Work Text:
Adamska falls in love for the first and only time at Tselinoyarsk.
He’s there to stall, to create an opening for this man - this American that the CIA sent after The Boss, and so he kills and he grandstands and he puts on a show.
The way he is dismantled so efficiently, thrown to the ground amongst the corpses of the men he’d just slaughtered, plants a seed in his chest that never leaves.
You ejected the first bullet by hand, didn’t you?
It’s breathtaking.
He keeps the bullet, of course, hanging on a chain right above where that strange feeling had lodged in his sternum - after all, he doesn’t get to keep the eye he eventually steals.
Fallen for him? Volgin asks, and Ocelot does not, cannot answer, because it doesn’t feel like falling. It feels like something is growing, crawling through his capillaries, burst vessels expanding like unfurling leaves to cast shadows under the sun.
But quietly, privately, he thinks yes.
He feels its roots curl their way into his arms, his legs. It is what takes him to the WIG, in the end, the force that works his jaw muscles open to compel him to ask for a name.
John.
He wouldn’t forget it.
He’s not expecting the call, but it’s not unwelcome, even though he can tell Big Boss - Snake - John - is lying through his teeth about being in battle.
I’m keeping busy, though - care to join me?
He had the frequency now.
He wonders who named him Adamska - if they had cursed him to a lifetime of succumbing to the temptation of snakes. The roots within him had grown deep, unyielding, suffocating his lungs with the weight of absence. He makes the call, takes a bite of the forbidden fruit.
They arrange to meet.
It’s as remote and non-descript a hotel as they come - which is to say very, in their line of work, staffed with the kind of people who tend not to look you in the eye.
Ocelot doesn’t notice. He only has eyes for the man at the bar.
He greets him with Snake and receives Ocelot back, sliding into the seat beside the imposing figure. Snake had not lost a single bit of his edge, the aura around him both tangible and restrained, and Ocelot feels something in his chest constrict again.
It turns out Snake is still just as oblivious, but Ocelot thinks there’s no way to misinterpret the way he slides his hands up the other man’s thigh just under the bar table, whispering fuck me, Snake into his ear.
There’s a darkness that settles in Snake’s eye at the words, and he wants to unravel it.
The sex is perfect in its imperfections.
It’s the way Snake growls and bites harshly at his throat, but still lays him on the bed with hands too gentle to be stained with so much blood. It’s the way he’s not as experienced as he wants Ocelot to believe, and Ocelot pretends not to see through the false bravado.
It’s the way he sinks down onto Snake, taking all of him, and John whispers Adamska.
He answers in kind when he comes, John falling from his lips like a confession. In a sense, it is.
They lie in the aftermath in silence, John’s hand curling over the bumps of Adamska’s spine the way one would pet a housecat, but he does not feel tamed. He leans up, presses his lips to John’s neck, and the weight on his lungs subsides long enough for him to whisper his devotion into the skin. John’s breath shallows, but his hand does not still.
Later, Ocelot wonders if he was the first to pledge his life to Big Boss. He certainly wasn’t the last.
They stay there as long as they can, a dreamlike haze of sex and sleep and words whispered in each other’s ears, and when the time comes for them to part ways Ocelot doesn’t feel the ache of loss.
The thing in his chest expands, brightens, spreads its branches further across his ribs.
He wonders if it has a name, aside from being his purpose.
He is not at Snake’s side during the MSF, but the distance does not burn as it should.
He is fulfilling his purpose, after all - working his way into organisations, a curated selection of secrets, of contacts, of whatever may be useful to Big Boss one day.
The thing in his chest always pulls, though, drawn like a compass to a place across the sea, and Ocelot knows that when he needs it to, it will guide him home.
He is not at Snake’s side, but their reunion is inevitable, and when it comes Ocelot will have everything Snake will ask of him.
The man he has tied to a chair spits blood onto the floor, and Ocelot frowns at the splatter that streaks across his boots.
“That’s all I know!” The strained, desperate voice heaves from within broken ribs, “That’s all, so please - please-”
Ocelot draws one of his revolvers slowly, running his other thumb across the polished, smooth barrel. His spurs clink in the silence, echoing off the concrete walls as he takes a step forward, and his informant chokes on a blood-soaked sob. He levels the revolver at the man’s bruised face, slowly shifting the barrel across the skin to rest on the right eyelid.
He thinks he does miss John, he muses as he pulls the trigger, but they’ll see each other again soon.
He is not at Snake’s side during the MSF, and the ice that grips his heart when the transmission comes through is new to him.
Snake - John is -
He does not panic. He wills his hand not to tremble as he makes his first call.
When Zero finally contacts him he’s torn between the festered resentment and something almost like relief - the location is safe, at least, and he can start making preparations to be there immediately.
“You won’t say no, will you?” Zero asks him, and Ocelot half-wonders if he’s being mocked.
“I have no choice.”
The thing that lodged itself in his chest in Tselinoyarsk, withered with cold fear, burns again with purpose.
“Thanks.”
“Save your thanks.”
His words, tainted with bitterness, leave the taste of blood in their wake.
The hospital is quiet, the air heavy with the smell of antiseptic and the sound of machines.
Ocelot watches.
John’s chest rises, the slow inhale of breath.
Beep.
Exhale.
Beep.
Regret is useless. John will wake up.
The nurses and doctors have left them alone, and so Ocelot feels safe to press his lips against John’s forehead before he leaves too.
It’s foolishly sentimental, but he makes sure the Star of Bethlehem flowers are always fresh, all through nine long years.
He follows Zero’s plan for the phantom with only a fleeting scrap of remorse. Just another body in their wake, another sacrifice to keep Big Boss safe. It’s no different to any of the others.
He can’t help himself from snapping at Miller whenever they talk, even though he knows Snake would disapprove. The man’s attitude is irrationally grating, blind emotion clouding his judgment, and Ocelot hates the familiar grief that he sees weighing down his shoulders.
He feels it on his, too, even if he tries to ignore it - John will wake up, after all.
His footsteps through the hospital hallway are hurried, and though he hates how telling they are he cannot bring himself to slow down. The nurses and doctors do not try to stop him when he flings open the door, ignoring the figure of the phantom that still lies asleep, and rushes to the other bed.
Nine years.
A familiar smirk crawls across John’s lips, and Ocelot’s heart unfurls like a blossom seeking the sun.
“Kept you waiting, huh?”
A rusty laugh crawls out of Adam’s throat as he steps closer to his Boss, red-tinged with anger and relief and something he doesn’t care to name.
“For a long time, Boss.”
John looks so much smaller in the hospital gown, propped up by pillows and his eyepatch gone, his muscles diminished by the years of disuse - fragile, though Adam finds it difficult to think it at first. Weakness guides him to reach out, leather-clad hand wrapping tightly around John’s, and though it is steady he wonders if John can feel the heavy nine years in his grip.
He waits for John to pull away - waits for a familiar half-smile, for a pointed jab about the watching eyes of the nurses that pace the halls, for the way John never seems to know what to do with his naked affections.
But John’s grip tightens on his, and Adam feels the weight of nine years begin to ease their burden across his shoulders.
“Tell me.”
Ocelot straightens up, but does not move his hand as he reports in to his Boss.
He doesn’t get through it all before he has to leave - nine years of him and Kaz and the world, all the tiny pieces moving apart and together, too much for the Boss to take in all at once. But he returns as soon as he can, armed with cassettes and reports for when he is gone, and Adam tells John a little more - too much, he thinks sometimes, from the way John’s eyes narrow at innocuous words, seeing something in him that Adam doesn’t know he’s revealing.
He does not ask, though, because no part of him needs to be a secret to John.
By the time word spreads that Big Boss has awoken, they’re not quite as ready as he would like, but Ocelot does not panic. For Big Boss, he would make the impossible happen - help the phantom spin his legend, while John creates Outer Heaven in its shadow.
“How are you back on your feet so quickly?” Ocelot prods, having finally tracked John down outside of his room, directed in hushed tones by the nurses.
“It’s a non-smoking ward.” John drawls, and Ocelot shoots him a flat look.
“Boss.” He sighs, but he cannot help the smile that tugs at his lips, exasperated and fond in equal measure. But he is here for business, and even as John continues to explain the gears are spinning in his head.
He lays out the facts as he knows them - they are out of time. He gives a vague outline of their plans with the phantom, their many years of work, even as John’s brows furrow in thought. There’s an odd reluctance in the set of his shoulders, but Ocelot presses on - the medic had given his life for Big Boss once, the way any of them would, and though Ocelot can’t help but empathise he’ll throw the shell of him in the firing line once again.
The phantom, the hospital staff who directed him today with kind eyes and whispers, the other patients - all of them trivial, if only John could be safe.
And Ocelot, none the wiser.
“Can you keep it up?” John asks, peering at him with one sharp eye, “It’s a hell of a lie.”
The question twists Ocelot’s face into another bitter smile, half-amused and half-resigned.
“It won’t be a lie.” He replies, voice steady, “I won’t know his secret either.”
He doesn’t know how to interpret the way John sighs at him.
Ocelot presses onwards, laying out the rest of the plan - to fool his own mind into keeping Big Boss’s secret, erasing the knowledge he holds close to his heart.
It should be agonising, he thinks, and the way John looks at him is so oddly inscrutable - is it worry that furrows his brow, regret, or mere concentration, he wonders - but Ocelot is nothing but determined.
“All right...John,” he says when he is done, keeping his voice and his heart steady, “I’ve never forgotten you in these nine years, but I have to forget you now.”
It is strange, he thinks, how saying it aloud makes it real - how he suddenly feels unstable, wanting to reach forward but trying to stay professional out in the open, some foolish pride in him not wanting to show another tremor of weakness.
John shifts forward, his stare piercing, and even barefoot and in a hospital gown there’s an impossibly commanding presence about Big Boss - Ocelot doesn’t move.
A hand comes to rest on his cheek, and the thumb that sweeps across his cheekbone is slightly awkward and gentle in a way that Big Boss never is. A fleeting moment, soon to be forcibly forgotten, and yet Ocelot does his best to burn it into his heart.
“Adam,” John murmurs, “I’m counting on you.”
Soon after the truth is revealed to the phantom, Big Boss calls him across the sea.
The adjustment once the self-hypnosis was no longer necessary had been difficult - though the hypnosis itself had not been perfect, the focus on his duty had kept him grounded through the worst of it. After all, his Boss had been right there, and so Ocelot had been where he had always belonged.
But the phantom is no longer real to him. The distance between him and John burns as it never had before, and when the call comes in he goes without a second thought.
Last time he had not been at his side, Mother Base had gone down in flames. Adam would not let it happen a second time.
He is shown to the Boss’s quarters as soon as he arrives, late as it is in Outer Heaven - and how impressively Snake has worked from the shadows, Ocelot thinks as he wanders the halls of their new compound. There are fewer and fewer guards the closer he gets to Snake’s room, and he shakes his head even as he smiles - bold to the point of arrogance, but he’s not sure he can bring himself to remind Snake about security just yet.
After all, the last time they had been truly alone - not phone calls or whispers in hospital rooms or Adam’s warm hand on John’s cold wrist, begging him silently to wake up - was well before the fall of the MSF.
He raps on the door sharply with his knuckles and it is flung open almost instantly. Snake is half-dressed, stepping to the side to let Ocelot in, and Ocelot feels an odd but nostalgically familiar constricting in his chest.
“I came as soon as I could, Boss.” He says, eyes flitting around the sparsely decorated room. He can sense Snake staring at him like a predator and so he turns away, divesting himself of his coat and letting it hang over the back of Snake’s spindly desk chair. He removes his belts and holsters just as slowly, a deliberate show of trust just as much as it is a taunt, and scatters them across the desk.
Snake makes it halfway through Ocelot peeling off his gloves, pale fingers tugging at the red leather, before he speaks.
“Ocelot,” he drawls, and Ocelot feels the burning gaze on his back, “stop playing games.”
The laugh he answers with is nothing but fond - because somehow, in all their years apart, he forgot his Boss knew him just as well, inside and out.
He turns and meets Snake’s gaze before his smile fades, before he can think to temper the affection that swells in his chest and shines behind his eyes, but Snake doesn’t say anything else. He only reaches out, hands warm through the thin polyester of Ocelot’s shirt.
“Did you miss me, Snake?” He purrs as he slots against Snake’s broad frame, letting Snake’s hands work at the buttons of his shirt. Snake huffs a laugh at him, fingers fumbling for a second in their haste, and Ocelot thinks he hears his answer in the silence.
Snake maneuvers him until Ocelot’s knees hit the bed and he falls backwards, pulling Snake with him - and this, Adam thinks, is where he belongs.
I missed you, he doesn’t say, because he knows that John will hear it in the longing way he finally kisses him, even when I didn’t remember that I did.
But these are the thoughts he keeps wrapped up inside himself, tangled like overgrown vines around his heart, and aloud he only sighs as Snake’s fingernails scrape over his back.
He lets Snake fuck him as slow as he likes, as if the moment could stretch into infinity to make up for all the years they’ve missed, his forehead against Snake’s shoulder as hips roll into his and calloused fingers run over his skin.
Snake’s hand moves to his throat, the sudden pressure on his windpipe stopping just shy of choking, Ocelot stilling beneath the warm constriction.
“The phantom?” Big Boss asks above him, the other hand running up Ocelot’s thigh like a reminder. Ocelot smiles back up at him, unable to help the way it comes out unspeakably fond, bringing his hand up to cup Snake’s face.
“Never,” He rasps, running his thumb over where the eyepatch meets cheekbone, the mark he left on Snake for everyone to see, “I’m only yours.”
The hand on his throat relaxes, John’s lips twitching to almost match the fond smile that can’t leave Adam’s own face.
And you’re mine, Adam thinks to himself, leaning up to gently kiss where his thumb had just been.
The years pass slowly and in the blink of an eye, the phantom taking his place in Outer Heaven as Big Boss finds his in FOXHOUND. Ocelot is wherever and whatever his Boss asks him to be, his purpose leading him ever forward. He goes out on missions when asked but always returns as soon as he can, a force pulling him ever back to where he belongs.
After his return one night he stretches cat-like across Snake’s bed, naked but for the thin sheet that covers his body and resting his head on his arms. As he watches Snake do paperwork at the rickety desk, hair greying and brow furrowed in concentration, he thinks this is what contentment is.
It is fleeting, as all things are.
Outer Heaven falls, and Ocelot feels a slight regret for the phantom - but it was not Snake that died there, and that is what mattered.
Now that Big Boss is presumed dead they spend most of their days in Zanzibar Land, and though it’s not truly what John wanted Adam feels a selfish pleasure in how much of their lives now overlap.
He is always at his Boss’s side, lingering behind his right shoulder to cover for the eye he stole a lifetime ago - or Snake is just behind him, watching as Ocelot tortures their informants just to the brink for all the intel they need, and Ocelot revels in the chance to show off his craft.
He looks in the mirror one morning as they dress and it’s like he’s seeing them for the first time - his own hair was more white now than silver, hairline beginning to recede and wrinkles marring his face, and as he turns his eyes to the reflection of John he wonders when they got so old.
They’ve grown old together, some foolish part of his heart reminds him, only-
“You know, John, it’s been 35 years since Tselinoyarsk.”
Snake snorts at him.
“Getting sentimental in your old age?” It’s still more fond than scolding, and so Ocelot doesn’t snap at him as Snake comes over to run a hand through his thinning hair, “Your hair’s getting longer again.”
“You said you liked it long.” Ocelot says absently, and lets the deflection slide.
“Did I?” Snake asks, but doesn’t wait for an answer, “Come on. I want an answer out of our latest guest.”
Ocelot falls into step beside him as naturally as breathing.
His compliance with John’s every word is his undoing.
He is away when Zanzibar Land falls, despite his unease - after all, John had asked him to go.
He wonders if John had known.
His grief crawls wordless out of his throat, a loss that will shake the world reverberating off the shattered glass in his hotel room.
John is-
It is memory that moves his every step in the years to come.
Ocelot joins FOXHOUND, his machinations beginning to unfold beneath Liquid’s nose, manipulating John’s young clone into playing right into his hands - or rather hand, he thinks, the other replaced with Liquid’s own after his death.
All because of the Patriots - no, all because of John.
The time passes quickly, at least, the years fleeting in the monochrome haze of grief.
The decision to erase himself is an easy one, too. His true purpose is gone, left only with regret in the world he helped create, the warmth that once bloomed behind his ribs cold and withered as he keeps himself going for the sake of Snake’s dream.
He hesitates only briefly over once again erasing his memories of John, the only thing he had left. There were many things he dwelled on that he was alone with his grief, things he wished he had said, had done.
When he was very young, he had wondered if the feeling that crawled through his chest around Snake had a name. Curious, he thinks, how it is only at the end that he has the courage to call it love.
But it is the last necessary step, so he turns himself into Liquid without a second thought.
Ocelot wakes up again on the roof of Arsenal Gear, muscles aching and the heavy pressure of the drugs in his veins, and from the way his heart beats sluggishly he knows he doesn’t have much time. Solid Snake - David, God, he looks so much like his father, Ocelot thinks deliriously, and when a fist slams into his face he feels an odd ache of nostalgia.
It’s 2014, a part of his mind supplies when he finally collapses, fifty years since Tselinoyarsk.
He looks up at the clone of Big Boss, fifty years after love first took root in his heart, and flicks his wrist in a facsimile of a familiar gesture.
“You’re pretty good.” He says, and he means it.
John, I’ll see you soon.
Adam closes his eyes.