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I.
There's been a silence hanging over life moving on that Raiden doesn't know how to deal with yet - he's running a mission without any direct orders. All he can do is drift between what he knows and what he’s used to with a cotton-like heaviness around his nose and mouth - it’s like he’s sleepwalking when he’s awake and fighting when he’s asleep.
None of it is made easier by the collective sense of mourning still washing through Philanthropy. It’s not easy to watch Otacon fall into his grieving any more than it is to fall into his own. Death rattles carve themselves into the moments between odd missions and the clean-up aftermath of Big Shell, like a ghost over Raiden’s shoulder.
Emma still walks the back hallways of his mind. Snake's tears and Otacon's wails and the ringing sound of C4 going off in Stillman's face keep him up at night as well as damn near everything else. They’re all burning trails in his head like a migraine pounding behind his temples but he can’t hate them for it. It’s no one’s fault but his.
He doesn’t know how but he’s supposed to be finding peace now that he's free - with Rose, with their relationship, with his new place in the world. She loves him and Raiden loves her. It's perfect, they're perfect. And he still can't sleep at night, not even when she lays her head across his chest and strokes the back of his hand with the pad of her thumb and tells him how much this means to her.
Raiden's forehead collides softly with the locker door and it clangs dully, the metal shaking as he catches his breath. It's cold as shit, the air clinging to his bare chest when he peels the top of the skull suit off. The fabric still smells like chemical ash and there’s blood crusted to the elbow cuffs - no amount of scrubbing succeeded in getting the stain out.
He has a headache, something he blames on his attempt to quit cold turkey but the constant buzz from the broken overhead lights don't help. Otacon said it's not really worth fixing the place to be any nicer, Philanthropy - for as nothing as it is nowadays - is still on the move. HQ is temporary, they’ll be somewhere new in 6 months. And besides, he's not the finance guy around here so it isn't up to him.
"Bring it up to David if you care that much," Otacon had said, back turned to Raiden and eyes on the diagnostics he was running like it would kill him to look his way, "I don't get why it matters so much to you, it's just a locker room."
“It gives me a migraine.”
“Then don’t spend so much time in there.”
Raiden is pulled from his soreness by the heavy scrape of the door and the even heavier thuds of footsteps behind him. He pulls himself out of his head and shuts the locker, pulling a civilian shirt over his skull suit bottoms. It's a weird look but when he turns around to face Snake he doesn't even bristle, just gives Raiden a once over and leans against his own locker.
Snake's still in his Pliskin gear, an unfriendly holdover from a few weeks ago. There’s a stain of red smudged on the left collar and Raiden's sure it's as old as the ones on his skull suit.
There's so little separating them when they're alone, something they should never be together. Their track record doesn’t paint them in a good light, the fact that Raiden’s been avoiding Snake every damn chance he gets doesn’t help either. He has Rose, he loves her more than anyone. Neither of them should even be here.
That's another thing Raiden can't stomach yet. Snake was there for it all, he knew everything, whether he was pretending to be someone else or not. Raiden’s defenses are raised on instinct for that, like Snake will pull him in close and tell him all of this was planned, that everything from the apartment he picked out with Rose to when and where and how Snake fucks him is just part of a mission.
Raiden doesn't know what to do with his hands when Snake watches him like this, wordless and inscrutable. He moves them from his sides to his back to crossed over his chest - there's no comfortable way to stand that doesn't feel hostile, that doesn’t make him seem like the enemy.
"Catch." Snake breaks his silence, throwing his pack of Lucky Strikes over the bench. Raiden stutters, fumbling with the carton in his hands. He would’ve liked a warning first.
Snake already has a cigarette between his lips when he looks back up at him and the offer is clear. Raiden's stomach turns despite himself. He’s supposed to be quitting, moving on. Whatever.
"Don't set off the fire alarm this time." Is what he says instead of ‘no, I’m quitting’. His voice is raspier than he enjoys and he's suddenly so aware of how empty the water bottle in the locker behind him is. When he licks his lips wet, Snake watches.
"I'll try not to. Need a light?”
And instead of saying ‘I don’t smoke anymore’, Raiden just nods.
Snake steps over the bench with an exhausted sort of clumsiness, like he hasn't slept in days - he probably hasn’t, no one really sleeps here anymore. Otacon lives off of energy drink spiked coffee and Snake runs to keep himself from getting restless. Raiden watches them struggle because they watch him, mutual voyeurism, a peek into how they mourn. Raiden might've picked the dumbest way to deal with it - fucking within someone else's relationship, fucking up his own. With every heavy step Snake takes towards him, he leaves a path that destroys whatever tentative, honorific barrier Raiden's attempted to set up since the last time they were together. Like it'll protect anyone that matters from the collateral.
Despite his better judgment, he allows Snake to lean in close enough to be considered volatile, just so that the ends of their cigarettes meet over the snapping flame of a Bic. The instant gratification that Raiden's become attached to is slightly lessened by his proximity to one of the world's most dangerous men. Proximity that he fights against as much as possible and yet he finds himself on the losing end.
"Are you free after this?" Snake's voice is muffled against his ear, blowing smoke across his cheek and talking slow, like they don't have to get to a debriefing in 15 minutes. Like Otacon can’t just walk in whenever he wants.
"No."
"Then are you free right now?"
Raiden draws in on himself when Snake moves just a little closer, one of his hands has formed a fist against the metal above his head, and the desire to keep him here is obvious. The locker room is a dead zone with no security for the sake of keeping a non-existent HR off their asses. It's the safest place to be alone with Snake besides Raiden's tentative quarters. Which doesn’t mean much if the door can’t lock and the walls aren’t soundproof.
He sighs out nicotine instead of an answer, lungs aching as well his head. Someone's pinching their fingers over his nose and covering his mouth with the palm of their hand at the same time, trying to choke him out.
"Is your CODEC off?"
"It doesn't need to be off, no one's going to connect to my line if I'm on base." Snake pitches his voice lower, so close to his face that Raiden might get strangled by the proximity. He makes his combined disbelief and apprehension visible when he lowers his free hand from his mouth, taking the cigarette with it. "I’ll be quick."
The buzz of the sour fluorescents swells and the gross yellow lighting sallows Snake's skin, the bags under his eyes seem so much deeper from this angle. For once he looks his age.
"Just turn it off-"
Snake sighs, dropping his head to cradle in the valley between Raiden's neck and shoulder. The loose neckline of his shirt reveals scars Snake's seen only a handful of times, all without stories Raiden can tell.
"I never turn my line off, Hal will think somethings up if it goes dead without warning."
"You're an awful liar." He gets a half-hearted laugh in return, huffed against his skin in a way that makes him shiver. Snake's body runs warm and Raiden would be a liar if he said he wasn't itching to be closer. That's the one thing Snake's left him with - an addiction. A need for things that he shouldn't want.
"Whatever, it's not my ass on the line if we get caught."
Snake takes that as permission to close the space between his lips and Raiden's skin, teeth sinking into his pulse point. His body juts forward with shock and he pushes Snake away with his free hand on instinct.
He tries to bury the sinking pit of guilt that always manages to rip his stomach open whenever Snake starts on him like this, whenever he fails to stop himself from making another bad decision. Snake sinks slowly to the tile, pushing Raiden back against the locker with his hands around his hips. The burning end of Snake’s cigarette singes a mark into his shirt but Raiden finds himself failing to care.
Snake's knees hit the floor with a dull thud. The sight of him with his headset still on and a cigarette ashing the floor is almost too much, and Raiden flushes from the top of his cheeks down to his chest. One of Snake’s hands fights with the skull suit bottoms, trying to push the springy fabric out of the way with little success.
"Help a guy out." The words are sanded with nicotine and strained arousal but Raiden would be compelled to do anything Snake tells him to right now. His fingers shake a little as he pushes the waist down with Snake's help, freeing just enough to expose the front of his boxers.
Snake is on him with no breath of patience. Raiden nearly jumps back, whining breathy and quiet when his head bounces against the metal. He drops his cig to the floor in the slight aftershock, staring dumbly as it rolls away, too far for him to realistically stomp out. Not with Snake caging him in, mouthing at the outline of his dick.
"Don't take your time, we're gonna be late." He’s gasping, grasping at the back of Snake’s head with an anxious need. Snake just gives him a look, more akin to exhaustion than desire as he drags his tongue along the fabric, soaking it in spit. Raiden will have to change again at this point, he’ll ruin himself if Snake doesn’t beat him to it.
He listens, though, like any soldier with an order and a mission.
Snake doesn't bother pushing his boxers down further than he needs to, merely taking a moment to lean back and take a drag off his cigarette before he’s pulling Raiden's dick out over the waistband. He has to muffle the noises rising with pressure in his chest, the rough treatment is more than he could ever ask for. Raiden only momentarily finds himself thinking of soft hands or neatly trimmed nails.
Snake gets his mouth on him and the immediate pleasure hits like a gut punch. His tongue is warm with spit and smoke when he lathers it across the underside of Raiden's dick, trying to make this easier for himself. One of Raiden's hands flies to cover his mouth against a whimper, the other carding through Snake's mullet - they both need haircuts but Raiden doesn’t mind, not when he can easily force Snake’s head down with a grip on his skull. He tries his hardest not to knock the headset from his ears.
Snake's halfway to choking, chin and cheeks slick with spit, when footsteps tap down the hall. The blood rush to Raiden's ears is so severe that he doesn't hear anyone coming until a hesitant voice is breaking through the fuzz in his brain - he doesn’t even care .
Raiden flinches when Snake takes him into his throat, a full-body stutter that only works to force himself deep. The groan of tightly wound want pouring from the crest of his lips is cut short, coming out aborted and strangled. It's at that moment that Otacon chooses to push the door open, mumbling something about being late, about needing Snake for something, about wondering where in god’s name he could be.
It’s like a joke - a very cruel, dumb joke. Raiden smiles, pained, at Otacon from where he’s frozen, fingers still buried in Snake’s hair. He can feel the laugh pulling at the corners of his lips like it’s funny, it’s gotta be the funniest damn thing in the world.
Raiden isn’t sure who starts crying first - Snake from his choking or Otacon from the shock - but he thinks he deserves to win some kind of award for not exploding on the spot.
Otacon stands there like he’s stupid for thirty more seconds and then the door is slamming shut just as quickly as it had been opened. Snake doesn’t even look up.
II.
"Do you smoke, kid?"
Raiden wrinkles his nose at the heavy air of nicotine and gunpowder that follows Pliskin when he leans next to him in the loading bay. The scarcely allowed downtime in their lines of work leaves a lot to be desired in the way of hobbies but Raiden never once considered picking up the same life and body ruining addiction that every other soldier eventually does.
"No, never. That shit kills you."
Pliskin laughs at him, something much less bitter and much more gentle than Raiden was expecting. It does nothing but piss him off.
"You should start."
"Why? I'm an operative, I can't just ruin myself." Pliskin shakes his head, cutting Raiden off so harshly that he feels the need to bite his tongue.
"That's what I thought too - but it's not despite, it's 'cause. You lose a few people and learn it the hard way." There's a gentle jab there about his training experience but Raiden takes it in sore stride. "You don't have the time to rely on anyone, to die slow. It's a nice thought but you'll catch a bullet before the cancers reach you."
He says it like they're cracking jokes with each other but the look on his face is grim, there's no humor in his smile.
"That's cynical."
"It's not cynical, it's realistic. Trust me, kid, I love life. Any man in our position would choose lung disease over getting gunned down but it's tough shit. That's why you smoke, because it's tough shit. If you have a little cash, you have something to lean on."
"Yeah, whatever. Reliance, addiction, it's all the same."
"Maybe, but it's easier like that." Pliskin gives him a look like he's sizing him up, ready to throw a punch if push comes to shove. But his shoulders are relaxed back, hands in his pockets like they don't have somewhere to be and someone to save. "If I could quit before it killed me, I would. But it's not that easy, you don't just get to say you’re done and walk it off."
And just like that, Pliskin leaves him there, with a soft feeling of discomfort and a clap on his shoulder. He brushes his hand on his way out, shoving something between his fingers. Raiden doesn't look until he's sure he's gone, turning his palm up to face himself. There, nestled between his hand and his thigh, is a half-empty pack of crumpled cigarettes.
It's junk, it's trash, he doesn't even own a lighter.
For some reason, Raiden doesn't throw it out.
III.
Snake lays on his chest after they’re done, heavy like a 170-pound blanket. He smells of sweat and cheap body wash and smoke - always smoke. He drags the smell all through Raiden's head, so thick it almost makes him dizzy. It'll stay there, soaked into his pillowcase, until laundry day. Raiden will fall asleep with the second-hand disease in his lungs and his chest caved in the exact place Snake has his ear pressed to him - he knows the ache already because it'll be like the last time all over again. An unbreakable cycle of tough-shit-circumstances.
He's taken up smoking recently, Rose isn't very happy about it.
It's nice for now, it's quiet - he'll never get used to that. But if they put out the light now and kick the intrusive thoughts of the people they're supposed to be dedicated to out of the room, they both might be able to sleep till morning. Raiden, regretfully, finds himself sleeping better when Snake's around. The nightmares fade into the back of his mind and leave him in dreamless darkness for six, sound hours. They don't get to be that lucky.
"How many times did they make you live through Shadow Moses?" Raiden's chewing his lower lip when Snake's voice shakes him through the afterglow silence. The rumble seeps through his ribcage and finds a home between his sternum and his lungs.
"Fifty, maybe a hundred, I don't remember. I think I just got bored of it at some point." He's tired, words languid and drenched in that fucked-out exhaustion he wants to have more than once a month. "They simulated the cold in VR, you know that? I've never been to Alaska but I don't think I ever want to go."
"That's a shame, it's gorgeous up there - quieter than any other place I've been. Beats New York by a long shot."
A heartbeat moment and then, "I would rather be anywhere but New York." Raiden tangles his fingers in Snake's hair, feeling where he's cut chunks out with blunt scissors to try to keep it short. "Maybe even Alaska."
"You could run away with me." When Snake says it, it doesn't sound real, because it isn't. Raiden fights the urge to laugh at him - they aren't teenagers with nothing else to do but run away. They’re men with kill counts and guns under their pillows "We could go to the cabin I have up near Anchorage, I could get all my damn dogs back. Maybe we’ll even find a way to go back and fix all the shit I left behind. You know Shadow Moses like the back of your hand, after all. It would be perfect."
Snake's turning over to press his mouth and nose into the cradle between Raiden's side and the arm lazing across Snake's shoulders. His tongue runs over the bumps of his ribs and Raiden tenses under him. He’s talking dumb and acting dumber but it’s still a soft sort of blow. One that has him reeling back into himself and he can't find the right words.
"You're stupid." Is what he settles on. Snake smiles into him and Raiden can feel the afterglow start to fade out into waves of tired guilt. "And you smell like a dog, get off me."
“Don’t make me get up, Jack, I’m not young like you. My back hurts and shit.” He’s breathless, huffing rough giggles into Raiden’s ribs. He can’t help but squirm under Snake, tugging at his hair to try to pull him away. It’s a useless fight, one that he gives into.
“You talk like you’re dying.”
“Maybe I am.” It’s a joke but Raiden can feel the weight in his voice, he has half a mind to tell him to just shut up. He doesn’t, he doesn’t waste the novelty of Snake in his bed with talk that won’t get them anywhere.
The moment turns over with every minute that ticks by on Snake’s watch and Raiden can hardly stomach it. The sweat on his neck is starting to stick hair to skin, like he's broken out in a fever. There's a nervous ease in the way that Snake touches him, they both know he has to leave soon. Now. Never.
The cot that's far too small for the both of them groans under Snake's weight as he pulls himself up on his hands, the blanket falling off and exposing his lower back to the chill. It's cold everywhere their bodies aren’t touching.
"Don't go." Raiden's mouth is stuffed full of cotton and his hands reach out on their own accord to hold Snake's face, like someone else is pulling the strings. "Sleep here tonight don't-" He loses his breath, his mind. Raiden’s gasping like he's being drowned but his face isn't wet. His eyes are almost painfully dry when Snake leans forward to take his mouth, a slow annex that becomes a takeover. When they pull apart a moment later Raiden still isn’t breathing. "Don't leave me here."
"I have to."
And he does. He leaves him again like he did last time and the time before that. Snake’s always leaving too soon, and Raiden’s always just too late. The smell of stale smoke stays behind and so does Snake's lighter. The nightmares don't go with him.
It's cold.
IV.
"What do I even do now?”
Pliskin- Snake doesn't look at him, there's a collapsing sense of judgment between them and Raiden just wants to-
He wants to throw a punch before he has to do the paperwork. They'll be sending boats out on the harbor to sweep up the mess before Raiden can even get some sleep, Snake and Otacon could be halfway across the world in the blink of an eye. He wants to give him a proper goodbye at least, with a tightly wound fist and bruised knuckles.
"I'm not the kind of person you should be looking to for advice." Snake’s face is severe in a way that seems permanent, and yet his eyes soften on Raiden. "You're your own person now, kid. You get to decide."
"Yeah, thanks. Real helpful." There's not an inch of gratitude in him, and he pulls his arms closer to his body to try to fight off the cold. To stop himself from starting a fistfight in the middle of the road.
Snake sighs, bowing his head close to speak into his ear, like he's about to tell Raiden his best-kept secret. "You just keep living, kid. You might pick up some nasty habits along the way, but that's the best you can do. I can’t tell you what to do or where to go, but you have a girl waiting for you, you have a life of your own. Don't waste your youth fighting a battle that isn't yours, you'll run out of time eventually.”
Raiden doesn't know when he started crying or when Snake's arms ended up around his shoulders or when his face got pressed into the neckline of the sneaking suit but he wets it with his tears. The fabric reeks of nicotine and Raiden finds himself wanting more, more than he should be allowed to want.
“Choose your own future, kid. And don’t forget me when you’re gone.”
V.
It ends one day, without ceremony or fanfare. There’s no earth-shattering heartbreak or aching screaming matches. Otacon doesn’t say a word to him about what he saw and Rose remains- she was clueless from the start. Snake walks back out of his life just as soon as he came into it, he goes back to Otacon - right back to where he belongs and who he belongs to.
Raiden’s not the same person he was before when their paths finally cross again. And really, Snake isn’t either. They’re unrecognizable, dying their own deaths. He looks like a sun-bleached, paper-printed photograph, like something out of Raiden’s nightmares.
You’d think those would go away with the rest of his body, but they don’t, and they never will. It's only sometimes that he wakes up gasping Snake’s name with a programmed shake in his artificial hands.
He lost the pack of Lucky Strikes years ago, and lost the addiction too. His life should’ve gotten better when Snake left, when Raiden left him. It’s backwards, it’s a joke, it’s tough shit.
It’s quiet in a way that Raiden still isn’t used to.