Intrude 2/5
This is my inspiring desktop picture :) Speaking of, I swear there were a couple of sketches of Frank's face in the long cutscene in part 3 of MGS4, and I've not found them online yet... It's so much easier to find canon arts of his ass than his face. Canon, ILU.
I've not finished part 3 yet so can't promise it'll be up on Sunday, but that's what I'm aiming for. Til then, enjoy.
Title: INTRUDE 2/5: EROS
Pairing: Solid Snake/Gray Fox
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 4500
Warnings: M/M sex.
Summary: Success feels like failure, but the stranger on his doorstep could be a friend.
1/5: KRONOS
Snake's homecoming was awkward, to say the least.
Fuck it, but until the very last moment he'd been looking forward to it. Just rescuing Gray Fox would've made him the toast of the base, and destroying Metal Gear would have him sorted - no more rookie jokes, no more box duty, maybe even a grain of respect from Big Boss.
Big Boss was gone, his little empire crushed, and if he was still alive it was no thanks to Snake.
He was not the toast of the base. Most agents wouldn't even look at him. There were no congratulations, little acknowledgement that he'd succeeded in a task when even the Fox couldn't - although the more Snake thought about the situation, the more convinced he became that it had been didn't rather than couldn't. FOXHOUND put a lot of stock in loyalty, and perhaps Fox's failure demonstrated more of that than Snake's success could. No wonder no one wanted him around.
He felt justified in his prior suspicion that Big Boss hadn't liked him very much. Sending him on a suicide mission and then trying to blow him to hell had been a fairly strong hint.
There wasn't a lot for anyone to talk to him about. Leopard was still trying out the usual banter, but somehow it never got past "So hey, you shot Big Boss..." before trailing off. He got sent on a lengthy mission a while later, leaving Snake alone in their room to stare at the walls in the evenings.
He'd noticed that no one was talking to Gray Fox either. He seemed to be spending a lot of time in his office, or otherwise out of sight. Never again would he wander the base attached to Big Boss's elbow; instead, Campbell and Miller stomped around together, talking noisily about how the hell FOXHOUND would get past this, what lies they'd have to tell the suits to survive. No cloud of cigar smoke followed them down the hallways; of eavesdroppers they had plenty, but they were all jitters, no awe.
Colonel Campbell was in charge now, and he made a thoughtful and thorough leader. Everyone thought he was a great commanding officer.
But everyone knew that he wasn't the boss.
*
There was a goddamn Congressional inquiry that dragged on for weeks. And weeks. After the first ten days he was ready to strangle FOXHOUND's lawyer, but knowing FOXHOUND, the suit was probably better at CQC than he was.
Gray Fox testified too, and Snake watched him from the public gallery. He was an excellent liar, Snake thought - serious and serene. Not someone you'd want to play poker with. He wondered which lies had been coached by the lawyers, and which were Fox's own additions. Congress did not ask what it had been like to be taken prisoner by a man who'd been your mentor and commander for over twenty years. Congress didn't know a fucking goddamn thing.
As Fox left the witness stand, he looked up to where Snake was standing, and nodded, lips pressed together, as if acknowledging Snake's thoughts.
At the end of the interminable proceedings, Congress concluded that Big Boss should never have been permitted to return to the USA, should never have retaken command of his own disciples, his activities in Africa should have been much more closely monitored (by who? FOXHOUND?), and that Snake was due a reproachful look for not ensuring Big Boss was dead before he left. Well fuck you, he thought as he was leaving for the last time. If the Capitol was about to explode and you'd just shot the Speaker to get out of it, would you run back to make sure he was really dead?
Thinking back on the weeks of bickering, he decided that some of them might.
In February, FOXHOUND put him on leave. For three months.
*
He tried not to think too much. Unfortunately, there was jack-all else to do. He took long runs every morning and evening, trying to exhaust his thoughts of energy. He realised he was smoking more and more. He'd go to the movies some nights, slip out for a smoke halfway through, and usually not bother to go back for the rest of the film. Trying not to think. It worked, some days. Others, he just found himself staring into space, words and memories looping over and over.
There were a few bars nearby that he'd go to late at night, looking for ways to kill feelings and keep them dead. He was wary of drugs and alcohol - their effects were more like the opposite of his intentions - but there were always warm bodies to take home, if they even made it that far. Men more often than women; they needed less talk, sometimes none at all, and they never even tried to stay to breakfast. (He wasn't lonely. They weren't worth it. He wasn't fucking lonely).
So he took his runs, drank instant coffee, filled up ashtray after ashtray, ate out of the microwave, kept the apartment clean and tidy because it was something to do. He wondered about repainting the place to kill time, but ultimately he didn't care enough. He would've liked to get a dog. Not a foxhound - maybe something bigger, something that needed some real exercise. But there would've been no one to care for it while he was away.
Some days he spent staring at the phone imagining himself picking it up, calling Colonel Campbell and saying he had to come back to base, take another mission, or he'd lose his mind. But he knew that would just be an invitation to spend the next year being pored over by the shrinks. He could stand it, right?
He'd held out for over a month. It would be fine. It was good that the world had put him down for a while, forgotten him again - better than the lawyers, the Congressional inquiry, all the intrusions after Intrude N313, all the awkwardness on base. The awkwardness. They could move on with him out of the way - he'd come back, and it would be just the same as ever and everything would be fine again. Except that Big Boss and Gray Fox wouldn't be striding about the halls together, boots clicking, coats swaying, smoke trailing after them as they went.
But it would be fine. The same. They just needed to forget him and he needed to forget Big Boss.
And the doorbell rang.
He shook his head. How long had he been standing there? It was getting dark. He'd not turned the lights on. The doorbell rang again and he reached for the gun he wasn't wearing. It never rang. He barely recognised the sound. There was a gun on the telephone table - he grabbed it and opened the door just a crack, letting it catch on the chain.
Gray Fox was leaning on the doorjam.
"Snake," he said. His voice was as solemn as ever. David was suddenly hyperalert, noticing all the tiny details - Fox's messy hair, the gloves hanging out of his coat pocket, his worn-out eyes. He put the gun down, not sure if Fox had even seen it, and unchained the door. "They put me on leave too - I thought I'd come see how you were doing."
"How did you know where I lived?" Fox stared at him levelly until David realised he'd just asked the world's most accomplished spy how he'd known where he lived. "Uh..." He flushed with embarrassment, and Fox laughed. Not cruelly, but kindly.
Like it was okay. Like they'd known each other for years.
"Want to come inside?" he asked, though he couldn't think of any reason why he would.
"Sure, if I wouldn't be intruding."
There's nothing here for you to intrude upon, Fox. Not a goddamn thing.
*
"You're watching the figure skating?"
David looked around. Seemed like he was; he'd turned that channel on a couple weeks ago, when they were showing clips from the Iditarod - an event that filled him with an elemental curiosity - and never bothered changing it. He'd always liked to watch winter sports; it had been a sort of escapism when he'd been growing up in New Mexico. "Yeah - I guess it beats most of what's on TV."
"At home, it's always tuned to the Discovery Channel." David blinked - it hadn't really struck him before that other agents had to just put up with people when they were on leave. Fight over a TV remote with people. Try to get along with people. Fox had slid off his trenchcoat, lying it over the back of the little worn sofa. He was dressed very plainly underneath - just black jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt. Maybe that was an infiltrator's instinct; to be unmarked and unremarkable. At the latter, he failed. Too scarred, too strange, and too beautiful.
Not having much else to share, David offered him cigarettes and what company he could muster, and both were accepted gracefully. He didn't know why Fox was there. Not really to see if he was okay. (He was okay.) Maybe he had something else to talk about. Another thought crossed his mind - that Fox had come to get away from something - but that was no reason to seek David out, surely. His interest in the skating seemed genuine, and they were soon talking about it - the overblown drama of the last Olympics, their shared suspicion that everything had been better in the late 80s, and how hot some of the competitors were. Fox laughed about the last, and David wondered if the man was as surprised as he was to meet another guy who saw more to it than that.
"Can you skate?"
"Never tried. You?"
"Not very well. Someone tried to show me how, once." Fox looked distant for a moment. "I still like to watch it. More than anything else they show."
David nodded. "Same. Hate team sports."
"Well, aren't you just a typical FOXHOUND agent."
"You would know, Fox. You've been one for, how long?"
"Since I was...a lot younger than you are now." He looked aside - David thought maybe he hadn't liked the question, but then he added: "And you can call me Frank."
David was startled. Damn FOXHOUND traditions, but field agents did not have names. Names were for medics, advisers, tech staff - if Fox was telling the truth, it was a true show of trust. "Sure. Frank." He chewed his lip. Fuck traditions. "I'm David." But I bet you already knew. He held out a hand, which Frank shook with comic sincerity. "And I'm glad you stopped by." He realised he had no idea whether the man lived two blocks away or had dropped in via helicopter just to talk to him, and wasn't sure which was less unlikely.
"So you hate leave too?" Frank asked.
"Yes," he replied, with feeling. "Glad I'm not the only one."
Frank had one heel up on the sofa; he leant his head on his knee, an odd posture for a man of almost David's height. "Fighting's what I know. I don't remember any other life. Hard to figure out how to be alive without it..." He sighed. "Big Boss understood."
The way he said it - the matter-of-factness, the tinge of sadness - told David a lot of things he hadn't the balls to ask about. That Frank still cared, even now the world had turned upside down. FOXHOUND's founder still meant something to him. It was terrifying, and it was reassuring, because Big Boss meant something to David too. Commanding officers always did.
Fuck everything. He figured that if he'd truly done something horribly wrong, Gray Fox wouldn't be sat beside him now. No, he'd've killed me on my doorstep, and felt no remorse.
"So what are you going to do now?" he asked. "Quit?"
"I don't know. That could be worse than leave. You going to quit?"
He'd been considering it, for roughly the last thirty seconds. "I don't know." There was too much he didn't know yet. He looked at Frank, and found Frank looking at him - his head half-turned, eyes masked under long lashes - and felt like the other man was a box that contained all the answers, a box that would be forever locked.
Something solidified in the other man's eyes. "David. There's things that neither of us know yet. But there's also things we could share." A key. If he had the nerve to take it. "Things we haven't answered truthfully until now. A question for a question."
He thought on this for a moment. "Deal."
But there was too much to ask, and it was in too many pieces, and the things he wanted to know most - Why the hell did you do it? How long had you known? You've been on his side since always, and can that really change? - he didn't dare. Too huge and too personal. There were other shards his words had the strength to lift, but not those.
"You first," he tried. Maybe Frank already had a question in mind.
The silence drew on. Maybe Frank was as confused as David, or more so. Eventually he said, "Honestly now. Is Big Boss still alive?"
Frank had heard what he'd told Congress - the lawyerly precise story about filling him with lead and then running from the collapsing fortress. Frank had also, he supposed, seen the reports in the newspapers he'd now given up reading - people looking for Big Boss and seeing him in the oddest places, like he was the new Elvis or something. And Frank wanted an answer, from the only person who'd really know.
"I don't know if he's still alive. But," and this he'd yet to breathe a word of to anyone, "he was when I left. Heard him call out as I ran away."
He almost heard Frank's calm fracture. The man's breath hitched, and his lips drew back from his teeth. David wondered if it had been the answer he'd hoped for. He hadn't told anyone before because he'd wanted the whole thing over, and he still did, but maybe Fox - Frank - couldn't feel the same, not after fighting for Big Boss for over twenty years.
Frank was sitting upright now, back pressed to the corner of the sofa. "Thank you. Your turn."
David's mind raced. That had to have been what Frank had come to him for. Maybe. He couldn't ask Frank whose side he was on, or if he'd ever really been a prisoner in Outer Heaven. Those weren't things you asked someone who trusted you with their name. And aside from that, there was only one other thing he wanted to know.
"Did he really want me dead?"
Frank tipped his head to look at the ceiling. "Fuck. I don't know. And I'd been trying to work it out." What? Why? "You told Congress he'd wanted you to bring back false information, but you'd stumbled over the truth instead..."
"Yeah, he said that."
"David..." He realised Frank had closed his eyes. "One thing I do know about Big Boss is that he never tried to undo the past. Not even when something had broken his heart. I don't think he wanted you dead. I know he wanted to control you - I think you were the agent he was most prepared to lie to. To use. But, before all this..." He was blinking, brow furrowed in thought. "He could've ruined you. He could've turned his back on you. He never did." He gave a dark laugh. "Sucker for the underdog, maybe."
"Right..." David didn't understand. It was like he was listening to half of one of those old conversations, and that made even less sense than hearing Fox and Big Boss speaking together. "So much for sharing what we know."
"What?"
He looked Frank in the eye. "We've got our hunches, for sure, but Frank, all we just said is that we don't know."
"True enough." Frank nodded. What are you going to do, try to find him? Half the world was looking for Big Boss - if he was even still out there. But David knew that if anyone could run him to earth it would be Gray Fox. And what then? "But thanks, anyway."
"Same to you." He swallowed hard. "Settles my mind a bit." Frank looked at him; not a question, but an open door. He stumbled through it. "Can't stop thinking, Fox. About what happened. About charging in to rescue you and..." He turned away, blinking back unexpected tears. He wanted another cigarette. "Everything before that, too. Like the last two years playing in a fucking loop in my fucking head. Everything he taught me. All the tools he gave me that I used to bring him down."
"CQC?" Frank lifted a foot onto his knee, moving a little closer to him. His grey eyes had turned warm.
"No - the things he said CQC was about. Using all my senses..."
"Loyalty." Big Boss said no one had asked. But Frank had been told. Or hadn't needed to be told. "Being alive."
"Feeling the will of your enemy." Frank was looking at him sidelong, and David could feel a familiar gravity. Could just be the feeling of trusting someone, or the adrenaline charge of secrets. But he leaned a little closer himself, and the blond smiled, flashing a row of pointed teeth. "Knowing their mind - but better -"
"Believing that you'll succeed." Frank offered him his hand again.
He took it gently, feeling a tense sweat beading on the other man's palm. "Believing in yourself -"
"Making the first move."
David's wrists were pinned before Frank had finished speaking, but the kiss was so hard he didn't care. So hard he knew nothing except tongues mashing against teeth, except the torrent of blood and emotion called up by their tangling lips - nothing but him and Gray Fox. Soon he was all heat and no oxygen, and he prised a hand from Frank's grip, pushing him back at the elbow and trying to force the man's knee off his other wrist.
He did not succeed, but he had air - air and Frank's scarred forehead resting against his, Frank's warm breath on his face. He reached his free hand up to the man's neck. Touched the ends of his hair, and was surprised how soft it was. He felt a murmur in the other man's throat, and kissed him again, swallowing the sound before he ever heard it. His caress at Frank's neck slowly hardened to a chokehold, and Frank finally shifted his knee. Perhaps David felt a laugh under his fingers. He pulled away again, taking Frank by the shoulders, working his hands over the hard muscles there. A rosy flush was spreading over that pale face.
"Goddamnit -" he whispered. This wasn't what he'd been doing. This wasn't the sex he'd had with strangers in the hope of a moment's respite from himself. He didn't know what the hell it was except that it was terrifying and he wanted it anyway.
Frank dropped a hand to David's hips, and with a few firm touches he was drawn over to straddle Frank's lap. He spread his hands out over the other man's chest, touching hungrily, finding hardened nubs, pressing. Teeth traced his collarbone, making his hips buck against Frank's, and he heard himself panting more cursewords.
Frank's cock was swelling beneath his own, and the friction was enough to make him dizzy.
He yanked off Frank's shirt, a favour that was returned immediately, and took a second to admire his flesh - that odd pallor with its soft yellow undertone, the ridged scars and bullet wounds, the sweet roughness of twenty years of war. A second was all he had before Frank crushed their bodies together - lifting his ass with one fondling hand, mouth curling around a nipple.
He grunted, head bent to Frank's neck, stroking him up to the ear with breath and lips. "This what you came for?"
"No." His voice was a thread of breeze, a whisper. "But it's why I'm still here." He felt Frank fumbling with zips. A rough hand closed around his cock, and he groaned, reached downwards, heard a harsh breath against his neck, touched heads together and also heads together, kissing again, feeling fluid beading, the early tremours of an eruption. But then he slid off his perch on Frank's lap, making space for them both to get properly undressed, because goddamnit he wanted to see this man naked again.
Frank didn't disappoint. Goddamn. Lean, plaster-pale, shaped perfectly - hips narrower than his, shoulders wider, penis curving out from rocky thighs - it looked so dark against the rest of his flesh, like a stain. Uncut, too. He liked that. Liked enough to taste it, one knee dropped to the carpet, his tongue lapping up the dewdrops of their earlier contact, Frank's fingers tightening over his scalp.
He looked up for a moment, and saw the other man's brow folding along scarlines, his spine curling forward, his body tremouring. It was strangely like aiming a shot - letting himself still, and finding the rhythm of his heartbeat. Passing that rhythm to Frank with firm strokes of his lips.
After a few minutes, Frank tugged at his hair. He laid his head on a hard thigh, finding it startlingly cold compared to the warm cock that now bobbed in front of his gaze. "Should we go somewhere more comfortable?" Frank suggested, fingers stroking at David's neck. He shifted, nodded towards the bedroom door, and rummaged in the pocket of his discarded jeans.
Frank looked back to him from the doorway as he flicked on the lightswitch. "Can't say I thought to bring condoms," he murmured, looking almost sheepish - a fox in sheep's clothing, barely hiding his teeth. David waved the ones he'd found in his wallet, rolled to his feet and pushed Frank into his room with one hand to the ass.
"Got a preference?" he asked, opening the nightstand drawer.
Frank sat on the end of his bed, looking thoughtful. "For now? Top me," he said. David nodded, not sure if he should be surprised, really not sure if he should be surprised that he was engaging in the preparatory politenesses of fucking men with Gray Fox, Special Forces legend. But his mind was rising to somewhere sex never normally took it anywhere near, somewhere close to mission mode, where you moved first and figured things out later.
Easier to shoot your own commanding officer that way. Easier and more satisfying, all round.
Frank pulled him down to the mattress for another kiss, with a fist curled in his hair to hold him suffocatingly close. David's empty hand found the other man's hips, tracing over planes of muscle - he found a delightful rough hollow high on the left-hand side, and realised it had been dug by the hilt of Fox's machete, hanging from his belt for twenty years. He twisted down from the man's grip, parting his legs with a hand, opening his pot of KY with the other.
Couldn't resist another taste. Not that he was trying too hard to resist anything. He slid slick fingers inside Frank's body, and felt him buck under his tongue.
David sat back to slip a condom on, then took a moment to let his hands fondle Frank from the tip of his cock to his entrance, thumbs buried in curls of hair even paler than Frank's skin. He was still marvelling at the other man's body - it didn't look old, just shaped by war into a machine-like rigour, steel held together with veins and tendons. There were scars everywhere, each one a story that David knew far better than to ask about. Frank was raising an eyebrow at him, full of feral hunger. "We should've done this at Outer Heaven," he said, carefully dripping lube over latex.
The blond just laughed and put an arm about his shoulders. "No, you had to get through there first. I don't fuck rookies."
David wondered, as he eased into him, if he'd just said that because he knew it would make him feel warm somewhere inside. So not like anyone else he'd screwed, ever. Like sex was an act of belonging, with Frank. And so fucking tight, like everything else about his goddamn beautiful body and his goddamn unfathomable mind.
He started moving, slowly at first, but Frank was growling in his throat and shifting his knees against David's sides. Demanding more from him. There was something limitless in those grey eyes - something that yearned to take everything he could give. He took it faster and deeper, until every part of his cock burned with heat.
Frank was arching under him, pushing up into David's stomach. He caught his balance, wrapped Frank's sex in one hand, and kept moving. Felt ankles lock behind his back, and teeth snap at his shoulder - he'd never seemed this close to someone while fucking. So contained on all sides. So locked into someone else's flesh.
The truth hit him somewhere just north of that mission state, just south of his orgasm, and harder than either. Frank, I care about you.
*
"Going somewhere?" he asked, as Frank slid out of the tangle of sheets, moving with surprising ease for someone who'd just been screwed senseless.
"Yeah, I need to get home -" A twisted look crossed Frank's face, but then the usual calm settled. "David, I'd stay here if I could. Truly. But I said I'd be home tonight."
Even amid his disappointment, David believed him. It's not about sex. It's not even about me. It's 'home', wherever that is. It makes him act guilty. He recognised the feeling behind Frank's eyes; it'd been writhing inside him since Outer Heaven. I gunned down my CO - but what the hell did you do?
"It's okay," he replied flatly. Frank's gaze still lingered. "Wasn't assuming you'd stay for breakfast." But I wanted you to. He pried himself out of bed, looking for tissues. Needed to clean up, change the sheets. He heard Frank collecting clothing, turning on the shower.
Maybe it was easier to live alone, when you killed people for a living. Maybe those who didn't had people worrying all the time, always watching them while they were on leave, always wondering if war had driven you mad.
He was still naked when Frank returned and laid a cold hand on his shoulder. He placed his own atop it without looking around. "Want to drop by again sometime?" he asked. He wasn't hopeful. Never was. Best way.
But he felt Frank nod. "Let me jot down my number -" David watched him go. Saw him scrawl on the telephone pad. Their eyes locked for a second before Frank saw himself out, and David strained his ears for a minute after - no rotor blades, for sure. Motorbike, sounded like. Typical merc.
He went to read what was written on the pad.
FRANK JAEGER - 555-014-048
Huh. Same state, at least...
And he'd given David his entire goddamn name.
3/5: KLOTHO
I've not finished part 3 yet so can't promise it'll be up on Sunday, but that's what I'm aiming for. Til then, enjoy.
Title: INTRUDE 2/5: EROS
Pairing: Solid Snake/Gray Fox
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 4500
Warnings: M/M sex.
Summary: Success feels like failure, but the stranger on his doorstep could be a friend.
1/5: KRONOS
Snake's homecoming was awkward, to say the least.
Fuck it, but until the very last moment he'd been looking forward to it. Just rescuing Gray Fox would've made him the toast of the base, and destroying Metal Gear would have him sorted - no more rookie jokes, no more box duty, maybe even a grain of respect from Big Boss.
Big Boss was gone, his little empire crushed, and if he was still alive it was no thanks to Snake.
He was not the toast of the base. Most agents wouldn't even look at him. There were no congratulations, little acknowledgement that he'd succeeded in a task when even the Fox couldn't - although the more Snake thought about the situation, the more convinced he became that it had been didn't rather than couldn't. FOXHOUND put a lot of stock in loyalty, and perhaps Fox's failure demonstrated more of that than Snake's success could. No wonder no one wanted him around.
He felt justified in his prior suspicion that Big Boss hadn't liked him very much. Sending him on a suicide mission and then trying to blow him to hell had been a fairly strong hint.
There wasn't a lot for anyone to talk to him about. Leopard was still trying out the usual banter, but somehow it never got past "So hey, you shot Big Boss..." before trailing off. He got sent on a lengthy mission a while later, leaving Snake alone in their room to stare at the walls in the evenings.
He'd noticed that no one was talking to Gray Fox either. He seemed to be spending a lot of time in his office, or otherwise out of sight. Never again would he wander the base attached to Big Boss's elbow; instead, Campbell and Miller stomped around together, talking noisily about how the hell FOXHOUND would get past this, what lies they'd have to tell the suits to survive. No cloud of cigar smoke followed them down the hallways; of eavesdroppers they had plenty, but they were all jitters, no awe.
Colonel Campbell was in charge now, and he made a thoughtful and thorough leader. Everyone thought he was a great commanding officer.
But everyone knew that he wasn't the boss.
*
There was a goddamn Congressional inquiry that dragged on for weeks. And weeks. After the first ten days he was ready to strangle FOXHOUND's lawyer, but knowing FOXHOUND, the suit was probably better at CQC than he was.
Gray Fox testified too, and Snake watched him from the public gallery. He was an excellent liar, Snake thought - serious and serene. Not someone you'd want to play poker with. He wondered which lies had been coached by the lawyers, and which were Fox's own additions. Congress did not ask what it had been like to be taken prisoner by a man who'd been your mentor and commander for over twenty years. Congress didn't know a fucking goddamn thing.
As Fox left the witness stand, he looked up to where Snake was standing, and nodded, lips pressed together, as if acknowledging Snake's thoughts.
At the end of the interminable proceedings, Congress concluded that Big Boss should never have been permitted to return to the USA, should never have retaken command of his own disciples, his activities in Africa should have been much more closely monitored (by who? FOXHOUND?), and that Snake was due a reproachful look for not ensuring Big Boss was dead before he left. Well fuck you, he thought as he was leaving for the last time. If the Capitol was about to explode and you'd just shot the Speaker to get out of it, would you run back to make sure he was really dead?
Thinking back on the weeks of bickering, he decided that some of them might.
In February, FOXHOUND put him on leave. For three months.
*
He tried not to think too much. Unfortunately, there was jack-all else to do. He took long runs every morning and evening, trying to exhaust his thoughts of energy. He realised he was smoking more and more. He'd go to the movies some nights, slip out for a smoke halfway through, and usually not bother to go back for the rest of the film. Trying not to think. It worked, some days. Others, he just found himself staring into space, words and memories looping over and over.
There were a few bars nearby that he'd go to late at night, looking for ways to kill feelings and keep them dead. He was wary of drugs and alcohol - their effects were more like the opposite of his intentions - but there were always warm bodies to take home, if they even made it that far. Men more often than women; they needed less talk, sometimes none at all, and they never even tried to stay to breakfast. (He wasn't lonely. They weren't worth it. He wasn't fucking lonely).
So he took his runs, drank instant coffee, filled up ashtray after ashtray, ate out of the microwave, kept the apartment clean and tidy because it was something to do. He wondered about repainting the place to kill time, but ultimately he didn't care enough. He would've liked to get a dog. Not a foxhound - maybe something bigger, something that needed some real exercise. But there would've been no one to care for it while he was away.
Some days he spent staring at the phone imagining himself picking it up, calling Colonel Campbell and saying he had to come back to base, take another mission, or he'd lose his mind. But he knew that would just be an invitation to spend the next year being pored over by the shrinks. He could stand it, right?
He'd held out for over a month. It would be fine. It was good that the world had put him down for a while, forgotten him again - better than the lawyers, the Congressional inquiry, all the intrusions after Intrude N313, all the awkwardness on base. The awkwardness. They could move on with him out of the way - he'd come back, and it would be just the same as ever and everything would be fine again. Except that Big Boss and Gray Fox wouldn't be striding about the halls together, boots clicking, coats swaying, smoke trailing after them as they went.
But it would be fine. The same. They just needed to forget him and he needed to forget Big Boss.
And the doorbell rang.
He shook his head. How long had he been standing there? It was getting dark. He'd not turned the lights on. The doorbell rang again and he reached for the gun he wasn't wearing. It never rang. He barely recognised the sound. There was a gun on the telephone table - he grabbed it and opened the door just a crack, letting it catch on the chain.
Gray Fox was leaning on the doorjam.
"Snake," he said. His voice was as solemn as ever. David was suddenly hyperalert, noticing all the tiny details - Fox's messy hair, the gloves hanging out of his coat pocket, his worn-out eyes. He put the gun down, not sure if Fox had even seen it, and unchained the door. "They put me on leave too - I thought I'd come see how you were doing."
"How did you know where I lived?" Fox stared at him levelly until David realised he'd just asked the world's most accomplished spy how he'd known where he lived. "Uh..." He flushed with embarrassment, and Fox laughed. Not cruelly, but kindly.
Like it was okay. Like they'd known each other for years.
"Want to come inside?" he asked, though he couldn't think of any reason why he would.
"Sure, if I wouldn't be intruding."
There's nothing here for you to intrude upon, Fox. Not a goddamn thing.
*
"You're watching the figure skating?"
David looked around. Seemed like he was; he'd turned that channel on a couple weeks ago, when they were showing clips from the Iditarod - an event that filled him with an elemental curiosity - and never bothered changing it. He'd always liked to watch winter sports; it had been a sort of escapism when he'd been growing up in New Mexico. "Yeah - I guess it beats most of what's on TV."
"At home, it's always tuned to the Discovery Channel." David blinked - it hadn't really struck him before that other agents had to just put up with people when they were on leave. Fight over a TV remote with people. Try to get along with people. Fox had slid off his trenchcoat, lying it over the back of the little worn sofa. He was dressed very plainly underneath - just black jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt. Maybe that was an infiltrator's instinct; to be unmarked and unremarkable. At the latter, he failed. Too scarred, too strange, and too beautiful.
Not having much else to share, David offered him cigarettes and what company he could muster, and both were accepted gracefully. He didn't know why Fox was there. Not really to see if he was okay. (He was okay.) Maybe he had something else to talk about. Another thought crossed his mind - that Fox had come to get away from something - but that was no reason to seek David out, surely. His interest in the skating seemed genuine, and they were soon talking about it - the overblown drama of the last Olympics, their shared suspicion that everything had been better in the late 80s, and how hot some of the competitors were. Fox laughed about the last, and David wondered if the man was as surprised as he was to meet another guy who saw more to it than that.
"Can you skate?"
"Never tried. You?"
"Not very well. Someone tried to show me how, once." Fox looked distant for a moment. "I still like to watch it. More than anything else they show."
David nodded. "Same. Hate team sports."
"Well, aren't you just a typical FOXHOUND agent."
"You would know, Fox. You've been one for, how long?"
"Since I was...a lot younger than you are now." He looked aside - David thought maybe he hadn't liked the question, but then he added: "And you can call me Frank."
David was startled. Damn FOXHOUND traditions, but field agents did not have names. Names were for medics, advisers, tech staff - if Fox was telling the truth, it was a true show of trust. "Sure. Frank." He chewed his lip. Fuck traditions. "I'm David." But I bet you already knew. He held out a hand, which Frank shook with comic sincerity. "And I'm glad you stopped by." He realised he had no idea whether the man lived two blocks away or had dropped in via helicopter just to talk to him, and wasn't sure which was less unlikely.
"So you hate leave too?" Frank asked.
"Yes," he replied, with feeling. "Glad I'm not the only one."
Frank had one heel up on the sofa; he leant his head on his knee, an odd posture for a man of almost David's height. "Fighting's what I know. I don't remember any other life. Hard to figure out how to be alive without it..." He sighed. "Big Boss understood."
The way he said it - the matter-of-factness, the tinge of sadness - told David a lot of things he hadn't the balls to ask about. That Frank still cared, even now the world had turned upside down. FOXHOUND's founder still meant something to him. It was terrifying, and it was reassuring, because Big Boss meant something to David too. Commanding officers always did.
Fuck everything. He figured that if he'd truly done something horribly wrong, Gray Fox wouldn't be sat beside him now. No, he'd've killed me on my doorstep, and felt no remorse.
"So what are you going to do now?" he asked. "Quit?"
"I don't know. That could be worse than leave. You going to quit?"
He'd been considering it, for roughly the last thirty seconds. "I don't know." There was too much he didn't know yet. He looked at Frank, and found Frank looking at him - his head half-turned, eyes masked under long lashes - and felt like the other man was a box that contained all the answers, a box that would be forever locked.
Something solidified in the other man's eyes. "David. There's things that neither of us know yet. But there's also things we could share." A key. If he had the nerve to take it. "Things we haven't answered truthfully until now. A question for a question."
He thought on this for a moment. "Deal."
But there was too much to ask, and it was in too many pieces, and the things he wanted to know most - Why the hell did you do it? How long had you known? You've been on his side since always, and can that really change? - he didn't dare. Too huge and too personal. There were other shards his words had the strength to lift, but not those.
"You first," he tried. Maybe Frank already had a question in mind.
The silence drew on. Maybe Frank was as confused as David, or more so. Eventually he said, "Honestly now. Is Big Boss still alive?"
Frank had heard what he'd told Congress - the lawyerly precise story about filling him with lead and then running from the collapsing fortress. Frank had also, he supposed, seen the reports in the newspapers he'd now given up reading - people looking for Big Boss and seeing him in the oddest places, like he was the new Elvis or something. And Frank wanted an answer, from the only person who'd really know.
"I don't know if he's still alive. But," and this he'd yet to breathe a word of to anyone, "he was when I left. Heard him call out as I ran away."
He almost heard Frank's calm fracture. The man's breath hitched, and his lips drew back from his teeth. David wondered if it had been the answer he'd hoped for. He hadn't told anyone before because he'd wanted the whole thing over, and he still did, but maybe Fox - Frank - couldn't feel the same, not after fighting for Big Boss for over twenty years.
Frank was sitting upright now, back pressed to the corner of the sofa. "Thank you. Your turn."
David's mind raced. That had to have been what Frank had come to him for. Maybe. He couldn't ask Frank whose side he was on, or if he'd ever really been a prisoner in Outer Heaven. Those weren't things you asked someone who trusted you with their name. And aside from that, there was only one other thing he wanted to know.
"Did he really want me dead?"
Frank tipped his head to look at the ceiling. "Fuck. I don't know. And I'd been trying to work it out." What? Why? "You told Congress he'd wanted you to bring back false information, but you'd stumbled over the truth instead..."
"Yeah, he said that."
"David..." He realised Frank had closed his eyes. "One thing I do know about Big Boss is that he never tried to undo the past. Not even when something had broken his heart. I don't think he wanted you dead. I know he wanted to control you - I think you were the agent he was most prepared to lie to. To use. But, before all this..." He was blinking, brow furrowed in thought. "He could've ruined you. He could've turned his back on you. He never did." He gave a dark laugh. "Sucker for the underdog, maybe."
"Right..." David didn't understand. It was like he was listening to half of one of those old conversations, and that made even less sense than hearing Fox and Big Boss speaking together. "So much for sharing what we know."
"What?"
He looked Frank in the eye. "We've got our hunches, for sure, but Frank, all we just said is that we don't know."
"True enough." Frank nodded. What are you going to do, try to find him? Half the world was looking for Big Boss - if he was even still out there. But David knew that if anyone could run him to earth it would be Gray Fox. And what then? "But thanks, anyway."
"Same to you." He swallowed hard. "Settles my mind a bit." Frank looked at him; not a question, but an open door. He stumbled through it. "Can't stop thinking, Fox. About what happened. About charging in to rescue you and..." He turned away, blinking back unexpected tears. He wanted another cigarette. "Everything before that, too. Like the last two years playing in a fucking loop in my fucking head. Everything he taught me. All the tools he gave me that I used to bring him down."
"CQC?" Frank lifted a foot onto his knee, moving a little closer to him. His grey eyes had turned warm.
"No - the things he said CQC was about. Using all my senses..."
"Loyalty." Big Boss said no one had asked. But Frank had been told. Or hadn't needed to be told. "Being alive."
"Feeling the will of your enemy." Frank was looking at him sidelong, and David could feel a familiar gravity. Could just be the feeling of trusting someone, or the adrenaline charge of secrets. But he leaned a little closer himself, and the blond smiled, flashing a row of pointed teeth. "Knowing their mind - but better -"
"Believing that you'll succeed." Frank offered him his hand again.
He took it gently, feeling a tense sweat beading on the other man's palm. "Believing in yourself -"
"Making the first move."
David's wrists were pinned before Frank had finished speaking, but the kiss was so hard he didn't care. So hard he knew nothing except tongues mashing against teeth, except the torrent of blood and emotion called up by their tangling lips - nothing but him and Gray Fox. Soon he was all heat and no oxygen, and he prised a hand from Frank's grip, pushing him back at the elbow and trying to force the man's knee off his other wrist.
He did not succeed, but he had air - air and Frank's scarred forehead resting against his, Frank's warm breath on his face. He reached his free hand up to the man's neck. Touched the ends of his hair, and was surprised how soft it was. He felt a murmur in the other man's throat, and kissed him again, swallowing the sound before he ever heard it. His caress at Frank's neck slowly hardened to a chokehold, and Frank finally shifted his knee. Perhaps David felt a laugh under his fingers. He pulled away again, taking Frank by the shoulders, working his hands over the hard muscles there. A rosy flush was spreading over that pale face.
"Goddamnit -" he whispered. This wasn't what he'd been doing. This wasn't the sex he'd had with strangers in the hope of a moment's respite from himself. He didn't know what the hell it was except that it was terrifying and he wanted it anyway.
Frank dropped a hand to David's hips, and with a few firm touches he was drawn over to straddle Frank's lap. He spread his hands out over the other man's chest, touching hungrily, finding hardened nubs, pressing. Teeth traced his collarbone, making his hips buck against Frank's, and he heard himself panting more cursewords.
Frank's cock was swelling beneath his own, and the friction was enough to make him dizzy.
He yanked off Frank's shirt, a favour that was returned immediately, and took a second to admire his flesh - that odd pallor with its soft yellow undertone, the ridged scars and bullet wounds, the sweet roughness of twenty years of war. A second was all he had before Frank crushed their bodies together - lifting his ass with one fondling hand, mouth curling around a nipple.
He grunted, head bent to Frank's neck, stroking him up to the ear with breath and lips. "This what you came for?"
"No." His voice was a thread of breeze, a whisper. "But it's why I'm still here." He felt Frank fumbling with zips. A rough hand closed around his cock, and he groaned, reached downwards, heard a harsh breath against his neck, touched heads together and also heads together, kissing again, feeling fluid beading, the early tremours of an eruption. But then he slid off his perch on Frank's lap, making space for them both to get properly undressed, because goddamnit he wanted to see this man naked again.
Frank didn't disappoint. Goddamn. Lean, plaster-pale, shaped perfectly - hips narrower than his, shoulders wider, penis curving out from rocky thighs - it looked so dark against the rest of his flesh, like a stain. Uncut, too. He liked that. Liked enough to taste it, one knee dropped to the carpet, his tongue lapping up the dewdrops of their earlier contact, Frank's fingers tightening over his scalp.
He looked up for a moment, and saw the other man's brow folding along scarlines, his spine curling forward, his body tremouring. It was strangely like aiming a shot - letting himself still, and finding the rhythm of his heartbeat. Passing that rhythm to Frank with firm strokes of his lips.
After a few minutes, Frank tugged at his hair. He laid his head on a hard thigh, finding it startlingly cold compared to the warm cock that now bobbed in front of his gaze. "Should we go somewhere more comfortable?" Frank suggested, fingers stroking at David's neck. He shifted, nodded towards the bedroom door, and rummaged in the pocket of his discarded jeans.
Frank looked back to him from the doorway as he flicked on the lightswitch. "Can't say I thought to bring condoms," he murmured, looking almost sheepish - a fox in sheep's clothing, barely hiding his teeth. David waved the ones he'd found in his wallet, rolled to his feet and pushed Frank into his room with one hand to the ass.
"Got a preference?" he asked, opening the nightstand drawer.
Frank sat on the end of his bed, looking thoughtful. "For now? Top me," he said. David nodded, not sure if he should be surprised, really not sure if he should be surprised that he was engaging in the preparatory politenesses of fucking men with Gray Fox, Special Forces legend. But his mind was rising to somewhere sex never normally took it anywhere near, somewhere close to mission mode, where you moved first and figured things out later.
Easier to shoot your own commanding officer that way. Easier and more satisfying, all round.
Frank pulled him down to the mattress for another kiss, with a fist curled in his hair to hold him suffocatingly close. David's empty hand found the other man's hips, tracing over planes of muscle - he found a delightful rough hollow high on the left-hand side, and realised it had been dug by the hilt of Fox's machete, hanging from his belt for twenty years. He twisted down from the man's grip, parting his legs with a hand, opening his pot of KY with the other.
Couldn't resist another taste. Not that he was trying too hard to resist anything. He slid slick fingers inside Frank's body, and felt him buck under his tongue.
David sat back to slip a condom on, then took a moment to let his hands fondle Frank from the tip of his cock to his entrance, thumbs buried in curls of hair even paler than Frank's skin. He was still marvelling at the other man's body - it didn't look old, just shaped by war into a machine-like rigour, steel held together with veins and tendons. There were scars everywhere, each one a story that David knew far better than to ask about. Frank was raising an eyebrow at him, full of feral hunger. "We should've done this at Outer Heaven," he said, carefully dripping lube over latex.
The blond just laughed and put an arm about his shoulders. "No, you had to get through there first. I don't fuck rookies."
David wondered, as he eased into him, if he'd just said that because he knew it would make him feel warm somewhere inside. So not like anyone else he'd screwed, ever. Like sex was an act of belonging, with Frank. And so fucking tight, like everything else about his goddamn beautiful body and his goddamn unfathomable mind.
He started moving, slowly at first, but Frank was growling in his throat and shifting his knees against David's sides. Demanding more from him. There was something limitless in those grey eyes - something that yearned to take everything he could give. He took it faster and deeper, until every part of his cock burned with heat.
Frank was arching under him, pushing up into David's stomach. He caught his balance, wrapped Frank's sex in one hand, and kept moving. Felt ankles lock behind his back, and teeth snap at his shoulder - he'd never seemed this close to someone while fucking. So contained on all sides. So locked into someone else's flesh.
The truth hit him somewhere just north of that mission state, just south of his orgasm, and harder than either. Frank, I care about you.
*
"Going somewhere?" he asked, as Frank slid out of the tangle of sheets, moving with surprising ease for someone who'd just been screwed senseless.
"Yeah, I need to get home -" A twisted look crossed Frank's face, but then the usual calm settled. "David, I'd stay here if I could. Truly. But I said I'd be home tonight."
Even amid his disappointment, David believed him. It's not about sex. It's not even about me. It's 'home', wherever that is. It makes him act guilty. He recognised the feeling behind Frank's eyes; it'd been writhing inside him since Outer Heaven. I gunned down my CO - but what the hell did you do?
"It's okay," he replied flatly. Frank's gaze still lingered. "Wasn't assuming you'd stay for breakfast." But I wanted you to. He pried himself out of bed, looking for tissues. Needed to clean up, change the sheets. He heard Frank collecting clothing, turning on the shower.
Maybe it was easier to live alone, when you killed people for a living. Maybe those who didn't had people worrying all the time, always watching them while they were on leave, always wondering if war had driven you mad.
He was still naked when Frank returned and laid a cold hand on his shoulder. He placed his own atop it without looking around. "Want to drop by again sometime?" he asked. He wasn't hopeful. Never was. Best way.
But he felt Frank nod. "Let me jot down my number -" David watched him go. Saw him scrawl on the telephone pad. Their eyes locked for a second before Frank saw himself out, and David strained his ears for a minute after - no rotor blades, for sure. Motorbike, sounded like. Typical merc.
He went to read what was written on the pad.
FRANK JAEGER - 555-014-048
Huh. Same state, at least...
And he'd given David his entire goddamn name.
3/5: KLOTHO