Such great characters to write about
Before we get down to business, let me just get my moment of narcissism over with: I AM INORDINATELY PLEASED WITH THIS THING. Haven't had such fun writing a fic in ages. (Present tense! Sentence fragmentation! Where have you been since our last escapade, you glorious bitches-- okay, that was uncalled for.)
Also, I love how writing for MGS can pretty much eliminate the need for epithets when every character goes by several names that alone may be used according to context. In other words, as entertaining as describing some sort of epic orgy would have been, there really are just two people actively involved in this scene. Honest! XD
Title: Three Days Later
Pairing: Big Boss/Ocelot
Rating: NSFW (swearing, some sexual content)
Word Count: ~3,200
Summary: After an unsavoury mission tests the limits of Ocelot's nerve and patience, there's only one man he knows can take the edge off for him. The assistance turns out to be mutual.
(Alternative Summary: Big Boss gets hand-gestured.)
Notes: Believe it or not, I began to write this as a spur-of-the-moment PWP one random night. Before I knew what was happening, though, the story grew on me and I found myself buried in a steaming pile of thinly veiled character meta and pseudo-philosophical rambling with some porn thrown in. And decided I liked that version better.
Notes II (AKA feel free to skip this): I was totally going to wait to post this until I'd played PeaceWalker, but then I figured this entire set-up would have only been possible in the time window between Portable Ops and PW anyway, so might as well go ahead. It definitely has to be before Big Boss gets all incensed about the clone shenanigans and takes off to, er, spread the revolution. Which places this fic sometime between 1970 and 1972, I presume. Geez, how anticlimactic is it that supposedly awesome organization only remained intact for two years?
Disclaimer: MGS belongs to Hideo Kojima & Konami.
Three Days Later
It's almost four in the morning and Ocelot is storming Big Boss's current hideout.
The guards posted around the perimeter - and they can afford guards these days - all know better than to stand in his path, or perhaps are just not willing to risk a round of Russian roulette; either way, he thunders down the hallway unhindered. He has his access to the place. He lets himself into the final room.
His first realization is that Big Boss is awake, and although Ocelot doubts it's out of some pointless worry about a spy who should have reported to him three days ago, he takes it as a good sign nonetheless. He kicks out with one of his boots, slamming the door shut.
If Jack is taken aback by his appearance, he does not let it show. The way he immediately springs to his feet is more of an indication of relief, of an emotion trying but failing to hide in plain view.
Big Boss really should give one the best men on his side a little more credit.
Soon they're embracing in the middle of the room, a gesture as fitting for comrades as it is for lovers and friends. It is only now that - after the assignment and the spectacularly shitty way back - Adamska gets a long-overdue impression of his ordeal being finally and deservedly over.
He allows Jack to pull away, to survey him with the one eye. It's a genuine inspection as much as anything, but subtle hints Ocelot can read as though they were printed in bold letters suggest that he is, after all, welcome back. Still, the assessment makes him feel distinctly unpalatable next to someone whose only current sources of weariness are insomnia and tedious officialdom. Special agent Ocelot might as well be wearing evidence of his most recent engagement on his sleeve, that's how strong the lingering smells are. Gunpowder, blood and sweat.
“That was one assignment from hell. Boss,” he adds as if to underscore the complaint, seconds later collecting his reward in the form of an unceremonious kiss. The fact Jack lets him have it on the spot is enough of a vindication.
Except not really, Adamska decides and advances. His mind is still too set in mission-mode to do much more than calculate what comes next. One step, two, three, beside the bed. Still no real contraindication. Push. Point clearly taken as Jack sinks to the sheets before him. Follow him, then. Next objective: clothes.
They achieve only a marginal state of undress before their mouths collide again, this time in earnest. Ocelot does remember to dispose of his revolvers, placing the pair on the cluttered bedside table next to the alarm clock gutted for batteries. His mind registers hands attempting to wrestle off his boots, but he just can't be bothered.
“Will you slow the fuck down,” comes an aggravated whisper from beside his ear. It does prove slightly sobering.
“Only complaining now?” he counters rhetorically to cover up for his awkwardness. Luckily, Jack doesn't seem to be in the mood for one of his smart-ass “kid” taunts that would shove Ocelot right back to square one for several infuriating seconds. An attention-starved show-off from Groznyj Grad.
Not that Adam needs that piece of motivation to exercise his best brand of self-control. The boots come clanking to the floor as their spurs hit the nondescript tiles; then he pries off the gloves, pausing, for a moment, at the sight of all the dirt and dried blood in the material. Those are ruined. He tosses them to the other side of the room, blocking out the striking recollection with a shake of his head. His hair is beginning to lose the crispness of the utilitarian cut he used to wear, and he intends to let it thrive into whatever old age he might live to see now that he's more or less freelance. Jack likes to tease him sometimes that he has the whole rebel persona backwards. For his part, though, Ocelot is of the opinion that he'd better get a few small benefits from what he does for Big Boss. He's certainly not in this for the sake of some tired figurehead like Zero. And it's not like he expects hazard pay from the organization whenever things get rough. Hardly even the Philosophers' Legacy would cover that, Ocelot thinks sometimes.
Nor does he shy away from what he gets. Usually, his interrogations go smoothly enough with the subject remaining conscious through the drill and nobody else interfering. Usually, the target winds up writhing on the ground in pre-emptive terror well before the gun-roulette has a chance to send the poor slob there somewhat less gently. Usually, the whole affair doesn't leave Adamska so desperately disgusted. Needy for a counter-rush of feeling, as different from the first as he can hunt down.
Can spies afford psychotic episodes?
“What are you talking about?” Jack interrupts his thoughts, alerting him too late to the fact that he'd echoed that last sentiment out loud.
Shit.
He can't answer this one nonverbally, either.
It's a mystery to himself why he goes for the tried and untrue method of dismissing uncomfortable questions with ludicrously transparent retorts. Namely, “Nothing.”
Of course Jack doesn't lap it up. “You know, sometimes you can get away with bullshit if you just admit the bullshit's there.”
He glares. “It should be obvious, even to you. I've had enough back-to-back missions to last me a month.”
“Won't be that long until your next assignment, I'm afraid.”
“I'm not delaying the proceedings here, am I?”
Clearly he's hit a nerve, as it is Jack who initiates the next kiss. There's one fleeting instant when it almost seems that he's sorry for keeping Ocelot's hands, not to mention his schedule, full enough to occupy the time of ten ordinary triple agents. Not that he should be, Adamska steadfastly maintains until their kiss becomes pure physicality. He may be on the young side, but youth is relative in an arrangement like theirs. Everything is. And it has been years since he was that precociously young Spetsnaz major with gun skills and preferential treatment chasing The Boss's apprentice through the wilderness.
Though he has to admit some things have only changed a little.
The insistent prickling of his skin when Jack touches him being one of them. Maybe the effect would dull if Adam had a sample of that feeling every day, but even then he doubts it. Drugs, too, gradually require larger doses, and he'll take as much as his system demands of this peculiar kind.
Quickly to do his codename proud, Ocelot eliminates impending clothing. He commences attack even before Jack's shirt has fluttered to the floor, tracing the scars on the other's torso with his hands and tongue. They're not blemishes, these marks; they suit Big Boss like camouflage face paint. The skin is hot under his touch, the muscles shifting beneath, contracting. This is the way he'll always want it, a blind map he can annotate with gasps and hisses if he does his best.
Neither of them is vocal in bed. Force of habit par excellence.
Somewhat redundantly by now, Adam finally admits it's not the end of the world he cannot wait. He'd imagine the end of the world slightly different: with a bang or a whimper, but likely not with Big Boss sprawled out on his back, open to his attentions in benevolent acquiescence. They're probably both running on sheer adrenaline at this hour - Ocelot knows he is, after that clusterfuck masquerading as his last mission - but that's just as well as far as he's concerned. He will let himself go for this. He'll tolerate the fact that for all his stubborn will and deadly efficiency, he's only human and he is still young, dammit.
So when Jack's hand locks around his wrist just as he's about to get rid of his trousers, it stands to reason Adam is not amused. He's had enough useless leading on from about every codenamed incarnation of this addictive, evasive son of a bitch and he'll be damned if he slips into the old game now.
Then his other hand gets caught as well, resulting in a stalemate. An unfavourable development, to put it mildly. It gives Adamska no choice but concede an inquiry, concede a small defeat. “What the hell?”
What he gets in lieu of reply is an insolent smirk, and that is definitely Big Boss at work. The accompanying string of words takes their recipient a moment to process. “Do you really think you can blast your way in here whenever you damn well please to fuck me?”
Maybe because it's ridiculous.
“Then you fuck me,” Adam counters in a deadpan voice. “Or we fuck some other way. I don't care.” A meaningful pause, during which his tone has the time to drop. “I do not line up with your admirers, Big Boss. You fucking ought to know.”
“The mission, Ocelot. How'd that go?”
“Fine, obviously,” he grits out through the teeth. “Paperwork's on the way. Debriefing, just for you, later.”
Fortunately for everyone involved, Jack opts for not pressing the point. Wise choice, Adamska observes privately, watching him slump against the pillows. The sight has a tinge of intimacy to it by virtue; neither Big Boss nor Naked Snake has a lot of relaxation to spare. That much is final and non-negotiable, but Adamska had the foresight years ago to ask the other's civil name. He only has to stick to John when he speaks out loud. Jack belongs to The Boss.
Mostly.
Why he has all these concerns racing through his mind now of all inconvenient times, Adam has no idea; he refocuses on the task at hand. Undressing. He makes a short pause once he's as far as Jack's underwear, then strokes the half-hard bulge through the fabric, slowly. Listens in for the telltale sharp breaths. Ignores the horribly insistent way he himself is aching already.
Doesn't go for the easy “old man” joke. The gap between them seems to grow more negligible by the day anyhow.
His other hand slithers up Jack's torso, chest, neck, alighting for a moment on his jaw, then moving to toy with his eyepatch. Adamska holds a morbid sort of fascination with it, though he'd never take the thing off uninvited. He slips the offending hand further up into Jack's hair, adds a little pressure with the other, smiling furtively as Jack leans into both. Near-submission. It's a spectacle, all right.
It's far too much to resist as well. Ocelot draws away, only to lurch forward with all his weight, suddenly back to his frantic state. If his world is anchored to anything, it would be the rough hands caressing the skin beneath his unbuttoned shirt in hectic yet knowing patterns. There are times when their rapport's almost frightening.
Open-mouthed, Adam assumes a course downward, his lips in contact with Jack's skin so seamless he needn't even simulate kisses along his trail. There's no doubt about his destination but he arrives with all pomp anyway, only with the aid of pure luck not tearing Jack's last article of clothing a couple new ones as he tugs it down with a flourish. He can't exactly describe the haze in his mind as he takes in the sight as calculation, but the conclusion he reaches is accurate enough: getting there.
He aligns his lips against the head and swallows.
It takes time, these days. Not just age would be to blame for that, even if Jack was ancient, which he is far from as only nine years his senior. If Ocelot hasn't learned anything else, he knows with hateful certainty that ageing is the least serious factor that has impacted Big Boss's health. It's a gross injustice in the layout of the cosmos, heaping so much danger on one man. Although... no matter. He's more than willing to service.
Bobbing up and down, swirling his tongue, prompting a convulsive tightening in the fingers buried in his hair.
Pretty good, if he might say so himself.
It's not quite what he's after tonight, though. So he stops as soon as the time is right, taking no chances.
He sits back on his haunches, anticipatory, breathing ragged. He wants Jack to look up.
When that happens at last, it is with displeasure and a gruff voice. “And this-- is what exactly?”
He chuckles, even if the sound is under strain. “Slowing down,” he intones vengefully.
“Bullshit.”
“Bullseye.”
“Jesus, cut the crap.”
Adam grimaces. “You know, you can be pretty off-putting when you try.” All the same, he divests himself of pants and undergarments, belatedly coming to realize that he has been the overdressed party for some time. Irony is always bitter-tasting.
“Look, have it your way,” Jack tells him, lifting his hands like a criminal arrested, “but be so kind and have something already.”
And that's all the permission Ocelot asks for.
Bracing his knees on either side of Jack's hips, he inclines his head immodestly and spits on his own hand without preamble. The common art of improvisation, as he learned long ago. It'll do.
Fingers slick enough, he prepares quickly. This, at least, isn't nuclear engineering. He's lifting himself up even before his brain registers the action; stills in position, and descends. No delay, only the steady bearing down of experience and impatience.
Beneath him, Jack gives a feral growl.
Adam has his eyes screwed shut once he gets himself moving along the other's length. The sensation is nothing unfamiliar but he relishes it regardless, all too aware that every time with them may as well be the last they have. He concentrates on pleasing rather than being pleased, hips undulating, withdrawing, pressing. For his own state of arousal, the flailing edges of his open shirt brushing his cock every so often are almost too much of a control exercise.
But he is nothing if not persistent. Persistence is a virtue.
Persistence wins him the pressure of Jack's hands, one on his hipbone and the other on his thigh. The only reaction he can come up with is to grasp them both, squeezing, craning his neck in rare abandon. Muscles flexing with the rhythm he has set, picking up the pace. His heart and lungs too large for his ribcage. Ears thrumming with his pounding blood.
It's then that he distinguishes the calling from the static, his given name as it rolls off Jack's tongue like the endearment it is: “Adamska.”
“Mhm,” is his eloquent reply. Still, he senses the urgency in Jack's tone and snaps to attention with the ease of a customary salute. Ingrained by training. He looks down.
And once that is done, their contact escalates to white-hot intensity, reminding him why he always needs to brace himself for this. It's too much. Jack's heaving chest, glistening scarred skin and that piercing one-eyed stare fixed on him and not some lofty ideal, terrible prospect or inescapable regret the way it usually is with the living legend. Big Boss.
Locked together with him in fluid motion, rattling the standard-issue bed in a dingy room.
Adam can't keep himself in check anymore. Knowing both of them are close, he doesn't dare falter, only raises his hands to point the shaky finger-guns. Mock-fires, and mouths the word.
Bang.
That finally does it, mind and matter in unison; Jack is arching off the bed in that overdramatic fashion and the world is spinning, whirling and damn, he'll say it: this beats reloading any day, any fucking day at all. Adam stammers out something that doesn't matter or make any sense as they cling to each other with all the determination of battle survivors - until balance gives way and they tip over, graceless, collapsed in a knot of vibrant flesh.
Happy, for the moment, as they are.
*
After sex, Adamska muses, the two of them would make a hilarious magazine cover.
Big Boss smokes his cigar. Ocelot spins his gun.
He seldom does this with his hands ungloved, but now it lets him appreciate how smooth the metal really is along the hard contours. Perfection. Revolvers suit him best, no argument.
They also look good discarded on the mattress when he gets fed up with his pastime, stretching his arm towards Jack instead. With his hand splayed out on Big Boss's chest, over the largest and most intriguing of his scars, the contrast in their skin tones is more pronounced than ever under the fluorescent light overhead.
“Now you're touchy-feely,” Jack remarks, exhaling smoke. It swirls above them and dissipates, diffusion at its finest.
They observe the simple phenomenon like jaded scientists. Jack does, anyway. Adam, for his part, studies the other's profile, until he can't just gawk anymore and pulls their bodies flush against each other for good measure. The tobacco is the least pervasive scent in the languid air: the dominant one is entirely, maddeningly human.
Didn't even shower before I got here, Adamska recalls lazily. Good thing we've crawled through worse.
His original wide-eyed exhaustion has broken, too, ebbing out into blissful satiety. Figures - when he can get his share of sleep, he doesn't care for it anymore. Whatever he's operating on now that he's graduated past adrenaline, it's potent.
“What was that about?” comes Jack's soft query.
“Huh?”
“Your psychotic episode.” He's clearly trying to keep it noncommittal, but that trick would work on an outsider, if that. The way his hand curls into a fist on the rumpled linen is a statement. Suddenly he is Big Boss again, inquiring after a comrade; the commander who prefers his men accounted for.
“Let's save that for the debriefing,” Ocelot mutters darkly. “It's not important now it's done.”
Silence again, resettling along with their limbs. A fool would liken it to the world having disappeared, but they can't make great accomplishments in a vacuum. The world is out there, unobtrusively waiting. But the sheets are warm.
The problem is, Ocelot feels obliged to say something definite. It's not as if he takes it for granted, having the carte blanche to break into Big Boss's bed without getting himself kicked out like an obsessive worshipper who has just taken his adoration a tad too far. No, the fault is merely that appreciative phrases besides the tongue-in-cheek reiteration of “you're pretty good” don't come easily to him. To any of them in their circle of devotees.
It is with this justification that, for once in his life, Ocelot takes a shot in the dark.
“I almost forgot how charming you are, John.” Caustic as it is, the admission comes out more fervent than he intended.
It actually causes Jack to pause before answering. “I'm not used to seeing you this,” he flounders, “honest.”
True, Adam has to concede, honesty in a spy is unbecoming at best, especially in one who plays his roles as well as he can. Then again, he does not let down his guard anywhere near the enemy. Or exactly often with the one man he trusts, either, what with the pathetic infrequency of their meetings - but it seems he needs it every now and then. Acting for himself amidst all his natural-flowing lies.
“Guilty pleasure.”
There is no truer, stupider way to put it.