders. Even as he kissed him, he knew this was a concession, a gift from John. A thank you. Was this what he had become? A loyal dog, begging for scraps at his master's table? Shame burned deep in his stomach, and he drew back, extricating himself from John's loose embrace.
“Eva's alone,” he said. He had missed the way John tasted. Had missed the familiarity of his body pressed against him.
If John was surprised at his reaction, he did not show it. His lone eye travelled the length of Adamska's body, returning at last to his face, to the pained expression he knew he must be wearing.
“That's pretty conscientious of you, Adamska.” The comment did not register as sarcastic. “Okay. Let's regroup.”
“And then?”
“And then we get out of here.”
Get out of here. Such a simple proposition, and yet Adamska could think of nothing more sublime than doing just that. Away from this sweatbox forest, these dirty clothes, this fucking mission. What he wouldn't give for a bottle of vodka and somewhere cool to sleep. For the luxury of solitude.
Adamska did not say any of that.
He nodded.
“Sounds good,” he said, and let John lead the way.